RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, you know that I am very reluctant to talk about myself. Since most everybody else does, I try to mollify the Stick-to-the-Issues Crowd and just stick to the issues. But today I’m the issues. Today I am the news with my appearance on Fox News Sunday yesterday morning, a full 15 minutes uninterrupted.
You should have seen this place yesterday. I walk in here, they asked me to get here an hour early to test the audio. But because I know how these things work, I got here two hours early. So I rolled in here at seven o’clock and it looked like a bomb had gone off here. Both back doors were off their hinges. I had wires coming out of both back doors. The air-conditioning was off. I walk in here, there are eight people, there must have been an array of lights that would light up Wrigley Field and monitors all over the place.
It’s no big deal. They were great, they always are, the crew that Fox sends here. It’s just that television just amazes me. All of that for 15 minutes. (interruption) Well, no — (laughing) they would have done it no matter who the guest was, Snerdley. Snerdley: “They had to do it right.” That’s what TV has to do.
Anyway, normally on something like this, I’ll be honest with you, I’d come in here and I wouldn’t even talk about it ’cause it was yesterday’s news and if you saw it you saw it, and if you didn’t you didn’t and time to move on. But it actually provides, you know, what we do here, we play audio sound bites and I react to ’em. And it’s very rare that I get to react to me. Other people get to do that, but I never do.
So I’m gonna react to myself as a news maker here, and I’m gonna criticize what I said. Well, that may be a stretch, but I’m gonna point out what could have been better, what I really meant, ’cause it was very constrained. I normally don’t even get into a topic in the first 15 minutes, and here they wanted to do six of them in 15 minutes. So it was rat-tat-tat-tat, and it was, in some cases, brief and opportunity to extrapolate or expand just wasn’t permitted by time.
So playing the sound bites here and reacting to myself as a news maker provides abundant opportunity, and a lot of it is relevant to exactly what is the news. So let’s just get to it.
Up first was the question that Chris Wallace asked about all the protests going on, the race protests that are taking place. His question, “We’re delighted to have you. Let’s start with the protests across the country in the wake of the grand jury decisions not to indict those police officers. Do you think that those demonstrators have a legitimate beef with police and prosecutors?”
RUSH ARCHIVE: There is grievance politics in this country that’s tearing the country apart, Chris. I think what happened in the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, and what happened here in Staten Island does not warrant this because the grand jury rendered a correct verdict in Ferguson. New York is a little bit different, but this would have happened I think no matter what the grand jury in Ferguson said. I think the real thing to note here is that this is tearing the country apart. It is literally ripping our fabric apart. And the president of the United States, one thing about him: He’s a great orator. You put the right words on the teleprompter and this man can deliver soaring, inspiring rhetoric.
I ask you to remember his 2008 campaign in front of the Styrofoam columns at Denver during the convention speech. If he wants to, he can inspire. And I think it’s called for in this situation. This is not good for the country, what’s happening here, because it isn’t — I don’t think — full-fledged legitimate. It’s not based on real-world grievance. It’s grievance that’s being amplified and made up. The president, if you ask me, could do a lot to stop this by telling people to respect the criminal justice system. There’s nothing here that’s designed as they would have you believe to purposely get it wrong, to purposely screw people. It’s not the case. And presidents are supposed to be uplifting.
RUSH: And they’re certainly supposed to be unifying and that’s why Obama was elected. If you go back to his campaign of 2008, what was it about Obama that everybody found so appealing? Well, one was his race because that alone was gonna say so much about us. We elected a black president, why, wow, what a huge step our country had made beyond the racial divide. Added to that, Obama was portrayed as a great unifier.
Now, you and I know that he wasn’t any of that, but a lot of people at that time didn’t. A lot of people at that time hoped Barack Obama was the greatest thing that ever happened to politics. They thought he was. We’d never had anybody like this before, that the world was fawning all over. And people bought into the myth that was portrayed about Obama by his own people, that he’s a great unifier, that he was uplifting and inspiring, and the politics of division that had popularized this country was going to be a thing of the past. He was gonna change Washington and all that’s happened is it has gotten worse.
Now, the president comes out and he throws fuel on this rage, and he’s doing this by design. I told Chris Wallace back in 2000 all of this is being done on purpose. The president’s got a chip on his shoulder, and the mayor of New York last week gave up the ghost on this, if I can use that term, by admitting that our country has been fatally flawed since its founding.
