RUSH: Folks, also, I don’t know what to do today. I really don’t know what to do. The audio sound bite roster is, again, 95% about me. The reason for my indecision here is that — well, I’ve talked to you about this before. People lob attacks at you and when you respond to them they think, a-ha, we’ve hit home runs here. There’s so many outrageous, fabricated lies. There is a genuine full-fledged smear campaign being orchestrated by liberal sportswriters and picked up by other liberals in the State-Controlled Media that it’s breathtaking. I’m used to being taken out of context, but we have sourced it, we have found where it was found, these fake, totally made up quotes attributed to me which are being repeated without any fact-checking at all by liberal sportswriters. The interesting thing about this to me is I think back to Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman saying, ‘Oh, the Internet is a sewer. They need us, professional journalists with filters. The Internet is a sewer out there, you can read anything, people believe everything that’s out there, Tom, and, yes, our professionalism, we’re highly trained professionals, and only we have the ability to filter the stench that is the sewer of the Internet.’
All right, fine. Only professional journalists have the ability to wander through the sewer and figure out what’s valid and what isn’t. So a bunch of professional journalists are believing everything in the sewer, they’re not checking it at all, they’re not fact-checking, they are embarrassing themselves, and the sound bite roster today is largely about this. I’m in a dilemma here over whether to waste valuable broadcast time talking about some of this. So I’m going to mix the two. We will mix the two as we always do, but I just want to warn you. As you people know, I’m very uncomfortable using this program to talk about myself. I’ve run a test, I take an average 45-minute segment of this show and compare the number of times I use the word ‘I’ compared to the number of times Obama uses the word ‘I’ in an average 45 minute speech and it’s no contest. I mean I’m a piker compared to the personal pronoun usage of President Obama.
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RUSH: Thomas in Kettering, Ohio, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. It’s great to have you here.
CALLER: Rush it’s a pleasure and an honor to talk to you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you.
RUSH: Well, this is the dilemma that I admitted having when the program began. I’ve talked about this a bunch. Brief history. When I started this radio program in 1988, I had never been called a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a homophobe. People who knew me never thought that. It was ridiculous. But then I got on the radio as a conservative and all of a sudden I started being attacked as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. And I didn’t know what to do about it. It had never happened, and there was nobody that could give me any guidance. I just got a bunch of advice and there are basically two pieces of advice I got. ‘Rush, you gotta hit back! You can’t let people make those claims about you and try to ruin your reputation and smear you. You gotta fight back on that!’
So I would take that advice and I would respond to it, and the critics would just (rubbing hands together) laugh with glee, ‘A-ha! We must have hit a home run. Limbaugh’s upset,’ and they would just add to the smears. And then other people said, ‘Look, you’re bigger than all that combined. You just have to ignore it because if you acknowledge it, you just elevate it and more and more people hear about it than otherwise would,’ and those are always the two options that you have. Now, there are mitigating factors, that is, I think when race is brought into it that you can’t let stand. If people are trying to destroy your reputation and your credibility, your life and your career by attacking you as a racist, then you have to stand up and fight that. Now, we are in the process behind the scenes working to get apologies and retractions with the force of legal action against every journalist who has published these entirely fabricated quotes about me, slavery, and James Earl Ray. I never said them. We have tracked them. We know where they came from. We don’t know the identity but we know where they came from, a single blogger who posted the stuff on my Wikipedia page in Wiki quotes, unsourced. Wikipedia says, ‘Well, this is in dispute.’ It’s not in dispute. They were never uttered. I never said them. And I’ve even told reporters, ‘I never said them.’ One reporter said to me, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ve created a masterful publicity stunt here,’ meaning my effort to buy the St. Louis Rams is just a publicity stunt. ‘Enjoy the controversy. I’m not going to retract it. Why should I? This is good for you,’ he wrote. He’s black. Jason Whitlock.
