RUSH: Stephanie in Cleveland. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Yes, hello, Rush. We’ve been laughing together, you and I for years, you know.
RUSH: Well, thank you. I’m glad to hear that.
CALLER: Yes, we have, and you always make my day because you’re the funniest person I know.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Well, good.
RUSH: I’m a naturally funny person.
CALLER: Yes, you are, you’re naturally funny. With the Depends thing you just did, you know, you had me laughing on the other end.
RUSH: I did. I saw it all standing there. I did.
CALLER: Yes. Well, Rush, I know that earlier — can I talk to you about a couple things? Well, one, actually.
RUSH: Oh, sure, by all means, have at it. Until we run out of time.
CALLER: I know that it was touched on a little bit by one of your former callers, but you know what really bothered me and is bothering a lot of people, as a matter of fact, my daughter came in for lunch and said, “Oh, well, I liked Cruz, but I can’t vote for him.” And the reason is I think a lot of people are very incensed about what he did to Dr. Carson last evening. This is big, Rush.
RUSH: Are you talking about this dirty trick where somebody in the Cruz campaign announced that Carson had pulled out of the race at 7:30 last night, and that —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: — CNN and the media, somebody announced it, they actually took it on the air: Ben Carson dropped out of the race.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And this affected people that were caucusing and who they were choosing. Now, of course I’m aware of it. I have been trying to track it down. I have not mentioned it ’cause I don’t really know yet if Cruz did it. I’ve got some people, admittedly Cruz supporters, telling me that there’s more to this than meets the eye. I don’t know what it is yet.
CALLER: Well, I think that it really should be cleared up and I think Dr. Carson addressed that this morning on Fox & Friends.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: He spoke about it and said he would really like to get to the bottom of it ’cause he feels that it did disrupt his voting and he could have had higher numbers.
RUSH: You know, Dr. Carson, 10%. That number stunned me. In fact, I’ll tell you something. I probably shouldn’t admit this. In the early going before it was known what was gonna happen, when it was nip and tuck there and Cruz was, you know, up by a hundred votes, then 200 and 300, and Carson is sitting there, whatever his number is, 10%. I thought this means Trump’s gonna win this, ’cause I thought that meant that Carson was taking votes that Cruz would need to win. Turned out to be not true. It means the Republican base is even broader and bigger in Iowa than we knew.
CALLER: Well, and at the same time, I think this is what worries and bothers people about Cruz. On one hand, he’s saying to God be the glory.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: As he’s throwing Dr. Carson under the bus. Now, that is not the way we want a conservative or any candidate for president, you know, to act. They would have expected that, I believe, probably out of Trump.
RUSH: Yeah, I think what happened was Dr. Carson said that he was gonna go to Florida right after Iowa to get a change of clothes, and somebody said — it’s being alleged it was in the Cruz campaign — somebody said, “Well, that’s proof that he’s dropping out of the race. If he’s gonna go home after this, what can you think –” that’s where it all got started, and network ran with that. So, no, it’s a serious problem. You’d call it a dirty trick, right?
CALLER: Rush, I would. I think it goes against what his evangelical talk is out there, and I think that’s something that really doesn’t fit with that. You know, is he brother Jimmy Swaggart?
RUSH: I know, if you’re gonna go that route, you are hemming yourself in on behavioral requirement. Jimmy Swaggart, I wouldn’t go that far. I wouldn’t go that far, come on. I remember when Jimmy Swaggart came clean. You know, I’m sorry. I watched it. I watched him come clean and the tears were streaming down both eyes and he had the microphone in his hand, or maybe it was at the podium. He was crying, just river of tears, and his face was contorted in great pain.
He was looking heavenward, and had his thousand, 2,000, whatever, 5,000 people in his audience there in his church. (imitating Swaggart) “I have sinned before you. I have sinned before you!” I’m watching this. I don’t think that’s what we had going on in Iowa last night, safe to say. But I appreciate, Stephanie, the call, really, I do appreciate all the kind things you said. I never take that for granted. I really do appreciate it. I’m just up against it on time.
Cruz, I’ve just been informed by the Official Program Observer that Cruz has apologized to Carson for the incident. Is there an acceptance of blame in this? Okay. I see. So Senator Cruz is explaining in his apology to Dr. Carson it was a misunderstanding. Okay. We’ll get to the bottom of this in terms of what’s known and be back after this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. Here we go. Dr. Carson, grab sound bite number 18. Dr. Carson was on Fox & Friends this morning. Steve Doocy said, “You’re accusing Senator Cruz of dirty tricks last night. What are we talking about?”
CARSON: At, uh, many of the precincts, uh, i-information was disseminated that, uh, I was suspending my campaign, that I had dropped out, and anybody who is planning to vote for me was wasting their vote and therefore they should reconsider. Some of those speakers said that, but we — we also have, uh, tweet and written correspondence to the same. If Ted Cruz doesn’t know about this, then he clearly needs to very quickly get rid of some people in his organization — and if he does know about it, isn’t this the exact kind of thing that the American people are tired of?
RUSH: Okay, so the Cruz campaign has responded. “Cruz said in a statement Tuesday that his campaign staff saw a CNN report that Carson was dropping out, although CNN [claims it had] not characterized Carson’s actions that way. ‘Last night when our political team saw the CNN post saying that Dr. Carson was not carrying on to New Hampshire and South Carolina, our campaign updated grassroots leaders just as we would with any breaking news story.
“‘That’s fair game. What the team then should have done was send around the follow-up statement from the Carson campaign clarifying that he was indeed staying in the race when that came out.’ CNN reported that [Carson] planned to go home to Florida after the Iowa caucuses, rather than flying straight to New Hampshire or South Carolina…” Carson was joking he needed to “get a fresh set of clothes.” He lives not far from here, just across the bridge in West Palm Beach. So he’s gonna go get some clothes and head back up to New Hampshire.
And that was then taken advantage of to say: Hey, Carson’s leaving. Carson’s leaving the race.
“Twenty minutes after the caucuses began in Iowa, Rep. Steve King [according to CNN], the Cruz campaign’s national co-chair, retweeted CNN’s Chris Moody about Carson’s break from the campaign trail before New Hampshire’s primary. ‘Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope,’ King tweeted. In another tweet, the congressman said Carson’s next steps were ‘equivalent of suspending.'” So Cruz is saying, “It’s a misunderstanding.” CNN’s saying, “No, it’s not.” CNN’s saying that they clearly took advantage of a logistic deviation or plan, that Carson had intended to go to Florida.
Hey, he’s leaving!
Voters here need to know that he’s leaving.
This helps to illustrate the… When I saw the tight race, when I saw Cruz and Trump were nip and tuck, nip and tuck, early in the night and I saw Ben Carson with 10%, I said, “Those are normally votes that Cruz would get,” and the Cruz campaign obviously thought so, too. Anyway, they’ve been working on straightening this out. But it looks like some people are gonna have a tough time getting past the dirty tricks angle of this. Some people are gonna want to see it as dirty tricks. No matter what explanation they get, it’s gonna be dirty tricks, and then Carson’s saying, “Isn’t this the kind of stuff that we’re running against here, all of us?”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hey, look, there’s a way out of this. Senator Cruz could simply offer Dr. Carson a delegate or two as part of his apology. Maybe three. Three max. One or two delegates ought to cover it.