RUSH: I mentioned at the top of the program, your host: Things said on this program that are serving to inspire many panel discussions on cable TV. So it was last night on Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream. She had a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, and this guy… This guy is… I don’t know how you describe him. Not all there. Name is Philippe Reines, and he was asked about my comments on the Carter Page FISA warrant.
REINES: Rush Limbaugh weighing in and saying, “If it was so bad with Carter Page, why didn’t they go to Trump and tell him, ‘Someone is trying to infiltrate your campaign from Russia’?”
RUSH ARCHIVE: Why did they get a FISA warrant to spy so that they could find it happening? What was their point here? It doesn’t seem to me that anybody involved on the Obama team wanted to stop it. They wanted an opportunity to find evidence that it was happening — and if they couldn’t find any evidence, they wanted to plant some!
RUSH: So she leads off with that bite, my analysis of the FBI and Carter Page, and here is Philippe Reines and his answer…
REINES: What’s getting lost here is that the Mueller investigation isn’t just about possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians. It was to look into Russian interference. I’m not gonna use any kind of judgment about who they helped, who they hurt. I think we all agree — although the president goes back and forth — that they did so. He was tasked with, among other things, finding out who did it and why. As part of that, Carter Page, who does not seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer and I don’t think Republican Party should go too far (snickering) out on a limb for him, he for years has been just sort of canoodling with the wrong people.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. We got a FISA warrant on this guy ’cause he “canoodles”? We got a FISA warrant on Carter Page ’cause he “canoodles” with the wrong people. According to who, the wrong people? So you see, they’re still going for this bifurcation business. “Well, what’s getting lost here is that the Mueller investigation isn’t just about possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. It was to look at the Russian interference.
“I’m not gonna use any kind of judgment about who they helped or who they hurt.” Well, that’s new, because up until last Friday you guys were convinced that Putin had helped Trump. Until Mueller’s indictments happened, ’til Rosenstein’s announcement, you were convinced. Now you’re saying, “Weeeeell, you know, we gotta remember it was about much more than that. It was about Russian meddling too. We’re not gonna get into arguments whether they were trying to help or they’re not. That’s for another…”
Really? You’re gonna drop the whole idea of collusion now? Carter Page. So this guy, Philippe Reines advising the Republicans not to defend page. Not go out too far on a limb on this guy, ’cause he “canoodled” with the wrong people. Up next, Fox & Friends this morning, they talked about the comments made here yesterday about Trump’s tweet, his all-caps tweet to Iran. To set things up, here is the fill-in co-host Todd Piro introducing and playing a clip from yesterday’s big program.
PIRO: Rush Limbaugh had a pretty interesting taking on Iran as it relates to Russia and those same liberals who criticized the president for not being tough enough with Russia. Here’s what he had to say…
RUSH ARCHIVE: The Drive-Bys are now obsessed, for the moment, with Trump and his all-caps tweets to President Rouhani of Iran who is continuing to shout “Death to America!” here and “Death to America!” there, and Trump’s had it. … We don’t laud over anybody! We just be who we are. There’s no shame in becoming a superpower … Iran, good bet, is Russia’s No. 1 client state at this point in time … Pretty hard to reconcile Trump’s tweets with the claim that Trump is Putin’s puppet. Trump is aggressively challenging Russia’s puppet client state in the Middle East. How in the world is this acting as Putin’s puppet?
RUSH: Right? And this is not an isolated incident. Here’s Steve Doocy reacting…
DOOCY: Exactly. And so when you, you know, get the way back machine and you look at how those on the political left just exploded when the president of the United States engaged Kim Jong-un the way he did on Twitter and stuff like that, calling him Little Rocket Man, what does the political left say? He’s gonna get us into a shooting war. Sound familiar?
EARHARDT: I think the majority of the country likes it. I really do. I think that they like his tough stance. That he’s, you know, he’s not a politician.
RUSH: That was Ainsley Earhardt weighing in there. So, once again your host kicking off a discussion, making a point. Look, if Trump is so in bed with Putin, if Putin owns Trump, then what in the world is Trump doing rattling sabers with their number one Middle Eastern client state? And I just want to remind you if you missed this, Trump’s tweet from this morning: “I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming election based on the fact that no president has been tougher on Russia than me, they’ll be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump.”
This is brilliant on so many levels. It is brilliant because of the reaction in the media it’s gonna create and cause. It is brilliant because it takes one of the main points the left has been using to get rid of Trump, that he colluded with Trump and really throwing it back at them. They have been demanding that Trump acknowledge the Russians meddled. Even people on our side have been telling Trump, “You better acknowledge they meddled. You don’t have to say they colluded. You can say they meddled without affecting the legitimacy of your election.”
Everybody’s been telling Trump. So what does Trump do? He acknowledges that the Russians are gonna meddle again, and this time they’re gonna be trying to help the Democrats because nobody’s tougher on Putin and Russia than Trump is. I’m telling you this is politically brilliant, and it happened instinctively I’m sure. This is just who Trump is. This is how he’s naturally inclined. And privately these people on the left and the media will see this tweet and they will literally have conniptions. They may not portray that on TV, but I’m telling you it drives them crazy.
