RUSH: Craig in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: (garbled audio) Hey, thanks Rush. Quick question for you.

RUSH: Yes, sir?

CALLER: Do you think this is going to affect disaster relief now with this happening to the Republicans trying to get tax exemption? Will it happen, too, to us who are in tornado states where these things happen quite frequently? Is it going to affect us getting any relief or us getting money now that this is all tied into whether you’re —

RUSH: No, I —

CALLER: — (garbled) or not?

RUSH: No. The president, has he not, already ordered disaster relief for Oklahoma? I don’t think so. There was a time where people jokingly said that stuff. In fact, I’ll be honest with you. When the tornadoes hit Oklahoma… Obama sued Arizona, for example, so when the tornado hit Oklahoma, there’s a part of me that laughingly said, “You know what?

“He’ll deny ’em aid because it’s a Romney state.” But, no. He authorized the aid there. I understand your concern. The fact that you have the concern, the fact that you have a legitimate question about that is an indication in and of itself. The Texas fires? There was no help. You know when Texas had those wildfires, there was no federal help offered.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: I think the same thing in Tennessee. So your question has a basis, a foundation.

CALLER: With him always denying and having nothing to do with any policy or any type of relief, I mean, I figured that he would just say he’s not in charge of whether we get the funds or not.

RUSH: Look, I understand the question because he has denied aid in previous instances. But I think when the Oklahoma tornado hit, he was right there with the promise that disaster relief would be forthcoming. The real story about that was Tom Coburn, the Republican senator. He said (paraphrased), “Look, you know, I’m an Oklahoman, and it’s my state. But we’ve got a law here that says all this stuff has gotta to be revenue neutral. “So if we’re gonna spend money that we hadn’t planned on spending for disaster relief here in Oklahoma, we’re gonna have to find it somewhere in the budget.

“It can’t be new money.”

He did stand up and say that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back to the caller we had who asked me if I thought Obama might not come through with aid for Oklahoma or where he lived in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, because of politics. I checked the e-mail during the break, and a person said, “You know, that guy made more sense than I think you were acknowledging.” You go to the New York, New Jersey area, and you will find that Staten Island has gotten the least aid to recover from Hurricane Sandy. It’s a Republican borough. And the point was made that Obama’s modus operandi is punishment. Obama punishes enemies. He punishes people who don’t support him.

There are the examples of the Texas wildfires and the floods in Tennessee where there wasn’t any disaster relief. Requests were made for — what’s the term? Call it a disaster area. I forget. Disaster zone or something. He didn’t do that. That was denied, and so forth. And it reminded me, you know, when Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senator from Rhode Island who apologized for this later, but his first instinctive comment after the tornado in Oklahoma was to bash the people there and blame them as polluters and deniers for causing all of the destruction, weather-wise, in his area of the country. Remember that?

I mean, folks, it was sick what Sheldon Whitehouse said. He was essentially blaming Republicans in Oklahoma for the weather, destructive weather. (imitating Whitehouse) “You polluters, and you deniers, you come hear and you want money from us? Well, you’re causing us to spend money with your own disasters that you’re causing because you don’t believe in global warming, and you’re therefore preventing us from doing anything about climate change, and therefore the storms that are hitting us are destructive.” It was so over the top that even he had to apologize, but it was the first thing he said, it was instinctive, and, in fact, it’s probably what he really believes. People find it hard to believe when I say this. Reaction, particularly among low-information voters, “That just can’t be.”

Sheldon Whitehouse was blaming Republicans for the weather. Now, I am here to tell you that he meant it, even though he apologized later. He meant it. They, the liberals — folks, when they say these things, you hear them as really over the top and wacko, extreme, they believe this stuff. They believe global warming is real, and it’s caused by excessive capitalism, excessive profit, oil, all these horrible things, and anybody who supports capitalism, oil, is guilty of preventing them, the do-gooders, from stopping global warming, which is the root cause of all this. So he goes out there and blames the Republicans in Oklahoma for the destructive weather in Rhode Island and Connecticut and New York and New Jersey, he means it. As a liberal, that is what he really thinks.

To you and me, this is radical, lunacy. It is their mainstream guiding light. I’m not exaggerating at all. It’s another reason why I often say, we have nothing in common with them, politically. There is no overlapping commonality where we can find areas to be bipartisan with these people. There just isn’t. And so the question, would Obama, because his modus operandi, he punishes, this guy, he is obsessed with his own messianic status and people that don’t buy into it and don’t support him, they’re gonna pay for that one way or the other. Look at his enemies. Look who he’s going after. AP, Fox, whatever, the people that he’s targeting, mentioning me all the time. I’m not exactly known as an Obamaite.

So he says that there will be aid forthcoming for Oklahoma, but let’s actually wait and see. Will it be little and late as it is in Staten Island? Of all the places where Hurricane Sandy hit, Staten Island’s gotten the least amount of assistance. And it’s a Republican borough. And the Republican GM owned dealerships. They were the ones shut down. He does punish his opponents. Carries grudges and all of that. So it’s entirely possible. His modus operandi is to eliminate opposition.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s a list. “Obama Denies Texas Federal Disaster Aid.” “FEMA Denies Disaster Relief for Claremont County.” “FEMA Denies Texas Disaster Relief for Wildfires.” “Obama Denies Florida Disaster Relief.” “Obama Denying Disaster Relief to Red States?” “FEMA Denies Federal Disaster Aid to Oklahoma Again.” That’s August 26th, last year. “FEMA, Obama Deny Funds to GOP-Leaning Virginia.” These are Google searches. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, just the first seven: Obama Denies Federal Disaster Aid to X.

So it’s a legitimate question: Will Oklahoma actually get their money?

I’m gonna say it again. I loved it. The media down there couldnÂ’t believe it. Anderson Cooper could not believe it. Shep Smith could not believe that in 24 hours they’d already started to rebuild. They couldn’t believe that the Oklahomans weren’t just sitting around waiting for the government to show up. They weren’t sitting around feeling sorry for themselves! They couldn’t believe that they weren’t just sitting around waiting for somebody to do something. Literally, they were stunned that Oklahoma had already started to rebuild and that they were giving thanks to God for surviving it and so forth.

Backbone of the country, folks.