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Feb. 8, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:44
February 8, 2017, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Welcome back, my good friends.
It's a delight.
It's a thrill to have you here, Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Coming at you right here from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
No, what I'm trying to say here, people asking me about this executive order in the courts.
What we have here is the is a clear violation of the separation of powers.
There is a statute passed by Congress, the elected representatives of the peoples that vests total authority and power in the president of the United States to determine who and who does not get into the country.
By proclamation of the president, and for however long he deems necessary to secure the borders and the safety of the United States, national security.
And we have a judge in the state of Washington who told the president, well, I don't like that you're doing it, so I'm going to say that you have to stop.
The judge does not have the constitutional authority.
This this statute has it is it is clearly constitutional.
It's not been challenged.
And because this judge stayed the executive order, now we have a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing the appeal by the federal government on the judge in Washington.
If this stands, this is the judiciary taking power from the executive, which it is not entitled to have.
Where does this stop?
What other executive branch powers can a rogue judge who is a leftist hack just forestall by virtue of having another leftist hack, ask for a stay of execution on whatever presidential act is being disagreed with.
And if a bunch of liberal judges can literally co-opt a president and steal executive power with no redress, uh that cannot stand.
And that's all that's going on here.
This is nothing more than a bunch of political hacks who are wearing robes and are called judges, literally telling a president he can't do what he has the clear legal authority to do because they disagree with it.
And the frightening thing is that this could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
There are enough liberal hacks on the Supreme Court who could rule that the president doesn't have this authority because we don't agree with him.
Not because it's illegal, not because it's unconstitutional, but we don't like it.
We don't like what he's doing, so we're gonna stop him.
Well, where does that end?
Now the real question is what's the redress for this?
And we will discuss that in due course, should that become necessary.
But I I can't tell you how the Ninth Circuit's well, I mean, the odds are the Ninth Circuit's gonna uphold the judge in Seattle.
You've got two liberal hacks on this three-judge panel that are of the same stripe as Judge Robart, who is a liberal hack in Seattle.
Wonder why they chose Seattle for this?
A district court judge telling a president of the United States he can't do what the judge disagrees with.
This is to me, it's serious up.
I've been I've been asking every legal authority I know, how can you be so patient with this?
This is this is a clear constitution.
This is a uh to me, it's almost a constitutional crisis.
I may be the only one who sees it that way.
Because I think the academics get involved in all this, you know, it's just a fascinating intellectual exercise.
To me, it's the real world.
To me, it's the left taking over a branch of government and trying to stop what they lost during a campaign.
And I think back to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats talking about what A threat to our democracy, Donald Trump would be if he failed to accept the results of the election if he lost.
And where are people asking that about Judge Robart?
Where are people asking that about the Ninth Circuit, depending on how they rule?
Where are people asking that about the Democrat Party?
Hillary Clinton is a threat to our democracy.
Donald Trump poses a threat to our democracy if he refuses to accept the result of the election.
This is when Hillary thought she's going to win in a landslide.
Well, now who's refusing to accept the results of the election?
The entire Democrat hate group.
Anyway, we got to get back.
I know, I know.
Elizabeth Warren, we're going to keep going here.
Here's soundbite number two.
It's three more sound bites before we get to her being shut down with the invocation of Rule 19.
Mr. Sessions is a throwback to a shameful era, which I know both black and white Americans thought was in our past.
It is inconceivable to me that a person of this attitude is qualified to be a U.S. attorney, let alone a U.S. federal judge.
He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department, and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.
Lindsey Grahamnesty, Senator from South Carolina's pro Sessions, and he has uh tweeted out the photograph of an award that Sessions got.
In 2009, Jeff Sessions was awarded the uh what is this?
The NAACP gave Sessions their governmental award for excellence.
He was a senator in 2009.
The NAA LCP, National Association of Advancement of Liberal Colored People, gave Sessions their award for governmental excellence.
Now they oppose him.
As Folkahana supposes him.
So Folkahana is just getting warmed up here.
Here's another bite.
A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws.
The Senator is reminded that it is a violation of Rule 19 of the standing rules of the Senate to impute to another Senator or Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or becoming a senator.
Mr. President, I don't think I quite understand.
I'm reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record.
I'm simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judgment and what it would mean in history for her.
This is a reminder, not per necessarily what you just shared.
