Rush Transcripts...Jan. 7th 2020

[mystery-ak]

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/


Trump Has Restored America as the World’s Lone Superpower

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: Hi, folks. We didn’t have a chance yesterday to do a post mortem on the Trump interview because the show ended, so we didn’t have a chance to discuss it. Now, I thought the president made news at least three times in that interview, maybe four, if news coverage of the president were conventional. But news coverage of the president isn’t conventional.

Most of the coverage, we’ve done a review of it, it’s kind of hilarious. Most of them are ticked off that he was on with me and not with them. And that’s what drove them in their commentary in the president’s interview yesterday, which we will review.

Also, Brit Hume said I went a little too far in saying that the Iranians are no different than the Democrats or that the Democrats are no different than the Iranians in their criticism of Trump. So we put together side by side Democrat comments, Iranian comments, and you decide. You tell me if you can even tell the difference. Can’t wait for that. That’s all coming up.

Now, the Drive-By Media is going wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral of General Salmonella or Salami, whatever you want to call him, Soleimani. The media going wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral. We’re getting to see all of the supposed mourners. Now, Buck Sexton, CIA analyst, former guest host of this program was just on Fox and he said what I told you yesterday.

The regime goes door-to-door to ask you if you are going to the funeral, and if you say no, they leave your head in the house and take your body to the funeral. They literally do. They go door-to-door and they ask you if you’re gonna join the mourners, and if you say you’re not, then that’s the end of you.

Now, look. It’s a big country. There’s some people genuinely distressed that the terrorist is dead, but this big crowd that you’re seeing is — this is a totalitarian state. The people there don’t have any free will and they don’t have freedom of choice. And when the regime wants you to do something, you better show up and do it. He says they’re going door-to-door. And he would know. And you get the mourners there shedding tears for their lost martyr.

But where was this kind of coverage back in November? A million truly brave Iranians took to the streets back in November to protest the regime. Back then the Iranian government killed over 1,500 protesters. They put 7,000 more in jail. And we saw nothing about that in the American Drive-By Media. So after something like that, you have a million Iranians taking to the streets to protest the mullahs, essentially. Fifteen-hundred of them were killed, 7,000 put in jail. That’s just last November.

So now Soleimani disease and they go to door-to-door asking if you’re gonna go to the funeral, and you say no, well, then you get added to the 1,500 dead or the 7,000 injured. And the ayatollah, the Ayatollah Khomeini, he was out there crying. I got a note from a friend of mine, Zev Chafets. You remember Zev Chafets? He wrote a New York Times profile of me, and he wrote a great biography of Roger Ailes.

I don’t know if he wants to be attributed in this email. He sent me a note. He said, “Rush, when I saw the ayatollah crying yesterday, it made me think of the Hollywood producer in The Godfather waking up in bed next to the severed head of his beloved horse. Shock is the first emotion, then bluster comes next, and then you start to wonder what else the godfather is capable of. And ta-da, the singer gets the part in the movie after they leave your dead horse head in the bed next to you.”

Now, if the ayatollah is sane, that’s how this is gonna come down, but that’s a big “if” if the ayatollah is sane. The ayatollah says that Iranians, not proxies, should strike at America. Trump says that the United States will bomb 52 targets if a single American is hurt.

By the way, Brian, throw that picture up. Yesterday — they say this is just a coincidence. Fifty-two F-35 stealth fighters were put on the runway at an Air Force Base in the middle of the country. It was just a coincidence, they said, 52 of ’em. Look at those gorgeous stealth fighters. We’re showing the picture to you on the Dittocam, 52 of them on the gigantic Air Force Base runway.

Conrad Black has a piece today, you know, I’ve talked about this in generic terms in the past. It is about the ability that the United States single-handedly, singularly has to project power in the world. We have no match. There is not a single nation, maybe the ChiComs, but their development is behind ours. We still are the superpower of the world. And every enemy of the United States knows it.

And I think this would be a good time to share with you some of the things that Conrad Black shares in his piece, “Americans Will Rally Around Trump on Iran.” This is a piece found at American Greatness. And let me give you some great pull quotes of this piece.

We are strong in our military and in our economy, and there is no match to either our military or our economy anywhere in the world. Now, Millennials and college students and high school students and leftists, if they are informed of that, are immediately opposed to it and frightened and scared. Some of them don’t believe it. Some of them think that it’s what’s wrong with America. But responsible adults understand the absolute necessity of this.

But just forget the necessity.  Just the factual basis, the factual truth: There is no match.  There is nobody that comes close in the world to matching our economy and our military, and particularly now. That’s true at any time, whether we’re in a recession, whether we’re in an economic slowdown or now — when we are in an economic revival and roaring along — there certainly is no match.  And you add our military to it, there isn’t any match.

Folks, nobody is even close, and they all know it.  But here’s the difference.  That’s always the case.  There has been no match for the American economy and no match for the American military my entire life.  Nobody’s even close.  The Soviet Union was a Third World economy with a First World military, and they could not sustain themselves.  They were a nuclear threat, and that was it.  But they had no morality acting as a foundation for their existence.  They were destined to implode.

What’s different now is we have a president, we have a leader who has the gonads to use both of these — the economy and the military — to protect this country from little maggots around the world like this General Soleimani and ISIS and all the rest of them, ’cause that’s what they were.  They’re not even in our league.  It is only our restraint and our acknowledgment of our status as the world’s lone superpower and our morality — the fact that we are the good guys — that stops us from literally wiping the world out of these people.

But if you hit us, we now have a leader who is going to make you pay the price for it, and this is frightening and scary to children on the left, frightening and scary to adults who are children on the left.  They have no comprehension of deterrence, no comprehension of strength.  To them, strength, confidence, ability, exceptional economy, exceptional military? (sobbing) “Those are all examples of how unfair it is around the world! It’s not fair that America so big. (crying) It’s not fair that the rest of these people are so puny. It isn’t fair!”

