RUSH: Let me get into some brief debate analysis. There’s more of this, ’cause I saw something. I saw everything everyone else saw last night. I saw these idiots trying to moderate this thing, lose control of it, and I saw… (chuckles) Folks, do you know (sigh) how embarrassing it was? Kathryn and I were watching the debate, and after two video shots of those candidates standing there with their hands raised, we started looking at each other.
“What the hell is this? Why are they raising their hands?” These are candidates for the presidency asking for permission to speak, to respond. I said, “This is out of whack. It’s the media that ought to be raising their hands asking for questions.” You contrast this, what you saw last night when all these Democrats are raising their hands, “Can I go next? Me? Notice me! Notice me! Hey, I want to respond. I want to respond!
“Hey, ask me a question. You’re not giving me long enough to talk.” Do you think that would ever happen with Donald Trump on a debate stage? Donald Trump, when he conducts a press conference, you don’t even see the media. Donald Trump has come up with a brilliant way of doing press conferences. They’re outside on the way to the Marine One helicopter, and the camera is never on the media. You never see them.
The only thing you see is him, and he’s the one pointing at the media, telling them when to go. It looks like he’s conducting an orchestra. It’s brilliant. He doesn’t raise his hand and ask for permission like the people on that stage. What in the world was that? That was… I’m telling you, folks, it was nauseating to me to see people campaigning to be president raising their hands to ask the media permission to speak.
I know everybody saw that and I know everybody saw the CBS moderators lose control. Everybody saw that, and everybody saw what they saw, what’s being reported. But I saw some different things, and I’ll tell you what one of the most telling things in that debate last night was: The Democrat Party and the Democrat candidates on that stage last night in Charleston, South Carolina, made it clear as a bell that they don’t want Bernie to get the nomination.
Not because he’s a socialist. They don’t object to that. They don’t object to Bernie’s madcap socialist, communist ideas. Their problem with Bernie is they know he’s gonna lose. That’s the only reason they oppose Bernie Sanders. This is what was abundantly clear. They didn’t lay a glove on Bernie last night. They didn’t touch him last night — and he’s the frontrunner. They had to go get him. You know, Plugs is out there saying that guns have killed half the population.
He’s still got Clyburn’s endorsement today ’cause Clyburn has to maintain his position in the Democrat establishment so that when Bernie wins the nomination, Clyburn can say, “Hey, hey, I did everything I could to stop Bernie in South Carolina. I endorsed this guy, Plugs. He had no chance, but I still did it for the party. You can’t throw me overboard.”
That’s why he did it. These people do not oppose Bernie Sanders for his socialism. They don’t oppose him for his communism. They oppose him ’cause they don’t think he’s gonna win. That was the most telling thing of all to me last night — and there were a lot of things that stood out, and I’m gonna tell you about ’em after I take a break and catch my breath here.
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RUSH: Now, one of the things I noticed in the debate here — I’m just gonna give you a little heads-up — is one of the moderators named Whitaker, Bill Whitaker, was asking Biden about all the great things that Biden and the Democrats have done for African-Americans. And it was clearly a setup question. A real journalist would have asked a totally, entirely different question.
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RUSH: Now, in no particular order, the big takeaway I’ve already mentioned. And here’s the thing that you need to know about the debate last night. And it’s not that the moderators lost control. It’s not that they looked like a bunch of school kids with their hands up, “Call on me!” It’s not that. It’s this. Not a single person on that stage last night, everybody seeking the Democrat nomination, they all tried to pile on Bernie Sanders ’cause he’s the frontrunner. But not a one of them are afraid of Bernie getting the nomination because of his policies. They are afraid that if Bernie gets the nomination he’s gonna lose in a landslide. That’s why they oppose Bernie.
They do not oppose Bernie’s socialism, folks, that’s the point. That was the take-away. Bloomberg tried a couple times and Mayor Pete tried a couple times. That was it. There was not much of an assault of what Bernie believes from any of those people. Their great fear is that he’s gonna lose in a landslide.
Conrad Black has a piece out today, American Greatness. He’s predicting that if Bernie Sanders is the nominee, that Trump is going to win the biggest landslide victory there has been in 200 years. That the Democrats are gonna lose the House and they’re gonna lose the Senate and they’re gonna lose dogcatcher all the way down the ballot. That Trump might end up with 65% of the vote, I mean, a landslide the likes of which we haven’t seen.
