This iPhone 4, I can’t duplicate this reception problem. I know people are having the reception problem. I’m not denying it. But, folks, they’ve sold three million of these phones since the end of June. When did they go on sale, June 15th, 24th, whatever. Three million phones and the number of 
returns is infinitesimal, and yet the big news is how rotten the phone is. I remember saying on this program many, many times — in jest, being jocular — that Apple would report all this cash on hand. Apple was reporting all these profits, stock price going up.
I said, ‘Steve Jobs, you better be careful. You are becoming an enemy of the state.’ If you’re gonna make a profit, don’t brag about it. But they can’t help it, ’cause they have to report it, to the SEC and to the Street. They’ve just painted a big bull’s-eye on their backs — and, lo and behold (it didn’t take long, did it?) for a couple of schlubs in the media to raise a big ruckus about some problem that is not causing mass returns of the phone. And then today we have a story from Bloomberg: ‘Last year, Ruben Caballero,’ not to be confused with Guy Caballero, ‘a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Steve Jobs that the iPhone 4’s design may hurt reception, said the person who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf, and asked not to be identified.’ So somebody who’s not allowed to speak and has asked to remain anonymous has just said that Rubin Caballero, an engineer at Apple, went to Steve Jobs, ‘You got an antenna problem here,’ and, lo and behold, we got an antenna problem.
The iPhone is the worst piece of garbage that’s ever been made and ever been released, and everybody’s buying one is being screwed, by Steve Jobs personally and by Apple — and since Apple hasn’t responded to this suitably, Apple is in big trouble. Where’s the fix? Where’s the free case? Where’s the free this; where’s the free that? Apple’s called a press conference tomorrow, nobody knows what they’re going to say. The speculation is a mass recall, free cases. Then if you read further in this Bloomberg story, get this. ‘U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, issued a public letter to Jobs saying Apple’s efforts to address the matter so far are ‘insufficient’ and asking the company ‘to address this flaw in a transparent manner.”
Then we had Consumer Reports, which is a worthless bunch of trash, first saying the iPhone is the best product in its field and then suspiciously coming out and saying: Don’t buy the thing, you can’t hear a call on it. Folks, nothing is real. Now, as you know, I’ve got no brief for Apple, but I do love this country, and I love freedom, and I detest the tentacles of statist big government reaching into every nook and cranny and corner of this country and trying to tell everybody when and where they have to do what and how much. I am sick and tired of successful private sector companies and industries being enemies, perceived as enemies and being targeted by the American left. The irony here is that the people going after Steve Jobs are a bunch of liberals.
The people going after Apple are a bunch of liberals, in the media to one degree or another. Now Chuck-U Schumer piling on, a Senator from New York? New York? How close is New York to Cupertino, California, where the iPhone is designed? What the hell is Chuck-U Schumer got to say about this? ‘Oh, he’s a US senator! Oh, yeah, we’re supposed to have immediate reverence. A US Senator is demanding that Apple be transparent because they’re screwing people.’ That’s the news, that’s the message: Apple’s the latest company to screw people. If we could return Obama, how many returns do you think there would be? I guarantee you if we could take Obama back to the voting booth there would be a hell of a lot more people returning Obama than have returned iPhones.
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RUSH: Now, folks, as nauseating as it is, as nauseating as it is, try to imagine being Charles Schumer for just a minute, always on the brawl to attack, always out to smear, always out to control. You have to wonder what kind of mind this man has. You have to wonder what kind of life this man has. Rather than seeing what is great about this country and appreciating it, and recognizing all of these wonderful things that happen, despite of and in spite of him, he sits around and he’s lurking in the corners and he’s waiting for some situation to exploit, always tearing down this country, or tearing down a successful institution, company, or tradition in this country. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer has produced nothing, not a single job, not a product, not one damn thing. He is perpetually in a hateful state of mind. These people are not well. The UK Telegraph is reporting that Apple has lost $9.9 billion in stock value after that bad Consumer Reports review. They’ll get it back. This is a buy opportunity if you play the game that way.
All that aside, this all feels forced and trumped up. The only thing missing is consumer complaints. Everything else we’ve got. The media hasn’t yet found one disgruntled customer. I know that the lawyers have tried to come up with a class-action suit, and they did that, and to prove what that’s all about they tried to get the class-action suit up even before the 30-day return-the-phone-for-free period had expired. Something’s not right here. This isn’t real. Try as they might, they can’t find a whole bevy of Apple customers willing to go on TV and rip the company or Steve Jobs or anybody else to shreds. They were able to come up with a couple of dunces who drove Toyotas who tried to blame Toyota for a brake pedal that acted as an accelerator when in fact we’ve now learned that these people were flooring the accelerator thinking they were hitting the brake — a-ha, supposedly thinking they were hitting the brake. This whole thing’s been a setup. Apple’s too big a target. Apple’s got too much profit. Apple’s having too much fun. Apple is too loved. Apple is demonstrating an antidote to socialism. In the midst of one of the greatest recessions ever, look at the success Apple is having by providing a product so loved and so appreciated and so desired that people in the midst of a recession are buying it in record droves. We can’t have that.
