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Sept. 9, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:43
September 9, 2016, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Look at this.
Fox and CNN have pretty much the same graphic headlines that Trump has put the GOP in an uncomfortable position with statements on Putin.
First place he goes to the Larry King show.
Who the hell knows that that's a network called Russia Today?
What's Larry King doing on a Russian network?
Much less Trump.
But who knew?
Does Larry King even know?
He's on a Russia network.
Apparently, apparently Trump's an old trouble out there because he said, correct me if I'm wrong.
He said that uh Putin has been a stronger leader for Russia than Obama has been for the United States.
That's what that's what he said.
Now there everybody says poor Pence.
Poor Pence's got to run out and defend that as the vice president.
He's got to defend that, and he doesn't.
It depends on how you define strong, it seems to me.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
I mean, when's the last time Vladimir Putin apologized for Russia?
When's the last time Vladimir Putin went to an economics meeting in China and called his own citizens lazy?
When is the last time Vladimir Putin went around the world and apologized for whatever atrocities Russia has committed in the world?
I don't know, depends on how you define strong.
It's open line Friday.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh behind the golden EIB micro.
Once again, this is the kind of thing Trump supporters aren't gonna care.
Trump's some of Trump's supporters are probably gonna applaud it.
Some of Trump's supporters are gonna, because that they're they're gonna hear it as a uh as a swipe at Obama, which they don't mind hearing every day.
Anyway, but it is typical of uh the drive-bys and others in the Washington, New York, Boston corridor, the establishment.
Oh my god, oh my god, the Republican candidate praised a Russian butcher over our own president.
Oh my god, what problems does he know he's causing for the Republican Party?
And in their world, yeah, this is a taboo.
You just don't do it.
Forgive me, but is it not the Democrat Party who's been sidling up to communists all over the world my entire life?
Is it not Ted Kennedy who wrote the Soviet Yuri Andropov a letter asking him to be patient until they could get rid of Ronald Reagan at the next election?
And to not make any foolish nuclear arms agreements with Reagan because he's a dangerous cowboy.
Was it not the Democrat Party making deals with the Soviet leadership in Nicaragua?
Trying to undermine Reagan there.
Somehow we're supposed to believe here that Trump has violated some great tenant where you don't sidle up to Soviet leaders, and he's not even a KGB guy.
I mean, Putin.
I mean, this is it's much ado abouthing as far as Trump supporters are concerned, don't doubt me.
Okay, Hillary Clinton and the debates.
By the way, just a reminder, a close confidant of uh Hillary Clinton's calling for the Commission on Presidential Debates to remove Chris Wallace, Fox News from his role as a moderator.
Uh, let's see.
It's David Brock.
It's David Brock, it's Media Matters for America.
It is a glaring conflict of interest.
That former and CEO Roger Ailes simultaneously provides evidence or advice, advice that Donald Trump will serving as a paid advisor to Rupert Murdoch, debate moderator Chris Wallace's boss.
So that's they think Wallace ought to go.
That's because they're worried.
They are worried.
Hillary bombed in that presidential forum.
You have to keep something in mind.
These people on the left, Democrat Party, think that Hillary Clinton can run rings around anybody.
She's the smartest woman in the world, remember?
She has so much knowledge.
She has so many resources.
At the tip of her fingers.
And the tip of her tongue.
Hillary Clinton has forgotten more than Donald Trump will ever know about anything that matters.
Hillary Clinton is just brilliant.
She is so brilliant, the brilliance of her brilliance blinds you.
I mean, she's so smart.
She's so confident.
She's more competent.
She's more suited to be president than anybody who ever has been president, that's what Obama said.
So they built up all these expectations.
And she shows up with Mount Wower and can't even get off the defensive on questions about her emails.
She looked angry.
She looked, well, a lot of other things too.
So they're worried.
Hill.com.
Anxious Democrats urge Clinton to open up.
Joe Biden earlier.
Hillary's got to find a way to show people her heart.
Am I the only one that finds this incredible?
The woman's been around for 30 years.
