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<\/p>\nRUSH: Ross Perot has died, folks. Eighty-nine years of age. And many people in the Drive-By Media today are saying that it might in fact have been Ross Perot that inspired Trump to believe that he could actually win. Ross Perot sought the presidency in 1992. His primary opponent was George H. W. Bush. There was a personal rivalry between the two that dated back to the Reagan administration.<\/p>\n
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Now, the Perot campaign, just to relive a little history here, the Perot campaign — and, Snerdley, you\u2019ll remember this — it was the first crisis and I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been one since — the first crisis between me and you in the audience. I told everybody to not get sucked into this. I was convinced that Perot didn\u2019t intend to win, that he had some other agenda here. And I was later I think borne out as accurate.<\/p>\n
I had no personal animus for Mr. Perot. In fact, I admired him a great deal. But I will never forget the early syndication partner, Ed McLaughlin — you remember him, Mr. Snerdley? We seldom had meetings, but he called an emergency meeting. He said, \u201cWe think you might be on the wrong side of the Perot thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYour audience is all-in on Perot. You\u2019ve got \u2013\u201d They really thought, the grand pooh-bahs of management really thought that I was throwing away the program by not getting on board the Perot campaign and candidacy. And it was. I mean, it was brutal out there. We were getting phone calls. I was getting phone calls during that entire summer, the entire summer of 1992.<\/p>\n
I mean, the audience was ticked off at me. And I was trying to tell everybody why I wasn\u2019t getting sucked into this. I said, \u201cYou guys, this is personal. There\u2019s something going on. And I\u2019m gonna find out what it is.\u201d And I did. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think Perot intends to win this. If he gets close to winning it, he\u2019s gonna drop out,\u201d which he did. When he got to 19 points, he dropped out.<\/p>\n
And remember what he blamed it on? He was mad at the media, did a hit piece on his daughter. Everybody gets death threats. That\u2019s what he said. He didn\u2019t care about death threats. He\u2019s a guy turned on by death threats. I mean, the black helicopters and the tinfoil hat people were circling his estate. But he was brilliant. I mean, he had the same ability as Trump to reach people.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s one of the few, he likewise, like Trump, had established a genuine bond. Yeah, my nickname for him was priceless. \u201cLittle hand grenade with a bad haircut,\u201d is what I called him. Little hand grenade with a haircut. At any rate, he had the bond with voters back then that Trump has. He came to the public eye via C-SPAN. Remember at the time CNN is it. There is no blogosphere yet. There is no mass number of websites. Those are just building out.<\/p>\n
There really wasn\u2019t a huge talk radio apparatus out there yet. It was still basically this show and a couple of others. But there was no alternative media. Perot got noticed on C-SPAN by making speeches all over the country to various economic clubs. And back then, you watched C-SPAN if you were a political junkie. That\u2019s where you had to go if you were interested. What you watch Fox News for today or CNN or whatever, C-SPAN is what you watched back then.<\/p>\n
Perot was all over it and he was lighting people up like Trump did. And I told my syndication partners, said, “Look, I can\u2019t fake this. I just don\u2019t think this is a legitimate candidacy for one \u2013” but they didn\u2019t care. “You\u2019re losing your audience. You\u2019re gonna lose advertisers. You\u2019re on the wrong side of this.” I said, “Stick with me on this, \u2019cause it\u2019s not the case.” And then later when Perot dropped — and got back in, by the way. But he did drop out — and I\u2019ll never be convinced otherwise — he dropped out because he actually thought he might win it.<\/p>\n
Remember he was in the ponytail guy debate with George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And he owned it. He\u2019s flying around doing rallies like Trump did. And his big tick back then, his big push was how wasteful the government was with money. It was spending way too much money, and everything was gonna be blown to smithereens if we didn\u2019t get a handle on it. And he wanted to get rid of every government jet, for example.<\/p>\n
He said (Perot impersonation), \u201cYou got rid of every jet, every jet, Larry, replace everything, you want your Lear 55s and we\u2019re in fat city, Larry. We don\u2019t have to be traveling around here in these gigantic Boeing nut jobs.\u201d People were loving it and applauding it, going to wherever to find out what\u2019s a Lear 55. (interruption) Yeah, that was his line, “You own this country. This country is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/APP-070919-Perot-004.jpg\")
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His favorite media guy was Larry King. Loved Larry King. He was the first anti-NAFTA. He came out — in fact, he set a records rating on CNN with a debate with Algore on NAFTA. The night after that I was — this is kind of funny too. The night after that debate — it was a Saturday night debate and it was on CNN, moderated by Larry King, and the next night was the 60 Minutes 150th anniversary of their show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the Temple of Dendur.<\/p>\n
