RUSH: Earlier today. Fox has this show that airs opposite my show.  It’s on at noon.  It’s called Outnumbered, and they have four of their female anchors and infobabes there, and there’s one guy who is the guest, and he is the “outnumbered,” and the hashtag on Twitter for that is #OneLuckyGuy ’cause he’s sitting there with four Fox babes.  Today was John Bolton who was the #OneLuckyGuy “outnumbered” by the four Fox females, and they had a discussion about the interview that we did with Mike Pence yesterday right here at the EIB Network. 

During that interview with Pence, Pence referenced the fact that the White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that the United States is in “a narrative fight” with ISIS.  Now, folks, look. I don’t want anybody take this the wrong way.  This is one of the reasons why there aren’t very many guests on this program, and over the course of the years I’ve explained to you why it’s primarily career and professional and business reasons.  There are others, but those are primarily why. One of the biggest reasons is I have to ask people questions that I already know the answers to. 

So why am I having a guest here if I already know the answer to the question I’m asking?  Well, when the vice presidential nominee, when the campaign says, “We’ve got 10 minutes. Can you squeeze us in?” I say, “Sure.”  When the vice president or president, Cheney or Bush, call and say, “Can you speak to me?” Yeah, obviously.  But this is why I don’t do guests is ’cause I… Well, I don’t want to offend anybody here, but I generally know the answer to every question I’m asking.

Which makes me sit here and say, “Why am I asking this question?  I already know the answer, so why do I have to pretend I don’t?”  Well, that is what happened here.  Pence started talking about Earnest’s comment about the fact that we’re in “a narrative fight” with ISIS. So I said to Pence, “What is that?  What is that?”  Even though I know what it is, I had to ask the question, because Pence was here to explain it.  They played that sound bite; then they had Bolton respond to it.  So here’s the first half of what happened, sound bite 33…

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PENCE: Well, I’m not sure that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know that we’re at war. The White House spokesman today actually said that we were in a quote, “narrative fight,” in a “narrative battle.”

RUSH: What is that? What is that!

PENCE: I don’t even know what that is! To be honest with you, I was just mystified by it.  … I really don’t understand what a “narrative fight” or a “narrative battle” is. I mean, we need new leadership in this country that will name our enemy.

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RUSH:  I know what “a narrative fight” is.  I knew what Earnest meant.  These are a bunch of academic theoreticians in the White House! You know, ISIS to them is… They’re playing chess or they’re playing Risk or Monopoly, whatever, and these are just pieces on the board and they construct academic, very deep intellectual exercises to explain what these barbarians are doing, and they discuss it in terms of buzz and PR. 

Okay, so ISIS is out there doing what they’re doing, but they’ve got a “narrative” associated with it that they’re good people, that they’re helping out, that they’re righting wrongs.  So we have to have a counter-narrative that they’re the bad guys; we’re the good guys.  So everything is looked at in a “narrative battle,” who can win the media coverage — and, of course, that’s irrelevant.  We’re not looking at winning media coverage!

We’re looking at winning a very real war against these people.  But the Obama administration is not focused on that at all.  So when Earnest goes out there and I think drops the ball and admits they’re in a “narrative fight,” he’s admitting the way they look at this: That ISIS is just one of the many issues in the world that we have to deal with here and we’re in a battle with them over who can win the hearts and minds of the people. 

In other words, they’re legitimate!  We’re gonna legitimize them by acknowledging they have a narrative, and we are trying to go to out-narrative their narrative.  We’re trying to trump their narrative. Well, they wouldn’t say that, but… So that’s how I would have explained if somebody asked me, “What is this ‘narrative battle’?”  Now, here’s Bolton.  Sandra Smith, one of the Fox infobabes, starts the bite by talking to Bolton about what this all means…

SMITH:  You heard the voice of Rush Limbaugh challenging that notion of a war of narratives.  Is this a misguided White House, Ambassador?

BOLTON:  It’s a dream world.  Look, academics call this “semiotics.”

FAULKNER: Mmm.

BOLTON: It’s the science of signals and symbols, and that’s what they do at the White House.  They maneuver words around and talk in narratives.  You know what ISIS does for semiotic warfare?  They cut people’s heads off.  And you know what they respect?  They respect force —

FAULKNER: Mmmm!

BOLTON: — which they’re seeing in inadequate amounts from the United States at this point.  So we can either have a real war against terrorism and try and defeat these barbarians, or we can engage in more semiotics.

RUSH:  And again, “semiotics” is just a war of handlers and PR and buzz. Who can create the winning narrative, and for who?  Well, in terms of the Regime, they would like to create a narrative that has everybody in the media agreeing that we’re beating ISIS. So what did Obama say at the UN today?  Essentially that. The world’s never been safer, America never been safer, we’re beating these people back.  In the midst of all these attacks, that’s what they do.  No, it’s Wag the Dog.

Remember that movie, Wag the Dog? Did you see that? 

It’s exactly what this is.  Wag the Dog! There was no war, and yet the news coverage was of a war every day that the people provided phony footage of it.  It captivated… It was a movie, but it demonstrated what a “war of narratives” actually is. But the takeaway from it, the bottom line that Bolton is saying here, is that the Regime is not even taking ISIS seriously for what it is.  The way they look at it, ISIS is a challenge to the legacy of Obama. 

