RUSH: One thing about the press conference — well, a couple more things about the press conference yesterday that I didn’t know until the program was over yesterday. I’ve alluded to couple of these today already. The president of the United States actually said yesterday (paraphrasing), “Okay, on the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to. Had I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, ‘Boy, this is gonna be great.’ You know I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying this is gonna be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity a week before the website opens, if I thought it wasn’t gonna work.”
So this is the example where he uses his own ignorance as a sign of brilliance. His own stupidity or ignorance is a sign of how smart he is. He actually wanted people to believe yesterday that he wasn’t told that the website wasn’t ready. Now, that simply isn’t true. That has to be a lie. It has to be a lie. There’s no way he didn’t know. The real answer, he didn’t care. It didn’t matter whether it was ready to go or not. Didn’t matter. The website, the exchanges, they are necessary distractions for what he wants. In fact, the more they don’t work, the faster he thinks he’s gonna get where he wants to go.
But here’s a guy, on one hand, everybody thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. Why, this guy knows everything. You ever listen to him talk? You ever heard him talk on policy? This guy can talk about policy like nobody’s business. This guy knows everything. He can’t do it. He’s horrible at policy. But he plays the talk game really well. He sounds smart. He sounds like he knows everything. He’s got these details down like nobody other than Clinton had ’em down. He’s a great academic. He’s a professor of law at Chicago University or some such thing. But then, being the all-knowing master of detail, he doesn’t know anything, on the other hand.
So this guy holds up the fact he didn’t know about his website as proof of how smart he is. “You think I’d be dumb enough to go out and sell this thing as ready to go, as good as Amazon, if I thought it wasn’t ready to go?” So on the one hand he wants us to think, boy, this guy’s so brilliant, so hands-on, so masterful in details, and then, on the other hand, he’s an absolute ignoramus. There are a couple other things that he said. Get this, now. And again I apologize. I shoulda had this stuff yesterday but I didn’t have a chance to get to it.
“What is true is that, as I said before, our IT systems, how we purchase technology in the federal government is cumbersome, complicated and outdated. And so this isn’t a situation where — on my campaign, I could simply say, who are the best folks out there, let’s get them around a table, let’s figure out what we’re doing and we’re just going to continue to improve it and refine it and work on our goals.
“If you’re doing it at the federal government level, you know, you’re going through, you know, 40 pages of specs and this and that and the other and there’s all kinds of law involved. And it makes it more difficult — it’s part of the reason why chronically federal IT programs are overbudget, behind schedule.”
Okay. Do you understand what he just said here? He just indicted bureaucracy as one of the reasons why his health care plan is failing and why the website’s bad, and he says he knew that going in, except he didn’t know the website wasn’t working. If you know the federal government can’t do something, then why did you do it? (Obama impression) “It’s not like my campaign. I can’t just sit there and issue orders, ‘Go get the best people.'” He’s admitting you can’t get the best people in the federal bureaucracy. You can’t get the best people and you can’t give ’em orders because there’s 40 pages of rules and regulations that you gotta go through.
So the guy indicts the very means of implementation of his dream. And then, folks, this was the biggie. The president said, “Even if we get the hardware and software working exactly the way it’s supposed to, with relatively minor glitches, what we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy. And another mistake we made I think was underestimating the difficulties of people purchasing insurance online and shopping for a lot of options, with a lot of costs and a lot of different benefits and plans and somehow expecting that that would be very smooth, and then they also go try to apply for tax credits on the website.”
We discovered that insurance is complicated to buy. You had the president of the United States — you remember when George Bush was said not to know what a supermarket scanner was and how they portrayed him as out of touch, a wealthy aristocrat who never had to go to a grocery store? Here’s a guy who claims he didn’t know until his website rolled out that buying insurance is complicated? He didn’t know that? You know, I can see where he wouldn’t know. He doesn’t do this stuff. This is so beneath him. He doesn’t have to mess around with this kind of stuff. But I’m gonna tell you why this website bopped out is because they purposely hid the most important things from people.
You go on a website, you’re gonna buy something, the first thing you want to know is what it costs. You could not find that until you had sworn to give them everything you own plus your two kids. They demanded so much personal data from you and you couldn’t find a price, you couldn’t find the terms, and the reason they were hidden was because they didn’t want people to not sign up. They knew people wouldn’t sign up when they found out their premiums were gonna triple or double and the deductible was gonna triple, so they put that stuff at the back end where nobody could stay on long enough to get to it.