So we should handcuff ourselves.  They have no idea of the work, the sweat, the blood, the tears, the lives it took to achieve this status, this place in the world.  To them, it’s all the result of America being essentially a great crime, and I’m not exaggerating that in terms of how they view this. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Crazy Bernie and the rest of the Democrat candidates for president.  The United States is an accident: Madeleine Albright.  United States is a colonial evil. The United States destabilizes.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

No audible Democrat, no Democrat out there speaking right now understands that Donald Trump cannot lose any of these arguments that he’s having with Iran or with North Korea.  We cannot lose.  If we decide to engage, we cannot lose.  It’s not up for grabs.  Land and sea-based power, cruise missiles. The United States has these in theater in both cases.  We have Hellfires. We have cruise missiles. We have the military agents of destruction ready to launch on North Korea and Iran or any other enemy on a moment’s notice.

Not from here; from there.

We are everywhere, and we have the ability to project power unlike any other nation in the world.  We have the ability to de-calibrate the artillery that the North Koreans have aimed at South Korea from caves just north of the Demilitarized Zone.  We could do this in five minutes.  I talked to you yesterday about the two relatively new kinds of weapons that we have.  One of them is a bomb that digs 200 feet down below the surface of the earth, wipes out anything in caves — including guns, including bad guys.

The bottom line is the United States could destroy every strategically relevant military and economic target in Iran in 30 minutes.  If we wanted to do this, we could wipe that country out in 30 minutes — and we have been able to do this for years.  Now, we don’t talk about it.  It’s not part of the daily news cycle. But this is one of the reasons why the American left so despises America, because we do have this ability, and nobody else does (sniveling), “And it’s unfair, and it’s a destabilization. It’s lack of balance.”

But it’s also the fact that they do not look at the United States as the good guys in the world.  I’m not exaggerating.  We have the ability to take out any meaningful strategic military target in Iran inside of 30 minutes.  Everybody in our military knows it, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.  Trump has made it clear that if there is any move by the Iranians to achieve nuclear military capability… Same thing with North Korea.  He’s told both.

He’s not gonna let ’em do it.  He’s gonna strike.  He has told them both.  The North Koreans have made fools of previous presidents, and the Iranians have too.  Trump literally is a new sheriff in town.  He’s demonstrating that go he’s not just a bunch of talk, not just a bunch of huffing and puffing.  Now, the elimination of General Salmonella, General Soleimani, bolsters the mullahs’ realization that Trump means what he says.  In other words, the mullahs… Everybody thinks, “The mullahs are mad, and we better be frightened, man. We really ticked ’em off!”

It’s the other way around.  The mullahs know damn well what happened. We took out the guy within 30 seconds of him getting off of his airplane.  We had intel on the ground.  We had intel in the air.  We had spies.  We had GPS.  We knew where this guy was every moment of the day.  In the real world, this is the kind of thing that shakes up the bad guys, not makes them mad and should create fear in us.  These Iranian threats of retaliation are pure rubbish.

Any retaliation that they engage in is gonna result in them being hit 10 times worse than whatever they dish out, and they know it.  “George W. Bush and Barack Obama had a good record fighting terrorism, but they were both taken over the barrel by North Korea, as Bill Clinton was. The total failure of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion…” This is Conrad Black writing. “The total failure of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion was particularly evident last week, as the country is largely an Iranian satellite … and everybody knows that Obama gave the store away to Iran.”

And what’s happening now, folks, is that President Donald Trump “is taking it back.”  We are not going to survive with the status quo.  Trump is taking it all back, and the overwhelming majority of Americans are going to support the president.  The Democrats have put their head in a noose, standing over the trapdoor, as they continue to side with enemies of this country because of their foggy view (through the lens of hatred) they have for Donald Trump.

[mystery-ak]

My Postmortem on the Trump Interview

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: So the president’s 30 minutes on the program yesterday was actually 25 minutes, 20 minutes, ended the program, didn’t have a chance to discuss it afterwards, did not have a chance to do a post-mortem. So we’re gonna do that now with the aid and assistance of Drive-By Media reaction.

Now, I can’t even begin to share with you all of that reaction. There were hundreds of mentions of the Trump interview. Many in the Drive-By Media were livid that Trump appeared here and not with them, which is crazy. Trump spends more time with the Drive-By Media than any president in our memory, whether it be at NATO, whether it be on the South Lawn at the White House on the way to the helicopter.

The one thing the president stopped doing and our old buddy at CNN Jim Acosta mentioned this in a tweet, he’s very upset about it, the formal White House press briefing has ended. It doesn’t happen. There hasn’t been one in over a year or close to it. And the Drive-Bys are very upset about this because that’s when they got their faces on TV and that’s when they had their chance to try to embarrass the president, make big names for themselves. Now they don’t get to do that.

Now when Trump meets the press, it’s all of them lined up on the driveway at the White House shouting like a bunch of Romper Room 6-year-olds. “Mr. President! Mr. President!” And you can’t see them. All you see is Trump. And he looks like a maestro conducting the orchestra pointing to this media person and pointing to that one and telling this one to shut up, putting his index finger to his mouth. And he spends half an hour with them. I mean, this guy spends more time with the press than any previous president ever. And yet they’re still complaining about lack of access and lack of this.

So he shows up on this program yesterday, and many of them said that’s not right, he shouldn’t come to places like this. He shouldn’t come to places where he’s supported. He shouldn’t come to places where people that talk to him and interview him are friendly with him, it shouldn’t happen. Well, I guess that would disqualify all of them from ever talking to Obama, then, right? ‘Cause that’s all it was was a bunch of fawning, slavish hero worship when the Drive-By Media spent time with Barack Hussein O.

