Rush Demands Obama Apologize

RUSH: This is last night on the campaign trail. And this is interesting, too. Since the media, the Drive-Bys, are paying more attention to me than they are Senator McCain, I guess Obama has decided he should shift his campaign and run against me.

OBAMA: When I hear Rush Limbaugh or some of these people talking about how we need to send ’em all back, we’re not going to send ’em all back. First of all, this is a country of immigrants. Second of all, as a practical matter, we would end up having to use all of our law enforcement resources to round people up, detain them, separate families. It’s not a realistic solution. We’re not going to be able to solve the problem if we’re just shouting about it.

RUSH: I don’t know what… He’s talking about immigration here, but I have never said deport these people. I have said it’s not realistic. In fact, when the argument has come up… You know, when we had the amnesty program going through the bill. What was that, McCain-Kennedy? McCain-Kennedy was the amnesty. It was McCain and some other Democrat. When it was going through Congress — well, when it was being, you know, hashed out behind closed doors under the cover of darkness — they had all these fines. They had all these things. All these illegals that were in the country going to have to show up somewhere, pay a fine, go to the back of the line, and maybe go home or whatever, and I said, ‘How in the world is this going to happen? Our immigration program now can’t track down all these people!’ I don’t know where Obama is getting this that I am in favor of deportation. I have never come out in favor of deportation. That’s not the focus of ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’ The focus is stopping the inflow and securing the border, and we’ll deal with things after that. There’s gotta be a stop to this, pure and simple, and every bit of legislation that’s come out of Congress on this has done nothing about that. They want to increase the flow of illegals, and they want these people — both parties, so they can get their voters, or try to get these people as voters. But, anyway, I find it interesting out there, Obama hitting me, running against me here, rather than Senator McCain, because I’m in the news more than Senator McCain is.

RUSH: I got just a few sound bites here on the Spitzer stuff. By the way, I think I do need to send Obama some talking points on immigration. McCain can send Obama talking points on his middle name, and not using it.

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RUSH: I’m in such a good mood today, I think I had a less than appropriate and serious reaction to our Obama sound bite. Would you go back, Mike, grab Obama sound bite number two, tell me when it’s ready so that we can listen to this again. I’m so used to being mischaracterized; I’m so used to be being criticized; I’m so used to be being lied about that, to me, it’s just funny, but I think I was a little bit too flippant about this.

OBAMA: When I hear Rush Limbaugh or some of these people talking about how we need to send ’em all back, we’re not going to send ’em all back. First of all, this is a country of immigrants. Second of all, as a practical matter, we would end up having to use all of our law enforcement resources to round people up, detain them, separate families. It’s not a realistic solution. We’re not going to be able to solve the problem if we’re just shouting about it.

RUSH: I have never called for the deportation of all illegals in this country. As I say, my original reaction to this was a bit flippant. I think that this calls for something a little bit more serious, because Senator Obama is running for president and is distorting my words, attacking me unfairly, saying things about me which aren’t true. I would like to challenge Barack Obama, who is running around demanding corrections from everybody else who misspeaks about him or who offends him, I would like to challenge Obama to prove where I ever said that immigrants ought to be rounded up and deported. I have talked about creating disincentives in which companies that hire illegals stop hiring ’em, where illegal immigrants are less likely to come here or stay here because of a reduction of opportunities, but I never said we should round up people and deport them.

So I insist the Democrat presidential candidate leader, Barack Obama, apologize for this falsehood. He needs to get his facts straight, especially since he demands accuracy from others. He’s out there complaining about all the stuff said about him that isn’t true. He even gets mad when you use his real middle name. He gets upset about that. I have never once called for the rounding up and deportation on a mass basis of every illegal immigrant in this country. It’s one thing when some stupid little blogger, some irrelevant little Drive-By journalist gets something wrong because that’s their stock-in-trade. This is a presidential candidate, and he happens to be leading the Democrat race for president. Obviously, he’s upset at Operation Chaos and the Rush the Vote and so forth, but that’s no excuse. I am owed an apology by the man leading the Democrat presidential primary races.

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RUSH: Obama, we played the sound bite earlier, lied about me. He has turned his focus on me since I’m in the media more than McCain is. He accused me of calling for mass deportation of all the illegal immigrants in the country, which I have never done. I earlier challenged Obama, who’s running around demanding corrections from people who misspeak about him or who offend him. I challenged him earlier to prove where I ever said that immigrants ought to be rounded up and deported. I’ve talked about other things, creating disincentives for companies that hire illegals would stop hiring them, you know, disincentives for illegals to keep coming and so forth, but I never have supported a full deportation roundup. So earlier, I insisted that Obama apologize for his falsehood. He needs to get his facts straight out there, especially since he’s demanding accuracy from everybody else. Now, Obama, back to Ferraro, Obama is saying that Ferraro is trying to divide Democrats with the slice-and-dice business. USA Today just posted it an hour ago.

Well, let me say Obama is trying to divide the nation with false allegations against me! Yes, he is. He is trying to divide the nation with false allegations against me. Obama is trying to introduce race into this discussion and into this election. You don’t think there’s a racial component here, when he lies about me, demanding that all these illegals be deported? You know, he’s weak on the Hispanic side, folks. We’ve talked about this. He’s trying to pick up Hispanic votes. He’s doing it by attacking me and lying about me, and I’ve demanded that he apologize for this. He’s trying to divide the nation using me and introducing race into this election by attacking me about deporting illegals. He’s trying to play to the fears of Hispanic-Americans by attacking me and lying about what I said. He’s playing to the fears of the Latino community, and I demand that he stop it. At least stop it in my name because I didn’t say anything like he said I said. He’s all sensitive about being lied about and so forth. I’ve got more experience being lied about than Obama will have even if he becomes president. He’s a presidential candidate, and when those guys start lying about you, you know, Clinton tells these lying jokes about me at the White House Correspondents Dinner, also race related, by the way, and now Obama has gotten into the act.