She'd been a public stage for 30 years been co-president.
She had the first step at uh at Hillary Care National Health Care.
She was first lady co-president for eight years, then a senator from New York for eight years, ran for president eight years ago, and they're now telling us she needs to open up.
And she needs to show us her heart.
It's a tantamount admission here that we're dealing with Nurse Ratchet.
One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
You remember there was a book not long ago, folks.
Well, I say not long ago, some time ago.
It was written by a guy to tell women when to just let go in a relationship.
And it was called Sorry, he's just not that into you.
Remember that book?
Well, I think what we're looking at here is, sorry, but we're just not that into you, Hillary.
And you can show us all the heart you want, and you can uh open up all you want, but we're just not that into you.
And you know what the truth of the matter is?
We never have been.
You talk about memes, narratives, and myths.
I think one of the biggest myths that has dominated Washington is that Hillary Clinton is unbeatable, that she is frightening, that she's so dominant that nobody would ever have a prayer of meeting her.
I think I think there have been so many false narratives and illusions created about Hillary Clinton when the fact is that even on the Democrat side, there aren't that many people really into her.
Her claim to fame is two things.
A capital D next to her name on the ballot, and the fact that her last name is Clinton.
All the money, all the commercials, all the effort, all the reintroductions, all the book signings, all of these things.
The celebrity endorsements, all of the cozy podcasts.
Young women happen to love the Hillary campaign podcast.
Did you know that, Dawn?
Certain young women, liberal young women love the Hillary campaign podcast because they think that's where she really does show her heart and her charm.
She's had all this really fluffy drive-by media treatment.
And still, she just can't pull away because of the simple fact that we're just not that into her.
So once again, nervous Democrats are begging Hillary.
They are imploring Hillary to be more appealing to people.
But those people have already decided they're not that into her.
We want to actually get rid of this person from the political scene.
And have for a whole long time, a big number of years.
Not only were we never into her, it's not that we have to get over her because we never were into her.
The Democrats have been forced to marry her.
The Democrats have been forced to embrace her.
Democrats have been forced to accept, embrace, love, or say they love her.
And they want us all to approve of their choice.
But even they see her flaws.
And they're desperate for her to hide them.
They're desperate for her to stop coughing.
They're desperate for her to show us her heart.
Go to the audio sound bites if you doubt me.
This is from last night CNN tonight, Don Lemon speaking with David Rodham Gurgen, who defines Washington conventional wisdom.
And they're talking about the Hillary campaign.
Lemon says to David Rodham Gurgan.
People are saying, where is this Hillary been, the one who's transparent now, holding press conferences?
Where's she been?
Why doesn't she open?
She seemed rusty last night in that debate.
They want to get the rust off.
They need to do this pretty darn quick.
They've got to get her in fighting form.
Donald Trump did pretty well.
I mean, a lot of people are blaming Matt Lauer.
But the fact is that Trump came out of last night doing pretty well against her.
And I think that's got to be a wake-up call for the Clinton campaign.
Do not take this lightly.
Do not assume that you can walk over this guy in a debate.
The good news here for Hillary coming out of the Matt Lauer thing is Lester Holt is going to be the host for the first debate.
Lester Holt in the first debate can be under heavy pressure.
If either candidate lies, you've got to call them out.
What does that mean?
Lester Holt's going to be under pressure.
I'll tell you what it means.
Lester Holt's also at NBC.
Matt Lauer is at NBC.
Matt Lauer got dumped all over.
Because he was he was he was mean to her.
He was he he he and you know what?
She says filibustered.
He had to interrupt her to ask questions.
That's what you have.
She will filibuster and answer for 30 minutes if you let her go and say nothing like Obama does.
So he interrupts to ask another question.
How dare you mistreat her?
How you be mean to the woman?
How dare you do that?
But they dumped all over Matt Lauer.
It was incredible.
I'm sorry, Matt Wauer.
So David Rodham Gurgen says, now they get Lester Holt in there next time.
That's going to be a big difference.
During Lester Holt's not going to be mean to her, Lester Holt.
