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Sept. 19, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:49
September 19, 2016, Monday, Hour #3
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And welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us.
A one and only Rush Limbaugh program meeting and surpassing and proudly so.
All audience expectations every day.
Great to have you.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
We have for just a few moments with us the vice presidential nominee, the governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, on the phone with us.
Governor, welcome and great to have you back.
Thank you, Rush.
Good to be with you from Mason City, Iowa.
Mason City, Iowa.
You know, Governor, I know you're going to be gone by 2.15, so when 215 hits, I want to let you know because I think you've got to run.
But I want to run a couple things by you here.
President Obama is funding terrorism, i.e.
with Iran, to the tune now maybe $33 billion, leaving our borders unprotected.
We are importing unvetted refugees, and the Democrat nominee wants to increase the number.
I never would have thought that to be part of the responsibilities and obligations of an American commander-in-chief, but I also never would have thought that we would have had a candidate like Mrs. Clinton endorsing all of that.
This is ⁇ we have bombing attacks, we have stabbings, and immediately Donald Trump becomes the target and the blame for it.
How are you all reacting to this today?
Well, it just is extraordinary.
You know, first, I would just say, you know, how our hearts do go out and our prayers to people that are recovering from injuries from Minnesota to New York and also how grateful we are for the brave first responders who have moved forward and even in Linden, New Jersey, within the last few hours apprehended a suspect in the case.
So it is truly a miracle that no one lost their life this weekend over these series of terrorist attacks on our shores.
But I take your point, Rush, that it is remarkable that while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to refuse to name our enemy, which is radical Islamic terrorism, that Hillary Clinton used a press conference today to attack my running mate, Donald Trump, saying that, in fact, his rhetoric was, quote, giving comfort to our adversaries, in her words.
Well, the only thing that gives comfort to our adversaries is weakness.
The only thing that will alarm or put fear in the hearts of our adversaries is the absolute assurance that we will have an American president who will rebuild our military, marshal our resources, rebuild our alliances, and confront and hunt down and destroy those who would bring violence to our citizens or inspire violence here at home.
You know, it's incredible.
We have the Benghazi attack, for example, which was clearly a planned terrorism attack.
And what do they do?
Blame some hapless guy who made a video that nobody had ever seen.
Now we have these events here and San Bernardino, previous events like this.
And these same people, every one of these perpetrators ends up a victim somehow in their world.
Well, they're justified.
They're discriminated against as Muslims in this horribly racist country.
We have got to empathize with them, Hillary once said.
That's smart power.
Mr. Vice President's nominee, they don't seem to be doing anything.
They don't seem to be oriented towards solving any of this.
None of the actions they want to take or say they're going to take will do anything other than perpetuate this.
Well, I'm not sure that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know that we're at war.
The White House spokesman today actually said that we were in a, quote, narrative fight, in a narrative battle.
What is that?
What is that?
I don't even know what that is.
I'll be honest with you, I was just mystified by it.
You know, I know that we've got American military personnel in the region in Iraq fighting ISIS on the ground in Syria.
I mean, we're at war with the ISIS Caliphate that sprang up because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama precipitously withdrew all American forces from Iraq and created a vacuum of power that ISIS was able to overrun vast territories that our soldiers had won in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And yet from the beginning all the way through yesterday, Hillary Clinton and her running mate, I mean, the president in January 2014 called ISIS the JV team.
And yesterday, Hillary Clinton's running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, said that we'd, quote, dramatically improved in the battle against ISIS in the last year.
That was the morning after a soldier of the Islamic State stabbed nine Americans in Minnesota in a mall.
It just strikes me that the American people see through all of this.
Oh, I think they do.
Governor, these people do not.
Here's the divide.
And this is, I think, what explains your observations.
Obama and Hillary, and dare I say most of the Democrat Party, they refuse to accept that there is terrorism in Islam.
They refuse to believe that the Muslim religion has aspects of it that are oriented toward terror.
