RUSH: Last night, CNN, The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer is talking with Mary Matalin and Donna Brazile about Obama and me. Blitzer set up the conversation by playing two clips of me from this
BLITZER: Rush Limbaugh, among others, has been I guess, you know, saying things about the president that the president clearly doesn’t like. I want to play two clips for you, Donna, what Rush Limbaugh said on August 19th on his hugely popular radio program and what he said today.
RUSH ARCHIVE: If it was okay and even laudatory to call Bill Clinton America’s first black president, why can’t we call Imam Obama America’s first Muslim president? George Soros is not pledging all this philanthropy; he’s not trying to score points; he’s trying to screw and he’s succeeding at it because he’s bought the Democrat Party and Barack Hussein Imam Obama.
RUSH: Now, this is August 19th and did I say this about Soros yesterday? Maybe. At any rate, what I said here is indisputable. If it was okay and laudatory to call Bill Clinton America’s first black president, then why can’t we call Imam Obama America’s first Muslim president? Clinton wasn’t black. I mean he wasn’t black then. He’s not black now, yet he was the first black president. Obama says he’s not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. So I’m just being consistent. If you Democrats want to say that Bill Clinton was the first black president, Donna Brazile went along with that, and who was it that came up with it? Toni Morrison, a black authorette, because Clinton understood, you know, growing up in the back of an El Camino with AstroTurf in the flatbed back there in Arkansas. He understands what it’s like to be black in America, so he’s the first black president. Well, he never was black, isn’t black now. Obama says he’s not Muslim, so couldn’t we say he’s the first Muslim president? I’m just extending the Democrat logic here. If they don’t like Imam Obama, I can understand that, so we’ll call him Ayatollah Obama. I know Imam Obama might be a little provocative. But Ayatollah Obama, why not?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Obama ostensibly, Wolf Blitzer knows, unhappy with my referring to him as Imam Obama. So then Blitzer said to Donna Brazile, ‘When you hear Rush Limbaugh calling the president not just Barack Hussein Obama, but Barack Hussein Imam Obama, what do you think, Donna?’
RUSH: Aw, let’s get the violins out. It’s a sad statement about where we are today. What she’s admitting here is that the Media Tweak of the Day works. That’s what she’s talking about here. (imitating Brazile) ‘Well, you know, Limbaugh knows the mainstream media, they’re gonna salivate, they’re gonna want to discuss what he says. It’s polluted the volatile political season, those kind of comments are always gonna attract media attention.’ The Media Tweak of the Day works. So Mary Matalin had her two cents. Blitzer said, ‘Are you as appalled at Rush Limbaugh, Mary, as Donna Brazile is?’
MATALIN: From the very first week of the Obama administration the Democrats have been trying to demonize Rush Limbaugh and they succeeded only in driving people to his show where they find out that he’s not hateful, he’s not angry, he’s a common-sense conservative and he’s a wickedly brilliant satirist. And when they take this humor-impaired, grassy knoller approach to Rush Limbaugh, they make themselves look bad. He was calling it — making those imam remarks in satire in response to Obama’s support for what was then the Ground Zero mosque, and within three days of that the mainstream press was blaming Rush Limbaugh for the doubling of Americans who are confused about the president’s religion. That’s not Rush Limbaugh’s issue. You cannot blame one radio show for the confusion of a third of America.
RUSH: She’s talking about the fact that 20% of the American people think he’s a Muslim. And we didn’t do that poll, the Pew people did that poll. And then the Democrats tried to blame me, 20% of the people think he’s a Muslim because I, El Rushbo, called him Imam Obama, but the poll was taken days before I introduced the Imam Obama term to the American mainstream political discourse. So she’s exactly right, Matalin has nailed it here. Donna Brazile then said this.
BRAZILE: Mary, look, the simple truth is in a Pew study recently they blame the media, they blame the media for 60% of the American people not knowing President Obama’s faith. But look, I want to say something. I try not to demonize people because I want to know what people are saying, not what they’re reacting to, but what they’re saying. And the reason why I have tried not to react to everything that comes out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth or Sarah Palin’s tweet is because I believe it’s irrelevant.
RUSH: No, you don’t. You don’t believe it’s irrelevant at all. It’s penetrating. You’re not going to comment on it, she just spent the whole show commenting after she said she wasn’t gonna comment. Two weeks ago Donna was coming after me. She’s always coming after me about something. How is calling somebody an imam demonizing them? No, no, no, seriously. I mean, what’s wrong with being a Muslim? Okay, 20% of the American people think he’s a Muslim. So? What’s wrong with that? There’s a lot of Muslims in the world. Is something inherently bad about being thought to be a Muslim? What’s the big deal about it? It’s like what’s wrong with somebody being gay? I don’t understand. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being a liberal? I mean there are a lot of liberals out there. What’s wrong with it? Imam is simply Arab for ‘leader.’ That’s all it is. It’s not even preacher, not even reverend, just a leader. So how is somebody calling somebody an imam demonizing them?
Now, do 20% of the American people think Obama’s a ‘Magic Negro’? Why doesn’t Pew go out and poll that? And if they don’t think Obama’s a ‘Magic Negro,’ why not? We thought Obama told people not to listen to me, that that’s not how things get done in Washington. Here Donna Brazile said, ‘Yeah, Limbaugh’s irrelevant, I don’t even talk about him,’ after spending ten minutes talking about me. Well, obviously, folks, this has gotten under Obama’s skin because in Albuquerque, New Mexico, yesterday Obama explained how he became a Christian and he explained what Christianity means to him. And like a lot of people who are religious, he has some misunderstandings about what’s in the Bible and where it’s in the Bible.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ayatollah. You know, imam means leader in Arabic. Ayatollah, by the way, means miraculous sign of God, in Arabic. Maybe, ladies and gentlemen, maybe President Obama would prefer that I use more Christian terms, or Christian-sounding terms, to describe him. So how about ‘the Immaculate Deception’ to describe Obama, his victory, and his campaign. Or, ‘the Teleprompter Messiah.’ There’s any number of ways that we could go with this.