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Dec. 22, 2016 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:13
December 22, 2016, Thursday, Hour #3
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Now I'm gonna do it right now.
As I told everybody about it, I'm gonna do it right now.
I'm gonna get it out of the way.
I frankly, too.
I mean, I it it's Obama blaming me and Fox News for his problems.
And it really, you know, it's it's explanatory in its in its own way.
It's a very it's a it's a great way of illustrating who Obama is and how he how he thinks.
Uh look at what Obama has at his disposal in order to get everybody to love him and to agree with him.
He owns practically every cultural leading pop culture entity there is.
He owns, by owns, I mean they love him.
He's in total control of it.
Hollywood.
Books, movies, news, music, newspapers, I mean, you name it, virtually every pop culture entity that has influence loves Obama.
And by the same token, not only do they love Obama, they routinely are hypercritical of me and others who are not in the Obama camp.
I mean, they're constantly calling out Fox News and me, and all of this.
So Obama owns the world media.
Uh and yet these two relatively small outposts, the Rush Limbaugh program and Fox News, somehow are responsible for him not being a beloved what.
Uh I don't know what he seeks to be, but his latest complaint was to a reporter at the Atlantic.
And what he's essentially complaining about is that I have created this character that I have named Barack Obama, and I have created this character out of cloth, and the character bears no reality to the real Barack Obama.
And therefore, you people who only listen to me, you have a totally distorted view of the real Barack Obama, and you are being lied to, and he's being misrepresented.
You want to know the truth about this?
The people in this audience also read all of that crap that idolizes Obama.
The people in this audience are not shut out.
The people in this audience absorb all media.
It's the other side that closets itself away from us.
It is liberalism, it's Democrats, it's that whole mess of people.
They are the ignorant ones.
They are the ones that pay no attention to anything other than what they agree with.
My point is the people in this audience have a much wider knowledge base, a much broader sense of the news and events that are happening.
They know more about Obama.
The people in this audience know more about Obama than the people that read the New York Times.
If anybody has been presenting a caricature of Obama, it's the New York Times.
If anybody's been presenting a caricature, a false character of who Obama is, it's the mainstream media.
The mainstream media has created this mythological historical figure who's next to perfect.
Smartest ever, the most well spoken ever, the most whatever, ever.
And of course, that isn't true.
It's exactly the opposite of what Obama is trying to tell people.
The people that do not like Obama or the people that don't support Obama's policies do so from a foundation of real knowledge and information.
The people, for example, who don't like me or who hate me, I guarantee you, 95% of them have never listened to me.
I guarantee you they have never taken the time to talk to anybody who does listen to me.
It's the exact opposite of what they think.
People who do listen to this program love it.
That's the danger in it.
Take you back to 2002.
Mr. Snertley loves this memory.
2002.
The Democrats thought they were going to clean up in the midterms.
This is the year of the Wellstone Memorial.
And they lost.
They actually lost seats in a midterm election they should have won.
And Tom Dashell, who was then the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, was appearing somewhere in the media, might have been meet the press.
And he was very alarmed.
You know, Dash was a soft spoken guys.
We're very concerned, Tim.
We're concerned that the uh mean spirited, uh racist, and and bigoted uh clan like uh Republicans are really trying to deny uh people their water uh everyday team were deeply concerned, and and and Harry Reid tried to pick up this mild, soft spoken, don't scare anybody.
But Puff Dashel went out there and said that they had just seen some research, and they were shocked.
Yeah, uh it showed that uh uh uh a lot a lot of people are uh listening to Rush Limbaugh, and a lot of our people uh we we were shocked to learn that there are many former Democrats that that listened to Rush Limbaugh, did totally a discombobulated him.
Anyway, little Brian Stelter at CNN, who is their media analyst.
And you might say, who's Brian Stelter?
Where'd this guy come from?
I'll tell you where he came from.
Brian Stelter started a TV blog called a TV Newser.
You ever heard of the TV Newser?
You still did this day.
This is the most it's a blog that basically did TV gossip.
