RUSH: Did you hear what David Axelrod said about the Carryn Owens moment? Now, this obviously is a slip of the tongue. If this had been stated — something like this had been stated — by (sigh), I don’t know, Karl Rove, by somebody equivalent to Axelrod (who ran Obama’s campaign)… “In an unfortunate choice of words,” Axelrod said about that moment, “You’d have to be dead not to appreciate it.” Now… Now, we will acknowledge that that’s “an unfortunate choice of words,” but I doubt anybody else screwing up like that would be given much leeway.
That is the mission of the American media. Most of it. Exceptions of course. Nothing is gonna change their minds about it.
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RUSH: Now, Van Jones, the avowed communist at CNN, former member of the Obama Regime, was blown away by the moment last night where Carryn Owens was honored along with her husband, a Navy SEAL, by President Trump, and he is being tarred and feathered today by other liberals. They are ripping him a new one, and this is what he said last night on CNN’s special coverage.
JONES: There’s substance, and there’s tone. The substance of the speech I disagree with entirely. But I think at some point Democrats gotta be willing to take “yes” for an answer. We’ve been asking for him to be more presidential. We’ve been asking for him to be less divisive. We’ve been asking for him to pretend like maybe being the president matters to him, as much as it matters to us, and tonight he showed some glimmers of that. If we can’t as Democrats say, “You know what? Thank you for that part,” then I think that we are adding to the problem we’re trying to solve. We’re not gonna get there if everything he does we’ve gotta attack even when he’s right.
RUSH: Well, that’s not the bite that I wanted. He was effusive. That speaks for itself. I mean, that would get him in trouble as it is. But he went way beyond that when he was describing the Carryn Owens moment. And I’ll tell you what that is when we get that.
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RUSH: Here’s what Van Jones said, and he’s got Keith Olbermann jumping all over him. He’s got Bill Maher, everybody’s jumping all over him ’cause this woman was nothing but a prop, don’t you understand. Trump used her and exploited her as a prop and how can Van Jones not see that.
Here’s what he said: “There are a lot of people who have a lot of reason to be frustrated with Trump, to be fearful of him, but that was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics, period. And he did something extraordinary. And for the people who’ve been hoping that he would become unifying, hoping that he might find some way to become presidential, they should be happy with that moment.
“For people who have been hoping that maybe he would remain a divisive cartoon, which he often finds a way to do, they should begin to become a little bit worried tonight because that thing you just saw him do, if he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s gonna be there for eight years. Now, there was a lot that he said in that speech that was counterfactual, that was not right, that I oppose and I will oppose. But he did something tonight that you cannot take away from him. He became president of the United States.”
He was effusive. And the left, you would not believe some of the vicious tweets that have been aimed at Carryn Owens for allowing herself to be used as a prop, allowing herself to be exploited by this evil Trump. And Van Jones being savaged for not seeing that that’s what was going on.
Now, you’ll note in this, here’s the party of feminism, right? Here’s the party of women. And this party cannot look at that woman and see that maybe she’s strong and maybe that she loved her husband and maybe she’s doing nothing in terms of being exploited. That she is thrilled and honored to have her husband honored. That it’s going to mean something forever to her and her children. That it is a high honor, that her husband died protecting this country he loves. And the Democrats see a helpless objectified waif, the party of women?
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RUSH: I want to go back before we go back to the phones to this Van Jones bite that I played, because I had not heard this. The only one I’d heard all day was him going overboard bonkers on the — well, now I don’t know what to call her, Karen or Carryn Owens. I thought I heard everybody calling her Karen Owens last night, and now one person’s telling me it’s Carryn, so. I hate mispronouncing people’s names. (interruption) Okay, thank you. Finally, somebody confirmed. It’s Carryn Owens. But this bite that we just played, the one I thought was Van Jones reacting to that, this is a different one, and I want to comment on this. So here it is again. This was last night on CNN.
JONES: There’s substance, and there’s tone. The substance of the speech I disagree with entirely. But I think at some point Democrats gotta be willing to take “yes” for an answer. We’ve been asking for him to be more presidential. We’ve been asking for him to be less divisive. We’ve been asking for him to pretend like maybe being the president matters to him, as much as it matters to us, and tonight he showed some glimmers of that. If we can’t as Democrats say, “You know what? Thank you for that part,” then I think that we are adding to the problem we’re trying to solve. We’re not gonna get there if everything he does we’ve gotta attack even when he’s right.
RUSH: Okay, now, this has got all kinds of things to unpack here, because, on balance I guess it’s a complimentary conclusion that you would draw, that Van Jones is being here. And his buddies on the left are mad at him for being this open and tolerant of Trump, who is to be universally despised and hated and ridiculed and never, ever have anything positive about him spoken.
But there is also, there’s something unsettling about this. “We’ve been asking him to be more presidential. We’ve been asking for him to be less divisive,” as though we still run the show here. And he better conform to what we want or else. And whatever Trump is doing, it’s not because he’s trying to conform to what these people think they’re demanding.
