RUSH: Okay. So what does this mean? Lindsey Graham was on Hannity last night. Lindsey Graham says Republicans have the votes to confirm whoever it is that Trump nominates. It looks like it’s Amy Coney Barrett or the judge from South Florida, Lagoa, both of whom would be superb. But what does that mean?
Greetings, my friends, and great to have you with us. It’s Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network. Telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
It’s not just Romney that, by the way, has announced he’s gonna vote for whoever the nominee is. He’s got a caveat. He says, as long as the nominee’s qualified, guaranteed to be qualified. So you count Romney in. Lamar Alexander came out said he was gonna vote for the nominee. He sometimes goes the other way. Cory Gardner from Colorado came out and said he’s gonna vote for the nominee. It’s not just Romney.
And the desire that many of us have to return to American traditions and institutions that were part of our founding, that led to our greatness and exceptionalism are now going to be the vast majority of opinions on the United States Supreme Court.
Look, anything can happen, just like everybody’s stunned that this happened, that the opening came up. So I want to avoid the potential problem of acting like this is a done deal. Because we Republicans, of course, we’re used to trapdoors and things coming along and the bottom dropping out beneath us. And when I see a story in the Washington Post, “Democrats Largely Powerless to Stop GOP from Confirming Trump’s Court Choice,” and, as we sit here today, this is true.
Then Pelosi a couple days ago was on with Stephanopoulos on This Week on ABC. (imitating Pelosi) “Oh, we got all kinds of arrows remaining in our quiver.” She doesn’t have any. Wall Street Journal James Freeman: “Pelosi’s Empty Quiver — The House cannot prevent the president and senators from doing their jobs.” Pelosi even advanced the idea of impeaching him every day in an interview with a tech journalist at the New York Times, if she wanted to. Yeah, we could impeach Trump every day of the week for anything he does.
But the problem they have is that they can’t stop this. Elections have consequences. Harry Reid blew up the Senate. The Republicans have maintained control of the Senate 2014, 2016, 2018. And as we sit here today, with the pledges made by various Republican Senators, the nominee, even before there is a named nominee, we have a fairly good chance at confirmation.
Now, there’s something else that this tells us. Well, I should say there’s something else this tells me. It’s a very simple question. Somebody needs to help me out here. Because for the past year — well, let’s narrow it down. Let’s say since the pandemic. So let’s say the past six months. The past six months virtually every poll has Donald Trump losing the presidency by eight points, by 12 points, by 13 points, by eight, by four, by five. Every poll has Donald Trump losing swing states that he won and is theorized to need again in 2016, needs again in 2020. But he is, according to polling data, gonna lose all that.
So what does this tell us? Well, what does it tell me? It creates a question. How can a guy, Donald Trump, who is destined to lose the election, destined, destined to be thrown out of office, according to polls, it isn’t even gonna be close. Plugs is looking here at a landslide, just like Hillary was.
So how can it be that this guy — so universally unpopular now, so universally reviled and hated — how is it that his Supreme Court nominee can’t be stopped? How is that possible? If everybody believed — I’m including the Romneys in this and the Murkowskis and the Susan Collinses and some of the other waverers out there — if they were all convinced that Trump was going to lose, then why would they give him this pick? Why wouldn’t more people be opposing it? And you don’t have to oppose him making the pick. You don’t have to take it that far. All you’d have to do is vote against it if you’re in the Senate.
And if you really think that Trump is gonna lose, you would then logically think that he shouldn’t be picking Supreme Court nominees if he’s gonna lose ’cause he’s unpopular. The American people, if they’re gonna send Trump packing, then the American people probably don’t want his Supreme Court pick, either. This is what any number of these guys could say. But the fact that the nominee is gonna sail through tells me that these people do not think Trump is going to lose, tells me that they’re not believing the polling data.
Now, some of you will disagree and say, “Rush, no, no, no. You got a guy like Romney -” and, by the way, there is some substance to this. Romney is big in Utah. People in Utah are very big on overturning Roe v. Wade, and if we get a nominee who pledges to do this, it would be very difficult for Romney not to vote for the nominee given the makeup of the people that elected him in Utah. The people in Utah very much care about the Supreme Court, very much care about limiting the damage the American left can do via the American judiciary. And this opportunity literally once in a lifetime.
So it could be said that even people like Romney would go ahead and give Trump his choice because that’s what Romney’s electorate, that’s what his constituents want, even if they’re not particularly crazy about reelecting Trump. So I can see it going both ways here. But still, the one thing missing in all this — and I’m listening to all the Drive-Bys. Snerdley, do you think that I’m overanalyzing this? (interruption) I’m listening to all the Drive-Bys, and the Washington Post, “Nothing the Republicans can do, Pelosi’s quiver is empty.” I’m not hearing anybody try to score points by saying, “Look, the guy is gonna lose, the guy’s getting ready to lose in a landslide, there’s no way he ought to be picking a nom.”