Now, he didn’t mention the flaw, but everybody knows what it was, slavery and itinerant racism attached to it. And both he and Obama are running around saying that nothing’s been done. The protestors, “There hasn’t been any progress.” That’s absurd. But the country is roiling, all of these protests, the country dividing. There are people today who think race relations — polling data is out — race relations in this country are worse than they’ve ever been. See, that can’t possibly be true. We’ve come a long way and nobody is out saying this. Nobody’s trying to tamp this down.
Obama may think, “Well, if I try to tamp it down I’m being insensitive to the protesters.” This isn’t good for anybody except the few who are profiting from it. And I mean profiting from it in two ways: power and money. And of course those are two powers that are hard to contend with, but nevertheless the policy that is being engaged in here is destroying, literally destroying the fabric of our country.
It’s dispiriting people, and you talk about hope and change. It’s taking hope out of all kinds of people who don’t want to live like this. You don’t want this to be what America is becoming or has become. They don’t want to believe it, they don’t want it to be, and presidents have extraordinary power to shape public opinion, to bend people, to inspire, to uplift. I mean, one of the things about Reagan, if you take away everything that happened with Reagan policy-wise, that’s the thing that Reagan did.
I’ll never forget back in those days, back during the time Reagan was president, the media would run around and ask people about Reagan, and without fail you would hear nine out of 10 times, “He makes me feel better about my country, makes me feel better about myself.” But there are people who think that is an insensitive attitude. That there’s nothing to feel good about regarding America, because America’s so flawed. And I think people need to ask themselves, who benefits from all this division? Who profits from it? I’m not talking about Al Sharpton here. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, those relics, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about who profits. What political party, for example, but not just restricted to them. Who benefits from all this division?
Who benefits from all this rage and anger? And, believe me, there are people that do. And I think it’s sick. I think it’s unnecessary. And I think that if there were people that really cared, they’d be doing everything they can to uplift and stop this, especially since so much of this is based on things that aren’t even true when you’re talking about Ferguson, Missouri.
Next question from Chris Wallace. “One of the things that critics and some of the demonstrators cite is, for instance, that black drivers who are stopped for a traffic stop are three times likely to be searched as white drivers. So what do you think of them as this perception of unfairness in the criminal justice system?”
RUSH ARCHIVE: I don’t think that things are rosy and perfect in America, but to say that they’re no better, as the mayor of New York said, that’s absurd. We’ve made all kinds of efforts to improve race relations in this country. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, affirmative action, we have bent over backwards. Is it all perfect? No, it’s not. But there’s no acknowledgment of any of the progress, Chris. If you listen to these people, the president, the mayor of New York, you would think it’s 200 years ago. You would think we haven’t even started working on these problems, and that’s not true.
And I think for the president to promote this division as he just did in that clip that you said, and mischaracterize what happened here — he’s talking in large part about Ferguson and what he described did not happen in Ferguson, and what most of the media is describing did not happen in Ferguson, Missouri. There was no “hands up, don’t shoot.” It didn’t happen. And that’s tearing this country apart. We have people to whom the truth is relative. And they’re using whatever power they have to try to redefine the truth for the advancement of their own political agenda. And it’s just not productive. And the president taking sides in this in a way that further divides the country I find reprehensible and very unfortunate.
RUSH: But purposeful. Now, there’s one thing you’re missing here, folks. It’s a key element when you’re doing television. There’s one thing you’re missing, and that’s how hot I looked, and that just doesn’t come across on the radio, but it is undeniable. One of the points I’ve always made, I had my own TV show, and for every comment I got about whatever I said, there were five or six about my tie or some other aspect of my appearance. Television is just that. The lasting thing, the lasting memory people have of television is what things look like, and I looked hot yesterday. And you aren’t getting that as part of this replay here on the radio. So you just have to imagine it. But it was there.
But, seriously… (interruption) Snerdley is shouting at me that the last sound bite just bore a hole right through their entire purpose and their protests. I don’t know. This just really, really troubles me. We have really, when I say bent over backwards, and I’m talking about the American people, policy, law, you name it, from affirmative action to admissions policy, to changing requirements to be a cop or to be a firefighter or to be in whatever, we have gone out of our way to accommodate the grievances of every minority that pops up out there. And in back of everybody’s mind or maybe at the forefront of everybody’s mind is the knowledge that we’ve done that.
