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Feb. 7, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:22
February 7, 2017, Tuesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right, 99.8% at a time, and it's climbing.
Our telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882, and the email address L Rushbow at EIB net US.
Yeah, I got so checked the email during the break, and all kinds of people are weighing in trying to answer my question.
What is the one thing that could stop the Trump agenda?
And by the way, let me remind you if you if you missed it, I don't think all these protests by themselves can derail the Trump agenda.
I don't think all the demonstrations and the rioting and the temper tantrums and all that stuff is demonstrated by the left.
I don't I don't think that by itself can derail, slow down or stop the Trump agenda.
And I actually think the more the left engages in this, the more damage they're going to actually end up doing to themselves.
I think that's why you're starting to see now certain people with sympathies to the left, like Rahm Emanuel saying, back off it.
Come on, dial it down.
We're not going to get power back even in 2018.
Ron and Mayor, we're not going to get our power back even in 2018.
But they're not going to back down.
They are going to continue to do this because they've got reasons other than advancing an agenda.
And I know many of them are obvious.
But we've always had the question at what point does this kind of activity hurt and hurt with whom?
I mean, who if if if the Democrats and their mindless leftist protesters engage in this kind of activity and it ends up causing them damage, how so?
I mean, with whom?
Is it with moderate voters?
Because I saw something yesterday and I mentioned it to you that moderate voters don't like all this.
And it's the first time I've ever heard that said about angry leftists.
My entire career, I've heard the experts say that the Republicans need to stop criticizing Democrats.
Stop criticizing Obama, stop criticizing Hillary, because the moderates don't like that.
Moderates, it makes you really nervous, just run right back home to the Democrat Party.
Now they're people are saying this stuff could end up hurting Democrats.
The Democrats are already hurting.
To me, this is the great unspoken elephant in the room is that the Democrats are in quicksand.
It just doesn't look like it because of media coverage, obviously, but they are losing seats.
They are losing power.
Electoral power.
I know this may appear to cut against the great.
For example, the Trump executive order.
Let's let's swerve in that direction here for just a second.
The judge in Seattle, this judge by the name of Robart, who put a stay on the Trump executive order, was not a Republican judge.
He was appointed by George W. Bush, but he was chosen by Patty Murray.
He is an ardent leftist.
He is a classic example of a judge is actually a judicial activist who uses his position on the court to implement his own policy beliefs, not to sit there and judge or decide the law.
And when he issued his ruling, he made some statements that have now been confirmed as untrue.
Before I get to those, I want to give you a uh another AP story, as because this case is now at the Ninth Circus, and it's being argued there at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.
Now the conventional wisdom about the Ninth Circuit is that it's the most liberal appellate circuit in the country by far.
It's so far left that it's that's why it's called the Ninth Circus.
And that Trump doesn't have a chance there.
No Republican ever has a chance there because these people are so fringe wacko leftist.
And then you go to the Supreme Court, which now has eight Justices, it is presumed that this case, if it ever goes to the court, would end in a 4-4 tie, which is a big assumption because it assumes that Anthony Kennedy is going to find with President Trump.
And if you do a search of Anthony Kennedy's decisions on issues related to this, you find that he's very concerned in cases where the judiciary gets trumped, so to speak.
He doesn't like the idea that the judiciary by statute must defer to the executive branch when it comes to statutory law.
And he has found on in previous occasions in the past against the executive in immigration cases.
So it's not a slam dunk that it would be 4-4.
It's entirely possible that the Trump executive order case comes out of the Ninth Circus, with the original judge in Seattle affirmed, and the stay on Trump's order then affirmed, then it would go to the Supreme Court, and it could well be that it could be 5-3.
Anti-Trump, 5-3 opposed Trump, given what the proclivities of Judge Justice Anthony Kennedy are.
So the AP is out today with a story, and the headline is this scholars say that the liberal reputation of the Ninth Circuit is overblown.
Well, no, it's not.
The liberal reputation of the Ninth Circuit is well deserved.
The liberal reputation Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is right on the money.
But AP is out now telling us that no, no, no, no, no.
It's overblown the fact that the Ninth Circuit's a bunch of libs.
