RUSH: Hugo Chavez is room temperature. I know that. The smell of sulfur is everywhere, and, yes, we have the sound bites. The media in this country is extremely sad. It’s hilarious to listen to this. We have story here from USA Today, and the way they headline the story is this: “‘Who Will Take Care Of Us?’ Poor Say After Chávez Dies.” There’s an object lesson here about where this country is headed. We’ve joked often about the similarities between Hugo Chavez and Obama, but they’re really somewhat serious here. A 27-year-old housewife is quoted in the USA Today story: “Who will take care of us now? Chavez cared for the people, not like the other presidents.”
The president of the country’s dead, and citizens are now feeling lost and potentially homeless, moneyless, “Who will take care of us?” This is the direction that we are headed. This is exactly the direction we’re headed. Now, it’s not imminent. Well, no, it is imminent. It’s not anytime soon, hopefully, but this is the direction that we’re trending. And people all over Venezuela are asking, “Who will take care of us now?” And of course the dirty little secret is that the number of poor people in Venezuela skyrocketed during Hugo Chavez’s presidency. He did not take care of the poor, but he made them think he was.
When he would go out and nationalize some oil wells, for example, he always did it under the auspices of taking those oil wells back from those evil corporations and giving the money back to the people, and the people cheered. The thing is, they didn’t get the money, Chavez did.
Chavez’s family has an estate in excess of $2 billion. Whatever Chavez took out of the country he gave to himself. The poor people in Venezuela are still poor. The number of poor people are growing. But the psychology is stunning. The poor people in Venezuela think they’re being taken care of. They think they’re okay. Now they feel like they’re not. Chavez is dead. Who’s gonna take care of them? Their lives have been getting worse. The reality is that their economic circumstances have been getting worse, and yet they still supported it. That’s why I’m going to such great lengths to try to reach low-information voters in this country with this program because this is where we are headed, this kind of blind faith and trust in the government to take care of you rather than you investing in yourself.
There’s nobody that cares more about you than you. There’s nobody that has your self-interests at heart more you have. There’s nobody better equipped to take care of you than you. But look how easy it is to turn your life over to people that you don’t even know, people that you’ll never even meet, people with whom all you have is faith and a belief because of their slick demagoguery and their ability to make you think they care about you, as your life gets worse every day. Life in Venezuela didn’t improve under Chavez, but people thought it did. At least the poor thought it did. And this is the danger that we face in this country.
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RUSH: Sean Penn, noted Hollywood actor, is gonna have to find a new dictator in the world to love because of Hugo Chavez assuming room temperature. Sean Penn said, “I lost a friend.” Oliver Stone, a noted Hollywood director, when told that Hugo Chavez had passed away, said, “I mourn a great hero.”
Now, the death of Hugo Chavez matters in a way. I don’t know if you’ve paid any attention to what’s happening in Venezuela, but his handpicked successor, some guy named Maduro, is running around telling the people of Venezuela that Hugo Chavez was murdered by us. That we found a way to give him cancer just like the Israelis found a way to poison and kill Yasser Arafat. Now, we sit here, we laugh at this, “Oh, my gosh.” We’ve been laughing the last five years. Who’s gonna believe any of this rotgut stuff Obama says? People do. The people of Venezuela are going to believe this.
The people of Venezuela are feeling helpless and lost. They don’t know who’s gonna take care of ’em anymore. They gotta rely on this new president who’s telling them that the United States killed their father. The United States killed their provider. We gave him cancer. No, not Obama. No, no. Obama and Chavez are good buds. I mean, the photo-op, the meeting down there, Obama and Chavez shaking hands and they had an embrace. No, no, no, no. The CIA, the Republicans, somebody, George Bush, his people. That’s what the people are gonna be told. Now, we get, not a lot, but we get a significant amount of oil from that country. Any instability down there is not good, and they are going to foment all kinds of instability. They have to.
Folks, this country was worse off for Hugo Chavez. Whatever Venezuela was when he assumed presidency 14 years ago, he made it worse, economically. I mean, Caracas is an expanding slum. But the people who live there, the people who are mired in poverty and whose economic circumstances are worsening, think Chavez was their hero. They never got any of the money when he nationalized oil companies or other companies. He got it. He and his buddies took the money. The country, Venezuela, didn’t get it. But they believe that he intended to give it to them. And whatever they had, they believe that he provided it for them. It’s instructive. I think it’s highly instructive.