And it gets really frustrating. You go out of your way and you try to accommodate, you try to help, and none of it’s appreciated. There’s no thanks. There’s no appreciation. There are just demands for more amidst claims that nothing’s been done. And at times like this it calls for a reasoned voice that is automatically respected. That voice is the president. He’s respected because of the office he holds. And some presidents command even more respect beyond what is granted them simply by holding the office. Obama did have that at one time, and he squandered it now. He’s just a pure partisan. The thing is, he always was. But a lot of people that voted for him, that’s the last thing they thought that he was.
So now the truth is revealing itself, and people are seeing that no matter what progress is made, it’s never enough, it’s not good enough, and it’s a great teachable moment about liberalism, because that is liberalism. It’s never enough no matter what happens. No matter what they get based on what grievance, it’s never enough. But the whole notion of grievance politics is destructive in the first place because those bandying about and announcing their grievance, yelling about it and making demands are never satisfied no matter what happens.
And if you take it down to a base level — have you ever tried to be nice to people and it ends up being thrown back in your face? I’m just talking about an individual, at work, at home, anywhere, you go out of your way to be nice and it still doesn’t matter. Imagine a nation feeling that kind of frustration, and then that frustration descends into an attitude of futility. “Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do about it. Being nice doesn’t fix it. Changing policy doesn’t fix it.” And you end up with a population at large that is to one degree or another depressed, down in the dumps, frustrated, what have you.
And after a while, that is gonna manifest itself into other attitudes of defiance, such as, “What more do you want? My God, we’ve done everything in the world. Can’t you be happy?” And the real question is, don’t you want to be happy? Anyway, gotta take a break here, my friends. We will continue with all this, my appearance on Fox News Sunday right after this. Don’t go away.
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RUSH: So I just got an e-mail. “Hey, Rush, you did look great, but it wasn’t you. That’s what great lighting does. Great lighting takes time. That’s why the crew was there for so long.” (laughing) I love all of you in the audience. Great to be back. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. One of the things I wanted to say to Chris Wallace — and I just couldn’t remember everything I wanted to say — is about this grievance business.
It leads to (and we are fully enmeshed in it now) a victim and victimology culture. I am 63 years old, and for all of my adult life, the same people have been whining and complaining about the same things. It’s only gotten more intense. The level of dissatisfaction has risen no matter the efforts that have been made to address these grievances or complaints. For my entire adult life, my view is — and I’ve paid attention like all of you have.
I have looked at various parts this country turn over backwards, bend over backwards attempting to respond to and resolve and placate those who come across and come up with all these grievances. And for my entire life, they’ve had the same grievances. The civil rights coalition, the feminists, the unions, the anti-war crowd, the environmentalist wackos, you name it. They all have the same grievance that they had 60 years ago, 50 years ago.
They’re never happy. No matter what is done to please them, no matter what policy changes have been implemented, they’re always angry. They are always outraged, they are always miserable, and they demand that we and everybody else be outraged and miserable with them. Now, it could well be a psychological thing. But even so, there’s no question in my mind that it is political, primarily. It has political objectives.
There is politically devised strategy behind it, and it all has one objective. All these different groups with all of their grievances have one objective, and that’s tearing down this country and transformating it. The thing that we’ve done now, is we’ve elected somebody who has this frame of mind. We have elected somebody president who wants to do all this, who carries these grievances. The president just the other day, what did he say?
He said that this country’s deeply rooted in racism. Well, okay, fine. That’s not helpful. Ah, everybody knows that. What the president is saying is, we haven’t made any progress. Now, he did give a bit of a paean to it, but not nearly enough to overcome the original claim that we’re deeply rooted in racism and the implication clear that we haven’t done nearly enough.
That simply isn’t true, particularly when it is patently obvious that no matter what is done, it doesn’t even matter. There’s no gratitude; there’s no thanks. It’s the same complaints, the same whining, and now we just keep creating more and more victims — and you know what happens with that? You remember the days where people said, “No, no, I refuse to play the victim; I am not gonna play the victim”? It was an attitude that was scorned to be a victim. Today, it’s a badge of honor to be a victim.
