RUSH: So, Snerdley comes in today, “Say, did you see all this stuff about you on TV?”
“No.”
“Did you see all this stuff about you in The Politico?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
I can’t tell you the last time I had cable news on, when I was watching it. I’m just being honest about it. I don’t watch it much anymore. If there’s breaking news, but, hell, everything’s breaking news now, so… (interruption) It is. They have “breaking news” whenever anything is going on. Breaking news to report sports scores. Breaking news to report what Beckham’s wearing at the World Cup. I just don’t have any interest in it anymore.
So no, I didn’t see any of the stuff. But I have the audio sound bites. And I think the staff is playing with me, ’cause they hear me, they listen to this program. They heard me early in the week saying I’m worn out with Hillary. They heard me say I’m tired of it. They heard me say I don’t want to get caught up in all this. I do not want to fall prey to the daily soap opera script that makes whatever Hillary’s doing or saying or wherever she’s going the focus of everybody’s interest. So I got the audio sound bites today, it’s all Hillary. Well, some of it is about what I said about Hillary, yes, the cable networks do take excerpts of me on this program.
I wonder why it’s always me. For example, why are they taking sound bites of me, what I say about Mrs. Clinton, and then using those sound bites on their programs for their guests to react to and thus create a segment? Why are they using me? (interruption) Is that right? I’m the only one saying what I’m saying? Is that right? You think that’s what it is? Well, that may be, but I clearly am not the only one thinking it. So actually what they’re doing is they’re hoping each day that I say what everybody’s thinking, and then when I do they go, “Yeah, right, we got two more segments out of this.” This is why I say “show prep for the rest of the media.”
Well, okay, we’ll get to it, I do have them. If we’re gonna play sound bites today, they’re gonna have to be about Hillary ’cause they’re… (interruption) What do you mean, not gonna do it now? (interruption) You don’t want to me to do it now? (interruption) I’ve got no choice. People have worked very hard on these sound bites, finding sound bites of Hillary. It takes, what, 20 minutes. And so if we’re gonna play these sound bites — look at this. And by the way, she’s encountering something she’s not used to and it kind of makes a point.
You know, the libs, the leftist politicians, Democrats, really don’t know what it is like to face a confrontational or combative or even challenging media. I mean, they literally are given softball questions most of the time. Mrs. Clinton went on National Public Radio the other day and she was hit with, I think, pretty mild questions, in truth. But to Mrs. Clinton they were unfair, they were biased, they were prejudicial, they were too personal, and she got rattled.
It was a female, Terry Gross is the infobabe’s name on NPR. Yeah, and it wasn’t an easy question. I’ll have the sound bite coming up. The question basically was, “Mrs. Clinton, you’ve always been for gay marriage, but you couldn’t say so, right? you had to wait ’til the political time was right before you could come out and say you were for gay marriage?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. My change of mind was legitimate.”
“Oh, come on, Mrs. Clinton, everybody knows you were always for gay marriage. What was it that allowed you to change your mind? What changed in politics that made you feel comfortable that you could finally tell the truth?”
It was that kind of stuff. And Hillary, “What do you mean I wasn’t telling truth? What do you mean? You’re playing with my words. How could you do that?” I’m telling you, these people on the left do not know what it is like to face a grilling, they so infrequently get one. And when they do, you can see how offended they are. And you can see how they issue subtle warnings to the members of the media that are daring to do this to them. It’s funny to watch. So that’ll be somewhat entertaining to listen to.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but I can’t, especially since I committed to it. Yeah, it’s time to start chipping away on the audio sound bites that are about Mrs. Clinton and me. I guess I deserve this, because I said earlier in the week, “Look, I’m really tired of it. I’m bored with it. There isn’t anything new. In fact, I almost feel like my intelligence is being insulted when I’m told that I have to care, when I’m told that I have to think that this is the Smartest Woman in the World.
“I’m told I have to take her seriously, I have to believe that she’s this and that and the other thing,” and I just don’t. So, the things I have said have ended up being fodder elsewhere in the media for guests on cable shows to comment upon. Monday night, NBC Nightly News. This is to set this up. This is the Hillary comment in question here.
Cynthia McFadden, who used to be at ABC. She’s now at NBC. She’s interviewing Mrs. Clinton. She said, “I think an awful lot of people think that we’re less safe today than we were a week ago because these five guys are out” that we’ve swapped for Bergdahl. These five guys are out now, and we’re a lot less safe because of that.
HILLARY: These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We may be kind of, y’know, missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.
RUSH: Or what about if they’re war heroes? Why insult Bergdahl by associating him with some drunk that fell off a ship, or was pushed or jumped? I mean, isn’t the story about Bergdahl, that he was a hero to certain people? (interruption) Well, I know some say he’s a deserter and so forth, but why? (interruption) Yeah, I know. There are reports that he was on hashish and hookah and rather enjoying it, and became one of the Taliban and all that. But regardless, that’s not the point.