He's going to realize what he's got to do.
But you heard David Rodham Googan.
She didn't do pretty well.
And by the same token, Trump.
Like I say, folks.
In circumstances like this, much as you might wish it not to be true, people will remember much less what they hear you say.
I...
They don't remember that for very long.
But they never forget how you make them feel.
And Trump has a charisma.
He has the ability to connect with people, no matter what he's saying.
It's just his personality.
She does not have that.
That's what they saw.
And these two were not even on stage at the same time.
They're doing an A B side-by-side comparison.
Up next, David Axelrod of the Obama campaign.
Anderson Cooper said, while Trump's often criticized because of his tone, you thought Hillary could use prepping after last night's forum, right?
She got uh hit with a number of questions right at the top about email, and then they went to the first questioner who also asked about email.
And I think in a half hour show, she felt uh that too much was being placed on that one uh question.
And she was irritated, and her irritation showed uh throughout as she was answering the other questions, and I think it hurt her, and I think there's a lesson in that for her as she prepares for these debates.
You have to be able to shake those things off.
Well, I'm gonna beg to disagree here.
I mean, I I don't disagree with the fundamental answer here.
But I think what set Hillary off was that Lauer even dared bring that up.
This email stuff and the server and classified documents.
I guarantee you, in Hillary's world, they're pretty confident the press isn't gonna bring that up.
The press is there to cover for them.
The press is there to deflect all of the potential negatives away.
The press is there to go after and destroy Trump.
She was probably shocked, if you ask me, that Lauer even went there, and that's what she was unable to recover.
She's sitting there seething over it.
She was, he's right.
She was irritated, she was irritated, not that he wouldn't let it go.
She was irritated, he went there in the first place.
You will never convince me that there is not an implicit understanding between a Hillary campaign and the media that certain things about her are off limits.
You don't bring them up.
You don't bring up Lewinsky, you don't bring up the bimbo eruptions, you don't bring up one into Broderick, you don't bring up any of that stuff unless you do it in the context of vast right wing conspiracy.
You do not bring up this email server.
You do not talk about classified doc.
You do not talk about unless it's asked in such a way that Hillary can agree with your premise that she's great on national security.
In other words, Hillary Clinton is not to be treated like any other candidate is treated by the media.
They go in expecting that exception.
And when it didn't happen, she's sitting there seething.
And she's, you know, she's in her nurse ratchet mood and she's plotting the punishment for the patient.
Jack Nicholson was being played there by Matt Wauer when the show's over.
And she's going to ice him in solitary.
Or even worse, Lauer is headed for the testicle lockbox.
But it continued.
Bloomberg TV, all due respect, Mark Halpern and John Heileman.
They had this exchange about Hillary's performance.
If she shows up at the first debate with the demeanor she had last night and she tries to hold them accountable with that demeanor rather than a light touch.
He could get through the first debate winning with that level of performance.
I was critical of her on style.
Rightly, I think she'd not do that well.
If she performs that way in the debate, it could allow him to skate through.
Skate through.
Skate through if she performs like well the odds, she is who she is.
This is the thing.
They want her to show her heart.
They want her to warm up.
They want her to open up.
She doesn't know how to do that.
The Clintons hide things.
The email server, all these secret e they hide things.
They don't open up.
We have sound bites here coming up of her trying to be humble.
I think.
Yeah, I got some coming up.
I gotta take a break here, but there's even more of this harsh analysis of her performance.
So all of that and more we get back.
Squeeze in another phone call from Irvine, California.
It's a beautiful place, by the way, and this is Crystal.
It's great to have you.
Ditto's Rush from a mom of five boys on the very left coast of California.
It's an honor to talk with you.
I wanna thank you.
I wanted to pick up on something you said earlier about can conservatives conservatism win, or are we just holding back the liberal tide?
And I think there's two issues there.
One is uh probably a religious issue about how people view just kind of the end times, but the other issue goes to something that you said back in the eighties about Bill Clinton.
