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May 5, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:31
May 5, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
No, I'll tell you what happened.
Somebody sent me a note, said you better look at that because that's not what happened.
And this business is about Trump reversing himself on a minimum wage.
I've got the headline here, the headlines of thehill.com.
It's off of a CNN interview.
And the headline is, in reversal, Trump expresses openness to raising minimum wage.
Now, the reason I bought it, it wouldn't surprise me.
Number one, and it doesn't bother me.
Number two, it's not worth being bothered about right now.
It would bother me when he did it if he did it, but we would try not to let it get to that point, folks.
Greetings, welcome back.
800-282-2882 if you want to be at the program.
Now, typical mainstream media way of doing things.
In reversal, Trump expresses openness to raising minimum wage.
And here's what the story actually says.
In a reversal, Donald Trump expressed openness to raising a minimum wage in an interview on Wednesday.
He said, I'm looking at that.
I'm very different from most Republicans.
Trump told CNN Wednesday about the prospect of raising the minimum wage.
He says, you have to have something you can live on.
But what I'm really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that.
Much more money than the $15.
During a November debate, Trump voiced opposition to raising the minimum wage.
He said, I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is.
So, you know, I've told people forever how easy it is to get suckered in by drive-by headlines.
Even the most vigilant, and I am among them, even the most attuned and highly aware of how they do things can get caught.
And I think I might have been caught on this one.
Because if you, the, the, um, the question's one thing, but what Trump actually said is, I'm looking at that.
I'm very different from most Republicans.
And then CNN interpreted that as, aha, aha, we got Trump to admit that he wants to raise the minimum wage.
Because, of course, it's a litmus test for them.
Raising a minimum wage is a litmus test.
And if you get somebody out there in favor of it, then they've got to be a Democrat.
They've got to be a left-winger.
And the media, some of them are going to be hell-bent on proving that.
But he said you can't live on it, but that's not even the point.
The point is, I'm looking at that.
I'm very different from most Republicans.
That's all CNN needed to hear or theHill.com needed to hear.
But when you, if you know how to translate Trump, and I, of course, do, as anybody who wants to take the time to actually study the way people talk, and I do that, it's fundamental to understanding what people mean.
Trump says a lot of things like that.
He'll say, yeah, we're going to take a look at that.
I'm going to look at that.
I'm going to look at it.
Or, I'm going to do something on it.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to be the greatest.
We're going to make America great.
Damn right, I'm going to look at that.
Damn right, we're going to help those people.
Exactly right.
But if you look at what he goes on to really say here, what is the meat of this?
What I'm really looking to do is to get people great jobs so they make much more money than that.
My interpretation, and that's all it is, and you can do with it what you want, is that in Trump's world, a minimum wage would be irrelevant because nobody would make it.
A minimum wage, maybe entry-level, but minimum wage to Trump is not anything that's a way to measure anybody's standard of living and say, we've got to come up with a number that we can all agree on will support a family.
I don't think he looks at it that way.
I think his objective is to make America great again.
And I do believe he means that.
I'll tell you something else about Trump that I know.
And that he's very proud of the image or reputation of being a winner.
He doesn't like losing or being called a loser.
And he doesn't want to.
You can disagree with him on ideas.
And you can tell him he's all wet.
But the way to get under his skin, if any of you want to, I'll give you a little insight.
Just call him a loser.
Just say that Trump's lost everything.
He's not this big winner.
He says, do that.
You'll get his attention, I guarantee you.
But you're not going to get his attention by saying, you know, I disagree with you.
You're full of it on this.
You don't know what you're talking about.
He'd be glad to engage you left and right.
But that's just his personality.
But I think largely he was saying here that the minimum wage, if he succeeds, nobody's going to care what it is because most everybody is going to be making way beyond that.
Well, good, great, if that happens.
I frankly fully agree with that sentiment.
Something about conservatism I've always tried to tell people.
Because one of the things that really rubs me wrong about it is the way it's been characterized as caring only about the rich and not caring about the poor and the disadvantaged.
And the truth is that conservatism, by its very existence and definition, is compassion.
Conservatives love everybody and they want the best for everybody.
And we believe that there are ways of making such things happen.
We just believe that government's not part of the recipe.
We think that success and individual happiness and self-esteem, all that stuff, is driven from within.
Achievement, that kind of thing, is driven from.
We believe in every human being reaching their potential.
We want everybody to be the best they can be.
We don't take great comfort in the fact there are haves and have-nots.
And we certainly don't try to exploit the have-nots.