They say this.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, weighing the appeal concerning President Trump's executive order on immigration, is the Federal Appeals Court, conservatives have long ridiculed as the nutty Ninth or the Ninth Circus.
The San Francisco based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years, among them finding that the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.
They literally did that.
The United States Supreme Court, by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the most reversed court of appeals in Supreme Court history.
That's another thing you need to know.
They are reversed more than any other appellate circuit.
And they were reversed in this when they actually ruled that inserting under God in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional.
But some legal scholars say the Ninth Circuit's liberal reputation is overblown, and the court has now moved to the middle, as some of President Jimmy Carter's appointees have taken semi-retired status or passed away.
So why is the Associated Press trying to convince us that the Ninth Circuit isn't so liberal after all?
Well, look at the logic here.
From the article, it says this.
Bush appointed six of the court's 25 active judges, but 18 have been appointed by the Democrats.
Though the seven appointed by Obama are generally considered moderate.
Now that is just flat out BS.
Obama didn't put a moderate judge on any court anywhere.
No Democrat puts a moderate on the court.
That would be protest worthy.
The Democrats put activist leftist extremists on courts.
But here's the AP telling us that the seven judges that Obama placed at the Ninth Circuit are considered moderates.
You see, there really are only six Republican-appointed judges at the Ninth Circuit compared to the eighteen appointed by Democrats, but the seven judges Obama appointed are all moderates.
And therefore the court's not nearly as liberal as it used to be.
And the purpose here, when the Ninth Circuit upholds the judge in Seattle, it's not going to be said because this is a bunch of liberals staying loyal to each.
No, this is a bunch of moderates who are ruling on the law that President Trump's a wacko insane lunatic and was off his rocker when he did this.
That's why they write this story.
So that the low information crowd, the millennials that pick it up on Yahoo News will believe the Ninth Circuit is just made up of intelligent, reasonable people, and they quickly found that Trump is a lunatic.
I have news for you.
Trump's executive order is entirely legal.
I don't know.
Some people might think they botched the implementation, the rollout and how that, but it's entirely legal.
By virtue of statutory law, by that I mean there are statutes, federal statutes, laws passed by Congress, which grant the President of the United States this explicit power.
Obama has used many of these statutory laws in executive orders on immigration.
But back to the judge, Judge Robart.
The federal judge who halted Trump's travel ban was wrong in stating that no one from the seven countries targeted in Trump's order had been arrested for extremism in the United States since 2001.
Now this was one of the things originally reported.
The judge in his ruling implied the president's a nut case.
I mean, he's got this ban on travel from these seven countries, and we've never had anybody from these seven countries arrested in this country.
And that was the fact that you would even need to fact check that to find the judge's wrong is a little bit disturbing.
When Judge Robart said that the press should have should have laughed at this in his face.
Of course they're never going to laugh at his face.
Just last October, an Iraqi refugee living in Texas pleaded guilty to attempting to provide support to the Islamic State group ISIS.
Accused of taking tactical training and wanting to blow himself up in an act of martyrdom in November, a Somali refugee injured 11 in a car and knife attack in Ohio State.
He would have been arrested had he not been killed by an officer.
There have been about a dozen Somali refugees in Minnesota arrested and convicted for extremism since 9-11.
The AP reports some of this, but not nearly all of it.
The point is the judge was wrong, and everybody's out there talking about what a Doomkoff Trump is and how he's ignorant and doesn't even know what he's doing, and they revel in this brilliant judge.
The judge got fact after fact after fact wrong in his ruling, and his ruling didn't even rely on the law.
And Breitbart has a story providing even more details the AP couldn't manage to admit in their fact check article.
Headlines, Seattle judge ignorant about jihad convictions prior to imposing refugee reform ban.
Now they're starting to get concerned.
NPR headline, what if something happens after judges' ruling on Trump's travel ban?
And here's how the story begins.
If a refugee commits a crime, will a federal judge have blood on his hands?
President Trump says yes.
After Judge James Robart temporarily blocked an executive order that stopped all refugees as well as visitors from seven Muslim majority countries, the president tweeted.
Who is Judge James L. Robart and why did he block Trump's immigration order?
