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June 15, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:20
June 15, 2016, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Well, you know, that's comforting to know.
I just saw something up there on Fox says that the FBI says the shooter is the main focus of the investigation.
Well, that's good.
What else would it be?
A wife?
You know, there's two wives.
There's an ex-wife, a current wife.
As the ex-wife, it wouldn't say anything.
The ex-wife it knew wouldn't say anything.
You guys should investigate her.
I guess you could investigate Marwan Alwockie or whatever, the late great terrorist inspiration that this guy seemed to have some reverence for.
But I just wanted to pass it on.
The FBI, still processing the crime scene.
The focus of the investigation is the shooter.
And that was breaking news.
You have to, you see, what else would be the focus?
Or am I missing something here?
Greetings, my friends, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations daily.
Rush Limbaugh here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
You know, Mrs. Clinton's taken a lot of money.
The foundation has taken a lot of money from all of these Middle Eastern countries that slaughter homosexuals when they discover them.
Ten countries in the Middle East and some in Asia who literally murder, they execute gays when they are discovered.
And every damn one of those countries has donated to Hillary Clinton.
Every one of them.
Here's Hillary Clinton.
She's talking about Trump's lack of temperament.
He does not have presidential temperament.
He doesn't have the qualification.
Donald Trump does not have what it takes to be president.
He's temperamentally unsuited.
This is the woman that lied to the world about a video being responsible for what happened in Benghazi.
This is a woman who lied to the parents of the four people killed in Benghazi, lied to them over their caskets that it was a video responsible for it.
This is a woman who did television commercials in Germany and Europe with Obama, blaming the video all the while, knowing the video had nothing to do with the attack.
It wasn't a protest.
It was a planned terror attack.
She knew she lied, but people say she's eminently qualified and she has perfect temperament.
Hillary Clinton is the one that needs to be kept out of the Oval Office.
Hillary Clinton doesn't need to get any closer to it than she already is.
If she does, it's only going to stay the same.
The path this country is on is only going to stay the same.
We are only going to continue to decline.
Life in America and economic opportunity are going to continue to decline as long as the Democrats run the show in the White House.
That's why it is even more repugnant when you see Republican leaders standing with Obama to condemn Trump over Trump's reaction to what happened in Orlando.
Now, yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned to you that many of the soundbites that I had in the roster were about me.
And I don't like the program becoming about me because I'm talked about everywhere else.
I'd like to stick to the issues here.
So I purposely did not use any of those soundbites yesterday in favor of, in lieu of focusing on things that were both current and that had happened while I was away.
But popular demand has reared its head.
And so now we're going to get into some of these soundbites that I didn't, I purposely did not air yesterday.
I told you about them, but I didn't use them.
We're going to start with Haley Barber, the former chairman of Republican National Committee.
And to set this up, I've known Chairman Barber for years.
He's not a close friend.
I'm going to get the wrong idea here.
But I have seen him on several occasions, and he's always been convivial, nice.
There has never been any acrimony whatsoever.
But he is a Republican establishment.
There's no question about it.
And I told you one of the times that I ran into him, I was having dinner at the famous New York Speakeasy 21.
I was dining there and consuming an old beverage.
Could smoking cigars when you still could do that with Roger Ailes, who was executive producer of my TV show.
And Haley came in, he saw us, he sat down and he said, Rush, I got a great idea.
And he started pitching me on the sharing of mailing lists.
My newsletter didn't have a website yet, newsletter in exchange for it.
I mean, they wanted to tap into my massive subscriber base, the largest political newsletter in the country.
It never happened, but it was just throwing out an idea.
We don't sell a list, period.
I never have.
Well, I can't say we never have back in the old days before I was in charge of what was going on.
There were a few little sales here and there, and I heard him.
What are you doing?
So I just got a penis enlargement pitch.
I'm sorry I didn't do it.
And we went and shut it down.
Because I've never wanted our mailing lists here to be sold or rented or what have you.
But back in the formative days when all this was new, hey, Rush, it's a new income stream.
How much is it?
Well, it's like a dime versus a dime a subscriber.
We're going to risk our image for a dime a subscriber.
Well, you know, every dime counts.
Well, it doesn't here.
Anyway, I got it shut down.
But the second time I ran into Haley was he was toying the idea of running for president.
I guess this would have been 2012.
And there was some event going on here in Florida that many Republican big shots and bigwigs were attending.