And there's not a conservative I know that wants more and more have-nots imported into the country so that we can exploit them for our own personal or political gain.
That's the Democrats.
That's leftists.
But I believe Trump when he says he wants to make America great again.
And I believe Trump when he says he wants as many people as possible to do well, get rich as he says it.
Now, so I think we could safely say that Trump was not actually, his focal point here was not saying, yeah, yeah, now I can be honest.
Yeah, I want to raise the minimum wage.
I don't think that's what, I think that's what they want people to think that they got him to say.
But I don't think that that is what he means.
The Hillary stack had a Hillary stack.
I've mingled the two.
It doesn't matter because I've got some soundbites I want to get into while I sort that out.
We're going to start here on the Hillary portion of things here.
This was Anderson Cooper 360 last night.
He interviewed Hillary and questioned there are Democrats who are just worried about you against Trump, that you're not ready for whatever he may throw at you.
I mean, he's brought up a lot of stuff about a lot of people that nobody could have predicted.
I mean, quoting from the National Inquirer just yesterday, you know, he's made references to your marriage, to your husband.
Are you prepared for what this guy might throw at you, Mrs. Clinton?
Are you prepared?
He's not the first one, Anderson.
I just can't, I can't say this often enough.
If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the footsteps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I'm more than happy to have him do that.
You're ready for that.
Oh, please.
I mean, look, this is to me a classic case of a blustering, bullying guy who has knocked out of the way all the Republicans because they were just dumbfounded.
Could you play the beginning of this?
I really, I didn't know that this began with the Arkansas broadbeam cackle.
I just have to hear this.
Are you prepared?
When you're not expecting that and that hits you, it's just, what is that?
It sounds like a broken record.
Or the mating call of the Australian rabbit bat, one of the two.
If anybody is stuck in the 90s, ladies and gentlemen, it is Mrs. Clinton.
And that is another reason why I think that the Democrats are ripe because they're the ones stuck in the Clintons are wedded.
They are locked to the 90s.
By that, I mean the techniques they used to defeat their political enemies.
That's where they still are.
And I don't, this kind of goes hand in hand with that soundbite of hers the other day that she's used to men.
She's got a lot of experience with men going off the reservation.
You know, insulting Native Americans, by the way, on that at the same time.
And I was one of the first to interpret that as because she's the most cheated-on woman in America.
I naturally assume she was talking about she's got experience with guys that are cheating on her, not loyal and that.
I have been persuaded that it might mean more than that.
That she could have been talking about your average, ordinary, lunkhead guy that accomplished feminists have had to overcome their whole lives.
You know, idiots who run companies that have no business being there.
They're only there because they're men and they knew somebody who knew somebody.
And she's used to dealing with a bunch of typical men, bullies, mean, crack sex jokes.
She's used to dealing with this kind of primal behavior of men.
And Trump doesn't scare her because she's got a lifetime of dealing with these kind of guys.
When you strip everything away from that, what does that say about Hillary Clinton's impression of the men in her life?
It means she doesn't have a very high impression of men and gentlemen.
She doesn't, she's got some chips on her shoulder where men in general are concerned.
And it was understandable that a feminist would.
You have to have that kind of attitude as a feminist.
But I think she doesn't.
She's got it backwards.
It's the Clintons that are stuck in the 90s.
Anderson Cooper, next question.
You know, Trump does run a different kind of campaign than anybody else, Mrs. Clinton.
Certainly on the Republican side.
I mean, you might have been prepared for whoever on the Republican side, but I can't believe you're prepared for Trump because nobody knows what Trump's going to come up with next.
He makes himself more available to reporters.
He'll do anything anywhere.
He loves it, Mrs. Clinton.
He'll go to anybody that asks him to show up.
He'll do 25 interviews a day.
What Anderson Cooper didn't say is, and you, Mrs. Clinton, hide from the media.
So, Mrs. Clinton, are you going to start doing that more?
Are you going to up your media visibility?
Reporters now have a chance to ask some tougher questions.
It's not enough to call in and give somebody a platform.
It's now the time to make the tough decisions.
And you got to ask him, okay, so what exactly would you replace X, Y, and Z with?
The man is the presumptive nominee, and being a loose cannon doesn't in any way protect him, I hope, from being asked the hard questions that he should have been asked during the whole primary process.
Oh, there we go.
So Mrs. Clinton, who has a cloak of security around her and doesn't know what a tough question is, because anybody who would ask her one's testicles are in a lockbox, she thinks the press hasn't been tough enough on the Trumpster.
