Rush Transcripts...Dec. 17th

[mystery-ak]

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/


The Most Influential Audience in All of Media

Dec 17, 2019



RUSH: Now, folks, before we get into the meat and potatoes of the program today, I want to get a little personal here. This is the time of year where I often become the most reflective and thankful for all of the blessings that I have had my entire life. And the blessings that I have had obviously extend to my family, the people who work and have worked here at the EIB Network.

But this year is a little different. This year has something added to it that is unique. Every year about this time we get the top 50 list, the top 10 list of this or that, the best cars, the best movies, whatever, the most influential in the media, the most influential here — but there’s always a group left out. And it’s you. The most influential audience in all of media is right here on this program, hands down, no contest. Because without you, none of anything that happens here would have happened. It would be all academic if it weren’t for you.

And then all of these end-of-the-year reflectives and retrospectives and analysis of what’s been important and what’s been popular, it’s always the American people left out of everything. It’s always assumed that the American people are kind of mind-numbed and simply do what they do as a result of those who influence them. And it’s always been my approach because it’s always been my belief that you are not mind-numbed and that you are not robotic. That you in fact are very intelligent and you’re perceptive. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.

I have made it a point because it’s in my nature to treat everybody I talk to as though they are fully capable of understanding me and in many cases, smarter than I am because the point is to relate and to communicate and to be understood, if that’s your objective. And it certainly is mine. I’m not here to be misunderstood, and I’m not here to mislead, I’m not here to practice deceit or misdirection. It’s the exact opposite.

And so I’ve always assumed that you are independently intelligent, educated, informed, opinionated, and desirous of knowing and learning more. And I have always assumed that you’re not thinking what you think because of me or anybody else, that you are independently capable of making up your own minds about things. And it seems that that attitude about audiences is not common. It ought to be, but it isn’t.

‘Cause in each of these lists — most influential here, most important there, the one thing that’s always assumed in these lists is that the people being influenced know nothing on their own and if it weren’t for the influencers, then nobody would know anything or nobody would think anything. And I think it’s the exact opposite. I think many of the people that make these end-of-the-year lists don’t have half the brains that you do, don’t have half the intelligence, perceptiveness that you do. And especially if we’re talking about media lists.

But it’s even bigger than that. I want to play a couple sound bites today to make my point, that you are the most influential audience in all of media. And I say audience simply not to label you, but that’s what you are, you’re an audience to this program, and you listen to it, react to things that happen on it in ways that no other audience does. And I’m talking about compassion and giving, charity supportiveness, loyalty, you have it all, or I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be thriving the way I have. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this. I wouldn’t have had the blessings that I have if you weren’t there as you are.

So the two sound bites are from Fox & Friends today. They did another segment — I didn’t know this was gonna happen. Which is not a big deal other than to tell you I didn’t know about this until I got the sound bite roster about a half hour ago. It was a segment on Fox & Friends on Tunnel to Towers paying off yet another mortgage of a family from Fort Worth, Texas, the family of police officer Garrett Hull. So here is Ainsley Earhardt talking to his widow, Sabrina Hull. She says, “Tell us what happened to your husband a year ago?”

HULL: In September of 2018, he was helping get some bad guys that were doing armed robberies all over the Fort Worth area and there was a shootout and unfortunately my husband was killed in the line of duty.

KILMEADE: What’s the last year been like for you?

HULL: Horrific, but also amazing ’cause I’ve seen so much good come out of so much horrible. I was literally sitting at my husband’s grave site when Frank called to tell me that they were going to pay off our mortgage. Garrett was our main source of income. I have two daughters. How am I gonna keep our home? How am I gonna pay the bills? What am I going to do? So, when Frank called, I had no words for the gratitude I feel.

RUSH: So here is the widow of the police officer, Garrett Hull from Fort Worth, Texas, who was killed a year ago. He was the breadwinner, primary provider. She had no idea how she was gonna go on, how they were gonna keep their home or any of that. She had a chance meeting — well, it wasn’t chance. That’s the point. She was sitting at her husband’s grave site when Frank Siller called her from Tunnel to Towers. Here’s Frank Siller talking about it.

SILLER: I just listened to Sabrina here, and I didn’t know that she was at her husband’s gravesite when I was speaking to her. And we know the difference it makes in their lives. So, Sabrina, this is your paid mortgage here.

DOOCY: Oh wow.

SILLER: Here today.

HULL: I really love you all.

SILLER: Well, the viewers from Fox & Friends and Fox in general and most certainly Rush Limbaugh —

EARHARDT: Yeah.

SILLER: I’m wearing another one of his shirts (laughter) here today.

DOOCY: Stand Up for Betsy Ross.

SILLER: Listen, he donated $5 million, you know, and going.

KILMEADE: Still going, right?