Now, you can tell these guys are bothered by the fact that he’s on this program, not with them, very snarky about it. We have some audio sound bites to illustrate this. We’ll start here at the top. There’s another thing here about this. This interview had at least three — if this were a normal press-president relationship, there were three things the president said yesterday that were genuine news. And they’ve ignored all of it, as they always do, in place of attacking him in the way they have become famous for.

So here is a montage of a bunch of the Drive-Bys. And this montage is an example of how much they heard. Now, this is a sign of how great an interview it was. I wouldn’t normally point that out. But this is how great an interview it was by how many different things the Drive-By Media heard in the interview.

KAITLAN COLLINS: With nothing else on his public schedule, President Trump called into Rush Limbaugh’s radio show today to defend the U.S. air strike.

JIM ACOSTA: The president told conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, he’s waiting to see what Iran does next.

MICHAEL WARREN: On Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in a 20-minute conversation Donald Trump brought up Barack Obama’s name four times in the first five minutes.

BLAKE BURMAN: During that interview, the president continued to defend his decision to take out that Iranian general.

HILLARY VAUGHN: President Trump saying that he took care of what the administrations under President Obama and President Bush didn’t.

NATALIE BRAND: President Trump told Rush Limbaugh, Soleimani should have been taken out a long time ago.

LAURA JARRETT: What he said with Rush Limbaugh, of course making this about President Obama, a familiar target.

HANS NICHOLS: He should have been taken out, as he said, 15 to 20 years ago.

JOHN ROBERTS: President Trump speaking to Rush Limbaugh on his radio program saying that Soleimani had it coming.

RUSH: All right. So they have all these different takes of what happened in the interview yesterday. Here’s Jonathan Karl on ABC’s World News Tonight.

KARL: Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh asked the president to explain why he ordered the strike when he did.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Could you explain to people why what you’ve done here makes us safer, why it was necessary, and why what we did was right?

THE PRESIDENT: He should have been taken out a long time ago. And we had a shot at it, and we took him out. And we’re a lot safer now because of it.

KARL: But the president made no mention of an imminent threat.

RUSH: It just kills these guys that the president was here. It kills these guys that your host, El Rushbo, the beloved radio talk show host was asking the president questions. They think it’s their God-given right to do this, their constitutional right. So you note the snark here. “But the president made no mention of an imminent threat. “

No mention of an imminent threat? Have you listened to the Iranians making all the noise about what they’re gonna do next? It’s just all so predictable. Here’s Brian Stelter at CNN saying that it’s not normal, it’s not normal for the president to do what he did yesterday, talking to a radio talk show host.

STELTER: We need to recognize it’s not normal. A strong administration, a confident administration would want to answer lots of questions. But instead the president right now is on the phone with Rush Limbaugh, his friend Rush Limbaugh on the radio giving rants, giving speeches. That’s the way the president likes it.

They could be winning back credibility one true statement at a time, one piece of evidence at a time. That’s what journalists do every day. If we make a mistake, we correct it. We try to get better every day. And unfortunately, this administration doesn’t seem to want to win back credibility, instead President Trump wants to stay in his bunker, his Rush Limbaugh, talk radio, Fox News bunker.

RUSH: I mean, they cannot help but turn it around and make it about them. “We journalists, we try to get better every day. We try to win credibility back every day. We try to do one true statement at a time. That’s what the president ought –” So by virtue of appearing here, the president was not being truthful. See? By virtue of appearing on this program, the president was being dishonest. The president didn’t have to even be credible. These guys, it’s hard to believe. In this instance, Donald Trump’s yesterday appearing on this program talking to his base.

And, you know, can I tell you something about this, folks? There is — and I don’t know what percentage of it, but there’s a percentage of Trump’s base that’s not happy with this Iranian stuff. There’s a percentage of Trump’s base that doesn’t want any more U.S. engagement overseas, military engagement. Been there, done that, waste of resources over there, not our problem, especially now that we’re energy independent. It’s not our problem.

Now, I don’t know what percentage of Trump’s base is upset about this, but there are some in the Trump base who are, who think that this is not exactly what the president promised when he was campaigning in 2016. And there are also some people who think the president has squandered something. Every president strives for the old axiom of peace and prosperity.

If you can lay claim as president to your presidency, your time being a time of peace and prosperity, nobody can beat you. And we’ve got the prosperity in spades, and we have the peace in spades. We’re not at war. And Donald Trump is the only president in the modern era who has not started a war until this hit on Soleimani.

So now the question comes, okay, is this starting a war, or is this ending a war? Is it starting a war or is it involvement in a war that has been going on for who knows how long and it’s time that the people who have been committing atrocities against our people get paid back for it. I mean, you can look at it any number of ways. I don’t look at this as starting a war but there are clearly some Trump supporters that probably do. So the president comes here. This is an election year. He’s got to have his base. If he doesn’t have his base, then all the rest of it’s academic.

So it’s not the president seeking safety and security coming here.  It’s tactically and strategic.  A good percentage of this audience is Trump voters, Trump base.  He doesn’t know, nobody knows how many of them maybe don’t support this. He comes here to explain it.  It makes all the sense in the world.  This is not cowardice.  This is not refusing tough questions.  The president obviously felt that it was worth his time to appear on a program that he’s confident reaches a bunch of his voters.

It makes absolutely perfect sense.  So the question would have to be put to you: If you’re in the camp that thinks this is a big strategic mistake and a waste of American resources, did the president convince you yesterday that this is worth our while or not?  This is not, you know, he wasted 30 minutes showing up with some friendly host throwing softballs at him.  This is maintaining the base.  This is all part of the reelection strategery of 2016.

Anybody knows that in politics, if you don’t hold your base, all the rest of it becomes sort of meaningless.  Here’s Don Lemon, the smartest man… (chuckles) “the dumbest man on television,” and that’s a tough competition now.  You got Fredo out there; you’ve got Don Lemon. You know, half the CNN roster and 75% of the MSNBC roster is in the competition for dumbest person on TV.  So out of everything that happened on this interview yesterday, here’s what Don Lemon on his show on CNN last night took away from it…

LEMON:  This is what he told right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh today about Qassem Soleimani…

THE PRESIDENT:  He’s a terrorist.  He was designated a terrorist by President Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it.