And I think fundamentally you pointed out that there was a shift in the way we view politics when he went through the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Um it no longer was about um policies or nobility or even serving the public, but it became win at all costs, and that's the first time I think conservatives, we we knew the media was in the bag for liberals, but it became blatant,
and I think since then there's been a demoralizing, and you've talked about this even recently, a demoralizing of those of us that are conservative conservatives, and I feel like I don't generally I I'm an economics teacher, so I used to love to engage in political conversations with my friends and and it was great, but now I feel like there's no listening to each other because it is a win at all costs type of mentality.
Um I just want to know I I love that you're so optimistic, but what would you say to someone living in California who feels like most of the time I don't even engage in political conversation anymore?
Uh well, you're so vastly outnumbered in in California.
Yeah.
That I think it it's probably tough to have uh politics be one of the foundational aspects of friendship or relationship you have with people.
Sure.
Um and what you mean by win at all costs, I know what you mean.
It's it's it's an intolerance.
Yes.
What you're really talking about is an intolerance uh for opposing points of views, even to the point of admitting somebody disagrees with you has other human characteristics that might be admirable and worth spending time with.
People disqualify each other on the basis of their political beliefs.
It disqualify for friendship, relationships, or or what have you.
Um in California, you're so vastly outnumbered.
there isn't a Republican Party for all intents and purposes there.
Right.
And so you um I under I understand the the uh the challenge.
If if if politics happens to be, or political subjects happen happen to be the formative basis on which you have relationships, then you're gonna have a narrow or a small universe of people that you can hang with because uh we've gotten the point now where the left has become so I don't know what the what the term is um intolerant that there
is an there's an almost an automatic attempt to shame and uh impugn and embarrass publicly rather than set that aside and find other things to have in common with.
I understand uh if if you're running into that doesn't surprise me.
But anyway, you don't want to miss what's coming up about this.
It was just two days ago that I shared with you a an op-ed piece, a long column that I had found at the Claremont Review of Books website called the Flight 93 Election.
And if you missed it, the basic summary of the column is written by a conservative intellectual who thinks that Donald Trump is the only hope we have in stopping the inexorable decline and march to transformation of the United States.
And he writes a column here chastising his fellow intellectual conservatives who are never Trumpers.
And he shames them.
And each paragraph is an explosion of strength.
Some paragraphs are sticks of dynamite, others are s you know, one stick, others are potential nuclear explosions in the in the degree to which he is criticizing and attacking them.
And he challenges their motivation.
He challenges their legitimacy.
He he asks, what are you in this for?
You are you a conservative just to keep your fundraising avenues open?
Are you are you doing what you're doing because you really care about the policy and the issues, or are you just doing it to earn a paycheck?
Do you not realize you're you're you're wearing the jersey of the Washington Generals?
You're on the you're in the establishment, you're in the league, but your your job is to lose.
And if this keeps up, we're finished.
And if you don't understand this, you'd better shape up real fast and realize it because we're in deep doo-doo.
Now, those are my words.
And he the flight ninety-three analogy essentially is that in the view of the writer who went by he chose the name of uh of an ancient Roman military commander, Publius Decius Moose, and I may not be pronouncing it right, it could be Publius Decius Mus.
Regardless, in his analogy, the United States is Flight 93.
That's the terrorist plane that was targeted to either the White House or Capitol Hill, but the passengers took over and it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
In his analogy, America is Flight 93.
Donald Trump and his supporters are Todd Beamer and the passengers rushing the cockpit, trying to take it away from the terrorists.
And Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party and the military and the and the media and the whole of that they're the hijackers.
So the Plains America is being hijacked by Hillary and the left and the Democrats for years and years and years now, and Trump is Todd Beamer.
That's the analogy.
And he says you got one of two choices when you're in that situation.
You do nothing and you're guaranteed gonna die.
Because the terrorists are gonna crash it somewhere, or you can rush the cockpit.
You may still die, but at least you'll die trying not to.
Now the reaction to this piece by those to whom it was targeted has been predictable.
It's anger, outrage in some cases, they're laughing at the guy, and they're they're they're claiming that he's just way overboard and is uh it's an unjust and unwarranted piece.
