RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I had an idea yesterday. That press conference that Obama did, it was juvenile. It was something that a spoiled rotten kid would do. It was petulant. It certainly was not presidential. He called that press conference for one reason: to use the words “hostage,” “bomb thrower,” and “extremist” for an hour. That’s why he did the presser. So I told Cookie, I said, “Will you put together a montage? I want excerpts of Obama at the Gabby Giffords event, where he criticized this kind of behavior and where he urged everybody to stop this kind of talk, juxtaposed with what he himself said yesterday.” I want you to listen to it. This is Barack Obama and our montage, Obama at the tribute for the shooting victims, January 8th, 2011, in Tucson, and yesterday.
OBAMA: (January 12, 2011 ) At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized. (Yesterday) Extortion, insane, catastrophic, chaos. (January 12, 2011 ) We are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently. (Yesterday) You have some ideological extremist, extreme Republicans. (January 12, 2011 ) ItÂ’s important for us to pause for a moment. (Yesterday) We’re not going to pay a ransom, you don’t pay a ransom, demand a ransom. (January 12, 2011 ) And make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals. (Yesterday) You do not hold people hostage. (January 12, 2011 ) Not in a way that wounds. (Yesterday) Ransom-taking or hostage-taking. (January 12, 2011 ) Usher in more civility in our public discourse. (Yesterday) Burn down the plant or your office. (January 12, 2011 ) Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face the challenges of our nation. (Yesterday) I’m going to burn down your house. (January 12, 2011 ) Not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness. (Yesterday) Tea Party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, a nuclear bomb. (January 12, 2011 ) We should do everything we can do to make sure this country lives up to our childrenÂ’s expectations. (Yesterday) You’re just a deadbeat.
RUSH: So you tell me, folks, who is this guy? Is he the guy in Tucson or is he the guy from yesterday? He may be both. But who he was yesterday is who he really is. He showed up yesterday mad. He showed up yesterday ticked off, and he let everybody know at who he was mad, and why. But it was in no way intended to promote agreement, negotiation, or compromise. That’s the last thing that Obama was attempting to do yesterday. All of that talk in Tucson was just a bunch of empty words. If you go to the foreign press, you will find accurate reports of what this press conference was and how embarrassing it was and how churlish and childish and how infantile it was.
Seth Mandel, Commentary magazine: “Obama Stumbles Despite Friendly Press.” As I say, not one question, folks, not one question about the rollout of Obamacare and the absolute disaster that it is. Not one question. Now, in fairness, the media today, as I say, the Washington Post, CBS are all talking about what a disaster it is, but there wasn’t one question yesterday, because the media is there to protect Obama.
Nile Gardiner, UK Telegraph: “Barack Obama’s Sinking Leadership: Half of Americans Believe the Founding Fathers Would See the US Today as a Failure.” The other half just want their free birth control and their food stamps and their phones. They just want Santa Claus. And there’s another Nile Gardiner piece: “President Obama Throws a Tantrum at Press Conference — Compares His Opponents to Hostage-Takers and Deadbeats.” It was “an embarrassing set of hand-picked questions from a largely subservient liberal-dominated media. … The United States is facing the prospect of a default overwhelmingly because of ObamaÂ’s big spending.”
And that’s the point. Folks, this man has added $6 trillion to the national debt in five years, not even five years, $6 trillion, and he dares go to the microphones of that press conference yesterday and complain and assert that raising the debt limit does not raise the debt. The reason we have to raise the debt limit is him and his party and the irresponsible spending that has taken place, which is burying this country and the future for many young people. The shutdown has been prompted by the imposition of a hugely unpopular health care reform. The American people don’t want Obamacare. It has been forced on the American people, despite the fact that Democrats no longer control the House.
This is a president who is incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions; who refuses to listen to any criticism of his policies and is more willing to negotiate with a state sponsor of terrorism in Tehran than to sit down with Republicans in Congress. We are where we are because of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party. And with a 37% approval rating, don’t kid yourself. More Americans than you would believe understand that. I’m gonna tell you, folks, those of you Republican and conservative media types inside the Beltway, you do not understand. You do not understand the reaction out here when we see the National Mall shut down to World War II vets and American citizens and opened up in a shutdown to advocates for amnesty. You do not understand the reaction outside where you live.