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RUSH: Yeah, it used to be that it was a matter of scorn to be a victim. Nobody wanted to be a victim, because victims whined and they complained and blamed others for their plight. It was a stigma. That’s why, not that long ago (you would probably remember) people were running around refusing to play the victim. In fact, it was almost valorous to not be the victim, but today it’s just the exact opposite.
To be a victim is to be a hero.
To be a victim is to be some sort of massive fighter for justice and integrity.
I’ll tell you what happens — and we’re living it. We’re right in the middle of it. I don’t care, take your favorite group. Pick any group you want that has become fully victimized. They are fully enmeshed in victimology and where they live is the victimhood, and it’s gotten to the point now where anything that is said contrary to the contentions made by the victims is considered to be an attack on the victims.
The victims in our culture I also call “The Offended,” and there are people that are offended by you name it. Secondhand smoke. They’re offended by words they hear on radio/TV, whatever. They’re everywhere. If you don’t bow down and try to accommodate every little whining, moaning complaint, then you are judged to be attacking them. This manifests itself all over. You know our biggest victim in the country is right now is Barack Obama, and he plays it to the hilt.
He’s the biggest victim we’ve got, and if there’s any criticism of Barack Obama, why, it is considered to be an attack and is considered to be an attack rooted in racism. All of this is designed to shut down any opposition, legitimate or otherwise. It’s designed to shut down disagreement, shut down debate, you name it. It’s designed to intimidate people into shutting up, getting out of the way, and let the victims and The Offended overrun whatever it is they demand be changed.
We’re living right in the middle of the it. The president himself was on BET, Black Entertainment Network, and he effectively labeled the United States as being a country of racists, and having deep roots in racism. He said, “There’s something deeply rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history, and when you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or…” Wait a minute, sir. You’ve been here six years.
You’re the first African-American president, you are historic, and you’re talking as though you haven’t been on the scene yet. Six years, and what do you have to show for doing anything about any of this? It’s what presidents do! Deal with problems. Improve the country. Unite people, bring ’em together, move everybody forward. Not divide them. I really think this is extremely harmful, and it’s getting worse by the day.
In Ferguson… Do you know what happened in Ferguson?
There’s story at National Review Online today. The Justice Department went into Ferguson, Missouri, ostensibly to have a meeting with community leaders to try to come up with solutions to various problems. That was just a cover for what really went on. The mayor got fooled by it, but some people that were in these meetings have told National Review Online that what really happened in there was that the Justice Department was asking attendees if they know how to recognize the signs of “white privilege,” or if they know how to deal with white privilege.
If they didn’t know how to recognize the signs, the Justice Department told them what the signs of white privilege are and how you can spot it. The Department of Justice then gave them guidelines on how to behave and how to react to white privilege. So what everybody thought the DOJ going in there try to mollify things and get answers, dig deep and get to the truth? They were going in, throwing gasoline on the flames!
They were hoping for a bigger fire by telling the residents, “Yeah, you guys got all kinds of white privilege going on in Ferguson, and here’s how you spot it.” Eric Holder’s Justice Department. This is not unifying. It’s not problem solving. It’s exacerbating problems and it’s using people, and it is encouraging anger. It’s promoting anger and division and all these things, and it’s keeping all these people Democrat voters in perpetuity. That is the primary objective.
This country is over 230 years old, and this past weekend we’ve had to listen to people all over the place act as though not one thing has even been tried to deal with this root racism plaguing America, and that simply isn’t the case. Because, you see, the victims in this current culture can never be wrong. The Offended, the victims, are always right, and if you do not kowtow to it, you are considered to be attacking them.
“And attacking a victim? Boy, that’s just mean! Because victims, by definition, are helpless and poor and powerless. Boy, you’d really be a mean person to attack a victim.”
Did you see…? Where is it? What did I do with it? Get this along the same lines. This is from the Washington Free Beacon. Here’s the headline: “Iran Instructs US: Stop the ‘RacistÂ’ Crackdown on Blacks — Iran lashed out at the United States and the Obama [Regime] on Sunday, demanding that America immediately take action to end its ‘racist, inhumane crackdown on blacks’ and other minorities, according to a statement by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“As the controversy over the deaths of [The Gentle Giant] and Eric Garner continues to roil the country, Iran accused the United States of hypocrisy on the human rights front and of being a racist nation.” You know, I mentioned this in the 2012 presidential campaign. I can’t tell the difference sometimes between the Iranian Regime and the Democrat Party. You know, I listen to the Iranian guy (he’s gone now) Ahmadinejad running around talking about America and he sounded just like John Kerry talking about America.
