{"id":23291,"date":"2006-01-23T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T06:01:01","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2021-08-23T09:32:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T13:32:00","slug":"lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/01\/23\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lazy Nightline Ignores Rush\u2019s Afghanistan Troop Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I guess I missed this because I haven\u2019t seen Nightline in I don\u2019t know how long. But apparently Nightline did a recent show with — who is this comedian? Well, I can\u2019t find the name in the story here real quickly. Kathy Griffin, comedian Kathy Griffin. You know, I\u2019m not into pop culture. I never heard of her. Have you heard of her, H.R.? I don\u2019t know who she is. Doesn\u2019t matter. I mean, I\u2019m not surprised. The whole point of the Nightline show was to paint conservatives, including me, as too cowardly to help the USO, and this story is posted at NewsBusters.org. “In a December 23rd USA Today front-page story, ‘USO Cheers Troops But Iraq Gigs Tough to Book. Safety concerns, disagreement with the war keeping many celebrities from volunteering,\u2019 reporters Martin Kasindorf and Steven Komarow related how actor-comedian Robin Williams ‘who, like others, has been an outspoken critic of Bush\u2019s management of the war.<\/p>\n

Wayne Newton, a Republican who backs Bush, says, ‘Some stars have turned down the USO because they thought some performances would amount to endorsing the war,\u2019 but on a Friday evening Nightline story, Terry Moran through his use of sound bites from two left-wingers, portrayed cowardly conservatives including Rush Limbaugh, who isn\u2019t a stage performer, as the problem facing the USO in trying to get stars to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. Moran asserted…” Do we have sound bites of this? We do? I thought I saw this on the list. Here. We have a little sound bite. Grab #24. This is from the program, Friday night is when it was on Nightline.<\/p>\n

MORAN: Comedian Kathy Griffin has done one USO tour to Kuwait and Afghanistan and signed up for another soon to the Middle East. A self-described “D-list celebrity” and opponent of the war, she, too, loves performing for the troops, and she wonders why some vocal war supporters have stayed home.<\/p>\n

GRIFFIN: I think Rush Limbaugh should go over, you know, put your money where your mouth is.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Hmm. Hmm. Now, isn\u2019t this interesting? “Rush Limbaugh should put his money where his mouth is and, you know, go over.” All right. As you people who listen to this program regularly know, about a year ago, in February, I went to Afghanistan<\/a> and did not just one tour. I went to four or five different bases, spoke to all kinds of troops, and I also did other things as well, had chock-full days. My website is full. To this day, you can go to my website and read the transcripts of the reports that I filed from — “filed” — I called in. Reporters “file” stuff and I\u2019m not a reporter. I went over there. I did a troop visit, and I called in every day or most of the days and gave a summary of what happened, what I had seen, what I said, and what I did over there. I have asked the USO and the defense department numbers of times to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, and finally one of my requests was answered by the US department — well, the Agency for International Development, which is part of the state department, run by — just resigned from this position — Andrew Natsios, but I went over.<\/p>\n

Mary Matalin was with me for the whole week. It\u2019s where I introduced myself to the show “24” on the plane ride over. How many times have we talked about it on this program? You know that I have made requests. I\u2019m not going to mention any names, because the purpose here is not to get anybody in trouble. It\u2019s not Rumsfeld, but I called the defense department.<\/p>\n

I called the secretary of defense\u2019s office about September, two years in a row saying, “If you need somebody to go over at Christmastime, I\u2019ll go,” and both times I heard, “Oh, you\u2019re one of the most requested people we get to come over,” and I never heard back. Now, the USO, I don\u2019t know that I officially requested the USO, but they\u2019ve never invited me, either. Now, I remember this story in December. This story in USA Today was all about the fact that the USO is out there whining because they can\u2019t get enough celebrities to go, precisely because too many of these celebrities feel that going over would show their support for the war.<\/p>\n

They still say they support the troops but they can\u2019t do that, because you don\u2019t support what the troops do. So now it\u2019s morphed into the reason, according to this “D-list comedian” on Nightline, and Nightline Friday, the real reason is that all these conservative stage performers are too cowardly to go over there. Now, this is an interesting question to me in a purely professional sense. I have the most listened to radio talk show in history, have the most listened to radio talk show in America, and at any given time we have up to 24 million people listening during a week. We hit about two million people a show, and at one time there was between 4-1\/2 and 5 million people listening to the program. I have a website.<\/p>\n

The Afghanistan trip that I took was made a huge deal of on this program and on my website. Now, how is it that a program like Nightline, in preparation for this broadcast, cannot find out who has and has not been to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?
\n<\/a>
\nHow is it that they can\u2019t? Is it my responsibility? Not knowing that they\u2019ve got a show coming up, is it my responsibility after I get back to send out a press release to all of the news networks so that they know what I have just done? Maybe so, because they obviously don\u2019t listen to this program, and I\u2019ve known that for a long time because as often as I get misquoted here or as often as some other places\u2019 websites will take me out of context and the mainstream press will eat it all up and report it as though it actually happened. What are we supposed to do? It\u2019s made me think: how do network news people learn anything they know? And I myself have said on this program that the fastest way to get a story anywhere is to send out a fax or a press release to some reporter because that\u2019s how most of them find out what\u2019s going on, and they have their sources and they have their little enclaves in which they live.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve told you about the story about how this fake group in Chicago successfully redefined the food groups before the AMA proved that they were a bogus outfit, and all they did was create some nice little logo, put it on a fax and send the fax out in a very official-looking way, and networks bought it and trumpeted the thing. Do I care that Nightline — I mean, the last thing that I want to do when I come back from a place like Afghanistan is put out a press release and say, “Hey, guess what I did?” because I know how it\u2019s going to be interpreted. You don\u2019t come back — brag is the wrong word, but I didn\u2019t go over there for the publicity of it. I didn\u2019t go over there for all of the reasons that a lot of other people do these kinds of things. I went over there because I actually wanted to send a message to the troops.<\/p>\n