And Conrad Black posits that this is what all Democrats know, that this is going to dwarf the embarrassing landslide defeat of McGovern. And by watching the debate last night, I think the Democrat establishment knows it and a lot of these candidates — believe me, folks, they only oppose Bernie because they think he’s gonna lose. They don’t oppose him because of any socialism or communism.
Now, another objection I made. Bill Whitaker, one of the moderators for CBS, asked Biden, since it’s considered Biden’s state, you know, two-thirds of the primary voters in South Carolina on Saturday will be African-American, James Clyburn, the Congressional Black Caucus, come out and endorsed Biden today.
He has to. Has to stick with the Democrat establishment, even though he knows Biden’s not gonna be the nominee, not even gonna come close to being the nominee. But Clyburn has to let the Democrat establishment knows he did everything he could to try to stop Bernie.
And so the conventional wisdom is that since Biden is the old war horse establishment candidate, that that’s who the majority of African-Americans are gonna vote for on Saturday. Unbeknownst to a lot of people — and it may be that Biden wins, but he’s not gonna win big, if he does, Bernie is sneaking up. If Biden wins South Carolina Saturday, Bernie’s gonna come in a close second. Biden isn’t gonna win by enough to jump-start his campaign.
And there’s another reason why that isn’t gonna happen. Biden’s out of money. He doesn’t have any money. And James Clyburn’s endorsement didn’t contain any money. So Plugs is pretty much finished, I think, unless, if he wins South Carolina by an unbelievably big number. But even at that, he has no infrastructure in place for Super Tuesday. Crazy Bernie is set to sweep that. So we’ll see.
Anyway, so Bill Whitaker asked Biden how he’s gonna improve race relations. The standard question that Democrats have been getting for 50 years and they’ve been lying and faking their way through the answer for 50 years. You know what Biden did? Biden said (paraphrasing), “I’ve been to the projects. I know how things are in the projects. I’ve been to the projects. I care about it.”
And I’m listening to this. I’m saying, “Joe, okay. So you’ve been to the projects. How many of the people you saw in the projects are no longer there because you went to the projects? What is the fact you went to the projects mean?” And in Democrat Party politics, in liberalism, that’s all you have to do. All you have to do is go to the projects and don’t do anything else, just go there, and somehow you have convinced everybody that you care. Somehow you’ve succeeded in getting a lot of people to vote for you ’cause you went to the projects. You didn’t stay there. You passed by.
I mean, you didn’t live there. You’ve never lived there. You don’t move there. You wouldn’t dare. But you’ve been to the projects. That’s the first thing Biden said, I’ve been to the projects. Well, how many people living in the projects, Joe, have been able to move out of the projects because you went to visit them? Hmm? Not very many.
You know what a real journalist would have asked? A real journalist — and this question is so abundantly obvious that it proves we don’t have any real journalists anymore. A real journalist, in a Democrat primary, where they’re trying to stop Bernie Sanders, where they need somebody like Biden to really kick butt and do well, a real journalist would have said, “Vice President Biden, you have been promising to improve the lives of black Americans for 50 years. You’ve been working very hard by your own admission. Yet for the same 50 years we keep hearing the same complaints from African-Americans, leading to the conclusion that they don’t think much is being solved. And yet for 50 years you claim you’re hearing them and you’re working on it and you’re gonna fix whatever’s wrong.
“So, Mr. Vice President, how do you explain in just three years of Republican administration the lowest black unemployment rate in history? How do you explain that, Mr. Vice President? How do you explain all of the new upward mobility being experienced by the black middle class for the first time in 50 years? You’ve been trying to make that happen for 50 years, but you haven’t. In three years, a Republican administration’s made it happen. How do you explain that?”
Now, that would have been a question. And, boy, would you have loved to see the answer. Now, I know it would never be asked because Bill Whitaker doesn’t even think that way himself because the Democrat Party is in flat-out denial that life for African-Americans is improving. They won’t even acknowledge it. They don’t want to acknowledge it. They can’t acknowledge it. And yet it is happening.
There was another question. They went to Twitter. And they allowed somebody on Twitter to pose a question to Amy Klobuchar, who did not have a good night. Amy Klobuchar did not have a good night. And Bloomberg didn’t, either, but compared to his first night it was good so he’s getting points, but it was still bad. No fire in the belly. And he ends up admitting that he bought the House majority.
Did you hear that he admitted that he bought (paraphrasing), “Yeah, I made it happen, I bought -uh, I donated to all those races, I made it happen.” The Twitter question for Amy Klobuchar, I was so stunned at all the candidates answering this that I grabbed my iPhone, I took a picture of my TV screen so I would remember the question.