SILLER: Still going, and this is why we were able to do — in the Season of Hope — 24 homes in 24 days to relieve the mortgages or give mortgage-free homes. That’s RushLimbaugh.com, and the proceeds for these Stand Up for Betsy Ross shirts is coming to the Tunnel to Towers.

RUSH: Folks, I can’t adequately describe how this affects me: $5 million, all from you — every penny of it from you — by buying apparel at my website store and the Stand Up for Betsy Ross campaign, starting out with a $27 T-shirt — one color, white T-shirt. The apparel line expanded to include all kinds of items for the holiday season, which have now become mostly sold out because you have just taken everything that we have, bought everything we have all for the support of this great charity.

Twenty-four homes, 24 mortgages in 24 days. Stop and think where these people would be without you, if this hadn’t happened. No, it’s not me. See, I can announce it. I could do everything that I did, starting with Kathryn and I starting July 4th and July 8th, and announcing it and making the merchandise available. But if you hadn’t stepped up, none of this would have happened. It’s $5 million, on an average-price item of $30, in the course of — let’s see, July, August, September — five months.

That is so, so deeply profound to me. There’s nobody, no other audience out there that could have done this. Now, it’s huge — it’s a huge audience — and that’s one of the explanations for it. But still, it’s all you, and I just wanted to start the program today, because every year at this time of year is when I get really reflective about the blessed, great fortune that I’ve had over what now is — if you count Sacramento — approaching 34, 35 years, and each year the audience has grown, and you are responsive.

You are deeply caring and compassionate. Now, you get fine merchandise in exchange. You’re not just throwing the money at it without any return; I understand that. But still, you step up — and each time we, as a program, make a decision to get involved in a charitable thrust or activity, you always step up. You’re always there, and it chokes me up to stop and think about: $5 million. You know, we live in times where big figures are part of the common, everyday lexicon.

The budget deficit is $500 billion or maybe even a $1 trillion. The total budget’s $3.4 trillion. We’re talking about large numbers that are associated with everything. But $5 million at 30 bucks a pop is astounding. So I just wanted to take a brief moment here to play these sound bites and let you know what you’ve done, what you have made possible, what you’ve made happen, and to express again all of the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation that I have for you for making this happen and for making it possible.

And if there ever is a category, if there is ever one of these end-of-the-year most influential lists that includes audiences, you have no competition. You have no peers. You have nobody who’s even close — and you don’t even know the half of it. You don’t even know the half of it. The $5 million and counting that has been raised through this? Prior to that, there were the multimillions for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

You have stepped up for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. The amount of charitable support that you have extended over the course of the years of this program, there isn’t… I don’t care. There isn’t a group, other than a charitable foundation which spends its entire existence asking people for money. Aside from that, you have no competitors. You have nobody even close. So I measure influence a lot differently than conventional wisdom measures it. I measure influence a lot different than these end-of-the-year lists.

‘Cause I don’t measure influence on how many people are under my spell or are under my control or because of my various contacts or whatever it is. I measure influence by virtue of how many of you there are and the things that you do, and I’m telling you that I wish there were a way to impart individually to all of you the great feeling of pride and achievement and satisfaction we all get because of what you’ve done.

It’s hard to do that. I hope that you stop and think about what you have done and what it means. A woman you’ll never meet, one of 24 just in… It’s actually more than 24. They’ve paid off more than 24 mortgages. This is just in the recent past: 24 mortgages paid off, 24 homes built. It’s many more than that during the five- or six-month history of this. Stop and think what that means to people, people that you don’t even know. But they fully are aware that somebody out there cares beyond their wildest imaginations.

They know that somebody cares. They know that somebody was thinking about them. They know that somebody — a bunch of somebodies — came through, stepped up in their time of need, when they had no the expectation for any such thing happening. In this case, it’s a police officer that’s struck down. In other cases, it’s a military person, husband or wife, cut down defending the country, making the ultimate sacrifice — and that’s disruptive enough. That’s upsetting enough.

That’s shocking, that’s disorienting, that’s life changing enough.

But then the prospect of losing a home and losing everything else and not knowing where to go next? Helping to maintain the nest, to maintain the home is one of the great offers of security that people in these circumstances need, and you’ve made it all possible. I cannot thank you enough. I’m so humbled by it and blown away by it. I had to take the beginning of the program here to make mention of this, because it’s perhaps one of… This and all the others added together, are some one of the greatest ancillary aspects of the success of this program.

So as far as I’m concerned, you’re it, you’re tops — and I would have to include in this all of the great radio stations that make it possible for all of you to listen and be part of this audience. Great people, wonderful people, coming through on a moment’s notice. I cannot express my gratitude — for me and my family as well. Kathryn spearheading this effort in so many ways to make sure (chuckles) you got what you got, design what you bought, make sure the quality was all there. It’s been an all-in. There were a hundred jobs created because of you — 100 jobs — just to get these orders out, just to scale up and handle it all.