They refuse to acknowledge the whole concept of Islamic supremacist ideology.
They reject that as impossible.
So, what we have here are a bunch of lone wolves who obviously got together and decided to act on the same day in their world.
It's nothing more than that.
That's what I mean.
We're no closer to solving it.
Now, they think this is a debate between the ISIS PR team and ours to create the winning narrative.
I'll take your interpretation of it, Rush.
I really don't understand what a narrative fight or a narrative battle is.
I mean, we need new leadership in this country that will name our enemy.
Donald Trump laid out that brilliant speech in Youngstown, Ohio to confront and defeat radical Islamic terrorism by rebuilding our military, renewing our alliances, including with moderate Arab nations, hunting down and destroying ISIS, and also setting aside this culture of political correctness that is tying the hands of law enforcement here at home.
I mean, we've got a law enforcement officer who was shot today in New Jersey taking down this terrorist suspect, and he's in our hearts and in our prayers as we speak.
But the truth is that this culture of political correctness has tied the hands of law enforcement around this country who are constantly walking on eggshells and not wanting to give offense to anyone.
And all the while we see these terrorists in our midst.
I think Donald Trump knows the kind of leadership that we need at home and abroad.
I think the reason why you see this campaign developing such tremendous momentum is the American people know that we need America needs to be strong for the world to be safe and for the American people to be safe.
And that'll happen when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States.
You have a lot of people who really are angry over Trump being blamed for this by Hillary.
I've had a couple calls today from people with their own ideas about how you ought to respond to this.
There is a palpable thirst on the part of many of your supporters for you guys just to launch back at Hillary and Obama when they try to blame you for this.
What is the strategy that you have dealing with this?
Because you know that their media is on their side, and if they say Trump did this, Trump's responsible for it with his rhetoric, they're going to carry that ball.
How do you guys plan to react to it, if at all?
Well, I'm going to be doing a series of events here in Iowa today.
Donald Trump is traveling to Florida later today.
Look, we recognize weakness arouses evil.
The American people know this, and we're going to call them out.
Seven and a half years of the weak and feckless foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has weakened America's place in the world, and it has emboldened the enemies of our freedom.
And that our enemies will respond only to American strength.
But I'm going to tell you, I'm going to, at our events here in Iowa and going forward, I just think that the fact that Hillary Clinton today said that my running mate's rhetoric is, quote, being seized on by terrorists, and in particular, ISIS, as they're looking to make it into a war against Islam.
To me, this is, once again, this is a ready-fire aim by the Democrats.
They just simply, they don't know that this is not a narrative fight.
It's not a narrative battle.
We are at war with radical Islamic terrorism.
We are at war with the ISIS Caliphate.
And what we need is a commander-in-chief who knows that, who understands that, who will give our military the resources they need to make that fight, pull our allies together, including moderate Arab nations, and hunt down and destroy ISIS and other terrorist organizations at their source.
Well, Governor, thanks very much.
We've reached the time that you have to go.
You have a hard out today because your schedule is so busy.
And thank you for being able to squeeze us in today.
Thank you, Rush.
Honored to be with you.
Governor Mike Pence, Indiana, who is the, of course, vice presidential nominee.
As I said earlier, ladies and gentlemen, I really want to try to develop this a little further.
Look, I'm walking a tightrope here.
I don't want to give anybody the impression that I think a lot of people see this and agree with me.
And I certainly don't want to convey the impression that I'm convinced Hillary's going to lose.
I'm not caught up in a false sense of hopefulness here.
But it just, and I guess it's been gnawing at me for a while, and I've never actually put words to the thought.
It just seems to me that times have passed her by.
She seems stuck in a time war back in the 1990s in terms of strategy, tactics, how to run a campaign and win an election.
And it's right out of the establishment handbook.
I mean, there is a way the establishment crowd runs their campaigns.
They have their consultants.
The Democrats have a very predictable modus operandi, and the Republicans have a very predictable modus operandi in terms of how they're going to run their campaigns.
