RUSH: Now, normally, ladies and gentlemen, we wouldn’t talk about things like this, but this is too good to ignore. The feud going on between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump over Trump’s “second chance” for Tara Conner, Miss USA. This is what got it all started. This is Wednesday on the view, and this is what Rosie said about Trump.
O’DONNELL: He annoys me on a multitude [sic] of levels. He’s the moral authority? Left the first wife, had an affair. Left the second wife, had an affair, had kids both times, but he’s the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America. Donald, sit and spin, my friend! I don’t enjoy him. No. He had inherited a lot of money — wait a minute — and he’s been bankrupt so many times where we didn’t have to pay. He didn’t pay off the people he owed. So get ready. This is going to be good. He’s going to sue me, but he’ll be bankrupt by that time, so I won’t have to worry. I don’t know. I just think that this man is like sort of one of those, you know, snake oil salesman in — in Little House on the Prairie.
RUSH: All right, you can say a lot of things that you want to say about Donald Trump but if you say he went bankrupt a number of times or that he inherited his money or that he’s a snake oil salesman, if you take aim at Trump’s reputation and image, he will come at you. I don’t care who you are, he will come back at you, and last night on one of these entertainment shows (they’re all a dime a dozen) we have a montage here of Trump responding to Rosie O’Donnell.
TRUMP: Rosie O’Donnell is disgusting, I mean, both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob. She talks like a truck driver. She doesn’t have her facts. She’ll say anything that comes to her mind — and, you know, her show failed when it was a talk show. She failed on that. The ratings went very, very low and very bad, and she got essentially thrown off television. Her magazine was a total catastrophe. I never filed bankruptcy. I never went bankrupt. But she said I went bankrupt. So probably I’ll sue her, because it would be fun. I’d like to take some money out of her fat-ass pockets.
RUSH: Last night on the entertainment shows again, here’s more of Trump.
TRUMP: Well, Rosie is a loser. Rosie’s been a loser for a long time. Her magazine failed. She got sued. She folded up like a tent. It was too bad. Rosie is somebody out of control who really just doesn’t have it, and she ought to be careful because I’ll send one of my friends to pick up her girlfriend, and I think it would be very easy.
RUSH: He said (laughing) and then he went on and intimidated that if Rosie were honest she would love to spend some time with Miss USA. He said that this morning on Fox. So Rosie responded on The View this morning.
O’DONNELL: Look who’s here today. Kelly! I was afraid to leave her home in case somebody with a combover came and stole her from me. So, yeah, she’s here now.
RUSH: So who do you like in this, folks? Who do you like in this? (laughing) I love Trump in this one.
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“I’ll send somebody over to steal her girlfriend. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard.” (Laughing.) Greetings and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We are here, Rush Limbaugh, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis. All right, to the phones, to Smithtown, Long Island. This is Marlene, and I’m glad you waited. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s Marlene. I wanted to get your spin on the Rosie O’Donnell situation. I’m wondering if this is a whole big publicity stunt on her behalf.
RUSH: Well, you can never rule that out. Everybody in media does things for PR and spin. I don’t. I’ve made a point not to, but everybody does. Trump does. Rosie does. I mean, everybody does. Trump even said today the only thing he graduates about this is that he’s calling attention to this “stupid show,” The View, which he called the “stupid show.”
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: He said (paraphrased), “I know I’m doing this, but the show is going to stink. It’s so bad with Rosie on it. She’s destroyed the show. It won’t take long. No matter how much we build it up, this show is finished. I can’t believe Barbara Walters would purposely wreck her own show with this truck driver broad that she’s brought in there to host,” blah, blah. So he knows that he’s generating publicity for her.
CALLER: Right, right. Do you think it’s like a publicity conspiracy?
RUSH: No! No, no, no, no, no. It’s a way of life for people in the media. The real interesting thing to me is, as Rosie continues to be the focus of the show, what’s going to happen to the other hosts? I mean, there’s other woman on this show. You gotta understand what The View is. You’ve got Elisabeth Hasselbeck who (sigh) I don’t think…
CALLER: Not a journalist.
RUSH: Wait a minute. What about a journalist?
CALLER: She came from Survivor.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Her husband is backup quarterback for the New York Giants.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Tim Hasselbeck who is the brother of Matt Hasselbeck, the quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks. They’re both the sons of Don Hasselbeck, former tight end for the New England Patriots, and they live in Boston.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: But she’s a lone conservative. You’ve got Joy Behar who is no queen, and then you’ve got whoever the guest host is when Barbara Walters isn’t there. But my point is, with Rosie hogging (no pun intended) all of the PR and the attention of this thing, these other babes on this show might end up getting a little envious and resentful of that.
CALLER: Well, what bothers me is Miss USA, deserves another chance. We all make mistakes, and for Rosie O’Donnell to come on top of Donald Trump and say, “You’re a snake oil salesman,” I mean, this girl deserves another chance. You know, she’s not a politician. She’s not running the United States.
