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Feb. 17, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:14
February 17, 2017, Friday, Hour #3
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Speaking of California and flipping California, hail I share with you this next headline.
That's all it'll take.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
This is one of those, oh my god.
And the minute you read it, you realize it's true, and that's what makes it an, oh my God.
By the way, greetings.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh and Open Line Friday, final big, busy broadcast hour.
Your highly trained broadcast specialist executing assigned host duties flawlessly with zero mistakes here at 800-282-2882.
I just know Trump wants one of those 787s.
He probably went in there and said, can I fly home in this thing?
Anyway, we just had a call from Merced, California.
A guy wanted to know, ultimately, what he could do, what anybody could do, what we could do to flip California, because it was just in the 1980s and prior that the Republican Party literally owned that state.
Well, that's a bit far.
I mean, the Democrats had the state assembly in a lot of those years.
But, you know, Reagan was a two-term governor, excuse me, George Duke Manchin.
There was Pete Wilson.
And even Schwarzenegger was a Republican in name, as far as party identification.
And you want to trace California's move to the far left.
You go back to the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill.
And Simpson-Mazzoli was where we granted amnesty to, at the time, what was three and a half illegal aliens.
And that's it.
It did not, we were told that would be it.
We're going to start being strict about guarding the borders and making sure that there wasn't any more illegal immigration, but that didn't happen.
That was the design.
It's Ted Kennedy, Simpson, Missoula.
That was their idea here, and it's worked out magnificently for them to this extent.
This is a Breitbart story that just was published yesterday.
You ready for this headline?
Mexican presidential candidate holds anti-Trump rally in Los Angeles.
What more needs to be said?
A guy running for the presidency of Mexico, Wendy, is campaigning in Los Angeles.
I'm sure he's also campaigning in Mexico City.
He's campaigning in Guadalajara.
He's campaigning at the night of the iguana.
He's campaigning in Cabo.
But he's also campaigning in Los Angeles.
And I'm sure he'll stop in San Diego on the way back.
That doesn't say it all.
And we're talking here about illegal.
You know what the left has succeeded in doing?
They have succeeded in, in terms of the vernacular, the lexicon.
They've defined, redefined the word immigration.
And to tell everyone, we're anti-immigrant.
That's one of the whole thrusts of the existence of the Democrat Party to the left, that people like you and me are anti-immigrant.
As though we want, as though that wall means nobody gets in, as though we don't want anybody that's not like us in here.
And that's not at all the truth.
We're all big believers in immigration.
They think they've got a monopoly on this silly idea that we are a nation of immigrants.
America's greatness is traceable to its immigrants.
I'm sorry, I don't buy that as a standalone idea anyway, because really what they're trying to say with that, that America's greatness is due to America's diversity.
And that has not a thing to do with it.
American greatness is because of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and our country.
Greatness has nothing to do with diversity, skin color, race, ethnicity, nothing to do with it.
And that's not a cut.
The people that say diversity is the reason for the greatness are purposely assaulting the United States as founded.
They want you to believe that America was only great for a few people as founded because as founded, America was gigantically discriminating against the poor and against people of color and against transgenders.
Yeah, I've read the Federalist Papers, you know, James Madison, he wasn't popular with the transgender group back then.
Did you know that?
You won't find the word.
It was not a factor of the way they have attempted to modernize things here today.
It's just lies.
There's a distinct American culture that evolved from the United States founding, and that is what made America great, is what allowed the human being to become.
The United States of America was the first place on earth where average people had the opportunity to become the greatest among all people.
It was the first time in human history where people were allowed to pursue the best of their abilities to whatever desire they wanted because it was a nation founded under the concept of human beings being born free.
It wasn't anything to do with immigration.
It wasn't anything to do with ethnicity.
It wasn't anything to do with diversity.
Diversity for diversity's sake is nothing more than affirmative action and can make no claim to being part of America's greatness.