Might have been, I don't know what it was.
I don't think it was Horowitz's thing.
Anyway, Haley Barber came by the estate and mentioned he was thinking about running.
And I've mentioned that he made the point, we cannot criticize Obama.
Rush is a part.
We can't.
We criticize his policies.
We criticize his policies all day long, but we can't go there.
Now, he didn't say, why?
But everything's in the unspoken.
We can't go there because he's African American.
We call racists.
And it was the same old song and dance.
I didn't say anything.
I just sat there and nodded.
I set all this up simply to tell you I've never had a strained or acrimonious relationship with Barber, just to set up the sound bites rather than play them cold.
They happened last Thursday on the Fox Business Network with Neil Cavuto and his Coast to Coast show.
And Charlie Payne was sitting in for Cavuto, and he had Haley Barber on, and his question was, has your party been changed forever now with Trump?
Trump now controls the platform.
He controls the message.
Will things never be the way they were when you, Mr. Barber, had more clout within the party?
One thing that has changed tremendously, when I became chairman 20 years ago, there was the rise of conservative news media, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and they were very, very supportive of Republicans and conservatives.
But in the last three years, the biggest critics for Republicans have been the conservative news media.
Mad because, you know, they say that Republicans aren't pure enough.
Republicans don't fight hard enough.
Republicans cave in.
And I really think that has had more effect on the standing of the party.
What does he mean by the standing of the party?
You mean the reputation of the party?
The standing of the party?
Well, he's right.
I mean, this program started in 1988, and for four years that was it.
And then it boomed.
Then my guest hosts started getting their own shows, and then some got national shows.
Fox came along in 97.
And then the bloggers and the websites, and it just exploded out there.
And it was, it was a conservative slash Republican media, and it was amplifying Republican ideas.
And back in those days, the Republicans were opposing the Democrats.
Back in those days, Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America ended up winning the House for the first time in 40 years for the Republicans.
They were actually balancing budgets.
They were implementing the conservative agenda as best they could.
Last three or four years or longer, they haven't been doing that.
There's no mystery here.
And so Charlie Payne said, well, you know, what changed?
What brought all this about?
I became chairman of the Republican National Committee about the time of the rise of Rush Limbaugh.
I loved it.
We were finally going to get some conservatives out there telling our side.
And it worked that way for a while.
But in the last three or four years, the most bitter, the most harsh, the most negative critics of Republicans have been the conservative media elite, the Rush Limbaughs, some of these people, friends of mine.
But the fact of the matter is, and it may be just because of ratings, but they are the leaders.
They are the agitators for the purity cause.
It's not about purity.
Oh, I don't.
Snerdley thinks it was.
What was the cheap shot?
Oh, that ratings thing.
Well, that's always a fallback.
Yeah, these guys are just doing it for ratings.
They don't care.
They don't really believe what they believe.
They're just saying what they say for ratings.
That has followed me from day one.
And it has never been the case.
I haven't needed to.
But anyway, that's the excuse that, you know, lay it off on us as though we're the ones that changed.
Folks, I'm going to tell you something.
For better or for worse, I am the same guy believing the same things today that I believed on August 1st, 1988.
I have not moderated.
I have not modified.
I've not wimped out.
I've not loosened up.
I have not changed at all.
They have.
That's the difference.
I would never stand up with Barack Obama or some Democrat and condemn the Republican presidential nominee, not after he becomes presumptive, like they did yesterday.
There's no way under the sun that I would have ever, and believe me, they tried.
I can't tell you the number of times emissaries from Washington were sent down here to try to get my mind right on immigration and amnesty.
And it would have been the easiest thing to fall in with it.
It would have been the easiest thing.
My God, I could have sat here and said, you know what?
This is Washington.
This is the White House.
This is real big coming to see me.
Boy, what's in it for me if I become an ally?
I could have looked at it that way.
It would have been easy to decide, but it actually wouldn't have been because there's no way I believe in amnesty.
There's no way I believe in any way, shape, man, or form the Democrat immigration policy.
But the Republican Party, at some point, shifted and became no different than Obama on that.
I don't chase ratings or dollars.
I try to just be the best every day and let everything fall in as a result of that.
But it would have been easy.
And I'm telling you, folks, it was seductive.
You wouldn't believe.
It's not that I was offered things, not in a direct way, but I mean, implications were all over the place that I would be looked upon very, very favorably.
