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Aug. 1, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:33
August 1, 2016, Monday, Hour #3
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone.
The telephone number, if you'd like to be on the program in our final busy broadcast hour today, 800-282-2882.
If you want to send an email, I check them.
The address is Elrushbo at EIBnet.com.
I searched the subject line.
That's how I, because it's impossible to read them all.
It's just way too many.
Anyway, folks, today we are starting our 29th year.
This is our 28th anniversary of being behind the Golden EIB microphone.
And there's one thing, we're going to play some sound bites here from the past.
The theme that Cookie set up, she did this on her own, by the way.
I offered no, I never do on these anniversary shows.
She thought it would be interesting to go back and look at the number of different ways I have been characterized and portrayed in various places by various people over not all, but some of these 28 years.
And in that regard, we have one soundbite that's new in the sense we haven't played it in this.
I don't think we've played it ever in its entirety.
And it's from Mr. Buckley, William F. Buckley Jr.'s introduction of me, my first appearance on Firing Line.
But, you know, these, I actually feel blessed to have been able to do my lifelong dream.
I mean, I wanted to be on the radio from age eight.
And not only have I been blessed to be able to do it, but I truly have been blessed by having people like you as the audience.
Because it's people like you that have made it all happen, made it possible.
And I am aware of this daily.
Even after 28 years, and I mentioned this in relation to something else either last week or the week before.
But I go home every day after this program.
And I would say four out of five days, I go home troubled to one degree or another that it wasn't as good as it could have been.
I go home sometimes feeling guilty that I had some really good stuff and didn't get to just because of the way things fell out in the day.
And one of the things I have to constantly remind myself, I know what I've got here.
I mean, I know everything I've got as a result of the show prep that resulted in the show being put together here.
But you don't.
But I have so much faith and confidence in you that I think you do know.
I think you are so intelligent and so aware and so informed that if I don't get to something every day, that you know I didn't get to it and you're disappointed or angry, thinking I didn't prioritize correctly or not.
And that's because I've often, I've always believed that you are among the smartest people in the country.
And that's why I don't talk down to you or in any other way be arrogant.
In fact, it's one of the greatest comforts in the world to realize and think that the people listening are smart because it means you're going to get it.
It means you're going to understand.
And I also have great faith that many of you are here every day.
And so therefore you understand the context of each show because you heard the day before.
And that's truly a blessing.
I don't know how many other people who do this, I don't know what they think of their audiences.
I don't know how much they think about them.
And this is not intended as a put-down.
But as far as I'm concerned, you are it each and every day.
That's you out there or what this is all about.
And I do.
I go home.
When I say troubled, it's not devastatingly troubled because there's always tomorrow to fix whatever might not have gone right or whatever I might not have done or gotten to.
So it's always ultimately a positive.
But and I never assume that you're going to be here every day.
I think that that's another reason why I go home troubled.
I go home worried that, oh, gosh, they're going to think that they're missing it.
I'm not getting to certain things.
And this is not a stick to the issues crowd comment.
This is just an acknowledgement that you are informed and aware.
You know what's going on out there.
And some of you have expectations or desires to hear what I think about it.
And if I don't think I get to it every day, I just don't want to let anybody down.
But always fix it the next day if necessary.
So it's a roundabout way of saying thank you and acknowledging your primacy and your supreme relevance in all of this and what it is and what it has become.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart each and every day.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart each and every night.
And I thank you from the bottom of my heart each and every morning when I am sitting here getting ready for this.
So with that, the theme, things that have been said about me, the humorist otherwise, the way I've been characterized over these recent years, past years.
And we just can't, it's just three things here.
We're not going to spend a whole lot of time here.
The first is my mother.
This was in the early 1990s.
She was telling, I don't know where this was.
She might have been on the air here.
I might have been interviewing her.
It might have been an interview somebody else did.
My mother once welcomed the National Inquirer into our home and offered to answer any question they had based on the fact that we limbos have nothing to hide.
The inquirer couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe it when I found out about it.
I would go home.
I would go home to see my mom.
And it wasn't to talk about me.
There were 200, 300 books every weekend that people all over the country had sent her that I had to sign.
There wasn't any time to talk to her about how she was doing.
Now, you owe it to these people.
You sign these books.
I thought, oh, geez.
You know, I'd rather go to Taco Bell.
There was one instance where I flew into town on EIB 1, and on Sunday was timely.
She usually took me to the airport.
