RUSH: Snerdley tells me that there is a movement out there, people calling in saying, ‘Why don’t we export republics instead of democracy?’ That doesn’t pass the IQ test. Just because I say I don’t have to be interested, doesn’t mean we’re gonna turn the program over to people whose IQ’s can fit in a pencil erase. No offense. That’s just the way it is.
Now, this Egypt stuff, I think all of you know the essence of what’s happened here and you are fully aware why the media is all upset and how they were humiliated and so forth. Just a little summary of things to keep things in perspective here and pointing out there are some great opportunities to illustrate hypocrisy here. One example, this is a story that ran last night — actually, this morning in the 8 a.m. hour. It’s from the Associated Press. ‘Losing Patience, Obama Challenges Egypt’s Leaders — Showing deepening dismay, President Barack Obama is questioning whether Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s promised transfer of power has any credibility or meaning.
‘As a defiant Mubarak stayed in office, Obama challenged the autocratic Egyptian government to explain its path toward democracy to its people and the world.’ So Obama was furious. I mean, these guys were humiliated by Mubarak yesterday. Obama goes out and looks at that silly, childish, self-centered, narcissistic, immature campaign speech in Michigan trying to make what’s happening in Egypt really an extension of his own campaign of 2008. So Obama was furious that he got slapped around, the media was furious that they got slapped around, because their demands haven’t been met. But here’s my question: Isn’t this the same Barack Obama and the same news media that claimed the United States has interfered with other countries for far too long?
Isn’t this the same Barack Obama who said, ‘Now that I’m here, the world’s gonna love us. The world is going to respect us, and we’re no longer going to impose our way on people. No more of this cowboy foreign policy.’ I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, I definitely remember Obama all through his campaign. The left constantly has, throughout my entire life, said, ‘We can’t impose our way on the rest of the world. It’s none of our business,’ blah, blah, blah, blah. In fact, most of the time the left has contests with itself to see who can get us out of various parts of the world. I’ll never forget during the ’84 Democrat presidential primary, Gary Hart(pence) was seeking the Democrat nomination against Walter F. Mondull, and they got into an argument over who could get us out of South Africa first, and then that elevated into who can get us out of there, over there.
‘I’ll get us out of there!’
‘I’ll take us out of there, too.’
Now all of a sudden we are demanding — Obama, his regime and the media are demanding — that Hosni Mubarak do what we say. Haven’t these people complained? Didn’t they complain during the 2008 presidential campaign, ‘We are too arrogant as a country. We are too arrogant a people. We practice cowboy diplomacy. It’s none of our business. We’re not gonna impose our views on other governments,’ but the first time things don’t go Obama’s way, he becomes angry, petulant, apoplectic. ‘Without naming Mubarak directly, Obama issued a written statement on Thursday night in which he criticized the leader for a lack of clarity and direction.’ Boy, you — you talk about the pot calling the kettle half black?
I cannot believe that. Getting on Mubarak’s case for lacking clarity and direction? ‘That assessment came after Mubarak surprised those protesting in Egypt’s streets by saying that he would shift powers to his vice president but remain in charge.’ Why was anybody surprised? We know people were surprised because the media was reporting all day yesterday that Mubarak was gone. ‘In mere moments, he’s going to make speech! In mere moments! In mere moments Mubarak will address the people, and all of their concerns will be met, all of their demands.’ This was the media. And, by the way, it was our media that provided the source information for our CIA director and for our president and the people on the ground in Egypt.
So listening to the media, the US media and the rest of the media, Mubarak was gone. ‘Be patient, here. Just a couple minutes here. In a couple of minutes he’s gonna show up, he’s gonna speak, and he’s gonna give you what you want and he’s gonna leave. He might even commit suicide for you! He’s going.’ Well, that didn’t happen, and so who were they mad at? Mubarak? But Mubarak was never the source authority for the fact that he was leaving. ‘He had been widely expected to step down on Thursday, as even the CIA chief had suggested was in the offing.’ (snorts) Now, this is AP. They did not include that Panetta said this because he had seen it on CNN. Why are we paying Leon Panetta? Why do we have a CIA?
Anybody can turn on CNN and learn what’s going on. Look, I would just as soon use STRATFOR.com as I would CNN to figure out what’s going on in American policy. So, anyway, there’s that. They’re all upset. If Egypt, my friends, has made anything clear (and this is not necessarily good), it is that Obama has no idea what’s gonna happen five minutes from now. He’s flying by the seat of his pants. You don’t go out and make speeches based on information you’re getting from television, from the media. Triumphant? ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead’ kind of speeches? And trying to make the events in Egypt an extension of your own campaign from 2008? The sad reality here, folks, is that events around the world continue to slap Obama upside the head.
He is perpetually caught by surprise — and that’s not good for America. Who in their right mind would roll out a ‘Recovery Summer’ campaign when the facts on our economy were so well known? Recovery summer. That was last summer. It still hasn’t happened. A week ago Obama led us to believe that this would be Recovery February for Egypt. Now, what’s clear to me is that… I think part of Obama’s problem is that he’s obsessed with settling past grievances at the expense of future progress. He doesn’t seem to care as much about ‘winning the future’ (this is his slogan) as he does redistributing yesterday’s transactions — or, as he sees them, transgressions. So it became obvious. Obama is now out to settle the score with Mubarak because Mubarak humiliated and embarrassed him. Has Obama been doing what’s necessary and appropriate to have a stable ally in Egypt a year from now?
