RUSH: Greg in Port Huron, Michigan. I’m glad that you waited. How are you doing, sir?
CALLER: I’m doing good. How are you doing?
RUSH: I’m superb. Thank you.
CALLER: So I’m 19 years old, and I’ve been listening since 2008, my dad’s been listening since 1989, and my 13-year-old brother has been listening since 2015. So we’ve been listening for a while.
RUSH: That’s awesome. I appreciate it.
RUSH: Did you join the website, too?
CALLER: No. I don’t think so.
RUSH: Aw, come on, man. You can’t do all that and not join the website. Here, we’re gonna comp you. We’re gonna make you a complimentary member at RushLimbaugh.com, and that means you go out, you get the app… Do you have a phone? Do you have an iPhone?
CALLER: I just have an old flip phone. I don’t have an iPhone yet, so…
RUSH: You have a flip phone?
CALLER: Yeah. I’m calling on a land line ’cause my flip phone has bad quality because it’s old.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. The only people that use flip phones are criminals now. You know that?
CALLER: I know. Yeah, it’s stupid, but…
RUSH: Okay, well, look, since I’m in a good mood today we’ll throw in an iPhone. I’m gonna give you your choice, and this is before you’ve even said what you called about. I have some iPhone Xs here, and I have some iPhone 8s and 8 Pluses. You know, I don’t want to give the X short shrift. I mean, it is state of the art. But these 8s, especially the 8 Pluses, are awesome iPhones as well. So you can take your pick of whichever one that you would like. And then when you get that, you can go get the RushLimbaugh.com app, after we comp you your one-year membership to Rush 24/7. So which one…? Are you versed? Do you know what an 8 Plus is and an iPhone X?
RUSH: I wouldn’t blame you. It’s the one with Face ID, and it has… It is. It’s state off the art. There’s nothing like it, and it’s two years ahead of any competitor up there to come up to Apple’s speed on this. So it’s a wise choice.
CALLER: Well, thank you. That means a lot to me.
RUSH: Well, you need to hang on after this so we get your address and stuff and get you the phone. We’ll get it to you next week. It’s unlocked. It has no SIM card in it. So it will work on any carrier. Now, what was it you called about from Port Huron, Michigan?
CALLER: Well, we’re a very liberal town, unfortunately — a border town — and we’ve been hurt by NAFTA. All our jobs kind of went away. But, you know, I voted for Trump ’cause he wanted to get rid of NAFTA, wanted to bring back jobs. You know, I’m tired of looking at empty factories and stores and stuff. So I’m kind of looking forward to that. But one of the things is we had the government shutdown again, and everyone keeps blaming Democrats and Republicans, but my real question is: Why are we in debt anyways and why can’t we just make the government smaller so we can have less shutdowns and have a better budget?
RUSH: Well, you know, to answer this thoroughly would require an in-depth history lesson, which I would be more than happy to provide. But we don’t have time for it here, so I need to give you the CliffsNotes version. The Founding Fathers recognized the threat. They knew what democracies go through. They know the pressures that hit democracies. And one of the early people around the founding of the country… I forget who. It’s somebody famous. He said once the voters figure out that they can vote themselves money, then it’s over. Now, it’s not over immediately, but this is exactly why has happened. So you ask why is the government shutdown politics? Why are we in debt? It’s because the job of members of Congress is to spend money.
CALLER: Yeah.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I just turned 67. When I was your age, my grandfather and people his age were telling me that if we didn’t get a handle as a nation on the national debt, that by the time I was ready to retire, I wouldn’t be able to because the country would be in such dire financial straits. So I spent my early years thinking the national debt was something really important, and I saw it get bigger and bigger. I never heard anybody talk about reducing it, and I remembered people I trusted and loved telling me it was gonna be the end of the country.