“Weeeee have been asking him to be more presidential.” And I don’t know if he means the Democrats or the media here. Probably is one and the same, what difference does it make. “Weeeee have been asking for him to be less divisive. Weeeee have been asking for him to pretend like maybe being the president matters to him as much as it matters to us.”
This is that arrogance that comes from people who think that power is their entitlement and this is just an interruption, and so since he somehow managed with the Russians to pull this off, could you at least behave the way we demand? If we didn’t win and you did, still could you at least behave so we’re not embarrassed, or some such thing. (interruption) To who? A warning?
Snerdley thinks that Van Jones is issuing a warning to the Democrats that they better wake up and understand what they’re dealing with here, that they’re dealing with a different animal. It could be. That would be a rather high degree of maturity. There may be an element of that, there could be.
Anyway, Mary, Bay City, Michigan, welcome. Great to have you. I’m glad you waited. How are you doing?
RUSH: It seems just like yesterday to me.
CALLER: I’m sure it does, but a day wouldn’t go by unless we got to hear Rush Limbaugh so —
RUSH: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Mega dittos from Michigan. Also, I’m a reader, and the grandkids are gonna love your books. I’ve been reading them, and they are wonderful.
RUSH: Oh, thank you so much.
CALLER: So I’m gonna get to why I called. The president’s speech last night was awesome. I think it was well planned, thought out. He is a very shrewd man. And I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet. But I also believe that Donald Trump is God’s man for this time in history. And seeing him last night just brought that all together.
We sat and listened to it, watched it, and I happen to live in an area that the representative that I have in Washington, DC, is a Democrat, because they were elected. But I’ll tell you what; I don’t believe these people are gonna get reelected in ’18. Because, to watch them, the way they behaved or didn’t behave and just look at them —
RUSH: You know what? I addressed this in the first hour, and your call here, I can do it again. I do believe that a bunch of Democrats in that chamber were seeing Trump for the first time. That they only knew of Trump because of the media, the way the media reported him. I don’t think they watched his rallies. I don’t think they spent much time. They never took him seriously! They thought Hillary was gonna win from the get-go. On election night they thought Hillary was gonna win. They have a prejudiced, bigoted view of Trump as presented to them by the media. And so do their voters.
So last night Trump was who he was, who he’s always been to people that support him and know him and voted for him. And the Democrats, I think for the first time in many cases — and you may laugh at this. You may think this is not possible, but I’m asking you not to doubt me on this. The Democrats do not pay attention to anything outside their comfort level in their cocoon, folks. They listen to what the media tells them and what they read on their blogs and websites, and that’s what they know.
They never took Trump seriously. And Trump last night, they’re sitting there realizing what’s happening. Trump is destroying every effort they’ve made to misdefine him the last five weeks. He’s going right over the heads of the media and he’s doing it.
Now, here’s the point you mean about their behavior last night and how it was very immature and childish and not applauding even universally acceptable things like American economic growth and wage increases. They wouldn’t even applaud things that we’re all for. And people say, “Boy, these people really got bad manners.” Let me tell you why they did that. There’s two reasons.
The Democrats in that chamber last night are totally capable of that kind of rude, ill-mannered behavior. But there’s another aspect of this, and that is they were sitting on their hands, in addition to every other reason, because they think that’s what their voters demand that they do. And sitting on their hands, disrespecting Trump, not applauding, is how they continue to receive campaign donations.
Their base is rabidly insane. They can’t afford to have their base stop sending them money. So there were many reasons to explain the Democrats’ behavior. Ill-mannered rudeness, meanness, arrogance and so forth. But don’t discount the fact that they were also doing that because that’s what they think their voters expected them to do. Make no mistake about that.
So anybody thinking this was a wake-up call to Democrat voters, maybe a few, but, nah. They’re just gonna hate Trump even more after this. This is a different bunch of people here, folks. You can’t take things that we all believe in our hearts and assign them to them. We don’t have much in common with the people on the radical left today, and certainly not basic human values. I mean, they couldn’t even, as I say, applaud universally acceptable good things last night. They couldn’t even stand up, not applaud, just stand up.
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RUSH: Now, the Carryn Owens moment, everybody is raving about this, and justly so, don’t misunderstand. I just want to share with you my reaction to it when it happened. If I’ve seen anything in a State of the Union speech, it’s this. Reagan started this with a guy named Lenny Skutnik or some such thing. There was an Air Florida flight, Palm 90 was its call sign, and it was in the middle of January. It was a Boeing 737, I believe. It was snowing to beat the band, and this plane took off from Washington National, now known as Reagan National.
It had been deiced but then sat waiting in line long past the time the deicing was effective, so it took off and immediately it was not able to maintain lift because the ice on the wings destroyed the aerodynamics. The plane didn’t have enough power to overcome that, and so it plunged into the river, not far from the bridge. And this guy, Lenny Skutnik, whatever his name was, he dove off the bridge into the icy waters and brought some people out alive.
Reagan honored him as an American hero and put him up in the gallery sitting next to Mrs. Reagan in the State of the Union. Ever since that it has happened with every State of the Union address. And I had read prior to this speech that Trump was gonna have some guests up there and I knew who they were. They had reported all of them, including Carryn Owens, the wife of the Navy SEAL who died in the raid in Yemen back in January.
