RUSH: All right. I don’t know who is responsible for the Code Pink Looney Tunes getting into the confirmation hearings of Senator Sessions, but whoever let ’em in there, I want to be the first to thank you.
Code Pink shows up dressed like members of the Ku Klux Klan, starts protesting Beauregard. They think anybody named Beauregard can’t be a good guy. That’s Jeff Sessions’ middle name. And they start making utter fools of themselves, and the security took their good time in getting these people out of there.
These people continue to make fools of themselves and I think the more of this the better. Because in the past, Republicans have cowered from this stuff. In the past, these kinds of protests made Republicans fearful of opposing whoever was responsible for the protests.
But these people are one of the many reasons why the Democrats lost. And the more of this activity, the more Meryl Streep, the better. The more of these kinds of protests that go on in there, the better. The more insane, lunatic, deranged behavior by these losers who cannot accept reality, the better, folks. They’re not helping their cause. They’re only hurting it.
Greetings. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh with yet another three-hour broadcast excellence excursion officially underway. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and, if you want to send an email, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
So Jeff Sessions up first today in terms of confirmation hearings, and it’s going pretty much as expected. The dead giveaway that Sessions is probably gonna skate through, interestingly enough, is found in the New York Times today. The New York Times has a front-page profile of Sessions that is essentially an endorsement.
You read this and say, “Whoa! Whoa! Wait a minute.” Because it wasn’t that long ago that reporters for the New York Times were out there assisting others on the left to dig up all this age-old so-called dirt on Sessions. Now all of a sudden — I mean, let me read you some excerpts from this piece in the New York Times.
“A devout Methodist and an Eagle Scout who will soon celebrate a golden wedding anniversary with his college sweetheart. … He is widely regarded as rigidly honest and inflexible on issues he considers matters of principle. … The family lived in a one-story house with no driveway, a small concrete front stoop and a heating system consisting of a fireplace and space heaters. … He learned thriftiness from his parents, who grew up during the Depression.
“Friends joke that even after he attained the comfortable life of a senator decades later, he refused to replace an aging car or the outdated kitchen countertops at his home in Mobile. … After he was elected senator, taking a seat on the same Judiciary Committee that denied him the judgeship, Mr. Sessions seemed to bear no grudge against those who had humiliated him in 1986.”
It goes on from there. Now, this sends a signal to Democrats everywhere. It sends a signal to the Drive-By Media. I’ll tell you what this means. It means they know they can’t stop him right now and they are not gonna waste their ammo here in the confirmation hearings.
They’re gonna hold their fire. They’re gonna wait for after Sessions is confirmed, gonna wait until he’s attorney general, and then if something happens that they don’t like — and that’s guaranteed, because he will enforce the law, not make it, Democrats think the attorney general should make law. In fact, that was illustrated in his Q&A with Senator “Turban” from Illinois, which I’ll comment on here in just a second.
These clowns in the media, they’re gonna need sources inside the Department of Justice. They’re gonna need their leakers and they’re gonna need people to talk to ’em, so they’re going easy, and the numbers are just not there. The Democrats can’t stop Sessions. They can’t stop any of these people. Now, it may well be that for the sake of comity one of Trump’s nominees may go down. I have no idea who. I’m just speculating here that the Democrats might make a stand on one of them. But the numbers just aren’t there.
If the Republicans stay unified and hold firm, there’s not a single one of these people the Democrats can deny. So the Democrats, they’re going through the motions here of insinuating that Sessions has been a bad guy. He’s a racist. He’s a pig. Middle name is Beauregard; can’t trust people from the South with the name Beauregard. He probably was a plantation owner, maybe a Civil War general. Can’t trust the guy. They’re doing all this. They’re fundraising. And they are doing what they have to do to appeal to the lunatics in their base. But they know they’re not gonna be able to stop the nomination.
Now, you know, Trump is under fire right now for many reasons. He’s under fire because of this business with the Russians and the hacking of the election. He’s under fire for just being Trump. He’s under fire for mocking, as Meryl Streep said, a disabled reporter.
