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Jan. 20, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:43
January 20, 2017, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Well, Obama's gone now.
Can Republicans go back to listening to me?
That's true.
They never stopped.
Anyway, greetings, my friends, and welcome.
It's great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We come to you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
Well, there's so much to review.
I've basically treated you already to my immediate post-inaugural address analysis.
What's going to be fun now is to look at some of what the drive-bys.
You hear what Bob Schieffer said on CBS.
Bob Schieffer, and by the way, this is patently obvious.
I mean, we were sitting here watching this during Trump's speech, and it was just crystal clear what was happening.
Bob Schieffer's description, he basically took the hide off everybody on that platform.
Now, I think that it is important here to once again say what I think many in the establishment who still to this moment, well, now they might finally have come to grips with it.
But I mean, even this morning on the early morning news shows and all morning during the setup, whenever I tuned in and listened, the overall tone of the commentary was that Trump's transformation into presidential would occur today.
They all were of the opinion that Trump finally would reveal that he is going to become one of them today.
He's going to do a standard, ordinary inaugural address that could be compared to previous inaugural addresses, and that Trump was going to basically vacate the campaign persona today.
And if not become an actual practicing, functioning establishmentarian, he was going to at least make a step in that direction.
And I think as they were sitting there listening to his speech, they just probably were stunned and shocked and couldn't believe what they were hearing.
And I think it goes not just for the people that were up there on that stage and near the podium, but also some in the drive-by media.
Because I think, folks, it can't be said enough.
The people analyzing Trump, the people in the establishment, both parties and the media, they still have not come to grips with what's happened here.
They haven't come to grips because they are not capable of addressing reality.
Now, this is primarily the leftists.
I think some Republicans, more and more of them, are on board and understand it whether they like it or not.
But the Democrats are clearly still off the reservation and don't have the slightest idea what's happened to them.
And I think it's evidenced by that political story I mentioned yesterday.
They know how bad a shape they're in, but they're not admitting to themselves yet why.
They have not admitted that they were rejected, that their ideas were rejected, that Obama's agenda was repudiated.
That hasn't crossed their minds.
They still believe that something strange happened, such as hackery, wiki leaks, Russians, maybe their polling betrayed them.
Some of them are starting to acknowledge what a lousy candidate Hillary was, but they still haven't yet acknowledged to themselves why they lost.
That's good for us, by the way.
The longer they remain in the dark about it, the longer it's going to be before they make any substantive changes.
But I don't think they can make any substantive changes.
At some point in the last 10 years, the Democrat Party decided to abandon their base that has been there for decades, and that is the white unionized working middle class.
They decided to jettison that group and instead go after and pursue political victory with a coalition of oddball minority groups that were really not unified by anything other than hatred of the same thing.
And you heard Chuck Schumer essentially call out to him, the Democrat Party basically looks at America and sees ethnic divisions, sexual orientation divisions, gender identity divisions, racial divisions.
But they've ignored the economic divisions.
And they have decided that their path forward is somehow putting together a coalition of all these disparate minority groups.
And Schumer gave him a shout out in the remarks that he made today.
And I think that's what has been reclaimed by the Trump victory and by all of the ceremonies that began last night and carried through to the inaugural address today.
The omnipresence of God, the acknowledgement of the existence of God, the prayer after prayer after prayer, the requests of God for strength and guidance.
These are things that make the Democrat Party coalition really angry and really nervous.
The acknowledgement that we are one people, that we all have similar objectives and dreams, that the things that differentiate us are not that important.
The way Trump addressed that was to say, whether we're black, brown, or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.
When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.
And together, we will make America great again.
Together, we will make America strong again.
Those words, I guarantee you.
Hollywood cringes.
The American left cringes.
The Democrat Party cringes.
That's not their language.
To them, those are fighting words.
Together we'll make America great again when America is united.
They don't want any unity.
They're looking for the various minority groups that they're trying to coalesce into a working majority.
They want that group of people in anger, lashing out, fighting back, and defeating the other America, which is the America of our founding.
And that's what the Democrat Party now sponsors.
And Trump just threw it right back in their face.
Of course, the great irony here is that while the Democrats seek the votes of all of these disparate minority groups, once they have their votes, they ignore them.
Their lives never improve.
Their economic circumstances never improve.
The people that donate to Democrats' lives improve.
And the people that raise funds for Democrat lives improve.
But the rank and file do not.
They never have under the Democrat Party, and they never will.
And so Trump firing both barrels today in what to me is a clear effort to reclaim America's birthright has got them shell-shocked in much of Washington.
