RUSH: Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites on this because it’s interesting. If you listened far enough on Face the Nation yesterday you heard Bill Clinton eventually agree with me. It takes three sound bites to get there. Bob Schieffer is talking to Bill Clinton. Here’s the first of three bites.
SCHIEFFER: Rush Limbaugh said, for example, that President Obama might try to use this for political means, to shore up support for himself in the black community. And he said we’ve already donated to Haiti, they call it the US income tax. What’s your response to that?
CLINTON: Oh, I don’t have any. You know, I — I think we should — it’s not fruitful to get involved in that. I think every American has been heartbroken by what’s happened, and I just think it doesn’t do us any good to waste any time in what is in my opinion a fruitless and pointless conversation.
RUSH: Schieffer says, what would you say, Mr. President Bush?
BUSH: I’d say now is not the time to focus on politics. It’s time to focus on helping people. I mean, look, you got children who lost their parents, people wonder whether they’re gonna be able to drink water. There’s a great sense of desperation. And so my attention is on trying to help people deal with the desperation.
RUSH: So Bob Schieffer then says, what do you — and Clinton erupts.
CLINTON: Let’s take a serious point that Mr. Limbaugh was making is that the Americans pay for the government and the military is down there doing their part. But in a disaster of this magnitude, there is no way that the government, which has other responsibilities as well, national security and other responsibilities, you just can’t deal with this just with government money. That’s what all these faith-based groups are doing down there. That’s what all these other nongovernmental groups are doing. And we think Americans know that and want to help.
RUSH: Exactly! Which is my point from the get-go, which was distorted by the media watchdogs that watch and misreport this program and people like Bob Schieffer who don’t listen to this program then get an idea, a distorted idea of what I said. The government can’t do it all! I can’t believe he actually admitted it. These guys are having you believe government can do everything, government can fix your health care, government can solve war, government can solve pestilence, government can do everything. Now it can’t. Did you ever hear them say this during Katrina? ‘Government can’t do everything.’ You never heard them say this during Katrina. So vindication for me is all over the place. It’s out there for one and all to see and hear.