However, you stated that a sitting senator is a disgrace to the Department of Justice.
And so she would just get warmed up.
This is the kind of stuff she loves.
These Democrat hate groups, they love this kind of challenge.
And so Folkahanis was just getting what by the way, the voice you heard there, that was Steve Daines.
He's a senator from Montana, and he dre poor guy, he drew the short straw last night in having to act as president of the Senate.
Another Democrat all-nighter.
They tried to destroy DeVos, now they're trying to destroy Sessions.
They're got they're not going to succeed at this.
This is an exercise here simply to feed the hate to their base.
They're victimized base, which has a steady diet of undiluted hate, and the Democrats have to keep serving it.
If they have any chance of getting elected, so Mitch McConnell, as she kept going, McConnell stepped in, the Republican leader of the Senate had enough.
Mr. President.
The majority leader.
Senator is impuned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama as warned by the chair.
Senator Warren, quote, said Senator Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.
I call the Senator to order under the provisions of Rule 19.
Mr. President.
Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate, I ask leave of the Senate to continue my remarks.
Is there objection?
Objection is heard.
The Senator will take her seat.
I appeal the ruling of the chair.
And she just kept going and she got hysterical and uh so forth.
The reading of the letter from Coretta Scott King, 1986 about Sessions appointed appointment to be a federal district court judge back in 1986, is not even applicable today.
It's all related to that that whole the whole thing here is rooted in the left trying to take a joke with Sessions told and turn it into a serious policy statement.
The left wants you to believe that Jeff Sessions was all cool with the KKK.
He was fine with the KKK.
They were a great bunch until he found out they smoked marijuana.
And when he found out they smoked marijuana, that's when Jeff Sessions decided he had a distance himself from the KKK, was telling a joke, I'm giving it to you out of context.
That one episode is what the Democrats have tried to build a case on that Sessions is pro-KKK, anti-black, anti-minority, racist and all that.
It's disbogus, it's BS.
Many of the senators that voted against Session and Sessions in 86 have wished and stated they wish they could do it again.
They feel bad they voted against him.
Everybody in the Senate knows the guy.
This is so it's all made up.
This is why McConnell stood up.
It's made up.
It's a bunch of lies.
None of it is true.
It's impugning a senator.
It is violation of Rule 19.
However, there is a an interesting piece about this by a writer named Sean Davis over at the Federalist.
And this is, in his opinion, this is related to the upcoming battle over Judge Gorsuch.
And it's rooted in the fact that McConnell and the Republicans would really love to get Gorsuch confirmed without having to invoke the filibuster to nuke it.
Which means they would like to be able to get 60 votes for Gorsuch.
And but Rule 19, you see, Rule 19 provides a route around the necessity for 60 votes without blowing up the filibuster.
And here is the part of Rule 19 that is relevant to this aspect of it.
When a senator desires to speak, the senator shall rise and address the presiding officer and shall not proceed until he's recognized.
And the presiding officer shall recognize the senator who shall first address him.
No senator shall interrupt another senator in debate without his consent.
And to obtain such consent, he shall first address the presiding officer, and no senator, this is the key to it, no senator shall speak more than twice about any one question in debate on the same legislative day without leave of the Senate, which shall be determined without debate.
You heard her ask for leave of the Senate.
That means basically suspension of rules, which was denied.
So the the key element of Rule 19, which shut her up, might actually be a test for the use of Rule 19 in another area, and it is the area which prevents a senator from speaking more than twice about any one subject.
So the upshot is that no senator can speak more than twice on any legislative day on the same subject.
So if you're talking about the debate on Gorsuch on the floor or whether he should be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
So what what McConnell could could do here, he could say, because he's the leader of the Senate.
He could simply deem that the floor debate on Gorsuch will occur in one Legislative day.
And he can do that if the Senate is not gabbled into recess.
Which means that the debate would actually become a real filibuster.
It means that every senator rising has to speak about the subject and can only speak about it twice.
And the Senate can't go into recess.
So you have a legitimate filibuster.
It's just a filibuster where every senator can speak, not just one.
And since a senator can only speak twice about a single subject, the theory is that you could have the Senate legislative day comprise 48 hours and give every opponent to sessions two different chances to say whatever they want to say about him.
After everybody has had their opportunity to speak twice on the floor of the Senate, whether it's at noon or midnight or whenever, they're done.