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RUSH: St. Louis Rams. One of the funny things about this, it’s been reported in such a way that leads people to believe I am the primary guy in the group, that I am the major bidder in the group, and that’s not the case. You know, I’m from Missouri, a town called Cape Girardeau, a hundred miles south of St. Louis, and I remember when the St. Louis football Cardinals decamped and moved to Arizona. St. Louis is a great sports town. (interruption) What? Yes, it is. A great sports town, St. Louis really is. (interruption) It is. But don’t distract me. The opportunity was presented to me to become part of a group that was going to make a bid on the Rams. I’ve always had a dream of being involved in the National Football League. I love it. I love the people who play the game. I admire ’em. I wish I could do what they do. I wish I could experience what they experience. Do you realize how few people are ever part of a championship team, winning a Super Bowl or a World Series, compared to the percentage of the population. I mean 300 million people and there are 53 players on a Super Bowl team, that’s really a rare thing.
But look at these people running around trying to prevent people they don’t like, don’t even know, from engaging in an activity which might actually improve current circumstances. Jesse Jackson, who wanted to neuter President Obama at one point during the campaign, these guys could no more survive being held to the same standard they apply to everybody else, and especially when they get involved they start telling lies about people. So it’s a fascinating thing to go through. It’s a fascinating thing to watch otherwise professional journalists totally embarrass themselves by repeating fabricated, made-up quotes I have never said. And we found out where it all came from, and we’re going to do two things. To everybody who has repeated these lies we’re going to send a letter and say, ‘Back it up, source it, prove it, find out where I said it, I want to know.’ If they can’t, which they won’t be able to, then we’re going to demand an apology and a retraction, and that is the least that some of these people can do.
Eric in Philadelphia. Got about a minute here but I wanted to squeeze you in before the break. Hello.
CALLER: Hey. Thanks, Rush. How are you, man?
RUSH: Fine, sir, thank you.
CALLER: Listen, this is an honor. Real quick, you gotta go ahead with this thing, man, you gotta buy the Rams. If there’s any way you can get that deal done, you gotta get it done. Now, I want to revisit real quick this Donovan McNabb thing. Man, I’ve been trying to get to you for like four years to say this, okay? When you made your original comments, Tom Jackson, Michael Irvin both were on board with what you said. It took about three days for the deal to unravel, and what happened was, Sharpton and Jackson got to those guys. If you recall, and they started making political things about it and what have you, and then the whole thing came undone —
RUSH: We’re having some phone line problems. Every caller we’re taking has got static on it. I don’t know, is it our phone line? We’re working on that. We just lost the call? All right, well I know full well what happened with that, folks. There’s more to it than even Eric in Philadelphia said.
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RUSH: Well, you know, this would be a good day to do that, Snerdley, because there’s about — let’s see — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven… I’ll tell you what… I’m not through here. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I could play fourteen. Hang on, folks. Hang in there. Wait for it. Yeah, I got fourteen in a row. Fourteen sound bites in a row! That’s why I said at the beginning of the program, ‘You know, I’m not comfortable talking about me, ladies and gentlemen,’ and I certainly don’t like being distracted from the issues of the day, but hell, I am one! (sigh) Live it, love it, learn it. So Mister Broadcast Engineer, here’s what I want you to do starting now. I want you to go sound bite number two. We’re just back-to-back-to-back. It doesn’t matter who these people are. I’ll tell you in advance it’s MSNBC. It’s Al Sharpton; it’s James Carville; it is Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton; and ‘Mercury’ Morris, former player for the Miami Dolphins. You’ll be particularly fascinated about that. I’m not even going to read the questions they were asked. We’re just going to play sound bites two through fourteen, bam, bam, bam, bam, wham, thank you, ma’am. Are you ready at the broadcast engineer console? Let her rip.
DEUTSCH: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: And branded a racist because he says on the air what everybody is saying off the air!
(silence)
SCARBOROUGH: Whoa.
BRZEZINSKI: Wow.
SCARBOROUGH: Bleep that out again.
BRZEZINSKI: All right.
SCARBOROUGH: Why did you have to do that?
DEUTSCH: I can say it now. I called Rush Limbaugh a feminine hygiene product. It starts with a D. Sounds like my last name. Bleeped. You can’t say on TV! I’d like people to vote in and say, ‘Is that an appropriate word for Rush Limbaugh, yes or no?’ MSNBC viewers, please vote and call in.