We’re on a similar path in this country, and I don’t think that can be overestimated. I don’t think it can be said too much. It’s exactly where we’re headed. This purposeful desire to inflict pain on the American people with the sequester is for two reasons: blame the Republicans for it, but also condition people that the government can never get smaller. The government can never cut back in size. The government can never reduce spending. Look what happens! People are denied medical treatment. People are denied access to health care. People are denied White House tours. Long lines at the airports, at TSA checkpoints, all this horrible stuff and we’re not even cutting spending with it. I mean, we’re not even reducing spending. We’re cutting the rate of growth.
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RUSH: I actually I do not believe what I am holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. I do not believe it. I have an editorial here by the Miami Herald, and they rip Hugo Chavez a new one. This is stunning to me. “Hugo Chavez’s folksy charm and forceful personality made him an extraordinary politician. His enviable ability to win a mass following allowed him to build a powerful political machine that kept him in office from February of 1999 until his death on Tuesday.
“But as a national leader, he was an abject failure who plunged Venezuela into a political and economic abyss.” Holy smokes! There must be a huge expat Venezuelan population down in… What is it, Doral, Florida? Holy smokes. You’re not gonna find this elsewhere. You’re not gonna find this in the mainstream press. You’ll find the Heritage Foundation writing things like this, maybe the Washington Times, but you’re not gonna find that anywhere in the mainstream media.
Here. Let me give you an example. Audio sound bite number one. The State-Controlled Media is mourning the death of Hugo Chavez. This is a montage, and they loved him. There’s nothing they love more than a socialist dictator that hates America. Folks, I’m not kidding. Somebody on NBC actually said that Chavez is “a great loss.” Who is going to be the next socialist anti-American dictator in that country? As though that’s a job that needs to be filled! In order for the balance of the world to be maintained, we need somebody in Latin America who’s a huge socialist and hates America.
NBC actually found somebody that had that point of view.
DIANE SAWYER: (mournfully) The provocative and unpredictable strongman of Venezuela has died. The streets are filled with mourners.
SCOTT PELLEY: Chavez was a hero to Venezuela’s poor.
MATT GUTTMAN: (b-roll noise) Chavez was a charismatic hero wearing that trademark red shirt.
GERRI WILLIS: Incredibly charismatic.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: (phone) He was very c’rismatic and quite funny.
EUGENE ROBINSON He’s very quick-witted.
ALI VELSHI: Chavez got a lot of big-name celebrities who liked him, who endorsed him.
CHRIS SABATINI: He sort of branded himself as the anti-Bush.
PIERS MORGAN: He reduced unemployment significantly, brought millions of Venezuelans out of the poverty trap.
BARBARA WALTERS: (phone) He could be vew’y warm. He was vew’y vulnew’able.
LARRY KING: (phone) He liked to sing. He was a crazy American baseball fan. He was huggable. He generated a positiveness about him.
RUSH: I tell you, folks, it is unreal. It is absolutely surreal. The last two voices there were Baba Wawa and Larry King, and then of course Piers Morgan had to weigh in there. “He reduced unemployment significantly, brought millions of Venezuelans out of the poverty trap.” This guy, I don’t know how he gets a job. I don’t know how Piers Morgan… Well, I do know how he gets a job. But it’s the exact opposite. Chavez did not rescue people from poverty. He did not bring millions of people out of poverty.
He brought millions into poverty! He didn’t reduce unemployment significantly. The Miami Herald has the truth. That country is far worse off after 14 years, just like any country is after a socialist dictator! Crime exploded out the wazoo. The place was dangerous. There were food shortages in a supposedly paradise socialist country, where everybody was gonna prosper. He would go out and seize businesses.
He nationalized oil companies, oil wells. He just went in and took them from the companies that owned them. Who was gonna stop him? He did it under the auspices of giving the money to the people of Venezuela, and he and his family have an estate valued at $2 billion upon his death. The people of Venezuela got nothing. Prosperous parts of Venezuela were converted to slums. It’s stunning, and here we have the brightest lights of the American media falling hook, line, and sinker for this.
It’s embarrassing.
It is purely embarrassing.