Well, it turns out, have you ever heard of Ira Madison III? You probably haven’t. Ira Madison III is a host at MTV News. Okay? So this guy Ira Madison III at MTV News today made fun of Senator Sessions on Twitter because Senator Sessions has four Asian-American grandchildren.
So I guess it’s okay for people on the left to make fun of minorities. It’s okay for people on the left to mock minorities and humiliate and insult them and laugh at them and make fun of them, but it’s not okay for anybody else to do it. Here’s what happened. Senator Sessions appears today at the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared to make a statement, give testimony. He’s got his family there. And, you know, we’ve learned some tricks of the trade. Sessions is sitting there with one of his grandchildren on his lap. I said, “We’re learning for the children.”
I mean, how can you get up there and start throwing darts at somebody who’s got a little baby sitting on his lap? The optics of this. I was privately chuckling and making note of this. Well, it turns out that he had a lot of family there, including his four Asian-American grandchildren. His daughter Ruth Sessions Wok is married to a guy named John Wok who is an Asian-American man.
So this Ira Madison III at MTV accused Sessions of stealing his grandchildren from Toys “R” Us for the hearing. He did. He went on to call the grandchildren a prop brought in to mitigate accusations of racism. I’m watching it. I told you I saw Sessions sitting there with his grandchild on his lap. This Ira Madison III clown tweeted, “There is no reason for that child to be in his lap in a hearing other than to send an ‘I’m not racist message.'”
And then this Ira Madison III clown defended his attacks on Sessions’ family before returning to allegations the Senator harbors racist sympathies. This guy writes regularly for MTV News, the host of the MTV podcast, MTV Speed Dial. I guess he’s a Millennial hero or a Millennial star.
So, you see, it’s perfectly fine for people on the left to mock minorities, perfectly fine to laugh at ’em, perfectly fine to make fun of them. In fact, it’s heralded, it’s supported, it’s something that’s necessary to go after this deeply racist, bigoted individual, Jeff Sessions. And of course he’s none of those things. He’s not a racist, he’s not a bigot, he doesn’t even come close to being either one.
The protesters, I’d like to know who let them in there. I was asking some people today, and I still don’t know the answer to this, and it’s just ’cause I’m lazy. You know, I can get anything I want. I mean, I can call anybody. Anybody I call will answer, right? I’m Rush Limbaugh. I’m the Mr. Big of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
Theoretically… Snerdley tells me all the time, “Just call ’em! If you call anybody, they’ll take the call.” I don’t use the phone. I don’t use… I can’t even stand the phone ringing. I’ve got a phobia when I hear the phone. In my life, the phone ringing has always been bad news, so I don’t even… I have ringers turned off. I don’t even want to hear it, ’cause it’s a hearing challenge. So I don’t call. I don’t decide… Just laziness, folks. I could find out the answer to the question. I just don’t know. My impression is that whoever is in there is by invitation. Somebody has to give a pass.
You just can’t, as a member of the public, dress up as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and walk into a Senate confirmation hearing, right? Now, I know, for example, in the House Gallery you can. If it’s State of the Union, for example, somebody has to extend you an invitation to the gallery, and I would think the same thing here. In times past, say during the Bush administration — because, you know, Code Pink rarely shows up when Democrats are in the White House. They do sometimes, but not nearly as frequently as when Republicans are.
Code Pink was regularly in Senate hearings of one kind or another when George W. Bush was president. How do they get in there? The answer I always got was, “Well, somebody on the committee has to give them a pass. So I guess I ought to get the answer to this, because with as many people that want to get into something like this, how is it Code Pink gets in every time? It wasn’t one or two people. They had seven or eight people in there, and they’re dressed up as Klan people. One of the protest moments featured protesters dressed as members of the Klan standing up and shouting, “Go, Jeffy boy!