Ahmadinejad ripping into America sounded just like the way Dick Durbin does it. I couldn’t tell the difference between the Iranians and the Democrats — and now look. The Iranians are accusing us, the United States, of inherent inhumane racism and demanding that we do something about it. These are the people that behaved toward women according to Sharia law, which means the last thing you want to be in Iran is a woman. Just amazing.
You can’t tell the difference. If you didn’t put an identifier before some of these phrases, I couldn’t tell the difference between Iranian official and a member of the Democrat Party. All right, back to the sound bites of Fox News Sunday. Next question from Chris Wallace: “You now say, Mr. Limbaugh, Eric Garner was not choked, that it wasn’t a chokehold. A question I have — and I ask this with all due respect, we’re friends — what are you talking about? This is not a chokehold?”
RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m listening to experts in the police departments around the country that I know tell me it’s not a chokehold. I’m listening to certain things I’ve read in the media quoting police officials and those who train police saying that this was not a chokehold. It might have been carotid restriction, but it was not a chokehold. But, Chris, none of this… This all misses the point. What was Eric Garner doing? He was selling cigarettes, loose cigarettes. And the police in New York, because they’re so eager for tax collection… What is being done here with regard to taxes and the state’s desire to collect them no matter what, how many cops were descended on that situation for cigarettes?
How many people smoking marijuana did the cops pass by and ignore on the way to Eric Garner? You’ve got $13 a carton, uh, $13 a pack in New York City, over $6 of that is taxes. And the authorities are telling the cops, “You go out and you stop that,” because they’re so intent on collecting tax revenue. I think the real outrage here is that an American died while the state is enforcing tax collection on cigarettes! This is just absurd. And it … You know, people talk about the left, they want a big state. They want a powerful state. Well, here it is. You’ve got to take all of it. If you want a powerful state, there’s your police force acting on demands of the authorities to go out and make sure that every dime of tax is collected, particularly from tobacco. Look how we stigmatize tobacco. … to the point it’s so despised and reviled that a guy loses his life selling single cigarettes in New York City. It’s absurd.
RUSH: It really is, when you stop and think about it. You got a black market because they tax cigarettes. It’s an addictive product. It’s an addictive substance. Cigarettes are taxed so high that the primary number of people who smoke ’em can’t afford ’em. Ergo, you got a black market. Eric Garner is in the black market trying to eke out a living selling loose cigarettes. The guy that owns the store where Eric Garner was camped out call the cops, “Hey, there’s a guy here selling illegal cigarettes. He’s giving away my business.” Understandable complaint. Five or six cops ultimately show up to get this guy.
Now, I’m not denying he resisted arrest, and that is a primary factor in what happened to him, but what was the offense that sent the cops there in the first place? Taxes. Confiscatory taxes on cigarettes. The cops don’t just show up on their own. The cops are assigned things to do, crimes to seek, punishment to mete out, and they’re given marching orders. They’re just not rogue, “Hey, look here, a guy selling cigarettes illegally on the street.” I mean, they know to do that if they run into it, but these people are under orders ’cause it’s a big deal. New York City’s broke; New York state’s broke. How terrible is it that an American is dead and what started it all was the fact that he was selling illegal cigarettes on a sidewalk in New York City.