WILBON: One clarification I want to make from Friday’s show: I repeated a quotation about slavery that was attributed widely to Rush Limbaugh in a recent newspaper column. Rush called me and said, ‘Do not believe this! I never said this,’ and I take him at his word. I look forward to speaking with him perhaps about my larger point of objection.
KORNHEISER: (Kissing sounds)
SANCHEZ: Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are (pause) too many to name. Here’s a sampling. He once declared that ‘slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.’
SHUSTER: Critics are saying Limbaugh’s racially charged remarks through the years, among them: ‘slavery…had its merits.
HALL: Should a person who says there are ‘merits’ with slavery be able to have this privilege of owning a team?
CARVILLE: The problem is — is — and it is not Rush’s ideology. It’s some of his statements [have] just been very, very unsettling to everybody particularly to African-Americans. He also spoke with some nostalgia about slavery which is, you know, ungh! Not even going to try to go there.
HALL: ‘Slavery…had its merits,’ and you’re talking —
REPORTER: That’s what he said.
SHARPTON: — in an industry [with] over two-thirds black players and we’re sitting around acting as though that, uhh, this should be questioned?
SHARPTON: Doesn’t matter. I think that he sells racial kind of, uh, statements. Whether in his heart he means it or not is really immaterial. You cannot sell that in the daytime and then go to the conference table later and go against what you sold as your personality. He has to be the same person. Are we going to say that Rush is going to say, ‘Now, that’s really just my schtick and here I’m somebody else’? Of course not! He’d put himself out of business.
SHARPTON: I think the question is whether or not the NFL is going to have standards. I think when the Players Association came out this weekend and said that they are objected because he was divisive… Clearly if you have someone that has attacked the players, you have someone that is going to be one of the 32 owners if he was approved that would decide on a proposed walkout, uh, uh, next year, uh, by — by, uh, the 32 owners, you have to have some standard to say, ‘But wait a minute. This guy has offended the people that generate the money. This guy would be sitting there deciding on a walkout that affects a hundred thousand employees at stadiums and all kinds of businesses.’ This is a very sensitive position.
SHARPTON: Race has nothing to do with it. He has offended the players, whether they be black or white. When you say these people are like Crips and Bloods without guns, you gonna disparage these people’s character. And now I want to be one of the owners that will decide their contract, decide their future. I think Mr. Morris and I may agree on outcomes. I think he’s right. To put him in a hornet’s nest at a time when we’re going to be making crucial decisions? I think the NFL would be doing itself and those who support it a disservice to have someone who’s expressed that kind of opinion on the people involved to be sitting at the table when we gonna see these crucial decisions, which is why I think the Players Association came out over the weekend and made the statement they did.
MORRIS: (laughing) Well, you know what, Rick? The answer to that is (chuckling), is that, when you look at what he said and how he said it, it actually makes some relevant sense.
MORRIS: In 1965, I graduated from high school. The top three problems in the country were running in the hallway, talking in class and being late. Now in 1985, the top three problems were teen violence, teen pregnancy, teen drug use. In 2005, it’s still the same. So a whole generation of young people have grown up under the stigma of the Crips and the Bloods, and these some — some of these people are playing in the NFL now.
SANCHEZ: Mmmph!
MORRIS: So you can’t take away from that gene pool that they have to choose from, because it’s what society has to offer them.
MORRIS: Hey, I want him on there, because I want him to see what it’s like. You know, you can drive a NASCAR and say, ‘I like to get out there,’ but you put your butt in that seat and get out there with everybody else, then you get to see what it’s really like —
SANCHEZ: (chuckling)
MORRIS: — what you’re talking about what you really want to do.
SANCHEZ: Exactly.
MORRIS: I don’t think he’s not going to really understand that he’s walking into a bee’s nest here with these young brothers who think racism is when you don’t get to go into the NBA when you’re 18, you have to wait until your 20. That’s not racism. Racism comes from where I grew up in the 1960s, like Limbaugh did. But it’s a different set of circumstances out there, and I would love to see him jump in the middle of it. The Washington Redskins was a segregated team until 1962.
