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Feb. 27, 2017 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:18
February 27, 2017, Monday, Hour #2
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Hi folks, and welcome back.
It's great to have you with us, kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
Rush Limbaugh, 800 282-2882, email address.
L. Rushbo at EIBNet.us.
Grab audio soundbite number 25.
The uh the president, after addressing the governors for a short time in the White House today, had a meeting with the health care CEOs, CEOs of health care insurance uh companies, and they came out, they praised Trump, and they say that they are ready to work with him.
We have the spokesman for the group here, uh Daniel Hifferty.
He is independence health group, and then there is Joe Swedish from Anthem.
President Trump, Vice President Pence were very clear that they will work toward a smooth transition.
They will continue to dialogue with the leadership in Congress with the industry to make sure that we put our consumers first and continue to give all Americans an opportunity to get access to quality low-cost care.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to echo what uh Dan Hilford he just said.
The president was very engaging, very clear and open about his intent to serve the consumers, uh, to stabilize the marketplace and to build a uh health care delivery health uh insurance model that works for all Americans.
Uh, we're very glad to be with him today to hear that message.
Okay, now some caveats.
These guys said the same thing after meeting with Obama.
So I uh you you have to understand some of the dynamic here.
The dynamic here is that these guys are in a regulated business, and they're having a meeting at the White House in the Citadel of Power with the President of the United States.
And even if these guys, and who knows, I mean, these guys could be radical leftists for all we know, but they're gonna they're they're not gonna go out of the meeting and start ripping into Trump, uh, even if they are of that framework and that mind, because there's been a shift in America where businesses like to sidle up to government.
It's it's uh protection, it's uh close to power, it's in a number of things.
Now, I choose to believe on this one because every meeting that Trump has had, I don't think there are any exceptions to this.
Every meeting with whatever group of business people or issue-oriented people, they all come out of these meetings raving.
It was a meeting of some people last week.
The group escapes my memory for the moment, but people in that meeting came out and said they'd never been in one like this.
And my guess is that what that means is that that Trump conducts meetings and actually tries to get something done rather than just have the meeting, and rather than just announce a framework, and rather than just touch on bullet points or outline points and to speak in large terms about what our four-year objectives are.
My guess is that Trump's get Trump gets in and rolls up the sleeves and starts talking about actual work that's going to be done, things that he wants to do, things he believes the American people elected him to do.
And I think it probably is a stark uh contrast for people who basically work in a bureaucracy, and even CEOs police their own bureaucracy.
Trump is not that.
He does have more in common with these guys than uh most elected officials would have, and particularly in the Obama administration, Obama didn't have anybody to never work in the private sector.
All they have is a bunch of theoreticians who thought they were smarter than everybody that runs businesses in the private sector.
And and and who knows, you know, what kind of pressure was brought to bear.
Remember, Obama's agenda was one that was to be governed against the will of the people.
And who knows what kind of techniques were used to bring these people aboard in things that they might not actually support.
It was a huge labyrinth.
What we know after eight years of Obama is that uh more and more Americans didn't want any more of it.
So Trump has his budget coming up tomorrow night, which he's going to go into much greater detail on, and I think it's gonna shock people.
I I think as Trump continues to shock people.
There's one the left is waiting and the media too.
Don't doubt me on this.
The media is waiting for the first signs that Trump is ready to surrender for peace.
They're looking for the first signs that Trump's maybe going to start waving a little white handkerchief, not a flag, a little white hanger.
Because they're used to being able to affect things with the kind of things they're dealing with with Trump.
Nonstop televising of riots and protests and creating pictures that the whole country is opposed to Trump.
And I think they're used to this kind of thing weakening Washington politicians that are in their crosshairs.
And they haven't figured out yet that Trump doubles down.
All of these news organizations, acting like Tarzan, standing up there beating their chest.
We're not going to the White House correspondence dinner.
Screw Trump.
Trump's mean.
Trump's a big Trump's, we're not.
Trump quotes us fake news.
We're not going, and we're not going to do the parties.
Take that, take that.
Trump says, you know what?
I'm not going either.
And I really hope you have a great time.
I hope you have a wonderful time.
But I got better things to do.
And they're offended.