And I think members of both parties, but primarily the Democrats and the left.
Let's daily caller.
Let's review some media here before we get to the sound bites.
Daily Caller, Chuck Schumer drowns in booze at Trump's inauguration.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer faced a sea of disapproval during his speech at the inauguration.
He was repeatedly booed, especially after lines like, I stand here today confident in this great country for one reason, you, the American people.
Crowd starts chanting Trump.
Do you realize that way, way out there when Hillary walked in, there were cheers of lock her up, you could hear?
Way, way out.
They weren't anywhere near the stage area.
Lock her up.
In fact, you know what?
Caveat, caveat, I didn't hear them either.
It's been reported.
Let me retract that.
I don't really know that that happened.
It'd be something classic that drive-bys would report that happened that didn't.
Like this.
CNN, fake news again.
CNN runs a story that Nancy Sinatra is offended and outraged that Trump is going to sing her dad's song My Way, or Trump, that the song is going to be played my way at Trump's inauguration.
CNN reports Nancy Sinatra's livid about it.
Nancy Sinatra tweeted, I don't care.
I've never said that.
Why would CNN lie about it?
CNN is fast becoming known as the headquarters of fake news.
You know, they've even hired somebody to be in charge of fake news.
Well, they did.
They hired somebody.
It's somebody to be on the lookout for fake news, not somebody to disseminate it.
But, I mean, they've already got that covered.
They've got the dissemination of fake news covered.
It's a.
Yeah, it's right.
They hired Valerie Jarrett's daughter.
Well, you've got to keep a communist presence even after Obama leaves.
And so CNN has become the agent of that.
Now, audio soundbites.
Let's start with George Stephanopoulos and George Carr, or George Carl, Jonathan Carl.
This is after Trump's inaugural address.
He began with a thank you for everyone behind him on that West Front of the Capitol, members of Congress, senators, Republicans, Democrats, former presidents, but then a direct attack on all of them for failing America.
That was something else, George, to hear him say that this is a transfer of power, not just from one party to another party, but from Washington, D.C. to the American people.
This was an attack on the politicians in both parties that were surrounding him after that rather blistering attack on everybody around him.
He did return to that theme of unity, a broader theme of unity.
And I thought the line that we'll hear a lot was when he said, whether we are black, brown, or white, we all bleed the red blood of patriots.
The one acknowledgement that we have very many different types of Americans is notice what they think.
Yeah, that's what everybody's going to focus on.
No, no, no, that's not going to be what everybody's focusing on.
They continue to misread it.
Here is, by the way, right, Trump is signing some, it looks like some ceremonial executive orders right now.
And the reason I say it's ceremonial is because Nancy Pelosi's there trying to horn in on it, and she's smiling.
So if Trump was actually doing something meaningful today, Pelosi wouldn't be there smiling.
So obviously, the members of Congress, you know what happens when the president signs something, he signs one letter with a pen and then gives somebody the pen, then grabs a pen, signs another letter of his name.
And in some cases, part of a letter.
You can use sometimes 20 pens signing your name as president.
Everybody gets a pen that you used.
And Pelosi's in there trying to get in on the action.
And let's see, basically it's Paul Ryan there and Baron Trump, Mr. and Mrs. Pence, Roy Blunt, Mitch McConnell, Aaron Camera left.
The Trump familia in the back.
I mean, in this camera shot, correct me if I'm wrong, the only Democrat in there is Pelosi.
In the camera shot, I really, I don't see a Schumer.
I'm looking for a book.
Oh, he was standing.
Oh, yeah, there he is next to Mitch.
Just came in next to Mitch McConnell.
Okay, here's the next series of bites.
This is Trump.
One of the moments calling out Washington politicians sitting right behind him.
Soundbite number 23.
For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.
Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.
Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories.
Their triumphs have not been your triumphs.
They're sitting right behind him.
While they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
They're sitting right behind him.
He's talking about the very people sitting right behind him.
And they knew it.
And they knew it.
I mean, it was incredible.
You know, Trump had a line.
What was the line?
He said something about the when you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.
It's an interesting thought experiment.
Anyway, so Trump has just ripped their hide off, as Bob Sheaver said.
Now, let's listen to F. Chuck Todd and Tom Brokaw describe this.
I have to say, it was surprisingly divisive for an inaugural address.
He went with populism, and I think that it's going to play well with his folks, but that wasn't the type of inaugural address that was intended to bring this country.
There was a point there, Lester, where it felt as if he almost was insulting every living president that was sitting next to him in very personal ways.
He was also insulting all the Republican congressmen and senators who are on that stage.