RUSH: The last sound bites there are from Mercury Morris, and he was on CNN’s Newsroom yesterday afternoon, and Rick Sanchez could not believe what he was hearing from Mercury Morris. Now, every one of these people from Rick Sanchez to David Shuster to Tamron Hall to James Carville — who really knows better. James Carville knows me. We have socialized together. James Carville is repeating this totally fabricated lie attributed to me about slavery. We have tracked its origins. Its origins are in 2005, a blogger who was throwing it all over the Internet and then got it into my Wikipedia entry in the Wiki quotes, and even there it says it’s unsubstantiated, ‘disputed,’ but these people are still going in there and using it. These are professional journalists: Rick Sanchez, Tamron Hall, David Shuster — who, by the way, NBC already suspended Shuster once for saying that the Clintons ‘pimped’ out Chelsea Clinton.
By the way, the publisher is Nation Books in New York and the quote, he said he got it from a book written by some guy named Huberman, Huberman’s book, 101 Worst People in America or whatever. It was published in 2006. The problem is he was spreading it in 2005. We know who the source of this is. We know that the guy that wrote the book did not source the quote! Nobody can source it because it wasn’t ever made. I never said it. And look at all of these people who are repeating it without checking, and these are the people who tell us that they are the professionals, that they are the ones we should trust to weed out what’s garbage and what’s not garbage in the ‘sewer,’ they say that is the Internet. They are the sewer! They are the sewer, and they are in the midst of it. They are waste and they are promulgating waste all over the place! (interruption)
Oh, I’m told Mr. Zirin’s name is pronounced ‘Zy-rin.’ It doesn’t matter. Zirin, he was utterly, utterly irresponsible on that program yesterday. These people repeat lies because it fits their already prejudiced agenda. They are the ones with prejudice and bigotry coursing through their vanes, through their hearts, and through their souls. They are consumed with jealousy and rage. They are all liberals — and make no mistake: That’s what this is about. It is about ideology. It isn’t about race. It’s about their being jealous and attempting to discredit me, and they’ve now sunk to the low of repeating fabricated quotes that they cannot source. So we have sent them all letters. But we’re going to have to add Tamron Hall to the list. We’re going to have to add James Carville to the list. We’re going to have to add David Shuster to the list. We’re going to have to add Al Sharpton to the list.
Who else are we going to have to add to the list? I guess that’s it. Of all the other people, Drew Sharp of USA Today, this Zirin guy of The Nation. Bryan Burwell. We’re going to say, ‘You’ve got a few hours here to produce the citation, produce the source. Source this quote! Tell us where you got it. You prove to me that it was said, or else we will demand a retraction and an apology.’ I doubt that they care enough. In their minds, ‘mission accomplished.’ They’re laughing about it and having a grand old time with it. But it is an embarrassment to them. I’m sounding like a parrot here. They ought to be ashamed of themselves to call themselves professionals. They’re nothing but hacks. I mean, everybody in the world knows you don’t believe anything on Wikipedia because anybody can go in there and put anything on that they want to unless you succeed in getting your site locked, and I don’t even care about that.
Wikipedia is as irresponsible as anything else. Anybody can post anything they want on there. But these are the professionals! They’re supposed to check this stuff. The idea that somebody could reportedly say, ‘Hey, slavery was great! You know what? Why, it kept the streets safer at night,’ in 1998 and it is only now surfacing? I said that in 1998? I guarantee you the Clinton war room would have been all over it! In 1998? This quote sat dormant for 11 years and all of a sudden shows up with a vengeance in conjunction with a report that I am a minority participant, minority participant in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams? You would think… You know, I’m not hard to reach. My office isn’t hard to reach and the radio show is not hard to listen to.
