RUSH: It was last night on NPR radio, it turns out. Liberals love it, by the way. These liberals, whatever happens on NPR, it may as well be the Bible. It first starts at the New York Times, and then the NPR people do it, and it’s just gospel. They just believe it. They all talk to each other like they’re hosting and guesting on NPR. Of course. “We need your pledge here at NPR. We can’t dust without your pledge.”
Anyway, it’s a Leonard Lopate Show. Have you ever heard of that show, Mr. Snerdley? I hope I’m pronouncing it right. (interruption) L-o-p-a-t-e. It could be Lopate, could be Lopate. So we’ll go with Lopate. And he spoke with filmmaker… Yes, they never have directors on NPR. They have filmmakers, artistes. He was speaking with the filmmaker, Michael Kirk, about his Frontline documentary, “Divided States of America” on NPR. And the host of the program, Leonard Lopate, said to filmmaker Michael Kirk, about his Frontline documentary, Divided States of America, “Donald Trump exploited the divisions that already existed in America? Is that your contention?”
KIRK: (halting whisper) Then there’s the extent to which right-wing talk radio has acted as a megaphone for the big issues and driven… I mean, somebody told us that Trump spent thousands of hours before he announced, absolutely listening to, uh, Rush Limbaugh and, uh — and, uh, others just getting the vocabulary right matching it up with Sarah Palin and the Tea Party and saying, “These are my people.”
RUSH: (impression) “Right. So, you see … it was announced to the world last night on NPR by … filmmaker … Michael Kirk that somebody told him that Trump spent … thousands of hours before he announced absolutely listening to Rush Limbaugh … figuring out … how to do it. How to connect with … my people.” They believe this. Now, to them, folks, this is not a compliment. (chuckling) I am Satan incarnate to them, at PBS, at NPR, at the New York Times. So this, to them, is a deep insult to Trump. (interruption) Well, I… Oh, yes.
Yeah, yeah. That’s true, that’s true, because over on PBS, the televised version of NPR, I was being blamed for the failure of Obamacare and the failure of Obama anything. I was being blamed. Grab one of those sound bite. Let me find out… I don’t know if these are… Yeah. We have one here. See. Number 19. This is a Frontline, a Frontline show on PBS. They’re telling a story how Rush Limbaugh divided America and stopped our young, idealistic president’s hope and change.
They trace the Obama presidency, and at every turn they blamed a guy on the radio. With two days left in the Regime, Frontline plays extended Reverend Wright clips! (laughing) They just now are getting to them! Maybe if they’d played ’em eight years ago we wouldn’t have had so many questions about Obama. Anyway, during a segment on then-Senator Obama’s history with Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ minister Jeremiah Wright, we have the unidentified narrator… They only mention my name once in this show, but every clip that they used was of me, and here’s one…
NARRATOR: (dramatic music and tone) Barack Obama was facing his own challenge. He was being forced to deal with a subject he had hoped to avoid.
WRIGHT: — and then wants us to sing, “God bless America”? No, no, no!
CONGREGATION: (angry grumblings)
WRIGHT: Not God bless America. God (bleep) America.
CONGREGATION: (cheers and hooting)
WRIGHT: That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people.
CONGREGATION: (cheers and hooting)
WRIGHT: God (bleep) America for treating her citizens has less than human!
NARRATOR: Obama would move on, but the issue of race wouldn’t go away.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The association with Reverend Wright has demasked Obama.
NARRATOR: For some Americans, suspicions about Obama only deep end. Throughout the campaign, talk radio fueled questions about just who Barack Obama really was.
RUSH: So you see how this works. “Barack Obama was facing his own challenge,” and they play Reverend Wright and they say, “Obama was trying to avoid and stay away, but it wasn’t to be.” Cut to an audio sound bite of me. Here’s this one. They covered McCain’s loss and the rise of Palin and talk radio as the precursor to Trump. There’s 10 of these, folks. I’m not gonna play all of them. I’m just going to play a couple of them here to give you a sample of what they did last.
RUSH ARCHIVE: This campaign never had a prayer, and everybody knew it from the get-go.
NARRATOR: That evening, John McCain knew his time as leader of the Republican Party was ending.
MCCAIN: I am also, of course, very thankful to Governor Sarah Palin, one of the best campaigners I’ve ever seen.
CROWD: (wild applause and cheers)
NARRATOR: But he also knew that Sarah Palin had tapped into something powerful — and, he worried, something potentially dangerous.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m glad at least he didn’t blame Palin.
