RUSH: The Dick Cheney interview on Thursday. I remember talking to several of you people after the program, and while you were enthusiastic and excited about some of the things he said, many of you (and you know who you are) called here and asked, ‘Where was the emotion? Where was the rage? Why wasn’t Cheney impassioned about this?’ and I asked him, of course, ‘Does this Pelosi stuff enrage you?’ and he was very calm, cool and collected. He’s Dick Cheney, and I told you people, ‘There’s going to be plenty in this interview that if the Drive-Bys want to focus on it, they can make Matterhorn Mountain out of it,’ and they did. All weekend long, the Cheney interview was news, and particularly one thing. When he accused Nancy Pelosi of ‘bad behavior,’ that just set them off. It just totally set them off. I thought one of the things that they would react to in enraged anger would be when I compared the Democrats on that Senate committee that turned down the ambassadorial nomination of Sam Fox to Belgium — Kerry and Obama demanding that he apologize for donating money to the swift boats — I called that ‘Stalinist,’ refusing to vote for him being ambassador to Belgium simply because of a political donation, and I called them Stalinists, and I said to Vice President Cheney, ‘This is my word. You don’t have accept this. But to me this is Stalinist-like behavior.’ He said, ‘You’re dead on, Rush.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s what they’re going to focus on.’ Some did in the blogs but not in the Drive-By Media per se. We have a sound bite or two. First off, this is sort of like a montage here, Thursday and Friday of people mentioning Cheney on this program. We’ve got David Gregory, Caroline Shively of Fox News, and Steve Doocy. We have Brian Lamb. We have Kiran Chetry. We have Tim Russert. We have Dana Milbank. We have John Roberts. They’re all talking about Cheney’s appearance on this program last Thursday.
DAVID GREGORY: They’ve deployed the vice president to use pretty strong, uh, words as he did with Rush Limbaugh this week.
CAROLINE SHIVELY: Mr. Cheney spoke out about it on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, saying the meeting rewards Assad for bad behavior.
STEVE DOOCY: The vice president, on the Rush Limbaugh show, chastised her.
JOHN HARWOOD: You had Cheney bragging about it with Rush Limbaugh today. Democrats are incensed.
BRIAN LAMB: Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, repeated his allegations.
KIRAN CHETRY: Vice President Dick Cheney called her on that on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show.
TIM RUSSERT: Vice President Cheney went on the Rush Limbaugh radio show.
DANA MILBANK: It’s being directed, obviously, when it is made on Rush Limbaugh show, towards the base.
JOHN ROBERTS: Al-Qaeda had a significant presence in Iraq before the invasion, if you heard what he told Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, that really set ’em off, too — and of course he cited the evidence. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq before we went in there. It just set ’em off, as I knew it would. By the way, if you go read the Cheney transcript — and you didn’t hear it, just read it — as Mr. Snerdley pointed out this morning, it does sound harsh. All of you who thought it was sort of milquetoast because Cheney doesn’t speak with a whole lot of pep or energy, never fear. He got the message out, and they heard it, and the fact they spent so much time on this clearly illustrates they were bothered by it, and the only reason they’d be bothered by it is because he hit a home run. You know, if he was off the reservation or making wacko comments they’d be sitting there and laughing at it, but he’s challenging one of their templates and that is the whole war was based on a lie, that it was unnecessary and we don’t need to about where we are at all; there is no war on terror.
In fact, they’re still repeating on the blogs that disguised purpose for the war was to secure oil for Bush’s oil buddies and Halliburton. They’re still saying this, and we now know the first contract signed for Iraqi oil go to everybody but us. Actually, it’s kind of frustrating. The Chinese are getting dibs on some of the oil, a couple of other countries as well, but not the United States. Some people think we ought to get some of that oil revenue as a way of repaying ourselves for the costs that we have incurred. They were also upset with Cheney having said that the vote was a test of supporting the troops for Democrats, meaning the supplemental. That’s the first thing that he spoke about on the program last Thursday. So anyway, he hit the bullseye, and it had them infuriated. Chuck Todd of the Hotline was on Meet the Press yesterday, and this is ironic. This is funny. He’s describing how the conservative media machine piled on poor Nancy Pelosi’s trip.