My point is, for the president of the United States to stand up in a nationally televised press conference and say, as though it’s a new discovery for him, they didn’t know how complicated it was to buy insurance. This guy constantly reaches out to the lowest common denominator in our society and connects with them. The low-information voter hears that, “Yeah, man, he’s one of us, man, yeah, it is complicated. I’m glad he found out. He knows, Mabel, he knows how hard it is. What’s the latest on Kimmy and Kanye?”
He had no compunction about saying any of these things. He had no problem admitting that he didn’t know his website wasn’t working. He had no problem turning that into an example of how smart he is. He didn’t have any problem whatsoever saying (paraphrasing), “You know, dealing with the government, that’s really a pain in the rear end. All these regulations and things, and you can’t get the best people. It’s not like my campaign.” And then he had no compunction, no problem at all telling people he didn’t know until this all started that buying insurance was complicated. And still he’s held out as the smartest, brightest, most brilliant. It just wears me out. It just wears me out.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hi, Dan. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Great to speak with you. We’ve been fans in my household for over 10 years now. We’re huge loyal fans of yours. I just wanted to call to make two points to you, sir. This is the greatest honor in my life. Thank you. I just wanted to say, you know, it’s funny, if you get pulled over for so much as a speeding ticket and you say to the officer, “You know, I didn’t know I was going that fast.” They tell you, and this is such a slogan, “Ignorance is no excuse for the law.” It’s all you ever hear is ignorance is no excuse for the law.
RUSH: This is very true.
CALLER: It’s funny because the president needs to be told over and over again, that, you know, have really drilled into his head, because it’s funny, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, you know what I mean, Rush?
RUSH: Uh, sort of. What are you specifically referring to?
CALLER: Well, I’m just basically saying, you know, you always hear that ignorance is no excuse for the law. Well, it’s funny because the president is out there claiming all this ignorance, and it’s all you ever hear, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” But if it’s good for us, it should be good for him that ignorance is no excuse for his law.
RUSH: Well, that’s true. I get your point. You’ve got a different way of illustrating the hypocrisy. Basically nobody gets away with, “I didn’t know.” But in his case we’re not talking about breaking the law so much as, “I didn’t know the website wasn’t working. I didn’t know that people weren’t gonna be able to keep their policies. I didn’t know any of these details,” when he is also portrayed as the smartest, the most detail oriented, the most connected, the most compassionate, the most caring. These are the kinds of things that frustrate you and me that make no impression on low-information voters. They make no impression on a lot of people. “I didn’t know the website was gonna be that bad.”
The guy has, let’s face it, because of the first term and the campaign, he’s got a lot of goodwill built up with people. I mean, the guy was a messiah. He was gonna unify everybody. His poll numbers are in the toilet now. His approval numbers are down, but I don’t really know how many people when he says he didn’t know about the website. My real feeling is that most people don’t even know that he said it, because most people are not watching a presidential press conference at 12 o’clock. They’re doing other things, particularly the low-information crowd. The media is not making a big deal out of that so much. So it’s just a huge disconnect.
I have found over the course of the years, folks, and one of the really big frustrations associated with this program is the daily realization of how little people in the country actually are aware of, hear about, or care about, within the political arena. Most people have this protective view of the presidency. Anybody who holds the office is always gonna get the benefit of the doubt unless the media spends four years destroying them like they did Bush, and with Bush not returning fire or any of that. But I’d have to say that’s one of the most frustrating things, is the overall level of detachment that a lot of people have.
Jeff in Enon, Ohio. You’re next on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Yes. I just wanted to point out something. I watch all the political pundits and hear you talk — and, by the way, love your show for 20 something years or more. And no one’s making point that Obama and his Regime have brought our country down to the level of, you know, the highest office of the land has become an insurance salesman, and at that, a hack of an insurance salesman. It’s embarrassing, and it’s insulting, Rush.
RUSH: I know. I know. By the way, we don’t want to insult insurance salesmen here. That’s not your point, is it?
CALLER: That’s not at all my point, and that’s why I said the word “hack.” An insurance salesman worth his salt, would have solved this insurance problem in just mere hours and got it out the door and then on to the next issue. Is that not true?
RUSH: Well, yeah. But not the way Obama wants to solve it. That’s the difference. What really cuts to the quick with what you’re talking about is Obama thinks he knows more than insurance people do about insurance. He knows more than doctors do about medicine. He knows more than generals do about the military. He knows more than Steve Jobs or anybody in Silicon Valley about high-tech. He knows more than Exxon about oil. He knows more about everything than everybody else doing it. And he hasn’t done anything.
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