He has a majority, but he went after politicians point blank.
See, I'm telling you, these are establishment people themselves, and they were thinking that today was going to be the day that Trump was going to take the first step to joining them on their side of whatever aisle.
And Trump doubled down and basically echoed his campaign themes in an inaugural.
You know, he did this last night in the event at the Lincoln Memorial.
He gave a prelude to this speech.
It was a very short set of comments last night, but it was basically a repetition of many of the campaign themes, like this was.
And they went to pundits at Fox.
Very, very disappointed.
Very, very disappointed in this speech tonight.
Too short, way too short.
More like a campaign rally.
This did not have presidential timber, was the reaction last night on Fox.
And I think they were expecting Trump to be somebody that he's not.
Because remember, in their world, everybody becomes who they are in order to advance in their world.
Anyway, take a break here, my friends.
We will be right back with much more.
Hi, Argobat.
Great to have you.
Rush Limboy here at the Excellence at Broadcasting Network, 800-282-2882.
You know, if there's any arrogance or condescending here, it's Chuck Todd, like in the soundbite we just played.
I have to say, it was surprisingly divisive for an inaugural address.
With populism, I think it's going to play well with his people, but it wasn't the inaugural address that was intended to bring the country.
Yes, it was.
You know, Chuck, you don't figure that the American people are not with you, Chuck.
The American people elected Donald Trump, not you.
In spite of you, Chuck, not personally, but you guys in the media, the American people elected Donald Trump, not you.
You do not define what's unifying and what you guys are not on the ball here.
Well, this was surprisingly divisive.
Divisive?
It wasn't divisive.
It was a calling out.
It was a reclamation.
I'm telling you, that's what this was.
This entire 24-hour period is a reclamation, a reclaiming of this country from people who wish to transform it and make it something it was never intended to be.
This country's been rescued.
And in that, there is unity.
I guarantee you, there's going to be a boatload of Bernie Sanders Democrats who are probably privately, don't want anybody to see them, applauding what Trump said today in part.
No, it doesn't concern me.
Just telling the media does not define who's unified and who isn't.
They don't define unity.
The media doesn't get to tell us what kind of country we are.
And if it isn't the kind of country they want, then something's wrong.
They don't get to do that.
They may have in the past.
They may have gotten away with that in the past, but not now.
By the way, at 12 noon straight up, all references to climate change were removed from the official White House website.
Back in just a second.
Hi, welcome back.
It's great to have you.
What Trump was signing was the formal submission of all of his cabinet nominations to the Senate.
That's what he was signing.
There were no executive orders.
That's going to come later today.
There are a bunch of executive orders that Trump's going to sign.
The Obamas are now boarding the 747-400 that will take them out to Palm Springs in California.
They just had a little going away ceremony in the hangar at Joint Base Andrews.
I don't know if it was the Congressional Black Caucasians in there or the Democrats that didn't show up at the inauguration that were in there.
I really don't know.
There was a crowd of people.
I remember when Clinton left in 2000, while Bill and Hillary were stealing furniture from the White House.
And that, by the way, folks, that did happen.
You may think that I'm being caustic or humorous.
No, no, they stole.
Remember, Hillary was, we left the White House broke.
They stole some furniture and other stuff of the White House.
But Janet Reno had her own departure ceremony in a hangar before she left.
She was an attorney general, and there were all kinds of people in the Department of Justice out there to wish her off.
And then other cabinet people had their own going away ceremonies in the hangar.
Obama just had his.
So he and Michelle just boarded the plane, which is the one that always ferried them around as Air Force One.
They have to, they are going to come back to Washington.
They have to make their own way back.
This is the last government trip they will be on unless there's a disaster somewhere and Trump decides to get all the former presidents together and send them over there to wherever it is like Clinton did.
I mentioned that at 11.59 a.m. today, the official White House website had a lengthy information page about the threat of climate change and the steps the federal government had taken to fight it at exactly 12 noon.
When Donald Trump took office, that page was gone, as well as any mention of climate change or global warming.
It just vanished.
And I hope it stays that way.
Rex Tillerson is now at the official congressional lunch.
He was probably talking oil drilling with John Rogers.
That's who his tablemate was there in Statuary Hall.
What is so funny?
I'm sure they were.
I know he's Secretary of State.
That's his expertise.
Secretary of State, he's talking to Chief Justice Rogers.
Roberts, I'm sure they're offshore drilling of some kind.
David Frum, a former speechwriter, George W. Bush, in the first term, ready for this.
You have to say, From is a never-Trumper.
From is somebody who still hasn't come to grips here with what's happened.