So thank you again.

You are the most influential audience in all of media.

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Dems Keep Lying as Support for Impeachment Keeps Dropping

Dec 17, 2019



RUSH: CNN poll: Support for impeaching and removing Trump has dropped nine net points since last month. It falls now to 45 to 47. It was 50 to 43 in favor. It’s now 45-47 against. Support for impeaching Trump has even dropped among Democrats from 90% to 77%. This is a direct reflection on Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. By the way, the IG report has totally exposed Nadler as a full-fledged, 100% liar. This is great. I’ve continued to dig into the IG report.

The Rules Committee at the House today is meeting to discuss the parliamentary procedures for presenting the full articles to the full House for vote, and they are continuing to lie through their teeth about the supposedly misconduct of Donald Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, I can give an example. Nadler cannot be at the Rules Committee hearing today because there’s some sort of family emergency in New York. I don’t know what it is. Doesn’t matter. So Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, is taking his place. And these people are just lying through their teeth. They are continuing to lie through their teeth.

This guy said the president has abused his office, engaged in misconduct, and they give the quote where the president said, “Look at Article II. I can do anything I want.” They know they’re lying about this! He didn’t say he can do anything he wants. It was in the context of an interview two different times. One with George Stephanopoulos in which he’s saying Article II gave him the power to fire Robert Mueller if he wanted to, could do anything he wants regarding Mueller. They know they’re taking that out of context. They know that they’re lying about this.

And if they’re lying about one thing, you have to assume they’ll be lying about a lot of things. The one thing that is unmistakable in all of this, they don’t even have a crime. They do not have an impeachable offense. The second thing that Raskin did, they’re still repeating the Trump joke, that Trump asks Russia to go find 30,000 Hillary emails and five hours later, the Russians hacked the server.

That’s not possible. When Trump cracked that joke, the DNC server had already been hacked, it had already been shut down. We still don’t know who really did it. But it was out of the way. Trump’s cracking a joke and making fun of the media and making fun of the Democrats, and these clowns throw it in their articles of impeachment. They’re just lying through their teeth. And it’s over and over and over again, and the media, of course, enables it, trying to make it look like it’s real, and none of it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have Rob in Boca Raton. Rob, great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: It’s great to talk to you, Rush. My concern is twofold, that, one, all the lies that the Democrats are putting out there, Americans are just hearing these sound bites and these headlines, and they’re not going in to really find out what’s going on. And the second thing is that there are pockets of the left that are just gonna storm the polls.

I just came from New England on a business trip. I couldn’t believe the people up there. They actually believe the things that people like Congressman Cicilline says to ’em, and just some things that their governor says to them. They just lie about Trump. Conservatives need to be strong, and they need to storm the polls themselves and make sure this guy gets elected.

RUSH: Why do you assume that the Democrats are more energized and ready to go than Trump voters are?

CALLER: Trump voters, and I think sometimes Republicans, they sit back and they think, “Okay. We got this won. It’ll be okay.” These leftists, they are so radicalized that they’ll do anything, they’ll stuff the ballot box. I’m worried that there are some places around the country where we’ve seen it over the years that they’ll stuff the ballot box. But if you come down here to Florida, South Florida, wow, you see the economy booming. They’re putting up housing sites three, four hundred houses at a time like they used to do back when I first came here in the eighties.

RUSH: Do you know how many job openings there are in the country right now? I saw this just this morning. Over seven million jobs are open. That’s seven million jobs that cannot be filled. That aren’t enough workers to fill them. We’re at full employment. The economy is booming so well. You know, you tell me that they’re energized in New England. They’re always gonna vote Democrat there no matter what. They can be as energized as they’ve ever been, it’s not gonna change anything.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, those places are gonna vote Democrat no matter who’s on the ballot. Could be Dr. Manhattan from Watchman on the ballot, and they would vote for him, Mr. Blue. I don’t think it’s something to get alarmed about to find out a bunch of rabid liberals in New England are rabid liberals. They’ve constantly been rabid liberals.

I think the great secret in this upcoming election is how ticked off Trump voters are and how many new ones there are going to be. And I don’t think anybody’s aware of what efforts are being made at every Trump rally to identify first-time voters and turn ’em out. I think you can sit there, you can react to the media making it look like Trump’s already lost, but I wouldn’t fall into that trap if I were you. Not by a long stretch.

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Justice Gorsuch’s Pure, Simple Explanation of Our Constitution

Dec 17, 2019



RUSH: There’s one other thing, folks, that I saw today that I want to call your attention to. Judge Gorsuch, Neil Gorsuch, has written a book. As a powerful, influential member of the media, I have my copy here. It’s called A Republic, If You Can Keep It. He was on Fox & Friends today, and I couldn’t stop watching this. I don’t know how to characterize it. It’s not simplistic. It was just so real. It was devoid of any of the usual partisanship. There were no talking points. It was just pure, is the best way I can describe it.

