RUSH: Look, I don’t want to start off here with a nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah See, I Told You So, but, man, I called it. I predicted it. Yesterday we had the cabinet meeting, and it was amazing. It was the first cabinet meeting with every cabinet secretary there. It’s taken this long to have them all confirmed. So they’re there, and it started out with each cabinet secretary, like the first day back in school from the summer. What you did during the summer; who you are; who’s your neighbor, what have you been working on; what are you gonna be working on; how much you like the teacher. And, of course, all that happened.
Trump and his people are not supposed to be smiling. They’re supposed to be defeated. People are supposed to be defecting from Trump’s cabinet by now. People are supposed to be publicly resigning and raking Trump over the coals for being whatever the left thinks he is.
I mean, they’ve loaded the guns every day. They have fired the best they’ve got, and Trump is still there. Trump is still standing. Trump is still smiling. His cabinet’s still happy to be there and honored. And it doesn’t seem to be affecting Trump at all, at least outwardly, which is what the opponents of Trump want. They want to see some sign that they’re getting to him. They want to see some sign that Trump is beginning to crumble. They want to see any indication whatsoever that all of these political assassinations and these hit pieces and the silent coup taking place, they want evidence, they want visible evidence and examples that it’s working. And Trump just isn’t giving it to them.
So this cabinet thing set ’em off anew yesterday. We have here a number of elements to show you and bring to your attention just how affected they were by it. Let’s start with the audio sound bites. I mentioned this at the end of the program yesterday, but we didn’t have time to play it.
Now, if you are the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, your name happens to be Chuck You Schumer, if you have time to gather your staff together and write a Saturday Night Live-type script for a video and then you take the time to get your staff together and you produce this video, it must mean that you don’t have a whole lot that’s important going on.
And it must mean that you really don’t have any power worth talking about. If this is what you think your time is most productively spent on, then I think it’s an indication of how vacant and absent the Democrat Party is of real leadership. They are absent an agenda other than: “We’ve gotta get rid of Trump.” That’s it in toto, plus their newfound fascination with the F-bomb being used in public.
So I mentioned that Schumer and his boys had put together a video mocking Trump, and once again taking their cues from the media ’cause the media, as you know, is running the left-wing opposition to Trump. The Democrats are just placeholders in elective office where hopefully they get to implement what the media directs them to do. But here’s the audio, Schumer and staff. It is a video mocking the Trump cabinet meeting.
SCHUMER: I want to thank everybody for coming. I just thought we’d go around the room. Lucy, how’d we do on the Sunday show yesterday?
Lucy: Your tone was perfect. You were right on message.
SCHUMER: Michelle, how’d my hair look coming out of the gym this morning?
Michelle: You have great hair. Nobody has better hair than you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE STAFFER: You know, before we go any further I just want to say thank you for the opportunity and blessing to serve your agenda.
SCHUMER: That’s great. (laughter)
RUSH: There you go, and that circulated all over. The Drive-Bys thought it was great, it was funny, it’s an audition tape for Saturday Night Live. But if you’ve got time to do this, then you must not really have much that’s important going on. And, of course, did any of that make you laugh? I don’t know if any of you have seen it, but did that make you laugh? Did those people sound funny? (interruption) Yeah, when you see the video these people look stupid.
See, the difference is that Trump’s cabinet meeting was real. They think it was all fake. They think exactly what happened was that Trump called a pre-meeting and all these cabinet secretaries walk in there and Trump gave them marching orders, Trump gave them a script. “Okay, you, you’re gonna talk about how brilliant I am and you’re gonna talk about how happy you are to be here and how there’s no better meeting than this one, no better president. You, you’re gonna do the same thing and you’re gonna start out saying no better president and you’re never more honored to do anything.”
Then he goes down the cabinet list, tells everybody what to say. Then they have the meeting, let the cameras in. The Democrats think the Trump cabinet meeting was scripted, it was planned, probably rehearsed. If you watch it, it was genuine, it was legitimate, it was improv, it was ad-lib. There were not people reading scripts. The laughter was genuine. You can’t fake that. In the Schumer video, slash, audio, it sounds stiff, there isn’t anything funny about it, and it’s not even good parody because if you do not know — stop and think of this, folks.