And I've chosen one piece here to bounce it, just a really a couple paragraphs in this piece, because when I read them, a lot of it uh these two paragraphs, this piece is written, it's in the week.
It's at that website, The Week is by Damon Linker.
And the last two paragraphs of his piece, I read this of what in the hell is this?
And I had to do some digging to understand where he's coming from.
So in order for you to understand what I'm gonna say, and I don't mean this in a in a in a condescending way, much of modern conservatism is derived from Edmund Burke.
Intellectual conservatism, not the kind of conservatism where you get up every day and you try to follow the law, obey the laws you want small government, you want limited government, you want low taxes, you want self-reliance, rugged individualism, uh, keep your kids as safe as you can, give them as good a future as you can, uh, try to improve your life.
That kind of conservative, intellectual conservatism discussing and discovering the intellectual roots of the actual ideology, trace back to a number of people, but Edmund Burke probably would be at the top of the tree.
Edmund Burke, and many of you know, I'm just I'm just cluing in those who don't.
Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, was an he was an Irish statesman, he was an author, he was uh an orator, political theorist, philosopher.
And he is renowned as widely regarded as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.
He was a huge supporter of the American Revolution, Catholic emancipation, and he was adamantly opposed to the French revolution.
In his mind, the French Revolution is actually the beginning of the modern iteration of liberalism or leftism as we know it today.
But he is considered to be his writings and his philosophy are considered to be, if you want to know what conservatism really is in the intellectual exercise, you go consult Burke.
So I'm reading this piece by Damon Linker at the week.com, and it's its headline is here's the most powerful and chilling case for Trump that you will ever hear.
And he describes the piece as radical.
The premise, the Flight 93 elects, radical.
Everything in this is radical, including its support for Trump.
It's radical.
And I just, in the interest of time and cutting to the chase, I want to get to the last two paragraphs of his piece.
All of this, meaning the column, the Flight 93 election, all of this would merely be one anonymous man's personal revenge fantasy, were it not for one singularly important point.
The writer is indisputably correct that the rhetoric devised and deployed by the conservative movement and the Republican Party in recent years points in precisely this direction.
Reactionary.
Reactionary attacks on the status quo have encouraged reactionary judgments, provoked reactionary pessimism.
This is describing you and me here, folks.
Reactionary attacks on the status quo.
That's you and me.
Reactionary judgments on leftists and their issues, which has provoked reactionary pessimism.
We're pessimists, we're doom and gloomers, Everything's going to hell in a handbag.
We're just a bunch of reactionaries.
And it is raised reactionary expectations.
And the 2016 campaign is the stage on which the reactionary drama is now playing out, with Donald Trump in the starring role.
Once the election is behind us, conservatives and Republicans who peddled this political poison.
Conservatism is called political poison here because it is reactionary.
Reactionary attacks on the status quo, encourage reactionary judgments, reactionary pessimism, reactionary expectation.
In other words, nothing real about us.
Everything we do is simply mind-numbed reaction.
There's no principle to us, there's no reason to, we're just reacting, and we're hell-binned, and we're radical in the process.
And once the election's behind us, conservatives and Republicans who peddled this political poison, i.e.
conservatism, and then came to recognize too late the dangers posed by a potential Trump presidency will face choice.
Will they at long last reign in their rhetoric?
Meaning, will we conservatives stop all this reactionary incendiary speech?
Or will we keep at it and risk a threat to the Republic, even greater than Donald Trump.
So I read these two paragraphs.
Okay, so I and practically every other conservative is not an intellectual, we're a bunch of reactionaries, and we're pessimists, and we attack in a reactionary way, reactionary basis, and we have reactionary expectations.
Where does this come from?
So I had to dig deep.
I had to I had to what I of all the things I consider myself.
Look, I know that, and I've said so myself, we get up every day and we look at the latest example of the left taking the country off the cliff.
And we we do.
We act, react to it, we stop it, we try to stop it, but we're so busy doing that we don't have time to advance anything.