Just find the radio and turn it on. Hit the seek button and you’ll find me all over the dial. Whatever happened to journalists calling people and saying, ‘Did you actually say this? I’m doing a story on blah, blah, blah. Did you actually say this?’ They didn’t want to take the chance I didn’t say it. They wanted the excuse to run the fabricated quote. They wanted the opportunity to do it. These people are scum. They are literal professional scum and they are responsible in many ways for the deteriorating standards and quality of journalism. They are leading the pack. They are found on both the news side and the sports side, and they are doing everything they can to promote disunity and discord throughout our culture and society while holding themselves up in their own minds as great unifiers and people who care only about social justice. When they’re basically just incompetent, irresponsible, impersonators of journalism.
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RUSH: You know, this is kind of fun. Let’s keep this going because I’ve barely scratched the surface here on the sound bite roster that mentions me. So up next is former St. Louis Ram player D’Marco Farr on a radio station in St. Louis, Chris Matthews and a couple of bites from the pit Yorkie, David Bonior all back-to-back. Here they are.
FARR: I think it’s scary. I really do. And I’m not sure you want to bring that brand of humor, because that’s what I assume it is, I never listen, never met the guy, all I know is about what I read about Rush Limbaugh. But I do know what he talks about, and the line that he tries to play. It’s an easy line to play, it’s a race line. I don’t know if you want to bring that into the NFL. The NFL is all about bringing guys together, playing together, teamwork. Why would you want to bring that type of divisiveness, you know, outward divisiveness into the NFL?
NEWTON-SMALL: The salary like, you know, he renegotiated his contract last year for $400 million. That’s a huge amount of money. I don’t know any other journalist that gets paid that much money.
MATTHEWS: It’s interesting, because the one thing about this city, spending all these years in Washington, which can be a tough city because you have wealthy people moved here for national reasons, local African-American community, which is not wealthy. It’s middle class in most cases these days, but it’s tough and there’s a lot of natural rivalries going around here. But he comes into a sports team like St. Louis, which can be more, you know, a little more tough on the race front there, down there, I’ll bet.
RUSH: What?
BONIOR: I think we do have to do a better job of counteracting these folks, because in Rush’s case, Rush Limbaugh’s case, excuse me, I’m not that familiar with him that I should be calling him Rush’s case, I tend to think that he appeals to folks who have an intolerance of certain groups in our society and I think that’s a losing proposition for the future, and I think that’s one of the reasons they were not successful this last election. I think his reputation has been built to some extent, Rush Limbaugh, on his intolerance for gays, women, people of color.
MITCHELL: Just because he calls us feminazis?
BONIOR: It’s a little bit more than that and there’s obviously some other pieces that — I mean the whole Donovan McNabb situation is indicative of the problem he has. He’s also had a drug problem. I mean there’s a lot of reasons to disqualify him. I don’t think he has a chance in hell of getting this franchise.
RUSH: That’s David Bonior, who was the campaign manager for John Edwards, who we all know has the John Edwards case, if you will. The first quote was D’Marco Farr, the former player for the St. Louis Rams. Here’s a guy that knows only what he reads. He never listens but he knows what I talk about, but he’s never listened. He only knows what he reads. And we now know that what he reads is lies, drivel and junk. Oh, I forgot to include Jason Whitlock in this list who repeated these slanderous, made-up, fabricated quotes found in a sewer on the Internet. And the list is expanding. I’m sure there are more people than I have heard throughout the broadcast day on ESPN since the weekend when this all started who have repeated all this stuff as well. I’m just amazed.
In 1998 they say the quote was uttered and only now surfaces 11 years later? Just the right time before Obama’s going to get his health care bill at the Senate Finance Committee, right before the NFL owners meeting is taking place today. Isn’t it amazing how these people who simply report the news, ‘Oh, no, no, we’re not trying to shape the outcome of this, oh, no, no, we just report the news.’ No, you make it up. These people do not have the guts to listen to this program. They don’t have the guts to call me and ask me, ‘Did you really say this, or were you kidding or what?’ They don’t have the guts. They have courage to go on TV and shout their invective and spread their lies and then get the applause from fellow journalists who, ‘Yeah, what a way to get Limbaugh,’ and they think they are big shots. They’re small fry, insignificant and wish they mattered but they don’t.
John in Mokena, Illinois, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re taking my call. How are you?