Next up Wolf Blitzer’s CNN panel, and they mocked the Trump cabinet meeting. Now, these people don’t just have contempt for Trump; they have contempt for you and me, folks. They have contempt for any of us who happen to support Trump or, more likely, oppose them. A lot of Americans elected Donald Trump and that cabinet to pursue a specific agenda, and it is not a joke to millions of Americans who voted for it and who happened to elect it. And the CNN people just once again can’t come to grips with it. We have here Jeffrey Toobin, Chris Cillizza, Blitzer, and somebody named Ron Brownstein from The Atlantic.
TOOBIN: Wolf, can I say something?
BLITZER: Yes.
TOOBIN: Wolf?
BLITZER: Go ahead, Jeff.
TOOBIN: Can I say, I just want to thank you for having me…
Cillizza: I knew that was coming, Toobin!
TOOBIN:…on The Situation Room.
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. (laughter)
CILLIZZA: Classic Toobin.
TOOBIN: I think you’re doing such a great job…
BLITZER: Thank you.
TOOBIN: …in general but especially today, and it’s just an honor to be here with you.
CILLIZZA: I’m surprised…
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, yeah.
CILLIZZA: … Jeff didn’t mention your suit. (laughter)
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, really.
CILLIZZA: It’s a nice fit on you. It’s an oversight by Jeff, but I want you to know I mentioned your suit.
RUSH: You know what these people don’t get? Here they are trying to parody. They have no sense of humor. They can’t pull it off. They are filled with rage. They are angry that that Trump cabinet meeting happened. They are angry that it was real. They are angry that it worked. They are angry that it was genuine. And they are angry that Trump, as I say, is not cowering and going away and slinking away and acting hurt and despondent and all that.
But the real irony for this to me is that this is exactly how these people acted with Obama. You go to your average White House press briefing, and your question, “What have you found most inspiring about your time in the White House? What is it that has made you enjoy poetry even more since having moved to the White House? Can you tell us, are you as thrilled as we are that you are here?” Those were the kind of questions we got every day, an example, your average White House press.
I mean, you talk about sycophancy. I mean, if it had kept on, the White House press corps might have died from anal poisoning because of what they were kissing every day. They don’t understand. They look at the Trump cabinet meeting, and it was genuine and real and they resent it. They instinctively resent it because they know it’s real. They go out there and try to make fun of it and they end up making themselves look exactly like they did during an Obama press conference.
You talk about scripted or planned or devoted or “it’s an honor to be in your press corps, sir. It’s an honor and I would love to be sitting close to you at the White House correspondents dinner, such an honor.” And whatever Obama said, whether it made sense or not, was the most brilliant thing any president had ever said. So while they’re trying to parody the Trump cabinet meeting, what they’re actually doing is demonstrating their natural state and the way they were behaving every day with Obama.
Here’s David Axelrod last night, CNN, Anderson Cooper. Question: “How unusual is a cabinet meeting like this? I mean, it’s the first full cabinet meeting, so is it kind of normal for what happened to happen?”
AXELROD: It is not unusual — if you live in North Korea.
RUSH: Oh, man. You hear that?
AXELROD: But here in the U.S., that is very unusual. (snickers) I attended cabinet meetings. I’ve never seen anything like that. Look, you have an embattled president who wants to change the narrative, uh, and he enlisted his cabinet to do that, and, uh, but I think at some expense to them because they look so servile that it was absurd. It was like a competition to see who could be more obsequious. Y-you know, when the president says, “I wouldn’t think of asking people for loyalty pledges…” But this was, in a sense, asking for a loyalty pledge —
RUSH: How do you know?
AXELROD: — asking them to parade in front of the cameras —
RUSH: How do you know?
AXELROD: — and offer testimonials. Uhh, it was an embarrassing thing.