And this particular Sunday, she left a half hour early and said, I'll meet you there.
David's going to, your brother's going to take you.
I've got to do something before I go.
Okay, fine.
I didn't think I think.
When I got out of the airport, there were 20 people on the airplane.
And half of them she didn't know.
She had just invited, they were stopping into town just to say hi to her, pulling off I-55.
And she invited people just she knew I would say no to that.
Security risk in it.
You can't, mom, you can't bring people you don't even know.
Oh, no, no, you don't understand.
They love you.
They wouldn't.
I said, you can't.
So there's 20 people on the airplane, all with books.
She was just famous.
She was just, she was so honored that so many people liked her son that she just, she didn't say, I mean, there were people at my grandfather's funeral that we didn't know.
She invited them, almost like stuck a sign out on I-55.
Said, stop for Limbaugh Senior funeral today.
We're all looking around and going, what is this?
So here she is in the early 1990s talking about me in my kindergarten days.
We had four and five-year-old kindergarten here at college, you know, the train school, they called it.
And one day, the teacher, who is now gone, had me in for conference, like she did all the parents.
She said, if Brush doesn't, she called him Rush, if Brush doesn't change his ways, he'll never grow to be the man his grandfather is or his father.
I'm four years old, and they're already pronouncing me a failure in kindergarten, calling my mom in.
I don't change my, I don't know what I was doing, throwing things at people.
I don't know what I was doing.
So here's a montage that Cookie put together.
28 years of confounding the establishment, confounding the media and politicians trying to explain who I am in nicknames and descriptions.
Let me give you some of the people here in this montage.
We have Chris Wallace.
We have Judy Woodruff.
We have CNN's John Berman.
We have Hugh Hewitt.
We have Patsy Schroeder.
We have Chris Matthews.
Get Barbara Walters, Tom Brocott, Carville, Carol Costello, Amanda Carpenter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Kaine, Donna Brazil, Mario Cuomo, F. Chuck Todd, Eagles quarterback,
Donovan McNabb, Barack Obama, D.D. Myers, Billy Bush, Camille Pottiatt, Lisa Myers, John Podesta, E.D. Hill, John McCain, Mike Tarico, Al Michaels, Steve Melnick, Trump, Jack Germond, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Barbara Walters.
That's the order of the montage Hillary, or Cookie, put together here.
Love them or hate them.
Rush Limbaugh is the king of conservative talk radio.
Rush Limbaugh is the ratings king of talk radio.
Rush Limbaugh, the dean of conservative talk radio.
Rush is, in fact, the big kahuna.
And they had the big kahuna, none other than Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh is big.
Big voice, big audience.
Rush Limbaugh is beginning to look more and more like Mr. Big.
Rush Limbaugh, the most powerful and successful conservative radio talk show host in the country.
A powerful voice in American politics.
Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh, who is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.
Rush Limbaugh is the de facto head of the Republican Party.
He is the most powerful person in that party.
He is the daddy of the Republican Party.
Their de facto chairman, Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh still looms large.
The Man Time Magazine calls the GOP Savior Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio Titan.
Rush Limbaugh is the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican Party.
Rush Limbaugh is quite the entertainer.
Rush Limbaugh is a master entertainer.
Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio entertainer.
What Rush does is entertainment.
Rush Limbaugh is a hero of the right.
I hire Rush Limbaugh as my marketing agent because he's done wondrous for me.
One of my favorite Washington characters, Rush Limbaugh.
If you drive home and you listen to Rush Limbaugh, Mega Ditto's Rush, and you're the man.
I think Rush Limbaugh is a huge influence.
Rush Limbaugh is one of the most influential voices in the country.
Rush Limbaugh is on the radio because he's sharp.
Rush Limbaugh looks really good.
He looks hot.
Rush Limbaugh is the most popular of all talk show hosts.
Rush Limbaugh.
He's extremely talented and entertaining.
Rush Limbaugh, terrific player.
You are an everyday treat and a usually important figure in this country.
Rush Limbaugh, who I think is a terrific guy.
Rush Limbaugh is a hell of a guy.
Rush Limbaugh has this great racket going.
Rush Limbaugh will have free hours to say whatever he wants.
There's no truth detector.
I'll take Rush Limbaugh any day.
20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.
Rush, you do great work.
I'm a huge fan.
Rush, you darling fuzzball.
Barbara Walters, 28 years there just of characterizations, which, again, we haven't ever done that.
Cookie put it together.
And then there's this.
This is the last one.