I guaran-damn-tee you, if three million people who had bought Apple phones couldn’t make a phone call on them, or if they were dropping calls left and right, we would have heard about it from the people to whom it was happening, not a bunch of shrufs in the media and willing accomplices. Maybe they need to make a deal with the SEIU. Maybe Apple needs to call the SEIU, maybe that’s Job’s solution here, is to unionize. Somebody needs to tell Chuck-U Schumer the Apple store on the Upper West Side of New York City keeps its door open when they have their air-conditioning on. You know you can’t do that in New York, there is a city ordinance you can’t keep the door open when you have the air-conditioning on. It wastes money. It’s in direct violation of New York regulations. Nine stores on the Upper West Side of Manhattan were fined just last week for having their doors open. Apple probably is like Bill Gates back in the old days, not paying enough protection racket to people like Chuck Schumer. But what must that man’s life be like? What must it be like to live the life of a leftist, where you’re always looking for evil, looking for enemies, and finding it if you have to make it up, never being happy. They tried to destroy Toyota. They tried to destroy Walmart. You take a look at the enemies list of Chuck Schumer, his party, and the American left, and it’s every damned successful service or manufacturing company in this country.
Gibbs, Cocoa Beach, Florida you’re on the phone first today. Great to have you with us.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Very well, thank you.
CALLER: Good. Well, you just made my point. I was watching Fox News last night, and they have decided that the Toyota malfunction had to do with operator error and nothing wrong with the car, and it’s uncanny how they’re doing the same thing to Apple and the iPhone.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I don’t get it, Rush, they’re trying to destroy us.
RUSH: Well, in the case of Toyota, there might have been a couple instances, but damage is done, the poor little CEO from Toyota came over here and begged, basically committed hari-kari before a US committee, congressional Senate committee, and then we find out that the problem was dunce drivers. I’m not even going to buy the notion they’re dunce. It seems the route to riches in this country these days goes through trial lawyers. Jackpot drivers. It’s just get in your Toyota, get in your Lexus, create a problem, manufacture one, it’s easier and a better deal than getting the scratch off Powerball ticket at the local 7-Eleven or wherever the hell you get those things. Toyota, no union. Walmart, no union. Apple, no union, case closed. Chuck Schumer, Democrat, attacking Apple, no union. Where are Feinstein and Barbara Boxer defending Jobs?
It used to be that American representatives and senators worked for you. It used to be that it was a pleasant thing to encounter a government official. Now it’s a risk. Now it’s a roll of the dice to encounter a government official, either a Transportation Security Agency person, or if you happen to be a legal alien in Arizona you got big problems. Where is Algore defending Apple? Algore’s on the board of directors of Apple. Well, Al’s got his own problems at the moment. What you’re looking at here, folks, is a shakedown of Apple. Now, let me give full disclosure here. We have tried for 21 years to get advertising from Apple, and they won’t do it, for political reasons. They will not do it. I happen to think they make the best stuff available for what I want to do with that kind of stuff. So, I talk about it. I haven’t been given a penny. I can’t get a phone call back from the executive suite at Apple. I got some people I’ve been able to get through, I got some help there, but my point is I don’t know these people. But I know a shakedown when I see it.
And when Chuck-U Schumer pops up to get involved in this, Schumer, what, senators work for us or do they work for Wall Street? You see the story today in the Wall Street Journal about all the senators, not just Chris Dodd, all these senators, a bunch of them, got all these cushy mortgage deals from Countrywide? Who do they work for? Do senators work for you or do they work for Wall Street? Schumer should be representing Wall Street, right? They are his constituents, should he not? So for Schumer, joining this Apple business, we have a shakedown. He raises more money than anybody else does from Wall Street. So they pony up to Schumer in hopes that he’ll go after some other company or go after some other industry. A shakedown. It’s a protection racket. And if you’ll notice, the people who never get shaken down and the people who never get targeted are the people who are genuinely ripping us off, teachers unions with poor schools for one example. They’re propped up. Go figure.
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RUSH: March 12th, 2010, ABC News: ‘In a press conference held near the site of a possible runaway Toyota crash, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat, New York, today asked that Toyota cooperate fully with local investigators. ‘It’s time for Toyota to work in good faith with the Harrison police department, turn over the information the investigators need.” So first it was Toyota, Chuck-U Schumer back in March joining the crusade against the nonunion Toyota, and today Chuck Schumer launching into Apple, also not union. Nothing in the media is real, folks.