Now, here I am 50 years later, and we’re in the midst of an economic revival. The national debt is over $20 trillion. It was doubled in the eight years of Obama. We are running budget deficits every year, and I have yet to see any evidence that the national debt is causing us any harm at all. The theory is that if the government owes so much money that they have to borrow to pay money, the interest on that debt, and that that leaves less money in the private sector for people like you and me to borrow to buy homes, to buy cars, whatever we would need to borrow money for. That hasn’t happened. I mean, the credit markets are wide open. Look at people’s credit card debt.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Nobody’s saying no when you want to borrow money, unless you’re an absolute, total risk. So all these things — and I still don’t have an answer for this. I can still find people, Greg, who sound today just like my grandfather did 50 years ago. “The national debt will be the end of the country!” Look, I wish the government was smaller, and I wish more Americans felt they didn’t need it. I wish the government was smaller because I don’t like it involving itself in as many aspects of people’s lives as it can.
Because there’s a certain political class that wants to do that, believing that you and I are incompetent and incapable. They want to manage our affairs, manage our lives for the sheer power of it. But, man, you get there, I guess, and the idea that you have all this money to spend and people love you after you spend it? It’s gotta be one heck of an aphrodisiac. There have been people who try to make the government smaller. The Republicans balanced the budget one time, in 1995.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But, you know, in a theoretical sense, ideological sense, the government getting smaller and less intrusive is what it means, really. When the government “shuts down,” it really doesn’t. It’s just we go a few days without money to make certain transactions. But the government never shuts down. In fact, it would be great if it did.
CALLER: Well, I know that. But a lot of people my age when they hear “government shutdown,” they think, “Oh, we’re gonna live in the streets and won’t have any money!”
RUSH: Well, see, that’s my point. Look at what people have been made to think: If government isn’t there, life cannot go on. And that’s absurd!
CALLER: I live just fine without government. You know, just like we’re required to have health care. I can’t work more than 19 hours a week because I have to have health care. But I’m young and I’m not sick. Same thing. You know, I just don’t need government telling me what to do.
RUSH: What I would urge you to do is not change. We’re gonna need as many people like you who learn this stuff at your age and then hold on to it and learn how to defend it, fight for it and all that, because you’re gonna be up against people your age just like you described. They almost descend into a panic when they hear the government shutting down. They don’t even know what it means. But they still get into some sort of great fear that something’s not gonna be able to be available or happen or whatever. It’s a great illustration of just how successfully the Big Government crowd has been in convincing people they can’t live even a day without it.
RUSH: Wait a minute. That was the story they had that there’s so much poop on the public streets in Frisco that they had to put a map out so people could avoid it?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: You put —
CALLER: I shared it on Facebook. My Facebook got shut down and it’s still shut off.
RUSH: Wait a minute. Did you share it from RushLimbaugh.com or just one of your own compositions?
CALLER: No, it was from your website.
RUSH: And they did what?
CALLER: They shut it down, said it could have been a dangerous source, said it could be filled with bots or viruses and stuff.
RUSH: It called this a dangerous source?
CALLER: Yes, it did, and I showed everybody, and they couldn’t figure it out. It’s like, it didn’t make any sense, just an honest story, and it got shut down.
RUSH: See, this is why I told Rachel earlier that this stuff — social media — is a sewer. I can’t believe that they did that. Because I’m not a credible source? Is that what they said?
RUSH: This is good to know. See, this is why you need to get the Rush app and start sharing from the Rush app to other people. You can try it on Facebook and Twitter and so forth, but develop your own network. This is gonna be how we counter this. That poop story wasn’t… I didn’t make it up.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: That was from the liberal media somewhere. I still have the website here. I’ve still got the map of where the poop is on the street lights and the corners and the alleys of San Francisco. It wasn’t my map. I didn’t make it up.
CALLER: I know you didn’t. That’s just how it works. You know, they’re censoring me everywhere, just… You know, it’s incredible, but —
RUSH: They are censoring…? Yeah, they’re censoring you. But if you had posted on your own, it might have made it by. But since it came from Rush Limbaugh, they’re… I didn’t know they were that blatant about it. I’m glad you told me this. That alone is worth the iPhone. Speaking of which, hang on. Don’t hang up. We need to get your address and some other things for you to comp your membership at RushLimbaugh.com for a year, so hang on. Mr. Snerdley will be right back with you.
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