“Go, Jeffy boy! Beauregard, thank you so much for being here for the people.” And then as they’re taking the guy out, he shouts, “Wait a minute. You can’t arrest me. I’m white. White people don’t get arrested.” And then they finally usher the guy out. Nobody was taking it seriously. Sessions and the Senators were chuckling. They made a valiant effort not to uproariously laugh, which is what the natural inclination would be. But they’re smiling. So it didn’t have any impact on anyone, other than the media. The media couldn’t get enough of it.
Everybody in the media stood up holding their cameras and their smartphones and they started snapping pictures, and I imagine they can’t wait to start writing stories that the real news coming out of the Sessions confirmation hearing was the protesters. Now, Sessions made news today. He promised he would recuse himself if there is an investigation into Hillary Clinton and her server and emails while secretary of state and/or the Clinton Foundation. He said he would recuse himself. He said (summarized), “Unlike Loretta Lynch, who said she would defer to the FBI after having met with the President Bill Clinton, I will recuse myself.”
Senator Grassley from Iowa is the chairman, and he said, “You will recuse yourself?” “I will recuse myself, Mr. Chairman.” “You will recuse yourself?” “I will recuse myself.” “Let me make sure. I want to ask this one more time. You’re saying you will recuse yourself?” They went at it four different times for Sessions to assure everybody he would recuse himself. Then Senator Durbin… This is a classic, by the way, illustration of the differences in people understanding the rule of law and the role of government and people who think that the government trumps law.
Senator Durbin from Illinois is questioning Senator Sessions, and I’m sure the Democrats assign each other various areas to go after. Like Di-Fi went after Roe v. Wade and abortion and what Sessions thinks of all that. It was Durbin’s time, and he went after immigration, and particularly the DREAMers and DACA. So he’s painting this grim picture in his question to Senator Sessions. “What are we gonna do about these kids? What are we gonna do about these kids that everybody says we should deport? What are we gonna do?
“What are you gonna do when you’re faced with the prospect of thousands of young kids and they might just be thrown out of the country? What are you gonna do?” And Sessions said, “Sir, that’s your job. I will simply enforce the laws of the land. It is not my job as attorney general to make law, to write law. I simply will follow the course of action taken by you and others in this body and over in the House who write law to deal with.” Now, what Durbin was looking for… Well, I don’t know what Durbin was looking for, but clearly the import of Durbin’s question is that the attorney general ought to “have compassion” and be able to step in when things are not going “the right way,” protect the children and whatever.
And Sessions didn’t fall for it, but this question clearly indicated that Durbin thinks that the attorney general and judges and other members of government should be activists. The law be damned! Just do what’s good for, in the case, the Democrat Party agenda. I mean, that’s what it really boils down to.
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RUSH: We have a little sound bite here of an exchange between Senator Sessions and Senator Durbin from Illinois that illustrates a little bit about what I was just saying, the differences in the way the law is perceived and activism and so forth. So Durbin’s question is this: “There is not a spot of evidence in your public career to suggest that as attorney general you would use the authority of that office to resolve the challenge of our broken immigration system in a fair and humane manner. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Now, what do you think of that question? “There’s not a spot of evidence in your public career to suggest that as attorney general you would use the authority of that office to resolve the challenges of our broken immigration system in a fair and humane…” In other words, “Senator Sessions, there’s not a spot of evidence in your public career to suggest you care about people, and you don’t even care enough to use your power to help minorities.” That’s what this really means — and in the answer, Senator Sessions destroys Durbin and takes him to school.
SESSIONS: You are wrong, Senator Durbin. I’m gonna follow laws passed by Congress. As a matter of policy, we disagreed on some of those issues. I do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty, that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into America. I believe the American people spoke clearly in this election. I believe they agreed with my basic view — and I think it’s a good view, a decent view, a solid legal view for the United States of America — that we create a lawful system of immigration that allows people to apply to this country. And if they’re accepted, they get in. If they’re not accepted, they don’t get in. And I believe that’s right and just, and the American people are right to ask for it. We have not delivered that for them.