RUSH: North Korea? See, my friends, this validates my point. This is not the way Trump’s supposed to be. He’s supposed to be defeated by now. He’s supposed to be worn to a frazzle. He’s supposed to be barely functioning, supposed to be babbling there making no sense when he speaks up. And there’s not anybody left that’s supposed to still love and respect the guy, particularly the people closest to him in his cabinet. North Korea! Yeah, yeah. “It is not unusual — if you live in North Korea. … I’ve never seen anything like this.”
That’s the point folks!
That is precisely the point.
Everybody’s tired of the way it’s always been done, and everybody’s tired of the way it’s always looked, and everybody’s tired of the predictable, formulaic things that are said and done in Washington. Trump was sent there to shake things up. He’s doing it, and he’s not backing off from doing it. Here’s John Dickerson. He is the, what, CBS political director? He was on CBS This Morning. He also hosts Slay the Nation. Norah O’Donnell, fresh from her bathwater, said, “We saw what can clearly be described as an unusual cabinet meeting yesterday, John. Each of Trump’s secretaries praising the president, saying it’s an honor and a blessing to serve him. Who organized it this way, and why did they do it?”
DICKERSON: It was an extraordinary bath of adulation. I’m not sure what the organizing principle was. It was clearly a public relations effort to bolster the presidency. Imagine if that were used to talk about the agenda for the forgotten man that the president ran on, to talk about the opioid crisis, to talk about things that were being done for the people that elected him, as opposed to just merely, um —
RUSH: Can you catch that?
DICKERSON: — offering praise after praise.
RUSH: Did you catch that, that Trump should be working on the opioid crisis and trying to help people that elected him? So a bunch of opioid hicks elected Trump and he’s neglecting ’em. The basic point there… This is an uppity leftist here, John Dickerson, CBS News. But his point is, “This is just silly, these guys up there pledging loyalty to serve Trump. This is unusual. We’re never heard of this. Trump and the cabinet should have been talking about the agenda.” Well, the fact of the matter is they did, except the Drive-Bys are not sharing that portion of the meeting with you. But they all discussed the agenda. It’s typical fake news to claim it wasn’t discussed.
Here is a sample…
JEFF SESSIONS: Law enforcement all over America, they have been very frustrated. They are so thrilled that we have a new idea that we gonna support them and work together to properly, lawfully fight the rising crime that we’re seeing.
ALEXANDER ACOSTA: The apprenticeship program is gonna make a real difference.
RICK PERRY: I had the great privilege to represent America in China at the green energy ministerial. They needed to hear why America was stepping away from the Paris Accord, and they did.
MICK MULVANEY: We were able to also focus on the forgotten man and woman who are the folks who are paying those taxes.
SCOTT PRUITT: I actually arrived back this morning at one o’clock from Italy, the G7 summit focused on the environment and our message there was the United States is gonna be focused on growth.
REX TILLERSON: We are engaged with our allies to ensure that they know where our common interests lie, where our expectations are; that America will continue to be a leader, but they must do more.
JAMES MATTIS: We’re grateful for the sacrifices our people are making in order to strengthen our military so our diplomats only negotiate from a position of strength.
JOHN KELLY: … a 70% drop in illegal immigration.
BEN CARSON: We’re making tremendous progress in converting to a business model, and already seeing tremendous savings.
LINDA MCMAHON: I’ve been traveling around the country, and what I’m continuing to hear is this renewed optimism from small businesses.
STEVE MNUCHIN: We are focused on creating sustained economic growth, sweeping tax reform, and fighting terrorism.
RUSH: So these guys are not only talking about the agenda, they are giving miniature reports on their work. Of course, it hadn’t been anywhere else. They’re out there saying, “They didn’t discuss the agenda! They’re just a bunch of if sycophants out there,” and, by the way, I don’t know how many of them know the outward “sycophancy” yesterday, and now a lot of them are describing that word by the way to describe the cabinet. But you’re not hearing this video. They did describe the agenda and they talked about the progress they’re having in everything.
