Caller: Thank You, President Bush

RUSH: Colleen in Bergen County in New Jersey. Welcome. Thank you for waiting, and it’s great to have you here.

CALLER: It’s great to talk to you, Rush. I want to start my call off with congratulations on your Pittsburgh Steelers. We love our football. Those are manly men.

RUSH: I’ll say.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Exactly right.

CALLER: Yes. I also want to say, I want to start by saying, there’s an article that came out in the San Francisco Chronicle by Debra Saunders.

RUSH: Debra Saunders is a friend of mine, by the way.

CALLER: Oh, good! Oh, good! All right, see? I knew she had to be somebody good because it started off that Bush ‘showed us that the USA is no paper tiger,’ and it starts off, ‘From the day Bush took office, the long knives were out,’ and that ‘Al-Qaeda members had told our intelligence officials that they never thought Bush would respond to the 9/11 attacks as ferociously as he did,’ and it also quotes, ‘To trash Bush was to belong.’ So this call is about, I want to bid my commander-in-chief a fond and loving farewell, and I’m probably going to get emotional because, ‘I want to thank you, Mr. President, George Walker Bush, for keeping us all safe. I can truly say this: You have read those intelligence reports. You know and you have always known the attempts that this enemy has made on our own soil throughout your entire presidency. You truly have protected us. You love our families. You love our sons, our daughters, our nieces, and especially our nephews, as if they were your own, and it’s a testament of how you were raised: so humble and so proud. Wealthy or not, you’re one of the most humble men, you and your father, that I think this country has ever known.’ I mean, Rush, the story that you ate lunch with him and he had peanut butter and jelly.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I mean…

RUSH: He likes… It’s either peanut butter and jelly or baloney sandwiches, he likes. I forget. I think he likes the red jelly, not the purple jelly, and he said to me, ‘The peanut butter is good for you, Limbaugh. You should try it.’

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Peanut butter and jelly on rye. And you mentioned, by the way, Colleen, intelligence reports. What is the theme that we have heard from President Bush as he’s easing his way out of the White House? He continues his farewell address, other remarks he’s making publicly have to do with how successful he feels in keeping America safe. There has not been an attack on our soil. It’s clearly the thing that he took most seriously. I doubt we can understand what it’s like to be president of the United States, having taken an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and the people and have 9/11 happen on your watch. You don’t know what’s happening the next two hours. You don’t know what they’ve got planned the next day, the next week. You have to put that at the top of your priority list and make sure that another one of those things happening on our soil does not happen.

He pulled that off. He succeeded. And I, therefore, all through this transition period, I guarantee you, he’s been reading these intelligence reports, because whether he’s on his way out or not, that remains his number one objective. And as the president-elect, Barack Obama has been reading the same intelligence reports. Whatever Bush is getting, Obama is getting them, too. We haven’t heard a word from him about it. It’s not on his radar to talk about this, at least at this stage. He’s going to have to at some point, because the threats are there.