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RUSH: No, I don’t know if I own any Apple stock. I don’t know. (interruption) Because I don’t worry myself with that. I have trusted advisors who do all that. I’m not a day trader. I couldn’t… (sigh) My work and my income are my growth. My investment portfolio’s based on preservation of principle. Okay, so Howard, if you’re out there listening send me a quick note and tell me if I have any Apple shares. None of what I’m saying here is based on any self-interest in Apple. I’m not even speaking about Apple per se. I’m talking about what’s happening in this country. Chuck Schumer… (interruption)
Well, I got some e-mails, ‘What do you care about this, Rush? It sounds like you have a lot of Apple stock,’ because it’s been falling. No, I don’t own the Apple stock. If I do I don’t know, and I haven’t sold any if I own it. I don’t… (sigh) People won’t understand this. I do not monitor it every day. I do not know the stocks I own. I’m mostly in municipal bonds anyway; screw it. And they’re going to be targeted anyway. Tax-free ‘munis,’ they’re going to start taxing those before Obama’s finished. We’re all going to get it no matter what we are.
Chuck Schumer owes Toyota an apology. Chuck Schumer was part of the cabal that led the hassle that Toyota has, and he owes them an apology. Every other politician that jumped on that owes them one, as well.
In the interest of further disclosure, let me just tell you about me and Apple. I’ve already told you. We can’t even get a meeting, for 21 years, to discuss advertising. We can’t. They’re not interested. There’s a complete, total ideological divide. I don’t care. They make the best stuff for what I need. There’s nobody even close. I don’t care if they’re a bunch of ‘commie, greenback’ whatevers, they make the best stuff for me. They make me more productive. I bought 40 iPhones, 40 iPhone 4s. I gave them to every employee and a couple of friends because they improve people’s productivity. It’s why I keep the air-conditioning at 68 degrees where my employees are ’cause I don’t want them complaining about heat and humidity. I want ’em working and I want them to enjoy the work atmosphere.
Yes, I made a deal. No I did not get 40 phones and pass ’em out. I got gift cards for redemption. Nobody can go out and buy 40 phones. But you know what else I did? I picked up two years of service for every employee, or the equivalent of two years. If they go through it in six months it’s their problem. But nevertheless I believe in the stuff. I believe in productivity. I believe in employees, people that work with you being productive and enjoying what they do. I also believe in rewarding them when they do it well and above and beyond what they’re paid for. Most of the people that work for me have an attitude: ‘There’s always something else to do after you’ve done everything you think you can do. There’s always a little bit more to do.’
So I happen to really believe in these products, and to see this kind of assaults against it… Not one person, not one person to whom I have gifted an iPhone has told me they have to take it back. Now, they may have, but they haven’t told me. Have you taken yours back, Snerdley? (interruption) Dawn, have you taken yours back? (interruption) Brian? You got any problem with yours? (interruption) H.R. can’t make the reception problem happen on his phone. I can’t make it happen. Kathryn can’t make it happen on hers. The broadcast engineers can’t. We got two engineers. If they know about antenna attenuation, it’s they, and they can’t cause the problem. They can’t duplicate it, they can’t make it happen. But the media is making it sound like this is every phone everywhere. Disgruntled here, disgruntled there.
Anyway just to straighten all this out, one thing you have to keep in mind here, folks, when you listen to this program: I’m about America. I’m about success. I’m about opportunity, prosperity, American exceptionalism, being the best, do the best, pursuing excellence, pursuing happiness, contentment or what have you — and I am just worn out. I am worn out. Not to the point of giving up, don’t misunderstand. I just am exhausted with a never-ending, ongoing assault on happiness, productivity, greatness, exceptionalism, and excellence that is the hallmark of the American left and the Democrat Party. They target those things. Any time somebody is excellent, any time somebody does anything superbly, if they’re even pursuing it, it’s the mediocre and the lazy who get propped up by the American left. It’s the mediocre and the lazy who are the beneficiaries of redistributionist largesse.
I’m sick and tired of the producers being punished for success. I’m tired of it. I don’t care whether it’s high taxes, burdensome regulation, or all-out character assaults by members of the government or the regime. It’s just about country to me. It’s about tearing down, for whatever reason these people have, for wanting to destroy what it is, what it has been, those things that have defined this country’s exceptionalism and greatness and has set it apart. I have said I don’t know how many times, and this is a feature every personal appearance I do, we are no better human beings than anybody else in the planet. Our DNA is no different. There’s nothing special about us, in a genealogical or a physical sense whatsoever, but there is something special about where we were born and where we were raised and where we grow up and where we seek opportunity. And that is the United States of America, and it’s not an accident of our birth; it is a blessing from God.