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RUSH: You know, given all the oil in Venezuela, that country ought to be like the United Arab Emirates or Dubai or Saudi Arabia instead of the cesspool of poverty that it is. What do you think the unemployment rate is in Saudi Arabia, for example? You probably can’t even measure it. This guy actually hurt people, and he’s being praised by our media!
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RUSH: I want to go back the Hugo Chavez and his assuming room temperature. When thugs like Yasser Arafat and Chavez become enormously wealthy while representing the downtrodden, you know, you might think that the left would treat them worse than Mitt Romney. Hugo Chavez and Yasser Arafat both became “obscenely wealthy,” to use the left’s own language, and what did they do? They were known for representing the downtrodden, protecting the poor, standing up for the little guy against these powerful forces of greed and the corporate culture.
They were making sure that those people didn’t get away with raping the people and raping the countryside and whatever else they were raping, and they saw to it that money was taken away from those evil corporate entities and returned to the rightful owners of that money: The people. Except one thing always goes wrong. The people never got the money! The thugs ended up with the money. Do you think it might bother somebody like Sean Penn or Oliver Stone?
Do you think it might bother Diane Sawyer? You think it might bother Piers Morgan or Barbara Walters or Larry King or anybody else in that montage? Do you think it might bother them that while the country of Venezuela is basically a sewer, Chavez is worth $2 billion that he did not when he assumed the presidency? And we know that the presidency of Venezuela doesn’t pay that kind of money. You’d think they might be bothered by it, and you’d think they might treat them worse than, say, Mitt Romney.
But then you would miss the point if you thought that. You’d miss the point of anti-capitalists. Apparently, folks, if wealth is obtained, confiscated, skimmed, or pilfered in the name of the poor, then it’s okay. If you get rich in the name of the poor — if you get rich in the name of the thirsty, if you get rich in the name of the hungry, if you get rich in the name of the downtrodden, if you get rich in the name of the forgotten, if you get rich in the name of the homeless — fine and dandy! The problem is when you earn it.
If you earn the money in the private sector by starting a business, and hiring a lot of people, that’s when you become the enemy. That’s when you become the focal point of derision. That’s when you become an enemy of the state. You can take all the money from anybody you want, as long as you’re doing it for the poor. But if you actually do something for the poor — if you actually start a business and you hire people and you help people escape poverty — then you become a target. That’s what it appears to me.
Now, why would that be?
Well, the only thing I can conclude is that if you are really serious and you really succeed in helping people step out of poverty, then you’re doing great damage to the dictator. You are inflicting great pain on the totalitarian. You are an enemy of the state, because you are showing people that they don’t need the state in order to escape poverty. You are showing people they don’t need a government in order to have food, that they can do it themselves. That makes you an enemy. The Democrat Party, the American media, ran ads that blasphemed, smeared, libeled and slandered Mitt Romney and his family.
The same people hoist up on a pedestal a thug like Hugo Chavez, who never did anything to help people but he made them think that he was.
The private sector, if you happen to be involved there, if the private sector is growing, then what must be happening? Somebody must be stealing from somebody. The private sector is evil. The private sector is the focus of evil. The private sector is where all the mean people are. The private sector is where all the greedy people are. So stealing from them is heroic. Targeting them for derision, successful people in the private sector, targeting them must be done. Targeting them, making them your enemy and everybody else’s enemy, that’s what gets you success in a socialist or totalitarian state.
What did they say about Mitt Romney? Mitt Romney made his money by denying insurance to sick people. Mitt Romney made his money because he was a tax cheat. Mitt Romney made his money and kept it all because he put it in the Cayman Islands where US authorities couldn’t get to it. That’s what we were told by the Obama campaign. They spent millions of dollars spewing those smears, folks. Mitt Romney got rich by causing other guys’ wives to tie. Mitt Romney got rich denying people health care. Mitt Romney got rich by keeping all that money in the Cayman Islands, cheating his fellow citizens on tax revenue.
Hugo Chavez got rich by stealing money from his own country, in the name of the poor and is a hero and is charismatic and is a wonderful, huggable guy. Mitt Romney and other Republicans are the focus of evil. They may as well be the devil with horns. Hugo Chavez? A hero to the left. To me, folks, this is just another reason why you don’t compromise with these people. We have nothing in common with them. There is no area of commonality. There is no place where we can be bipartisan. There’s not one thing we believe that they believe. They’re not even interested in it. We foolishly are. Anybody who honors immoral, illegal, and unethical behavior in my mind can’t be trusted and I wouldn’t want to enter into a deal with anybody like that anyway. To me it would seem like an obvious point.