And no company can say it either.
Our country is great because of our diversity.
I can say it, but it has nothing to do with it.
Literally nothing to do with it.
How diverse you are.
Well, it just means we don't discriminate.
It means that we value all people, which is fine and dandy.
But unless your company makes something or has a service and you have an atmosphere where people working for you can become the best they can be, it doesn't matter what your workforce looks like, Doomkoff.
Well, this is all the distortions that we have to face now and the things that we're supposed to accept.
And chief among them is that immigration means anybody who wants to come in.
And we don't even have to make them a citizen.
If they want to come here and live here, it's not for you to say they can't.
You're being a bigot and a homophobic and a racist or whatever if you say that.
So to them, immigration is anybody who gets in.
Anybody who wants to come gets in.
And that's not what that's illegal immigration.
And that's what is opposed.
You know, speaking of all of this, I want to remind you of something.
We had a couple of calls today about the Rush Revere Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans book series.
And this is the President's Day weekend.
And the most recent Rush Revere Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans book is Rush Revere and the Presidency.
And folks, I have to be honest.
I have to tell you, we hear from people, children all over this country, families who are encouraging me to mention the Rush Revere series more often than I do.
And I probably should, but I'm just trying to budget everything and be as diverse.
You know, I'm trying to get as much into this show each and every day as I can because there's so much happening.
And I feel a compulsion every day to make sure certain things are mentioned.
Some days I don't take enough phone calls.
Some days I don't mention this enough.
Some days I don't get to that at all, whatever it is.
And people say, you know, you really got something greater.
You need to be talking about it more.
And I agree.
I agree.
I don't always get the chance because all the news is constantly breaking.
I mean, literally, it's breaking news constantly now.
But I tell you, since this is President's Day week and Monday's President's Day, I'm going to mention this.
The latest book in our New York Times best-selling American history series is Rush Revere and the Presidency.
What we have discovered here, and you've probably heard parents calling here to share these stories, children that normally don't like reading and certainly are not interested in history have become devoted to this series.
They have become absorbed.
We got an email the other day from a family describing how a couple of their kids hide under a blanket at night with a flashlight to read after they are supposed to be in bed.
Parents tell them you've got to be in bed by exit, so they go into the bed and they get under the cover with a flashlight that are reading the books.
The parents discovered it.
They wanted us to know this.
And we're talking about 10-year-olds here who are staying up past curfew to read the Rush Revere, Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional American series.
You know why?
Because it's not just history.
Because of the usage of a vehicle here called Time Travel, Talking Horse, that can time travel back to anywhere in American history.
The students, the readers, are taken to these events about which we write, and they experience them.
Not just told about them, and they're not just spoken at.
They're actually transformed as part of the story to the events that we depict.
And in this book, Rush Revere and the Presidency, I'm Rush Revere, and I'm a substitute teacher at a place called Manchester Middle School.
And my hilarious sidekick is a smart Alec talking horse named Liberty.
He can talk because he was struck by lightning when he was young.
And he can time travel.
He can only go to American history, but he can time travel.
He can take students with him from Manchester Middle.
And they go back in time.
And that's how they learn about American history.
And in this book, one of the students at Manchester Middle wants to be school president, but for all the wrong reasons.
And Rush Revere recognizes that it's all the wrong reasons.
He wants to be famous.
He wants to be hip, wants to be cool.
Thinks if he's school president, everybody will like him, and that's what he wants.
And so the short version of this is that we travel back in time to meet George Washington and John and Abigail Adams.
And old Cam witnesses George Washington's inauguration speech, talks to him about why he ran, why he didn't accept King, why he left office, the whole thing about what being president of anything really is and why seek it.
And we made it a point, by the way, to include Martha Washington and Abigail Adams in this book so that young girls reading it would have things because they were important figures.
Martha Washington and Abigail Adams were huge, important figures in American history.
We wanted young girl readers to be able to relate in that way.