You do not understand what is happening with people as they learn what is happening to them as they enroll, or try to, in Obamacare. You do not understand what is happening and what people are finding out and how they’re reacting when they learn about the mistreatment of uniformed military personnel killed in action and their families, who are being denied benefits and proper respect, trips home, proper burials, all of this being denied purposely by the regime because of the shutdown, when it need not happen at all, and everybody out here knows it’s happening because of cheap, childish, immature partisan politics of the president of the United States and his party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to play our summary of Obama’s press conference yesterday. It took an hour. He didn’t get one question from the media about the rollout of Obamacare, not one, which is another disaster. I’m gonna tell you something. It is so bad, they are so worried in the Drive-By Media that it isn’t working. And, by the way, why isn’t it? Have you heard how much money they spent on this website? Six-hundred million. Let me double-check the actual number here. Okay, $634 million to develop a website. Do you think that’s what developing a website costs most people? $634 million, and it still isn’t working. It is in such bad shape, the Drive-Bys are worried about the optics. They’re worried about all the testimonials of people that can’t get in.
And, by the way, those who can’t get in, some of them can’t get out. Some of them, the website won’t release ’em. I kid you not. So the Drive-Bys are out suggesting, well, you know what the fix for this is? Let’s just go single payer. I think that this is all by design, and I’ve said so from the beginning. The purpose here is to wipe out the private sector insurance market. It is to make getting health insurance so difficult and so complicated, so complex, that people finally, in frustration, throw up their hands and say, “Single payer. Why don’t you guys just handle it all.” It’s what Obama ultimately wants the US health care system to be anyway.
If you know you’ve got three years to design a website, you got three years to get it right, and you don’t? Nobody’s that incompetent. I realize that they don’t have the best talent at government. The private sector does. But three years? And now we’ve learned today that Obama was told it wasn’t ready. He didn’t care. He said launch it anyway. Chaos is what we want. He’s not quoted as saying that. This is the mind-set. But this press conference yesterday, for all of you people who think the Republicans are losing on this shutdown business, hell, they may be being blamed for the shutdown, I don’t know. But at the same time the people do not think the shutdown’s the end of the world. That’s a holdover from the nineties. That’s a dream by the media that the American people think that the worst thing that could ever happen is a government shutdown, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”
Now, to people like Andrea Mitchell or anybody else the Drive-By Media, the government shutdown is the end of the world. I mean, that’s the end all to them, government this, government that, oh, my God, oh, my God. For most people it’s not that way. So Obama goes out and does this press conference yesterday, and it’s mean, juvenile, it’s petulant, spoiled little kid type thing. We put together, for those of you didn’t see, a short little what day minute and a half summary and version of the Obama press conference yesterday.
(playing of spoof)
RUSH: So that’s our summary. That’s a condensed version of the press conference yesterday. Now, I asked Cookie last night to put together a montage, ’cause I remembered Obama back on January 12th of 2011 in Tucson, the tribute to the Tucson shooting victims, including Democrat member of Congress, Gabby Giffords. You remember Obama went out to Tucson, made a speech, and he implored people to stop all this partisan bickering. That we had to do it for Gabby, and we had to raise our standards.
We had to lift up our language. We had to start getting along. We had to start talking in ways that eliminated the sharp polarization that was in our country. And remember what he was playing off of. What he was playing off of were laying reports in the media that Sarah Palin’s website was responsible for that shooting. The media had that story out, so he goes out to build off of that, “We’ve got to stop this kind of mean-spirited talk.” Well, that’s exactly what he engaged in yesterday, so we put together a montage, and the title is, “What happened to Mr. Civility? What happened to the guy who wants us to all get along?”
OBAMA: (January 12, 2011 ) At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized. (Yesterday) Extortion, insane, catastrophic, chaos. (January 12, 2011 ) We are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently. (Yesterday) You have some ideological extremist, extreme Republicans. (January 12, 2011 ) ItÂ’s important for us to pause for a moment. (Yesterday) We’re not going to pay a ransom, you don’t pay a ransom, demand a ransom. (January 12, 2011 ) And make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals. (Yesterday) You do not hold people hostage. (January 12, 2011 ) Not in a way that wounds. (Yesterday) Ransom-taking or hostage-taking. (January 12, 2011 ) Usher in more civility in our public discourse. (Yesterday) Burn down the plant or your office. (January 12, 2011 ) Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face the challenges of our nation. (Yesterday) I’m going to burn down your house. (January 12, 2011 ) Not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness. (Yesterday) Tea Party Republicans flirted with the idea of default, a nuclear bomb. (January 12, 2011 ) We should do everything we can do to make sure this country lives up to our childrenÂ’s expectations. (Yesterday) You’re just a deadbeat.
RUSH: So which is the real Obama? Mr. Civility of 2011, January 8th, or this embarrassing, childlike temper tantrum that we got yesterday that was filled with amazing untruths, such as defaulting on the debt if we don’t raise the debt limit. By the way, I’m not saying don’t raise the debt limit. That’s not my argument. But we’re not gonna default if we don’t. We have plenty of revenue coming in to pay the interest on the debt if the debt limit isn’t raised. It’s not the catastrophe that he’s trying to play it out to be, make it out to be.