It was just pure to listen to Neil Gorsuch describe life as a judge, life as a Supreme Court justice, his interpretation of the Constitution and how he goes about his job. And I’ve read part of the book, A Republic, If You Can Keep It. And it’s just ideal. And he even cites a stat in the interview. Let me see if the sound bite has the particular stat. I’m trying to speed read it and I don’t see it. It’s about the relative high number of Americans who do not know something, like the name of their congressman or senator — this book is ideal for people. It’s not above anybody.

If you’re looking for a book for anybody to understand the Supreme Court or this country as it was founded, this book is for you. And I want you to hear Judge Gorsuch in his own words, ’cause it is rare that Supreme Court justices sit down for extended interviews. They do it for academics. They do it for legal groups and think tanks. But it’s rare to see something like this that happened today.

I’ve got three sound bites. Judge Gorsuch is a special judge. You know, my father, my whole family as you know is lawyers. I’m the only one that’s not. I remember my dad when I was very young talking about the absolute authority of judges in the courtroom. And you don’t argue with ’em beyond a certain point. You have to learn to respect their authority, right or wrong. They are the final authority. And he said the faith in the system that everybody has is rooted in the fact that judges are special people.

And by “special people” he meant that they are and have to be, in an ideal way, exceptionally smart, exceptionally open-minded, exceptionally thorough. And Judge Gorsuch fits every criteria of what my father meant when he talked about judges are special people because they are, in many cases, the final authority on the law, particularly at the Supreme Court level.

And for those of you who have not had the chance to hear Judge Gorsuch speak or read his book, A Republic, If You Can Keep It, I want to play these three sound bites for you just to illustrate how pure this is, how uncomplicated this is, how easy he is to understand as he explains the virtues of his job, of the Constitution, and of the country.

So he was with Ainsley Earhardt. First bite, the question: “You always hear conservatives want original constitutionalists on the court. Can you explain what it means to be an originalist or a constitutionalist and how do you describe your judicial philosophy?”

GORSUCH: The idea of originalism is just simply that judges should follow the original meaning of the words on the page and neither add things that aren’t there nor take away things that are there. And I worry that both of those things happen when we depart from the original meaning of the Constitution. It says we’re not gonna add things, we’re not gonna take things away. The judge’s job is to be faithful to the Constitution at all times. Nothing more, nothing less.

RUSH: That is factually unassailable. But more than that, it is totally unthreatening in the way he presents it. It doesn’t threaten anybody, other than people who disagree with the concept of originalism. And, of course, they’re gonna be threatened by how undisputable his answer is. They’re not gonna know what to do with it. It’s very simple.

And I admire people who are able to take what everybody assumes are these intricate, ornate, complex things and boil them down to their essence. When you have Democrats like Pelosi and Schiff and Nadler throwing the founders — Jamie Raskin’s been doing it, been cherry-picking The Federalist papers. “And Federalist 65 where Madison said” whatever they want Madison to say, they can find Madison saying it, the Democrats.

So Ainsley Earhardt said to Judge Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch, “What would James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, say about the government today?”

GORSUCH: He wrote the Bill of Rights, but he thought that what would really keep us free is the separation of powers. And if you look around the world today, I think he has a point. Every country in the world has a great bill of rights these days. My personal favorite is North Korea’s. It promises everything we have, the right to free speech, a right to privacy and my personal favorite, especially at this time of the year, the right to relaxation.

But the fact of the matter is that those rights aren’t worth the ink on the page, and they’re not because all power is accumulated in one man’s hands. And what Madison knew is that people are not angels and that we need to separate powers to keep us free.

RUSH: What a great way to explain the lies and the false promises of communism without even using the word. Do you know that North Korea’s have a constitution just like ours except none of that matters. Those people that live there don’t have it because of the people in charge never meant it, never intended it. They’re lying to their own people. And the people of North Korea grew up thinking that they have these rights. They’re propagandized daily.

Kim Jong-un is on television every day, every night telling the people of North Korea what the world is featuring, what’s going on, what to believe. He lies to them like you would not believe. And they believe they have freedom of speech. They believe they have freedom of association. That’s what life in North Korea is to them. They know nothing else. And because there’s no check or balance on Kim Jong-un because he’s a dictator, then none of those rights mean diddly-squat.

So he was focusing on here the importance of the separation of powers, checks and balances to make sure that tyrannical dictatorship doesn’t happen in the United States, despite the best efforts of some and a particular political party to make it happen.

Next question from Ainsley Earhardt: “I know your faith is extremely important to you. The Declaration says we are ‘endowed by our Creator with … rights among [which] are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.’ What did the framers mean by ‘God-given rights’?”