And she is sending out marching orders in that bite.
She is ordering, suggesting, asking Anderson Cooper and the boys to go out there.
You know, it's about time you tried to lay a glove on Trump.
You know, it's about time you hit this guy.
So we will see.
Same interview, Anderson Cooper said, now, assuming that you get the Democrat nomination, if you're Hillary Clinton sitting there and you get that question, do you not think you'd be insulted?
She's probably thinking, what do you mean, assuming I get the nomination?
Who do you think you are?
Assuming that you get the Democrat nomination, are you ready for Donald Trump?
I mean, he's already got an unflattering nickname for you, Crooked Hillary.
He's unlike any other candidate probably, certainly you've ever run against that anybody has ever seen.
This is the second time he's asked her this.
Are you sure you're ready?
I mean, nobody has any idea what's going to come from Trump from day to day.
You have no idea.
Are you sure you are ready?
Anderson, I've seen the presidency up close from two different perspectives, and I think I know what it takes.
And I don't think we can take a risk on a loose cannon like Donald Trump running our country.
He's a loose cannon.
I mean, he's somebody who has said so many things, and I'm sure he'll be scrambling, and his advisors will be scrambling.
But he's already said all of these things.
He says climate change is a Chinese hoax, and I think it's real, and we've got to pull the world together to deal with it.
So you can go down a long list, some of which he's tried to bob and weave a little bit, but I think it's a risk.
I think he is a loose cannon, and loose cannons tend to misfire.
So I was on Nightly News last night with Lester Holt, who says Hillary Clinton today used the term loose cannon to describe you, noted that loose cannons misfire.
She talked about your blustering and your bullying.
How do you respond to that, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump?
It's a nasty term that was given to her by one of her pollsters, I guess, but the fact is that we need strength in this country.
She's not strong.
She's not going to be strong at the border.
She's not going to be strong with our military.
She's not going to be strong with ISIS, no matter how you look.
Look at what she's done with Libya.
Look at what a disaster it is.
Even her vote to go into Iraq was a disastrous vote.
And he's not going to let her forget that.
That vote with Iraq.
He's not going to let her forget it.
But you know, look at the things she says.
He says climate change is a Chinese hoax, and I think it's real.
And look what she's willing to do because you know what?
Mrs. Clinton went to West Virginia and she told coal miners, look, we are going to shut down the coal business because your business is destroying our climate.
And then she assured them government would come up with replacement jobs for them.
She literally said, we'll come up with things down the road.
We'll come up with new jobs for you.
Just utter, utter total crock.
You know, I don't think Trump is making a quarter million dollars for 20-minute speeches at banks.
And I don't think Trump has an email problem.
He doesn't do email, in fact.
Back after this.
Don't go away.
All right, here we've got it.
Grab audio soundbite 14.
This is the actual Trump minimum wage bite, CNN.
It's Wolf Blitzer.
And the actual question is, Bernie Sanders says that he wants a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Has really gone after you lately saying that you're happy with $725, the current federal minimum wage.
Mr. Trump, you can't live on $7.25 an hour.
Well, and I'm actually looking at that because I'm very different from most Republicans.
I mean, you have to have something that you can live on.
But what I'm really looking to do is get people great jobs so they make much more money than that.
But you're open to raising the minimum wage.
I'm open to doing something with it because I don't like that.
So his first answer was, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at that.
You get it.
It's not enough.
Of course it's not enough.
It's not enough for anybody.
But what I really, really want, I want to get people worthy more money.
$15 now doesn't even matter.
Wolf?
I don't even want to talk about $15.
And Wolf doubles back.
But you're open to raising a minimum wage.
Yeah, I'm open to doing something with it because I don't like it.
But that's not.
Trump raising the minimum wage is not the policy.
It is not his recipe for improving people's lives economically.
That's the takeaway.
And they want you to think that he is already betraying.
Yeah, ESIC, what's the question?
Well, that's what the caller Snurdley is asking me, official program observers.
Do you think you think Trump tells people what they want to hear?
You might be able to put it that way.
I mean, if you look at Wolf Blitzer here boring in as only Wolf Blitzer can, you can't live on $7.25 an hour.
Well, who in the world thinks you can?
But that's not the, the minimum wage is not a livable wage, and that was never supposed to be.
Minimum wage is such a it's always an entry-level wage.
It's not for skilled labor.
It's not designed to support families or anything of the sort.
It was never the intention.
It was intended to be a political football from the first days.
Everybody thinks there's all kinds of compassion behind a minimum wage.