It was a miniature drudge report of television news, of drive-by network television news.
And I can remember, this goes back, this would have to go back twelve years, when nobody else heard of TV news yet either.
But if, for example, CNN was written up poorly, they just discombobulated everybody at CNN.
They thought everybody read it, but it was very tiny.
Anyway, the New York Times was so impressed by this blog that they hired little Bryan to be their chief media writer.
He was a blogger, he's a pajama clad, you know, in the basement there, blogger type guy with TV news in the New York Times hired him.
And he spent some time at the New York Times writing.
You know, you you you go to school in the New York Times, you learn how to write for them, the style book and you know the various things you have to do to make it obvious.
It's a New York Times story.
And after that, CNN picked him up.
And now he's the chief media analyst for for CNN.
And he got caught recently.
He tweeted out some fake news, and he got caught up in it, and and it was, I forget what it was about, it was just this week.
Anyway, that's a diversion.
This afternoon on CNN, uh co-host John Berman at CNN brought in Brian Stelter, who hosts their reliable sources show, to talk about Obama's latest comments in the Atlantic, in which he said he thinks conservative media has vilified him, and that Trump supporters who don't like Obama are simply responding to this fictional character named Barack Obama that Rush Limbaugh created.
And Berman says to Brian Stelter, you know, you get the sense that the president's gonna watch much Fox News in retirement, Brian.
What is this really going on?
The president took side swipes at Fox over the years, but now he's swiping much more directly, commenting much more directly on what he thinks Fox did to his presidency.
You know, we knew back in 2009 Fox News was an opposition network to Obama, Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio as well.
I would flip it around and say, did the president do enough to try to persuade those viewers, those voters, did he do enough to try to reach out to conservative media listeners, or did he treat it as a lost cause?
I think candidly, some of his aides now look back and say, maybe there was more they could have done.
Come on.
Can we get real here?
There was no way there was ever gonna be outreach.
Let me tell you two key things.
You may you probably know one of these because you listen to me.
Two weeks after Obama was inaugurated, he had a joint meeting of congressional leadership up in the White House.
Republican and Democrat, leaders in the House and Senate.
And it was at that meeting that he looked at the Republican leaders, looked really at John Boehner, and he said, You've got to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
You j you can't get things done that way.
He singled me out.
No, I wasn't offended.
No, no, no, no, no.
For a moment I was a little alarmed because I knew what he was doing.
But the key to this was why why would Obama take the time in Minahammer radio talk show host his first meeting with congressional leadership?
Why tell these guys?
I'll tell you why, because he believes too, the poppycock that's in the media.
And the poppycock that's in the media is that the Republicans in Washington are scared to death of any criticism that might come from me.
They are afraid to cross me, and therefore they will never do the quote-unquote right thing.
They will never go along with a Democrat, even when they want to, because they're afraid of what I will say.
Obama believed that because it's in the media that he reads.
It's a common misconception that's out there.
It's it's fake news.
So Obama goes into the meeting believing that that's what those guys think and do and are.
And so he warns them, you gotta stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
That's not how things get done here.
And I've told you, I happened to talk to Boehner right here in this office sometime not long after, and he was telling me about it, and he looked at me, he said, why would he do that?
We could we're looking at each other.
Why would he do that?
And I said, I'll tell you why he did it.
He was hoping that you'd walk out to that set of microphones outside the White House and agree with him.
He was hoping you would realize it's a new day.
We got this brand new president here, postpartisan, post-racial, post-everything, and we're gonna stop global warming and we're gonna fix our reputation in the world, and everybody's gonna be happy, it's gonna be gonna be utopia.
And he wanted you to go out there and say it is a new day, and uh the uh listen to Rush Limbaugh.
We never really have, and we're not going to anymore.
That's he wanted you to go out and discredit me.
And Baehner looked at me, actually.
I don't know why he thought we'd do that.
I said, Well, I do.
But here's the next thing that happened, and you you you probably remember some of this.
Do you remember?
I don't know if this was before he was inaugurated or after, but there was a dinner at George Will's house that Obama attended, and it was touted in the media as Obama meets with conservative leaders.
