RUSH: Let’s move on. Let’s move back to the Republican campaign, which means me. The Drive-By Media last night and all afternoon yesterday were playing clips of me from this program yesterday, Dittocam clips. Two of the three nightly newscasts last night did. This program discussed all over the place, and they were wrong. They were totally wrong, and all of them admit to listening to what I said yesterday. They got it wrong. ‘Limbaugh is on board now, that’s what it took, why, New York Times comes out and savages McCain, Limbaugh finally on board.’ Now, those of you who listened to this program yesterday, I think would agree with me when I tell you that my reaction to the New York Times story was not to say, ‘All right, this is it. Now they’ve thrown the gauntlet down, I’m a McCain guy now.’ That’s not what yesterday’s program was about. Yesterday’s program was, if anything, a See, I Told You So. See? This is who the left is. You can’t befriend ’em. They’re going to come out and, at some point, if you are a Republican, conservative, or otherwise, they’re going to throw you under the bus, even your own, after you’ve given ’em rides on it. And I asked Senator McCain to learn a vital lesson from this, to find out who his real friends are.
However, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t believe that the Drive-By Media getting what I said yesterday wrong is actually the story. In fact, they know that they got it wrong. They know full well they got it wrong. They are trying to frame it in their own way as the Drive-Bys do. They’re trying to take little snippets of what I said, forget other things I said, and say, ‘Limbaugh’s on board, all right, McCain’s — now let’s get him.’ Now that everybody is on board in their mind, now, okay, both barrels can be fired at Senator McCain. They’re in essence saying — and I know these people; you gotta trust me on this — they’re essentially saying, if anybody’s going to take McCain out, it’s going to be us, not Limbaugh. And, lo and behold, we have — and this is actually not the first example of this, which is important, it’s a third or fourth version. This is Reuters, by the way, Thomas Ferraro: ‘At 71, leading Republican presidential contender John McCain must convince voters that despite his age he is up to the rigors of what is often called the world’s toughest job. ‘I’m not the youngest candidate but I am the most experienced,’ says the white-haired senator from Arizona, first elected to Congress in 1982. … McCain’s age is one reason his selection of a vice presidential running mate will be highly scrutinized. If McCain were to die in office–‘
If McCain were to die in office. ‘But Rush, but Rush, why are you so upset, a lot of people –‘ yes. Now. Yes, now a lot of people are bringing this up, now. Of course they are. It’s been my point all along, ladies and gentlemen. So the bottom line here is they know full well what I said yesterday and what the import of it was. They’re getting it wrong on purpose. They just want to be able to frame this in their own way, because if they can frame the Republican Party unified, then, ‘let’s get him. All right. Now it’s open season.’ As long as there were rifts that they had to report, they’d have to sit by the side of the road and let the Republican Party perhaps off itself. At any rate, let’s go to the audio sound bites. I’ll show you what I’m talking about. Last night, CBS Evening News, the anchorette, Katie Couric, spoke with the commentator and analyst Bob Schieffer, who I think also is 71. He might die on the air. And Katie said, ‘Do you think this McCain story in the Times has legs? Do you think it will trip him up?’
SCHIEFFER: Katie, there were some people in the McCain campaign who actually winced when he was endorsed for the Republican nomination by the New York Times. They thought that would set off the Republican right, and, boy, did it ever. It looked like he would never find a way to get those people to warm to him. But look what happened today. Here’s Rush Limbaugh coming to his defense. So maybe we’re going to see some changes there.
COURIC: So now they’ll bond over a common enemy.
RUSH: You know, doesn’t Katie’s intellect dazzle? It stops you dead in your tracks, the power of her intellect, the CBS Evening News. Schieffer made it through the sound bite alive, so now we move on to the Nightly News. Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell said this about me.
O’DONNELL: The Times found itself the target of criticism today. Rush Limbaugh, usually harsh on McCain, was now on his side.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The story is that this paper endorsed McCain, sat on this story, and now puts it out just prior to McCain wrapping up the nomination.
RUSH: So they know. They had to, of course they did. They had to listen to what came before. They had to listen to what came after. Well, PMSNBC ran it all. They ran it all as Dittocam video. As I said yesterday, they better be careful because this is going to outrate their own anchors. It’s a risky thing to play so much Dittocam footage of me. Now we move on to MSNBC last night, Live With Dan Abrams, had this exchange with the Democrat strategerist Lawrence O’Donnell.ABRAMS: Rush Limbaugh today sure sounded like he was ready to shift gears. Let’s listen.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Most people’s prediction last night, was this was going to finally rally conservatives to McCain. McCain couldn’t do it himself, but that the New York Times could, and the Drive-By Media. And I got some e-mails, ‘That’s it, Rush, I hadn’t planned on voting for McCain, but I’m going to send him some money now.’ I’m not going to sit here and let the New York Times destroy my candidate.