The point is I think this statement of hers (impression), “They’re no threat to the nation. They’re no threat to Americans. They’re not here. Their threat is to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Come on, y’know?” I think that is indicative of what we’re dealing with here. So, anyway, my reaction to that is what ended up being played on cable news this morning on America’s Newsroom and the Fox News Channel.
Bill Hemmer spoke with Juan Williams and the editor at large at HotAir.com, Mary Katharine Ham, about me and my criticism of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham-Rodham for saying that the five released Taliban members are not a threat to the US. Now, to set up the segment, here is Hemmer’s introduction and the clip they played of me talking about Mrs. Clinton.
HEMMER: Rush Limbaugh with some harsh words for Hillary Clinton over remarks she made earlier in the week that the five Taliban commanders freed from Gitmo are not a threat to the United States.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Now, I think this might come back to haunt Mrs. Clinton. This one little answer to this one little question, to me, is proof that this woman is neither smart nor competent.
RUSH: Now, let me elaborate why in case you missed it. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t here, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wasn’t here, and Ramzi Yousef wasn’t here, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh wasn’t here. The 19 hijackers did come. They were in and out. But all the planning, all the fundraising, all of the orchestrating took place exactly where these five released Taliban prisoners of war are.
They don’t have to be in the United States to wreak havoc here. That, to me, is what was absurd about this. “Oh, no, they’re not a problem. They’re a problem for Pakistan and Afghanistan. Come on, y’know? I mean, they’re not a threat to the safety of the United States.” Like bin Laden wasn’t? So, anyway, they played the clip. It’s time now to go to Juan Williams, whose reaction here is to suggest that Hillary graduated from fancy colleges and I didn’t, so who am I to criticize her?
WILLIAMS: It comes in a week in which she said they were dead broke when they left the White House, and that set off conservative blogs, and now this one coming from Rush Limbaugh. I don’t know if he wants to test his Mensa score versus Hillary. I mean, you know, she’s a big-time college grad. But I think what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to deflate a balloon here in that what he said later in that monologue was that Hillary Clinton is supposed to be the brightest woman ever, the most competent woman, and therefore she can be president, and he wants to take down that whole structure right now.
RUSH: Well — (laughing) — credit where credit’s due. I am trying to pierce that balloon. To me it’s so phony as a construct anyway. And it started back in 1992, smartest woman in the world. They gave her health care. She botched that. She botched the way they handled Paula Jones. She botched practically everything they gave her to do. Botched Benghazi, botched the Russian reset. Where is the evidence of this brilliance and this competence? Anyway, so we got another bite on this with Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams continuing.
HAM: I’m not sure that electorally it will matter in the end. I hope that’s not the case.
WILLIAMS: There we go.
HAM: I think she will ride the wave of a lot of identity politics. She will be treated quite well by the media after she gets through an initial sort of questioning. The messaging will be, “Look, I’m the first woman and you better wanna break this glass ceiling with me or else you hate women.” And anybody who discusses her or criticizes her, much like in the form of our criticisms of Barack Obama, will be called sexist instead of racist.
WILLIAMS: Limbaugh said nobody’s gonna want to watch a woman age on TV if she’s elected president, so I think we already started that.
HAM: And you’ve already started it.
RUSH: (laughing) Folks, you know what this means? This watching a woman age, I asked the question with a picture of Hillary, do the American people want to watch a woman — they didn’t say this — A, with a picture of Hillary up there — they haven’t forgotten. Just like they haven’t forgotten Operation Chaos. So Juan Williams, he cites that, and then he cited, the brightest, the smartest woman in the world. So they’re very much aware, and these little things that irritate them, they never forget them. “Yeah, yeah, and Limbaugh said the American people…” (laughing) I was the first, I absolutely was the first. Well, the way this came up, I was defending her. Don’t forget. This was part of Operation Chaos and I was defending.
She had been thrown under the bus by her own party for this young, articulate black guy. And here’s a woman, this was her campaign, 2008. The presidency was hers. This was her payback for enabling Clinton all those years, for helping him to survive. And now look what they’re doing to her, and look how they’re treating her. You remember all this. Operation Chaos was to keep her campaign alive. And I think there was somebody who had made some comment, before me, about Mrs. Clinton’s — H.R., do you remember who it was? I know there was somebody before me that referenced her appearance. I forget where it was.
But, anyway, if you recall, I said how unfair is it that people — do the American people want to watch a woman age publicly in office. And I was doing it in defense of her because she was being ripped up by her own party. You remember, there was some really deep divisions in the Democrat Party during that primary. I was saying they don’t do this to men, is it fair. Operation Chaos, I was defending Mrs. Clinton. But look what Juan Williams remembers. All he remembers is that I asked the question. He doesn’t know or maybe didn’t know, doesn’t certainly remember the context.