The question on Twitter originally posed to Amy Klobuchar was, “How will your policy address and ensure affordable housing and education equity for minimum wage workers?” Kathryn will tell you, she was watching with me, I lost it, I blew a gasket the minute I saw the question.
Let me answer it for you. “How will your policy address and ensure affordable housing and education equity for minimum wage workers?” The only way the minimum wage will help you with affordable housing is if you move back in with your parents. The minimum wage is not intended to be enough to buy a house or a shack or even a homeless tent.
The minimum wage is an entry-level job price. It is arbitrarily chosen. It ultimately does great damage to the job market because it causes employers to fire people because the minimum wage is often more than what the jobs they have available are actually worth. But no way under the sun is anybody supposed to be able to buy a house or rent an apartment on minimum wage. Minimum wage is entry-level and yet here comes this question, and they started answering it.
And every Democrat answered it, and not one of them had the guts to be honest and tell anybody, “Well, if you want minimum wage to somehow enable you to afford housing, you gotta move back home with mom and dad.” And the other part of this, “How will your policy ensure education equity for minimum -” What the hell does the minimum wage have to do with education? “Well, I mean, Rush, people making minimum wage have to be able to afford to go to school.”
The minimum wage is not intended to be able to buy an education. And yet here are these Democrats answering, it was gibberish, the things they were saying. And it was all designed to lie to whoever asked this, “Oh, I have a policy for it. Affordable housing is something we need more than anything in this country, and Donald Trump doesn’t care about it, and Republicans have never cared about it, but I guarantee you my plan will take care of it.” What plan? There isn’t a plan in the world where the minimum wage can afford anybody to buy a house.
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RUSH: Today’s Democrat is a person who has been yelling, “Russia, Russia, Russia” for three years, going on four. “Russia, Russia, Russia, meddling in our elections! Russia, Russia!” And now they’re about to nominate a communist to run for the presidency from their party. Did you notice something else?
We had a Washington Post story. I found this really fascinating last night. We had a Washington Post story say that Vladimir Putin — the Russians — are trying to meddle in this 2020 election because they’d like to see Bernie Sanders elected. Michael Bloomberg mentions this last night, and he got practically booed off the stage. Now, how does that happen?
After three years of lies and misrepresentations about Donald Trump being a traitor, about Donald Trump colluding with Russia — all of these lies, all of these media stories for two years guaranteeing that Trump meddled, that Trump colluded, that he was an agent of Putin’s, no evidence ever — the Washington Post has a story about the Russians wanting Bernie Sanders to win, and Bloomberg calls him out on it, and they boo Bloomberg!
How does that happen? Why don’t they take Russia’s meddling with Bernie Sanders seriously all of a sudden? Now, Bloomberg was clumsy the way he did it. But he still made the point, “Well, Bernie, I see the Russians are trying to get you elected,” and the place booed Bloomberg. So does that mean Russians meddling when Democrats are running is not a big deal; it’s not a problem?
What does that mean? Because whenever the Russians are mentioned with Trump, the Democrats go bonkers. Democrat voters, Democrat candidates, Democrat establishment, they go bonkers. The media goes bonkers. Yet the Washington Post runs a story saying that Putin wants Bernie elected, and Bloomberg points it out and gets booed for it. That was just odd to me.
In fact, let me see if by chance… Well, you know what? I’ll look for it when we get to the break. I don’t know that we had that. We have Bloomberg saying he “bought” the Democrat Congress. Grab sound bite number 16. This is funny. This is Bloomberg admitting that he “bought” the 2018 midterms for the Democrats. Last night live, CBS debate, listen to this…
BLOOMBERG: Let’s just go on the record. They have talk about 40 Democrats, 21 of those were people that I spent a $100 million dollars to help elect. All of the new Democrats that came in, put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bought, I, I, got that.
RUSH: I bought ’em, I got ’em, I bought ’em. He’s trying to get credit from the Democrats for being on their side. They don’t think he’s a real Democrat. Somebody just accused him of being not trustworthy because he was a Republican as mayor of New York City. So he didn’t like that so he said, no, no, no, no, no, I gave you guys your Democrat majority, I bought — uh, I, I got ’em. I did it.
Everybody’s talking about how the media, the moderators lost control of the debate last night. And they did. But the thing, again, that struck me was these guys actually running around, all these people on stage with their hands up asking to be called on. It was embarrassing. It was demeaning, I thought, and it certainly was not presidential. And it’s not something that you would see Trump doing.