RUSH: Very well. Thank you.
CALLER: You’re welcome. Say, with the war on race and the race-baiters like the Jacksons and Sharptons it just seems to me like they’re fighting the battles that actually prolong the war. When I think a lot of people, they just want that war to end. And it’s like for them race comes first and content of one’s character comes second.
RUSH: Well, how do they earn their money?
CALLER: How do they earn their money?
RUSH: Their living.
CALLER: I’m not quite sure how, maybe books?
RUSH: No. They earn their money by thriving in the race business.
CALLER: Right. Right.
RUSH: Jesse Jackson, in fact, shakes or has shaken businesses down, threatened boycotts, a number of things. Al Sharpton has run hoaxes and ended up having innocent people put in jail!
CALLER: Didn’t Jackson’s son get something with a brewery for the liquor license for —
RUSH: I don’t know. The stories are too numerous. And one thing about Sharpton, you know, his comments that we played here having to do with the players association, the NFL Players Association, their contract’s about to expire with the league, and Sharpton —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — essentially said that the Players Association is making this move now for leverage against the owners, everybody knows what’s going on here. But the idea that these people have credibility only exists because their brethren in the media bestow it upon them. If the media ignored these people, if the media applied the same standards to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and all the rest that they apply to all of us in conservative media, those guys couldn’t stand 12 minutes of scrutiny.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: If they had to stand up to the same scrutiny we have to go through each and every day, they couldn’t survive it. They exist because they are promoted and all of their shortcomings are ignored, and they are said to have every excuse in the world to hold the positions they have because they’re representing minorities, disadvantaged, the poor and so forth, and so they have a little extra license. It’s all a scam. It’s all a game. And that’s how they earn their living.
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RUSH: Now, you want to hear something really funny, and I think quite telling, and I think this doesn’t require a whole lot of intelligence to figure out. Let’s say that you are one of these bigoted, racist, left-wing radical sportswriters, and your agenda is to paint me as that. You’re willing to go so far as to use fabricated, made-up quotes that you don’t even check, then you say, ‘Why, this league is 70% African-American. Why, we can’t allow racists owning teams.’ If I’m a racist, why do I want to be part of a business that is 70% African-American that pays them millions of dollars a year?’ The two do not go together, do they, Dawn? If I am this horrible person, why do I want anything to do with a business that is 70% African-American, that pays them millions and millions of dollars?
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RUSH: This is Ted in Lynchburg, Virginia. Hello, Ted.
CALLER: How you doing?
RUSH: Very well. Thank you.
CALLER: Good. I just had a short comment about any accusations that they’re trying to make against you, what, over the purchase of a sports team?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: By trying to justify yourself to them you’re actually playing into their hands in a way by giving it credence, and the best thing to do that I found in life is just ignore the whole thing as best you can. Sometimes you can’t, but why? Just do it. Just ignore the whole thing.
RUSH: Well, I addressed this earlier today.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I’ve been faced with this dilemma since I started this program, and there are two ways to do this. One is to ignore it because all you do is elevate the criticism and please the critics. The other is to address it, but like you said: You have to sometimes. What I have found, and the very few times I’ve done this, involves race. When they are trying to make a ‘racist’ tag stick, you can’t let that happen.
CALLER: No, I heard that. I was listening to you.
RUSH: That’s what this is. These are not race-baiters. These are irresponsible journalists.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: These are left-wing radical activists who are sports groupies so they become journalists, so they get to hang around with players and all that. And they’re nothing but left-wing ideologues. So they try to make this racial stuff stick. When Bill Clinton tried it at the White House Correspondents Dinner back in, I forget,1993? He told a joke, and the room — 1200 people in the room at the Washington Hilton — just couldn’t believe it. There was nervous laughter, but there was more of an audible gasp. And what that was about, this was shortly after the Waco invasion authored by Janet Reno. And Clinton, when asked about it, said (doing Clinton impression), ‘Well, that was the attorney general’s decision. I didn’t have anything to do with that. You’ll have to go talk to Janet Reno.’