And, by the way, as an aside, that raid was a defense department plan in the Obama administration in the ending months. Obama had signed off on it, except the military commander, unit commander said, “No, I need this raid to happen on a new moon. I can’t have any moonlight. We need total darkness as cover.” Well, there wasn’t a new moon by the time Obama would leave office. So by the happenstance of chronology, the mission was going to occur after Trump had been inaugurated.
Trump had nothing to do with assembling the mission. And neither did Obama, actually. The unit commander puts the strategy, plans the mission. What presidents do is sign off on ’em after receiving input, advice, whatever, from the commander, the chief joints of staff, the president says, “Okay, go” or “no go.” But presidents generally do not get involved in the intricate details of the mission. They did in the Vietnam War which was one of the reasons it turned out the way it did.
Trump was not involved. But the military believed in the mission, they wanted it to go, so it went after Trump had been inaugurated, and Trump had signed off on it. They didn’t do it without his knowledge. But it was something that the military had planned long ago because it was target rich, a lot of potential intel. The Drive-Bys have used this as an example of Trump seeking glory, that Trump wanted the operation to happen so that he could take some glory right when he had been inaugurated. And that’s just total BS. All of this was driven by military planning, considerations, and strategy.
I just mention that as an aside because somehow they knew we were coming. The mission was blown almost from the time it launched because the targets knew we were coming. One of the ways they knew, apparently, was our drones were flying too low and the one thing militant Islamist extremists know now is the sound of drones. And when they hear drones, they go hide behind women and children. And they heard the drones that night. I’m told they even knew without the drones that it was coming. The mission was compromised, but it went ahead anyway.
The argument now is over whether or not anything intelligence-wise was gathered to make the mission a success. The media is trying to say it was a total flop and blame it on Trump because all he wanted was the glory, and the secretary of defense, General Mattis, has told Trump that it was successful, and that’s why he said that last night during the speech. Now, the SEAL who was killed, Owens’, wife was in the gallery last night. She was recognized; he was honored, along with others up there.
When it got to the point in the speech where Mrs. Owens, Carryn Owens, was going to be recognized, something I haven’t seen happen, happened. And that is, the president led the standing ovation and applause and said with the most heartfelt sincerity to her that his life would be etched in eternity forever. “And thank you.” And it was an obvious and sincere “thank you.” And the ovation that began lasted longer… It just didn’t stop. It just kept going. That’s what was new. It just kept going.
And while it was happening, Carryn Owens was obviously completely overcome with emotion. She was shaking; she was tearing; she looked heavenward and said, “I love you, Baby.” That entire room… I don’t know what the Democrats did. I’ve seen pictures that Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz and somebody else continued to sit on their hands. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t know. I don’t know how many Democrats stood. Some didn’t. But for the most part, it was overwhelming. And she just… She was the reason.
The way this affected her, the way she reacted to it with this deep, deep appreciation, deep involvement. It was obviously something very necessary for her. Her husband just died weeks ago. And it was… His honor and service was commemorated by the highest elected officer in the land and done so in a sincere way. Ivanka was standings next to her and wisely didn’t embrace her, didn’t move in, didn’t try to get in on the scene, stood her ground. Everything about this was the epitome of genuine.
This is the event that Van Jones is reacting to where he said if Trump keeps this kind of stuff up… They didn’t think Trump was capable of this. You ask yourself: Why would they think Trump’s not capable of this? Did you ask yourself that? Did you ask yourself, “Why were they so shocked that Trump could do something like this?” It’s ’cause they don’t think Trump’s got a heart, folks. They don’t think anybody has hearts but them. They own compassion; nobody else has any.
We just fake it, in their minds, and we don’t do it very well. This blew them away. Everything about that last night, I think, blew them away because of their bigoted, prejudicial impression of Trump. Everything hit them last night like a slap upside the head, and they’re still probably trying to process this. Anyway, I must take a brief time-out. It just didn’t end. You know how long it went? It was over two minutes, three minutes this kept going — and the intensity never died down until it ended.
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RUSH: Karen in Cleveland. Hey, great to have you on the EIB Network. How are you?
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I’m fine. How are you?
RUSH: Good, good, good. Thank you for calling.
CALLER: I wanted to make a comment. When I heard the Van Jones comment, I thought, “He really sounds sincere about this.”
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: I think Van Jones gets it. You’ve been saying all along the Democrats don’t get it. I think he got it. I think he realizes that all you need to do is care about what people think and care about the middle of the country, and you could actually win some elections here. I think we’re gonna see a new and improved Van Jones. If he can ditch this communist thing and start to move away from CNN, we might see the darling of the Dems in 2020.
RUSH: Now, that is an interesting comment. I’m gonna remember this day: March 1st, 2017. Karen in Cleveland predicting the possibility that Van Jones will take care of the communist thing, extricate himself from CNN, and become a viable Democrat candidate because he sees the light. That’s… I’m fascinated by how people think, folks.
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