All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 6, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
29:24
October 6, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Yes, this is it right here.
After Hillary Clinton put a spotlight on Alicia Machado's strife with Trump, the 39-year-old's dirty laundry spilled out into public.
Do the Clintons care?
No way.
She served her purpose.
And that's that.
And so now here's a woman who thought, I don't know what she thought.
I'm guessing she thought that by bashing Trump in support of the Clintons, that some great fame was going to attach itself to her with accompanying riches, who knows what.
But all that's happened is that Alicia Machado's dirt.
Nobody wants aspects of their lives made public.
All these people that want fame and think it's the greatest thing when they get a taste of it.
It's not all red carpets.
Very little of it is.
So she's pulling up.
She doesn't want to be part of it anymore.
And it's just, it's typical of what happens to people that end up in bed with the Clintons.
Their lives end up being damaged while the Clintons benefit from it.
Greetings, folks.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh here in Los Angeles had to decamp the homestead in advance of the oncoming Hurricane Matthew.
And even while doing the program today, continuing to monitor during commercial breaks the proceeding, the track of the hurricane, measuring it against the National Hurricane Center's track and seeing if there are any deviations in not just in direction, but intensity, wind speed, barometric pressure, and all that.
So just, it's not really a distraction, but it's part of me is fascinated by it.
But, well, I guess some of it is a distraction.
But because of it, we're here, and we're going to be here tomorrow, too.
And depending, we had a hurricane go through where we lived, Hurricane Wilma, 11 years ago.
It was a category two.
And I think the place where we live without power for a week.
Now, it didn't affect me.
It's a powerful, influential member of the media.
I have a generator that the neighbors hate because it's so loud.
But we were able to stay functioning there.
It was like 11 days that the power was out, the phone lines and all that.
And this is said to be a category four at the time it strikes.
So we're all deeply anticipatory.
I have a friend who defied the EVAC order and stayed.
And he lives about 100 yards away.
And he says, hey, nothing going on here.
25 mile an hour winds out of the northeast.
It's a great day.
I said, look, I sent you the note.
It's 8 o'clock tonight till 2 in the morning is when you're going to get the worst of it.
So, you know, tell me what's going on then.
He said, no sweat.
He stayed when Wilma went through.
And it got both ends of Wilma because it came from the West.
We got the eye wall twice, right over us.
And they're not, you know what the thing that really stands out about a hurricane, if you've not been through one, is the noise.
Imagine yourself being out on a tarmac when a Boeing 747 revs all four engines.
And it goes on for hours until the hurricane passed.
The noise associated with it.
Fortunately, me being deaf, if I ever got stuck in one, I could take my implants off and I wouldn't hear anything.
But for people that have to hear, that's one of the most noteworthy things that people who have withstood and lived through hurricanes have to say about it.
Have you all heard of this eminent historian by the name of Douglas Lightman, L-I-T-L-I-C-H-T-M-A-N?
He is an occasional guest on cable news networks, and he has been for years.
He is a history professor at American University.
And he has a whole way of analyzing presidential races.
And he says he has not been wrong since 1984 when he began to use his method.
He has accurately predicted the popular result, not the Electoral College result.
They mostly follow.
He has accurately predicted the popular result since Ronaldus Magnus had his landslide victory over Walter F. Mondo back in 1984.
And he calls it the Keys to the White House analysis.
And he's predicting a big win for Donald Trump.
Now, other people, such as the Wonderkind Nate Silver in his 538 blog, the New York Times say that Hillary's probability of victory is over 50%.
But Professor Alan Leichman is out there all on his own.
What is it?
It's Lichtman?
He didn't have to pronounce it.
He could have pronounced it Lightman.
He chose to pronounce it Lichtman.
Well, see, I don't look, don't get me.
I don't listen.
I have captioning on because I can't hear the TV with the noise nerve.
Okay, it's Alan Lichtman.
I'm sorry.
Professor Alan Lichtman.
I did not mean to mispronounce the name.
I just saw it and I said it would be pronounced Leitman.
But hey, anyway, what happened here is Professor Lichtman joined Reuters Global Markets Forum to discuss his take on the campaign.
He said, he asked the question, why is Trump your favorite to win?
He said, well, with respect to my prediction, my keys system is based on 13 true-false questions where an answer of true favors re-election of the White House Party, in this case, the Democrats.