But it's a perfect way for young readers to learn and understand how our presidency started and the man who was the first president and how his morality kept this from becoming a monarchy and how it all works today.
So this book was released back in the latter part of November.
We wanted to wait till after the election crush.
And it's at Amazon Barnes and Noble Books a Million, retailers all over the place.
And I have to add, we post great photos all of the time at Rush Revere's Facebook page.
You'll see recent scholarship winners, amazing comments.
Liberty the Talking Horse really wants you to like his page there.
The guy's got an ego that's out of control.
I mean, if you were a horse and you could talk in time travel, you'd have a big ego too, and Liberty does.
Wants lots of followers.
Facebook.com/slash Rush Revere.
Now, and there are four other books.
The first one, Rush Revere and The Brave Pilgrims.
And they're just all works of art, illustrations.
And they're serious books.
They're not little picture books, coloring books for little toddlers.
I mean, these are books that accept and understand, promote the maturity and intelligence of young readers who actually want to learn American history.
So in fact, here I can show you the – here it is.
Flash over the little camera.
That is the cover of the Rush Revere and the presidency.
I don't have time to zoom in on this.
I've only got one hand here to do this with, but that's it.
You can check it out.
What a timely time to mention this.
Now, brief time out here.
We will come back.
It's Open Line Friday.
We'll get back to the phones.
And what else do I have here?
Well, yeah, I want to remind you something from the New York Times back in August of last year.
And there's some stuff here.
So we'll wrap the week up with a bang.
Be back right after this, folks.
All right, Scott Pruitt was confirmed.
Scott Pruitt confirmed as Director of the EPA, a guy who once stated he wanted to get rid of it.
Now, what was happening today, employees at the EPA have been calling their senators to urge them to vote today against Scott Pruitt, Trump's contentious nominee to run the agency.
This is the New York Times.
They describe this as a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the EPA.
So the underlings of the EPA were calling their senator, please vote against Pruitt, please go in big daughter.
We can't handle it.
Please vote against Pruitt, please, please.
And the New York Times characterized that as a remarkable display of activism and defiance.
Many of the scientists, environmentalists, lawyers, and policy wackos who work in EPA orifices around the country say that calls are a last resort for workers who fear a nominee selected to run an agency.
He's made a career out of fighting.
I hope we soon see a headline like we saw today about the State Department.
Rex Tillerson clearing house, cleaning house at the State Department.
Anyway, remarkable display of activism did not prevent Pruitt from becoming confirmed as director of the EPA.
But, well, I don't know.
Maybe active on the unemployment.
Depends.
Some of them are going to quit and protest, but there's going to be a lot of them stay and try to undermine things.
You think there's not an Obama deep-stated EPA?
There sure as hell is.
That's where climate change lives.
I'm telling you, they're probably even more radical and radical and committed at the EPA than they are at the intelligence agencies.
In terms of Obamaites and Clinton, this is we're going to have to keep an eye on this.
EPA, there's going to be hells a pop in there.
You watch.
In the meantime, here's Richard in Santa Cruz, California.
Welcome to Open Line Friday.
How are you?
Hey, it's an honor to speak to you, Mr. Limbaugh.
Thank you very much.
Titan of truth and technology, you are.
I was calling because here in Santa Cruz, liberal Santa Cruz, they did a sweep of the notorious Central American gang MS-13.
And instead of the people in Watsonville being happy to get rid of gang members, they went to city council and protested that we cooperated with Homeland Security.
And they also had a big protest where 7,600 students didn't go to school, I believe it was yesterday, which cost the city there $410,000 of loss because they weren't teaching anybody anything.
Well, that actually may be a benefit.
Probably.
It's really quite ridiculous out here.
I mean, we had the whole taking away pretty much the Second Amendment.
And even though the police were totally against all the proposals that were on the ballot, people still voted for it.
And they've pretty much cracked down on freedom in California.