Obama dines with media conservative leaders.
And it was George Will, it was David Brooks, and I think it was at that dinner where Brooks saw Obama's crease in his slacks and concluded he was going to be a great president because of it.
Larry Cudlow was there.
Um I forget who else.
Dr. Dr. Krauthammer was there.
I was not there.
Now, the objective of that, do not doubt me.
The objective of that was twofold.
Obama, who at that time he was reveling in this massive popularity like Trump has now, except Trump's is real and Obama was still in the hope stage.
But still, he had won the election, and everybody was just having the media was still having orgasms over it in historical aspect, first black president.
They just barely contained themselves.
So he's universally popular.
The point was that Obama was now defining who the reasonable and responsible conservative media people are by choosing which ones to socialize with.
Well, it was no accident that he chose a bunch of academics who are not in the fight.
I mean, they write their opinions and they put them in their columns, but they're not that's that they're they're theoreticians and academics.
And many of them, like Brooks are not even full-fledged conservatives.
Uh they were all establishment types.
But the point of it was that I wasn't there, Nor was anybody from Fox News there.
It was designed to tell everybody in the drive-by media that Fox and Limbaugh don't matter.
I mean, Crowdhammer was there as a Washington Post columnist, not as a commentator on Fox.
Those two things.
He did those two things expressly and specifically to try to get Washington and the media and Republicans to cast me aside to throw me overboard.
And now Brian Stelter comes along saying that there are members of the regime.
Maybe if we had reached out to Limbo in an early days of their administration, maybe it would have been different.
There was no way they were going.
People still don't understand who liberals are, what Obama is.
I mean, he's a community organizing agitator.
There wasn't any desire for unity unless the unity could be achieved by people like me willingly conceding defeat.
And that's why Obama's upset.
A lot of Republicans went along with him.
A lot of Republicans, you know what?
It's hope and change.
We need to give it a chance.
Racial component, don't you know?
So that's but it must be bugging him.
I mean, if he keeps talking about it, it it must be.
That's why I say I'm living rent-free.
And I had the mansion or whatever, and it's there every day.
No Airbnb about this.
Hey, I want to congratulate uh uh uh Sean Spicer, yeah.
I was gonna say I I've known so many spicers in my life, and a couple of them have been real creeps.
Um, but he's not.
It's people I worked with way, way, way, way about 35 years ago.
I think one of his name was uh Scott.
And so I can keep I'm I'm tending to call him Scott is Sean Spice.
He was just named a White House press secretary, and I wanted to send out kudos and congratulations.
He came here with uh with Rines previs.
That's the thing.
I was getting lazy with Rines' name the other day, and I kept calling him Rince.
And I heard about it's right.
I mean, two or three people must have sent me emails.
I know it's Rhinz, it's just easier to say Rince, but anyway, Spicer was with Rines when they came down here uh last summer.
It was in the midst, I think of Democrat convention was actually going on or nearby.
And Jason Miller has been named the uh director in the White House communications office, and he's great.
Uh he's the guy I mentioned earlier who went out and was telling the Washington Post the kind of people Trump wants, that that they're confident, they're not wallflowers, that they are uh well spoken, passionate, confident, and the Washington Post writes a story, take those comments.
Trump Trump chooses people who look good.
As though if you're not a beautiful person, Trump won't use the greatest example of well, it's hard to pick one, classic example of fake news and distortion and misrepresentation.
Jason Miller is good.
All these guys are good.
Uh and they can handle themselves.
Here's uh where are we going next before we uh that Mary in Groton, New York.
Uh welcome to the program.
How are you?
Well, I'm fine.
Thank you, Rush.
And uh longtime listener, uh grateful for all your encouragement uh all throughout the campaign season to hold the course.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
And and basically my comment is very simple that tying into what you say about how immature the progressives, the liberals are, um, is the fact that they're they're punishing us because we don't agree with them.
And and most of this um that was their goal, that was what their leader Hillary was going to do was to continue to punish us for not being in their corner.