September 16th, 1992, on PBS Firing Line.
This is my first appearance.
And William F. Buckley was one of my idols and heroes.
It was a great thrill to get to know him.
And this is his introduction of my appearance on that show.
Rush Limbaugh is, by everyone's reckoning, a phenomenon, the most spectacular media success of recent years.
His preeminent medium is a culture almost ignored by American critics, even the most beady-eyed.
Because it's assumed that nobody who really counts spends time listening to people talk over the radio.
We should have taken more seriously the polls that for a couple of decades have told us that one-third of the American people get all their news from radio.
It is news that Rush Limbaugh sets out to give, though he could not perform as he does without reading the scores of daily newspapers and weekly magazine he chews up.
His medium's opinion advise him that the moon yesterday was caught blinking at the sun, and he will run that through his cosmology and come up with a meaning for it all.
And if the episode was good news, responsibility for that good news would be the founding fathers or Ronald Reagan or Clarence Thomas.
If it was bad news, probably it was Teddy Kennedy or the National Organization of Women or the Americans of Libertaries Union that is responsible for that frolic.
What astonishes is that no one is surprised and only the humorless are really offended.
In this sense, it's fair to say, I suppose, that he gets away with his scams, as no one since Norman Lear got away with his and his series Hall in the Family.
Done at the expense of every conservative position ever held, and glorious entertainment it was.
Russ Limbo was born to a family of lawyers, fooled around doing this and that for a while, decided not to sell potato chips for a living.
Went to Sacramento as a DJ, then came to New York City a few years ago.
Vany, V D V C, they said about Julius Caesar.
He came, he saw, and he conquered.
William F. Buckley Jr., introing on firing them.
Nobody like him.
Nobody like him.
And I don't believe we did that show in his, well, in the drawing room of his Mesa Nick on 73rd and Park.
And I don't believe he had a prompter.
There was not a prompter in there.
I think that was all off the top of his head.
So we'll take a brief timeout.
We'll come back and resume the programming portion of the program right after this.
No, I'm telling you, one of those places was Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or as they say, Johnstown.
That's how you say it, Western Pennsylvania, Johnstown.
Anyway, Hillary and Tim Kaine went into Johnstown, and Andrea Mitchell, Envy Seniors in Washington, was there, and there's nobody there.
I mean, it's a really, really tiny crowd.
And it was, what day was it?
Well, I can't see that.
It was over the weekend.
The point is, folks, that they had a little miniature bus tour, and they went to a bunch of different places in the so-called Rust Belt.
It was in Pennsylvania.
Didn't get too far out of Philadelphia.
It wasn't multiple states.
But they didn't draw flies.
And the veritable proof, don't take my word for it.
You haven't heard anything about it.
And if there had been massive Trump-like crowds with adoring minions and people cheering, that's all you would have heard.
You would have heard that mixed in with stories on Mr. and Mrs. Khan.
It wouldn't have aced the Khan story out, but it would have been right there with it.
You would have seen Khan holding up his Constitution, ripping Trump, cut next to video of crowds going nuts for Hillary and Kane, but they didn't.
Crowds do not.
In fact, do you know what else happened at the Democrat Convention?
You know what?
This didn't, this was never going to get covered, and it didn't.
But after the convention, a bunch of Bernie Sanders people began to tweet and Facebook the methods taken to shut them up during Hillary's speech.
That convention was not unified, and everybody in there was not enamored of her.
She does not engender that she doesn't have that connection with people, folks.
She does not engender that kind of support.
If Hillary Clinton's coming to town to do an appearance, it's a yawner.
It's no big deal other than to party hacks who are part of the election team campaign effort, get out the vote, and all that.
But general public, she doesn't have that.
Her saving grace is her marriage, giving her her last name and that big D on the ballot.
And that's it.
Here's Jay in Hyannisport, Massachusetts.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
It's great to have you here.
Hi.
Thank you for you and Snerley for taking my call.
An impressive montage about your career, Rush.
Although, too quick, but whatever.
I do want to talk about it.
It was too quick, wasn't it?
It was too quick.
I mean, if it's 28 years, it needs to be a 28, at least a 30-minute montage, at least a minute per year.
I agree with you.
Impressive accolades about you, nonetheless, still.
I appreciate this.
We're just teasing.
Cookie's going to get all nervous now.
We're just teasing.
Anyway, I do want to discuss a very sensitive topic about Nir Khan's speech to his diatribe against Donald Trump.
And I have to qualify by saying before I begin that I have an utmost respect for him and there's an incredible sympathy that he lost his son who gave the ultimate sacrifice to the country.
That I fully am aware of.
But, and it's a big but, that represents one life.
And that stacks up against the thousands and thousands and thousands of people whose lives have been disrupted, destroyed by ISIS and al-Qaeda.
And how dare you, how dare Hillary Clinton, the unmitigated gall, to use an unwitting pawn in her scheme, her warped campaign, to take somebody like that.
His heart was in it.
You saw his heart.
That's who they are.
That is exactly who they are.
They could have gotten parents from any of any fallen soldier, but they had to politicize it.
Well, of course, it was a convention.
You know, you can do things at a convention that do not appear overtly politicized, and they're even stronger.
This was overtly politicized, but it has to be seen in context of what these same people did to the parents of fallen soldiers at the Republican convention.
Okay, now, here's Obama.
This is how this all works.
I have experience with this too.
This is exactly how this works.
So the Democrats find a couple that they want to put on stage to exploit.
And it may be the cons are sophisticated and are in on this.
It may be that they're fully aware of what's going on and they're willing participants.
So the week prior, the Republicans honor the four dead at Benghazi, including all the other fallen in the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
And they put on stage parents.
Pat Smith, her son died in Benghazi.
And Pat Smith told the story of how Hillary lied to her, told her that it was video that was responsible and assured her that they're going to get to the bottom of it.
After Pat Smith appears, the Democrats smeared her.
The media smeared her, made fun of her, mocked her, fact-checked her.
Fact-checked Gold Star Mother-type woman.
Chris Matthews, I don't care what that woman felt.
She destroyed the convention.
One week later, the cons are up on stage, and it's so sad and all that, and milking it for everything that it's worth.
But they were trying to create the reaction.
This was a taunt.
And this is why I maintain: if the Trump campaign had somebody in it that saw these people ideologically and understood how they operate ideologically, you could avoid falling into the trap.
So anyway, you know the story.
Everybody starts piling on Trump, and Trump reacts to it in a less than spectacular way.
And then the next phase is the president coming up, which he did this afternoon in Atlanta at the annual convention of the disabled American Veterans.
No one has given more for our freedom and our security than our Gold Star families.
They represent the very best of our country.
They continue to inspire us every day, every moment.
They serve as a powerful reminder of the true strength of America.
And we have to do everything we can for those families and honor them.
Donald Trump has not done anything or said anything that has smeared Gold Star families.
Donald Trump, in fact, in his whole campaign, has made his devotion to and respect of the military a central theme and fixing the VA.
And yet, look at this.
The whole point of this statement is to imply.
You want the audience to infer that Trump doesn't care.
Trump's mean.
Trump doesn't understand.
Trump doesn't like the military.
Trump doesn't really.
It's just, it's obscene.
But the president piling on, that's how this, that's the formula that you know is coming.
It's just, I don't know.
I said it's frustrating, folks, because when this stuff starts, I know I'm pretty sure what's going to happen, and I'm pretty sure how it's going to fall out.
I know what the effort's going to be by the media and the Democrats.
Could spot this.
I didn't see it live in the convention.
I didn't watch that convention before 10 o'clock at night.
I only turned it on for the prime time, so I didn't know about this thing until the next day.
And I saw this and I saw, man, I wish I had seen it the night before, even knew it was coming.
I might have been able to sound a warning Klaxin because this one sure deserved one.
And it has achieved its desired, or has it this we don't know.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
You know, this, by the way, is now considered by the intelligentsia to be the destructive moment for Trump.
This is it.
He's finally stepped in it.
This is it.
He has finally committed the last final destructive act.
This is it.
This is what they all thought Trump had done on his announcement speech.
And when he went after McCain and three or four or five other times in the campaign, and they were wrong every time, they think this is it.
Trump has finally imploded.
First, David Brooks on Meet the Press.
I've never felt as nauseated as I was when I saw his comments about Mrs. Kahn.
Disgust doesn't begin to cover the range of emotions I felt, and I think a lot of people will fail.
I think it stems from lack of empathy, a lack of respect, a lack of basic decency.
And I wonder what this moral pygmy on top of a ticket is doing to the country and would do as president.
Well, he sounds almost as mad as David Gregory was.
Remember when David Gregory got all mad?
Trump's out there.
Maybe Russia, if you're listening, maybe you can find Hillary's missing emails and then let the media know when you do.
