RUSH: So I just saw this Chelsea Clinton story yesterday. The headline is: “Chelsea Clinton Accuses Trump of ‘Sad, Misogynistic, Sexist Rhetoric.'” And I’m wondering if she knows who her dad is. I’m reading this, “Who’s your daddy? Pedro Martinez? Who’s your daddy?”
Battleground Poll: Clinton Up Two
RUSH: Some new polling data that’s out, and it’s still close margin of error stuff. This is a Battleground poll. This is a poll I’ve often cited. This is Ed Goeas and Celinda Lake. She’s a Democrat; he’s a Republican. And on that basis they have a premise of an unbiased poll. It’s called the Battleground, and Clinton’s up 42 to 40 in this poll, and they claim that the debates are gonna be the deciding factor. Yeah, people go back and forth on these debates. I’ve heard experts say, debates don’t really change anything, and I’ve heard her experts say they are everything in a campaign. I think it depends on each individual campaign.
CNN has a story today — see if this fits with what you think. “Millennials Are More Conservative Than You May Think.” Now, be careful there. It’s not saying Millennials are mostly conservative. It says they’re more conservative than you might think. They could still be little commie blips running around, but they may not be as commie as you think. And from CNN’s perspective, that could be translated into Millennials more conservative than you may think. So we will have delve into that.
RUSH: Do you know who the third-party candidate is? Does his name ring a bell? Gary Johnson. Exactly right. Now, this guy, third-party, the media loves third-party candidates, no matter who they are because third-party candidates genuinely mean the Republican candidate’s gonna lose.
Third-party candidates take votes from the Republicans and the media loves these guys and the media heaps all kinds of praise on third-party candidates. And they treat them with great respect and they afford them great substance and talk about how their quest to become president even though hopeless is deeply, deeply important.
Well, anyway, this guy, Gary Johnson was on PMSNBC this morning, being interviewed by the noted plagiarist, Mike Barnicle, and he asked Gary Johnson (paraphrasing), “So, with all of this going on in Aleppo –“
And Gary Johnson, “What?”
“Aleppo, with all the stuff going on in Aleppo.”
Gary Johnson: “What are you talking about?”
Barnicle said, “Are you serious? You don’t know what Aleppo is?”
“No, no. What’s Aleppo?”
“Well, it’s only the center of the refugee crisis in Syria. It’s a town in Syria and that’s at center of the refugee crisis.”
“Oh, oh, oh.” So the third-party candidate, who’s being treated with great respect and admiration, didn’t even know what, much less where, Aleppo is, and they talk about Trump.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: No, I really don’t understand what the big deal is about a Libertarian candidate not knowing where Aleppo is. I’m not surprised if a Libertarian candidate wouldn’t know where Damascus is. Why would a Libertarian know anything about a city in a foreign country? It’s not their bailiwick.
Now, if you ask them questions about medical marijuana, you ask ’em questions about open borders or whatever, and with Gary Johnson, if you start talking to him about the glories of the carbon tax, he’ll talk your head off, especially if you start talking about medical marijuana. If you start talking to a Libertarian about marijuana, period, they know everything, they’ll talk your head off.
But why would we expect a Libertarian, who doesn’t want us to be anywhere in the world, to understand where Aleppo is? That’s not why they’re running. That’s my defense of Gary Johnson, while everybody else is piling on the guy.
Coming Soon in The Limbaugh Letter: Ben Watson of the Baltimore Ravens
RUSH: After the program today I’m interviewing for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter a Baltimore Ravens tight end, Benjamin Watson, who has played also for the New England Patriots. Why are you frowning in me? You didn’t know? What do you mean, what’s his deal? Benjamin Watson, he’s tight end, played for the Patriots, he’s played for the New Orleans Saints, and the Ravens. He’s 36. He’s a 12-year veteran.
He just, in a preseason game I think, blew out his knee. He’s gone for the season. But he has a new book, and that’s what we’re gonna be talking to him about. He’s distressed at the racial divide occurring in the country. He’s distressed over not a lot of it, but he’s distressed over things happening to the African-American community by left-wing activism. He’s Christian.
But it’s very risky, think the opposite of Kaepernick in some regards. I don’t want to precharacterize it, the interview, until we speak to him. It was originally scheduled for the current issue. We were gonna talk to him in August and then he was unable to get away. We do the interviews at 3:15 on the day that we choose it and during training camp he simply didn’t have the time to do it and asked for a later date and then like a week later had the injury to the Achilles tendon, and so we scheduled it for the next issue coming up. And I’m looking forward to talking to him this afternoon.