Well, now you know that the second half, that is a that is uh actually very shrewd observation.
Well, thank you.
No, that they were that's exactly what they were gonna do.
Yeah.
They do they punish uh anybody that doesn't agree with them.
Exactly, exactly right.
That's basically what I've observed and everything you've said about um how childish they are childish behaviors.
It is amazing uh that they are so many different psychological things.
Childish is is there, dangerous is another.
Hey, look, uh Mary, iPhone 7 or 7 plus.
Tell me which one would you like?
I'd love a seven plus.
Yeah, and who's your carrier?
Verizon.
Verizon, you have a color preference?
Um the um did you say silver is available or white?
Uh hang on.
Okay, hang on through the break.
Don't go away.
Okay, we are back to Mary in Groton, New York.
Okay, Mary, here's the here's the iPhone situation.
I want to offer you an option.
Okay.
The only colors I have in sim free, which means Verizon.
Okay.
Is Matt Black and Jet Black.
Now, if you want a rose gold, I can try and get one.
No, a Matt Black is fine.
Well, no, wait.
I I I can because you're not gonna be the last one.
Okay.
You know, uh uh but I can try if you want a rose gold.
I'm I'm looking at an inventory.
I have I have a uh way what what you want is available, it's just whether or not I can get it by tomorrow and ship it by tomorrow so that you would have it on Christmas Eve.
Uh whatever works out for you.
What?
Whatever works out for you.
Uh either way.
No, somebody's talking to me.
What would just say, Mary, what uh well, whatever.
What does it matter if it's silver rope?
I don't have it, is the point.
So if if you want whatever color you want, I mean I can try to get it sometime in time to ship it out to you tomorrow, which you would have for Saturday.
Okay.
But I c uh does it matter when you get it?
If you No, it does not.
Okay, so you want silver, then I'm gonna get you a silver one.
It I just won't be able to send it out today.
That's fine.
So you want silver Verizon, okay.
All right, then you shall have it.
Now keep in mind, too, that that FedEx is just overwhelmed.
I haven't gotten anything on time this week.
Uh and because they're just overwhelmed with with Christmas and stuff, but it will eventually get there, okay?
All right.
So hang on to Mr. Snurley, get your address, and we can send it all out.
Okay when we get you oh, you're more than welcome.
Merry Christmas.
Here's uh where are we going next?
Jeannie in the Philippines.
Welcome to the program.
Great to have you.
Thank you.
Um Are you actually in the Philippines right now?
Right now, and it's 3 30 in the morning.
No kidding.
No kidding.
Um you know, we heard how the media howled when pre previous the other day said something about changing the daily press briefing, and knowing how the media hates Trump, I I wonder how would you suggest that he deals with getting his message out.
Uh do you think he's having trouble getting his message out?
No, no, I don't.
I just don't know how I know he's uses Twitter a lot, and I don't know how he can do that.
Maybe he can.
Or how how should Sean Spicer Why do you think he can't uh is it because you don't think it's presidential to tweet?
Oh, no, I think it I think it's fine.
It's just that if Sean Spicer's gonna be up there having his press briefings if he does that, I wonder how how he's gonna deal with it, because they're just gonna be so awful to Trump and everything he says.
Well, that's the that's the thing.
You can have great White House press secretary and a communications director, and if you have a media that's gonna literally lie about what your spokesman says, and like like the Washington Post did folks, this is this is it's incredible.
What Jason Miller said about Trump appointments is what anybody responds, we saw somebody comfortable, we want somebody confident, we want somebody who's not a wall flower.
We want somebody who believes in what we believe in, we want somebody who's able to say it.
We want and he the thing he said, we want somebody to be able to present and represent what we believe will and the Washington Post turned that into an entire story about how Trump only wants good-looking people as in model type appearance for women or whatever.
A whole long story about it.
So here's Jason Miller, who couldn't have been more forthright and honest and upstanding of what he said.
Totally distorted and misrepresented.
So your question is valid.
If if the same thing had been said at a White House press briefing, and then the Washington Post reporter takes it makes a story like this, what's Trump going to do?