Here are the names. It was Jeff Sessions, Alexander Acosta, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney (who we talked the Limbaugh Letter last week), Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, John Kelly, Ben Carson, Linda McMahon, and Steve Mnuchin. Those are the people you heard. Carson, he was kind of overshadowed by the camera shutters: “We’re making tremendous progress at converting to a business model, and already seeing tremendous savings.” He’s talking about Housing and Urban Development there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And we’re back. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, cutting edge, societal evolution, doing what I was born to do.
There’s something else here about this. One other observation I made on the media reaction to the Trump cabinet meeting yesterday. I think — and I’ve touched on this in an ancillary way, but I want to double back here and zero in on this. I think these people in the media — and, of course, their accomplices in the Democrat Party — when they hear Donald Trump addressed with respect by people that they don’t consider to be Trump-like.
I mean, some of the people in the cabinet Democrats have previously associated with them, respected them. Like Rex Tillerson, Rick Perry. There’s any number of Trump cabinet members that the Democrats and the media have long found okay. But to hear them addressing Trump with such respect, the same kind of respect they gave Obama (very, very important), I think it just shattered them. It is so far out of their experience.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to stick with this cabinet business for just a second, because I want to grab this call from Brian in Tucson, Arizona. I meant to mention this yesterday. We had the audio from this yesterday and I just… It’s one of those many things I didn’t get to. Brian, great to have you. How you doing, sir?
CALLER: I’m well, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Very, very well. Great to hear from you.
CALLER: Mega dittos. I’ve listened since about 1994. Enjoy your show.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I just wanted to mention to you that when Clinton had his Lewinsky scandal, he brought the whole cabinet out. Donna Shalala was there with Madeleine Albright, and they were all talking about how great Clinton was — and nobody mentioned North Korea or anything like that. No comparison at all.
I took the call ’cause I love all of you and I appreciate every contribution you make — and I remember this. This was the Lewinsky scandal. This was Clinton and the now-famous (impression) “I never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, not a single time. I never asked anybody to lie, not a single time, not ever.” He’s wagging that finger at everybody and he says, “I didn’t do it. This is before everybody knew she had that blue dress! (chuckling) Heh, and that was gonna-be-cooked time. But at that time, the media thought, ‘Clinton is as honest as the day is long,'” and he said he didn’t do it.
Madeleine Albright and the Clinton cabinet waddled outside the diplomatic entrance, the Diplomatic Reception Room. They were angry and they said, “We support our president.” They were in full sycophant mode. “We support our president. This is outrageous that a lie and an allegation like this would surface. He told us that it didn’t happen and he didn’t do it and we believe him.” We’re all watching this and we’re incredulous because we all know that it did happen, and we all know that Clinton is lying. But not the media.
The media was sycophancy on parade with Madeleine Albright — and then the fateful day came when the blue dress was discovered and everybody knew that Clinton had lied, and we got this story September 11, 1998: “Clinton Apologizes to Cabinet — President Bill Clinton apologized to his cabinet and Senate Democrats, in painful private meetings Thursday that produced blunt confrontations about how his behavior hurt his standing with female supporters in Congress.” It did no such thing, and I don’t believe that there were “painful private meetings.” I don’t believe this for a minute.
I don’t think that’s how it happens in the Democrat Party. I think what happens is they have a meeting, “We got caught. How we gonna handle this? We sent the cabinet out to lie, but now something’s gonna happen.” There weren’t any painful, hurt meetings, ’cause everybody knew from the get-go that Clinton was lying! Madeleine Albright knew it, the whole cabinet knew it, Hillary knew it. Everybody knew that Clinton was lying. So these painful, hurtful meetings — and then, of course, bringing in the Reverend Jackson to have the private counseling meetings to try to overcome it. (sobbing) Oh, it was so, so, so sad!
And I don’t believe a word of it.
“A cabinet member told CNN the meeting was extremely emotional and said at one point the president cried as he pleaded for forgiveness, asking cabinet members if they could still trust him. When the allegations against Clinton first surfaced in January, Albright stood before TV cameras with Donna Shalala and said they believed the charges were false, based on what Clinton had just told them.” I don’t believe, folks, for a minute any of this. I think everybody knew Clinton was lying and everybody knew he was having an affair with Lewinsky (because he was having an affair with any woman that would have him) and he could be secret with it.