And we have a story at theHill.com, headline, ex-Bush speechwriter.
Trump is worse than slaveholding presidents.
A speechwriter for former President George W. Bush on Friday called President-elect Donald Trump the worst human being ever to enter the presidency, just hours before Trump's inauguration.
The worst human being ever to enter the presidency, and I include all the slaveholders, tweeted David Fromm.
He's now a senior editor at The Atlantic.
From this week, published a piece in The Atlantic titled An Inaugural Celebration at Rings Hollow, in which he wrote that the lesson of Trump's inauguration is the system has failed.
So that's a pretty powerful statement.
The worst human being ever to enter the presidency just hours before the inauguration.
The worst human being ever to enter the presidency, and I include all the slaveholders.
Wow, that's pretty desperate.
The worst human being ever to enter the presidency, including all the slaveholders.
You think some people are taking this hard?
It's despicable.
It's disgusting.
It's David Fromm.
Charles Krauthammer at Fox, describing Trump's inaugural address, said that it's the most aggressive, hyper, and hostile speech for anyone in the foreign audience, our trade partners and allies, ever given in an inaugural address.
The most aggressive, hyper, and hostile speech for anyone in the foreign audience, trade partners, allies ever given in an inaugural address.
To the phones, we start in Catherine, Wichita, Kansas.
Welcome.
It's great to have you with us.
How are you doing?
Hi.
Thank you, Marsh, for taking my call.
It's a thrill to talk to you.
Thank you.
I have a question.
Do you think President Trump has ushered in an era of winning without the establishment?
Well, that's the...
Before I answer that, let me get exactly what you mean by that.
What do you mean by winning without the ⁇ are you asking me if I think Trump will be able to succeed without the establishment helping?
Well, no, what I actually meant was in the past, the Republican establishment has always said that we need to hang together.
And then here recently they said that they could win without the base.
Are we now in an era where the people can win without the establishment?
Okay, do you mean Republican establishment or just the establishment?
The establishment.
Well, we did.
I mean, if you want to look at the presidential election as a victory without the establishment, you would have to say that's what it was.
I mean, the establishment was arrayed everywhere the establishment is against Donald Trump.
And after this speech today, they're going to stay there.
One of two things is going to happen after today's inaugural address.
Because if there was any hope on the part of the establishment that Trump was going to moderate, that all of this up to now has just been theatrical for his base voters, and that now it's time for the rubber to meet the road.
Now that it's time for the pedal to hit the metal, Trump is going to do what the only intelligent thing has to do, and that's become one of us and include us and take our advice and advance our agenda.
And that is not happening.
If anything, Donald Trump tripled down today on every theme of his campaign.
So we're just going to have to wait and see.
One of two things is going to happen.
The establishment is either going to, for self-preservation, do what they can to tag along or try to undermine.
And frankly, folks, I'm going to vote for try to undermine.
And that's not a new prediction.
And it's not the result of a new train of thought.
I don't know how often most of you had a chance to listen during the campaign, but I spent a lot of time explaining the psychology of the establishment and how they are being affected by Trump's candidacy and the fact that he just kept winning state after state after state, was not imploding, was not being defeated, wasn't going away.
Look, for many of the people in the establishment, what's the best way to describe this?
It is the existence of the establishment and membership in it that is 90% of life.
What the establishment does is actually ancillary, except for those things that are oriented towards self-preservation, like a bureaucracy.
The purpose of a bureaucracy is to maintain itself.
And thus, bureaucracies do not solve problems.
And if they do, they create new ones in the process.
Bureaucrats and the bureaucracy never ever does things in such a way that people could conclude, well, we don't need you anymore.
Well, it's the same thing with the establishment.
The establishment, folks, I don't know how best to describe it, the term elite is apropos.
And by that, the members of the establishment do think they are better people.
They are a higher quality and a higher class of human being.
And that is why many of them are condescending to people they consider inferior.
And that's why they hold many of the middle class in contempt.
It's a character trait of the establishment.
Say the European Union, same thing there.
I mean, the European elites, it's the same psychology.
And preserving that establishment is objective number one.
And whatever policy and ideas the establishment collectively hold are second and third in importance.
But sometimes it's difficult to separate.
I mean, when you're preserving the establishment, there are specific policies designed to do so, like throwing more and more power to the UN, surrendering more and more power, say, over the court system or climate change or what have you to the UN.
That is preserving the establishment while combining an idea or a set of ideas or policies.
But the first and foremost thing is the preservation of the established.
I just can't see them letting Trump I can't see them abandoning that establishment, who they are and what it means to them to get on the Trump bandwagon.