And if you have a history of winning, then you repeat the strategy and you repeat the tactics.
But it just seems as I watch Hillary and the way they're going after Trump, not even taking Trump on on issues, which would seem to me, if given Trump's the novice, the outsider with no insider and establishment experience, no governing experience at all, it seems to me that they would tackle that a bit, but they're just, they're doing the name-calling routine.
And I consider saying he's unfit and unsuitable and ill-tempered.
That's all part of name-calling.
And it's, to me, it's vacant.
It doesn't seem like they really are up to speed on what they're up against.
And I think the falling polling numbers that she has, the high, untrustworthy and dishonesty numbers that she has, indicate this.
Now, there are stories today that she is at risk that she's losing Hispanic voters left and right and on the cusp of losing significant African-American support.
Now, I want to go back to the Hispanic aspect of this for a second, because what have we been told by the people in the establishment that run these campaign playbooks?
The Republican playbook for the last four elections, certainly three, has been something along the lines of: if we don't support amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform, we are never going to win the presidency because we are never going to get a significantly high number of Hispanics voting for our nominee.
In other words, the playbook and the strategy has been: we have got to show Hispanics that we are not what the Democrats say we are.
We're not racist.
We're not anti-Hispanic.
We don't dislike them or anything.
So we've got to come out for amnesty.
We've got to come out and endorse lawlessness just like the Democrats do.
And the Democrats are the first people to tell us this is what we have to do, by the way.
We have to agree with them, or we're never going to win, as though the Democrats care whether we win the White House ever again.
And yet look at what's happening.
Hillary Clinton, who believes in amnesty and open borders and unvetted refugees by the hundreds of thousands, is losing Hispanic votes.
A Republican nominee who is in no way associated with amnesty, who says he wants to build a wall, who says he wants to increase the vetting procedures on Muslims and Syrian refugees and stop the flow of illegals, is winning Hispanic votes.
Maybe winning them a little slower than Hillary is losing them, but still, the old strategy, the Republican playbook on how to win the White House again by getting Hispanic votes, is so far off the beaten path as to be inoperative now.
But when you listen to Hillary speak, whatever the issue is, there are certain ways you go about characterizing your Republican opponent, no matter who he is or she is or what they believe or not.
And that's what she's doing.
And it's all predictable.
We've heard it all before.
And it all works when you're talking about somebody who is of the political class.
It was easy, their strategy they ran on Romney, for example.
Rich white guy doesn't care about people and didn't care about the family dog and didn't pay his taxes.
That kind of character assassination works against a Republican who's already in elective office or has been, but it doesn't work so much against a guy like Trump.
Not in the way it works against another insider or member of the establishment who happens to be running.
I just don't think that they have the ability to adapt their game plan to the Trump campaign.
And I think the evidence is the falling polls and the stories, the accompanying stories of how worried the Democrats are about this.
They're worried about her health.
They're openly saying to the New York Times now.
A number of Democrats are openly admitted.
They're really worried about her health and what it means for the campaign.
And they're worried about her lying.
And they're worried about the fact that she's not at 70%.
They really thought that if Trump got the nomination, that Hillary was going to smoke him.
Their egotistical view was, well, we are the elites.
We are the establishment.
We run all of this.
We control politics in America.
This guy, Trump, he doesn't know did least squat.
Hillary Clinton, my God, the best insider we could have nominated to go up against this buffoon.
And look at what's happening.
The buffoon is tied her practically everywhere.
There's a Reuters poll out that has her back up four today, but it's the only one that's the LA Times USC poll has Trump up seven.
And now with these terror attacks over the weekend and Mrs. Clinton, a predictable response, no, it's not terrorism.
No, it's all Trump's fault.
It's all the Republicans' fault.
I mean, that's what I mean.
It's all the Republicans' fault.
Trump, Romney, whoever, a terror attack happens, it's Bush's fault.
It's Romney's fault.
It's Trump's fault.
It's Rushlin boss.