They have exactly six false keys against them.
That's just enough to predict their defeat.
So Professor Lichtman is giving himself an out, though.
He's acknowledging that it's tight and that his system could be proven wrong in this election, which means simply that he wants to keep his job teaching at American University.
He said, how big is the immigration issue in deciding the election?
Answer, I think immigration is a very important issue.
America is a nation of immigrants and immigrants have been demeaned for more than two centuries.
The two candidates have fundamentally different approaches to dealing with them.
Anyway, the details what his keys are, and I'm not going to go through all 13 of them, but basically he is saying that this is Trump's election to win.
It's an issue-oriented thing.
He doesn't look at electoral college votes.
He doesn't look at polling Danis so much.
He looks at other things.
And he's not been wrong since 1984.
So take that for what it's worth and do with it what you will.
UPI.
We don't hear much about UPI, United Press International, but they also have been conducting state polls.
And they are reporting that Trump is gaining in all but five of them in this past week when Trump was supposed to be seeing the bottom falling out.
You know, I'm going to stick with the Lichtman can have his theories.
I've got one of mine, and I'm going to stick with it.
I have believed in it since this whole primary began.
American politics is within itself a business.
It's like any other business.
It doesn't want to be characterized as a business because politicians routinely rip into business as being run by dishonest sharks.
And politics, of course, is about the better things in our features.
It's about issues and ideas and so forth.
And by business, I mean there's certain things you have to do to climb the ladder of success in that business.
There are certain things you have to do before you are allowed entry into what we call the establishment.
There are certain things you have to, for example, you get elected to Congress.
You better do what the leadership says or you'll not get re-elected.
To hell with what you think.
If the leadership wants you to vote something you disagree with, you better do it or they will defund your next campaign.
You won't win re-election.
That's how they do it.
It's standard operating procedure.
Both parties do it.
But there are other elements of the business of politics.
Trump isn't a part of any of it, and yet he's being judged by the same measures and rubric that somebody in politics would be judged.
For example, his tax return.
I maintain to you that a politician constructs every aspect of his life toward being re-elected.
And that means constructing everything in his life to pass muster with the voters.
And when it comes to a tax return, you'd better show yourself paying taxes.
You'd better show your income comes from your congressional or senate salary.
You had better show that you don't donate to charity here and there.
And you had better not have it seen that you're on the take from anybody.
And politicians release their tax returns and they're analyzed by others in the media who are also in the business of politics.
But Trump has never been in politics.
He has never once lived his life or constructed his life to be judged in the political realm.
His advancement, his climbing his own success ladder is far different than what people in politics have to do.
In politics, you have to make it look like you are totally subservient to the people, when in fact, that's the last thing you are.
In politics, you have to make it look like you like kissing babies and you love putting on a coat and tie to go to a pork loin barbecue on a Sunday.
You have to look like you love this stuff.
You can never go somewhere with a pair of shorts on and a golf shirt.
You have to have a coat and it's part of the routine that you have to do.
And your tax returns are every bit.
You have to structure them a certain way.
Trump hasn't done any of this.
He hasn't lived his life as though he's a politician and though it's going to be covered as a politician.
He hasn't lived his life.
So if it's learned about and discovered, then it's going to be measured the way we measure politicians.
But now he's running for the presidency.
And so the people that don't want him to win are judging him and putting him into the political business or rubric and judging him accordingly when you can't.
You simply can't.
And the proof of that is they have not been able to convince Trump supporters to abandon him no matter what they've done.
Trump can't even make them abandon him.
Trump says some outrageous stuff.
He says some curious stuff.
He does things that his supporters wish he wouldn't do, but they do not abandon him.
And it's precisely because it's bigger than he is.
What Trump represents is the chance to wrest control back from these career political types to average ordinary Americans who feel that career political types really don't care about them or their future while they lie every day about how much they do care.
So Trump is being measured against all, and he's not losing any ground.
The media is pulling its hair out.
We even had a soundbite from F. Chuck Todd the other day.
We can't believe Trump's still standing.
We've thrown everything at Trump, he effectively said.
And Trump's still gaining ground.
They can't figure because they know how to take out Republicans in the political business.
And they're trying the same things they used to take out Romney, the same things they used to destroy George W. Bush, the same things they used on any number of people that work, but they're not working on Trump.