GORSUCH: They wrote down the rights that they thought were terribly important in the Bill of Rights, and they left it to us — we, the people — to decide when to add to them, when to take them away. They didn’t leave it to nine older — I can say that now — judges in Washington to rule a country, crossing a continent composed 330 million Americans. And to those who say that we can’t rule ourselves — that we, the people can’t do this — I try to remind young people about the story of Greg Watson, who was a college student at the University of Texas in 1992. He’s responsible for the most recent amendment to the Constitution, the 27th amendment. We, the people, we can do this. We can govern ourselves.

RUSH: Now, this interview went on for a half hour, and it was just exceptionalagain, in its utter unthreatening simplicity, factualness and truthfulness — and I wanted to call your attention to that and Justice Gorsuch’s book, because it is written in the same vein. It’s simply one of the best ways to either refresh your own memory or to teach somebody you think needs to know what this country and the Constitution and the republic are really about. Neil Gorsuch and A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, one of the reasons the Democrats are so paranoid of Donald Trump being reelected is that he’s going to appoint more Neil Gorsuches to the Supreme Court. That is something that I think is not mentioned much. I think I mentioned this two or three weeks ago. But the abject fear that a reelection, Donald Trump reelection ultimately will mean a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court has got them scared to their wits’ end, and it is as much a reason why they are doing this as anything else. They literally are trying to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump.

They can’t stop it with any of their candidates. All they can do is try to get those of you that voted for him to abandon him. That’s their sum total effort. That’s what all of this really has always been about. It’s what it continues to be about, the fact that Donald Trump is gonna go out and find more justices like Neil Gorsuch. By the way, put that picture up. Here’s a copy of the cover of Justice Gorsuch’s book: A Republic, If You Can Keep It. It’s been out awhile, and I just wanted to bring it to your attention with his appearance on Fox today.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want you to hear one more sound bite from the Judge Gorsuch interview. This is the one I couldn’t remember. Cookie went out and found it. He here is addressing the lack of knowledge that American citizens have on civics today.

GORSUCH: I worry today when I read that only about a third of Americans can name the three branches of government, and 10% of Americans apparently believe that Judy Sheindlin serves on the United States Supreme Court. Now, you know her as Judge Judy, and I love Judge Judy, but she is not one of my colleagues. And the truth is our rights — including the separation of powers — are only as good as the people who want to keep them there. Daniel Webster said that it took 6,000 years for a self-governing people to arrange our Constitution, and it really was a miracle. And those things aren’t kept by accident, and there’s no guarantee they will endure unless people care about them.

RUSH: That is… You know, it is so true. The Judge Judy stat is interesting, and it’s not new that so few Americans can name their member of Congress or 10% think that Judy Scheindlin is on the Supreme Court or understand civics concepts. The truth here in this sound bite is what a miracle this country is. I often refer to it as that. There have been books written about the Constitutional Convention, calling it the Miracle in Philadelphia, and 6,000 years… Daniel Webster said it took 6,000 years for a self-governing people to arrange our Constitution.

That’s just another way of saying how unique and unprecedented and miraculous the United States is. It’s 6,000 years, and it wasn’t until the United States Constitution that the concept of individual freedom and liberty as a tenet of our creation was enshrined in the founding documents of the country. In every other country in the world, the majority of citizens lived in some kind of tyranny or bondage or poverty — and that was the expectation. However you were born was how you died.

The concept of an improving standard of living or freedom of choice from the state was a foreign concept until our nation declared its independence from the king. The fact that it happened after 6,000 years, the fact that it’s maintained for over 200 is indeed evidence of blessing and a miracle. And it does require a certain level of informed people living in the country to hold onto it. And this is what frightens me, is that the Democrat Party today is constituted to undermine these concepts. The Democrat Party today really…

You know, it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who started talking about (summarized), “We need a new Bill of Rights, one that enshrines the power of government over people.” We’ve had leftist legal thinkers say that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as a whole is a “collection negative liberties.” Negative liberties! The whole term is offensive. Cass Sunstein, the husband of Samantha Powers, is one of the people who believes that the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is a collection of negative liberties — and by that he means it’s too proscriptive on the government.

It tells the government too much what it can’t do. It doesn’t spell out enough what the government can do — and that’s what they want to change. The Bill of Rights and the whole concept of individual freedom and liberty is a great obstacle for the Democrats and the modern-day left as it seeks to accomplish its political objectives. These are the things that are at stake. So when Donald Trump runs around and talks about Make America Great Again, this is what scares them. Now, the way they oppose Make America Great Again is they say, “That’s code for white supremacy!”

They want people to believe that the whole concept of making America great again means a return to slavery. I am not only not making that up. I’m not exaggerating it. That is what they are trying to make people believe Make America Great Again means, and it couldn’t mean anything further from that. Make America Great Again means return this nation to the principles and concepts of its founding, which surround the concept of individual freedom and individual liberty over the state, not as subjects of the state.