But then even when I didn't join, they still tried and they came down and they were polite about it.
They tried to make their case.
And in fact, the most persuasive attempt, and when I say most persuasive, it wasn't close to persuading me, but the most persuasive attempt when they sent somebody down, I'm going to name names, say, look, what this is really all about is wiping out the Democrats.
We're trying to establish a super majority Republican Party across this country, and we've got to do it.
We've got to get the Hispanics, and we've got to get this group, we've got to get that group.
And I said, well, that's fine, but be who you are when you do it.
That was my problem with it.
They weren't being who they are.
They were trying to be what they thought people wanted them to be from group to group to group.
But I haven't changed.
That's why I refer to myself as old reliable or as a bulwark.
I mean, you're never going to tune in here and start scratching your head and ask what's happened to me.
At least not when it becomes ideological belief.
I have literally not changed.
If anything, I have become even more committed to conservatism and the defeat of liberalism.
And if I had to cite one thing, that's what I don't see the Republican Party interested in anymore is defeating the left, defeating liberalism.
Yeah, they want to win elections by beating Democrats, but I don't see them out there attacking the ideology of progressivism or liberalism, and that's what's tearing this country apart.
And that's what they're to do, the opposition party.
So I don't look at it as my problem.
If they hadn't changed, we'd still be right in there with them, and so would you.
There wouldn't be Donald Trump if the Republican Party was actually doing what they say they're going to do during campaigns.
Mitch McConnell is up next.
This is last Tuesday.
So eight days ago, American Enterprise Institute Matt Lewis, who is an author, was interviewing McConnell talking about politics in America today.
Question: 70% of the Republican base voted for an outsider or an anti-establishment candidate.
What could the Senate do that could resonate with those Republican-based voters who don't appreciate the importance of, say, entitlement reform?
Now, this guy, Matt Lewis, is asking McConnell: look, what could you do?
What could you and others in the Senate do that would reach Republican-based voters angry at you who think that you're either selling out or you're not standing firm?
What could you do?
What could you say to them that would win them over on, say, entitlement reform?
A lot of base voters have been really misled by a lot of talk show hosts and others about what's achievable when you don't have the White House.
I think the reason people are unhappy is because of the condition of the country and because they've been fed the notion that somehow a Republican Congress can overcome a Democratic president and completely bring him to his knees when it's not possible.
You know, this is it in a nutshell.
When they didn't have the House or the Senate and we were complaining, Obamacare 2010, they couldn't have stopped anything.
He's right.
They didn't have the votes.
They said, we need a House.
You got to give, you got to put us back.
We can do things when you get there.
So we put them back.
They won the House.
And then nothing happened.
Well, we can't do anything.
We get the Senate.
We've got to win the Senate.
Denwyst, we gave them the Senate.
And then they said, well, we can't say.
We don't have a White House.
They just kept saying, we can't.
We can't.
Democrats managed to stop us when they're in the minority.
It can be done.
Okay, one more.
This is unrelated to Mitch McConnell or to Haley Barber.
But back to McConnell for just a second here.
The idea that there's nothing you can do to stop a Democrat president.
Well, of course not when you announce you're not going to.
Mitch McConnell said they're not going to oppose it this whole year.
We're not going to stop Obama.
We're not going to do anything because we don't want to upset our nominees' chances to win the White House.
So we're not going to oppose.
They said two years ago, don't worry, Mr. Pritt, we're never going to impeach you.
Obama's messages that he's received from the Republicans are, do what you want, man.
Have at it.
Change Constitution.
We're not stopping you.
We're not going to deny you the money.
We're not going to deny, we're going to agree with every budget you want.
We're going to give you more than you asked for, which they did.
They're not even making an effort.
That's the thing.
Last Saturday on Smirconish, CNN Jeff Lord was the guest.
And Smirkanish said, Jeffrey, you served in the Reagan White House.
You have his portrait behind you as we see it right now.
But what about Michael Reagan's point that Donald Trump is not Reagan-esque?
That is something I have said repeatedly on CNN, that they are not the same.
Ronald Reagan isn't coming back.
Ronald Reagan was unique.
Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan.
Are there aspects of their campaigns and this moment that are similar?
Sure.
Ronald Reagan's enemies said at length that he was a racist.
I've spent the last day or so taking a look.