So I maintain to you that any attempt to assess this campaign by plugging Trump into, including his debate performances, by plugging Trump into the same system that we're judging career politicians by is causing the analysts here to totally miss what may be going on with Trump.
And I'll tell you that one of the big things, and I know this because a Washington Post reporter gave this away.
One of the things that the career politicians are really worried about, you know, half the people in this country don't vote.
A full 50% of the eligible voters don't vote.
And we know this with statistical data.
We also know this because every four years, various politicians and media wring their hands.
It's so bad for our democracy.
Half our people are not voting.
What can we do?
So there's early voting and there's voter, voter registration, there's illegal immigration, anything we can do to ramp up voter participation.
50% don't.
They don't vote because they don't think it's going to matter.
They don't think their vote counts.
They think they're powerless against this massive Washington establishment and it just doesn't matter and they don't even want to waste time paying attention.
Then Trump comes along.
And what they're worried about is that some of that 50% is going to show up and vote for Trump when they don't ever vote.
They're hard to find, hard to poll.
And it's one element, obviously, here in the voting public or in the political public that the establishment doesn't control.
If people aren't voting, if they're not participating, then you can't say that there's any control over.
So you can't determine what they're going to do.
So what the establishment's doing is doubling down on their attempts to impugn and attack and destroy Trump with his character by virtue of his personality, his mean-spiritedness to women and all this stuff, hoping to kill the enthusiasm that exists for Trump.
And I don't think they're going to be able to do it.
It would have been done by now.
They tried it all during the Republican primaries.
When Hillary asked the other day, why are I a head...
It's G.
She meant it.
They're sitting there thinking, they can't believe this guy is still standing and still has a chance.
But like our previous caller, it still doesn't exempt Trump.
His supporters still want him to go out and kick butt, and they don't think he did against Hillary in the first debate.
They think he phoned it in the last half.
They don't know why.
Nobody does.
But that's the only risk that Trump runs.
Trump, I don't think a lot of people disagree with me on this, by the way, but I don't think the drive-bys can destroy Trump.
Trump is the only guy that can do that.
They can't diffuse the energy that Trump supporters have for it, but he can.
And I've always thought that's the risk that he runs.
So when you look at the way they're analyzing his taxes or his statements about Mexicans or the way he's talked about women, I mean, the fact is, and they don't want to admit this in politics, that's how normal people talk about other people.
But with political correctness, they whisper it or they go to the bathroom to say it because the speech police are everywhere.
But that's how real people talk.
And women do the same thing.
They talk about other women in ways they would never do so publicly.
And men, people are people.
They talk about each other this way.
And Trump does.
So it's also a common, and they get mad when Trump gets assaulted for it.
Now, if Trump were a career politician, just show you how I'm right on this.
If Trump were a career politician, he would have been dead 10 seconds after his announcement statement, where he called Mexican illegals criminals and rapists.
That would have been the end of it.
The fact he's an outsider, it helped him.
So I don't think the establishment still knows what to do with him and how to go after him.
They're trying to attach the same techniques that they use to destroy others in the political stand, like Romney and like McCain and like George W. Bush and like Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.
But it bounces off Trump and it frustrates him.
This is not to say that I think Trump's headed for a huge win.
I don't know any more than anybody else does.
But I don't think, like they do, that it's a fait accompli and over.
They're telling themselves it's over.
They're trying to get you to believe it's over.
They're trying to depress you and make you all dispirited.
Trump doesn't have a chance.
He's blown it and he hasn't yet.
Because there's still a lot of days left.
There's still two more debates to go.
A brief timeout, my friends.
I have to take it.
We'll come back and resume with the phones right after this.
Okay, who's next?
Neptune Beach, Florida.
Jeanette, I'm glad you waited.
Great to have you with us.
Hi.
Hey, Rash, Najor Ditto from soon-to-be Hurricane Torring Florida.
Thank you, Jeanette.
It's great to have you here.
Yes.
Hey, I just wanted to follow up on your previous caller call about the Frank Luntz panel comments.
I don't know if you saw this, but the undecided that were watching the Pence King debate definitely thought Pence won, I mean, in a landslide.
But they did also comment that they were still waiting for more from Trump.