RUSH: That’s not even what this is about anymore. Rosie got this started because she started insulting Trump saying: Who are you to be talking about who deserves second chances? Look at you! You’re no moral arbiter. This, in a way, this is kind of interesting. In the past couple of days on this program we’ve been talking about the passive American society, which is unwilling to say that anything anybody does is wrong, especially if they’re “sorry” about it, or if they have a really good excuse, because we’ve all been told for years now, part of political correctness, to focus on the imperfections of people, because “everybody has them.” Nobody’s perfect, and therefore nobody is allowed to pass judgment on others, and it has been to liberals like Rosie O’Donnell who have been responsible for this kind of attitude, and it’s led to a blurring of the lines: right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil.
There’s no white and black anymore. It’s a whole bunch of nuanced gray out there, and since everybody is a sinner and since everybody is imperfect, then nobody can pass judgment on anybody. If you haven’t been in the military, you can’t talk about the war in Iraq! If you had a chance to serve and you didn’t go, you have to shut up. A woman who… What did she do? Aborted her mother, I don’t know, her daughter, whatever. “Until you’ve been in my shoes you can’t comment on what I did!” That was in London. So there’s been this building movement that nobody is allowed to pass judgment on anybody else. Trump, by the way, executed that flawlessly. (Trump impression) “When I talked with Tara, I discovered a good person! Troubled, very troubled, but good person, and Tara…” whatever. So he gave her a second chance. What’s being missed here is it’s his company!
The Miss USA pageant is his business, and if he wants to give anybody a second chance in it, he can. He just went out and did it in public because Miss USA is public and so forth. Rosie is not being a good liberal on this one. Rosie came out and said, “Who are you to be passing moral judgment? Why, you’re flawed. Who are you to be talking about giving second chances?” If Rosie were being a true liberal, she should have loved this babe getting a second chance because all she did was act human. “We all make mistakes.” You said it yourself, Marlene, when we went to the phone call with you. I’m not trying to make too much of this, but back to your original point. It’s one of the things that, frankly, kind of bothers me. I may get a little inside baseball on you here, but the lack of substance and genuineness among all kinds of media people from Hollywood actors down to reporters, TV and radio talk show hosts.
You would not believe, folks, the number of people whose lives are lived according to what might be said about them or what could be said about them. You would not believe the relationships that people forge just so as to create a positive media image. I guess what I’m saying is there’s so much phoniness out there that gets passed off as genuine. I’m not going to name any names here but I could give you two or three radio shows, for example, that have literally no audience to speak of. They are, quote, unquote, “national shows,” and they may be in 30 markets, and yet they’re touted as the most important and relevant and big-time radio shows out there, and it’s all because it has been spun that way by the guests who appear on these shows. Speaking for myself, when I moved to New York in 1988, I had a goal. I wanted to be the most listened to guy on the radio.
Really! I didn’t want it “said” that I was. I wanted it to be, because I believe that if you’re in radio that you have to connect with the audience. The audience is what matters. I’m not trying to impress other media people. I’m not doing this for them so that they’ll say it’s a great show. I’m trying to do a great show so that you will listen to it forever and ever and ever and never go away, and you’ll listen to it in such large numbers that I will be able to charge confiscatory advertising rates to my advertisers, and all of that has happened. Actually our fees and rates are very reasonable (laughs), but the amount of phoniness and the amount of activity that is engaged in to create an image that is not based on substance, is profound. So when you ask me, “Is this a PR conspiracy?” I don’t think Rosie and The Donald got together and said, “Hey, let’s put on this act,” because Trump is sensitive as hell when you attack his reputation and his image as a top-flight, leading businessman, self-made and all that.
He’s not going to sit back and let it slide. In Rosie’s case, hell, I don’t know, folks. I think most people are in love with this publicity. You know the old phrase: “It doesn’t matter what they say, as long as they continue to spell the name right.” I forget who said that, Barnum or Bailey (laughing), but for the most part in this oddball, kooky culture that we have today, that’s true! If used to not be as much as it is it is today. So I don’t think it’s a giant conspiracy, but Rosie is loving every minute of it, I’ll guarantee you that. I don’t know what Barbara Walters. You know, Barbara Walters has this regal, almost royal image as a journalist, and this is her show that’s being reduced to a truck stop every morning. These women are broads. I mean, most of them on the show are just broads, and I think this show is actually the worst thing could have happened to the feminists because it’s portraying women as nothing but a bunch of chatty, loud-mouthed, gossiping you-know-whats that never shut up, and they’re not likable. They’re mean as they can be. Hello feminism!
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Is that right? Mr. Snerdley informs me we have had five calls in the last few minutes from truckers complaining that the Donald and I are disparaging truckers by assuming Rosie O’Donnell is one and that they expect better. They have a point. They have a point. You know, I don’t often apologize for things and I cannot apologize for Trump, but I occasion I will apologize. I hadn’t even thought of that, and I don’t like offending people, especially truckers. Where would we be in this country without truckers? We could get along without Rosie O’Donnell, but we couldn’t get along without truckers. They have a point. There is no question about it.