I know there’s an argument against it. “Hey, he’s president until January. He was elected for four years. He can pick the nominee when there’s a vacancy. Constitution says so.” But my point is the politics of this. There ought to be a bunch of people out there trying to stop this from happening on the basis that Trump is destined to lose in a big landslide and therefore the American people would actually prefer the next president making the pick. Not that that’s true, but just that there ought to be a bunch of people out saying this if they really believed Trump’s gonna lose.
Lindsey Graham — we got the audio coming up — Lindsey Graham was on Hannity the licenses where he said that the Republicans have the votes to confirm a new justice before Election Day. Senator Graham also told Hannity that the Democrats will destroy anybody’s life to try to get what they want. And we saw that with Kavanaugh. We saw it with Clarence Thomas. We saw it with Robert Bork. We’ve seen it with many others.
And Graham also noted last night or asked, can anybody name a single Democrat nominee who has had his or her life destroyed? And you can’t because it doesn’t happen. It is only Republican nominees who have their lives, literal lives targeted, their careers, their past, their future, their families. Kavanaugh the most recent example. And I guarantee you — you know, people are asking me left and right, “Rush, who do you think it’s gonna be? Is it gonna be Amy Coney Barrett or is it gonna be the Judge Lagoa from South Florida?” And either one is great. I have no idea.
It looks like the conventional wisdom money is on Amy Coney Barrett. Trump met with her at the White House this week. But the Democrats are gonna do what they can. I want to see how the American people react when they go after a woman with seven kids, five of them hers, two of them adopted, from Haiti, which means they’re black. She has a big family, she is on the Court of Appeals, she’s got a full life, she may be the definition of “you can have it all.”
And it’s gonna be fun to watch the Democrats try to destroy her after they have confirmed her for the court of appeals in Chicago and other places. She lives in South Bend, Indiana, I believe, commutes to Chicago.
Or in the case of Judge Lagoa, here’s an Hispanic woman, 52 years old. Would you not love to see the Democrats try to destroy an Hispanic female, and would you not be interested in looking at the reaction American women will have if the Democrats go down this road? And they don’t know any other road to go down. That’s the only avenue open to them to stop this. They don’t have the votes right now. The only thing they can do is attempt to disqualify whoever the nominee is with a bunch of fake news, a bunch of fake allegations amplified and helpfully made up by the media.
And this, for them, is going to ball game. They’re sitting here on the verge of thinking that they’re gonna get Trump defeated. They’ve been trying for four years. They’re sitting here thinking they’re on the verge of nirvana, they’re on the verge of their utopia. They’re gonna be rid of Trump and they’re gonna turn this country into a communist paradise, a socialist paradise. And then all of a sudden there’s a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. It’s gonna give the court a 6-3 conservative majority, and they can’t stop it.
This was the last thing that any of them were ever considering likely or even possible. Now it is a hard, cold reality. But, again, it’s still early in the process, and even though the votes, as we sit here today, are there, they haven’t taken place yet. And anything can happen. So we don’t want to sit here and act — we don’t want to let our own hubris — not that we have any — or our own arrogance give us the problem of overconfidence. At the same time, we don’t want to be the usual defeatist and pessimistic about this. This is shaping up to be a gigantic win on so many fronts.
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RUSH: This is Dave in St. Clair, Minnesota. Greetings, sir. Great to have you with us. How are you?
CALLER: I’m great. Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh. You know, I’ve never given much credence to the concept of divine intervention, God intervening in critical points throughout our country’s history. But with Ginsburg dying six weeks out, not six months ago, not six months from now from now, but literally six weeks away from the most crucial election of this country’s history, I cannot write that off as coincidence. I think there’s something that we can’t fully understand or appreciate going on.
RUSH: Well, you may be right. I have purposely and studiously left aside theological discussions on this program for one reason. I am not a pastor. I am not a man of the cloth. I do not have a flock. To me, religion is deeply personal and a matter of faith. And I vowed 34 years ago when I started a program like this that I was not going to do anything simply because it’s not my field. I’m not gonna engage in any activity that would end up challenging an individual person’s faith in something so deeply personal and something which can’t be proved anyway. That’s why the faith aspect of it is so crucial and important.
So if you believe that there’s divine intervention going on and if that sustains you, then more power to you. I do have beliefs along these lines. I’ve got so much faith in prayer, you can’t believe it. I have personally no doubt that prayer works, personal experience. But that’s as far as I will take it. I appreciate your thought. I’m glad you called and wanted to weigh in on it. But that’s as far as I’m gonna go in reacting.
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RUSH: See here, President Trump’s job approval has ticked up to 48% in the new Hill-Harris poll. This is not Rasmussen. It’s Hill-Harris, 48% approval, which I think is a record high for this poll for President Trump.
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