When every senator has had his chance to speak twice, it's over.
The legislative day is over.
Once that's all done, there's nobody remaining who can legally take the floor in order to continue the debate, because every senator will have spoken twice about the nomination of Gorsuch.
So at that point, McConnell would say that the debate is over by rule and call for the final confirmation vote.
There would not be a 60 vote cloture vote necessary, wouldn't be a vote for 60 votes.
Wouldn't be a necessity for it, because once that rule, Rule 19, two speech rule has been applied to everybody who wishes to speak, the debate is over.
And then McConnell would schedule the final floor vote, and Gorsuch would sail in.
And it's it's a little bit more involved in that because it's it's uh uh it's all involved in shutting down the debate.
The debate can't go on because rule 19 prevents any senator from saying anything more than twice on the same subject.
So he invokes Rule 19, calls it a legislative day, and it the day goes on until every senator's had a chance to speak twice.
Well, the Republicans won't speak twice, but the Democrats will.
So every Democrat going speaking twice, whatever, they figure take 48 hours, a legislative day, 48 hours, and after that there can't be any more debate on the subject because Rule 19's invocation prohibits any senator from speaking more than twice on a subject, and you have to have a vote after this.
So it's a way around they it's obvious they do not want to have to use the filibuster to get Gorsuch confirmed.
And some people looking at this think that the invocation of Rule 19 will be a way of getting that done because you eliminate the need for 60 votes.
Because the debate ends.
It's 60 votes that ends the debate.
Normally, you've got to have 60 votes for cloture, but if you invoke Rule 19, and senators can only speak twice, then that's it.
Debate's over.
You don't need 60 votes to stop the debate.
Rule 19 has stopped the debate.
Then you have the vote, and Gorsuch gets confirmed by 52, 53, what have you.
Whatever it is.
That is the thinking.
And so while the left thinks that Elizabeth Warren scored a big knockout here by becoming the focus of Republican obstruction and so forth, what's really happened here is everybody has been prepared for Rule 19.
People know what Rule 19 is now, and there's another part of it, and it looks like it's about to be used back after this.
Hey, let's uh let's review some some recent polling data.
Have you noticed, by the way, folks?
We have not seen any polling at all on the Democrat obstruction of Trump's cabinet nominees.
Why is that?
I mean, they poll everything.
Why haven't we seen a poll of what people think of the Democrats' obstruction of Trump's nominees?
As I noted yesterday, uh, Ladies and gentlemen, Democrats are openly admitting that they are trying to make the country ungovernable.
The Democrats and their and their fellow protesters.
Do they think that's what voters want?
I mean, on the on before the election, they kept saying that voters want people that can make Washington work.
And who is it that's keeping Washington from working?
The Democrats.
UK Daily Mail, 92%.
Now this is in the UK, but I'll bet you it's the same here.
92% of left-wing activists live with mommy and daddy.
And one out of every three of them is unemployed, according to a this is this is protesters in Berlin.
92% of these long-haired, maggot-infested, dope smoking rock and rollers live with mommy and daddy.
And one-third of them are unemployed.
Harvard economists, 42% of immigrant households are on public assistance.
A Harvard economist has found that some 42% of immigrant households in the United States are on public assistance of some kind.
In 2016, 8.9 million households headed by a non-citizen.
Senator Tom Cotton, Arkansas.
It's time to cut immigration levels and shift the focus to helping American citizens first.
Exactly right.
The left wants you to believe this country has a duty to have open borders to let any disenfranchised poor person from anywhere in the world come in here because we're the reason they're poor.
We are the reason that there is oppression in the world.
We are the reason our imperialism, our military, our capitalist way of life.
We are the reason people have to flee their homelands, because we have stolen the world's resources for our own use, and so we owe it to anybody to be able to come into this country.
That's their view.
That's their view of immigration.
We're guilty, we're unjust and immoral, and we have polluted the world and destroyed the world, and it's our responsibility to take care of the people we've harmed.
That's how they look at this.
And Tom Cotton is stepping up and saying, We need to put limits on immigration again, which we've done.
We had no legal immigration from 1921 to 1965.
We need to do something along those lines again and start taking care of the American citizenry first.
Here's a poll from Emerson College.
During the election, during the campaign, this poll was given serious weight.
Are you ready?
The Trump administration is more trusted than the news media.
The Trump administration is considered more honest than the news media.