TODD: This was a — the Republicans found an opening. You know, remember the plane incident with Pelosi. This is the second time that they’ve been able to get this sort of — the conservative media machine going — Rush Limbaugh, Drudge, all — all in sync, which really only for the first time it seems like in three months, and they hit her hard. She’s going to weather this storm. I think they need to, when they do these things, think, ‘What’s the worst-case scenario?’ and think about the optics of this. They should have had those three Republican members of Congress that went sooner, they should have had them with — with her on this trip, she should have had more than just one Republican and possibly had a high-profile person from the Iraq Study Group, since that’s what she has used —
RUSH: What is this?
TODD: — as a defense for going to Syria. She could have done this in a much more — much more carefully orchestrated way.
RUSH: Now, listen to this! This guy is reaming us for being unified in the conservative media, as though that never happens on the left. The Drive-By Media, as we know, are willing accomplices, bedfellows, if you will, with those in the Democrat Party. He gives us grief for being coordinated for the first time in three months. There was no coordination here. We had the vice president on the program. If there was any coordination, it’s in the Drive-Bys opposing Cheney. If there’s any coordination, every one of the Drive-Bys had the same objection, saying the same swords as they always do! But then, here’s Chuck Todd — you want to talk about coordination? — advising Pelosi on how she screwed up, what she should have done, and how to do something like this better the next time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Drew in Wichita, you’re next. Two calls in a row from Wichita. It’s nice to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Good to talk to you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I have a question. I was excited last week when I heard you were having the vice president on for an interview.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And part of it was because I have been thinking to myself, ‘I know Rush has been frustrated by some issues, here we’re going to get a chance to find out.’ One of the chief of those was, why was the president didn’t go ahead and show he was serious about this war funding by calling Congress back into session, and it seems to me you just…. You spent a lot of time pitching the vice president softballs.
RUSH: Well, gee, I’m sorry I let you down, sir, but softballs are the rule. When the White House calls, they say they will only take softballs, and if I’m going to get those guests I have to go by the rules. Cheney didn’t want any hard balls from me. He knew that I was prepared to ask.
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: What do you mean softballs? The questions I asked him provided news for the Drive-By Media all weekend long!
CALLER: I know that, and I know that you have —
RUSH: What did you want me to say? What were you hoping I asked?
CALLER: I was hoping you’d ask why the president didn’t call Congress back into session; why he let Nancy Pelosi take off when there’s a federal law that says that we can’t have private citizens go do this.
RUSH: Because there’s a classic rule when an enemy is totally imploding or making a fool of himself, you get out of the way and you let it happen.
CALLER: Okay.
CALLER’S CRUMB CRUNCHER: Yaaaaaaaay!
RUSH: What’s that?
CALLER: That’s my young skull full of mush.
RUSH: Ah, okay. Crying or happy?
CALLER: Quite happy, quite happy.
RUSH: Oh, that’s great.
CALLER: He’s getting to listen to dad on the radio in the other room.
RUSH: Oh, he hears you on the radio? No wonder he’s ecstatic.
CALLER: (Laughing.) There was a lot of things that the vice president said that I really got frustrated about and things that I was just thinking, ‘Man, Rush, is going to grab that and really,’ not drill him. I mean, that’s just not what you should do.
RUSH: You know, I’m used to this. Everybody thinks they can do it better until the try.
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: No, no. When I did my television show, that was the worst. After every television show, I’d hear it. Some days I didn’t think they weren’t any good, so critics said so and I agreed with them, but sometimes I thought it was a great show and then I’d go read the e-mail, ‘You really blew it! Why did you waste so much time accepting applause of the audience? You’ve only got 22 minutes. Get to the issues!’ or criticism of the tie I was wearing or some such thing. I don’t know. Anyway, you have to understand I addressed this in the beginning of the program. I said, ‘A lot of people called, they were upset that Cheney wasn’t more energetic and that he wasn’t more emotional,’ and I said, ‘You people are going to have to be patient here, because the things that he said, the questions I asked him and the answers he gave are going to be fodder for the Drive-By Media all weekend,’ and they were.