Can't believe a judge would put our country in such peril.
If something happens, blame him and the court system.
People pouring in.
Bad.
That's Trump's tweet.
So now the left is all a Twitter.
Well, they're all worried.
Because Trump raised an important point.
The judge is out there saying we have anything to worry about.
We've never had any people need seven countries arrested for an England is not in demonstratively proved not true.
So if an act of terrorism happens by somebody that snuck into the country because the judge stayed the order.
The left is trying to say, no way, no way, not possible.
It's all going to be Trump's fault, but they can't.
Washington Post has even picked this up.
If something happens, Trump points his finger in case of a terrorist attack.
President Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to preemptively shift blame for any future terror attack on America from his administration to the federal judiciary as well as he's not shifting anything.
He's not laying the Groundwork, he's pointing something out.
The president took steps that he promised he would take during his campaign to engage in a much tighter vetting of refugees and illegal immigrants pouring into the country, particularly from Islamic jihad nations, and a federal George, a federal judge stayed the order, shut it down.
The federal judge, by the way, does not have the authority that he used to do this.
Even some Alan Dershowitz said that the president could have ignored this order and kept his order operative.
But Alan Dershowitz said that Trump has apparently too much respect for the judiciary to treat them that way.
But this judge didn't even make a legal ruling.
He presumed to know the president's state of mind.
He presumed to know what the president's intentions were.
And that's where we get into the gray area.
The judge basically saying that the president was engaging in a religious ban, and he wasn't.
This is about safety.
It's about vetting people who might have ill intentions.
It's not about banning religious people, which we can do too if we want to, but that's not what this is.
So it's being argued at the Ninth Circuit now.
And we'll see what happens there.
The odds are that uh Judge Robart will be upheld and then we'll make fast tracks to the Supreme Court, where all bets are off.
It's 4-4, unless Kennedy joins the Judge Robart crowd, in which case.
Well, it would be fascinating to see what happens if if the Supreme Court stays the stay.
Meanwhile, demonstrators and protesters, in their own words, anti-Trump resistance leaders say they want to make America ungovernable.
Behind the mass protests, choreographed chants and acts of violence, leaders of anti-Trump resistance efforts are communicating the same simple but dark message.
They want to make America ungovernable for the President of the United States.
Now, want to raise an observation with you.
Who is it constantly whining and moaning and caterwalling about gridlock?
The media.
The Democrat Party.
They're always complaining when the Republicans try to bollocks up an Obama agenda item.
Or when the Republicans refuse to act fast on a piece of legislation immediately Democrats want.
They accuse them of gridlock.
Here comes the sum total of these resistance protesters saying that's exactly we're going to make this whole country come to screeching halt.
We're going to make sure that you can't govern.
And they're applauding it.
Right on right.
Now, I know I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy, even though I know the hypocrisy never sticks to them.
But someday it's going to.
Someday all this stuff is going to come home to roost, and I think we're in the beginning stages of this kind of behavior.
Finally.
See, right now they're not paying a price for this.
That's why they keep doing it.
They're not paying a price.
But that they are going to be paying a price for this down the road.
Actually, they are paying a price, folks.
They're losing elections all over this country.
Be right back to your calls after this.
Hi, welcome back.
It's great to have you.
We head back to the phones.
This is uh Pam in Atlanta.
Great to have you.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
How are you?
Fine and dandy.
Thank you so much.
Uh, small business owner here in Atlanta, Georgia, and um I'm not nervous at all about the hundred-day agenda.
Not one bit.
Um Paul Ryan has said we're on board with the agenda.
It's just gonna take us probably two hundred days to implement it.
Of course.
It's still Washington.
No question about that.
And and my So you don't have you right now, you don't have any red flags raising at all.
Nope.
My customer base, my commercial business, everything is off the chart for a winter in January.
It's busy, people are optimistic.
Um, the the quiet group of us that went to the polls and elected Trump without anybody catching us, are still fired up.
We're still happy, we're still behind him.
And uh, I'm not sensing nervousness in any of my sectors.
No kidding.
Well, that's good to hear.
Well, what what are you expecting this agenda to be?