There isn't.
There's just an opportunity to make it look that way.
But you may have a point.
I mean, he may just, as a means of getting to where he wants to go and a question, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, but just tell them what they want to hear as a means of avoiding an argument to get to the real point that he wants to make.
But I don't think it's any more than that.
I think he said what he really intended to say there.
I don't think he was trying to buffalo Wolf Blitzer about anything.
Back after this.
You know, I'll tell you something else here.
You know, Lester of Two Evils business.
There's one thing.
Donald Trump does not face four federal investigations.
Donald Trump is not accused of trafficking in state secrets on an illegal server that has been hacked by foreign government hackers.
Donald Trump, as far as I know, hasn't killed anyone.
As far as I know, Donald Trump hasn't raped anybody.
As far as I know, Donald Trump's not been charged with sexual harassment, doesn't have a bunch of women popping up left and right accusing him of things like Hillary's husband does.
I don't think Trump has helped sell the United States uranium supply to the Russians via a conduit in Canada.
I don't think four people are dead because of Trump incompetence regarding military operations, i.e.
in Benghazi.
I don't think Trump has helped the United States overthrow two U.S. allies and thrown the Middle East in an absolute disaster.
I mean, here's Mrs. Clinton.
Now, the biggest charge that she can make, you know, loose cannons, the danger of loose cannons is not that they miss fire.
The biggest danger of loose cannons is where you aim them.
And the biggest issue that Hillary Clinton can come up with is that Trump believes climate change is a hoax and she doesn't.
She's going to go right down the Democrat playbook of issues, and she's going to do it from a 1990s perspective.
The biggest thing she's going to count on is the media backing her up.
The biggest thing she's going to count on was every Democrat candidate in our lifetimes counts on, and that is the media to destroy her opponent.
She's going to count on that.
We'll have to wait and see if that actually manifests itself.
Do you remember Trump way back before he ran for president, before his campaign started, was on this, he's hot on the trail of Obama not being born in America.
And he was really pressing that.
And in the middle of all that, I took pains to remind people that the Republicans didn't start this birther movement business, that Hillary Clinton did in the 2008 primaries.
It was the Clinton campaign and her agents, her consultants on the Democrat side that tried to use the issue of Obama's birth.
Well, on CNN yesterday, Trump reminded Wolf Blitzer that Wolf had never heard it.
Predictably, this is all news to Wolf.
He hadn't the slightest idea.
He thought there was the craziest thing he'd ever heard.
He said, this week, Secretary Clinton said this about you.
The leading Republican contender is the man who led this insidious birther movement to discredit the president's citizenship.
We cannot let Barack Obama's legacy fall into Donald Trump's hands.
What do you say to that, Mr. Trump?
Do you know who started the birth of movement?
Do you know who started it?
Do you know who questioned his birth certificate?
One of the first?
Hillary Clinton.
She's the one that started it.
She brought it up years before it was brought up by me.
A taped interview.
As soon as the taped interview ended, CNN, they played the interview, Wolf doing that.
When the interview was over, they then cut back to Wolf Blitzer Live, who said this.
Just to be clear on the Donald Trump birther claim, Hillary Clinton never said that Barack Obama was born outside the United States.
As soon as it was over, they cut back to Wolf.
But Trump was right.
The birther movement birthed in the 2008 Democrat primary on the Hillary Clinton side.
I don't know whether she personally ever used it, but her campaign did.
It's one of the reasons why you have campaign spokesmen and people out there representing you.
They say things a candidate can't but wants to say.
They threw the kitchen sink at Obama at first and it wasn't working.
People have forgotten.
That was supposed to be a coronation.
That was her coronation.
She was going to be Queen Hillary.
This is when everything the Democrats owed her for everyone was paid off.
And then here came this, what did, who was it that said it?
Biden.
Hey, we got a clean and an articulate black guy here.
It was Biden that said that, right?
Joe Biden.
And so then they threw her overboard.
I'm telling you, she's the most cheated-on woman in America.
They threw her overboard for Obama in 2008.
And there are a lot of people who would throw her overboard for crazy Bernie this year if they could.
Quickly, Kevin in Fargo, North Dakota.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
Hi there, Rush.
I'd like to say it's an honor to speak to you.
I've waited a very long time to get a chance to talk to you.
I appreciate your waiting, sir.
Thank you very much.
Yes, sir.
What I would like to talk about here is I find it very, very amusing that the Republican Party is now clamoring for unity and that we should all kind of gather behind the party for this great push for the presidency.
