RUSH: We start in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Alan. Thank you, sir. Glad you waited.
CALLER: Thank you. Right thinking dittos.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: As always, Rush. I just wanted to make a quick follow-up to the rumor concerning the, as I call it, the not-so-charming Michelle Obama.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: Well, it certainly seems possible that the whole thing was orchestrated by the left to impugn conservatives. What I haven’t heard anyone say is that it’s believable. If you think about it, it would never work if it wasn’t believable. If someone tried to spread a rumor about Barbara Bush ranting about black people using the N-word, no one would buy it, but in this case no one’s putting that out there that it’s preposterous.
RUSH: Okay, now, let me explain something to you. What you have just done with your comment has put your host in great jeopardy.
CALLER: Well, that’s not the intention, of course.
RUSH: Well, of course, it wasn’t. Of course, you’re trying to share an honest opinion using your First Amendment right to do so. But if I agree with you, if I agree with you and say, ‘You know what, Alan, you’re right, that’s the reason it really had legs is ’cause it’s totally believable,’ then the next story that Nedra Pickler at AP writes would be, ‘Limbaugh doesn’t care if tape exists, he knows she probably talks that way anyway,’ and then that would be the next series of stories to keep this thing alive. If I disagree with you on this, then I do a disservice to my audience because obviously you have a point here. You do have a point. Barbara Bush — and I know Barbara Bush — and you’re absolutely right, she would not for one thing take the pulpit of a church, and number two, she wouldn’t start running around using the N-word and all that. But the reason that you say it’s believable — let me ask you, why do you think it’s believable, rather than me — ha-ha — why do you think it’s believable?
CALLER: It’s just the impression that she gives.
RUSH: What’s the impression? Be specific. What’s the impression that she gives?
CALLER: I won’t use the word angry, I’ll use the word radical, how’s that? Just from her speeches and her writings. I didn’t dive into her whole thesis, it was too long, but I did download it and look it over, and just their background, I mean just when she gets up and speaks, it seems to fit her persona or personality.
RUSH: You mean she comes off less than content?
CALLER: Yeah. I mean exactly. I mean you’ve heard her, anybody paying attention has heard the way she talks.
RUSH: You work for the AP, by the way, Alan? I just have to ask this.
CALLER: No, this is not a setup. Personally I wish it was true if it could derail Obama, but whether or not it is, no one can deny that it’s believable.
RUSH: Limbaugh caller says he hopes rumor true. Limbaugh agrees. (laughing) All right, Alan, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Thanks much.
CALLER: Love it. Thank you.
RUSH: You bet. Here’s Dave in Pinole, California, nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, God bless you, my brother.
RUSH: Thank you, my brother.
CALLER: I have an observation on this Fox interview with Beckel.
RUSH: Which one?
CALLER: Well, the one regarding this supposed tape of Michelle —
RUSH: The one he was worried about the shoe dropping on her the next day, the one he was really, really worried about?
CALLER: Exactly. Fox pretended like they didn’t know about it, but the follow-up question to Beckel was, ‘Is this bigger than the thesis?’ Now, what thesis were they talking about?
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Bigger than the feces?
CALLER: The thesis, yes.
RUSH: Oh, the thesis, the thesis, oh!
CALLER: Thesis. Thesis, thesis. Yes.
RUSH: Close. Very, very close. Okay, you’re right. So the question was, is it your understanding this is bigger than say a college thesis paper?
CALLER: Correct. And that was making reference I’m sure to Michelle’s college thesis, because that was one that had been bantered around a couple months ago.
RUSH: And of course our old buddy Beckel said, significantly so.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Okay. So your point is that Beckel is lying when he goes on Fox last night and says he had nothing to do with this, that he was talking about an Obama, a Barack Obama rumor that he was trying to shut down?
CALLER: Nah, he knew about it, and so did Fox, by their follow-up question to him.
RUSH: Okay. You’re just illustrating the point, then. Everybody knew this. Everybody was talking about it.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. And also I have a T-shirt for you.
RUSH: What’s that?
CALLER: That would be: Change Diapers, not America. Yes.
RUSH: (laughing) Well, they are nannies, aren’t they?
CALLER: They are.
RUSH: Thanks. Appreciate that, Dave. We’ll go to Nashville next. Stephanie, hi. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, dittos from Nashville.
RUSH: Thanks very much.
CALLER: So me and my husband and son were driving back from Disney World, so we had a lot of time to listen to the radio, and we were listening to another good friend, Sean Hannity, and he was talking about not being able to confirm or deny that there was a tape, so we thought, well, if we want to really find out the truth we’ll listen to Rush, and we heard you the morning that you were saying that I don’t know if there’s a tape or not, but maybe there’s one, and maybe she said ‘why’d he.’