LEMON:  Okay.  So if… (sputtering) If you’re watching — Rush, whoever, anyone who’s watching — say with me, everyone: “Barack Obama is not president anymore.”

RUSH:  Thank God!

LEMON:  We can say it together: “Barack Obama is not president anymore!”

RUSH:  Thank God!

LEMON:  He’s not the president anymore.

RUSH:  Thank God!

LEMON:  Barack Obama’s been out of office for nearly three years.

RUSH:  Thank God.

LEMON:  President Trump owns this crisis, another one of his own making.

RUSH:  So you see, all Trump had to do was mention Obama.  These guys are gonna go to their political graves doing everything they have to to defend the Obama legacy, the Obama administration, including the Iranian nuclear deal.  So here’s Trump attacking Obama.  Don Lemon thinks it’s irrelevant.  “Obama’s not president!”  He was for eight years, and there are a lot of remnants of the Obama regime that have to be cleaned up, and this is one of them.  It’s exactly what Trump said.

It’s not hard to understand.  So Lemon cannot refute the president substantively.  Instead he has to (impression), “He can’t get over mentioning Obama.  Let… Let me tell you, everybody following along now! Uh, Barack Obama is not president.  Let me tell one more time.  Barack Obama is…” Well, he was, and we’re still paying the price for it in a whole lot of ways like immigration and health care and economics — and a bunch of the stuff that he did is in the process of being reversed and fixed, including this stuff.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Don Surber wrote a post at his blog, DonSurber.blogspot.com, a miniature review of Trump’s appearance here yesterday, and he pointed out that Trump saying that this should have been done 15 to 20 years ago, taking out Soleimani. In Don Surber’s view, that is major news.  It should have been page one news.

The media’s been chomping at the bit to get to Trump to ask him why he did this, and he answered it here. He said it should have been done 15, 20 years ago.  This guy’s taking out Americans, and murdering Americans, IEDs, plotting the attacks, the last one on the embassy in Baghdad.  This stuff’s gotta stuff!  That should be page 1 news, but it isn’t page 1 news because they didn’t get it. We did, here at the EIB Network.  So instead, they talk about all this.

“Trump chose a safe place! Trump couldn’t stop talking about Obama.”  Surber also pointed out what he thought was an intriguing piece or portion of the interview.  Pull quote:  “Limbaugh later set [Trump] up perfectly, asking, ‘A lot of things had to surprise you when you assumed office and found out some things that had been done previously in policy. What was the purpose of American policy with Iran prior to your presidency?’ President Trump said, ‘I don’t think they had a purpose. I don’t think they knew what was happening.

“‘Why did [Obama] give them $150 billion, much of it going back into terror? If you look at what’s happening… When I first came into office, I went to the Pentagon, and they showed me 18 ‘sites of confliction,’ meaning conflict, over there. And every one of them was started by Iran, either their soldiers or they paid for soldiers, soldiers for hire. I have no idea what they tried to do with appeasement,'” meaning the Obama administration and previous administrations.

“Death to America is more than a just slogan. Iran has us tied up in 18 little wars.”  Now, Surber thinks this should have been front-page news as well, the president pointing this out.  You know, here’s a question for you — and the president tore into John Kerry yesterday. He literally tore into him, and the Drive-Bys have totally ignored that.  But he tore into John Kerry as essentially being a coconspirator with Iran in their ability to nuke up.

I don’t care what you think of Trump and I don’t care what you think of Kerry. A president of the United States saying that about a former secretary of state is news, and they totally ignored it.  Why did they ignore that?  Why didn’t they run with that and make fun of Trump?  I think it’s obviously because they don’t even want to ask. You know, like, they don’t want to go, “What was that $150 billion for?”

Have you seen, uh, ladies and gentlemen? Have you seen some of the tweets that suggest that the Iranians were using some of that money to blackmail or pay off Americans to support the Iranian nuclear deal?  Now, Trump did not mention that, so don’t anybody confuse me here, confuse what I’m saying.  But there are a lot of people who think Obama dropped off $150 billion, $1.8 billion in cash on the pallets. For what?

Well, if the Iranians are paying people off around the world — Great Britain, United States, whatever — to support the Iranian nuclear deal, that could be one of the sources of the money. (Snort!) I tell you, what I have learned and seen about the way things operate in the so-called establishments around the world — European Union, you name it — nothing like that would surprise me anymore, and it wasn’t that long ago that anybody who said that, I would pooh-pooh it as an insane conspiracy theory.

[mystery-ak]

Death to America? Chevy Truck Carried What’s Left of Soleimani

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: I made mention of the fact yesterday that General Soleimani was flown back to Tehran in a cardboard box.  There was no body.  There were body parts.  There was a hand with an identifiable ring.  Flown back there in a box that was laid out across three coach seats in the Iranian airline.

Well, it turns out now that this coffin, Soleimani’s coffin was later put on the hood of a Chevrolet truck — not a Toyota, a Chevrolet truck — for part of his funeral procession.  So Chevy got some product placement here, edging out Toyota, which is the official truck vehicle for Middle East terrorists.

Saudi Arabian PR people tweeted out, “The American presence at Soleimani’s funeral was obvious…” (laughing) The American presence at his funeral!  The Saudi PR guy “noted that while the crowds were chanting, ‘Death to America!  Death to America!’ the number one terrorist, Qassem Soleimani, was killed with an American-made drone and his coffin was carried in an American-made car.”

So it looks like Trump’s mantra still stands: “Buy American!”  The Iranians clearly are, and they are transmitting the few remains of their gigantic hero in cardboard box coffins on coach seats and on the hoods of Chevrolet trucks.

[mystery-ak]

A-B, Side-By-Side Comparison: Iranian or Democrat?

