RUSH: I know some of you people in this audience don’t like Trump, but he went to the Today Show today and he dropped a stink bomb on poor old Meredith Vieira. She didn’t know what to do with this. This was just amazing. We’ve got the audio. During a discussion about Obama’s birth certificate, Meredith Vieira said, “In the state of Hawaii, they say they have seen this document, that he was born in the United States. That’s good enough for them.”
TRUMP: A birth certificate is not even close. A certificate of live birth is not even signed by anybody. I saw his — I read it very carefully. It doesn’t have a serial number. It doesn’t have a signature. He spent $2 million in legal fees trying to get away from this issue, and if he weren’t lying, why wouldn’t he just solve it? I wish he would because if he doesn’t it’s one of the greatest scams in the history of politics and in history, period.
RUSH: That’s true. If Obama was not born here, this is a huge scam. Not just in politics, but one of the greatest scams ever. Meredith Vieira, by the way, is leaving NBC. She’s leaving the Today Show, and she might be leaving Who Wants to be a Millionaire. She hosts that game show. She came back at Trump and she said, “You have people in Hawaii searching this?”
TRUMP: They cannot believe what they’re finding. I would like to have him show his birth certificate. Can I be honest with you? I hope he can. Because if he can’t, if he can’t, and if he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility — I’m not saying it happened. I’m saying it’s a real possibility, much greater than I thought two or three weeks ago — then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics, and beyond.
RUSH: You shoulda seen Meredith Vieira. She doesn’t know what to do with this. You know, she’s from the State-Controlled Media that, there’s no question here. She has never seen proof, she’s like everybody else, she’s not seen proof, she just knows it, everybody else in her circle knows he was born in Hawaii, and here comes this guy Trump who has his own NBC show, they gotta be very careful here. What’s Trump show, You’re Fired? What is it? Oh, Celebrity Apprentice. So here he is, I mean as off the reservation as a State-Controlled Media apparatchik can possibly witness, she finally said, “You’ve criticized Obama quite a bit in this interview and in the past. What do you think he’s done well?” I always used to get this question. When I deigned to go on these shows, “Is there anything nice you can say about Obama? Well, is there anything he’s accomplished?” I always got a question like that. Here’s what Trump said.
TRUMP: Get elected. I think he did a great job when he ran for office. If I had my choice of having Obama do great as a president and do a really great job for this country and not running, as opposed to running and doing — I’d prefer that he did a great job. I love this country. But this country is going to hell. I would run a great, great country. This country will be great again. It is not great right now. We have huge deficits. We have huge unemployment. We have huge problems, and we’re not respected. We’re not respected in the world. The world laughs at us. They won’t be laughing if I’m president.
RUSH: He’s tackling this birth thing head on. I mean head on. And they can’t say that Trump is part of the Tea Party. He’s not there. I mean he’s a marginal Republican in terms of the way people classify, but I mean nobody is out there tackling this the way he is. I actually think, by the way, that Trump is providing a blueprint here. The way to beat Obama 2012 is to just go at him. Everybody lives in this media-created fantasy that the guy’s unbeatable, that he’s the greatest orator in the world. You get him away from the prompter, I’m serious, and he’s lost. He’s a gaffe machine. He and Biden are in the same class, and it doesn’t take long to call the roll.
There’s a mythology that has been created about Obama that unnecessarily makes people afraid, and Trump is illustrating the way to do this, and Paul Ryan’s budget, just go right after him. You just go right after him, instead of pussyfooting around, worrying about what the independents are gonna say or worried about what the people that pay attention to politics two days a year are gonna say, just go after it. Last night while appearing with the Reverend Sharpton in New York, Obama said that he stood by his record the past two years, said he is proud of what he’s accomplished. Well, what is that? What has he accomplished? That’s not an achievement. That is an albatross. Obamacare? What has he accomplished as president, except ruining the economy? Is that what he’s proud of? The scary thing is it very well might be.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Angela in Arnold, