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Aug. 12, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:41
August 12, 2016, Friday, Hour #3
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Okay, folks, I want to expand on a point I was making right before the previous hour concluded because I checked the email and a lot of people have told me that was a brilliant riff.
You should do it again.
I'm not going to do it again, but I want to add some things to it because it really does.
We had a call.
Are we becoming like the evil empire?
And I said, no, and I described evil empire puts people in jail that don't agree with them.
We're not quite there yet, other than the guy that did the video about Benghazi.
But that's not what's happening to us.
What's happening to us is exactly what Angelo Codeville said was going to happen to us.
He said what already is happening to us, folks.
And I'm going to explain this in greater detail.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Right out Open Line Friday, big final broadcast hour of the busy broadcast week.
And I am your highly trained broadcast specialist, although I didn't need a lot of training because I have innate talent on loan from God.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Send an email.
It's lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
The simplest way to explain this, and I don't want to use any names in the off chance that I'm wrong about it, but it is my contention that all of these CEOs sidling up to Obama, I don't think very many of them actually agree with his policies.
I don't think we have a bunch of socialist, anti-capitalist CEOs.
We have a few.
Don't misunderstand.
But I think a lot of people, and this is what's different, it used to be that no matter where you were in American life, whatever your walk of life took you, if you were a CEO, if you were an employee, if you're middle manager, you were loyal to that, but you were also loyal to the country.
If you were a businessman, your business practices were in part based on your belief in your country.
And I think what's happened now since Obama, and I actually Bill Clinton started this.
It may have been common, but I think Bill Clinton, by selling the Lincoln bedroom and virtually selling anything associated with his presidency to business people, began this, and Obama has just expanded it now.
This is what cronyism is.
People who otherwise wouldn't vote for Obama and think Obama is rotten for the country, man, are eager to do business with him if it'll further their own business prospects and damage their competitors.
But in addition to that, what has happened is that there is the widest gulf between the elected and the people that govern us and the people who are governed.
There's always been, I think, a strain of people at the top of any chain thinking they're better than everybody else.
But there was always humility with that.
And acknowledge, okay, I may be better, but they're still citizens and they're still my customers or they're still my neighbors or what have you, and the sense that we were all in it together.
But I think now there is an arrogant condescension among our nation's elites where they want no part of people not in their club.
How else do you explain this eagerness for unlimited illegal immigration?
How do you explain amnesty?
The only way to, because it makes no sense.
It makes no sense that you would literally erase your own country's borders in exchange for cheap labor, in exchange for future Democrat-registered voters.
The pain that that's going to cause average American citizens, you don't care about anymore because it isn't going to affect you.
You live or operate or travel in circles where this influx of illegals, to use this example, you're never going to see them unless you hire them.
You're not going to have to put up with the rampant crime.
You're not going to have to put up with people that can't speak English and having to deal with them.
You're not going to encounter that.
And you don't want to encounter it much more than that.
You don't want to.
You look as down on those people as you do anybody else that's beneath you.
You want them here because it's cheaper labor for you or it's a way to win elections over Republicans.
But you don't want to be around them.
But you have the ability to avoid them.
But we, everybody else, don't.
You're opening the floodgates, and these people are flooding cities, towns, neighborhoods.
They are being profoundly, negatively impacted by it.
You're not, if you're a member of the elite.
That's the only way it can be justified.
If these people were as affected by it as everybody else is, they wouldn't be for it.
But because they can get favors or invitations or whatever from the elite in power, fine.
And that's what's changing.
And it's not just here.
That's always been the case in the Western social democracies, Western Europe.
And it's getting even worse there now.
It's almost like the old caste system that exists in India where you're born into whatever caste and you're there for the rest of your life.
You never get out of it.
Well, the American population's always been able to have upward mobility based on all these great things about American dream and American exceptionalism.
You know, the old clichés about hard work, ambition.
They existed here.
It was real here.
But now people are getting to positions of power and getting close to positions of power, not because of any achievement, not because of any accomplishment, not because they've innovated just because they gave somebody enough money to get noticed or because they have agreed to support some leader and his nefarious policies.
But along with that has become this, has arisen this gap where the elites no longer even have any interest in what life is like for everybody else.
They just close their eyes to it and assume everything's going to be okay in the end.
But they are not inflicting any of the discomfort or pain, suffering, however you want to characterize it, on themselves.
Now, Angelo Codeville mentioned exactly this in his great piece on the ruling class versus the country class.
And his, one of the many things he nailed was that the country class, meaning the vast majority of people in the country, the non-elites, don't even have a party.
They will no longer have a party that represents them.
And that is the result of this great divide.
The elites are now comprised of people of both parties, and membership in the elite club, the establishment, trumps everything else.
Well, where are we here?
We have the Republican Party went through its process and found a nominee.
And now that party, in large measure, wants nothing to do with that nominee.
Proving Codeville's point.
Trump's nomination and its candidacy is proving Codeville's assertion in spades.
They don't like the nominee for whatever reason, so they're not attending the convention.
They're not going to endorse.
They're not going to support.
And worse, they're going to try to undermine their own party's nomination.
And who are they blaming?
They're blaming people in the media like me.
Yeah, it's my fault.
Or the fault of who knows whoever else in the media.
Fox News, you pick them.
It's our fault that a real conservative didn't get the nomination.
You know what these people don't understand?
They never have understood it, apparently.
I gaze out over my audience here.
I don't actually see you, but I know you're there.
I know who you are.
I have a deep, deep connection with you.
You all were going to get excited and support Trump no matter what I said.
It's not a chicken or egg question here.
If I had that kind of power, the Democrats have never won an election in the last 28 years.
If I had that kind of power, a bunch of Republicans, they wouldn't have gotten away with getting as close as they got to amnesty.
I mean, it's absurd.
The way these establishment people look at you, I mean, this divide, you don't even have a mind of your own.
You're a wandering nomad, an empty vessel, a sponge, a mind-numbed robot waiting for somebody to tell you how to think and what to do.
And I have never looked at you that way.
The exact opposite, in fact.
So, Code V was so right about many of the things that he asserted.
And in the midst of this, what's frustrating about it is that it is true to say that Hillary Clinton is among the most vulnerable, the weakest candidates that the Democrat Party has nominated in I don't know how long.
The Republicans want to talk about what a big boondoggle that happened in their party with Trump.
But let me tell you something.
Hillary Clinton is a sitting duck.
And I'm a little frustrated at times that Trump doesn't go after her primarily on her areas of vulnerability like I think he should.
He could be pounding her on any number of things day in and day out.
But he is who he is.
And you deal with it as it happens.
And I just, I think that I don't know what is out there that could have changed.
But the overlying or the underlying characteristics that have created all of these circumstances predate Trump.
The Republican Party is in the trouble that it's in because of the Republican Party before Trump even decided he wanted to be president.
So, no, we're not the evil empire in the sense that the Soviet Union was or in the sense that communist countries are.
But we are divided, and we are more divided along many different lines.
We're divided on economic lines, the elite versus the non-elite.
The elite are wealthy versus the non-wealthy.
We're divided racially more than we've been since the Civil War.
This is my whole point.
The vast majority of these last years have been under the leadership of the Democrat Party.
And they've had all of these time, all of this time to implement their utopia.
And you listen to Hillary Clinton campaign, and she's complaining about the same things that she was complaining about 30 years ago.
Health care, taxes, the rich, all this class envy stuff.
It's 30 years since she came on the scene.
Hasn't she made one improvement?
She's had all the time, she's been Secretary of State, she's been first lady in charge of Hillary care in the first go-round.
She's had every bit of chance, every ample opportunity to implement these great policies that she says are going to give us a great country.
Obama ditto.
Where is it?
Why do 70% of the people think we're headed in the wrong direction?
Because we are.
Democrat policies don't work.
Look at this story.
This is from theHill.com.
This is not a conservative place.
Thehill.com next president faces possible Obamacare meltdown.
Not possible.
It's certain.
Obamacare is going to implode.
And when it does, it's going to leave a lot of people in the lurch.
People who believed all of the panaceas and the utopian-like lies that were told about it to sell it.
That it was going to be free, that it wasn't going to cost much, that everybody was going to be insured, that premiums are going to come down, that you're going to get whatever care you needed.
Isn't going to happen.
And by the fact, the way this fact that this is going to implode this meltdown, it's in the design.
It is designed to melt down.
It is designed to fail.
And when it fails, what the regime is hoping, it'll be Hillary in this case, if she's elected, what she wants is for you to be so scared, so frustrated, so angry, so unhappy that you demand the government take over all of it.
Screw the insurance companies, screw the doctors, screw the hospitals, screw, just let the government, that's what they want you to say, so that they can finally create national socialized medicine under the guise that you have demanded it.
Well, you will only demand it if it fails, if it melts down, which it's in the process of doing, because it was impossible for Obamacare to prosper, thrive, or even last the way it was designed.
This has always been.
They know that you don't want socialism.
They know, and they have known for as long as they've been seeking national health care that you oppose it.
So they can't come out and just campaign on it and say, we're going to have national health care, socialized medicine, the government's going to take over from the moment I sign it.
You'd never support it if that was the case.
No.
They have to tell you your premium's going to come down.
They have to lie to you.
If you like your policy, you get to keep it.
Like your doctor, they have to lie to you in order to get this boondoggle passed.
They have to fool you.
They have to trick you because you would not support who they are and what they want to do if they were open and upfront about it from the beginning.
And by the way, after they get it passed, Democrats and Obama, they get together, have a little party, and they celebrate the tricks and the techniques they used to fool you.
And that's all part of the condescension.
They may lie to themselves, say, yeah, people are not, they're not smart enough to know what's good for them.
We had to do this to give them what's best for them.
They wouldn't know what to ask on their own.
That's how they might lie to themselves and tell themselves that.
But what they're really doing is applauding themselves for being so easily able to trick you because you're so stupid.
Don't doubt me.
Back in just a second as Open Line Friday continues.
It is Open Line Friday.
This is Barry in Columbia, South Carolina.
I'm glad you called, sir, and I appreciate your patience.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
It's an honor.
Rush, I called to ask about if you had any thoughts on why the National Enquirer hasn't come out with some of this answers on this controversy swirling around Hillary Clinton.
You know, they were able to come up with the goods on Ted Cruz's father and his meetings with Lee Harvey Oswald and other stories.
You know, the woman gives birth to a two-headed goat and different things like that.
Now, let me ask you a question here.
Yes, sir.
Are you asking this question from a position of not being a Trump supporter, or are you a Trump supporter?
Well, I am a Trump supporter now, yes.
Okay.
Okay, so I'm hearing a tone in your question.
You think that maybe Trump was eager to destroy Republicans using his buddies at the National Inquirer, but he doesn't want to use the Inquirer to destroy Hillary, which might mean that Trump really doesn't dislike the Clintons as much as he might want you to think.
Oh, that's quite a possibility.
Yes, that's why that.
I thought I detected that.
I'm about your age and have been exposed to the Enquirer all my life.
And like I said, the stories that usually come out in the inquiry were stories about oddities and things like that.
And I was just kind of wondering about their silence.
It's kind of deafening.
All this, they were able to expose John Edwards and the price of his haircuts and his girlfriends.
Yeah, it was a little more than the price of his haircuts.
No, they took Edwards out.
For people that don't understand, what we have is a fine guy here.
Don't misunderstand.
But our caller is not all that convinced that Trump is really a political enemy of Hillary Clinton.
That Trump is maybe a wolf in sheep's clothing and really is there to damage the Republicans.
And he's got his buddies at the Inquirer taking out crews.
But where is all this?
Got to be stuff on Hillary.
Where is it?
He's an open-ended question.
I understand where it's coming from.
We are out of time in this segment, but I'm not going to dodge this.
I'm going to answer this question.
We get back.
I have an answer for you.
Well, I don't see anything I've seen that before.
Rince Priebus interviewing Donald Trump at a Trump rally.
Trump's in Erie, Pennsylvania.
And Rince Priebus came out to warm up the crowd.
I've not seen that before.
Place is going nuts as Trump comes out there.
Okay, the National Enquirer is owned by and operated by people who are said to be very close to the Trumpster.
And Trump has hailed the National Enquirer throughout the primary season as a trusted source, as a credible source.
To the chagrin of many, it's provoked anger in many people, particularly the Ted Cruz episode where supposedly Ted Cruz's dad was seen in a photo with Lee Harvey Oswald weeks, days before JFK was shot.
And so people think that there's a connection, that Trump can get the inquirer to run some very damaging stories on Trump opponents.
And they think there's evidence for that having happened during the primary.
So our caller said, where is that stuff on Hillary?
Caller obviously doesn't believe that any is going to be forthcoming.
Caller is of the opinion that Trump is actually not in this to beat Democrats, but to do damage to Republicans.
I would just say this.
I have, by the way, I don't know.
I didn't know that Trump was close to the acquirer guy until the allegation was made during the campaign during the primaries.
All of that was news to me.
However, I think if there's anything to it, Trump's not going to, well, if, let me put this, if the inquirer has anything, they're not going to run it now in August.
They're going to wait till after Labor Day.
They're going to wait till it enough time so that people don't have enough time to forget it or for something else to come along and erase it from buddy's memory.
The old October surprise thing.
But I do know.
A lot of Trump supporters have been very excited to see what the inquirer might bring forth on Hillary or Bill or what have you.
So we'll have to see.
Now I'm going to circle back here to Hillary releasing her tax returns.
I've seen a bunch of different data on this today.
The first story I saw was a CNN info babe with actual Hillary tax returns.
She's going through the pages and calculating various numbers, and she had concluded and reported that the combined federal and state tax rate that the Clintons had paid was 42%.
And that would be true.
That's pretty much accurate.
It should be over 50% given that their official residence is New York and the feds, but it took some deductions, obviously.
But, and this is important, I can't recall, and I could be wrong about this, but I can't recall a presidential candidate having released his tax returns with an effective rate any higher than 25%.
I think Romney, remember, this didn't help him.
The tax rate calculated that Romney had paid was 14 or 15 percent.
Nothing illegal.
He had just used every tool available in the existing tax code.
What the Clintons have done here, they knew that these would be the returns being released and previous years, but this year, actually tax year 2015, they knew that that was going to be the year released.
So I think what they've done, they dramatically reduced their income for 2015.
The 2014 income was around 30 million.
The 2015 income is around $12 to $13 million.
60% of their income is Bill Clinton's speeches last year.
Well, we know that Hillary earned $21 million in two years just doing speeches herself.
So the Clintons actually, and this is strategic planning.
You can't fault them for it.
You can point it out, which I'm doing.
They obviously planned in 2015 to report much less income than in the prior year.
So that it might be written, look at the Clintons didn't earn as much.
Why the Clintons are not as filthy rich as we thought?
Why the Clintons are closer to you and me?
Look at Hillary actually, they aimed 30 and they only earned 12 or 14.
Wow, the Clintons, well, it's supposed to redound to them positively.
And then they release the returns as such that it's calculated they paid a rate of 42%.
That's more than most Americans pay.
You'll find at the top 1%, that's about what they're paying.
You just don't know that because it's never reported.
But there aren't that many deductions, folks.
If you want to lose control of your money, you can shelter a lot of it, but you lose control doing it.
Shelter it over here, put it over there, charitable donation there, charitable donation here.
But these people reporting tax like Romney, 14, 15%, that may be what the government got, but he didn't keep 85% of it.
It had to go places where he lost control of it in order to get the deduction.
It had to go to investments here or there.
But it's not what people don't understand about this is that when a candidate or anybody in this tax atmosphere today has an effective tax rate on their return of 14 or 15 percent, that doesn't mean they found a way to cheat the government and are walking around with 85 or 80 percent in their pocket.
They lose control over a lot of it by virtue of where they put it.
They're putting it places other than the government.
They make the decision: like, I'd rather this business, that charity, this whatever, this 501c, I'd rather they get my money than the government.
But they don't get it themselves.
It's a really convoluted thing.
What the Clintons have done here is structure their 2015 payments so that you see they're paying a 42% rate and going, man, oh man, the Clintons are not cheating anybody.
Wow, the Clintons are, wow, they're so honest.
Well, look at the Clintons, man.
They're not taking any deductions.
They're not cheating.
That's what they want you to conclude.
After you realize that they earned $20 million less in 2015 than the previous year.
So you're supposed to say, wow, what, man, they're sacrificing for us.
The Clintons are actually losing money in order to serve.
That's what they want to be able to say, and that's what they want you to conclude with their.
And it's not coincidental that Hillary today is demanding that Trump release his.
That's obviously part of the plan.
Now, here's one more bit of information about the Clinton tax return for 2015.
Hillary and Bill deducted $1,042,000 in charitable contributions last year.
And you're supposed to, wow, a thousand million.
Oh, well, the Clintons are really a lot of compassion.
They really care about the downtrend.
You see that, Mabel?
A million dollars and $42,000 in charity.
Now, at their rate, the maximum deduction you get.
You don't get to deduct all of that.
You get to deduct, I think, 39.6% of every dollar.
And if Obama gets his way, the wealthy will only be able to deduct 25% at most of every dollar.
But of that $1,042,000 the Clintons donated to charity, $1 million of it went to their own family nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation.
The documents show that the Clintons earned, oh, I was wrong, it's $10,745,000 last year, mostly on income from giving speeches.
Of that, they gave just over a million to charity, but the donations can hardly be seen as altruistic since the money flowed right back to an entity that they control.
So it's so circular, their charitable giving, that it is mind-bending.
So they get paid to give speeches to people who have given to the foundation, and then they pay the Clintons on top of it, and then they donate the money they get for the speeches back to the foundation.
And the vast majority of their income is giving speeches.
Hillary reported some royalties from her memoir.
So given that that is my report on the Clinton tax returns, I want you to listen to Alan Allison Kossack, CNN.
She was on this afternoon with some other people.
Wolf Blitzer said, so Bill and Hillary, so most of the income I take it from last year's income that he generated, largely from speeches, she did very little of that, right, because the previous two years she had made $21 million doing speeches.
But Wolf probably doesn't even know that.
So Allison, she didn't do very many speeches.
She didn't contribute much because she was already running for president.
Implications.
She was already in government service.
She wasn't taking anything.
She's such a wonderful person.
Isn't that right, Allison?
It is pretty stunning, though, to see the huge difference in income from 2014 to 2015.
I do want to mention one other thing: charities.
And it goes without saying that if you're going to make less money, you're going to certainly donate less to charities.
So we saw a donation of $1 million in charities versus $3 million to the Clinton Family Foundation.
So that $1 million happening in 2015, $42,000 going to other charities in 2015.
So if you look at last year, almost 10% of gross income was donated to charities.
Oh, they're so wonderful.
Look at that.
That was 10% of what they earned.
That's a great piece.
Went to their own charity.
You happen to know what the pass-through on the Clinton charity is?
In other words, you give a dollar to the Clinton charity, how much of that dollar ends up in charity.
You give it their foundation.
You know what?
The pass-through on the Clinton is like 30 cents.
The administrative costs on a dollar of donated to the Clinton charity is like 70 cents.
I think I saw that somewhere.
72 cents, something like that.
They pay a lot of people to that foundation.
They pay a lot of family members out of that foundation.
Yeah, of course, there are people that work for the foundation.
You have secretaries, you have fundraisers, you have liaisons.
There's a lot of people that earn money from that foundation.
Yeah, yes, my friends.
That way the Clintons don't have to pay them.
Charitable donors do.
Okay, so Donald Trump's in Erie and he's on a roll.
I've been laughing myself silly here the last three minutes.
He's talking about campaign donations.
And he's got this crowd is raucous.
This crowd in Erie is just loaded for bear.
And he's saying, I'm funding my own campaign.
I'm paying for it.
I didn't finance it.
I'm borrowing it.
I'm paying it, right?
Right?
And I smant the last and all these other experts.
Look, I know a guy spent $100 million, came in seventh.
I spent one-tenth of that, and I wanted to landslide.
Who do you want for your president, huh?
And they erupt.
And he turns around and basks in all the applause and the glory.
This one reminds me of Trump in the primaries.
And he's got a piece of piece.
Look, Pennsylvania, you're not doing too good, you people.
You're not doing too good.
Look at all the manufacturing jobs you lost.
You didn't lose them.
They were taken from you.
Erupt in applause.
So here's Michael in Orange, Texas.
Open Line Friday continues.
How are you, sir?
Pretty good.
Thank you for taking my call.
My bad.
Yes, sir.
Happy.
I would like to connect the dots with Arab Spring and ISIS.
Obama encouraged and even praised Arab Spring while American troops were being pulled out of Iraq during the same time that he was calling ISIS the JV team.
Now there's a varsity team.
Is there a connection?
Sure.
Did you ask me?
Is there a connection?
Yes.
See, this is what this is.
Now, this is a frustrating thing about Trump.
See, Trump didn't acknowledge the bit on time.
I acknowledge the bit on time.
When I engage in what I've always called being absurd to illustrate or illustrating absurdity by being absurd, well, that is, I'll give you an example of it.
Barack Obama founded ISIS.
He's the founder of ISIS.
Predictably, the media will erupt and go nuts, and a lot of people will go nuts, and you let him go up, and you stand by it for a couple hours.
No, I damn well meant.
And then once you've got everybody really revved up and focused, then you reveal the gag.
And then you say, no, of course he didn't found it, but he may as well have.
Then when you've got everybody's attention, then you explain the woeful inept policy of Obama leaving Iraq that left it fertile ground for ICE.
ISIS is really nothing more than al-Qaeda in Iraq.
And they were around even during the George W. Bush days, but they didn't manifest into this dominant terror group they are till Obama pulled out of Iraq.
Well, Trump blew the timing.
He stuck with it one day too long.
If you're going to do something like this, which is, I don't know, call it a bit or whatever.
It's a technique.
If you're going to use a technique like this to focus people's attention so that when you tell them what you really mean, you've got 100% of their attention.
That's how you do it.
Sometimes, folks, with you, I even told you before I'm going to do it.
Folks, stand by.
We've got a media tweak coming up later tonight.
They're going to go bonkers over this.
You know, I let you in on it sometimes, even before I do it.
Trump just waited a day too long to let everybody in on what he was talking about.
Now he's out there, no, I was being sarcastic.
No, I was being sarcastic.
His instincts on this stuff are right on the minute.
Timing needs some advice.
Patrick Kennedy is on CNN right now saying, I don't like people calling Donald Trump crazy.
We shouldn't call people crazy.
It's not fair.
It's not right.
Student, meaning Donald Trump's not crazy.
We shouldn't call him crazy.
Trump for his part's out there.
He's just, he's having a ball at this particular rally.
There are a couple interruptions, and the cops cut the protesters out.
Don't we love the police?
The police do such a great job.
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