So what do we do in this country? We praise Hugo Chavez. We put him up on the pedestal. He is a great man, like Castro’s a great man, like Mao was a great man, like Stalin was a great man, and we destroy Mitt Romney, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Sarah Palin, you name it. To add insult to injury, we have several Republicans helping along the way. Sing the praises of Hugo Chavez, the man who helped the poor by making them poorer. Celebrate and sing the praises of Hugo Chavez, the man who helped the poor by amassing billions of dollars for himself while in office. Celebrate and sing the praises of Hugo Chavez because you envy the kind of totalitarian power that he had.
Of course, ladies and gentlemen, you’d have to know these facts to make these judgments about Hugo Chavez. But when all you hear is how much good Chavez did for the poor in Venezuela, you might miss little details like massive corruption, anti-Semitism, denial of rights, rule by intimidation, and plundering public money. You might miss all that. You might not notice that the number of people in poverty increased in geometric proportions under Chavez, because he was trying to help, and just like Obama, there were powerful forces in Venezuela that Chavez was fighting. He was trying to rescue people from poverty. But those big oil companies, other multinationals, they were doing everything they could to keep people poor, and Chavez did everything he could, and, sadly, he only got $2 billion.
He didn’t have enough time to redistribute it. The real tragedy in the death of Hugo Chavez is that he didn’t have time to give that $2 billion to the poor. Because we all know he intended to. We all know that he was a man of compassion and understanding and love and devotion for the poor. He intended to give every cent of that $2 billion away. Sadly, the American people, the American government, CIA, George Bush gave him cancer. You’ll read this on Twitter today. You’ll read on Twitter that we poisoned Hugo Chavez, that we killed Hugo Chavez. The American government did.
Now, Barack Obama has run the government the last five years, but it wasn’t he who did it, obviously. It had to be Boehner, maybe even Rubio, maybe Ted Cruz that did it. It wouldn’t be Romney. Romney was too busy running for president, didn’t have time to kill Chavez. Some of these other Republicans did. We all know he intended to give that money away. We all know he intended to redistribute that $2 billion. He didn’t mean to keep that. But we killed him before he had a chance to do it. He was a great man. Listen to Barbara Walters last night on Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN.
WALTERS: Yes, he could be. I mean, he certainly wasn’t the most physically attractive person, but he was very welcoming. He could be very warm. He was very vulnerable, compliant. He’d be married twice, Piers, but had no time for a relationship because he was married to his country.
RUSH: Oh-ho! Married to his country. See what I mean? He intended to give all that money back. He just died.
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RUSH: You know, even CNN had to admit that Venezuela is sitting on one of the world’s largest oil reserves. Even CNN had to admit that Venezuela is among the biggest oil exporters, and even CNN had to admit that oil production has declined in Venezuela. My question is, does the standard of living in Venezuela match the fact that it is one of the richest oil states in the world? No, it doesn’t. But Hugo Chavez’s family does. Back to the audio sound bites. Here is Wolf Blitzer reminiscing about one of their favorite Chavez moments with their United Nations reporter Richard Roth.
BLITZER: Richard, all of us remember when he referred to the president of the United States as the devil. What was it like?
ROTH: That was an incredible day in UN history. And, of course, depending on your political view point, if youÂ’re on the west side and along with the United States, it was disgusting, according to diplomats. And if you were among the dozens of countries here who believe that the big powers run roughshod over them, you kind of privately, at times, secretly supported what Chavez was saying about the US president.
RUSH: There wasn’t anything secret about it. He got a standing O. He got a standing ovation. He got a room full of laughter in the United Nations. I’ll never forget it, either. He strode to the microphone and started sniffing the air after Bush had spoken earlier in the day. Sniffing the air. He said that he could smell the sulfur. For those of us in Rio Linda, that’s a reference to Beelzebub — uh, the devil. The devil had just spoken. The place erupts in a standing O. Later that afternoon, there was a Chavez photo-op in an anteroom at the UN. Maybe it was the Venezuelan embassy. You know what it was? Hugo Chavez with a bunch of children surrounding him sitting on his lap. He was taking care of Venezuela’s children while at the UN after that speech. What a great guy.