I'm a really big fan of yours.
I don't think people understand how difficult it is to do your job to take three hours and make it so entertaining.
And I really appreciate all the hard work that you do.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
The situation, you live in Santa Cruz.
That's just got to be frustrating as hell.
I mean, here that you have an effort to actually get rid of illegal immigrant gang members, and even the cops protested.
Yeah, the police here are really, really good.
I had a personal tragedy and got to know some of the detective sergeants in the Sheriff's Department pretty well.
And they are.
California just is so deeply left.
It's particularly coastal.
It just is.
So I went and looked at the Santa Cruz, the Mercury News, the newspaper out there, the article here, changing, or they were chanting, let us speak.
Some 100 or more protesters drew a temporary halt to Tuesday's Santa Cruz City Council meeting.
The group came together in an outcry at the previous day's U.S. Department of Homeland Security raids across the county.
The federal operation undertaken in collaboration with local law enforcement resulted in a series of arrests at 12 sites, federal indictments of 10 men ages 20 to 40, believed to be associated with Mara Savatrucha or MS-13, transnational gang.
The men face charges related to conspiracy to commit extortion and possess methamphetamine, crystal blue persuasion, with intent to distribute with some suspected involvement, local homicides, according to police.
And this is caller's point, people protesting the rounding up of these people.
And he lives there.
What are we going to do?
I mean, we've got these bad actors in town.
We've got international gang members.
And Homeland Security comes in to sweep them off and get them out of town and so forth.
And town people and even some police protest the action.
Now, yes, I can explain it, except that I have so many times.
And I want to move on.
We've got Steve in Manhattan Beach, California.
Great that you called, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you so much.
An extraordinary honor to talk to you.
I am 67 years old, and I was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York.
went to school at the Little Red Schoolhouse, a lily-white private school during the height of the McCarthy period.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Eugene or Joseph McCarthy?
Oh, Joseph McCarthy.
Joseph McCarthy.
I'm 67, yes.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Eugene, I was in New Hampshire for that winter, but no.
What I wanted to say, Rush, is that Donald Trump was someone who was on my radar as a New Yorker back in the 70s, and he was sort of a clownish figure to me, who I completely ignored and never have watched an episode of The Apprentice or any of those other things.
But I truly believe, Rush, that we are witnessing what I am now starting to call Donaldus Maximus.
I think this man is truly going to save this country.
I feel that my grown children now have an opportunity to live in the kind of limitless republic that I was fortunate enough to be born into in the 50s and 60s and so on.
So I just wanted to ask if you feel that we can begin to call him that.
Donaldus Maxis.
Before I answer that, can I ask you what really brought about the change of heart?
I mean, look, I moved to New York in 1984.
Is that right?
No, 88, in 1988.
And I was there, the Marla Maples thing happened, and Trump on the front page smiling ear to ear with Marla Maples having me quota saying, greatest sex I've ever had.
Cindy Adams was the local Donald Trump expert.
Cindy Adams knew what Donald Trump's going to do before Trump did it, because I think Trump called and told her.
And he was a character then.
He was a larger-than-life character then.
And I actually got to know him shortly after moving there.
It's a long story, but Al D'Amato called him to ask him to show me an apartment in Trump Tower.
And that's how I got to.
And you were there in years prior to that.
And you've always thought him kind of a, you know, he's a funny guy, Joe, didn't take him seriously.
What changed?
I mean, even after his campaign began, you probably weren't on board.
What changed?
Well, that's true.
I was a cruise supporter, and I just, in watching this man evolve, and truly, to me, even in the 26 or 7 odd days he's been president, it's almost breathtaking to watch the evolution as he begins to understand fully what he's up against and what he has the power to accomplish.
And the you're not worried about any of the press criticism.
You're not that that hasn't served to weaken your resolve in the government.
I think it's I watch on Facebook most of my friends.