They have the total freedom to abandon their own party if they want to, which is a fake scholarship event, actually.
That's what the White House Correspondence Thinker is all about.
The White House Correspondence Association, the WHCA is all about supposed scholarships for budding young journalists.
But it's just another another organization, a charity, if you will, that advances liberalism under the guise of having to do with uh with journalism.
But now Trump's saying he's not going to go.
Well, they're indignant and they're offended, and how dare he, even after they've all made big deals about some of them, about them not going.
In this White House Correspondents Center, I've been, I think.
Did I go to two?
I may have only been to one.
And I haven't been back since.
The whole premise of the White House Correspondence Dinner to me has been fake.
It's been fraudulent.
Here's the premise of the White House Correspondence Dinner.
The president shows up one night to have dinner with members of the fourth estate, the drive-by media, where for one night they put aside the differences and have a mutual admiration society for three or four hours, and they tell jokes on themselves.
In fact, that's the duty of the president to be self-deprecating at these things.
And then the media stands up and they tell jokes and they have an entertainer whose job it is to entertain the room.
But that's not what it is.
I've always looked at the White House correspondent.
I get invited, I don't get invited anymore, but for the first 10 or 12 years, I'd get invited every year by a news organization to come sit at their table, and I would say, why would I want to go there?
Why would I want to be in a room of twelve hundred people who really don't like me?
And are going to be trying to fake through the night that they do.
Why would I want to do this?
The whole premise of this thing, and it's the way this White House Correspondence Dinner has evolved, it is nothing more than the left-wing political establishment beating up on the Republicans and conservatives, be he a president or a speaker of the House or whatever.
There's nothing congenial about it.
There's nothing collegial about it.
There's nothing of kind spirit about it.
It's just, and it's it's gotten worse and worse.
And now it's it's it's a it's acquired the name Nerd Prom to describe that politics is showbiz for the ugly, which is what it is.
And so ugly politician people would invite Hollywood types to show up.
And the Hollywood, then they start a red carpet for the thing, and it quickly became something totally unlike what its original intent or purpose was.
I just have never seen any reason to go there.
I mean, 364 days a year, they hate me, they hate a Republican president, they hate Republicans.
Why believe that they're gonna put all that on a shelf for one night.
They're not, and they don't.
One of the reasons Trump ran for president is the way Obama skewered him at one of these White House court.
I mean, it was brutal.
How they made fun of Trump.
Now, admittedly, Trump had been on this birther thing, so it was tit for tat, but it it lit a fire under Trump.
He was somebody nobody ever thought the guy would run.
And nobody ever thought if he ran, he'd really mean it, and nobody really thought if he ever ran, he would win.
And then after he won, nobody really thought it happened.
The Russians had to make it happen.
Then after that, nobody really thinks he knows what he's doing.
Nobody really thinks he's going to be able to get anything done.
Nobody and he just keeps setting the agenda and keeps determining the pace.
And does so in an undaunted non defensive fashion.
He knows the long knives are out for him from all over the place.
This Obamacare repeal and replace is a let me ask you a question about this.
Just a common sense question.
There have been six, minimum six repeal Obamacare bills that the Republicans have passed.
Why don't they just Jim Demitt, the Heritage Foundation had to say it?
Well, this grab one, send it up there to Trump.
Any of the six.
They've already voted on it.
Send it up there.
Why don't they?
Well, there is, I mean, then maybe there's a that they're afraid Trump would sign it, but what does that mean?
Well, well, now that gets to my question.
Because the repeal bills that they set up don't have a replacement.
That's why Obama was never going to sign it.
So these repeal bills were just catnip for you.
Supposed to keep you mollified, half drunk with delirious happiness that your Republican Congress was doing everything it could to stop Obamacare.
But it raises a question.
The Republicans have been control of the House of Representatives since when?
2010.
Okay, since 2017 now.
And we've either had Boehner or Ryan as Speaker in the why isn't there a replacement bill?
What in all of these years, you know, the Obamacare bill itself had been written for 30 years.
It's a Democrat wet dream.
They've had it in a drawer modifying it for decades, waiting for somebody to come along and actually implement it and sign it.
Well, where's the Republican replacement bill?
Well, if Tom Price had one, where is it?