He never even wanted her in there. She was Hillary’s hire. So John Conyers of Michigan does some showboat hearings on the Waco invasion, ostensibly to get some information, ‘What the hell happened here?’ and what he ended up doing was berating Janet Reno, which is understandable. But he wasn’t getting any answers, he was just showboating up there. He wasn’t really trying to get to the bottom of anything. He was taking the occasion of the cameras being on him to act like a big, tough guy. So on my television show I criticized Conyers for running a showboat hearing that didn’t accomplish anything. All he spent time doing was attacking Janet Reno.
So Clinton’s joke was, ‘Hey, did you hear Rush defend Janet Reno on his program the other night? I couldn’t believe it. Then I realized it was only because she was being attacked by a black guy.’ Now, we called the White House the following Monday and we got as close to an apology as you’ll ever get. I was a guest of the Washington Times I think that night… No, it might have been USA Today, Judy Keen, I think. I forget. But you can’t let that stuff stand. You just can’t let that stand — and this particularly. I mean, I would love to be able to ignore this. I told everybody at the beginning of the program, I told the staff during breaks, ‘I’m very uncomfortable doing this because it’s not the normal way I approach this,’ but this you can’t let stand. Especially… These people are going after my livelihood. These people are going after my business. Now, they’ve always done that for whatever reasons. But there are times, and they are very few, when you have to stand up to it and beat it back — and this actually is a no-brainer. With all of this based on utter lies, 100% character assassination, purposefully done, it can’t stand. So I understand the theory of ignoring it and so forth. I don’t care if I’m giving them what they want. The fact is I’m not giving them what they want. They’re the ones… They’re probably not going to feel bad. I don’t think they have any conscience. If they did, they wouldn’t have engaged in this matter in the first place. But I appreciate the call, Ted. This is Trace in Cleveland, Tennessee. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Professor Limbaugh, I’m inspired. I’m glad to be a student of the Limbaugh Institute. I’m going to add I’m a little sore because I’m a die-hard, steed blue Colts fan originally from Indianapolis but I want to be the first to get your take on a national headline that’s going to sweep the nation that says: ‘Through Conservative Principles Rush Limbaugh Turns Around the Terrible St. Louis Rams to Win a Super Bowl, and He’s Headed to Washington, DC, to Meet President Obama with a Number 44 St. Louis Rams Jersey.’ Can I get your take?
RUSH: (laughing) You know, at this point I have to put the brakes on.
CALLER: (giggling)
RUSH: No, because I can’t… I appreciate your call but I can’t say anything about this whole process. I can’t.
CALLER: You can say he held your jersey. Just like President Bush held your bag, Obama is going to be holding your jersey.
RUSH: I’m not going there.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: You know it, Rush!
RUSH: No.
CALLER: You know it’s what you want. It’s your invitation to the White House. Can you imagine if you didn’t go?
RUSH: No, I would go. As I told Jamie Gangel in the NBC interview, I would go. She said, ‘Well, what would you say?’ I said, ‘Hello.’ ‘No, no, no! What would you say?’ I said, ‘Well, it’d depend what he wants to talk about. But I would owe him the dignity and the honor of telling him the truth, of being honest about what thought. If he had me up there.’ But I told her, ‘Don’t look for it.’ Everybody is under the illusion that President Obama wants to get along and have unity and so forth. Obama clears the playing field of people who are opponents. I mean, look, there’s a survey. Somebody in the Drive-Bys did a survey of presidential travel, and 80% of it has been to blue states; 80% of it has been to places that he’s going to need for his reelection battle in 2012. His campaign for 2012 has already begun. He’s not going to places, say, where there are people who don’t like the health care plan and trying to persuade them. He’s not going anywhere and saying, ‘Hey, here’s my plan! Look, on page 44 it says right here we’re not going to kill grandma.’ He can’t do that because the plan doesn’t exist, number one. But he’s not out trying to bring everybody together. He says that but that’s not what he’s doing. Liberals don’t do that in general. It’s not just Obama. Liberals are not about bringing anybody together. They’re about wiping the slate clean. They’re about wiping our butts politically. It’s what we ought to be about, too, but we’re not.