And course Mary Katharine Ham is correct. The attraction for the Democrats and Mrs. Clinton is it’s another first. And any criticism of Mrs. Clinton will be said to be sexist, therefore illegitimate and not allowed, like criticism of Obama is called racism. But I don’t think it’s that automatic, ’cause she’s not new. She has been around the block a bunch of times on the public stage, 1992. She has got a record, whereas Obama didn’t. And it’s not an admirable one.
It might have been — I don’t want to get anybody in trouble here — but it might have been a photo I saw on Drudge that made me ask that question. It might have been. ‘Cause I didn’t just bring that out of nothing. I didn’t grab it out of the air. I mean, it might have been sitting there but I didn’t just grab it. Somebody else ran with it first.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I told you. I told you. I guess it’s 10, right? That’s it, folks. We’re getting proof now. It was a photo on Drudge that I was reacting to that got the whole thing started. Look, let me grab some phone calls. It is Open Line Friday. We’ll get back to all these sound bites. We’re just getting started here on that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. We now have incontrovertible proof that what got all the stuff started with me asking if the American people want to watch… In fact, the actual question was: “Does our looks-obsessed culture want to stare at an aging woman?” And this is what got it all started. Let me zoom in here, folks, so you can see this. I’m showing this to Rush 24/7 subscribers at RushLimbaugh.com via the Dittocam.
So zooming in, and there you have it. That was what was on Drudge: “The Toll of a Campaign.” In that picture of Mrs. Clinton, she’s very stressed, very tired, very worn out, and all the things that accompany that. Later on, there was side-by-side picture of Mrs. Clinton having been made up with no wrinkles. So it offered a comparison. I didn’t do that any of that. I just showed it. So there’s that.
Now, up next, this is from the website RushLimbaugh.com where all of this was exposed. It’s a bigger version of the same picture, and you can’t read it. That’s a transcript. That’s an actual transcript of the program that day. This is December of 2007. This is seven years ago. Juan Williams and the Democrats remember every word of this from seven years ago, December of 2007. So let me zoom out now of the Dittocam.
I’ll read to you what the headline here says: “Does Our Looks-Obsessed Culture Want to Stare at an Aging Woman?” And let me just review. “Now, this theory of mine based on this Drudge picture of Mrs. Clinton, with the headline: ‘The Toll of a Campaign.’ Now, it could well be that that’s a sympathy photo, too, to make people feel sorry for how tough the campaign trail is. Now, I want to preface this by saying I know it’s going to get out there.
“Media Matters is going to get hold of this and they’re going to take it all out of context. We can expect that. It’s a badge of honor when this happens, but for the rest of you, I want you to understand that I am talking about the evolution of American culture here, and not so much Mrs. Clinton. It could be anybody, and it is really not very complicated. Americans are addicted to physical perfection, thanks to Hollywood and thanks to television.
“We know it because we see it. We see everybody and their uncle in gyms. We see people starving themselves. We see people taking every miracle fad drug there is to lose weight. We see guys trying to get six-pack abs. We have women starving themselves trying to get into size-zero and size-one clothes; makeovers, facials, plastic surgery, everybody in the world does Botox, and this affects men, too.
“As you know, the haughty John Kerry Botoxed his wrinkles out during the campaign,” Botoxed them out. “There is this thing in this country that, as you age — and this is particularly, you know, women are hardest hit on this, and particularly in Hollywood — America loses interest in you, and we know this is true because we constantly hear from aging actresses, who lament that they can’t get decent roles anymore, other than in supporting roles that will not lead to any direct impact, yay or nay, at the box office.
“While Hollywood box-office receipts may be stagnant, none of that changes the fact that this is a country obsessed with appearance. It’s a country obsessed with looks. The number of people in public life who appear on television or on the big screen, who are content to be who they are, you can probably count on one hand,” and I’m one of them. I hate makeup, even. It’s one of the reasons I quit my TV show.
“Everybody’s trying to make themselves look different — and in that situation, in that case, they think they’re making themselves look better. It’s just the way our culture has evolved. It’s the way the country is. It’s like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”
That’s what it was.
You see, this is a very sympathetic treatment of the issue.
Now, Juan Williams and the boys don’t remember that because they can’t get past the fact I even had the audacity to bring it up. So coupled with their… Well, they’re all thinking it, too, but they don’t say it. You couple that with their preexisting prejudice about me, and it must be that I am making fun of Mrs. Clinton and resorting to really, really horrible things to try to keep her from winning, blah, blah, blah.
To me, it’s fascinating what they remember. (laughs) It always fascinates me.