It's Fox News' fault.
It's the vast right-wing conspiracy.
It's tired and worn out.
And the bottom line is that Hillary Clinton's policies in Obama's perpetuate the status quo.
You like terror attacks?
They're going to continue under Obama and Hillary because Obama and Hillary are not interested in identifying the problem and stopping it.
Therefore, she has become a champion of the very things the American people want fixed.
Here is Kathy in Toledo, Ohio.
Great to have you on the phone, Kathy.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
I just wanted to get your take on the report that was released today from DHS where they said at least 859 people who were supposed to be deported were, quote, accidentally given citizenship instead.
And I just don't understand that once they realize that, why they can't be sent back now.
Well, I did.
I just now happened to see the story about 15 minutes ago.
And I haven't even clicked on the link.
I just, I get it on my list of things breaking as the program is happening.
And I haven't had a chance to.
So you told me more about it than I know, aside from the headline that they mistakenly granted citizenship to 800 people supposed to be deported.
I don't, with that number, it's a relatively small number unless somebody knows these 800 and really wants them here for some reason.
This just sounds like typical government just can't do anything right.
Just sounds like.
This goes along with what Trump was saying about how we're not even set up to vet properly, and yet they can't even bring in more people.
But it's even more, it's just the general inefficiency of bureaucracies as they grow and grow and become less and less accountable.
The reason that they're not going to reach, they've granted citizenship to them.
They can't withdraw it.
That would no doubt look horrible.
They said it was something to do with their fingerprints or something.
There was some problem.
That's all I know.
I heard it from, like, it was on Fox earlier, and they said something about due to something with fingerprints, they accidentally got were given citizenship instead of being deported.
Alexander, you ask, how in the world you see that?
That cannot be an accident.
That's too big a differential to be an accident.
Somebody had to want this to happen.
I know that's a natural reaction to it, but I just think it's typical of bureaucracies and the inefficiency and incompetence of the people.
This is why people don't trust the government.
And I'm telling you right now, people are saying that they think maybe it's because are these people able to vote now, now that they're citizens?
What's going on?
You know, you just it's just like you say that people don't trust government, but it's very frustrating.
The same people that don't trust government demand government fix everything.
After they break it, after they break it, they're the first people to demand government do something about it.
It's one of the most frustrating things in politics to me, if we can categorize that as politics.
But I think this is the kind of thing that's going to feed all kinds of conspiracy theories.
And anyway, I've got to take a break here.
I'll have more on this when we get back, though, Kathy.
I appreciate your call.
Do not vanish here, folks.
Here is Stacey in Atlanta.
Great to have Stacey.
How are you doing?
Hey, Rush.
How are you?
It's doing especially well.
Thank you very much.
Listen, I just can't take this anymore.
I can't take this, them saying that Hillary, I mean, Trump's words are worse than Obama funding the terrorism.
I mean, he's actually sending the money to make this happen.
Yeah, the $33 billion to Iran.
Exactly.
And we're supposed to buy it all day long.
Please keep doing what you're doing.
Hey, Stacey, are you the Stacey of the old insurance company days?
No.
You're not.
You're not.
We used to have somebody named Stacey from Georgia who was an expert in health insurance and other insurance, and she'd call here regularly.
You sound just like her.
That's not me.
Okay.
It doesn't matter.
You're still honored.
Pardon?
I said, this is my first time, and I'm so honored.
Oh, well, I am too.
I'm glad you got through.
But no, this is this, we've been discussing this today, that Obama and the media are angrier at Trump for calling it a bombing before the official investigation disclosed it than they're angry at the bomber.
And Hillary had called it a bombing too, except CNN tried to protect her and edited those comments out of her remarks.
Unbelievably so.
They'll circle the wagons, and they have to do it a lot.
Have you noticed lately?
The media is having to circle the wagons to defend and protect Hillary a lot.
So Trump comes out and calls it a bombing and says, we're not going to put up with it anymore.
We've got to get to the point we can stop these things from happening and properly punishing the people that do it.
