RUSH: I’d forgotten this. The editrix of the Limbaugh Letter sent this in. This is from October 8th. ‘Sen. Hillary Clinton engaged in a verbal tussle with a questioner over Iran Sunday at a town-hall style meeting after he said the New York Democrat had authorized the president to invade Iran. … The Democratic presidential front-runner then concluded by suggesting the question was planted, saying, ‘somebody obviously sent it to you.” We have audio of this in our archives. The questioner, a guy named Rolph, said, ”I take exception,’ Rolph fired back. ‘This is my own research. Nobody sent it to me, I am offended that you would suggest that.’ ‘Let me finish,’ Clinton sharply responded,’ as Nurse Rached, ‘before saying ‘I apologize, I just have been asked the very same question in three other places.” See, you live by the planted question, you die by it. Whether it was planted or not, she thinks so. This is projection. She knows they’re out there planting questions. She gets a question she wasn’t expecting because these audiences are stacked, and all of a sudden she goes ballistic, just like she went ballistic at Russert when he asked her about the driver’s licenses for illegals. We have that audio sound bite with the Rolph guy and his exchange with Mrs. Clinton.
HILLARY: What wasn’t in what you read to me — that somebody obviously sent to you — is that —
ROLPH: I take exception. This is my own research. I have not —
HILLARY: Well, then let me finish! Let me finish telling you —
ROLPH: Those are my words! Nobody sent that to me. I am offended that you would suggest it.
HILLARY: Well, then I ap– I — I apologize. It’s just that I’ve been asked the very same question in three other places, so let me apologize.
RUSH: Yeah, right, ‘Let me apologize, and I hope you get outta here without any bruises.’ I’ll tell you, folks, this is now getting fun, and I knew it wouldn’t start getting fun ’til about now.
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RUSH: To the phones we go, to Easton, Maryland. Tony, I’m glad you waited. Thanks for the call.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I was listening to you from the opening hour about Hillary planting questions, and I recalled the time when she was on Late Night with David Letterman in her first Senate run, and she answered a whole bunch of questions about the history of New York that David proposed to her, and, of course, she got them all right because she’s the smartest woman in the world. But it later leaked out from a staffer that she was given the questions before she appeared on the show.
RUSH: I remember that, too! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there is a pattern here — and, of course, a lot of people are eager to help the Clintons present the facade that they are what they are, which is not what they are. Steve in Middleburg, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Hey, now that you’re doing Russert’s job, would it be too much to ask you to e-mail a few more radioactive questions to Wolf? I’m trying to think of a way for more of your questions to reach Senator Clinton. And would you consider planting Mr. Snerdley at a campaign stop?
RUSH: (laughs)
CALLER: Or would that be classified as torture by the Geneva Convention?
RUSH: Well, it depends on if he were captured. I don’t think we could get away with that. We don’t plant things. We would not do this. I could send Wolf the questions that we suggest that be asked. ‘Mrs. Clinton, what would you like to talk about tonight? Mrs. Clinton, is there anything you haven’t said that you would like to say? Mrs. Clinton, is there anything that you said that you didn’t quite think you were clear enough on that you would like to clarify now? Mrs. Clinton, have you had enough time to answer the questions that you got tonight, and, if not, how much more time do you need? Mrs. Clinton, is there anything that’s been said by any of your opponents here that you think is unfair or unjust that you’d like to respond to?’ I’ll send him a list of these questions to help him out. It’s from one media figure to another. The guy’s been threatened. Well, he’s been warned. What’s the difference? Frank in New Strawn, Kansas. I never heard of that.
CALLER: Yeah, it’s a little town in eastern Kansas.
RUSH: Ah, well, great to have you with us.
CALLER: Thank you. Back when George Bush senior was running for president, I went to a town hall meeting and in the chance that I would ask him a question or get a chance to do that, I worked very hard to come up with a well-worded question about Supreme Court justices, and then the next day in the media, the local media they said that Republicans had obviously planted the questions, so I called them up and said, ‘Why did they say that?’ They said, ‘Well, because the regular people wouldn’t be able to come up with questions like that on their own,’ and I think that Hillary is worried in her campaign that the people are not asking the right questions, aren’t intelligent enough to get the right questions out for her status on whatever she wants to talk about.
RUSH: There may be some of that, but I don’t think that’s the driving force. I think the driving force behind planting questions is protection, is to make sure she doesn’t get a question that she doesn’t want to answer or doesn’t have an answer that she can give. Everybody that does this kind of thing gets worried that somebody who stands up, is going to ask an idiotic question. But if you’re really doing these town meetings, and if you’re really out there meeting the people that are going to vote for you, that’s an attitude of contempt and condescension that you’ve just described. You should have been insulted all to hell that some reporter thought you were a plant because an average person — a, quote, unquote, normal person — couldn’t have come up with your question. That’s BS. And if Mrs. Clinton is worried that the questions she’s going to get at her town meeting are dumb and stupid, there’s a way of dealing with that that’s very classy, that doesn’t insult the question, or the person asking the question, and can endear you to the rest of the audience when dealing with it. That’s what these things are for. When you start hiding behind planted questions for whatever reason, it’s clear that you’re operating out of fear.