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH:   Just one more thing I want to do.  Play a little game.  I mentioned to you in the opening monologue of the first hour, about an hour ago, that our good friend and colleague Brit Hume at Fox News thinks I went a little overboard in comparing the Democrats to the Iranians in terms of their vitriolic comments about President Trump and our action against General Soleimani.  It happened last night.  Shannon Bream was doing her Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream show, and she had on the Fox News Channel senior political analyst…

Do I need a title like this? You know, all these people have titles: “senior politicize analyst,” “senior political director correspondent,” “chief congressional correspondent House Office Building.”  Do I need a title?  Probably not.  Just my name tells everybody everything they need to know, right?  I don’t need a title.  Anyway, these guys all have titles. (interruption) Well, Trump is the de facto head of the Republican Party.  This is Trump’s party.

I mean, I might have been at one point the titular head, but, no, this is Trump’s party.  Look, one of the reasons there are titles… I must be honest. One of the reasons there are titles is that’s how people get raises.  That’s how corporations categorize pay scales. (Snort!) You can sit in there and laugh all you want, but every corporate demon that is listening to me knows full well what I’m talking about.  You’ve got senior vice president, you got area vice president, you got senior vice president of vice presidents.

You got, depending on how large the corporation is, an interminable number of titles, and getting a new title (i.e., promotion) is one of the ways they categorize compensation and pay raises.  So let’s see.  Brit Hume here is senior political analyst.  That means some people are not senior.  They’re just regular political analysts.  There’s inferior political analyst.  There is trainee political analyst, intern political analyst.  But Brit Hume here is senior political analyst at Fox News.

Shannon Bream asked him about the death of the Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. To set things up, she introduced and played a clip of me from yesterday’s program.

BREAM:  I want to play a little bit of Rush Limbaugh today talking about the reaction from the left in a number of quarters to the death of Qassem Soleimani, who is unmistakably responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of Americans, thousands of other people of all ethnicities and backgrounds, but including, yes, American lives.  Here’s what Rush Limbaugh said today in talking with the president about reaction…

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: In the past two or three days since the attack on Soleimani, you literally have the Democrat Party and elements of that party openly supporting Iran, an enemy of the United States, openly supporting the terrorist actions of that country, and this is a country that beheads homosexuals and transgenders –

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

RUSH: — and has no human rights for the very constituency the Democrat Party claims to represent.

END ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH:  I don’t know what’s arguable about that.  I mean, the Democrats… All of these little Millennials and these AOC types, they do think that Iran is superior.  I’ve got story right here: “Ocasio-Cortez Accuses ‘Monster’ Trump of Engaging in ‘War Crime’ over Iran Threats.” You know, Trump has threatened to hit their “cultural sites.”  They don’t have any cultural sites!  Cultural sites are military installations.  We already got rid of their cultural sites.  It happened a long time ago.

I’m half jesting here, but the point is that here you’ve got Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accusing Trump of being a monster for engaging in war crimes in Iran.  Another headline: “AOC Likes Tweet from Russian State Media Claiming Iran Doesn’t Target Civilians.”  You know, so our good buddies, the Russians, are out tweeting (paraphrased), “I don’t know what Trump’s talking about.  Iran does not target civilians.” (Snort!) They’re only the Middle Eastern state sponsor of terrorism, and by definition it attacks civilians.

What the hell do you think a suicide bomb is!  But here’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out liking and retweeting the Russian tweet that Iran doesn’t kill civilians.  So this is not an out-of-bounds thing to say, and the Iranians do… If they identify homosexuals or transgenders, they’re dead.  You talk about people having to live in the closet someplace in Iran? This is no joke about this, and the very people in this country who support all of that — these expanded lifestyles — are out there praising Iran?  It’s just ignorant.

So, anyway, here’s Brit Hume’s response to that sound bite…

HUME:  The trouble with that is that it’s… (chortles) It’s like a lot of stuff you hear, is he has the point in the sense that the Democratic Party does not seem to be at all happy, broadly speaking, about the death of this terrorist mastermind whose departure from this earth will weaken Iran and its terrorist ambitions.  But at the same time, it is not quite fair to say that the Democratic Party is openly supporting Iran.  That’s too strong.  They have been weak in supporting our president, to be sure, but openly supporting Iran? Too strong.

RUSH:  Well, I…. (sigh) Maybe the tweets that I saw over the weekend I didn’t see — and maybe the caterwauling from elected Democrats over the weekend that I saw, maybe they didn’t happen.  I just don’t pull this stuff out of my top hat. I don’t even have one of those.  I don’t pull it out of my back pocket and just throw it out there.  In fact, this isn’t anything new!

Back when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the president of Iran, you couldn’t tell the difference between what he was saying about Bush and what the Democrats were saying about Bush.  Anyway, we thought we would play a little game here.  We’re gonna go side-by-side, A-B comparison, and you tell me if I may be overstating that.  Up first is Javad Zarif.  He is the Iranian foreign minister.  He was on CNN this morning, said this about Trump’s warning to Iran if they attacked the United States…

ZARIF: (whispering) Attacking cultural sites is a war crime.  But has he made U.S. more secure?  Do Americans feel more secure?  Are Americans welcome today in this region?  Do they feel welcome?

RUSH:  And here is Democrat presidential candidate Fauxcahontas Warren…

WARREN: (haltingly) We now have a president who is tweeting threats of war crimes.  We’ve had to pull all of the Americans out of the area, all the civilians.  This is not making America safer.

RUSH:  Iranian or Democrat?  You decide. (interruption) What?  Don’t… (interruption) What you saying? (interruption) Oh, you’re trying to say you can’t figure it out, may need some more time on this?  Well, okay, here is Javad Zarif (impression), “Attacking cultural sites is a war crime, but he’s made U.S. more secure?  I don’t think so.  Do Americans feel more secure?  Are Americans welcome today in this region?  Do they feel welcome?”  When the hell…?