And they just have a cow over on the left.
You called it a bombing?
Oh, my God.
We haven't had enough.
It blew up.
We had a garbage can.
We had a dumpster.
They blew up.
What do you think it was?
But you can't call it a bombing before the investigation has concluded that it was a bombing.
That is irresponsible.
That's working people up into a frenzy when it may not be necessary.
Well, what was it?
Look, this is the thing.
Everybody knows what's going on.
And Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are seen as, I don't know whether they get this or not.
They're seen as defending it.
Let me, they're not seen as defending the actions.
They are seen as defending the people who do it, which then justifies or permits the action to be misrepresented in terms of who's behind it and why they do it.
But at the end of the day, Obama and Hillary and the way they talk about this essentially permit this stuff to continue.
And they make it clear that there's no way they could ever make it stop because they will not admit that they know who is doing it and why.
They will not admit that.
To do that would be politically incorrect, and we can't do that as good leftists and so forth.
And it is highly dangerous.
And if that, you know, you say anything about Trump being unfit for crying out loud, if anybody is demonstrating an unfitness for office, it's Hillary Clinton, particularly when it comes to the safety of American people.
Talk to the people in Benghazi.
She cared not a whit about helping them out.
There was no additional security when they were under attack.
No help was offered.
And after enough time went by, Hillary's reaction, what difference does it make now?
Four Americans are dead.
What difference does it make?
How?
Really said that to a congressional hearing.
So I just, I think it's all getting tired.
I think that she's because she's vulnerable because the sickness, because of the ill health, the seizures and the collapse.
People are looking at her with a little more scrutiny than if she were standard Democrat picture of health running around with all kinds of vim and vigor.
She's just not, she doesn't make and doesn't have a connection with people.
And as such, all of her vulnerabilities end up being magnified.
Because everybody has negative aspects, but many candidates benefit from people's willingness to overlook them if they have strength and competence and other characteristics that convey security and safety and confidence.
She doesn't have any of that.
She doesn't give people a reason to look past her vulnerabilities and her weaknesses.
And so they focus on them.
And I don't think she knows quite how to deal with it.
Stacey, I appreciate the call.
It's an honor that your first call to a show was this one.
And we will be back.
Stay with us.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, I went to flew into Kansas City for the funeral, the memorial of a really good guy, a great, great friend of mine from the days that I lived in Kansas City.
I was in Kansas City from 1975 through 84.
It was 10 years.
And I met Ernie Mai, M-A-I.
That's how he spelled his name.
I met him around 1980.
It was shortly after I had started working at the Kansas, maybe, maybe before.
It was right around the time, 79, 80, it was in that area.
And I've told you about the shack that I lived in.
And it was, I lived in Overland Park, Kansas, which was considered a very upscale zip code, but not my part in it.
And I was one of these people that bought a house, had no business buying a house.
It was 79, it was 80.
Interest rates were 12, 13%.
And the whole thought process was, you've got to own a house.
You're throwing away money renting.
You've got to buy a house.
I didn't have enough.
I didn't earn enough money to own a house and keep it up.
And I didn't have enough money to really buy a decent house.
But I got caught up in the whole home sale business.
I met Ernie by way of the real estate agent that sold the house.
Ernie was her next door neighbor.
When I go oversee her, she introduced me to Ernie and his kids, and we became fast friends.
And yesterday I was listening to people talk about Ernie in the memorial.
For some reason, it just struck me what a crapshoot it is for everybody to make it in life.
It really is a crapshoot.
Making it emotionally, making it financially, making it career-wise.
It really, nothing is guaranteed for, I mean, for the vast majority of people.
And it so depends on the people you meet in your life, the kind of inspiration you get, the kind of hope you get, guidance from your family, of course.
Ernie was just the nicest guy, and he worried so much that I had bought this house.
He worried it was literally going to fall in on me.
And we'd have when they routinely in the winter, you'd get 10 below nights in Kansas City.