Last year, year before, we\u2019re constantly in the midst of this partisan political battle in this country. The troops are being ridiculed and impugned and that really intensified this year, and I wanted to go over there just from me, and knowing that what I would say represents the same views you have, our views and our appreciation and love and support for what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all volunteers, and they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing to protect the country, to protect their families. They\u2019re doing it out of a commitment — and I didn\u2019t think it was worth them being impugned. So am I supposed to come back and issue a press release saying, “Hey guess what I just did! Guess where I just got back from? I\u2019m available for interviews.” No, I\u2019m not going to do that. I wasn\u2019t going to do interviews about it. I\u2019ve got my radio program to get the message out. But not doing it has resulted in a Nightline broadcast that is just absurd ? and this is the vaunted ABC News machine. Now, my program is on several ABC radio stations — in San Francisco, in New York, in Dallas, in Washington. I saw this story. Somebody actually sent me this last night and I\u2019ve got a couple more copies of it e-mailed to me today by people who saw it, and it just cements and confirms my impression. These people are living in a bubble, and they haven\u2019t the slightest clue.<\/p>\n

This Terry Moran guy thought he was making a big point by finding this D-list celebrity to go on and talk about how these conservatives are a bunch of cowards. Now, Brent Baker wrote the story at NewsBusters, and one of the points that he makes, “Well, the USO doesn\u2019t invite media people. I mean, the USO invites, you know, stage performers or film performers or musicians or whatever.” If the USO were going to invite people that did not perform on stage, then why not invite Terry Moran? Why couldn\u2019t we also say Terry Moran\u2019s never gone over there to address the troops, or anybody else on Nightline? They\u2019d go over there maybe to report but they haven\u2019t gone over there to address the troops. Why not lump them in as they\u2019ve lumped me in? Of course, I do a stage show now and then — as rarely as possible, but I do them. But the libs don\u2019t find what I do entertaining, you know. To them I am fingernails on a chalkboard. My audience finds it entertaining, but they don\u2019t. But the fact that they don\u2019t even know about it, the fact that they don\u2019t even know that this has happened convinces me more than ever that they live in a bubble, and it\u2019s more reasonable than ever not to trust or believe what they report because there is a whole world in this country to which they are strangers.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: This is Judith in Clinton Township, Michigan. Judith, thanks for waiting. I appreciate your patience.<\/p>\n

CALLER: You\u2019re welcome. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your show, and not only is it entertaining but it\u2019s also educational.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Thank you.<\/p>\n

CALLER: I did see this Kathy Griffin piece on Nightline, and you\u2019re right, she\u2019s enormously uninformed, and so is Terry Moran. He used to be the White House correspondent in Bush\u2019s first term and since he\u2019s not doing that anymore he\u2019s become very anti-Bush. I wanted to also thank you —<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s not new. Wait just a second. That\u2019s nothing new.<\/p>\n

CALLER: But I also wanted to thank you for your Adopt-A-Soldier Program. I did do that for some soldiers at Christmastime, and that really gave all of us a really good feeling that we could do that. You know, just go online and do those subscriptions, so I thought it was great that you did that — and why wouldn\u2019t they bring that up, you know?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Because they don\u2019t know about it, and even if they did know about it they wouldn\u2019t bring it up. I\u2019m convinced, they\u2019re unaware and uninformed, and one of the things that leads them to that is they already think they know who conservatives are. It\u2019s like the Alito hearings. I told you last week — well, week before last — I\u2019m not convinced that they really didn\u2019t know the truth about Alito and that CAP club that he was a member of and some of these cases. You\u2019ve got Ted Kennedy out there saying, “He\u2019s never, never ruled in favor of a minority plaintiff in his career as a judge.” Well, a couple hours after it was over, four instances of just that happening were produced. Now, I know Ted Kennedy has happy hour and the gym and all this sort of stuff, but he\u2019s got staff doing all these other things, and I really wonder if the staff just looks at Alito. “He\u2019s conservative. He probably never ruled for plaintiffs.<\/p>\n

Why, he\u2019s a racist; he\u2019s a conservative. We\u2019ll just go out with it.” Now, some people disagreed with me, “No, no, no, they know it. They just think they can get away with it.” Well, either way it\u2019s idiotic. Either way it\u2019s absurd and stupid, and I think that when they look at a conservative in wartime, they see a chicken hawk. They see a big talker who\u2019s never gone to war and they have no credibility, shouldn\u2019t be allowed to talk about it and obviously they\u2019re cowards. That\u2019s the template; that is the mind-set, and they don\u2019t even think to question it because that\u2019s what they honestly believe in their hearts and souls, and it comes as a shock, or maybe it doesn\u2019t, when they learn the truth. But that doesn\u2019t change the way they look at these.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m really not sure how to read it other than they are just clueless, they\u2019re just absolutely clueless, and if they\u2019re this clueless about one or two things, how clueless are they about a number of other things? And the answer has to be: Quite clueless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: How is it that a program like Nightline, in preparation for this broadcast, cannot find out who has and has not been to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nLazy Nightline Ignores Rush's Afghanistan Troop Visit - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/01\/23\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Lazy Nightline Ignores Rush's Afghanistan Troop Visit - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: How is it that a program like Nightline, in preparation for this broadcast, cannot find out who has and has not been to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/01\/23\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/01\/23\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2006\/01\/23\/lazy_nightline_ignores_rush_s_afghanistan_troop_visit\/\",\"name\":\"Lazy Nightline Ignores Rush's Afghanistan Troop Visit - 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