He's now Secretary of Health.
Health I know, I know I'm asking dangerous questions.
But I mean, you in the audience, if you're asking after six, whatever it is in the seven years of of Republican, why isn't there a replacement bill in the drawer there?
Well, now wait a minute, wait a minute.
Well, you know, Russia, it's uh very complicated.
I know, but you've got six years here to work it out.
Well, you know, the conference changes every two years, different members.
Yeah, but the incumbency return rates like 94%.
Yeah, I know, but still there's enough turnover that we don't know if we wrote last year past this year.
Still.
So you have some cynics who believe that there are some Republicans who really don't want to repeal it or don't want to replace it.
Because to an outsider like me, this doesn't seem difficult.
You just they're going through these things.
Well, you know, we gotta, we can only deal with some of it through reconciliation, because we that some of these, if the full repeal and aspects of the replace are gonna require 60 votes in the Senate, and we don't have 60, we've got 52, and we're not gonna do nuclear option for this.
And then in the Senate, you've got you've got actually two sixty vote, you got sixty votes to consider, and you've got to get then you got sixty votes to cut off debate and go to the vote.
So you gotta get sixty votes twice, and they're telling us, well, uh, we're not gonna get sixty votes on everything in the replacement.
So we can only go as far as what we can do in reconciliation, which is legislative process that doesn't need 60 votes.
And that's basically taxes and and stuff like that.
And so they're telling us, well, we don't have 60 votes in the Senate.
But you didn't tell us you did.
You said you needed the Senate, and then you needed a house, then you needed a White House.
We delivered all that.
Now you're saying we're still eight votes.
Yep, that's right.
We need 60 votes in the Senate room.
Okay, just repeal the whole thing with you know, do do it all out outside of the reconciliation process.
Just repeal the whole thing and force replacement.
Necessity being the mother of invention.
But the thing that bothers me about this is that from a from a political standpoint.
We believe that Obamacare ruined and destroyed or set in motion the ruination and destruction of the American health care system.
So common sense would say, just dial a clock back.
Go back to before Obamacare.
It might not have been great, but it's not as bad as this.
Well, no, no, no, no, because if we go back to pre-Obamacare, we're now being told, oh, that was the worst.
Oh, so now you're saying there's a justification for Obamacare?
Is that what you mean?
Well, no.
Well, what do you mean?
Uh that uh that's the theory.
The theory is there are too many people who now have free subsidized insurance.
You can't take it away from them.
What a convenient excuse.
To me, this isn't all that complicated because there's this thing out there called the market.
And we have seen over the course of centuries that markets work and that government intervening in markets is what bollocks everything up.
But there's a fear, there's a fear of uh repealing Obamacare and going back to the market.
The fear is that these evil insurance companies are just gonna start raising premiums and refusing coverage and being mean to people.
Have you seen what the premium increases are now?
66, 68, 70 percent with Obamacare.
It all boils down to if you're sitting out there and you're not detecting a huge desire to do this, Idol, who could tell you that you're wrong.
And President Trump today said, for all of you who uh biting the nails here on on comprehensive tax reform, can't do that till we do deal with Obamacare.
Can't do that because we don't know what the tax circumstances are gonna be on the Obamacare replacement, and until we know that, we can't move forward with tax reform.
Chew on that.
Back in just a second.
Welcome back, L. Rushbo at 800-282-2882.
Now, I'm pretty sure that I heard President Trump say that we couldn't really finish tax reform until Obamacare.
It could have been reversed.
And I watched this uh while in the midst of of show prep, and it was in his uh comment to the governors.
Uh so let me track that down.
But I'm pr I'm pretty sure he said that they can't do tax until Obamacare reform is done because they won't know what the tax reform in Obamacare is.
Until that's known, they can't do the rest of the tax.
I'm pretty sure.
But if I've got it reversed, we'll find out and let you know.
In the meantime, here is Karen in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
It's great to have you here.
How are you doing?
Russ, I have to tell you you're second only to God in giving me hope and courage on a daily basis.
Well, I thank you for that.
I'm very flattered.
I appreciate your and to the first time we have I have hope in an American president that he's gonna come through for us.
So I have a good reason today to be a little more optimistic.