RUSH: Bingo! Bomb dropped. Explosion on the top of Durbin’s head. Sessions took him to school. Sessions didn’t cower. Sessions didn’t beg to be understood. “No, no, Senator! I do care about the disadvantaged, and I do care about the poor, and I do care about minorities, and I would do everything I…” He didn’t do that at all. He said, “No, you’re dead wrong about this question. That’s not my job.
“It’s not the job of the attorney general to ‘resolve challenges of a broken immigration system.’ That’s your job.” And he’s exactly right about that. He’s exactly right about amnesty and what it causes and undermining the respect for the rule of law. He’s dead-on right about it. This is why they oppose Sessions. This racism stuff from back in the days he’s Alabama? That’s all a smoke screen. This right here is why they oppose Sessions. This. Immigration is why they don’t want Jeff Sessions to be attorney general, even though they know they can’t stop him.
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RUSH: This is Ronald in Riverside, California. Glad you waited, sir. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Very well.
CALLER: Mega dittos. What I’d like to ask is (unintelligible) and everybody in the government blame us for bringing the illegal people here? We didn’t bring them here. They came. How come they don’t have that discussion with their family saying that one day we may have to (unintelligible) and sent back home. They divide each other up (unintelligible).
RUSH: We’ve got a horrible connection, either that or you’ve got your hand over your mouth. So I think what he’s asking me — and you’re gonna have to cut me some slack on this ’cause I’m deaf. But I think what he’s asking me is that these illegal immigrants are here, and I’m sure he’s bouncing off of the Durbin question to Jeff Sessions today in the hearings. “What about the children? What about the DACA DREAMers? There’s tens of thousands. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do about them, huh, huh?”
And I think caller is saying, “Why is it our responsibility? We didn’t bring ’em here. They came here on their own. Why is it our responsibility, in the face of them breaking the law, why is it our responsibility to provide for ’em? Why isn’t it theirs?” Is that pretty much what he’s asking? Why don’t their parents — ’cause we are talking about the DREAMers, the kids, why isn’t it up to their parents?
Well, because here’s the dirty little secret about this. Am I the only one that gets this? Am I gonna get in deep doo-doo for explaining this? Well, okay, here goes. Ronald, the whole point of the kids coming here without their parents — you know, this train that came from Guatemala, El Salvador, Central America is, the whole point is for the kids to get here and then for compassion to take over and say, “How can we have these kids here without their parents?” And bring the parents here. That is the purpose of all this. From the Democrat Party’s angle, that’s why this happens.
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RUSH: I mentioned earlier there was real news made at the Sessions confirmation hearings. Well, real news in the sense if you are a Democrat, this is real news. Now to audio sound bite number four, and the question here comes from Senator Grassley, who’s the chairman of the Judiciary Committee conducting the hearings.
He said, “During the course of the presidential campaign you made a number of statements about the investigation of Hillary Clinton relating to her handling of emails and regarding certain actions of the Clinton Foundation. Now you’ve been nominated to serve as the attorney general. In light of those comments that you made, some have expressed concern about whether you can approach the Clinton matter impartially in both fact and appearance. How do you plan to address those concerns?”
SESSIONS: I, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign with regard to Secretary Clinton, and some of the comments I made I do believe that that could place my objectivity in question. I’ve given that thought. I believe the proper thing for me to do would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton and were raised during the campaign or could be otherwise connected to it.
RUSH: So there you go. Sessions said, “Hey, I’ll recuse myself.” That’s the way to deal with it. He’s right about this, by the way. He was during the campaign trail among those thinking that Hillary needs to be investigated, the whole email thing and the Clinton Foundation. If he becomes attorney general, the proper thing to do for him to be would be to recuse himself while the justice department conducts the investigation. So Grassley said, “When you say that you will recuse yourself, you mean that you will actually recuse and the decision will therefore, I assume, fall to a deputy attorney general? I ask because after Attorney General Lynch met with President Clinton in Phoenix she said she would, quote/unquote, ‘defer to the FBI,’ but she never officially recused.” So, while news was made here, what really happens is (chuckles) they knifed Lynch.