I’ll never forget Phil Donahue wringing his hands on his TV show in the afternoons, lamenting and feeling guilty about the ‘accident of his birth.’ Only because he was born in America was he rich. If he’d have been born in Mexico, he wouldn’t be rich. He’d be horribly poor. His birth may have been an accident (you’d have to ask his parents about that), but he was born in a country that was blessed, not lucky. I pray to God every day for this country. You should, too. This is just never ending, and some people in this country who have benefited more than most are the ones trying to tear it down for everybody else, and they’re educating others to think evil, mean, rotten, ill thoughts about their own country. Now, if they’re screwed up, if they’re psychologically all out of whack and don’t like the country, fine, but keep it to yourself. Don’t spread it to your kids, don’t spread it to your neighborhood, and certainly don’t take it to your classroom and teach it. Unfortunately, all of that is being done.
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RUSH: And back to the phones we go, this is Butch, Butch in Hampton, Virginia. You are next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Yes. Hello, Rush. To kind of dovetail with your recent talk here about some of the health care issues, I just wanted to make a comment going back a bit here. As a potential partial fix to this defective iPhone crisis, perhaps Steve Jobs can be forced to offer free counseling to iPhone owners.
RUSH: (laughing) I don’t think any iPhone owners are — the people that need the counseling are the media.
CALLER: This is true. This is true.
RUSH: Anyway, I like the idea. There’s a quote from Microsoft — now, get this. Microsoft, I think, chief operating officer said the iPhone 4 is our Vista. Now, do you know what that means? You know, I’m not a Windows person because I don’t like cheap knock-offs. But I gather Vista was a bomb. It was an operating system upgrade that bombed, right? So here you have Microsoft admitting, in order to take a shot at Apple, that they had an operating system upgrade called Vista that was a bomb. Now they’re equating the iPhone 4 to it. Everybody wanted to go back to XP. I remember the constant moaning, complaining everywhere about Vista. Nobody wants to go back to the iPhone 3GS. Nobody wanted any part of Vista. At any rate, counseling. I just wonder what Jobs thinks. He’s deeply involved in left-wing causes, and look who’s going after him? All because of the way you hold the phone. Yeah, in the lower-left hand corner, called the death grip, if you grip the phone normally and they asked Jobs about it, ‘Well, you’re holding it wrong, just hold the phone there.’ That didn’t go over well. ‘What do you mean, don’t hold it there? There’s nowhere in the instruction manual where it says how to hold a cell phone.’
So I mean Jobs didn’t help himself here. But we also don’t know if Jobs actually said that. You know, everybody e-mails Jobs at about six Apple addresses you can send e-mail to, and people that send him e-mails say he replies and then these people in the media and blogs report supposedly what Jobs has said in the replies, but they never really know that it’s Jobs who said it. One of these e-mails that I read on one of these blogs, some guy supposedly wrote complaining about the iPhone 4 and the reception issue, and Jobs wrote back, supposedly, ‘Look, it’s just a phone. Why not spend more time with your family and leave me alone.’ Now, there’s no way Jobs would say that, but the media is out there reporting this. And some of the media said, ‘We really doubt that this is Steve Jobs.’ But anyway, so Microsoft, ‘Yeah, the iPhone 4 is our Vista.’ You wish, Microsoft, you wish. Why don’t you talk to us about your failed cell phone? They have one, you know. Yeah, you never heard of it, right? They took it off the market. Right.
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RUSH: Steve Wozniak is one of the three, really primarily two, cofounders of Apple who’s no longer part of Apple. He and Jobs started the company in a garage. He just commented on the antenna attenuation problem, the death grip that if you hold the phone in the lower-left hand corner, it loses signal. He says the solution is just get a second phone and put it in your right hand; when the iPhone loses signal, place the call on the other phone until the iPhone signal comes back. Meaning, the iPhone’s so great, don’t get rid of it, just get a spare phone for when you lose signal on the iPhone. It ain’t going to happen much. I love it.
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RUSH: Guess what was breaking news on CNBC mere moments ago?
REPORTER: Not everyone is having this problem. We just saw that Rush Limbaugh is actually coming out and saying that he has one of these phones and there’s nothing wrong with it.
RUSH: It’s breaking news that my iPhone works! My point, folks, all along has been to say it’s a media driven thing. Now it’s breaking news at CNBC that my iPhone works. (laughing) It’s not just my iPhone that works, but the 40 iPhones that I have bought and gifted to employees and friends are also working. Now, one other thing. My phone’s over there charging right now. I do not use a case, I do not use a bumper, I’m not using anything to shield — ‘You can fix the problem, Rush, just put a little rubber case –‘ Some people say just put some nail polish on it, duct tape. Well, if that works until I get a fix, so what, who wants to put duct tape on their iPhone? My point is my mine works. I don’t have any signal loss. I can’t make it happen. I can’t find anything wrong with the phone. It all works. It’s amazing. And it’s breaking news on CNBC.