Look, I ask people… This is the way I ask people to put today in context and Make America Great Again in context. We don’t have to go back very far to find the exact opposite of this. The eight years of Barack Obama were popularized by the Democrats attempting to convince as many Americans as possible that America’s best days were behind us, and that those great days may not have been fully justified because of all the racism and the bigotry and sexism and the colonialism and all the resources we have we stole from other parts of a world.

And there was a new era now, a new era of decline! We’d have to lower our economic expectations. America had reached a phase where it was no longer true that children would have better lives than their parents. It was just three, four, five years ago that this was the primary message of United States government to its people — and in the midst of all that, some guy comes along and says, “To hell with that, we want to Make America Great Again,” and look how it resonated and it continues to resonate.

And in the process of running that campaign, getting elected, being president, Donald Trump has thrown the entire Washington establishment on its head. Do you know what has been learned today? It has been learned that it was actually conservative Never Trumpers who hired Fusion GPS. Well, some of this was known, but the efforts to destroy Donald Trump have not exclusively been put into place by Democrats.

They have been put in place by conservative Never Trumpers who are now running ads. They’ve formed a PAC, and they’re running ads against Trump. The first one went up in Times Square.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Andrew, Modesto, California. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Pleasure to speak to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I just wanted to… When you spoke earlier about negative and positive rights, I wanted to highlight that our founders were very careful in how they wrote our rights to make sure that they were all negative, meaning that a negative right only requires that others abstain from interfering with those rights. That’s why we have “life, liberty…” And why they wrote “pursuit of happiness” and not “happiness,” is that they if they wrote “happiness,” someone would have to provide you with happiness. And it’s also why they didn’t include property in those rights is because, you know, if you had a right to property and you didn’t have any property, someone would have to provide you with that.

RUSH: Well, no, but the right to own property is front and center, and it’s almost as important as the right to free speech. People have a tough time understanding that, but —

CALLER: Yeah, absolutely. I just… You know, you were talking earlier with North Korea having a “right to recreation,” which is similar to FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights — you know, right to a house, a right to a job. Those are what they call positive rights. But, you know, if you have a right to a house, if you have a right to a job, who’s supposed to provide with you with it?

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: The answer is the taxpayer.

RUSH: It ain’t you.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: If you have a right to it, it means you don’t have to do it for yourself.

CALLER: Yeah. I just wanted to highlight what you were talking about that. You know, it was the intention of our founders to make sure that they stayed on the negative rights of things.

RUSH: Well, see, you’re using a different term, and I’ve always said, “Words mean things.” Negative rights, that’s one thing. When you start talking about like the left does, negative liberties? Liberty is a positive. How in the world can it be negative? And yet there they are discussing it. Now, a negative versus positive right, a lot of people would be scratching their heads over that.

In many people’s linear thinking, it’s a convoluted way to describe it. “What do you mean, ‘negative rights’? I don’t understand it.” But when you start talking negative liberties — and let me be specific about this, because I find that each time I mention that that it is news to a lot of people, that there aren’t a whole lot of people who understand that the left’s view of the Constitution is punitive to them.

The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, specifically spell out – in fact, the entire Constitution does — what the government cannot do. The government cannot stop you saying what you want to say. The government cannot stop from you worshiping the way you want to worship. The government cannot stop you from associating with whoever you want to associate with. The government cannot stop you from possessing a firearm, and on and on and on.

Now, leftist and now Democrat lawyers and legal beagles think that is horrible. Those are negative liberties. If your world is centered around all power rests in government, then the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are the enemy.

If you believe that all power should reside in government and that all freedoms and all liberties should stem from grants by government, then you’re gonna look at the Constitution as a great threat, a great negative. Only if you think the government should grant rights and the government should grant freedom can the Bill of Rights be negative liberties. But a liberty, a freedom, is inherently a positive, meaning it’s a good thing.

And it’s rare. Constitutional liberty and freedom is rare. We were the first government in 6,000 years, and there had not been one prior, to assemble our nation in that way under those guiding principles. It had never been done before. It is a miracle. It is a blessing. And from the get-go, there were people who didn’t like that, they didn’t think the citizens knew enough, they weren’t responsible enough, they weren’t malleable enough, whatever. There was too much power invested in the citizens. Government should have all the power, and that’s the primary argument that we’ve had since the founding, and it’s the primary argument we’re having today.

If you strip all of the details away, the argument really is over today: Do you have liberty and freedom or not? And the Democrats think the government ought to be in charge of who can do what and who can’t do what, and they want to have total control over that, what kind of car you drive, how cars are made, what you eat, what you can and can’t eat, and I’m not exaggerating. This is the kind of power and authority they seek.