So what can they do to limit the success of ISIS up and against Obama’s legacy, his reputation.  And, of course, taking them out and destroying them with real substantive military tactics? “No, no, no, no.  We’ve gotta come up with a better narrative.”  And this is… Folks, it’s another way of expressing the total frustration with what we’ve had here.  We don’t have people from the real world anywhere in the Obama cabinet.  We got theoreticians. We have academicians. We’ve got people who hung around the faculty lounge their entire lives. 

There’s not a single Obama cabinet member that’s ever run a business.  There’s not a single Obama cabinet member who’s ever had to meet a payroll or anything associated with it, so they have no way to really relate to it.  Their view of the economy is it’s just a never ending, fat, golden goose that’s laying eggs all the time and all these people gotta do is go pick ’em up — as many of ’em as they can get — and bring it under government control. 

So it’s the narcissism and the quest for power and the way these people seek to create legacies and historical references about themselves without taking any real action on anything.  There isn’t much in this country getting better, when you get right down to it. Like every economic period there’s always gonna be somebody doing well.  The hope is that a lot of people are.  But we don’t have an economy like that. 

There are certain people doing well, and most of the people doing well are those who have crony relationships with the Obama administration, where it doesn’t matter if they make or lose money in their businesses because they’re propped up and protected.  It isn’t real.  But there isn’t a whole lot good happening in our economy.  There isn’t economic growth.  There is not massive job creation.  We’re nowhere near replacing jobs that were lost in the recession in 2008.  And yet, in the war of narratives, Obama…

How do you think Obama’s at 54% approval, despite failure after failure after failure?  The American people don’t know of the failures.  They may be living the failures — they may be having trouble getting a job, they may be troubled by retiring the student loan debt of their kids — but they turn on the news and it’s really good. Everything’s cool out there for Obama.  Obama’s doing great.  Obama’s doing fine. 

Everybody likes Obama.  If there’s any problem out there, it’s the Republicans, people criticizing Obama who just don’t want Obama to do well.  That’s what your Millennial population believes.  That’s what this narrative business is all about.

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RUSH: Dennis, Torrance, California, quickly squeeze a call in while we have time.  How are you, sir?

CALLER:  I’m good.  How are you, Rush?

RUSH:  Very good.  Appreciate your call.

CALLER:  Thank you.  Hearkening back to the previous hour, so bear with me a little on this, because it may sound a little farfetched, but when you consider who we’re dealing with on the left I’m not so sure.  We already know Obama hasn’t even acknowledged we’re in a real war with Islamic terrorists.  He won’t even acknowledge terrorists are Islamists.  But who has the administration been in a narrative battle with from the get-go?  Us.  You, me, everyone on the right.

RUSH:  Oh, absolutely.

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  We are the biggest enemy they think they’ve got.

CALLER:  That plays right into my point.  Could Josh Earnest possibly be engaging in a little code speak?  Maybe that’s directed at us, what he’s saying.

RUSH:  What would be the code? 

CALLER:  Well, he’s saying they’re in a narrative battle.  Who are they really in a narrative battle with?  Like they won’t even acknowledge they’re in an actual war with Islamic terrorists.  It’s absurd to say they’re in a narrative battle with them.

RUSH:  Well, but, see — no, no.  See, that’s the point.  It’s not.  That’s exactly the way Obama wants ISIS — Obama doesn’t want to see ISIS as a battlefield opponent, as an at-war opponent.  For his legacy, his legacy doesn’t depend on defeating ISIS on the battlefield.  His legacy depends on the media and historians writing how he dealt with ISIS and rendered them irrelevant and all of that, and that is resulting from creating a narrative that he has done that. 

And he needs the support of the media to do it.  He doesn’t want to defeat them on the battlefield, doesn’t want to go that far.  I think Bolton was right.  They do construct these varies ways of — That’s why he won’t pronounce them as an enemy. He won’t call it Islamic terrorism, like you point out.  

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RUSH:  I’m gonna tell you what I think is actually going on with Obama and ISIS.  This whole narrative business, folks, I’ve studied this.  To the naked eye and to those of us whose who see the world the way we do and consider militant Islamic supremacism to be of enemy status and Sharia to be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution, we see an enemy that is attempting to conquer us.  And we see an enemy that needs to be stopped.  I don’t believe Obama sees it that way at all.  And I think it’s patently obvious. 

Once you have the brush cleared away and can clearly see and understand, like when Earnest comes out and talks about we’re in a narrative battle here, and when Obama won’t call them what they are, he will not even use the word terrorism and this insistence that there is no terrorism in Islam, it’s a religion of peace, I really think deep down that Obama sees Islam as the next civil rights movement.  He sees Islam as a gigantic yet minority movement, because there’s so many powerful forces, even though they’re smaller, arrayed against ’em. 

And I think Obama wants his legacy to be how he stood against the tide of anti-Muslim sentiment, against the backlash.  He wants to be seen as having ushered in a new era of Muslim acceptance in our society and around the globe.  If Obama were president during World War II, the equivalent would be talking about how wonderful the Japanese are and how wrong it is for us to be suspicious of them, before Pearl Harbor. How wrong it is for us to be suspicious of ’em and that they have reasons, if they don’t trust us and if they’re angry, they have reasons.  I think that’s his view of Islam.