Armed Forces Radio and Rush

RUSH: Carol in Waldorf, Maryland, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. I just wanted to share with you that when we lived in Sicily from ’95 to ’98, you were not on the radio then, and we had found your show when we lived in Guam, and we planned our dinner hours where our two teenaged children could watch it with us. Then when we went to Italy, we were kind of disappointed because we couldn’t get you, but then we found out there was a group of people, somebody’s mother sent her your shows, and we would have a dinner and just share, you know, sit down and it would be the Rush Limbaugh night out for all of us. And it was kind of a behind-the-scenes thing, nobody wanted to let anybody know we were doing it, but that’s the only way we could get you. So I hope that they don’t take that one hour of, you know, some sanity that those soldiers, sailors, and Marines, everybody gets.

RUSH: You know, here’s the interesting thing about that, two points. The Democrats want to take me off Armed Forces Radio, and they’ve wanted to do it since, well, 2004 is when the first of the two recent efforts was begun by Senator Harkin, being spawned once again by Media Matters for America. The objective back then was actually to get liberal talk radio on Armed Forces Radio. Congress does not determine who’s on Armed Forces Radio. The Pentagon does. In my case, I ended up on Armed Forces Radio because the Pentagon took a poll of military personnel overseas and said, ‘What do you want to hear that we don’t have?’ And I won the poll, as a write-in. I was not on the list of programs that were not at present being offered. I won as a write-in. The secretary of defense at the time, Les Aspin, responded to the pressure. He was over at the Pentagon, secretary of defense, and he put the first hour of the program on. Now, we come forward to the smear of last week, and the effort here is now to start pressure through, of course, the Fairness Doctrine to get me off of Armed Forces Radio. Now, that’s an interesting proposition, because, let me ask you, soldiers, military personnel wanted me in a write-in campaign in 1994, ‘5, whatever it was. In ensuing years, those in Armed Forces Radio who have listened to me have heard nothing but 100% total support, love, and appreciation. Why would a bunch of Democrats want to take that off of Armed Forces Radio so that military personnel could not hear a supportive, appreciative voice?

CALLER: I truly feel that it is just another morale buster. I mean, the one time that they hear somebody that’s supporting them — I mean what we did get over there, because we got a lot of NPR and mess like that —

RUSH: Yeah, 24/7 NPR is on.

CALLER: Huh?

RUSH: It’s on 24/7 over there, not just an hour of it, it’s on all day.

CALLER: Right. But like I said, when they need that, they need that, to hear that, that what they’re doing — I was online with my son, who’s actually in Afghanistan, and he has said, ‘Yeah, they want to take him off because they think that he’s just making us all a bunch of right-wingers,’ and I went back and I said, ‘Yeah, but most of you volunteers do have some common sense stuff,’ and so if they want to say they’re right-wingers, who cares, at least they’re hearing somebody that supports them for once.

RUSH: Well, I think your son’s got it half right. They are worried that these people, uniformed military personnel, might be converted to conservatism. But the idea to take a supportive voice away from them, that’s what speaks volumes. You can say that they want to harm the morale or what have you, and I don’t know if it would do that, but they certainly do want to deprive military personnel overseas of a voice — one hour a day — that is supportive. Democrats do. So you have to assume that they want some sort of harm to come to the military. They’re afraid of something here, probably your son’s right about being persuaded, who knows. But it’s because they can’t compete. They got some liberals on Armed Forces Radio; nobody cares. Do you think the troops actually want to get up and listen every day to some liberal bashing them, as a bunch of rapists and murderers and so forth and listening to tapes and sound bites of Jack Murtha played over and over and over again? And why would Democrats, why would anybody in the US government want American troops to hear that stuff? It’s perverse. It is sick! But that’s the deal. I’m glad you called. I appreciate the story, Carol. Thanks much.