The administration is considered truthful by 49% of registered voters, untruthful by 48%.
The news media, 53% say it's untruthful.
Only 39% say that it is truthful.
They sit up there and they talk about Trump gets his facts wrong, lies.
They just, they still don't get it.
They have this derogatory negative impression of Trump voters.
They have no idea how they are seen.
They really don't.
Oh, I got an email during the break.
Rush, you confused me on this Rule 19 versus 60 votes.
Could you go through this again?
Let me do it very quickly.
And then I'm going to go at it the opposite direction.
In the Senate, you need 60 votes for anything.
And the re the way it happens, it's called, it's called a filibuster, but it really isn't a filibuster.
It's just a Senate rule.
It's been around for a long time.
Don't ask why, what's the logic?
It just is.
The Senate is supposed to slow down things.
Passing laws was supposed to be hard to do.
The founding fathers didn't want a growing government.
They didn't want a lot of laws.
The Senate was designed to bottle everything up.
60 votes, not a simple majority.
In 2013, Harry Reid came along and said, it's not fair.
And he wanted to pack the courts with Obama-appointed judges, so he he implemented what's called the nuclear option and got rid of the rule requiring 60 votes for legislation and for district court judges, not Supreme Court judges, but district court pellet judges, everything else.
It was called the nuclear option because it blew up decades of Senate tradition.
60 votes are still needed not to pass legislation, but to end debate on any item.
And that's the key to understanding Rule 19's application.
You need 60 votes in the Senate to stop debate on anything, and then after you get that's called cloture, and then you vote on the actual legislation.
You can you can get cloture with 60 votes and have the thing pass by only 5545, but you have to have 60 to stop debate and go to the actual vote.
The way Rule 19 works, it eliminates the 60 votes to stop debate and replaces it with a rule that says senators can only speak twice about a single subject during a legislative day.
Whoever runs the Senate can define what a legislative day is.
So McConnell will define the legislative day as the Senate not going into recess, and the subject would be Gorsuch's confirmation.
He'll invoke Rule 19 and the part of it that says senators can only speak twice about it.
When every senator who wants to has spoken twice about Gorsuch, that is the same as getting 60 votes to stop debate.
Rule 19 says that debate is over if a single Senate legislative day has taken place with no interruptions, and McConnell can be in charge of that.
Once every senator has spoken twice about Gorsuch, it's over.
Debate is over and you move to the vote.
You don't need 60 votes in this case because Rule 19 replaces the need for 60 votes with a limit on senators' debate to two speaking terms.
They can go as long as they want.
This could take 48 to 50 hours to do.
But after every Democrat senator has spoken twice, it's over and you go to the vote.
That's and so the reason this is being discussed is relevant is because uh Rule 19's invoked really quickly last night.
And it's very seldom invoked.
And so Senate watchers are thinking, hey, you know, McConnell and the boys are looking at Rule 19 here.
And the reason they're looking at it is because they so quickly invoked it against Vocahantis.
So that's by the way, this is just a theory.
These are people speculating that this is what McConnell might do.
Nobody said this is going to happen.
What is known is is that McConnell, who's a great traditionalist, does not want to have to use the nuclear option on Supreme Court nominees.
He cares more about the traditions of the Senate than Harry Reid.
But I think if Push came to show if he would, but they're trying every which way they can to get Gorsuch confirmed without going nuclear, so to speak.
So I hope that Mr. Sturtley was that a little bit more okay.
Good, good, good, good.
Uh and again, nobody knows whether that's going to happen, but it's a possibility.
I know what you said.
Well, wait a minute.
How could 40, what if Elizabeth Warren wants to talk for a week?
Well, she can't.
I mean, she cannot leave the floor.
Senator cannot leave the floor.
It becomes a filibuster in the sense that senators can only speak twice, but they can't pass it off to somebody else and then come back.
It would take a while.
Not every Republican would speak twice.
The debate's going to be irrelevant.
Anyway, Gorsuch is going to get the votes.
All of this is just how do you get there?
How do you Get to the vote.
Do you invoke Rule 19?
If if I'll tell you the way they really want it to happen is to get enough Democrats to vote for the guy to get to 60 without having to play any games.
And they might, because more and more Democrats are coming out for Gorsuch now and signaling that there's no reason to oppose the guy.
So it's all going to work out.