So one of the things that Luntz talked about and suggested, and the group agreed, as do I, was that this upcoming debate, Trump should not debate Clinton or the moderators, but instead should talk directly to the audience.
Oh, yeah.
He also said, I think Trump should engage with the audience by asking them questions.
Wait, who said this?
One of the focus group people said this?
Frank Luntz said it.
He laid out like five points, and one of the key ones was.
Oh, Luntz said it.
Okay.
Yeah, but the audience agreed.
He said, I think that he should ask the audience questions.
In fact, in his opinion, the first candidate to do that will probably win.
But I just, I sat there and I thought, oh, wow, this would be a great opportunity.
So what were some of the things I would ask?
I would ask, do you feel safer than you did eight years ago?
Are you better off than you were eight years ago?
Are you happy with the entrenched lifetime politicians that are running your life?
Well, now it's interesting.
I have a similar theory, but for a different reason.
I have my theory that that is how Trump could go on offense.
Not by attacking her.
I'll explain it in a minute.
Okay, now Trump and our last caller Suggested that Frank Luntz, or said that Frank Luntz suggested that Trump's approach in the next debate be don't speak to her.
Don't attack her.
It's not going to get you anywhere because no matter whether she deserves it, it just doesn't look good on TV.
As Tim Kaine proved the other night, it just doesn't look good on TV.
So instead, talk to the audience.
There's a camera there, and behind that camera are going to be gazillions of people who want you, Mr. Trump, to hit a Grand Slam home run, whatever he sentence.
So do it.
And you can look at Mrs. Clinton and say, why would we want any more of this?
We are here tonight precisely because we all have a problem for what currently passes for policy in Washington, D.C. and life in America.
And just, I think this constitutes going on offense.
Now, too many people, like Trump, his personality is this.
If you attack Trump, he's not going to sit there and take it.
He's an alpha male.
He's going to come right back at you and he's going to keep coming back at you.
Now, in this case, that's what the Clintons want because they know how that looks on TV.
As I say, Tim Kaine proved it.
Grab somebody.
This is funny.
Dana Perino.
I'm sorry, Dana Bash.
Dana Bash on CNN last night on the Situation Ermis, Wolf Blitzer show.
And Blitzer says, audio summit number nine, Donald Trump just added a town hall tomorrow in New Hampshire to his campaign schedule.
Sunday debate, also a town hall.
Dana, what are you hearing?
How is Trump preparing to launch a fresh round of attacks against Hillary?
Just in terms of the performance aspect, which as we learned last night, preparation does matter and makes a big difference because Pence worked very hard on it.
But Donald Trump, I am told, cannot and will not be convinced to change his prep and the way that he does it.
And so he's not going to do a mock debate.
He's not going to have a formal person playing Hillary Clinton.
It's just not going to happen.
He runs the debate room, the debate prep room, which is basically a conference room sitting around the table, and that's it.
So they are horrified.
They're literally horrified.
They want you to think they're horrified.
CNN, that Trump isn't going to make any changes.
Because in their world, Trump had clot cleaned in the last debate, and anybody would make changes.
They find out Trump's supposedly not going to make changes.
We'll see.
But again, you have to judge every, like that analysis of Trump.
Remember, she would say this about somebody in politics.
To her, it's inconceivable you wouldn't do a fake debate.
It's inconceivable you wouldn't rehearse.
It's inconceivable to Dana Bash that you wouldn't have a bunch of advisors tell you what you think.
It's just inconceivable that you wouldn't rehearse a bunch of times, have somebody pretend to be Hillary.
But Trump is not of that world.
Trump doesn't think that he's deficient.
Trump doesn't think that he's lacking.
Trump doesn't think he needs advisors to tell him what he thinks.
Trump is supremely, imminently confident, and he doesn't want to do it the way everybody does it in politics because that's not the world he lives in.
Good or bad, I'm telling you, that's who he is.
And now he's looking at this.
But he still can go on offense without interrupting her and challenging her unless she just, you know, if a big, fat, slow-pitched softball's hanging out there, you've got to go for it.
But other than that, and talk to the audience, go on offense, and just tie her to everything people think is wrong.
Dishonesty, the lack of jobs, all these millennials still living in their basements with their parents upstairs, whatever it is.
And remember what got him there, being an outsider and having a confident fix for the things that are wrong.
But again, I must also say, Frank Luntz, just to be honest about it, Frank Luntz is of the political world, folks.