What are you expecting to come first or to happen relatively soon?
And if it doesn't, you might get alarmed.
Anything?
Well, I think, you know, we're all sort of, you know, especially business owners, middle class people.
Um, we're all looking for the tax cut and some relief as far as that goes.
My business isn't really affected by the regulations that I know hurt a lot of other businesses.
But, you know, I think the tax cut, if the tax cut gets stalled, and he can't do that as he promised, then we may get a little shaky.
But see, here's the thing about that.
I'm telling you why some people are nervous.
And it's look, it's understandable.
I that's why I made the point.
We're only what is it, the third week.
I I think it it is it is wiser not not to go off the rails here, and and then and you're smart to do that.
But people look at this, okay.
Well, we got all three branches, we've got the judiciary, we've got house, we got Senate, we've got the White House.
There's no reason why they can't stop us.
Is what people are the Democrats cannot stop us.
They don't have the votes to stop us if the Republicans stay unified.
So what?
Hell's Bells.
Why isn't the tax cut bill advanced?
Was this talk about Obamacare 2018-2019?
It went to replace repeal and replace repair, then well, I don't know.
It's Hang on just a second here, Pam.
And we are back to wrap it up here with Pam in Atlanta.
I didn't want the uh abrupt end of the segment to sound rude to you or anybody else, so I wanted to be able to thank you for calling.
And I just run a couple things by you.
By the way, I'm happy to hear you say that you nor any of your fellow Trump supporters getting nervous yet.
But the media is trying.
I want to just show you two headlines.
Voters await economic revival in a part of pro-Trump America.
This is story out of Wisconsin, Blue State failed for Hillary.
AP trying to say that Trump voters in Wisconsin already starting to get nervous.
Their economic circumstances aren't better yet.
This is the 17th day of the Trump administration.
And the next headline, this one's more problematic.
You may have even seen some of this on the news.
This is a story from the Hill.com Republican lawmakers face rising anger at town halls.
Have you seen any of the video tape of these?
I have not.
But it's vicious.
These left.
I don't we don't watch the new we don't watch the national news for that information anymore.
If I watch the news, it's my local stuff to catch, you know, you know, who who's being a hoodlumware.
I want the weather, and I want to You want the local blood and guts.
You want to see who's been robbed, who was in a car crash, you know that stuff.
I don't nobody trusts the national news anymore.
I mean, it's just it's it doesn't even seem relevant to us.
Right on.
I'm so happy to hear you say this.
You know, I've been doing this so long, I'm I I it it's hard to it's hard to set aside the fact that this kind of stuff can affect the way people think.
It's not.
I mean, we're working hard, we've got kids in college, we're doing day-to-day to make our little piece of America great.
And we're sick and tired of a very small slice of this whole pie running the the moral and the national agenda.
Well, you're damn right about that.
Uh, so right on the money about that.
They have a right to carry a sign, they have a right to assemble wherever the hell they want and say what they want, but they're just a small percentage of the slice of this pie, and the media is choosing to give them the glory.
And there were lots of fine women that marched in Washington that day.
Well, hell, the the media is the jobs.
The media is in the slice.
Well, I'm so happy to hear you say this.
I I I really am.
But here's my concern.
I'm gonna go ahead and tell you my concern.
Okay, let's let's let's make up Republican member of Congress, Freddie Slobodnik.
And Freddie is a is euphoric.
He's just been elected to Congress on a Trump wave, and he's gone to Washington, he's gotten sworn in, he's got his committee assignments, he's ready to Go and he heads back home for his first town hall meeting with the people that elected him.
And what does he find?
A bunch of angry, militant, enraged, on the verge of insane people who show up at his first town hall meeting and start throwing spitballs and other things at him and accusing him of all kinds of traitorous behavior.
And they try to make it look to Mr. Slobodnik like they are the people that voted for him, but they already feel betrayed.
They're already angry.
They can't believe that he hasn't stood up to President Trump yet.
And the objective is to scare our little imaginary Congressman here, Congressman Freddie Slobodnik, into losing his resolve.
And the reason this worries me is because it's worked.
Time and time and time again.
And I've seen some of the video of this.