Remember the reaction?
Oh, that is beyond the pill.
How dare he?
He's urging the Ruskies to hack.
He's encouraging the Russians to intercede in a Republican in a presidential election.
This is beyond the pill.
In 41 years, I have never heard any more of it.
It went on and on and on and on and on.
Trump asked the Russians for help in finding Hillary's emails.
David Gregory, NBC News.
Well, now it's CNN.
I've never heard any because they didn't understand.
They do not understand satire when it's aimed at them.
They don't understand jokes when they're aimed at them.
They don't understand, have a sense of humor at all.
Now, David Brooks, what's he saying?
He's nauseated.
You know what he's saying he's nauseated about is when Trump made reference to the fact that Mrs. Kahn was just standing there and he said, I guess she's not allowed to speak.
David Brooks, I was just nauseated.
I was just, disgust doesn't begin to cover the range of emotions I feel.
And I think a lot of people will feel.
It seems a little lack of empathy, lack of respect.
Look, where was David Brooks when Hillary Smith was calling Pat Smith a liar?
Well, I don't think she must have heard what I told her, she said to Chris Wallace.
I just don't think, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think that, you know, where was David Brooks when any of that was going on?
Fact-checking Pat Smith.
Here's Doris Kearns Goodwin, also on Meet the Press yesterday.
I do think this is a moment that will be remembered when Joe Welch said to Joe McCarthy, have you no decency?
Somehow you have a powerful story told by a man, and the candidate somehow is able to look at the wife and say, why didn't she say anything?
Was she told not to say anything?
I've always predicted a bridge too far when he said that John McCain wasn't a hero.
I thought that was it.
So maybe everything's topsy-turvy this year, but I agree with David.
This is going to make a difference.
And George Will on Fox News Sunday.
The straw that broke the camel's back did not break the camel's back.
It was the cumulative weight, the critical mass of straws.
And the question is, will there be a critical mass of these things?
Just when you think American politics has hit rock bottom, Mr. Trump rises or stoops to the challenge of saying there isn't a rock bottom to American politics.
And certainly attacking Gold Star parents is one of these things.
And so they think it's it.
He stepped in it.
He can't recover from this one.
And as George Will says, it's not these things alone.
Now it's the cumulative weight of all these things.
It's just going to run Trump supporters away.
They're going to be too embarrassed.
Nobody can defend it.
Nobody can support it.
Nobody can explain it.
Nobody wants to try.
It's bad.
They've all concluded this is it.
And we will be back.
I hate it.
We've got to take a break.
One Hillary soundbite from yesterday will suffice for all of them.
Chris Wallace says, after a long investigation, the FBI Director James Comey said none of the things that you told the American public were true.
And that's exactly right.
Comey laid out the case.
He did everything but recommend prosecution.
Under questioning, he admitted that she lied here, she lied there.
And Wallace says, you know, the director of the FBI said none of the things you told the public were true.
Chris, that's not what I heard Director Comey say.
And I thank you for giving me the opportunity to, in my view, clarify.
Director Comey said that my answers were truthful and what I've said is consistent with what I have told the American people.
That there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails.
And that's how you do it?
No, no, you didn't hear what he said.
What he said was, I didn't do anything.
I didn't do anything wrong.
Wallace said, look, he not only directly contradicted what you said, he also said in that hearing that you were extremely careless and negligent.
Well, Chris, I looked at the whole transcript of everything that was said, and what I believe is, number one, I made a mistake not using two different email addresses.
I have said that, and I repeat it again today.
It is certainly not anything that I ever would do again.
So, no, no, I didn't hear him say I lied.
I didn't lie at all.
I've been honest with everybody.
The only thing is, I shouldn't have used two email addresses.
Yeah.
What?
Well, she did.
She had multiple devices.
I don't know how many accounts.
But anyway, this is how you do it.
You know, Wallace just said, what do you do?
Sorry, Mrs. Clinton, that's not what we heard.
You didn't hear the, but, but I don't know anybody yet who knows how to directly confront this lying woman and to set it straight.
I've not seen anybody get away with doing it yet.
And this is what she does, just lie and lie.
I never had sex with that woman, not a single time.
Not ever.
And if it weren't for the blue dress and the stain, we still as always, my friends, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with us today.
And every day, it is deeply appreciated and eagerly anticipated each and every day, as is tomorrow.
Looking forward to it.
Can't wait to be back.
And I always try to make it worth it.
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