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RUSH: Okay, back now to Fox News Sunday. Now let’s get to the Washington political scene. Many people think this is the real meat of the program. Chris Wallace said, “One of the reasons that we wanted to talk to you is because recently you’ve been criticizing Fox News for some of the commentary here that says the Republicans in Congress shouldn’t shut down the government over their opposition to the executive action on immigration that the president took. First of all, what’s wrong with the Republican plan not to shut down the government? And what would you do?” Now, folks, you’ve heard all this. This is why they wanted me on, but I’m gonna add something to this that I didn’t even think of until after the program yesterday.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Because, A, it isn’t a government shutdown. They shut down, what, 15%, 10% of it? It’s not a government shutdown. We’re losing the language. The government keeps running. Welfare checks keep going out. People that depend on the government get government services. It’s not a shutdown. I’ll tell you what it is: It’s a diversion and it’s a trick. I know time is short. Let me cut to the chase here. In 2010, Republican landslide win; Democrat landslide loss. Ditto 2014. The Democrats have been shellacked in two recent elections, and the Republicans are running around like a poll saying the American people are not going to like them if they shut down the government, is absurd. Barack Obama’s approval is in the 30s. This isn’t about a government shutdown. This is about two elections in which the people of this country are begging the Republican people to stop this man.
RUSH: And, ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned this, too, we had to edit some of this for time. The 2012 presidential race, Romney lost that race while winning the vast majority of independents. That’s another trick that’s played. You Republicans, you better win the independents, you don’t have a chance. Well, he went out, he campaigned for the independents all right, and he got the vast majority of them, but four million of his own voters stayed home, four million! Four million Republicans stayed home. The people that vote Republican are tired of the Republican Party not listening.
Now, this stupid hiding behind a poll that says they’re gonna be hated and blamed if they shut down the government, what matters more, an election, two elections, or some poll? But what I wanted to add to this, what is a poll? It’s nothing but an expression of public opinion at the time. It’s not etched in stone. It’s not one of the Ten Commandments. Public opinion can change. If you make an effort, you can change public opinion.
The Republicans can go out and do exactly what I’ve done. “Hey, they’re lying to you. This isn’t a government shutdown. We are not shutting down the government. The government’s gonna keep running. The things that shut down are gonna be shut down by the president, not us. But we simply are not gonna allow the president to violate the Constitution. We are not gonna support the president in this executive amnesty that he is engaging in.” But they’re not doing that. Instead they’re hiding behind this poll. It is almost wimpish. “Well, you know what, we know that you’re right but, look, we’ll get blamed again for shutting down the government, and so we can’t.” The problem is, they don’t want to. Here’s the next bite. I sum it up in the next bite, which pretty much says where I was gonna go.
RUSH ARCHIVE: That does not matter?
WALLACE: Wait, wait, wait.
RUSH ARCHIVE: You keep talking polls to me … and the essence of a poll is an election, and I’ve got two of them. And we would have won the White House in 2012 if four million Republicans hadn’t stayed home. … I think the shutdown’s a trick. You know what? Here’s what it really means, Chris, the Republicans want what Obama wants on immigration, and they are using the government shutdown as an excuse to not stop him because the truth of the matter is they agree with it. Romney agrees with it, Jeb Bush agrees with it, the Chamber of Commerce agrees with it. Obviously the Republican establishment doesn’t want to stop Obama.
RUSH: On immigration. That’s what this means. You can’t tell me that a political party that’s just won two landslides, and they’re big — in 2010 the Democrats lost 700 seats. This time around they lost the Senate. Two Democrats are running around openly saying Obamacare was a mistake. The Democrats, every senator, every Democrat senator that voted for Obamacare is gone, defeated. There’s not a single Democrat Senator who voted for it left. Well, the ones that were up for election lost. I mean, the idea that the American people are gonna get mad at the people they’re voting for, the idea the American people are gonna blame the people they have been electing to stop this, if they stop it, it’s an insult to our intelligence.
So what it has to mean is — and we know it. The Chamber has made it clear. Romney — may have missed this — Romney said the Republicans need to swallow hard and go all-in for comprehensive immigration reform. Not just five million, but every one of them, and head Obama off at the pass. And Jeb Bush wants to do the same. It’s clear what the Republican Party — they don’t want to stop this. And they’re hoping that you will be sympathetic when they say, “Well, the American people will blame us and we’ll destroy everything that we’ve gained here by winning if we shut down the government.” No, you’re gonna do that by not doing what you’ve been elected to do. That’s how you’re gonna the end up losing.
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RUSH: Look, this government shutdown business is not just about executive amnesty. It’s also about the budget, normally a boring subject, but it’s got to be explained. They’re using the same excuse to let the Democrats write next year’s budget, or the rest of this year’s, actually.