ABRAMS: (laughing) Lawrence, what do you make of it, real quick?
O’DONNELL: I listened to the first hour of Rush today, and it was a pretty warm hour for McCain.
RUSH: Jeez. (laughing) You know, I was also getting — I didn’t say this yesterday — I was getting e-mails yesterday, ‘Can’t you ever lighten up on McCain?’ I was getting lots of e-mails of that nature. Oh yeah, that woman that wrote me the F-bomb, I read that e-mail yesterday. She was just mad as hell at me because she thought I was continuing to pile on McCain. Now, Lawrence O’Donnell, he was one of the, I don’t know, creative advisors to the show The West Wing, you know, which the liberals actually thought was the administration. Martin Sheen was president. So it’s no question that O’Donnell could listen to this show yesterday and think that it was a pretty warm hour for Senator McCain. Stephanopoulos, Good Morning America today, Robin Roberts talked to him.
ROBERTS: The Republican story, of course, yesterday, John McCain with his wife Cindy by his side, strongly denying the New York Times story, and it seems like conservative Republicans are now rallying around him like talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Any day, any day that Rush Limbaugh is attacking the New York Times instead of John McCain, after what he’s been doing for the last three months, is a good day for John McCain.
RUSH: They had to have heard this. They had to have heard what I said. Senator McCain, you need to learn a lesson from this. The McCain parody. Yeah, grab McCain breaking up with the Old Gray Lady. Here, we played this throughout the program yesterday.
(playing of McCain spoof)
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to the phones, to Fort Madison, Iowa. This is Robert. Thank you for waiting, sir. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I listened to you for a long time, and I’d just like to say, I’m influenced, but I’m not a robot. You know what I’m saying?
RUSH: Yeah. That’s most of the audience, by the way.
CALLER: I hope so. Anyway, had you heard that the New York Times had lost 5% of its worth today?
RUSH: Oh, you mean their stock price?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Yeah. I heard that.
CALLER: And they’re also reconsidering who’s going to run the show over there?
RUSH: Well, look, this has been going on for a long, long time. Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker has been chronicling the boardroom travails of the New York Times for many, many months.
CALLER: Uh-huh.
RUSH: There have been many stockholders who have wanted to get rid of Pinch Sulzberger —
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: — well, his dad was Punch.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And they call this one Little Pinch because they think he’s incompetent, because the stock price, advertising revenue, everything is falling over at the New York Times. It has been for many months prior to this McCain thing.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: There are two classes of shares at the New York Times that basically ensure that the Sulzberger family will never, ever lose control here. But there is a battle to change that and to force — if they’re not going to change that, to get somebody in there to run the paper that knows what they’re doing, as a business, not just as a little journalism publication.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I don’t know that the McCain thing has anything to do — it would be tough to peg the McCain story, that it has anything to do with their decline yesterday, because the market’s very volatile lately. But if you want to think that, I mean you’re free to.
CALLER: Well, you know, my wife and I were Mitt Romney supporters, and we still do in a way.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: We listened to his speech when he was at CPAC —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — and I realized, and, you know, we were going to make a choice, and we feel that you can’t un-vote a nuclear attack on the United States, and I still think that it would be probably best even with all his shortcomings of McCain, we’re going to vote for him.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: You know, it’s a hard decision, but when it comes down to the national security, that’s what a government is supposed to do, right? Protect us?
RUSH: Well, yeah. Of course that’s part of the oath of office that every president —
CALLER: Right, exactly. Well, I don’t think Hillary, or especially Obama, would even come close to that. And I love Bo Snerdley, by the way, what he’s saying there.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, our Official Obama Criticizer?
CALLER: Oh, he’s great. Give him ten minutes of his own.
RUSH: Yeah. Every guest host I’ve ever had here has gone on to bigger and better things, and I realize by giving Snerdley the post as Official Criticizer, that he might want an even bigger chunk of broadcast — he’s shaking his head in there, no, no, no, never happen, but I know human nature. Robert, I appreciate the phone call. Thanks el mucho.