Of course, I was invited because they thought I would cause a blow up being put at Camille Paglia\u2019s table. That didn\u2019t happen. But during the cocktail hour Tom Brokaw is standing next to one of the statues, the Temple of Dendur thinking he looks like whoever\u2019s in it, and he\u2019s got the numbers from the debate the night before, he\u2019s telling everybody, this damn thing got a 12 share. CNN had never had a 12, no cable outlet ever had a 12 in anything, and nobody could believe it.<\/p>\n
It was the debate on NAFTA that had such high ratings. And that happened to be the debate where Algore referred to me as a distinguished American, the NAFTA debate. Those were amazing, amazing times. And Perot was an amazing guy. Very quickly, the problem — and I learned this from George H. W. Bush. Back during the Reagan administration when H. W. Bush was the veep, Perot was pro-military like you can\u2019t believe.<\/p>\n
His office had artifacts and memorabilia from every significant military conflict in the world. He was a collector. And a bunch of it was on display. He had a deep devotion to military people and particularly POWs. And during — I forget — I think it was the second term of the Reagan administration there was news that had hit that there had been a discovery of a number of alive American POWs in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
And as I heard the story told, George H. W. Bush was entrusted with the responsibility to put together a plan of action to get them back, had to be done on the QT, and it was decided that as part of it being on the QT, federal money could not be used \u2019cause they wanted to keep it quiet.<\/p>\n
So what happened was that H. W. Bush and some others reached out to Perot, since he was well known as a devotee of the military — is a billionaire, many times over — by the way, his investment portfolio was 60% muni bonds, in case you\u2019re interested. And tax-free muni bonds. May be over 60%.<\/p>\n
At any rate, they asked Perot to fund it. But he wanted to be part of it. He wanted to be known as part of it. He wanted to be in the planning, and he wanted to be in the execution, he wanted to be on site when it was executed. And he was told no. So the mission was scrubbed. And he always supposedly took it personally that they were asking for his money, but they didn\u2019t want any other part of him participating in it.<\/p>\n
Now, there has to be more to it than that, but that\u2019s probably enough. Anyway, the campaign of 1992 did come down to Perot trying to do damage to George H. W. Bush, which some people think he did. He was still on the ballot. Third-party. Of course that gave it to Clinton who won with 43% of the vote. Now, there was a lot of polling data analysis after the election that indicated Bush would have lost anyway had there not been a third-party candidate.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/APP-070919-Perot-002.jpg\")
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Now, I don\u2019t know — back then it was believable, and it was not funded by Perot. But as far as Perot was concerned, it was mission accomplished. But later in his life, Perot just could not — and I want to soft sell this — let\u2019s just put it this way, he was not a supporter of Obama. Very, very troubled. But his time in the public eye had passed.<\/p>\n
Ross Perot was a genuine American. He perhaps in many ways was the definition of a real and genuine American. Fearless, I say \u201chand grenade with a bad haircut,\u201d but he was one-of-a-kind, one-of-a-kind character. He captured the minds and hearts of millions of Americans in identically the same way that Donald Trump has, except he didn\u2019t keep on with it.<\/p>\n
Anyway, he passed away today at age 89. And some great memories just thinking about that one year, 1992. And the year leading up to it. He was on C-SPAN for a year even prior. I remember one day watching C-SPAN — remember Christopher Hitchens? The British journalist, regular guest on CNN, very outspoken, controversial for his day, very left wing, of course, on some things.<\/p>\n
He was being interviewed. It was a regular guest spot on C-SPAN and when they went to the calls all anybody wanted to talk about was Perot, and he\u2019d never heard of him. He didn\u2019t know who Perot was. I mean, he knew Perot was a businessman in Dallas. He didn\u2019t know anything about Perot, what he was doing running around the country making speeches on the wastefulness of the economy and American government out of control.<\/p>\n
And I remember him saying at the end, \u201cI\u2019m gonna have to look into it, find out who this guy is, I\u2019m totally taken blindsided by this.\u201d It was a great illustration of how the inside-the-Beltway apparatus is totally unaware, and even was back then, of what\u2019s happening outside the Beltway. They\u2019re just unaware.<\/p>\n
And it happened again with Trump. And they continue, they\u2019re not even interested, even now they\u2019re not interested in what\u2019s really going on “out there.” They\u2019re just interested in snuffing it out, just like this U.K. ambassador made clear the Brits want to snuff Trump out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: Ross Perot was a genuine American. He perhaps in many ways was the definition of a real and genuine American. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":314928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":"\n