And I guess I would just like to make the point that I personally don't feel, as a lifelong Republican, that I owe the Republican Party anything.
I feel like they have betrayed me on virtually every important issue that has come to be voted upon for, I can't even tell you, the last time I feel like they actually upheld something that I stand for.
So does this mean, what calls for unity are you hearing that you don't want to react to here?
Is this about unifying behind Trump?
Yes, yes, unifying behind this candidate, Donald Trump.
And I, quite honestly, I view Trump as little more than Hillary Clinton in a suit.
And I recognize fully that she usually is wearing a suit anyway.
She's probably more man than most of the guys I know.
Thought you were going to say Trump there for a minute, Kevin.
You were, weren't you?
No, Hillary is actually more man than most men I know.
Yeah.
She puts her pants on one leg at a time like all the other guys.
That's exactly right.
And I guess my feeling is with Hillary, she's an evil that I know.
Donald Trump, I feel like he has absolutely no substance.
I feel like he has no credibility.
And I really, I don't feel like there's any way I can bring myself to get behind this guy.
All right.
Well, let me just try to lay some of your feelings.
There are a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
And I think some of these calls for unity may be a little insincere.
I mean, I'm not going to get to them, but I got soundbites.
Bill Crystal of the Weekly Standard now leading a third party movement.
They want to go out and find a principal conservative these guys can all vote for to preserve their honor, even though they know they're going to lose, and even though they know they're going to elect Hillary.
And they're probably, look, the Republican establishment, they're not through yet here, folks.
This is by, I mean, the nomination fight maybe, but they're not through yet here.
I mean, the fireworks haven't ended if they've begun.
But this Republican call for unity is a perfunctory thing, but there's still a lot of establishment Republicans who are not signing on to this by any stretch.
So you're not alone in that regard out there, Kevin.
I got to run.
We'll be back here in just a second, folks.
Paul in Goldsboro, North Carolina, North Carolina.
Great to have you, sir.
How are you?
Yes, sir.
Doing very well.
Better than I deserve, Rush.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
You bet.
Let me get right to the point.
I'll tell you where I'm coming from.
I am a constitutional conservative who was abandoned by the Republican Party.
I changed my registration to independent during the second Bush, George W. administration.
I was a supporter of Ted Cruz.
I still think highly of Mr. Cruz.
I think he was the started, soft conservative.
Why do you think what went wrong there?
Have you thought about that at all?
What went wrong?
Well, I have.
I think the same reason that I believe Donald Trump is going to win the presidency is they continue to underestimate this man.
He works very, very hard.
No matter what he was handed and whatever, no one can deny that Donald Trump has a strong work ethic and that he'll do what it takes to get the job done.
And I think that's why he's going to win.
People will continue to underestimate him and what he will do.
And he knows how to play the media.
Wolf Blitzer, you know, I don't think he necessarily changed his position as much as he did, kind of turned tables on him.
He knows how to turn tables on people.
And he doesn't play by their rule books.
And I do plan on voting for Mr. Trump.
I don't agree with him on a lot of things.
However, it's not so much the lesser of two evils, in my opinion, but someone who will try to do a good job.
And there are some common ground issues I think I can find with Mr. Trump.
You know, you are the first person, I think, I could be wrong.
You're the first person that I can recall anyway who's described Trump as a hard worker.
You're right.
There are a lot of people just see Trump all the time.
He's on the meeting.
He's everywhere.
He goes every hour and a half or hour long personal appearance.
He'll do four or five a day.
He'll get on Trump Force One and fly all over the place.
And radio, TV, he's there.
Plus, he's running his other businesses, his empire.
He doesn't get much sleep at night.
But you're the first person to observe that, at least to me.
And I think that's a good point.
He clearly appears to be working harder than Hillary is, for example.
And I've been playing the media.
I still think that there is a cadre of people out there who can't get out of the cookie-cutter mold in which they live.
And they still think Trump is going to step in it.
There's still going to be that moment.
They thought it was going to happen during the primaries.
They still think there's going to be that moment.
He's going to say the outrageous thing or whatever that is going to cause his supporters to abandon him.
And I think many of them on the Democrat side are relying on that.
And that's part of the underestimating him.
I appreciate your call.
We'll be back here, folks, and wrap it up.
Thank you, folks, so much for being with us today.
That's it for another excursion, a busy broadcast day here on the EIB network.
And we're already at Friday tomorrow in 21 hours.
We'll be back with Open Line Friday.
Looking forward to continuing our dialogue, as they say.
So see you then.
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