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RUSH: Okay. Let’s just get to it. Where are we gonna go? We’re up here now to audio sound bites 5, 6, and 7. Now, these actually happened last Friday night. Fox News Channel. They go back in time. It was last week and the week before, and maybe even a couple times before that. There have just been things that I have seen, people that I have heard speaking a certain way, that my whole life they have registered things and thoughts that manifest as predictions. I’m very, very often I’m right about. It’s just one of those things.
I think I first saw this as a television show. I’ve described this. CBS All Access, their streaming app. The sequel to The Good Wife is called The Good Fight, and without going into great detail, there was a Democrat Party consultant trying to hire the law firm that is the star of this show. And in the process of interviewing people law firm to see if they were suitable for being hired, the Democrat consultant flew into Chicago from New York and said, “We have to win! That’s all that matters. We have to win. We have to win.”
It was all about hate Trump this, that, everything going out the window. “We have to win.” And it hit me, how long’s it gonna be before they get tired of having to win? I mean, they’re trying to control pretty much everything else they can control. They view their entitlement to power as something to be in perpetuity. They think power is theirs. They think they are power, and whenever they don’t have it, when they lose it, it’s an aberration.
Now, I’m not predicting that we’re gonna hear about this next year, next two years. And when we first do hear it, it’s gonna be from some off-the-wall, out-of-the-way leftist place like some college professor, women’s studies professor who’s going to start agitating about the problems democracy is having because they depend on elections and what are elections but nothing more than expressions of public opinion, and what can we not do with public opinion?
We just can’t trust it. Why? Because the public’s not informed enough. The public is clearly not sophisticated enough. It’s not sufficiently aware of how important liberals running things is. So they’re gonna looking for a way around elections. I contend that they actually already do. I think they already try to circumvent elections. We know that Hillary did. We know the Democrat National Committee and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz and Hillary literally rigged the Democrat primaries.
During that entire primary, folks, don’t you remember? How many times after every state had held a primary Crazy Bernie going nuts and winning and everybody in the media said, “It doesn’t matter. The nomination is Hillary’s, and Bernie knows it.” His supporters didn’t, but Bernie knows it, and it’s all about the superdelegates. So no matter what happened in the Democrat primaries, Hillary was gonna win because why? She wasn’t gonna leave it to chance anymore.
She’d lost the Democrat nomination in 2008 running against The One, and she wasn’t gonna have that happen again. The Democrats had promised her in 2008, the nomination was hers and thus the presidency. When Obama comes along, they abandoned her, cheated on her like she’s always been cheated on her whole life. They went to the young attractive African-American guy, throwing her overboard. Never again that’s gonna happen and here comes 2016, and what? They rig it.
I’m just telling you they’re already thinking this way. I think one of the reasons they admire places like Venezuela and Cuba is that those leaders do not have to under go elections — and when they do, they’re sham. Saddam Hussein routinely got 98% of the vote. The 2% that didn’t vote were shot. So it’s not way out there in terms of expressing the mind-set of the average American leftist who’s becoming more and more radical.
And then there have been other incidents where I’ve listened to the impassioned demands of media people and Democrat politicians about the must-win status. “We have to win. We have to.” Well, I know that everybody in a competition says, “We have to win.” But for Democrats, particularly the American left, “have to win” becomes “must win,” because there can’t be anything but us winning. I think that as they lose, ladies and gentlemen, they inch closer to a future in their minds where there aren’t any elections.
In their minds, they’d probably like the American people to agree with this. I think one of the reasons that they spend so much time impugning and destroying conservatives is to facilitate this idea down the road that there’s nobody really but liberals who ever ought to win or serve in power. I do that know tht they think it’s their birthright. I do know that they think it’s their entitlement, and I do know that they are righteously indignant and offended when they lose, and they blame you.
They blame the voters.
They never blame themselves.
So, anyway, I’ve been saying things like this from the recent past, last three weeks ago to a month. Finally, they decided to discuss this on a cable news network. It was the Fox News Channel, and it was Friday night. Jason Chaffetz was filling in for Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle. He had as his guest a Democrat lawyer by the name of Leo Terrell, who was last seen defending OJ. Leo Terrell used to be a regular guest on Greta Van Susteren’s own legal show. So that’s who this guy is. So here’s the first bite with Jason Chaffetz playing the clip from last week to set up the panel.
CHAFFETZ: So what are the Democrats really after when it comes to the Russian obsession? Rush Limbaugh put out an interesting theory yesterday.
RUSH ARCHIVE: [W]hen they lose, it can’t be because they have been rejected by voters. No, there has to be some nefarious reason. There has to be tampering. There has to be meddling. There has to be collusion. And in the process, they have done a great job of making so many millions of Americans question the integrity of elections … I believe this all has a very long-term purpose, and that is to eventually get rid of elections. … [D]on’t laugh, and be very careful in criticizing me because I’m here to tell you that if they could, they would.