You're not watching out there, Pam, but I have seen some of the video.
And you know what this is?
It's almost a redo of the Tea Party town halls that took place in 2010 with incumbent members of Congress.
And they were living, these are people never been in politics before.
They had never joined a protest march, they'd never done anything.
They were not being told to show up by a singular leader.
They were just fed up.
They were fed up with Obamacare, they were fed up with all the spending, fed up with the stimulus, fed up with the national debt, fed up with it looked like there wasn't going to be a future for their kids and grandkids, and they showed up at their Republican town halls and demanded that these people stop it, that they do what they could to stop it.
And that's when they were told, well, we can't do anything with the numbers we have.
We need the House.
So these voters gained the House.
Then we heard, well, it's not enough.
We need the Senate.
Gave him the Senate.
Then they said, well, you know, we really can't overcome Obama.
He's still in the White House.
We need the White House.
We gave him the White House, but they're not happy with who's in it.
That's the rub for me.
So it is the left has now seen what happened to those Tea Parties town halls, and now they're co-opting the strategy and are showing up at Republican town halls as leftist opposition, and they're trying to intimidate and they're trying to bully and they're trying to frighten.
And Tom McClintock, who is a solid conservative, you never have to worry about him wavering, had to leave his own town hall with police protection in California because of this.
These are dangerous.
These people are bordering on committing personal violence.
All for the show, all to make just to scare these people into abandoning the Republican agenda, making them fear for their lives, no doubt fear for their families.
I mean, this is vicious stuff.
This stuff needs to be prosecuted, needs to be charged and prosecuted.
Because the this whole idea of dissent being a time-honored part of American culture, this isn't dissent, and this isn't peaceful.
And they don't have the right to destroy property.
They don't have the right to threaten and to intimidate.
They don't have the right to invade space.
This stuff needs to be stopped.
Republicans run many of these states.
They don't run California, but they run many of these states, which means they they control the justice angle in these states.
We need to get serious about this because I'm telling you, the thing that worries me, I'm just going to answer my own question.
The thing that worries me is the impact all this is going to have on Republicans.
Folks, you we've seen it.
And then you add something to this, and I'm not trying to be the harbinger of pessimism here.
Not at all.
We have to be aware of it.
The Republican establishment, the Democrat establishment is all one establishment.
And I don't care what anybody has told you, and I don't care what the reporting is.
The Washington establishment is still up in arms over the fact that Trump is in the White House.
And that is not shaped by party affiliation.
It's shaped by if you are in the establishment, Trump is an abomination.
Trump is an insult.
Trump is an affront.
Trump is an embarrassment.
And so the purpose of this organization of any organization is self-perpetuation.
And I just I don't see these people just willingly letting an outsider like Trump come in and roll them.
That's how they would look at it.
This is why Pam, it really is important for every one of you people that voted for Trump to hang in with it, because you are the only support base he has.
Whenever somebody polls you on presidential approval, you tell them you approve.
That numbers gotta stay pot.
That's it.
That's you know, presidents poll numbers are things that politicians pay attention to.
That's why I think speed, speed, speed, just just ramshackle.
Just do what I thought was going to happen.
I thought a pace was going to be established that the establishment, Washington, Republican, Democrat, Media Independent wouldn't be able to keep up with.
Would not know what hit them.
And they're trying to slow it down.
And do things the way they've always done it.
The way we've always done it.
So we will see.
But this Republican lawmakers face rising anger at town halls.
Um this is so obvious, just the headline and the first couple of paragraphs of the story.
So obvious the intent of this story.
I'm can't tell you how how how heartwarming it is to hear that you are not watching, reading, or listening to any of this.
I think that's fabulous.
Next up is Asheville, North Carolina.
Jim, great to have you with us to the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Mega Ditto's to you.
Thank you.
And in a shout out, dittoes to the previous caller.
And I just have three points.
I am so optimistic, and there is nothing that's going to make me wobbly that I can see on the future with Trump because of the way he's handling the media.
He hits back, he's teaching Republicans how to fight this onslaught.
And the people that I'm around, both liberal, conservative, and moderate, I see a whole slice of life out here at Asheville.
They're getting tired of the media piling on.