And in pursuing it they create things like climate change. “You’ve gotta grant us this power. You’re destroying the planet with that car you’re driving. You’re destroying the planet, every hamburger you eat. There needs to be some responsible authority telling you you can’t do that.” And they’re telling you you’re doing that to save the planet.

They’re not doing it to save the planet. They’re doing it to enrich and empower themselves over you. It remains the fundamental argument. Make America Great Again is the epitome of the argument. Make America Great Again simply means let’s go back to the principles that founded this country. People that don’t want America to be great again don’t want anything about America’s past. They are into totally transforming it into something it was not founded or intended to be.

[mystery-ak]

McConnell Slams Gavel Down on Schumer’s Demands

Dec 17, 2019



RUSH: Mitch McConnell just slammed the gavel down on Chuck You Schumer, but I want to explain to you how he did it and how he is right and what Schumer’s request for additional witnesses in a Senate trial means.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: They know they have no case. As evidenced by the fact that Chuck You Schumer wants the Senate to call four witnesses that Schiff didn’t call.

Now, there’s a reason Schiff didn’t call the witnesses. We would have lost. Trump does not have to furnish the witnesses. Obama didn’t. In 2014, Obama said — it was not about Fast and Furious. It was about something else. But Obama was telling members of Congress: If you want to talk to my assistants, you’re not gonna get to talk to ’em. Executive privilege, separation of powers. They don’t speak for me. They’re not coming up to talk to you.

It’s the same thing here. They want Mulvaney, they want John Bolton, they want Don McGahn, they want somebody else. And they want the Senate to continue the investigation. That’s what that really means, and that’s not gonna happen. And McConnell told ’em, “Hey, look, we don’t do the investigation. You make the case and you present the case to us, and we sit and decide it.”

Let me give you the equivalent of what Schumer’s asking. Forget impeachment. Let’s go to court ’cause that’s what’s this is gonna become. It’s gonna become a trial. Let’s say the prosecution, after failing and knowing it’s failed to make its case, asks the jury, “Jury, we want you to investigate some more on this. Here’s some people we want you to go talk to.” That would never be permitted. If the prosecution doesn’t have its case, it doesn’t have its case. It’s not up to the jury, in this case the Senate. It’s not up to the Senate to carry the investigation forward, but there is a nefarious reason that Schumer wants to do this.

If he could con McConnell into calling some witnesses, then they can have this trial go on all year. If McConnell ever agreed to call four witnesses that the Democrats want, then that parade would never stop. Now, McConnell shot it down today in a speech on the Senate floor.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, a couple things are being bandied about today as a result of Chuck You Schumer demanding that the Senate call three to four witnesses that were not called during the House impeachment proceedings — and that’s a very key point. McConnell went to the floor of the Senate today and made it clear that the Constitution is why he’s not gonna be calling any Democrat witnesses. He’s not gonna be calling any witnesses, because they do not do any investigation in the Senate.

The Senate trial is not an ongoing Democrat investigation of the president. The Constitution says the investigation takes place in the House. After they investigate, they prepare their articles of impeachment — the charges, the indictment. They then present the charges (via the House managers) to the Senate, and that’s it. From that point on the Senate acts as a jury with the chief justice acting as the trial judge, and the House managers make the case. Now, Schumer’s claiming that they need three, four witnesses — or more.

Well, the reason is they haven’t made a case in the House.

The House doesn’t have a case — and Schumer knows this, and the Democrats know it.

So it’s really a replay of the Kavanaugh circumstance. When Kavanaugh was on the verge of being confirmed, here came Christine Blasey Ford out of nowhere. Schumer’s demand of three to four witnesses is akin to asking for three to four Christine Blasey Fords to be entered into the fray after the House has ended its investigation — and the Turtle shot it down today. It’s not the end of it, because the Democrats are not gonna go away and they have other strategies up their sleeves, but it was good.

Now the next thing up is: Could the Senate dismiss the case on day one?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Mitch McConnell today rejecting the demands of Chuck You Schumer that the Senate call some witnesses if and when there is a trial.

MCCONNELL: The Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do the House Democrats’ homework for them. He wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it. If the Senate volunteers ourselves to do House Democrats’ homework for them, we will only incentivize an endless stream of dubious partisan impeachments in the future, and we will invite future Houses to paralyze future Senate with frivolous impeachments at will.

RUSH: That is so right on the money. The Turtle also said, “We don’t create impeachments, Mr. President. We judge them. The House chose this road. It is their duty to investigate. It’s their duty to meet the very high bar for undoing a national election. As Speaker Pelosi herself once said, it is the House’s obligation to, quote, ‘build an ironclad case to act.’ If they fail, they fail. It is not the Senate’s job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty. That would hardly be impartial justice.”

So McConnell has shot this down from the moment that Schumer presented it.

