RUSH: Audio sound bite. Let’s start with number two. As you know, I was off the air on Friday; Mark Steyn was here. Toward the end of the program on Thursday Speaker Boehner called here. All hell was breaking loose. The New York Times had that leak that a deal had been done, that Boehner and Obama were working behind the scenes, despite what either was saying in public to work on a deal. And then Fox had a crawl that a congressional staffer unnamed said, yep, there’s a deal: $3 trillion in cuts and no revenue. And what turned out, folks, it was Democrats across the country who were as livid as anybody at being sold out.

In fact, CNN had a story over the weekend, “Obama Losing Support Among Liberals.” Now, the purpose of that story, CNN was trying to buck up the liberals out there, “Hey, don’t leave your guy hanging, he needs us.” That was the point of the story. But it was true. That’s why they published it. Obama is in trouble. He’s in trouble with practically every demographic group that voted for him, other than of course African-Americans. Boehner calls here on Thursday, and last Thursday and Friday the media is just upset. They thought they had a deal. And then Boehner called here and it ticked ’em off. We have a montage of various leftists in the media freaking out after Boehner’s phone call to me on Thursday.

BASHIR: The President takes his case directly to the American people, and Speaker John Boehner? He’d rather talk to Rush Limbaugh.

SCARBOROUGH: John Boehner by day talks to Rush Limbaugh and by night is holding secret negotiations.

BOLDUAN: John Boehner went on the Rush Limbaugh radio show very quickly.

RUSSERT: Speaker Boehner was on the Rush Limbaugh program and said there’s been no deal publicly or privately. So that’s what the official word is right now.

FOREMAN: Listen to Boehner himself earlier today on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. “No deal, no deal, no deal.”

O’DONNELL: Still feeling he had to make it absolutely clear that he had not moved one inch in the president’s direction, the Speaker of the House called the commander-in-chief of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC. Then on Sunday morning, the syndicated Inside Washington during the roundtable discussion, the host Gordon Peterson spoke with Colbert King, nickname Colby, of the Washington Post about Obama, the debt ceiling negotiations, and me. Gordon Peterson said, “How’s this playing on the independents? That’s where the action is. It was there in 2008, 2010.”

KING: What we also have operating here is such an anti-Obama mood that it’s almost difficult to get anything done. Listening to Rush Limbaugh, his biggest concern was Republicans should do nothing to help Obama. There was no reference to saving the country, no such reference to averting disaster with the debt ceiling. It was a question of helping or hurting Obama.

RUSH: Mr. King is, in a way, exactly right Mr. Snerdley. It’s exactly right. The point is you can’t save the country if you don’t defeat Obama. It’s my point. Take you back to January 16th of 2008: “I hope he fails.” I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want 10.2% unemployment. I didn’t want houses underwater. I didn’t want what this country is now, has become. The way to prevent that would have been for Obama to fail in his ideas. So for Colbert King to say, “Rush Limbaugh, his biggest concern was Republicans should do nothing to help Obama.” Damn right. Damn right. Helping Obama hurts the country. I’m all about saving the country. I’m all about the people of this country returning to circumstances where prosperity is theirs if they seek it. I’m all about that. I’m all about people working hard and keeping most of what they earn to use as they please in their own self-interests, which, of course, would include their children, their spouse, their families. Of course I’m all for that. I’m not in favor of Obama having control over all the money and choosing to whom to send it, to distribute it, or redistribute it.

So Mr. King is confusing my love of country for sabotage of Obama. “Rush Limbaugh’s biggest concern … no reference to saving the country.” Every syllable out of my mouth is oriented toward saving the country. Every waking moment, every thought I have during preparation of this program, even when I am on the golf course, I care, folks. Maybe too much. It distresses me to see what is happening to this country and to know it need not have happened, to know that it happened because of policies implemented by someone who, I don’t care, is either clueless or is himself a saboteur. It doesn’t matter because if he’s either, it’s happening. It honest to God pains me. It really, really does.

I’ll share with you a brief Inside Baseball moment. I don’t know if it was Internet chat or instant message chat or something, maybe it was early Saturday morning, still in Boston, and I was talking to a couple friends who have their own shows, and they were asking me, “How is it different now than say back in the nineties, early, mid-nineties, with Clinton and so forth.” I said it’s dramatically different. Look, I’m not tugging your heartstrings here; I’m trying to be honest. In many ways it’s harder than ever to do this show at a top-notch level, and the reason is that radio is an entertainment media. People tune in here and want to be entertained, and they want all that that encompasses. At the same time they want to be seriously informed.

Now, back in the late seventies when Jimmy Carter’s bumbling around, I mean that was easy to ridicule. It was easy to make fun of. And Clinton, you know, Clinton had Obama type designs on this country, but he was nowhere near bringing it off. And back then the Republicans were winning elections in the House, and back then they were, for a couple, three years, terms, governing that way. We had a balanced budget, I mean we were kick ass, and we discovered the House bank, Clinton making all these comments about there being no truth detector. Today there’s plenty of stuff to ridicule, and there’s plenty of stuff to laugh at, and there’s plenty of stuff to make fun of. But I must be honest; it’s harder and harder to do that. It’s harder and harder to laugh at things which have destroyed people’s lives. It’s harder and harder to ridicule. What’s funny about what’s happened to the housing market? What’s funny about what’s happened in unemployment? It’s not impossible. And we have our share of fun with all these things. But at the same time, there’s this fine line balance.

People’s lives are being destroyed here. People know that their futures are being cut out from underneath them. In the past the country was nowhere near as near at risk as it is today. At no time in the past was it accurate to say, “Four more years of president X and this country as we’ve known it ceases to exist.” That is today’s reality. Four more years of an unchecked, unstopped Obama and America as we know it is transformed in ways that people have no desire to see. Obamacare is just one illustrative element. I don’t see any humor in people being on unemployment for 99 weeks. I see humor in individuals who have been on unemployment for 99 weeks who make no effort to get off who make fools of themselves.

For this guy, Colbert King, in his glorious ignorance, to sit here and say that I have no interest in saving the country is just pure lunacy, ignorance or what have you. He clearly doesn’t listen, reads whatever talking points. You and I together are trying to save this country. The people inside the Beltway don’t think it needs to be saved. They don’t look at it that way. This is just another round of spending, national debt goes up a little bit. All these things, just a business cycle. It will all get turned around if Obama gets his way. To them the number one thing is conservative Republicans don’t end up in power, because then the country will be saved. They don’t want it saved the way we do.