NEW YORKER EDITOR DAVID REMNICK: And when it ends, he goes up to Sarah Palin and says, “You know, we’ve lost. But now you’re the future of the Republican Party. And the crazies are gonna come to you, and the talk radio hosts on the far right are gonna come to you, and they’re gonna want to make you their standard-bearer. Do everything you can to resist that.”
RUSH: You get the manner of speaking here on PBS and NPR? (impression) “That evening John McCain knew his time as leader of the Republican Party was ending.” Cut to a sound bite of Limbaugh. (chuckles) Want to hear one more? Okay. I prevented… I am the reason in this next bite that Republicans refused to vote for Obama’s Porkulus Bill and that I rooted for it to fail. Again, it’s PBS Frontline last night, documentary, Divided States of America.
PELOSI: Their leadership told the members, “We’re not for any of it! No matter what it is, no. Just say no.”
PELOSI: (on floor) The conference report is adopted.
NARRATOR: The stimulus bill passed the House without a single Republican vote.
RUSH ARCHIVE: You watch. The Republicans are gonna come under severe criticism for this. … I hope so the stimulus bill fails. … I want, once and for all, the American people to see full frontal nudity on what liberalism is and what a lie it is. They have been sold a bill of goods. (fading out)
NARRATOR: Obama had been in office just over a week.
DASCHLE: (whispering) You could almost see the polarization. It was palpable. It was very, very real. It was, uhhh, just the beginning.
RUSH: Yes, a little Puff Daschle there. (laughing) Isn’t that just awesome? They’re just beside themselves. So my name one time in this show, I’m told. But every bite that we have here they use a clip of me supposedly as the one responsible for Obama’s ultimate failures.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mr. Snerdley has requested a replay of audio sound bite number 21. This is the most recent sound bite from PBS Frontline. By the way, there’s two more hours tonight. It’s a four-hour show. Last night was the first two hours. Tonight is the big finale, if you will. And last night they showed part one of the documentary, “Divided States of America.”
And they mentioned my name once, but I am featured throughout this program as the reason why America was divided and that there was opposition to Obama. It was me frightening Republicans into agreeing with me, frightening Republicans into not opposing me, frightening Republicans into opposing Obama. And in every sound bite… There’s like 10 of these just from last night. We’re only gonna play three. We’ve played two — actually played three. This is a replay. Snerdley loved this one, and I must admit I do, too.
PELOSI: Their leadership told the members, “We’re not for any of it! No matter what it is, no. Just say no.”
PELOSI: (on floor) The conference report is adopted.
NARRATOR: The stimulus bill passed the House without a single Republican vote.
RUSH ARCHIVE: You watch. The Republicans are gonna come under severe criticism for this. … I hope so the stimulus bill fails. … I want, once and for all, the American people to see full frontal nudity on what liberalism is and what a lie it is. They have been sold a bill of goods. (fading out)
NARRATOR: Obama had been in office just over a week.
DASCHLE: (whispering) You could almost see the polarization. It was palpable. It was very, very real. It was, uhhh, just the beginning.
RUSH: Obama had been in office just over a week — and, ladies and gentlemen, dare I say I called it exactly on the stimulus bill? There wasn’t one aspect of “stimulus” to it. It stimulus’d the Democrat Party. It was a money-laundering scheme. The vast majority of stimulus money… It was about $787 billion. The vast majority of it went to unions and union employees so they would not lose their jobs during the recession, so that they would continue to pay dues, which ends up being donated to the Democrat Party.
Obama couldn’t go to the Treasury and write a check for $787 billion paid to the Democrat National Committee. So you come up with a stimulus bill, ostensibly to rebuild roads and bridges and schools. None of that happened. It was all to pay back donors. It was to subsidize newfangled, wasteful new energy things like Solyndra. You know, solar and wind. I was trying to tell everybody at the time what a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roll piece of legislation this was.
That’s why I had said I wanted the American people to see full-frontal nudity on what liberalism is and what a lie it is. They’ve been sold a bill of goods, and people found out. But, bottom line, it’s laughable to listen to Pelosi and Tom Daschle and this whole program talk about how the only place you’ll find political opposition in America is here on talk radio, and then in the Republican Party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, I’m just watching a little of Obama’s swan song press conference out there where he’s thanking the press. “We traveled the word together. We’ve hit a couple singles. We hit a couple of doubles! I know you haven’t liked long answers, but that’s because you asked me six-point questions. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy every story you filed but I really liked working with you.” Of course he would like it! He’s got a bunch veritable media slaves in there. He’s got a slavish press corps that’s basically state-run, state-controlled. It is a stenography pool in there that’s basically disguised as a press corps.