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RUSH: How come nobody in the Drive-By Media is fondly remembering when Hugo Chavez told his people to take three-minute showers? One of the world’s richest oil nations ordered its people to take three-minute showers because they were having trouble supplying water and electricity. Oh, no. No, no, no. They don’t recall that. He did that for the good of the people. Nobody needs to take a shower any longer three minutes anyway. That’s actually a great move for climate change.
Hugo cared about the planet, and he cared about climate change, and he knew — he knew! — that the Republicans were trying to destroy the climate. Everything he did was for the good of the Venezuelan people. Here, who do we have next? CNN’s Situation Room. Wolf Blitzer is speaking here with the international correspondent, Shasta Darlington, about the death of Hugo Chavez. Wolf Blitzer said, “The reaction on the streets, a lot of people are mourning right now. There’s a bitter division within Venezuela over Chavez, but he did have a tremendous amount of support down there at the same time, right, Shasta?”
DARLINGTON: They wanted this charismatic leader who’d led this socialist revolution and really reduce some of the class differences that had characterized this country. They wanted to see this man recover and come back and get into power. On the other hand, by reducing these class differences, Chavez had also taken a lot of power and money away from a lot of people who were used to running this country. He also reduced some freedoms.
RUSH: That’s not a big deal. You have to take freedom away if you’re gonna get rid of class distinction. You can’t make everybody the same and still have freedom. Everybody knows that. Yeah, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet. I mean, everybody knows this. You can’t have freedom and people in different classes. Look at what she said. He took “a lot of power and money away from a lot of people who were used to running the country.
“He also reduced some freedoms.” Now, who were these people that he took the money away from? They were people. They weren’t thieves. They were people that owned businesses. He just took the money away from ’em. He nationalized one industry after the other, and now we know where the money went: To him and his family. But yet here he is praised. “Oh, he reduced the class difference!”
That’s right. He made everybody poor. You know how he reduced class differences? He lowered everybody’s economic scale. Here’s Katie Couric. This is December 8th, 2009. This is from the Rachael Ray Show. Katie is the CBS Evening News anchor at the time. She’s the guest. An audience member said, “You know, your interview with Sarah Palin was a defining moment in the presidential campaign. I’m just wondering, who would be at the top of your dream interview list next, Katie?”
COURIC: Fidel Castro. I would love to interview him. He’s in failing health, as we all know and possibly could do an interview, maybe, to talk about his legacy. Kim Jong-il would be fascinating of North Korea. That’s probably never gonna happen, but a girl can dream. Hugo Chavez would be so interesting. I think there are a lot of world leaders. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
RUSH: Well, that’s her dream interview list. Mass murderers, socialists, thugs, authoritarians, dictators. That’s who Katie Couric’s dream interview list was. And, by the way, it wasn’t to expose ’em. Oh, no. She wanted to expose their greatness. She wanted people to understand what it was that made them such wonderful men of the people. David Asman last night was on the Fox Business Network, The Willis Report. Gerri Willis, the hostette, said that David Asman had actually interviewed Chavez once. “What’s your reaction tonight to his death, David?”
ASMAN: He became the president by pointing out the corruption in the Venezuelan economy. What he did was he turned it into “I own it all,” but under the ruse of socialism. “I’m doing it for the people. I’m giving all this oil to the people.” He learned from Fidel Castro, who really was his mentor. Fidel taught him how to use PR to make it look like you’re doing everything for the people when in fact, behind the scenes, you’re doing a lot for yourself.
RUSH: So one place in the US media we happen to get the truth of Hugo Chavez. It’s the Fox Business Network, and that was David Asman. Yeah, Fidel taught him all this PR stuff. Fidel taught him how to make it look like you’re doing everything for the people when, behind the scenes, you’re doing it all for yourself. Yeah, under the ruse of socialism. “I’m doing it for the people.
“I’m giving all this oil to the people.” The people got squat. The people got poorer. I’m spending so much time on this because this is our future, if we’re not careful. Some people might say it’s here already. In fact, are we not watching the people of this country become poorer under the guise of everything being fair? Are we not watching the people of this country become poorer under the guise of equality?
Are we not watching people become poorer under the guise of making sure that all the unfairness and bigotry in the past is being fixed? We most certainly are. And are we not watching a president administer policies at this very moment designed to inflict pain on some Americans? Yes, we are. So to some people, the future is now. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I’m spending time on it. It’s an object lesson, actually.
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