So first, I think Trump is teaching and taking on the media and undercutting, just like you've said, their uh integrity on a daily basis, incessantly.
Number two, I am so proud of Mitch McConnell.
I want to give a a shout out to McConnell and Paul Ryan.
What they're doing is the devil's work that has to be done.
And with previous Republican Congresses and Senates would have reinstalled the filibuster to be nice, to to try to curry favor and say, see, we're not that bad.
McConnell and Ryan are having no part of it.
And as far as town halls, here's one.
Go look at our great Congressman Mark Meadows, who represents us stellarly.
He was bullied, and he had the same thing, and it only strengthened his resolve, I'm sure.
So to any freshman congressman out there, look at the people that you want to emulate, because they've gone through it too, and it's just tempered them.
And finally, number three, Rush, I'll tell you.
The reason I'm not wobbly, the reason I'm a hundred percent behind President Trump is because what he's doing is right.
And when you have the right on your side, and I don't mean right left, I mean the correct principles that he's reinforcing.
I I'm just excited.
I'm I'm over the rainbow, and I hope this call made you more optimistic that these guys are going to help President Trump and the American people get back.
And then I want to ask you about uh I have a question on your book on it.
Fine.
We're gonna question it just I'm not pessimistic.
I'm not that that's why I say it's you know, it's a fine line, pessimism and realism.
And as a mayor of realville, I have to stay real, and I that means I I have to be prepared myself for things that are gonna disappoint me so I can react to them in the right way and not be surprised by them.
And I have this this this ongoing uh thing I live by, and that is intelligence guided by experience.
You've seen it once, it can happen again.
You have to be vigilant for it.
The one thing I do have some concerns, and I know that I I I wish Trump had more vocal support from the Republican side doing what he's doing, but I understand why he doesn't because of who they are.
I understand they're prisoners to polls, they're prisoners to drive-by media reporting.
They live where the media lives, and whether you watch it or not, they do.
Um and then the idea that they're not really crazy about an outsider being president, period, and totally turning upside down the way Washington works.
There's some people not excited about that, even if it does mean their side wins.
And then thirdly, I'm not sure how many Republicans actually want to defeat liberalism and defeat Democrats.
When I keep hearing all this talk about uh Tom Tillis of North Carolina is still talking about reaching across the aisle and finding areas in which we can compromise to show that we can go.
Shall we we won the election?
The Democrats are losing their shirts everywhere.
There's no reason to to to draw back now instead of burrowing forward and burying these people.
And I don't know how much of a desire there is to bury these people, but boy, I have it, and I know that Trump does.
Is there anything what is it so far Trump's done that you like?
I I like his executive orders, number one.
Number two, I like that he coalesced uh Mitch McConnell and uh Paul Ryan and started to move and make action even before he took off uh office.
And I like most and above all else, again, he's teaching the Republicans how to deal with the hostile media, and really understand, like you have so eloquently put it, that the majority of Americans feel conservative, that the minority is the Democrat, not the majority.
Look behind the curtain.
Right.
And the thing that makes me happy is that what it really means to keep Republicans to defeat liberalism, make them understand that is if they don't move to defeat liberalism, they will be defeated.
So just in a selfish interest, Trump and the all these elections over the last twelve years that have removed Democrats from power from city commissions to the United States presidency.
All of that should show them that the path to victory to keep their power base, to keep their seat.
I agree.
I agree.
Look, I'm out of time here, but I know you had a question about the book.
So tell Mr. Snurdly, uh, don't hang up.
Mr. Snerdle will pick up the phone, ask you what your question for me was on the books or your comment, and he'll pass it on to me.
We'll deal with it as the uh program unfolds.
But I have to take a break.
I can't have my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Very much into fairness here.
Did you get the guy's question on the books?
All right, we'll get to it in the next hour.
Coming up, my friends, a new CBS poll.
Shows that a majority of Democrats consider Christianity as violent as Islam.
Now, where are they hearing that?
Who is telling them that?
Uh by the way, since so many of you are not paying attention to the drive bys, it helps me here.
Realizing most of this stuff you're never gonna know until I tell you.
That's very, very helpful.
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