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So you know I started listening a few extra days in the morning — I have to go to work unfortunately after the 11 o’clock hour, so we just kind of were led to believe after listening to you for a few days that there probably really wasn’t a tape, or, you know —
RUSH: See, this is interesting. So what you are saying, if I understand this, after listening to me, your ultimate maximum source, you concluded there wasn’t a tape?
CALLER: Unfortunately, yes. I mean not unfortunate for listening to you, but I mean we were kind of hoping there was one too so we could knock this whole thing out of the ballpark.
RUSH: Right, right, I understand that. (laughing)
CALLER: And I kept telling my husband everything morning that, you know, it must not be true because I’ve been listening to Rush and he just will not bring up this tape.
RUSH: All right, see, there you have it. This is great. That is fabulous of you, Stephanie, because here are regular listeners to the EIB Network concluding there was not a tape after listening to me not mention this for all of these days prior to the day that I did.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Ron in Wichita. Hello, sir, glad you waited. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Yes, Rush. Regarding the Bob Beckel comment regarding the —
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: — rumor that he’d heard that he thought was really a big threat. You know about the quickest way to tell when somebody is lying is when they overemphasize their statement, a little bit too much drama involved. The first time I heard Bob Beckel say that, the first thing that rang in my head is: Hillary Clinton supporter. Somebody starts a rumor; Bob Beckel substantiates the rumor for the benefit of Hillary Clinton.
RUSH: Well, but the thing is, I think — and I’m going to have to double-check this — that Beckel’s in the tank for Obama.
CALLER: No.
RUSH: I think Beckel has been in the tank for Obama for a while, but I’m not sure. That’s my memory. I’m going to have to check that. You could be right if my memory is wrong. If I’m right, he had another purpose, and his purpose was specifically to rope in conservatives to spread the thing around using his imprimatur as credibility for it —
CALLER: Sure, sure. You’re substantiating the rumor.
RUSH: — thereby allowing the Obama camp to then walk around trying to discredit all these conservatives. In other words, it was a trap. It was a trap that Beckel was laying. I think that’s what was going on.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Laguna Beach, California, Gene, glad you waited, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, you are the man. I do want to say about this whitey tape, what do I care about somebody saying something about whitey, Michelle Obama? She’s made so many horrible statements about change, Barack will make you change, first time being proud of our country, America’s a mean country. I think this is all a Democratic effort to inoculate her so that the statements that she’s already made, everything will be dismissed.
RUSH: Well, you’re exactly right, but there’s another step to this. Not only is it to inoculate her and Barack, it is to frighten and intimidate people like me from refraining from criticizing her any, at all, in the future, for fear that the hell of the Drive-By Media and the Obama campaign will rain down on us. What they don’t understand, what I’ve tried to tell them and they still won’t understand, the people in the Drive-By Media did not make me. The AP had nothing to do with building me up and making people interested in me. I did that. The AP can’t destroy me. Obama can’t destroy me, not with news coverage, anyway. Fairness Doctrine, you know, restrictive on free speech rights and Obama could do that. But the media is not going to be able to. They’re not going to intimidate anybody here. In fact, the AP — get this; I just read this — the AP has just issued a new policy setting guidelines on bloggers for what they can use on their blogs from AP.
Now, it’s being disguised as, ‘Hey, you bloggers aren’t paying us for this, the fair usage, you’re vastly exceeding what’s available for fair usage,’ but this is an all-out war now. The bloggers are probably, ‘Screw you, ABC, we’re not going to mention you, period, then.’ Well, that’s not going to go for me. I’m going to keep mentioning AP, but they’re not going to intimidate me. I think that, in addition to inoculating everybody or her, Gene, they’re trying to also intimidate people into just not talking about her. They know they’ve got a problem with her. They know they’ve got a huge problem. She just goes off the handle and says things and they don’t know what it’s going to be next. They are surrounding her with a new staff of women. They just hired Patti Solis Doyle from the Clinton campaign. How do you handle Michelle (My Belle)? You surround her. Democrat operative Stephanie Cutter joining the Obama campaign, senior advisor, chief of staff to Michelle Obama. Cutter, a longtime aid to Senator Kennedy, served as communications director to Senator Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign. Her role underscores a growing concern with the campaign and among outside allies that Michelle is becoming a lightning rod for the opposition.
So they basically surrounded her with a woman that’s going to put duct tape on her mouth. And whenever they want her to speak, they’re going to give her the script, and say, ‘Do you promise to stick to it?’ And if Michelle (My Belle), nods her head yes, then they’ll rip the duct tape off and they’ll send her out to speak. They know that they have a big problem.