But I have a question for you.
Yes, ma'am.
Why?
Why, after all these years of silence, does George W. Bush feel compelled to comment on the issues of the day.
Why do you think?
I'm so disturbed.
I'm so disturbed.
I I just I it's the all these years of Obama and he had nothing to say.
Yeah.
Nothing.
Same thing with McCain.
McCain has never ripped into Obama the way he rips into Trump or other Republicans.
Look, I haven't spoken to President Bush about Trump.
So I'm I'm the same place you are, with coming up with speculation to answer it.
And my guess, look, I don't think any of this is really complicated.
We're talking about the establishment of the world, not just of Washington, and the bull in the China shop over here who is trying to extricate the United States from whatever the establishment of the world has planned for the world.
And they're not happy about it at all.
I'm sorry.
I folks, I I should have explained what our last caller was asking about.
George W. Bush was interviewed by NBC.
It's on the Today Show today.
And he was asked about President Trump's visa suspension.
The uh uh th first executive order that the Seattle judge said, You can't do that.
You said you were going to ban Muslims, and I don't like that, so screw you, Mr. President.
And it went to the Ninth Circus, the Ninth Circus said, we hate your guts, and we're not gonna let you have this.
So fix it, you're on self, and then we'll deal with the next thing you try.
So they asked Bush what he thinks about all this.
And he said he didn't, if I'm not mistaken, I think he mentioned Trump by name, but he said, I wish our immigration system were more welcoming, is what he said.
So uh I know he's got a book out and it was he was there to sell it.
I don't mind that.
I I uh but but he did not he did not go on television to trash Trump.
He went on there to promote his book, and of course, if he's asked about it, uh that was his answer.
I I actually uh I can understand the question all the eight years of Obama when when Bush was asked repeatedly, not don't do that.
I had my time, it's his time now.
I'm uh uh the protocols and the uh history of traditions say that uh past presidents don't comment.
That didn't work for Bill Clinton, he couldn't help himself.
Uh and Obama is not commenting, but Obama is actively engaged in the sabotage of the Trump administration with all of these community organizing uprisings.
There are 250 nationwide chapters of organizing for action, which is Obama's post-presidency community organizing group.
And look at this is who these people are.
These are what leftists do folks.
Leftists don't leave it at winning at the ballot box.
If they lose at the ballot box, they force themselves on the country or society elsewhere.
Um we take our lumps.
If we lose, we say, okay, we've got to change, we've got to improve, come back and win the next election.
They don't.
When they lose, and even when they win, they because they know that they're in a numerical minority.
But that numerical minority is a vast majority of pop culture and education environments.
And so they just bully their way.
And they have all these embeds in the bureaucracy and in the judiciary.
So even when they lose elections, they have uh ample positions of power occupied by career invisibles.
Because to them governments, everything.
Controlling it, expanding it is everything.
And it's not to us.
So they leave nothing to chance.
If you reject them, well, screw you.
They'll find a way to either bollocks up what defeat that defeated them or just overwhelm the system with what they want anyway by bullying so many people at so frequent a time that people just give up.
All right, okay, I'm tired.
And the left gets what they want.
That's where Trump doesn't give up and let them have what they want.
But people around Trump and some other in the world of politics do.
Now, with Bush not mentioning Trump by name, uh clearly was referring to Bush with uh to Trump with the with the question.
But folks, this is like I said, it's the establishment versus an outsider.
It sounds simplistic, but it isn't.
I mean, that's exactly what's going on here.
It's going to be this way for four years.
I'm telling you, I don't care what the more success Trump has, the greater the energy poured into opposing him is going to be.
If if you were thinking that at some point in these next four years that the opposition to Trump is going to lay down arms, so to speak, and join him, that's never going to happen.
The real leadership of the opposition is never ever going to do anything but continue to ramp up efforts to stop Trump or destroy Trump.
Now, common ordinary everyday Democrats, not leftists, there may be if if the agenda gets implemented and this country starts humming on this on the domestic side, and if jobs come back and if the economy gets up to 3% growth and is sustained and the job market expands accordingly and people's wages go up, it won't matter.
But if but if you think that people today, like Hollywood are ever going to sing Trump's, it's never going to happen, folks.