If you type in racist and then next to it, the words Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, you've named the Republican or conservative, you will find that this is more or less the go-to for the American left with all these people.
So Donald Trump is really just the latest.
Right.
His point there is, is that Reagan put my name in there, search my name, Rubio Cruz, Romney, and Google's going to show you something like Hitler or racism or some such thing.
And they're doing it now with Trump.
So his point is that the left is using the same playbook that they have always used.
They used it against me.
They've used it against Republican nominees.
It's really amazing when you stop the thing.
They've used it against me.
I mean, it's the guy on the radio.
They treat me like they treat elected Republicans.
Anyway, okay, we're going to get back to more of your phone calls here, folks, in due course.
It'd be mere moments.
Hang in there.
No, no, no, no.
I remember it's coming up.
I remember Mitch McConnell on the campaign.
I remember Mitch McConnell when he won re-election in when was he re-elected?
2014?
I think so.
I remember that.
I remember his acceptance, whenever it was, 12 or 14, I remember McConnell.
Talking about stopping Obama and stopping what Obama was doing, and that's why he was elected.
He was pledging, and it sounded, he was one of us.
And he sounded that way on a campaign trail.
I'll never forget his acceptance speech.
I guess he was in Louis or where he was in Kentucky on election night.
I've never forgotten it.
Because I said, boy, this is different.
I mean, this guy really sounds like he's one of us here.
I mean, he was spelling it out line by line where Obama was going overboard.
Now they were going to stop him.
It sounded like he was a tried and true died-in-the-wall conservative.
And that's the point.
They all sound that way on the campaign trail.
Anyway, proof coming up.
I went back.
I got a piece here by Andy McCarthy at National Review.
This is from the 12th of March of 2016.
It's just this year.
I own the budget, quote unquote.
It was August 2014, the stretch run before the midterm election.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was making promises to voters about how he and his party would face down Obama's lawless presidency, put us in charge, he explained, and a Republican Congress would defend Americans by using the main tool the framers gave them.
That would be the power of the purse.
This is my point.
Mitch McConnell in 2014 was campaigning, as many of these Republicans do, as a strident, true, ardent conservative, saying it all.
And even the night of his election, he was spouting it.
He was promising people to go to Washington to put the stops to this.
And it's the last we heard of it.
Here is what he said in his campaign back in 2004, in August.
Quote, that means we can pass the spending bill.
And I assure you that in that spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what's called placing writers in the bill.
No money can be spent to do this or to do that.
We're going to go after him on health care.
We're going to go after him on financial services.
We're going to go after him on the EPA.
We're going to go after him across the board, all across the federal government.
We're going to go after it.
That's his campaign pitch.
And of course, the natural, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
Couldn't that lead to a government shutdown?
Isn't that what you said Ted Cruz is going to do?
Ted Cruz was going to shut the government.
It's the worst thing that could happen to shut the government down.
That's why you couldn't oppose Obama, right?
You can't stop Obama because they'll shut the government down.
Republicans will get blamed because Americans love their government functioning every day.
And if the Republicans are seen as shutting it down, it's the same thing as canceling checks.
And we can't afford it.
But the point is, here's McConnell promising all this action to stop Obama using the power of the purse.
And yet we just had the sound bite where he says it's talk show hosts have got to learn.
Here, grab 21.
It's not by 21 again.
I'm going to read this to you.
We can pass this.
This is August 2014, Senator McConnell.
And I've got nothing against him.
He's been very nice to me.
None of this is personal, folks.
I don't think that's what they understand.
It's not personal with me.
I don't know what other people do.
None of this is personal.
This is all about winning and losing to me.
And I'm tired of losing.
And I'm tired of hearing we can't win.
That's all it is with me.
I'm tired of losing to these people when they are the minority.
And I'm tired of being misled.
And I'm tired of being falsely promised in all this.
2014, campaigning, August, McConnell, we can pass the spending bill, but I assure you in that spending bill, we're going to be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what's called placing writers in the bill.
No money can be spent to do this or to do that.
We're going to go after him on health care.
We're going to go after him on financial services.
We're going to go after him on the EPA.
We're going to go after them across the board, all across the federal government.
We're going to go after it.
Last Tuesday, McConnell said this, answering a question about how he could reach out to the base and make them understand what's going on.
A lot of base voters have been really misled by a lot of talk show hosts and others about what's achievable when you don't have the White House.