There was no secret about this, and everybody was strategizing. They knew Clinton was caught, so the strategy was to go out and deny, deny, deny. Because until there was evidence of it produced, they could get away with denying it. Then the blue dress came up and everything was blown to smithereens. What’s interesting to me is the Trump cabinet meeting, I’m gonna guess, was pretty aboveboard and legit. I don’t think, with as much leaking as there is in that White House, that Trump would dare try to script something like that — and I’ll tell you this.
If he had, it would have already leaked, because that White House leaks like your average colander in your kitchen. They can’t keep a thing secret! If Trump had a meeting with the cabinet and everything they said was ordained and demanded and scripted and written, it would have leaked out. It didn’t. The Trump meeting was legitimate. What those people said was legitimate and improvisational, and it was all positive and upbeat. It’s the Democrats, it’s the leftists who constantly calculate everything.
It’s the left that constantly pre-produces everything.
It is they who conceive of schemes to get away with whatever has happened, and that’s exactly what happened here. They had concocted a scheme to get away with this because there wasn’t any proof. It was her versus him in terms of honesty and words; then the blue dress blew it all to smithereens, and they couldn’t cover it up. But don’t for a minute think that Madeleine Albright believed Clinton. Don’t for a moment. That was all part of a coordinated strategy no different than Hillary going out on the Today show with Matt Lauer and trying to claim that this is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy.
It was ridiculous! My point is: Projection. The Democrats project on us and the Republicans what they actually do. It is Obama that was treated with great sycophancy by his cabinet and by the media and by the Democrats, and Clinton got the same treatment. And the media, when they saw Trump being treated with great respect — the kind of respect they treated Obama with — they lost it. But I want to take you back. It wasn’t just the Democrats who treated Obama with sycophancy. February 28, 2009.
Not in the West Wing, but in the main White House. For the camera and TV optics, this had to be the main White House, like the East Room, the Blue Room. So that would happen at one o’clock. The groups would then have to report back to Obama at five o’clock, where the cameras would be there, and Obama would accept the reports from the various breakout groups on how they had fixed unemployment, how they had fixed climate change.
They’d had all these various summits: the jobs summit, the climate change summit, the what have you summit, the infrastructure summit. And after four hours of such meetings Obama would announce that they had fixed the problem. Maybe not in those words, but the point of it all was to create these photo-op images that even his first month in, Obama’s fixing climate change, Obama is fixing the jobs problem, Obama’s already gotten started.
Obama would go to every corner of the room and he would check in with the groups of people that were fixing these things. And I remember Thomas “Loopy” Friedman I think was working in the group working on fixing unemployment. I said, “Why is he there?” He’s a foreign policy shill for the New York Times. And Friedman looked up from his chair and he just had love and idolatry in his eyes for Obama. And everybody in the groups did. They all praised Obama as unparalleled, unequivocally, unprecedented, the greatest, the smartest, the best ever.
You want to talk about kiss ass, I mean, this set the record for it. And even John McCain got involved, February 28, 2009, Eisenhower Executive Office Building. This is after one of the breakout meetings of the fiscal responsibility summit. There was the jobs summit, the climate change summit, the global warming summit, what have you. McCain worked at the fiscal responsibility summit. Obama then spoke with participants about what they had learned.
I’m not kidding, folks. We can go back to the archives of RushLimbaugh.com and repost these things. I’m sure we’ve got pictures of these meetings, TV shots. Obama said, “I’m gonna start with John McCain, because, you know, he and I had some good debates about these issues during the campaign on fiscal responsibility. Senator McCain, what did your group come up with? What did you learn?”
RUSH: Holy smokes, the breakout group discovered that a helicopter is gonna cost as much as a Boeing 747. Wow. But, see, this is what’s going on. Let me ask you something. So McCain was in the breakout group on fiscal responsibility in 2009. What good did it do? Obama almost doubled the national debt. But it was very important. Of course it’s very, very important. McCain said it’s very important, Mr. President, thank you for doing this. It’s very important, particularly this breakout session on fiscal responsibility.