It's only going to get worse.
And they know it at the White House.
They're not expecting these people to be won over.
That's not why Trump's doing anything he's doing.
They don't expect the establishment types to find one day say, you know what?
You're right, Mr. Trump, this is great.
We like what you're doing to him.
It's never going to happen.
They don't expect that to happen.
There isn't going to be this.
There may be, as I say, average, ordinary, everyday Americans who come home to the cause, but the leaders of the establishment and the power brokers in it and the global establishment, they're never ever going to say, you know what, we were wrong.
And Trump is right.
And we need to get behind.
They're never going to become what they think Trump is, a populist, a nationalist, or what have you.
It's going to be a battle.
That's why you better be glad Trump's the guy raging it.
He's the one guy that you could have elected who's not going to cave on this stuff.
Certainly not in the first month, first six months, first year.
They're just getting warmed up.
I still am of the opinion that the establishment types and the left today still don't know what they're dealing with here.
They're still trying their time-honored blueprint for destroying political figures they don't like, primarily Republicans.
They're fake polls.
How many years did people hate Obamacare?
Now there's a poll out there that says Obamacare's never been more popular.
Really?
Really?
Just how stupid do you think we all are?
After whatever it is, six years of rising premiums, lost coverage, horrible treatment, no access.
Now all of a sudden, and there hasn't been any improvement in enrollment.
The Obamacare enrollment numbers are nowhere near what was needed or what was projected.
But now we've got a poll out there saying that Obamacare has never been more popular.
Well, how maybe it's a people like it 25% and it's only gotten to 23% before.
Who knows?
But the headline is so it's fake news.
And that's going to continue.
I know it's it's tough, folks, because you're good people.
You want you want a unified America with a sense of uh culture and decency and and all of this that that that reasterts and reaffirms the concepts of American exceptionalism.
But let me the the left and who they are, you know, you look you watch Hollywood, you watch the Oscars, you watch any left-wing, it's it's it's not even Democratic.
It is ultra-left-wing radical.
You know, I ask myself, when did this happen?
Because the left, you know, George Bush won two elections.
2000 and 2004, so 2008.
Uh we didn't see it was obviously there.
I mean, we saw effervescence and this bubbling up of this extreme left-wing cultural revolution, so to speak, but it seems like with the inauguration of Obama, outward appearances, it seemed like the country flipped and did a 180 overnight.
And I uh talked to a lot of people about this.
How when did this happen?
Where did it turns out it didn't?
Obama won two elections, but not certainly the first one, not because people wanted that agenda of his.
He never told them what his agenda was.
Not as it played out.
Obama was something other.
You after after eight years of it, look what happened in this election.
Did the country flip again?
No, I maintain it didn't flip in 2008, 2009, and we were not a 60% radical leftist population like they tried to portray it as.
They've never been a majority.
We just fell for one of the greatest illusions in modern politics.
And this election has exposed that.
So who are these people?
You know, I go back to Robert Reich and his appearance on Stephanopoulos show.
The Democrat Party has not been in this bad a shape since the 1920s.
Well, how in the hell can that be?
If during the eight years of Obama, they won and they had converted this country into this radical leftist extremist culture and country.
And if that was the trend, and if that's what Obama's elections meant, then how is it that the Democrat Party, which is the home of all of that, has lost 1,200 seats since Obama's second year in office.
How is it that Reich is right?
How is it that the Democrat Party has less power today?
You have to go back to the 1920s, almost a hundred years to find the Democrat Party as weak and out of power as it is today.
Well, how did that happen with just one election?
Well, it didn't happen in one election.
The fact is the Democrats have been losing elections, except for the White House for the last eight years in numbers that have not been reported, other than on programs like this.
Now, what's becoming of them?
That that's what I want to tackle when we get back.
Plus uh lots of phone calls from you.
Hang on, folks.
Be right back, don't go away.
By the way, I had it right from Trump's uh little address to the governors today.
Trump insisted tax reform is not an option until the White House and Congress can push through a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Obamacare reform has to come first because it has such a drastic effect on the tax code that until they fix that, they can't reform taxes.
In fact, Trump added that tax reform is a tiny ant compared to the replacement of Obamacare.