I think the reason people are unhappy is because of the condition of the country and because they've been fed the notion that somehow a Republican Congress can overcome a Democratic president and completely bring him to his knees when it's not possible.
Why didn't he say that in the campaign then?
Why didn't he tell voters, look, I don't want to give you the wrong idea, but we can't stop Obama because we're not going to have the White House, even if I win, even if you send me back to be your Senate majority leader, we still can't stop Obama.
Why didn't he say that in the campaign?
But more than that, who says you can't stop Obama?
They stop us.
Look what they did to George W. Bush.
Now, I know they would say, yeah, but they've got the media.
We don't.
Well, you've got a conservative media here that would love to support you.
You have a conservative media that would love to be championing what you're doing.
You've got all kinds of support out here, truth be known.
And that hasn't changed.
None of this is personal.
But when you announce that you're not going to oppose Obama at all in 2016, because you don't want any acrimony, because you don't want it reflecting on our nominee and his campaign, you're sending a signal to Obama that there's no breaks, there's no guardrail.
He can do whatever he wants to.
You've already taken impeachment off the table.
Then you say you're not going to use the power of the purse, meaning you're not going to deny him the money.
And not only have they not denied him the money, they've given him more than he requires.
You know why?
Because they're hoping the press will stop ripping them.
If it's that, that is so immature and childish to be worried to actually take the future of the country and throw it away because of what the media is going to say about you.
But every new senator I've talked to that says honest things says it's amazing what I've discovered when I got there.
The only thing that matters getting reelected, which I have come to believe.
Here's Jeff Madison, North Carolina.
Jeff, I'm glad you're waited.
I appreciate it.
You're next.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks.
It's an honor, sir.
Appreciate that.
I really do.
I just wanted to bounce back to that comment that Hillary Clinton made you talked about earlier.
It just irritated me.
How do you build a wall to keep out the internet?
Well, we don't want to keep out the internet.
We want it working at 100% because that's how you know what the bad guys are doing.
And I've never seen the internet kill people in buildings.
I've never seen the internet fly airplanes into buildings.
And I've never seen the internet drop an anchor, baby, and latch on to our social security system.
So it was just a stupid comment.
But you know, it's a great point.
And its purpose, once again, is to shift the blame from these terrorists.
She wants us to believe that they're just innocent, nice people because of the trash on the internet.
They see it, and they're being corrupted, and they're being radicalized.
And this is the problem.
She nor Obama will admit that they're wanting to be radicalized.
They're seeking out how to be radicals.
They're inspired and motivated by the imams and the leaders of the religion in these various places.
It's not the internet.
Absolutely.
And nor do we ever want it shut down.
And, you know, that's a source of information.
Well, let me tell you something.
She would love to shut it down.
She and Obama, net neutrality, they would love to be able to control the internet.
They would love to be able to throttle it.
They would love to be able to make certain sites inaccessible.
That's who they are.
That's what liberals do.
That's what progressives are.
They want control over everything.
So you come out, you blame the internet for terrorism, and you get a bunch of low information.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut it down, shut it down.
They won't learn how to beat terrorists.
And you get people believing that stuff, and then they're off to the races.
Absolutely.
I agree.
Hey, may I share a theory?
You want to share a fairy?
A theory.
A theory.
To say, a theory, yes.
I still think Obama would rather see Joe Biden in there as the candidate.
And I'm thinking he's going to wait till September, see where Hillary is in the polling, how strong or weak.
And if she's weak, because he didn't want Joe Biden in there for the entire year because he would have put his foot in his mouth 10 times already.
Yeah, look, I've only got 20 seconds.
I wasn't going to mention this.
I wasn't going to mention it.
But now it's a perfect bounce-off.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
You know, the Russians got Hillary's emails.
They hacked and they've got her emails.
And they've got Trump's.
They've got Democratic opposition research on Trump.
Putin has it.
Julian Assange claims he's got enough of Hillary's data to get her indicted and that they're going to release it.
It's in my stack here today.
Wikileaks.
He's still holed up in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
He's hiding out because they put him in jail if he comes in.
Now it's true.
The Russians did indeed hack the DNC server and they've got all the DNC opposition research on Trump.
The Democrats say that nobody could have ever gotten into Hillary's unsecured home server, but the Russians got into theirs.
Isn't that great?
See you tomorrow, my friends.
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