I think that Prebus, and you reference this.
I think Prebus gave a good indication of the way they're thinking.
Look at these are all smart people with Trump.
Would you agree with me when I say that?
I would.
Okay.
Totally.
They know what they're up against.
They know better than anybody how they're being lied about, smeared, and distorted.
And I think they want to they want to they're they're not looking to make nice with the media like uh most Republican presidents and and members of Congress are.
I think Trump looks at it as a battle.
And the idea that Prevus said we're looking at maybe changing the White House press briefing, these press conferences.
I don't know what that means, but I'll bet you that they're looking at ways to come up with uh different ways to reach the American people without using the media at all, because that's the great advantage and strength that Trump has.
That's great.
So I don't know what those methods will be beyond his tweeting.
But one thing, excuse me, one thing Trump does, the minute something's out there about him it's not true, he blows it up.
He reacts to it.
Just like this tweet that Gingrich put out yesterday that Trump's no longer use draining the swamp, and Trump's out today saying, I don't know who's saying that, but I sure as hell I'm gonna keep saying drain the swamp.
Nobody's saying it, we're gonna do it.
You know, and people, all right, right on.
And then uh Newt's out there saying, I'm sorry I goofed up and all that.
So I I'm actually excited to see how they deal with this because I think this is one of the best and most interest intriguing ways that Trump is going to keep his supporter base with him because the media is every bit the enemy that the Democrat Party is, because they're one and the same.
Right.
Okay, now we get the FedEx and iPhone to the Philippines.
This is this is gonna be fascinating.
I'm sure you'd like a new iPhone or a seven or seven plus, right?
Yes.
I I told Snerdly, my husband, he's in or out right now to the state, so it can be sent to where he is.
Oh.
Well, fine and dandy.
So what kind do you want?
Does the seven plus have a better camera?
It has it.
Well, it has two lenses.
One lens is identical to the camera in the seven.
The second camera in the plus is a genuine telephoto at two times telephone.
It's not done by software, it's an actual uh uh uh it's not a dig not digital telephoto, it's action and software.
It's a literal uh different lens.
And yes, it has it has more capability and and greater flexibility.
You you can you can do more with the seven plus camera, yes.
Uh I'd like that.
Okay, now I guess I need what you probably need to send you an unlocked version so you can plug in any Philippines.
A globe here.
Oh, we have I use Globe.
I have a 6S, but uh Well, then you should be able to take the SIM card out of it and put it.
I'm gonna send you an unlocked SEM-free.
You just take that SEM card out of your 6S and put it in this thing and you're up and running.
Do you have a color preference?
Again, I've uh what I have available is jet black and mat black.
Jet black sign.
Fine and dandy.
You hang on, Mr. Snerdley'll get your address if he hasn't already, and you'll get that, and a one-year subscription to Rush 24-7.
That's Rushlinbaugh.com.
Here's Alex in uh in Huma, Arizona.
Welcome to the program.
You know some of the best city names in the world are in Arizona.
Absolutely.
He got Winslow, Arizona.
He got Show Low, Arizona.
And now Hummer of all players.
Huma, Arizona.
That's great.
It's actually Yuma, Arizona.
Oh, Yuma.
I'm sorry, Snerdly with a dream that it's Huma.
That's all right, absolutely.
So, Rush, here's here's a question that I had for you.
Um, you know, we're a single income family.
We homeschool our kids by choice, and uh my insurance rates are going up by 2400 next year.
And in light of what we have now and now we have con uh Congress, that we have the House, Senate, and the White House, I can't help but think back at the two years of Bush 43, where we had all three and got nothing done.
So what do you think is different?
Uh well, let me understand the uh question you're at the essence of your question, the nature of your question.
Are you suggesting, or is it in your mind that everybody's excited here and really shouldn't be because we've already been here before and nothing got done.
Republicans had the House, Republicans had the Senate.
When George Bush was in the White House, and we didn't get anything done.
And so you're asking what's different, what's the what's gonna make it different this time?