We don’t have any idea. It doesn’t appear so. Obama is making this all about him. ‘The Egyptians dissed him and they’re gonna find out what that means! You don’t diss Obama like this!’ The president of the United States, in a situation like this, goes on television and is supposed to tell the American people what it means for our interests. That still hasn’t happened, and I don’t think anybody in our regime has the slightest idea what this means. Certainly not if their source information is CNN and the rest of the media. You can’t ‘win the future’ with poor judgment, a mountain of debt, an addiction to spending, and an administration staffed with amateurs and radical leftists. We’re not winning the future. Slogans be damned!
So you have a president, Barack Obama, surrounding himself with people angry about yesterday, angry about last month, angry about 200 years ago, angry about something in this country, rather than proud. After two years this much we know: Obama’s fixation on what he sees as past injustices has made it impossible to win a 24-hour news cycle much less the future. And now it’s all about the 24-hour news cycle: Proclaim victory there and nothing else matters. Obama, his presidency, apologizing for America, his policies are an apology for free markets. This is disastrous, looking at all this — and in the foreign press, the foreign press clearly understands this. They see it, and they report it. You know, in some parts of the world…
In some parts of the world that really depend on us for their defense, military defense, security, whatever — I guarantee you many parts of the world — they are looking at a presidency unraveling here. There’s no stability. There is no sense of competence. From Obamacare to Egypt, from the stimulus bill to the deficit, from the Olympics bid for Chicago to bowing down to foreign leaders, from the trampling on creditors’ constitutional rights at Chrysler and so forth, failing to uphold voting rights (that’s the New Black Panthers) this president has demonstrated his incompetence at every turn. I mean, we’re in the middle. We’re in the middle, watching the destruction of the US economy and the unraveling of our very foundation. Right before our very eyes. Jimmy Carter’s second term indeed.
I mean, look at it this way, we have Panetta showing total incompetence, the CIA director, quoting a Twitter feed, a ‘tweet’ that was totally wrong. And then that guy Clapper testifying that the Muslim Brotherhood is scholar. Obama was trying to take credit and personalizing this powder keg situation and using it as an extension of his own campaign. We’ve got incompetence. We’ve got immaturity, inexcusable, amateurish, clumsy, bush league behavior (dare I say, a little twist on words). Say what you want about Egypt, but they were an Arab ally in the Middle East, and I hope we don’t lose ’em, but, folks, it appears to me we could very easily lose Egypt like Jimmy Carter lost Libya and Iran. But the stakes are so much higher now. You know, one four-year term of utter incompetence in Jimmy Carter, okay, fine. But no, not a second one. Not compounding on his failures, and certainly not during these times.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mubarak leaves Cairo as military asserts control. And this is not part of the Egyptian constitution. All right, let’s go to the phones. It’s always exciting. You never know. Sometimes it can bomb royally. Not always. Not even frequently. But what was it, three or four weeks ago, maybe longer, time flies. (interruption) Eight weeks ago, you have not forgotten it. What, have you marked it on your calendar? Eight weeks ago Open Line Friday was an utter bomb, and it was such a bomb it was funny. This doesn’t happen very often, but it did eight weeks ago. So we start always with a little trepidation. I, frankly, folks, just to share something, I’m very trepidatious because Snerdley, I have watched him screening calls during this entire first hour, and I swear I saw the blood pressure rising. He was moments away from whipping that telephone headset off his head, throwing it down on the ground, just like Rex Ryan when the Jets lost to the Steelers and storming out of the room. And I finally said during a break, ‘What are you getting?’ ‘I got a bunch of people thinking we ought to be exporting republics and not democracies.’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s one of those, huh?’ So we’ll see.
Look, I just want to reiterate something here, folks. Obama, (paraphrasing) ‘We’re not gonna impose our will on anybody anymore. We’re not gonna do that. The days of Bush and cowboy are over,’ except on Israel. We’ll tell Israel where they can and can’t build houses, for crying out loud, and we will impose our way on the American people, but we’re not gonna impose our will anywhere else, and yet here they are. I find Obama’s respect for protests funny. He hates the Tea Party, he hates their rallies, he accuses them of being all kinds of things, but the protesters in Egypt, why, they are great, Muslim Brotherhood, secular, they’re not interested in violence. Obama loves these people in Egypt all the while he is in violation of a federal judge. This man is so concerned about the law in Egypt, he’s got his own health care bill declared unconstitutional, and he acts like the court has never ruled. So all this talk about democracy and the rule of law, give me a break, he’s flipping Judge Vinson the bird.
He may claim to love democracy in Egypt. He knows what that group is. He’s a community organizer. He knows exactly what that group is. That’s why he’s such a big supporter of that. He knows that group’s just a bunch of agitators. But to sit around and start talking about, ‘Oh, we love democracy, and whenever we see it bubbling up, we’re gonna support it out there.’ Yeah, except when the judge says your health care bill’s unconstitutional, we’re gonna ignore that. He loves democracy in action except when it’s the Tea Party. Then all of a sudden they become a bunch of tea baggers, as far as he’s concerned. Yeah. I’m not kidding. The American Tea Party, they’re responsible for shooting people, they’re responsible for all the violence. I mean, who’s worked this crowd up into a fevered pitch? I don’t know that my program’s on the air there. And if it were — he-he-he-he-he-he-he — they wouldn’t like me much.