In Mrs. Clinton’s case, I don’t think the worry is that she’s going to be asked questions by idiots and that the whole thing is going to look bad. I think she’s worried that she’s going to get questions she doesn’t want. Look, when you boil all this down, folks, there is one major conclusion that seems obvious, and it is that she is maniacally in control, demands to be in control. Nothing will be off script. Nothing will be taken for granted. No chances, unnecessary chances, will be taken. Remember, her task now, as well all these other Democrats, is (whispering) to not be honest about what they really believe, not be honest about what they really plan to do, like you can send Charlie Rangel out to announce your tax plan of a trillion dollars, and you say, ‘Well, I’ll think about it.’ You don’t do it yourself, as a liberal Democrat. Hell, as a liberal Democrat, you don’t even admit that you’re a liberal because that will hurt you in a national race. So her whole existence is based on a cover-up, a camouflage to keep people from knowing who she is and what she really intends to do, because if they did, she wouldn’t stand a prayer.
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RUSH: Mark somewhere in Tennessee. It’s nice to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, heavy-lift dittos. Hey, I was watching Fox News this weekend, and the thing that scares me the most about this is we’ve got guys like Bill Kristol — who you’ve taught me to trust — and Brit Hume, and they see this behavior, and they accept it as normal for this person, and you contrast that —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold it. I missed a word. Did you say — and I lost my train of thought — we got guys like Bill Kristol that I totally trust?
CALLER: Yes, sir. I mean, unless I’m confused, he’s —
RUSH: No, no. No, I just wanted to know what you said because I wasn’t sure I went to screen and it didn’t pop up. So start again. Start at, ‘We had Bill Kristol and Brit Hume on Fox this weekend, guys I totally trust,’ and then what did you say?
CALLER: Yes, they give her a pass. They accept this character flaw as normal, and it doesn’t even register on the warning screen, whereas Giuliani, they just got done talking about how he has made a grievous mistake with misjudging the character of this Kerik guy.
RUSH: Bernard Kerik. Bernard Kerik.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. I’m still confused. Are you saying that Bill Kristol and Brit Hume thought nothing of what? The planting of the question, or of the screw-up in the driver’s license? What did they say was nothing?
CALLER: Well, what they did was they discussed what she did with the planting of the question.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: And then it’s nothing. You know, they accept this as normal behavior from this person.
RUSH: Well, it is!
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: This is standard Clinton campaign stuff.
CALLER: But what the problem is, is they don’t point this out to everybody and say, ‘Look, this is a major character flaw. This means that you can’t trust a person like this. They’re willing to fool you. They’re trying to fool you about who they are,’ and it goes right back to what you’ve already said: How can we fool ’em today?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, you know this; I know this from studying under you, but it troubles me when guys like Brit Hume and Bill Kristol, they’re not even pointing it out anymore because it happens so often.
RUSH: In fairness to Kristol and Hume, I didn’t see what they said, and I didn’t see how they treated it. I’m not trying to insult you by denying or not believing what you said, but until I actually see it… I’ve had this happen to me too many times. People tell somebody what I’ve said and I never said it, and they believe it, but if what you say is true, it’s simply because it’s not a big deal to them.
CALLER: Right, sir, but…
RUSH: It’s not a big deal to them because there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. These are two seasoned experts, veterans, and they’ve seen it all and they’ve been up close to it and they think they’ll compare Rudy and Bernard Kerik to Hillary, and in a contest of ethics and morality, you don’t expect it from the Clintons. You do from Rudy and Republicans. So to them, it was probably something, ‘What’s more interesting: a planted question at a town meeting, or Bernard Kerik being indicted?’ I guarantee you the Drive-Bys and everybody else in the media, is no different than you and I. We all have things that turn us on and excite us more than something else does, and I’m just guessing these two guys were kind of ho-hum about a planted question in a town hall meeting.
CALLER: Exactly. But that’s the problem is that there’s —
RUSH: Well, don’t worry about it. I’m here.
CALLER: (laughs.)
RUSH: We got it handled. We got it covered.
CALLER: God love you, yes. You are, and thank you.
RUSH: All right.
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RUSH: Here’s Gary in Yorba Linda, California. Hi, Gary, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, El Rushbo.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I want to see if I can jog that highly fertile memory of yours and take you back to 1992 when George H. W. Bush was running for reelection against Slick Willie —
RUSH: Okay, hang on. The only way you can check my memory is if I remember it at this point. Okay?
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Are you talking about Larry King Live?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: George Stephanopoulos called in.
CALLER: This is correct.
RUSH: And George H. W. Bush said, ‘I didn’t know that you were going to let the opposing campaign come in.’ Larry King said, ‘We didn’t know he called (muttering).’ Nobody believes that Stephanopoulos was sitting out there on the phone for three hours waiting to get into Larry King Live. But your point is, this whole notion of planted questions is old hat for the Clinton war room.
CALLER: Absolutely. And this was a planted ambush.
RUSH: Good point. A planted ambush by one of the war room leaders, George Stephanopoulos, who, by the way, now, of course, is an independent, objective journalist at ABC News.
CALLER: Of course.
RUSH: It’s incestuous out there, folks, just incestuous. Thanks for the reminder. I appreciate that.