SESSIONS: She did not officially recuse, and there is a procedure for that which I would follow. And I believe that would be the best approach for the country because we can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute. That’s not in any that would suggest anything other than absolute objectivity. This country doesn’t punish its political enemies, but this country ensures that no one is above the law.
RUSH: Well, it does punish its political enemies. The Democrats do. They try to. But that’s their modus operandi. They’ve been trying to criminalize conservatism for as long as I’ve been alive. That’s inarguable, folks, that they’ve been trying to criminalize conservatism.
But Sessions did the right thing, recuse himself, but it was great, ’cause in the process he pointed out how these vaunted civil libertarian and judging go straight by the law Democrats, she didn’t recuse herself, but I will. One more here, and then we’ll be free to move on to other things. This is the question from Senator Dianne Feinstein. She said, “I want your response to this, and I want your answer to this question. How do you intend to put behind you what are strongly felt personal views? How will you take off the political hat and be an attorney general who fairly enforces the law and the Constitution for all?”
This question is rooted in a myth that Sessions was some racist segregationist type guy when he was an attorney and attorney general in Alabama. So the premise of this question is, “Well, how do we know that you’re not still secretly supporting the Klan? How do we know that you’re gonna be fair? How do we know that you’re gonna enforce the law for everybody regardless of whatever perversion they have?” Well, that’s what she means. And here’s what Sessions said.
SESSIONS: I would direct their attention first to the remarks of Senator Specter, who in his entire career, said he made one vote that he would regret, and that was the vote against me. This caricature of me in 1986 was not correct. I have become a United States attorney. I supported, as the civil rights attorney said, major civil rights cases in my district that integrated schools, that prosecuted the Klan, that ended single-member districts that denied African-Americans the right to hold office. The complaints about the voter fraud case and the complaints about the Klan case that I vigorously prosecuted and supported are false.
RUSH: Bingo. And that was the end of that. Do you know, for those of you that may not, there’s one thing, one thing that the Democrats and the media have been going back to when Sessions was a young man in Alabama to try to disqualify him. One thing, and that one thing was a joke he told about the Klan. And they’ve tried to make it as though he wasn’t joking, that he was actually telling the truth, because they have no sense of humor themselves, aside from that, and there are certain things in their world you can’t laugh about; only they can.
I’m paraphrasing this, but he was in a conversation with people about the Klan and how bad they were, and his joke was to finally act outraged when he found out the Klan smoked marijuana. And so what they wanted people to believe was that Sessions was perfectly fine with the Klan. Whatever they were doing, perfectly fine. But when he found out they smoke marijuana, that was it, no more support of the Klan. He told a joke about it and it was with another person that was a typical type of humor, and they tried to zero in on it as Sessions telling the truth. That he really did like the Klan until he found out they smoked marijuana, and this comes from their own prejudice, by the way, not any on the part of Sessions.
And they tried to turn that joke, by the way, I have personal experience with this with people on the left. They tried, the last three, four weeks have been about trying to make that one comment the reason to disqualify Sessions. And it blew up in their face, appropriately. But that’s what this is all about. Other than that, they’ve got nothing on him.
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RUSH: The joke was that Sessions was thinking about joining the Klan until he found out they smoke marijuana. USA Today ran this as recently as yesterday. They said, “At least one former colleague” — and that’s all it was, was one former colleague — “one former colleague noted that Sessions was … until he found out the Klan smoked marijuana.” That’s the same misunderstanding that these people have when Trump stood up there and said, “Hey, maybe the Russians can find Hillary’s email. Hey, you people in Russia, if you find the emails from Hillary, would you please let our media know?”
And they thought, they said that Trump was asking the Russians to hack Hillary’s email account. And Trump was lampooning these people! He was making fun of them to their face about how hard it had been to be to find Hillary’s emails when somebody knows where they are. It’s the same thing with Sessions. They actually tried to make people think that sessions was perfectly fine with the Klan until he found out they smoked dope, and that was the straw that broke. Of course it’s pure caca. But that’s what they base their opposition, that’s what they’ve been trying the last four weeks to get drummed up. They tried to sell that joke to the American people as reality.