Now, the witnesses that Schumer says he wants. He wants Mick Mulvaney, and it’s because of a press conference Mulvaney gave that was so widely misunderstood because Mulvaney made the mistake of being flat-out honest about the way government works, about the way foreign policy works. He was flat-out honest about how quid pro quo is a daily part of American foreign policy. It is the point of American foreign policy. The point of American foreign policy is to sway our allies into action that is favorable to us, and we do the same for them.

So he’s standing at the podium. “Who in the world doesn’t understand this? This is the way it is!” And so they thought they had entrapped Mulvaney. So now they want to call Mulvaney, and they wanted to call Pompeo, and they wanted to call John Bolton because they think Bolton’s ready to turn on Trump since Trump fired him. Now, the Democrats did call — Schiff tried to get Mulvaney and Bolton to testify, but they refused because of executive privilege, for which there is ample precedent.

Barack Obama in 2014 informed the Congress that his assistance would not be made available for whatever inquiries they were looking into, Fast and Furious and some others. Benghazi. “We’re not gonna make anybody available to you. It’s separation of powers.”

Trump has asserted the same thing. Trump has gone to court to appeal the subpoenas that Schiff sent. And that’s what the Democrats are saying is obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress. Because Trump will not give them the witnesses they want. He’s instead going to court challenging their subpoenas.

Trump is not acting outside the Constitution. Trump is acting like every previous president ever. He’s letting a court decide whether or not the subpoenas can be enforced. But the Democrats think the American people need to see this in action again, so they want Schumer to go demand that McConnell call these same witnesses. They want McConnell to call the witnesses, and they want Trump to refuse to let the witnesses appear. They want the media to then report to the American people that Donald Trump continues to obstruct Congress, therefore validating one of the articles of impeachment.

It’s flat-out absurd and McConnell is exactly right. The Democrats haven’t made a case. In fact, you know what they’ve done? In this massive 658-page impeachment report, you know what the two articles of impeachment are? Obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. But in the impeachment report, Schiff and the Democrats allege that Trump committed criminal bribery, wire fraud, and other multiple federal crimes.

But wait. Why aren’t they in the articles of impeachment? Because this is being conducted in the media. This is a trial and a prosecution that’s being conducted in the media. The Democrats want to push bribery because there wasn’t any. But they don’t care. They want the American people to think that Trump engaged in bribery, even though it was dropped in the articles of impeachment.

In other words, they want the prosecutor to be able to charge somebody even though he couldn’t get an indictment for it from the grand jury. That’s what they’re attempting to do here. McConnell called Schumer out exactly. If the Democrats were to somehow succeed in turning this Senate trial into a circus, then we could be looking at this happening every time an opposing party disagrees with a president.

So now the latest thing being bandied about is, “Hey, you know what? The Republicans could simply dismiss this case on a 51 vote, just put the case up for dismissal. Like on summary judgment, we’re just gonna dismiss the case on day one, and all it would take is 51 votes, and the Republicans have 51 votes. The question is, could McConnell get 51 of them to go ahead and dismiss the charges knowing the media hell that would break out.

But I’m gonna tell you it’s something that I could endorse and I could suggest and get behind here. The result is what matters here because this entire process is corrupt, this entire process is filled with lies and distortions and false charges and misrepresentations starting with this phony coup that was the Russia collusion hoax.

[mystery-ak]

Rush to the Senate: It’s Time to End This

Dec 17, 2019



RUSH: It’s time to end this.

It’s time to shut this down and move on and make the Democrats pay a price for what they’ve done instead of letting Christine Blasey Ford come back up and make another appearance in the form of somebody else with some horrible story about Donald Trump and what he did to Marie Yovanovitch or whatever they want to try to concoct. It’s time to end this. Because this is nothing but a foundation of lies and distortions and slander and libel.

We’ve got an inspector general report that dictates and spells out the absolute corruption and abuses of power on a false, phony charge of treason, collusion with Russia. And that’s all this Ukraine thing is, is a continuation of that. None of it is legitimate. And the first chance to shut this down should be taken.

If the Republicans do it, they do not know how much they would be rewarded at the ballot box next November. They’re gonna afraid of the media. They’re gonna be afraid of the criticism they will get. But, man, if they could pull the trigger and just dismiss this and throw it out on the basis there’s no case. The Democrats have no case. They have no evidence. There’s not a single crime even mentioned in the articles of impeachment. It would be, on a factual basis, easy to do. Politically, yeah, might be tough for some of them to pull out, but it would be the absolute greatest way to end this.

‘Cause if they don’t, if a trial actually starts, then it’s gonna be a year-long circus. Once a trial starts, the Democrats are never gonna let it end. It’s gonna become the ongoing, daily campaign event for 2020, and it will be on television every day, and it’s not gonna cost them a dime.