Nate Silver Ups Trump’s Chance of Winning
RUSH: Trump leads four-way race in Florida, Mason-Dixon for the first time in a long time. Let’s see. Is this the one we mentioned? This must not be the one where he’s doing better. There’s somewhere where he’s doing much better than Romney is doing and — oh. It’s in the electoral vote project — I got it. It’s FiveThirtyEight, it’s these guys at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver.
Nate Silver says that Trump has right now a 35, 33, whatever the percent chance of winning, which is up from like 15 or 20. And he also, he associates right now the polling data, if the election played out, Trump would get 242 electoral votes. Romney got 202 in 2012. That’s what it is that I remember. So Trump is outperforming Romney. That’s gonna really irritate some of the Never Trumpers out there. Hell, might even irritate Romney, for all we know. (interruption) What’s what? I don’t know that the Never Trumpers have a de facto head or real head. I don’t know if the Never Trumpers have a leader. That’s an interesting question. Is there a leader of the Never Trumpers? You know, there wasn’t a leader — oh. Speaking of the Tea Party. Tea Party didn’t have a leader.
FEC Commissioner Warns: Tea Party Animating Democrat Attacks on Free Speech
RUSH: This story, I mentioned this earlier, and no better time than now. It’s from the Washington Examiner our old buddy Paul Bedard. “FEC Commissioner Warns Democrats Are Gunning for Conservative Media.” This is one of the points made in that anonymous piece from Claremont yesterday.
“A key Federal Election Commission Republican warned Wednesday that liberals are moving aggressively to ‘amend the First Amendment’ so that conservatives are silenced and businesses are chased ‘out of the democracy.’ In some the toughest criticism leveled at Democrats, Commissioner Lee E. Goodman said that the attack started once the Tea Party changed American politics in the 2010 election and now dominates the politics of the Left. ‘It has triggered a very aggressive movement by people to amend the First Amendment.'”
He was on with Howie Carr yesterday on the radio saying this. Now, there was a movie, I was watching a George Clooney movie and it was one of these movies that had three parts in it. I wish I could remember the name of the movie. But in the movie Clooney played a Democrat candidate or Democrat official, and the first third of the movie was how the Democrats were paranoid of Operation Chaos.
Remember I came in and I told you about it. I had no idea when the movie was actually playing in theaters. Operation Chaos was an offshoot growth from the Tea Party. The Tea Party, make no mistake about this, this guy, Goodman, that’s exactly right. The Tea Party, this organic movement that came from the backbone of America, the Tea Party, people that had never been in politics before, all they had done is vote. And they started going to town hall meetings and they started attending political events.
The Democrats have to manufacture their groups. Every protest group is the result of a donation or investment by George Soros. Black Lives Matter is bought and paid for, it’s a created group. Occupy Wall Street was created, funded, paid for, orchestrated by the left in response to the Tea Party. It was made to look like it was the Tea Party of the left, that it just organically came into exist. By organic, I mean natural. The Tea Party came into existence, and it was just average, ordinary Americans from all over the country.
There was no leader. There were no donations. In fact, it was undermined by people that fundraised against it, if you ask me, but that’s another story. The Tea Party was legitimate Americans fed up with what Obama was doing. It was related to spending, it was related to Obamacare. They created Occupy Wall Street; and the media, of course, ballyhooed Occupy Wall Street as another organic movement. But this Goodman guy is exactly right.
They are paranoid of actual Americans who align politically, get involved politically who are not officially part of the Republican Party or any other organization because they’re powerful. And there’s no way to take out the Tea Party, there’s no single leader, there’s no single person you can destroy and thus destroy the movement. And it was fascinating.
It’s still there in spirit, it’s still there. The people that made up the Tea Party are still there, they still think what they think, or what they thought. And they’re prepared to vote on it, and many of them are with Trump, not all, but many of them are with Trump, and it scares the hell of the Democrats.
And this guy at the FEC, the Republican, is warning everybody that the Democrats on the FEC are prepared to do everything they can to undermine anybody in conservative movement, media, that might be said to act as a — well, like the Drudge Report, they’re targeting Drudge. They think Drudge is an unofficial Republican campaign aide.
They think that of talk radio. And so they are preparing moves on the First Amendment to redefine what political speech is. They want to limit it. And the First Amendment specifically is about political speech, specifically political speech.
Super Bowl Rematch on NFL Opening Night
RUSH: We’ve got the opening NFL game tonight, Carolina Panthers at the Denver Broncos, a Super Bowl rematch. Doesn’t happen much. Super Bowl rematch on opening night. All kicks off around 8:30. Pregame is earlier than that on NBC with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. We will be here tomorrow, Open Line Friday. Might even do some environmentalist wacko picks for the opening weekend tomorrow.