When I went on my troop visit to Afghanistan, I flew over and landed in Dubai, spent a couple of days there recalibrating time zones and all that, got on a U.N. plane and could not fly over Iran.  Now, this is back in the early 2000s.  We could not fly over Iran because they were threatening to shoot down anything that wasn’t theirs.  Feel safe in the region!  Nobody going to Afghanistan in ways I had to get there…

We had to fly around Iran, up through Pakistan and other places to get there. It added hours to the trip.  Feel secure in the region? Okay.  So Fauxcahontas (impression), “We now have a president who’s tweeting threats of war crimes.”  It’s exactly what the Iranians say. Let’s do another one.  Here’s Bernie Sanders last night on CNN, Anderson Cooper.  Question:  “Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted that targeting cultural sites is what terrorists do.  Do you agree with it?”

SANDERS:  It is a war crime, and to be learning from the Taliban about destroying cultural sites is unbelievable.  And the idea of spending trillions of dollars more on an endless war in Iran is, to me, just beyond comprehension.

RUSH:  Okay.  Here’s another sound bite.  Is this a Democrat or is this an Iranian?

ZARIF:  He’s prepared to commit war crimes.  He has killed people of this region.  He has spent a trillion dollars.  He said that, uhh, U.S.  had, uh, wasted $7 trillion in our region. He has added another trillion.  Is the United States more secure today because of that?

RUSH: So who is that?  Is that a Democrat or is that…? (interruption) No, you’re wrong.

It’s not a Democrat, although may as well be. That again is Javad Zarif, he’s the Iranian foreign minister. Crazy Bernie (imitation) “It’s a war crime to be learning from the Taliban about destroying cultural sites. Unbelievable. The idea of spending trillions of dollars more on an endless war in Iran is beyond comprehension.”

Here comes the Iranian. (imitation) “He is prepared to commit war crimes. He has killed people in this region. He has spent a trillion dollars. He said he wasted $7 trillion in our region. Added another trillion. Is the U.S. more secure today because of that?” You can’t tell the difference here other than the accents. I mean, nobody would ever confuse Crazy Bernie from being from Tehran. And one more. Here is Pencil Neck on December 18th on the floor of the House during debate on the articles of impeachment.

SCHIFF: When Donald J. Trump was sworn in on January 20th, 2017, he repeated these words. I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. Has he lived up to that sacred obligation? Has he honored his oath of office? Has he preserved, protected, and defended the Constitution of the United States? The uncontested evidence provides the simple yet tragic answer: He has not. In America, no one is above the law.

RUSH: The uncontested evidence? There isn’t any evidence. There never has been any evidence for any allegation these people have mounted. At any rate, so that’s Adam Schiff. And here now is the next voice, tell me is this an Iranian or is this a Democrat?

ZARIF: We are a law-abiding people. We’re not lawless like President Trump. He is destroying the U.S. Constitution. He’s destroying the U.S. political process. He’s destroying the rule of law in the United States.

RUSH: You tell me. That, again, is the Iranian foreign minister Zavi Zarif or whatever, you tell me the difference between these guys and the Democrats. You can’t. In the case of Schiff and this guy, that’s almost word-for-word verbatim. “We in Iran are law-abiding people. We are not lawless like President Trump. He is destroying the Constitution.” Like he cares. “He is destroying the U.S. political process. He is destroying the rule of law in the United States.” Exactly what Schiff and his cronies are out saying.



There isn’t any difference, and it’s not a stretch to claim that the Democrats sound like an echo chamber of the Iranians, and it’s not new. Here, one more before we go to the break. This is kind of unreal. CBS This Morning correspondent Elizabeth Palmer is interviewing the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. She says: “There are reports that the Supreme Leader –” meaning the Ayatollah Khomeini who they all eminently respect, they wouldn’t say one negative thing about the ayatollah. Even if he had a private club and a golf course, which he doesn’t, they wouldn’t ridicule this guy at all.

Remember when Mike Wallace interviewed the Ayatollah Khomeini, 60 Minutes, 25, 30-years — remember that? “Imam, imam, imam.” Most respectful thing you’ve ever seen. Nobody in the U.S. interviews Trump this way. Anyway, here’s the question from Elizabeth Palmer: “There are reports that the Supreme Leader has ordered that any revenge attacks should be proportional and carried out by Iranian forces.”

ZARIF: We are a law-abiding nation. When we take action, it won’t be disproportionate, unlike what President Trump has said. There has been the killing of several Iranian citizens and several top ranking, high-ranking Iranian military officers. That is what we will do, and we will do it not in a cowardly way, but in a clear and proportionate way.

PALMER: When?

ZARIF: As we choose.

RUSH: She’s wanting him to do it. She’s sitting there, she’s wearing the hajib, or the hijab, what is it, wearing the hijab, she wearing the hijab. (imitating Palmer) “Imam, when are you hitting Americans? Hmm? Hmm? When? When is it going to happen? We want to be there when you hit.” Don’t tell me, don’t tell me that it is overboard to compare the Democrats and the Iranian rhetoric.

Let’s see. All right. Grab one more. We have time for one more before we go to the break. State Department today, Pompeo had a press conference, secretary of state. And he mocked, you know, this claim here that the Iranians have made that General Soleimani was on a peace mission — he-he-he-he — he was on a peace mission, having just orchestrated the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

So a reporter said, “Iran’s foreign minister granted an interview saying that Soleimani was on a diplomatic visit to Iraq, that the U.S. strike to take him out was state terrorism, that President Trump is prepared to commit war crimes, that Iranians are enraged. What’s your reaction to this?”

POMPEO: His first statement, that Soleimani was traveling to Baghdad on a diplomatic mission, anybody here believe that? Is there any history that would indicate that it was remotely possible that this kind gentleman, this diplomat of great order, Qassem Soleimani, had traveled to Baghdad for the idea of conducting a peace mission? I made you reporters laugh this morning, that’s fantastic. We know that wasn’t true.