So, and now I mean if look, I can I can I can be Mr. Pessimism as well as anybody.
I just choose not to, but I mean I can do it.
You want me to you want me to replicate some of the pessimisms?
I'll show you what's out there.
Well, really.
So we can't do tax reform till we replace Obamacare, and it's clear that the Republicans in the House don't want to replace Obamacare, so we're never going to get tax reform either, Rush.
What do you say to that?
I know some of you are dialing the phone even now to tell me that.
We shall see.
In the meantime, uh Rich in Caldonia, Washington uh, Wisconsin.
Great to have you with us, sir.
Hello.
Well, I think you're an honor and a privilege.
I've been trying to get through for eight years.
I'm glad you made it, sir.
All right, thank you.
Or then wise that I listen to you daily.
I'm calling because I find it kind of worrisome that me Brzezinski is trying to change the subject this morning.
I watch it just to get an idea of what the other side's talking about before I listen to you with her uh talking about how in 1982 Donald Trump uh used uh was his own press agent.
And it's just it's just concerning that we have nobody coming forward other than you to defend the president, basically.
Um I think there's more than me, isn't there?
Well, not really, I'm not outspoken.
I mean, as far as the media goes, we I mean Tucker Carlson, I think Tucker should be voted as the next press secretary for Donald.
I love watching Tucker.
You like you like Tucker.
That'd be the pick cut.
That'd be another pay cut situation back there.
Uh yeah, but still it's uh it's a it's an honor.
And I find you.
Well, let me tell you what, let me tell you what Mika Bzinsky was talking about.
Do you know what she was talking about when she said that press was uh Trump is his own press agent?
Oh, yeah, but in the 1982, yeah, during his divorce and stuff and the media back.
It was the media even then back then.
Well, but what he would he had a fake name.
He would he call the press as his own press agent.
He would he would say, Hi, you know, I'm I'm John McClure of the Trump organization, but instead it was Trump calling.
And we save money.
And uh, whatever.
And so, but they're they're going with that they use this kind of stuff to say, so you can't trust Trump.
Trump's just phony baloney plastic banana good.
Uh we're dealing here with with uh critics like that.
Again, that they they come from uh there's only one way Washington works, and since Trump doesn't fit, we can destroy him.
And I I if I were you, if you're gonna watch that stuff, just don't take it seriously.
Uh I would advise against washing it.
Watch it.
I I'm tell folks, seriously.
Do you want to live a better life?
Do you really want to have a normal optimistic outlook on life every day?
Don't watch that stuff.
Don't watch CNN, don't read the New York Times.
If you look at Drudge and if you see headlines that portend the end of the world tomorrow, don't click on it.
Just avoid the crap that pollutes the daily so-called news that comes from left-wing news organizations.
You will be amazed.
It and it doesn't take long either.
Just two days.
You go on a drive-by media fast.
Two days of it, and your outlook on life will be dramatically improved.
You won't believe it.
And I know you say, well, I gotta stay focused on the opposite.
No, you don't.
I'll do that for you.
I'll tell you what they're up to, and as a bonus, I'll I'll nuke it.
You don't need to expose that's why one of the many reasons I'm here.
I know how to do this without it ruining my life.
I know how to do this without it ruining my day.
That's why I'm here to run interference to be the boundaries for you.
But I don't watch half of this stuff anymore.
Because it's so predictable and it's so boring, and frankly, a lot of it is is is is really just lame.
It's just lame some of the analysis that you get to explain things out there.
And there is more speculating.
You know, everybody thinks they're a political tactician.
So you'll take, like this Obamacare versus tax story.
You won't believe the number of blogs that you will read with the possibilities of what this means.
And it'll all be wild guesses rooted in esteemed political analysis.
And none of it is going to be based on anything factual beyond what is known.
And it's all to get clicks, and it's all to get eyeballs and this kind of thing.
Stick with me here, folks, and you will not ever be led astray on some of this stuff.
It is the fastest three hours in media.
Look, I've been putting this off because other things have been superseding it, not really putting off.
But I'm going to get into this take on what Robert B. Reich said about the weakened state of the Democrat Party, because there's a bit of analysis that goes along with this.
It'll fit nicely with what I am talking about now.
So hang on.
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