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RUSH: I got another email. “Mr. Limbaugh, as I’m listening to these sound bites you’re playing from NPR and PBS, and you being the place where they had to go to find opposition to anything Obama, why did they only go to you? Is it because there wasn’t any other opposition? Why didn’t they use any Republicans?” Some of these emails today have really been on point. It is fascinating. I hadn’t thought of it that way until I read the email.
But what are we doing? Every day, five days a week, 15 hours a week, we have an ongoing political discussion on this program, and it’s one of the few places where that happens. We don’t do little roundtables with five- or 10-minute plugs here from 10 people sitting around a desk who each get 30 seconds. We go into great depth and detail here, and the Republicans were not known for any consistent, publicly stated opposition to Obama. So if Frontline or PBS wants to put together a documentary featuring opposition to Obama, they are kind of limited in where they’re gonna go. (interruption)
No, no, I’m not upset they’re doing it at all. I’m enjoying it. I think these sound bites are funny. There’s a bunch more of them, too. Let’s see. Let me… Pss… pss… pss… pss… Buzz, buzz, buzz… Yeah. Grab number 22. Just give you one more example. This is the PBS Frontline show. Last two hours air tonight. Four-hour film, documentary, “Divided States of America.” The segment on Obama’s early policy priorities. The narrator and the subject of Obamacare…
NARRATOR: (whispering over dramatic music) Out in America, right-wing radio was fueling people’s outrage over health care reform.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The whole point of this is to get everybody enrolled in the government health care plan.
MCCAIN: And Sarah Palin said the government would use (dramatic pause) “death panels.”
RUSH ARCHIVE: You might even say that we got death panels going on here.
MCCAIN: Stoking fears that Obama’s plan would let Americans die to save money.
RUSH ARCHIVE: We now have leftist radicals in charge of your health care decisions rather than doctors. … We’re hanging by a thread.
RUSH: None of this was not true. Every bit of this was true. There are death panels. It’s called “rationing.” Sarah Palin just come up with a little bit more descriptive term to describe what happens when you ration health care: death panels. Some people don’t get coverage; some people are. Some people are gonna be treated; some people aren’t. Who’s gonna get treated and who isn’t? Well, two things factor in. Age and cost.
If it’s gonna cost six or seven figures to treat somebody, why treat somebody 75 or 80 when you could treat somebody 25 or 30? That’s exactly the kind of rationing that’s all over Obamacare. We just haven’t gotten that deep into it ’cause it’s a muddled mess. The rollout of it was purposely designed to be chaotic. (impression) “But the innuendo here is that Obamacare was wonderful, Obamacare was unique, Obamacare was thoughtful, as time-tested and yet right-wing opposition to Obamacare created doubts out in America.”
As though the opposition in no way, shape, manner, form was justified or warranted or of any significance. This is classic. Folks, I don’t care. The fact is the American people saw it, the American people experienced it, the American people felt it, and they realized they were lied to. It’s not hard. When you’re promised you can keep your doctor, when you’re promised you can keep your plans if you like them — and then, furthermore, you’re promised that your average premium reduction will be $2,500 a year? When none of those three things happened, I’m sorry, you don’t need somebody on the radio telling you that you have been snookered, because it happened to you!
And when it happens to you, you don’t need anybody telling you it’s happened.
Not when it’s this blatant.
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RUSH: I have another observation for you about this Frontline piece. Here they are, they’re all agitated, they’re irritated, they’re exercised by the fact that I dared oppose Obama. (paraphrased) “He’d only been in office a week, and Rush Limbaugh was rabble-rousing the rebels in the middle of the country!” Look at what’s happening now. At least I waited! Other than saying I hoped he’d fail, I waited for Obama to start introducing stuff and had real substantive policies he was talking about with which to oppose and disagree.
Look at what the Democrats have been doing to Trump since election night!
He’s not even inaugurated yet, and they’re already trying to impeach him; they’re trying to shut him down. I mean, I can’t hold a candle to them in the way I dealt with Obama’s policies and the way they are dealing with Trump, the person. They haven’t stopped since election night. And they do these documentaries acting like (impression), “It’s outrageous there was any opposition to Obama whatsoever, but it’s understandable and typical that it would come from the reaches of talk radio in the United States, popularized by Rush Limbaugh. Buh, buh, buh.”
Bunch of hypocrites.