RUSH: I made you reporters laugh. That’s fantastic. We know that wasn’t true.

[mystery-ak]

Democrats in a Panic Over Crazy Bernie

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: The Democrat Party’s getting really, really worried now that Bernie Sanders could win the Democrat nomination.  And the thing to keep in mind about that is that the Obama administration people despise the guy, and they have not been able to stop him.  A lot of people… You ought to be very concerned. We all ought to be very concerned about it because the guy is nuts.

He looks like this cranky old grandfather kind of Looney Tune that you tolerate at holidays, and he may be that. But he’s also committed to this fully socialist agenda that would destroy everything we just described about the pinpoints of greatness in this country — great military, great economy. There is no way either literally survive as they are if somebody like Bernie Sanders is actually elected.  So we’ll have to delve into that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Democrat Party right now is… They’re very worried, folks, about Crazy Bernie.  Up ’til now, amazingly so, the frontrunner — without any question about it — has been Biden.  There have been pockets of surprise here and there.

You’ve had Bloomberg get in, show up at number three after a very little time in the campaign.  The big news is that Judge Judy is gonna join Bloomberg out on the campaign trail.  I just… (sigh) Anything can happen, but I don’t see Bloomberg getting the Democrat nomination.  He’s not radical left enough. Well, he actually is, but they don’t know it.  But he’s not gonna get it.  There’s one big reason why he’s not gonna get it, and it has nothing to do with policy, it has nothing to do with party, has nothing to do with politics.

And I don’t even want to tell you why because… (interruption) Yeah, that’s it.  That’s it. He doesn’t have a prayer. He doesn’t have a prayer, because of one thing that has nothing to do policy, party, politics, anything of the sort.  It may be unfair; it may be unjust.  But it is a reality that exists today in our TV culture.  He does not have a prayer. It doesn’t matter how much money he spends, he doesn’t have a prayer.  Well, he might have a prayer depending on who he prays to.

But it’s such a long shot that it’s practically a safe bet to be impossible.  What’s happening out there instead is that Crazy Bernie is creeping up, and this has people in the Democrat Party nervous as they can be — and on the Obama side, they’re livid.  They don’t like this guy at all.  The Obama administration, Obamaites, Obama supporters have no love whatsoever for Crazy Bernie.  So let’s go through some of these stories.  Up first is from… (laughing) It says “New Week” here.

This is the old Newsweek magazine, which, you talk about being obscure? They’re it. But their headline nevertheless sparks an interesting discussion.  “Bernie Sanders Dominates Democratic Candidates Among College Voters, New Poll Shows,” and there’s a poll (I saw it during the break) that a majority of high school students… Well, I don’t know if it’s a majority. A significant percentage of high school students love socialism, which led some people to ask, “Well, how is that possible?”

How is that possible?  Who the hell is teaching ’em!  What do you think…? What do you think most teachers coming out of college today are?  I mean, look, it makes perfect, logical sense.  If you have people that are sympathetic to socialism and communism and they are teachers and they are teaching students, is it any surprise the students would end up being sympathetic?  Throw out everything you know about the evils and the ravages of socialism and communism. Throw it out.

You have to assume the people we’re talking about don’t know a thing about it like you do.  All they know is what they’ve been taught about it, how fair it is and how equitable it is, how equal it is, how nobody’s made fun of and nobody’s laughed at. Nobody’s better than anybody else. Everybody has the same amount of stuff and everybody’s concerned about the same things.  There’s no competition. There’s no winners. There’s no losers.

This is what young people have been taught socialism is — and communism’s even better.

So a poll here. This is the “Chegg election tracker survey of Democrat or Democratic Party-leaning undergraduates across the U.S. saw Sanders close out of the year with 38% support… In addition to holding the most support of Democrat or Democrat-leaning college students, several general election polls last month also showed Sanders defeating President Donald Trump. An Axios… poll released in early December found Sanders pulled in 22.5% approval from college students of all political affiliations. Trump came in second with 17.3% approval, [Fauxcahontas] was third with 15.9% and Biden fell to fourth place” among college students with just 9%.

[mystery-ak]

Let Democrats Try to Stop Trump from Defending the Country

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: Sherman, Texas.  This is David.  Greetings.  Welcome to the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  I’m gonna apologize for that guy.  I’m worried that House Democrats are gonna now pass legislation that will limit President Trump’s ability to defend us and engage preemptively, and we cannot wait on Congress to declare war because, you know, a supersonic ICBM could reach us in 10 minutes delivering nuclear warheads.

RUSH:  Okay, this is another great example. When I come up and say that there’s no difference in the Iranians and the Democrats, “Oh, that’s going a little too far.” Who is it that’s trying to handcuff the president in a potential situation you just described as defending the country?  It’s the Democrats.

CALLER:  Yeah, and they’re threatening now to limit his power, and that could just spell the end of everything.  It’s unbelievable.

RUSH:  It is totally believable.  This is the… It shouldn’t surprise you.  I made the point yesterday. I made a prediction yesterday.  All of this stuff is eventually gonna get folded into their impeachment effort, and, lo and behold, let me grab the bite. Let’s see here. Grab number 41.  I predicted this.  I predicted this yesterday that they were gonna open up impeachment hearings House. They’re gonna fold this whole Iranian stuff into it.  And this afternoon on PMSNBC, Pencil Neck showed up with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.

This is all about John Bolton has said that he will testify if subpoenaed by the Senate.  So, that’s its own separate story. This has ignited the Democrats once again, ’cause they think what Bolton is saying is, “Hey, I’ll come in and I’ll unload on Trump if you subpoena me.  I can’t wait!”  That’s what they think Bolton is saying.  They are so excited.  They think Bolton is ready to turn tail.  They think Bolton is ready to come in and unload on Trump and tell ’em everything about Russian collusion and the Ukrainian phone call and whatever else — the Steele dossier — that’s true.