He would come over and look at the furnace.
His business, he restored.
He was a construction business.
He restored burnt out office buildings and homes, specialized in restoring items destroyed by fire, properties destroyed by fire.
And he'd come over and he'd just look at me and I'd ask him about the furnace and the aircraft.
And he'd just get looked like Jack Lemon, by the way.
If he'd look at me, he'd just shake his head as though you're in a hopeless situation here.
You are living on a wing and a prayer that this thing is going to stop working tonight.
And it was funny.
He had the greatest kids.
In fact, I couldn't even afford a lawnmower, nor did I have the time to mow the yard.
It was 18-hour days during homestands.
So he sent his kids over to mow the yard every two weeks.
They'd show up in the car, get the lawnmower out of the trunk, and they'd mow it, smiles on their faces.
And I would do my best to get them royals tickets when I could.
In fact, one of their oldest son, Dan, met his wife, who's their son just got married a week ago.
You know, bittersweet, their father dies.
Dan's father dies a week later.
Their son's wedding is a bittersweet moment.
But I was thinking about all this, the crapshoot that life is, is because when I was living in this shack, and folks, I mean, it was not like Obama's brother's hut.
I don't want you to misunderstand, but it was, it was, just had, I had no business being this is, I couldn't make the house payment and the MasterCard payment together in the month.
They both came in the same 15-day period, and I couldn't make them both.
So my MasterCard was always late, and I ended up losing it for a while because of it.
Anyway, going over to Ernie's house was, even though my family was great, but going over to Ernie's house, being welcomed in there And hanging around over there was one of those crucially important aspects.
It's possible.
You can do it.
You know, I presented myself with a lot of obstacles to overcome by quitting college after a semester and behaving in business in ways that resulted in getting fired.
Well, actually, I only got fired for insubordination once.
It's just the nature of the business that you get fired radio.
Ernie lived to be 88, and he was just always smiling and laughing and set a great example for everybody.
Everybody loved him and tremendous friends, and it was just a shame.
Everybody has to pass away, but he was important to a lot of people.
And I couldn't let the day go by without mentioning how much love I had for their family and respect.
A lot of them get away, go out to Beaver Creek.
Some on their way now, because it's been a bittersweet couple of weeks.
I've been to Beaver Creek, but I used to be in Colorado.
Vale and Eagle used to be a member of golf club out there.
Eagle Springs, it was named.
It's actually Eagle Springs.
But he was just one of these unique people.
We'd sit around, for example, Ernie, he was a very successful guy, but there were still in the neighborhood, I was across the street and a couple neighborhoods away, but across the street, a couple neighborhoods away from Ernie, were the really big monstrous mansions.
And we'd sit out in his backyard and look over at them and wonder what the people who lived in them did.
And I would say, I'd try to, Ernie, don't worry.
Those people are in debt.
You can't believe it.
He said, the hell they are.
They've got $500,000 of automobile in the driveway.
And we'd chuckle and yuck it up and go drive into the neighborhood wondering what those people did.
He later in life got interested in flying with the Oshkosh Air Show and was this in his element, but a nickname for everybody, too.
But I am going to miss him a lot.
These kids have become good friends as well.
It happens when you get older, start losing people.
Really, really good people.
Anyway, I appreciate your indulging me for that.
It's a couple of minutes quick timeout, and we'll be back and wrap this up right after that.
Okay, I'm going to pour through the soundbite roster here and see what's because there's got this stuff in here that'll it's evergreen meaning somewhat timeless.
It'll work through tomorrow.
Yeah, like ABC Roundtable scared to death of hidden Trump vote.
This is a big deal.
There are three or four soundbites here today.
And we were the first to bring this up, calling your attention to a comment made by Robert Costa, the Washington Post.
The drive-bys are now getting very, very worried that there's a whole lot of people that have not voted in years that are registering Republican because they want to vote for Trump.
And they're not really being found in the polls.
They're getting very, very worried about a lot of things on the Hillary side.
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