Yeah, I know I'm not saying that Trump is Bush at all, and I'm cautiously optimistic that he will be different.
But what's my question is where's I guess where's the hope for us that Congress is going to act differently now that they have control.
Well, right now the answer's Trump, and that's it.
That's the only answer.
Well, I hope that uh I I really I like I said I'm cautiously optimistic.
Uh I've been here uh down here working on the border for twenty five years, and I really don't nothing seems to really change no matter who's in charge.
Well, uh I understand.
I mean, it it it's it's it makes much more common sense to think that something that has happened before will happen again, uh, rather than to think something that has never happened will happen.
You're much more so you've uh but Trump is the wild card here.
Trump's overwhelmingly it makes me uh I guess one of the things that makes me mad is you know, we're here, our uh insurance rates are going up, and now we hear this story with, like you said, it might be true, might not be, that Congress is thinking about oh, maybe holding off on Obamacare.
Well, there's so much going around about that.
I've I've even done something I I've actually called some people about it.
Here the three things going around about Obamacare this.
That we're gonna repeal it.
Everybody agrees we're gonna repeal it, but that doesn't mean anything because we're not going to replace it for either two years or three years.
Or I've also been no no no, Rush, we have a replacement.
We gotta be I can't tell you what's in it, but we got a replacement ready to go.
And now we have the story today that's in the Hill dot com that uh I think is traced back to the Washington Post, that Republicans are now saying that they might not eliminate that taxes in Obamacare with the repeal immediately.
They might look at I could understand if you choose to believe that, and then you have red flags dancing all around you.
I can totally understand because it it it it doesn't make sense.
Why why start talking now about repeal, repeal, repeal, but we're not gonna actually do it.
It doesn't make any sense.
The source for that story, by the way, is an unnamed lobbyist.
And lobbyists are s lobbyists uh are very unhappy people right now.
Trump has singled them out.
Trump didn't use or need any of them during the campaign.
Not I mean there might be a couple that donated, but in terms of the lobbying industry, he's not he's not beholden to it.
And that's uh that they're they don't like that.
They love being beholden to, and they're not.
There's a lot of people that are still ticked, even on the so-called Republican side that Trump won.
So I think we're just going to have to wait and do keep in mind that anything in the media that makes you feel like you have been sold out is designed to make you feel that way, and distrust it.
Wait until it happens.
Don't get all fatalistic unnecessarily.
The d the wild card here is Trump.
The great unknown and the something that we haven't had before is Trump.
The Republicans we know are reluctant to make any big changes because they're just the Republicans.
But Trump doesn't care.
Trump is all about big changes and getting things done.
And right now, the Republicans owe the fact that they won the House and Senate to Donald Trump.
And therefore they at at this stage, he's got they keep talking about his first two hundred days.
That's the length of time I think people think that he's got to really come in and make his mark.
Because at some point, uh it happens to every president.
Members of the House and Senate separate a bit, start getting protective, self interested.
If Trump can keep this, it's it's it crucial for Trump to keep this relationship with his supporters.
If he de if he keeps doing these rallies, if he keeps going out on these thank you tours, if he keeps demonstrating that he's got the American people with him, that's the greatest bit of ammunition he's got to make sure people in Congress follow along with him because that's the people.
They are the voters, and they are the reason the Republicans even won the seats that they won.
They and Trump.
So I I'm not pessimistic about this stuff yet.
I have been in the past, but this is an opportunity for something that we haven't seen in a while, like you said.
And I'm waiting patiently for it all to shape out.
This next month is going to be very, very fraught with the potential danger, and every effort's going to be made to depress you and anger you and make you think it's just gonna be the same old, same old again.
I would caution you to fight that instinct every time it overcomes you.
Back in just a second.
Don't go away.
Okay, folks, that's it.
We are out of busy broadcast time for today, but just for today, we are gonna be back here tomorrow.
Three more exciting busy broadcast hours.
That'll be my last three for this year, at least last three live hours.
And I can't wait.
We'll have fun tomorrow.
We'll look forward to whatever's happening between now and then and be on top of it all.
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