Whatever they dream about being true, they think Bolton is signaling that he’s ready to come in and turn on Trump.  So Andrea Mitchell is asking Pencil Neck about this, and this is what he said…

SCHIFF:  We haven’t taken that off the table.  Uh, I think what — what makes the most sense, though, frankly, uh, Andrea, is for him to testify in the Senate trial.  I do think that the pause in sending the articles has had a very salutary effect in flushing out McConnell and making it clear that he is working in cahoots with the president as part of this cover-up, uh, and fleshing out, uh, where the moderate Republican senators are.  The only thing that was clear from John Bolton up ’til now was that if we subpoenaed him, he would sue us and it would take ultimately years in court before we could secure his testimony.  So I think the pause has had a (sputters) very important impact.  It’d be up to the speaker when the time is right to transmit those articles.

RUSH: Will you subpoena Bolton? We haven’t taken that off the table. This is about a number of things, but they want to fold this Iranian stuff into the impeachment on the basis that Trump is unfit, that he is engaging in misconduct. And of course now they’re saying, “Well, he didn’t get our permission. He didn’t come in and use the War Powers Act, and we want to limit what he can do in the future.”

You know, I have a different view of people who are worried about this. Let them do this stuff. They are in the process, folks, of finally telling everybody who they are. And I don’t mind them doing it. The common sense reaction right now is when Schiff or any of these guys come out and says — or anybody else, Pelosi, “We need to limit what Trump can do.” Trump is only acting to defend the United States. Everybody in the world knows this. Everybody in this country knows this. They want to limit this president’s ability.

I think a lot of people lose track because we get caught up in all this and we go moment to moment to moment. But the cumulative effect of the Democrats and their efforts, unending, to get Trump, that are now into their fourth year, has not been lost on people. I’m talking about average, ordinary Americans who are watching this, and I still think that there are millions of them that just continue to seethe in various stages of anger over this.

Now, substantively, yeah, this is dire consequences and serious if they actually would succeed in being able to limit. But there’s this thing called the Constitution. They’re not gonna be able to pull this off. They can huff and puff about it, they can talk about it, I can give you examples in history. Thomas Jefferson. Let’s go back. Thomas Jefferson waged war against the Barbary pirates in Africa the early days of Islamic terrorists, and Jefferson did this without any consent from Congress whatsoever, and there are countless other examples of this.

So it’s just more huffing and puffing. And it is ultimately an admission by the Democrats that they are impotent. There’s not a thing they have been able to do to stop Trump. Why do you think this is gonna work? They haven’t been able to stop him. They haven’t been able to stop his agenda.

[mystery-ak]

The Under the Radar Progress at the Border

Jan 7, 2020



RUSH: Now, we’re in an election year, and, as such, people think that the president’s not gonna get anything done because the Democrats run the House. They’re not gonna permit any kind of legislative or policy victory during an election year. Well, imagine, if you will — and I’m just throwing this out there — imagine, if you will, the president finds a way to have a couple of pretty big successes on both immigration and in health care.

When you strip it all away, those are two things that a majority of Americans are very concerned about, and especially health care, and especially with the Democrat presidential candidates and this big push that many of them have to take away-employer-provided insurance and replace it with single payer Medicare for All.

The amount of money it would cost — people like their health care that they get from work. It’s something they know. It’s something that’s been the case for years. There’s a system for it. And 160 million Americans get their health insurance at work. The Democrats are running around talking about taking that away in the interests of fairness and equity and making sure everybody is on one system. And the amount of money this would cost is in the thirties of trillions. We don’t have it.

Immigration. Have you wondered what became of the caravans? There was a period of time last year where you couldn’t open a newspaper, turn on cable news without hearing about all these gigantic caravans, massive numbers of Central American people fleeing their native countries trying to get into the United States. The Democrats were out there showing pictures supposedly of Trump putting kids in cages. The pictures were actually from 2014 during the Obama administration.

There are massive things that have already taken place in immigration. Nobody knows about it because they’re not being reported on. It’s ultimately going to be the job of the Trump administration or campaign to publicize these things. But let me just give you an example.

Do you know that catch-and-release has ended? You didn’t know that. There is no more catch-and-release. This was an Obama administration and many administrations prior to was a favorite, catch-and-release was tantamount to admitting we can’t control it. Okay. So they get in illegally and we’ll catch ’em and then we’ll just release ’em. And we’ve obeyed the law. We have caught people, but we haven’t deported ’em.

Catch-and-release, you know what’s happening? In the old days catch-and-release would result in the people being caught being released into the interior of the country to get lost, to then take up residence in the, quote, unquote, shadows and to be part of this mysterious numbers of millions supposedly someday seeking amnesty. Well, those people are not being released anymore because there is no more catch-and-release. And it’s widely known.

One of the reasons there is not this everyday, gigantic mass of humanity at the border is because they know getting in does not automatically mean they’re gonna be released to get lost. The numbers of illegal immigrants getting into the country is way down, and it’s happened without a wall, without a physical wall. The president has also succeeded in negotiating new deals with Mexico and the Central American countries where they have pledged to help stop illegal immigration. Have you heard of it?

There’s a program called Remain in Mexico. Know what it is? It means anybody from Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, traveling through Mexico to get here stays in Mexico. In Mexico is no longer sending them north without obstruction. And this program, the Remain in Mexico program has sent 60,000 illegal aliens back to Mexico where they are awaiting immigration hearings, not here in the United States.

Now, this is big. And it has been happening for a while. It doesn’t get reported, obviously. It’s happening in a sense under the radar, even though it’s not — I know about it — it’s not happening under the radar. Mexico, you could say, they’re doing more to solve illegal immigration finally than Congress is. And you haven’t heard a word about it. The president’s having successes like these in an election year, and you’re going to be hearing about this as the days and weeks, months unfurl.