And Frank Luntz is offering advice as a political consultant would offer a political candidate.
Now, in this case, I don't disagree with it.
I like the idea of talking to the people.
I think there's nothing better than that.
But they think that Trump has nothing to gain by going after Hillary.
And that's where I disagree.
I don't think he should make a whole debate out of it.
But do you realize how many people in this country think the Clintons have gotten away with everything and they haven't been held to account for anything?
And you've got Bill with the women.
You've got Hillary with Benghazi.
You know, Trump may lose some money, but she loses people's lives.
She loses email.
She loses lives.
Four people dead in Benghazi.
See, so what difference does it make now?
There's all kinds of vulnerabilities that he could go after, especially if she teased them up herself.
So I think it'd be a combination of things.
We'll see.
You know, these debates, folks, are like when your favorite sports team plays, you're just scared to death they're going to blow it.
You know, you're a Steelers fan there in the Super Bowl.
You just know they're going to blow you.
Oh, my God.
You start today.
Oh, my God.
They're going to blow it.
You hope and pray they don't.
In a debate like this, guarantee you, every one of you people watching this, if at any time you think Trump's blowing it, you'll think you could be there and you could be knocking it out of the park.
The great make anybody think they can do it.
That's one of the aspects of greatness.
They make it look easy.
But in this case, it's going to be a lot of people are so invested in this.
And one of the things they're invested in is the Clintons being held accountable because they haven't been for over 20 years.
And if Trump can find a way to do that, he struck gold and can build on even that that he has now.
Brief again, I'm seeing profit breaking right back.
Here is Matt in Greeley, Colorado, as we head back to the phones.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Hello.
Mega Muncho Dero, Senor Rush, Latino voter in Colorado.
Thank you, Puppy.
Great to have you here.
You know, Rush, the only thing I wanted to say was: do you think that they're going to change or Trump will try to change his delivery?
Because I tell you what, he's saying some of the same things that Bill Clinton has said in the past about immigration, but his delivery, as you know, delivery from a message can be everything.
And I think Trump's like a bad paper boy.
Sometimes the news is the same, but he throws the paper through the window.
I like that analogy.
What would you have Trump do to change his delivery?
Well, I like the fact of looking at the camera or looking at the audience.
And I think that if he would say stuff like, look, listen, you know, right there, those two little words.
And I think that the American people would stop and they would actually listen to some of the things that he would say, just tweak him a little bit.
I think that Mr. Trump is saying some great things, but I just wish he would tweak it.
Do you think that go after?
Do you think Trump does a disservice to himself when he talks about his greatness, when he talks about how he has succeeded wildly more than anybody else?
These great businesses, nobody's done it as great as I'm good.
Does that do people laugh at that or are some of them put off by it?
I think some folks are put off by it.
And I'd rather him focus on, hey, listen, this is what's wrong with our country.
This is what Hillary has done in the past.
Well, I'm going to take, look, I agree with it, but there's nobody else doing that but him.
I mean, you don't even have Republicans doing it.
That's what he owns that.
I agree with you.
He should stay focused on that because that's why he's assembled the crowd that he has.
Now, on this delivery business, what I find fascinating about this, it's not uncommon.
You notice the callers that we've had today, they all want Trump to be great.
They're not mad.
They're not ready to throw Trump overboard.
They want Trump to kick butt.
They want Trump to do so well, and so they want to offer advice.
And I appreciate that.
I think that he's aware of that too.
But it wouldn't help.
I mean, it wouldn't hurt.
It wouldn't hurt if somebody were to remind him just how many millions of people are hoping that he does well and investing in him and so forth.
Because it could have the effect that you want in terms of delivery or his focus, such as looking at the camera and that kind of thing.
Anyway, we've got tomorrow to discuss this too.
The program never ends, folks.
Never's over.
Just takes a 21-hour break now and then, but we have to take another one now.
Be right back and wrap it up.
Thank you so much for being with us today, ladies and gentlemen.
As always, it's a genuine thrill and delight.
I look forward to it each and every day, as I will tomorrow, back in 21 hours, and see you there.
Remember, tomorrow's Open Line Fridays, whatever you want to talk about.
It doesn't have to be politics or the election if you don't want it to be.
Whatever is fine.
▲
Export Selection