I've lived in California now for 40 years, but most of my friends still live in Greenwich Village and are hair on fire Democrats who think that the world, Henny Penny, the Henny Penny crowd, is just beyond any kind of reasonable behavior.
But no, I'm not worried about that because I really believe that he is taking the measure of this country and really understands how desperate the situation is.
I think, thank you, because I think this is pretty close to what your average Trump voter thinks.
Now, let's talk about Trump voters for just a second.
Let me ask all of you a question.
What's the number of votes Trump got?
Is that 60?
Okay, 63 million.
And what percentage of the vote did he get?
46, 48.
I forget what it was.
But let's are all 63, is it 63 million?
Did you say what's it?
I don't care.
60, 65.
We've got a ballpark number.
Are all of them just died in the wool, pedal to the medal Trump supporters?
Or are some of them the kind of people that just hated Hillary?
And there was no way, no matter what.
And Trump was the alternate choice.
In other words, what percentage or what number of that 65 million do you think are all in?
Trump, love Trump, go into the rallies, think Trump's the answer, can do no wrong.
Media, they don't care what the media, what percentage of the Trump you think it's less than half.
Mr. Snurdley, weighing in thinks it's less than half.
So you think that of the 60, let's use the number 60 million that voted for Trump, let's just say 32 million are not that crazy about him.
Still, still waiting.
So you don't think they're disappointed?
You don't.
Oh, so you think of the, oh, interesting.
I would have expected you to say that the 32 million that were really not crazy about Trump, they were more anti-Hillary, are now really scared and worried.
This is not at all.
Oh, my God, this is embarrassing.
You think Trump is growing them?
You think Trump's growing so that that number of percentage of 60 million that voted for him, it's getting closer and closer to all of them being all in.
Oh, I do.
I had that question the other day.
I had that question the other day.
Remember, they had this guy on the phone.
He said his liberal friends in California told him if the election were held today, there's no question Hillary would win.
She'd win in the landslide.
Trump would even get 30% of the vote.
And I told this guy, I said, you tell your friend, you tell them I said so.
You tell them if the election were held today, Trump would win by an even bigger margin.
He'd win over 400 electoral votes and Hillary would barely even show it.
You tell them that I said so.
And he said, all right, because he was worried.
His friends were telling.
He was afraid that that was the attitude of a lot of people.
And this is why here's this guy on the phone here from Manhattan Beach, former New Yorker, and he doesn't care about any of my point.
The media has this way.
It's a formulaic blueprint for destroying politicians they don't like.
Most of them are Republican.
Occasionally, there will be a Bob Torricelli that they go after.
But for the most part, they have a blueprint and a formula for destroying Republicans.
And it always works.
If they target, they may not get him out of Washington, but they'll get him out of positions of power.
They'll take a speaker and get rid of him and make him a Fox News consultant.
They'll take another congressman, get him resigning in shame or what.
Or they'll take a president and they'll turn public opinion against him.
His approval numbers are 35.
They've got a blueprint for doing this.
And the blueprint relies on a wide universe of the American people believing what they see in the media.
And whenever these narratives build and they just catch the wave of momentum and inertia, there's no resisting it.
But Trump doesn't fit the blueprint.
Trump doesn't fit the formula.
The media doesn't know how to take him out.
And I'm going to tell you what I think.
I think the more of this stuff they try, the more it's going to backfire on them.
Folks, they've been doing this since last summer.
They've been doing this 15 months.
They've been doing this.
If the Access Hollywood video didn't do it, what do they think they've got that will?
A bunch of Obama holdovers at the CIA saying that Trump worked with Putin to screw Hillary?
What they don't get is it doesn't matter how Hillary was defeated.
That's acceptable.
Hillary Clinton represented this country's over to the people that voted.
And they're never going to understand this.
The people in the media in Washington, in the establishment, I mean, go back before the presidential campaign.
You know, how long did we talk about it here?
That real frustration we had with Republicans in Washington was they didn't see any crisis out there.