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RUSH: Oh, no. I didn’t see him. No, I didn’t see him. Snerdley just asked me if I could see Chris Wallace, if I could the show. I only saw the camera shot of me. So no, because there was a delay, a little bit of delay. Maybe it was here. I would have to look way off camera to see it though, so I didn’t. The bottom line, if it was here, I didn’t look at it. I still haven’t watched it. I’ve never liked watching myself on TV. I haven’t watched it.
He was really gracious and asked me about Rush Revere and the American Revolution at the end. He was really gracious about that, and they put a graphic of the cover up there and asked me about the book and the book series. I have seen that because Kathryn took that video off and we made a presentation of it on the Rush Revere website and the Rush Revere Facebook page, so I saw that.
And I was really — folks, I have to admit, I liked what I saw, and I don’t normally like myself on TV, but the Rush Revere stuff that I did look at, because I had to approve it, obviously, I had to see the video before it goes up because I’m top dog, run the show, ahem, ahem, ahem. I’ll get grief from the Revere team for that, ’cause I really don’t — he-he-he — run the show. But, anyway, I did like it. It looked good. He was really gracious asking me about that.
But now these guys are telling me — this is the first I’ve heard of this — both H.R., my trusted chief of staff, and Snerdley are telling me that Chris Wallace’s facial expressions when I was talking about how the polls regarding government shutdown, in my thinking are meaningless, he was confused? (interruption) Okay, they’re saying he was dumbfounded and perplexed as though, “Who could think this?” Because it was so outside the thinking parameters of the Inside the Beltway? (interruption) Okay, well, I didn’t see that. I guess at some point I should have watched this and see that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to get to the last sound bite from my appearance on Fox News Sunday. By the way, this is not all of it. You can see all of it at RushLimbaugh.com. We’ve got it all there. These are just edited for the audio sound bites today. But the end of the interview, Chris Wallace hit me with what they call their lightning round. “I’m gonna mention a name or a subject, and I just want you to give rat-tat-tat answers in as few words as possible.” And I said, “Okay, ready to go.” And he started out with, “How worried should Republicans be about Hillary Clinton as the potential Democrat nominee in 2016?”
WALLACE: That was quick.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Quick, you said quick.
WALLACE: Okay, good. I’m glad you’re taking direction. Barack Obama. When we last talked I was looking our interview from 2009, you called him a man-child who doesn’t care about the country. Do you want to take any of that back?
RUSH ARCHIVE: No, I think everything I told you in 2009’s been validated. All of this that has happened has happened on purpose. It’s been his strategy. It’s been his agenda. And he’s well into it, Chris. I mean, there’s nobody stopping him. Everything he wants is pretty much getting done.
WALLACE: On the Republican side, you have been quite critical of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. What’s your problem with him —
RUSH: Not quite.
WALLACE: What’s your problem with him, and who do you like on the Republican side?
RUSH: Well, now, that’s a loaded question ’cause I can’t mention everybody, and if I leave some people out, I make ’em mad. I think, Jeb — the Republican Party’s totally absorbed in this comprehensive immigration business. Jeb is out there claiming the only way he can get the nomination is somehow run against the base in the primaries. I think the Republicans have demonstrated they know how to lose the White House, and it’s time to change direction, change strategy. They’ve got that down pat. And it’s not — they’re not gonna win by continuing to do the same thing over and over again.
RUSH: And that is nominating moderates from anywhere, but particularly from the northeast. That’s just not the answer. They’ve demonstrated that. You might say, “Well, what about George W. Bush?” Well, okay, I would beg you to remember, George W. Bush ran as a Reaganite. He ran pretty close to a Reaganite. He fell off the rails in 2000 once when he started using liberal lingo, claiming that we shouldn’t balance the budget on the backs of the poor or some such thing.
But Bush W. actually cited Reagan a lot. He did not run as a moderate. Jeb, this is kind of ironic, ’cause Jeb, in terms of all of the sons of George H. W. and Barbara Bush, Jeb was always thought to be the most conservative of all of them, and now somehow he has morphed into what people think is the most moderate of all of them. I got a note from a friend, “You know my favorite line from your appearance on this show?”
I said, “No, what was it?”
He said, “Well, when Chris Wallace, toward the end, said, sorry, ran out of time because he just loves listening to you talk, is when you said, ‘So do I.'” (laughing) I had to inject it when given the opportunity.
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