A fairly good analogy for this, and that would be Reagan in this sense.
The establishment Republicans never really liked Reagan.
They resented Reagan.
In his case, it was simply because he was conservative and believed that government's the problem.
And of course, to the establishment, government is everything.
It's first, second, third, it's everything.
And here comes Reagan as a conservative wanting to de-emphasize it.
So they go into protection mode, preserve the establishment, preserve government.
And they resented.
But Reagan was so popular.
And he won two landslides, 48 and 49 states, that during his term in office, they did everything they could to be part of it.
They wanted to be on the White House staff.
They wanted to be campaign staff.
They wanted to be close to it because they love being close to power and the bright lights shining on it and they want to be seen.
They also want to take the occasion of closeness to try to undermine.
And they did try to undermine Reagan any number of ways and times.
And when Reagan's two terms were over, I mean, he was gone and they put him on the plane.
He went back to California and they immediately tried to erase all vestiges of Reagan.
That's probably what we can expect here.
But they can be defeated.
They just have been.
And right now, the Republicans in Congress are looking at years out way beyond even if Trump's two terms.
The Republicans are set up right now, folks, to be the majority party in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court for 25 years, if they play it right.
And in that 25 years, the first eight maximum are Trump.
So I think that they will do whatever they can to maximize party power.
If it means helping Trump fulfill his agenda, if Trump remains popular, they're going to be looking at opinion polls like you can't believe, public approval polls.
And as long as Trump's there at 50% or hovering near it, they're going to be on board.
Don't worry.
We'll be here guiding you through this and helping you understand on a daily basis what is happening in regard to all of this.
So Chris Matthews at PMSNBC referred to the Trump inaugural address as Hitlerian or Hitlerian, if that helps you understand.
No, I'm not kidding.
Chris Matthews described the Trump inaugural address as Hitlerian or Hitlerian, like Hitler, for those of you in Riolinda.
Telling you, their heads blew.
I am sure that there is blood on cameras today as drive-by's heads exploded out there listening to this.
There's a pastor who told Donald Trump in the Bible, rain is a sign of God's blessing.
And it started to rain, Mr. President, when you came to the platform, which it did.
You know, when Trump started speaking, I'm watching it here, and all of a sudden, uniform people start running down the aisle behind him.
So what the heck's going on here?
And then they were bringing umbrellas and little plastic.
Do you realize, here are these establishment types?
And they're holding trash bags on their heads to protect themselves from the rain.
Can you know what a come down that is?
I mean, the establishment, they have Gucci umbrellas and stuff.
And here they've got trash bags being passed out to shield themselves from the rain.
I thought, what a, what a, calm down.
And the drive-by media, the drive-by media, upset that Trump did not mention Hillary Clinton in his inaugural address.
The Hill.com, President Trump didn't mention his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, during his address Friday, despite her presence at the Capitol.
I don't know.
I saw a couple shots of the Clintons, and it was, and this is understandable.
This is the last place they wanted to be.
They looked like they were just not there.
I mean, blank expressions on their face.
This had to be so, so demoralizing for them.
Yeah, yeah, she did.
You got to say, she had the class to show up.
Carmel, Indiana, this is Brian.
Thank you for calling, sir.
Welcome to EIB Network.
How are you doing?
Hi, I'm Greg Rush.
Thank you for taking my call.
Yes, sir.
So as we finally close the book on Barack Obama, former President Barack Obama, I think it's safe to say that for his entire term, you really lived in his head, rent-free, playing the trumpet.
Is that something that was surprising to you or something that you expected?
Yeah, I've had people ask me if I was impressed because Friday night, there's Obama talking about me on Dateline, and last week he mentioned me always as the guy who stopped him from succeeding.
I was always the guy that prevented the Republicans from cooperating with him.
He came into office telling the Republicans not to listen to me anymore, and he left office complaining that they still did.
But I'm surprised that he would say it.
Yes.
I'm totally surprised he would say it.
I mean, let's be honest here, folks.
He is the most powerful leader in the world as President of the United States.
And I am a guy on the radio.
In his world, I ought not even exist.
I ought not be anything more than a pimple on a bull's butt.
But it obviously wasn't the case.
That does surprise me.
I have to admit to you that it does.
It was Franklin Graham who told Donald Trump, Mr. President, rain is one of God's blessings.
And since it rained on you when you began to speak, you were blessed by God.
A record number of prayers, by the way.
I knew it had to be.
Record number of prayers at this inauguration.
And we have another obscene prophet break here at the top of the hour.
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