My point is all of this was a dog-and-pony show. It had no substance. There was never intended to be any substance. It was pure, pure theater, exactly what they’re accusing Trump’s cabinet meeting yesterday of being. Except the big difference, Trump’s cabinet meeting actually talked about problems and the things they’re already doing to work on and fix those problems, and the media is lying through their teeth about this.
It is Obama and Bill Clinton who were treated like rock stars. Andrea Mitchell, during NBC’s live coverage back on July 27th, 2004. This is Obama, Democrat convention time. Obama is a rock star. As he stepped down from the podium, Obama told biographer David Mendel, “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level, I got some game.” And the media goes on to just wax eloquent about a unparalleled, brand-new state-of-the-art politician Obama is way back in 2004. Made all of us sick, I’m sure you remember.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, here you go. This is Madeleine Albright. We got the audio back. This is on January 23rd, 1998, the south side of the White House. Clinton has just done his (impersonation), “I never had sex with that woman, not a single time. Miss Lewinsky, I never even heard of her. It just didn’t happen. And I didn’t lie. I never asked anybody to lie. Now I gotta get back to work for the American people.” You can hear cheering back in the background. And then Madeleine Albright led the cabinet, they waddled out of there, diplomatic reception room.
WILLIAM DALEY: I’ll second that. Definitely.
DONNA SHALALA: Third it.
RUSH: That was William Daley, brother of boss daily in Chicago and Donna Shalala. And it was just a few weeks later that they all had to go out there — and I maintain to you that they knew on January 23rd that Clinton had done it. Everybody in the White House knew he had done it. For crying out loud, the woman was everywhere in there. Hillary knew! All these sessions where Clinton tried to put back his life together and meeting with Jesse Jackson, that’s the theatrics.
Dan Rather. Remember this, folks? The Clintons owned 60 Minutes. Steve Kroft was their only chosen interviewer, ’cause Steve Kroft would lick the floor talking to them his tongue was hanging out so far, and Dan Rather was the same. CBS May 27, 1993, this is long before Lewinsky, Dan Rather interviewed, and Connie Chung was there, Bill Clinton. And here’s the question that Dan Rather asked: “Mr. President, if we could be one 100th as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been together in the White House, we’d take it right now and walk away winners.” That was a question.
You know, Clinton’s sitting there basking in the glow. (impersonation) “Yeah, Dan. You know what? I know you love me. Dan, you’re nuts, you’re crazy, I would never ask you to be anywhere officially near me anything at all, but I will take this sycophancy you’ve got all day long. I’ll answer this. Dan, you never be one one-thousandth as good I am in your dreams, dude.” Nevertheless he answered the question with some meaningless pap.
Here is Kathryn, Valley Forge, Virginia? Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. I knew it. How are you, Kathryn?
CALLER: I’m swell, Rush. I have to tell you I’m gonna speak for tons and tons of people. I just hope you know how many of us admire you. We’re grateful for how strong you are in saying what you say, and we keep you in our prayers.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I hear this a lot and I can’t tell you how meaningful it is, how deeply I appreciate it and recognize it. I do. Thank you.
CALLER: Well, it’s the truth. Thank you. I’m so grateful to be able to say this, because this issue of the cabinet meeting, it’s like we have two languages in this country now. When the president had his first full-team cabinet meeting and these cabinet members, which is such an honor, say that they’re honored to serve their country, they were grateful that they were selected, and they’re honored and excited to work for the American people and do great things. To me, and I think a lot of people, it sounds normal and decent. It’s like what you would do. And here’s the corny part. It’s almost like first day of school you say the Pledge of Allegiance ’cause you’re proud and you’re grateful and you’re glad. And then when the other side is snarky and they make fun, they simply don’t speak the language. They don’t get it.
RUSH: That’s exactly right. That is so well said. Here they are making fun of people who like the job, making fun of people who love the country, making fun of people in their sincerity for the appreciation to have the honor to do the job. I would consider it an honor to be in the White House.
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