They didn't see any death spiral the country was in.
They thought we were kooks.
They thought we were nuts believing in conspiracies.
And yet, the people living out in the country, they're not protected by all the economic security and other kinds of security inside Washington, New York, Boston, or whatever.
I mean, living it every day.
They see it happening every day, and they see the people responsible for it continuing to add to what was doing irreparable damage, largely opening the borders of this country to non-citizens, putting them on the welfare rolls, and calling it immigration.
That just sent them over the edge, and they said, we're going to lose the country if we don't get a hold on our immigration laws and enforce them, and if we don't start assimilating people.
And they saw Washington official Washington totally uninterested in any of that.
And we voice these concerns to Republicans and others in Washington.
They, behind their backs, laugh.
These guys really think there's a crisis out there.
And they thought it was a joke.
And they thought it was people having an overreaction.
So I'd tell you, the disconnect here is wide.
And there's not much linking the disconnect.
I mean, there's very little commonality for there to even be a bridge between these two disconnects.
And I just think the more the media uses their time-honored blueprint techniques to destroy Republican politicians, it hasn't worked on Trump yet.
And they've been trying it a year and a half, folks.
We're dangerously close here to the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
And it's not Trump who's insane.
Trump's having a time of his life.
I mean, that's another thing they can't accept.
I meant to talk about it.
Fox just did a little segment on the back and forth Trump and April Ryan yesterday at the press conference where she asked him if he was going to have the CBC come to whatever he's going to do on reviving the inner cities.
And Trump said, well, hey, you know him.
You can set up the meeting.
And everybody's saying, that's racist.
That's racist.
He said that because she's black and therefore they're black and he knows that she knows them.
And therefore, and therefore, I'm sorry, it isn't going to fly.
Media, you can't get that might work on somebody like Ted Cruz.
It might work on any other Republican, but not going to work on Trump.
Nobody who saw that thought it was racial.
They thought it was funny.
There's a journalist.
Well, you want to set up the meeting?
I'd love to meet him.
And of course, the Congressional Black Caucasians, they said, well, we sent you a letter and you didn't respond to it.
And the White House was, well, we remember you boycotted the inauguration.
Let's not forget that.
Congressional Black Caucasians didn't go to the inauguration.
Anyway, that's a nobody saw racism.
I'm going to tell you, I think a lot of people started to be right.
A lot of people who saw that press conference are not big-time Trumpers loved it for a whole host of reasons.
Here is Donna in Vernon, Connecticut.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hi.
Hey, Raj, first time for me.
My sister Vanessa was on once, though.
And I think you're lulling your listeners into a false sense of security.
I think what Hillary Clinton said is true, and that is that the future is female.
Imagine the intellectual level of the lefties.
And I'm a member of the ladies of the left.
And we've assigned a sex to the future.
In other words, she declared the future was female.
And in fact, it is.
This Trump thing is nothing but a hiccup.
In other words, we had the organization.
Wait, did you say you're a lady of the left?
Yes, it's an active organization.
It's part of the Ferris and Friends.
Oh, okay.
Well, I have news for you.
The world's always been run by women.
Yeah, but now it was a new level.
In civilized society, women have the ultimate power.
It's women who say no.
It's civilized society.
That's what you feminists have never understood.
You've always run the show.
Ask any husband.
You have always run the show.
Anyway, this is not a blip.
It's not a blip.
This is a 180 turning the ship.
And it's not anymore women and children first in the lifeboats back after this.
Okay, remember, folks, I'm going to venture out on a television over the weekend.
I'll be on Fox News Sunday, live at 9 Eastern on the Fox Broadcast Network with Chris Wallace.
It's aired later in the day a couple of times in the Fox News channel, but it's live at 9 a.m.
Eastern.
Check local listings for when it's on in your area.
And have a wonderful weekend.
We will be back here on Monday on President's Day.
Another Monday holiday.
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