Now, in his view, in the writer's view, this is an unhealthy reactionism.
We're trying to stop liberalism, and that's that's that's that's that's not legitimate.
Stopping liberalism, stopping the status quo, that's that's unrealistic.
That's radical, that's reactionary.
So the very basis of modern conservatism, which is stopping the onward march of liberalism, in this guy's opinion, is reactionary radicalism.
Whoa, what must you think if that's how you view us?
So, attempting to explain that is my next chore when we get back.
Okay, now to react to this, and by the way, that the modern definition of a reactionary is anybody who wants to go back to the time before whatever the current political situation is.
That's a leftist definition of reactionary.
So if you think the last eight years of Obama and leftist domination are destroying the country and you want to visit something back before all this happened, you are a reactionary in their minds.
Now, Burke argued that respect for tradition and a predisposition against anti-establishmentarianism and revolutionary new modes of thinking were part of the conservative temperament.
And Burke is considered the godfather of modern conservatism.
So if Burke thinks that a predisposition against anti-establishmentarianism and revolutionary, in other words, if Burke considers what we are doing now to being bad and wrong, then it gets the endorsement of the left.
Hey, your own guy Burke thinks what you're thinking is wrong.
So the argument goes, while the left seeks radical change, the job of the conservative is not to reject the left.
Instead, it is to steady the ship and make sure that the left doesn't steer us into the abyss.
The assumption is that liberalism will Dominate that liberalism will win because it's morally intellectual superior.
But the conservative movement is there not to defeat it, but to make sure it just stays on course.
Maybe slow it down a little bit, but certainly not to oppose it.
So society, in the view of the leftists, society is on a permanent ratchet, a permanent shift to the left.
A conservative is someone who gently applies the brakes in order to slow them down, but never, never stop it.
If you want to stop Louis, you're a reactionary, you're irresponsible, you're a you're a radical.
You're not supposed to stop us, we're who, what is.
We are just supposed to accept the welfare state.
We are supposed to accept globalization.
We are supposed to accept the shredding of constitutional liberties by the courts and by the Democrats.
Our job is to run progress.
All of this is called progress more efficiently.
We're not to reverse this.
Because to reverse this would be to revolt.
And Burke did not say revolt.
And since Burke is opposed to revolting, as in the French Revolution, well, then it can't be conservative.
So essentially, guys like the guy that wrote this piece and people that want to oppose the flight of 93, essentially, they define conservatism as liberalism light.
And you can see it in the modern Republican Party.
Democrats propose something, the Republicans agree with a portion of it.
Be it health care, be it amnesty.
The Democrats set the agenda.
The Republicans never say no.
The conservative intellectuals never say no.
They just say we're smarter.
We can do it better.
Conservative intellectuals today say the people have voted.
They want a big government.
They want a strong executive, but they want us.
Conservative intellectuals to run it because we're smarter.
But there is so those of us, and myself included, who want to stop this, who want to roll this back and want to beat it, we are violating modern conservative tenets, according to conservative intellectualism and the left, And we are reactionary.
We're supposed to accept all this.
So, in short, they define conservatism as liberalism light.
Anything else, anything that demands conforming to the Constitution and the traditions and institutions of America as founded is radical and reactionary.
Liberalism, progressivism is the natural progressive, positive change away from the founding as we modernize and as we adapt to ever-changing world circumstances defined and dominated by liberalism, and to stop that is pigheaded, it's small bedded, it's small-minded, and it's reactionary.
And that's how this peace is viewed by people on the left and even conservative intellectuals.
So when we argue for limited government and fidelity to the Constitution, we're not supposed to really mean it.
If we really mean it, we're cooks.
They're so devoid of reality.
It's just rhetoric that we're using to persuade the rubes, i.e.
voters, that they should invest in us in.
And that's a short little lesson on what all of this actually means.
Well, that's it for this week, my friends, but we're gonna be back.
We will be back on Monday after the opening weekend of the NFL season.
So I hope you have a great weekend wherever you are, and don't forget to be back here on Monday.
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