RUSH: So that’s to set it up. I, frankly, was surprised. I thought that I would forever be alone on this. In fact, I thought if it were ever put out there that it would be mocked and laughed at and, “Well, here’s Rush. Something’s gone wrong with Rush today. Rush is way, way out there. Never gonna get rid of elections. This is a democracy,” blah, blah. But that’s not how this happened. So here comes Leo Terrell. He’s a civil rights attorney, fresh off defending OJ, and he asked Leo Terrell, “What is this obsession with Russia? What is the endgame? What are you playing for here?”
TERRELL: First of all, can I just make a comment about Rush. Rush is way out there. Algore with great and dignity accepted the 2000 election. My point is very simple. The Russian meddling is real! Both the Democrats and the Republicans realize that. Look at the Algore footage! He accepted with dignity and class the 2000 election!
RUSH: Uhhh, that’s the strangest way to object to what I’m saying. Can you…? (laughing) This… Folks, I was stunned to talk about how the guy who lost in 2000 did so with grace and dignity, which therefore proves that there’s no way the Democrats ever want to ban elections? By the way (laughing), Algore did not lose with grace and dignity! Algore sued the United States! He sued the state of Florida!
He took this recount to the Supreme Court! There was no grace and dignity about this. Algore conceded, and then he withdrew the concession! This is not to dump on Algore. I’m just telling you, of all the things that somebody could say! Now, Leo did say, “Rush is way out there,” which, frankly, I think would be a lot of people’s reactions. “Whoa, that’s so far away,” but I’m telling you this.
Deep down in the bowels of this party, when they hear me say this, I will guarantee you that privately they sit there and say, “Yeah, you know, there’s some people that are gonna figure –” they’re thinking about it, folks. Do not doubt me on this. I’m not saying tomorrow. I mean, I made predictions about the left 25 years ago that are just now coming true, 20 years ago.
But that’s the strangest way to refute it. Wouldn’t you think a better way to refute it would be, “Come on. That is so silly, Jason, I can’t believe you’re even asking us to react to that. Are you kidding? Ban elections when we win most of them? Why would we — this is just crazy. You know, Limbaugh, this is typical of what’s gone on in this America, ’cause we’re so far out there.” There are any number of ways to react. But he cites Algore’s grace and dignity as evidence that the charge I am making is illegitimate.
So now we go back to Jason Chaffetz, and the other guy on here is Horace Cooper from the Public Policy Research Center, and the conversation continued.
CHAFFETZ: Rush Limbaugh made a pretty strong allegation that the endgame here is actually that the Democrats want to get rid of elections. When Moscow created out of whole cloth the international peace movement that took over Europe with their funding, where was the left? When Moscow said that it was a farce that the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, would put up a Strategic Defense Initiative, where were the progressives? They were with Moscow. You come all the way to today, 2017, when we had the president’s budget on defense, where were the progressives? They did not support it.
RUSH: To me this is somewhat interesting. ‘Cause Jason Chaffetz put it out there twice, and in both instances nobody knocked the idea out of the park. Nobody really pooh-poohed it. In fact, the last guy here, Horace Cooper is talk — I remember the global peace march. When this program began, by the way, in 1988, we were chronicling it. We had a great peace march update with Slim Whitman and the song Una Paloma Blanca, because at that time what was happening? The great global peace march for nuclear disarmament was taking place.
A bunch of leftists were marching from Mount Shasta in Oregon and elsewhere on the Left Coast to Washington. And when they got there they had a die-in on the steps of some building, and they had red dye out there to make it look like blood with a mass death, what it would the look like at a nuclear detonation.
And that’s what this guy’s talking about. And they have been devoted to these pro-Moscow, pro-communist causes for the longest time. And this guy works this way into this response to the banning or the getting rid of or making unnecessary — maybe that’s another — making unnecessary elections, elections still happen be pro forma. But now that I have voiced what I think the reaction I expected to get, I’m sure we’ll get it now, such is the power of suggestion.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, just to be perfectly clear, there isn’t gonna be any move to ban elections while the Democrats think that they can get amnesty. If they can get amnesty for 20 million illegals and have open borders, then there won’t be any need to ban elections. If they could maintain elections where they win landslides every year, that would be even better. So this is no time soon. I’m just sharing with you a mind-set that they have.
Maybe the more accurate way to say this, these people run around cursing elections, that they have to endure them, that they have to go through them, it’s such a pain in the rear. Why should they have to? Why should they be subjected to public opinion? Which they resent and hold in contempt anyway. But if they get amnesty, if that thing ever passes, then they won’t need to ban elections. So it’s no time soon.
Now, if amnesty were defeated, if somehow we hope that that is pushed back and stayed back, now, that’s gonna cause a degree of panic, ’cause I’ll guarantee you they’re counting on amnesty. They’re counting on eventually getting that. They are counting on the fact that there’s gonna be a miraculous 10 to 20 million new Democrat voters pretty soon. And if something goes wrong with that, that’s when to keep an eye on things.