It's just how you get there.
President Trump just met with the CEO of Intel.
Intel announced that they're gonna invest seven billion dollars in a factory in Arizona and they're gonna employ three thousand people.
We're getting news like this every day.
We're getting good economic news like this every day.
And I was watching CNN during the break, and they're just wringing their hands over what Trump was saying about the judges on the Ninth Circus, and they got some guy, it was it was Trump said it was disgraceful the way these judges it wasn't disgraceful, it was full of grace.
These justices were arguing the cases before then this was democracy on the parade, and the president thinking not subject to judicial review, this is horrible, this is horrible, this is a very damaging thing to our wonderful and graceful democracy and blah, blah, blah.
This is not judicial review going on, this is political hackery going on.
Up straight, straight up political hackery is going on, not judicial review.
The judge in Washington was wrong in staying executive order.
What the law doesn't matter these people, obviously.
They just so politicized everything that if I weren't careful, folks.
I I I'd go off on a rant here that that uh even a Republican FCC might have problems with.
Just joking about that, but I mean, this people tick me off like you cannot believe.
And I'm exercising more restraint than even I knew I had.
Dennis in Colorado Springs, I really appreciate your patience and holding on.
How are you doing, sir?
I'm doing well.
I feel like I've won the phone lottery today, and actually getting to talk to you is such an honor.
Thank you, sir very much.
I appreciate it.
Great.
I have uh I have a computer question at the end of this, but first I wanted uh ask you.
Um, given that the President Trump has showed such undue deference to the courts that when the Ninth Circus uh finally upholds Robart, what would prevent President Trump from reissuing executive orders, uh seven of them, uh one at a time, banning entry from each particular country.
Then with each court challenge, he can then just simply uh uh exercise his singular authority and separation of powers and then simply bypass the courts until the constitutionality of the first executive order is uh decided.
Uh I you know that's a good it's a good question.
I I I know that there is redress for this.
That if if the this if this goes all the way Supreme Court and the Supreme Court stays this and it Trump is not permitted this executive order, I don't know the specifics, but there has to be have to be other ways of of doing this and getting it done, which he's committed to.
Yeah, I'm kind of thinking getting it done in the meantime so that we're not leaving ourselves open for 90 years.
Oh, I mean, that's I'm I'm saying he would.
I just don't know if it's seven dish uh seven brand new executive orders or if it's one brand new one that tries.
But they're gonna no matter what he does, we now know what they're gonna do.
They're gonna find a hack judge like this guy in Seattle, and they're gonna they're gonna go before the hack judge, and the hack judge is not gonna use the law, he's gonna use politics and his dislike for Trump being president, and stop it.
At some point this is gonna have to get resolved, and these people are gonna have to get slapped down.
You have a computer question.
Time's dwindling.
What's a computer question?
Okay, I have an older uh MacBook Pro, and um it's doing me fine, but I'm wondering when Apple's gonna stop upgrading it like they stopped upgrading my iPhone, and I'm going to be left without uh you know protection to uh the backdoor hackers and all that.
Uh because you know they they they're not gonna be.
Well, how old is your MacBook Pro?
How old is your MacBook Pro?
Real old, it's a pro uh four.
Really old.
What but what year?
Oh, gee, I don't know.
I kind of inherited it from my wife.
It's got to be at least ten years old.
Well, uh I think you're already there because something that old you probably cannot put the latest operating system on it.
And you and they probably have stopped issuing security upgrades for machines.
So you you're you're timed upgrades now.
Would be that the same thing with the uh notebook, the Mac Pro Notebook.
There well, the you mean the Mac what you mean the 12-inch thing?
Yeah, I have an older MacBook Pro that I think is going to be timed out as well, but my iPhone, I've already given up on trying to update that.
Wait a minute.
I thought you were talking about the MacBook Pro.
You're talking about the iPhone?
Right, no, both.
Both.
I have an I uh MacBook Pro that's older.
It's uh 2011.
I'm out of time.
Darn it.
I've I'm sorry.
I've uh I've gotta go.
Oh it turns out I answered the guy's question even though I didn't think I had.
You know what?
I'm right even when I think I'm wrong.
I get it done even when I think I haven't got it done.
I answer the guy's question.
Satisfactorily, too.
His computer will still work.
And that's it for today, my friends.
But we've got stuff coming to March.
You just don't miss it.
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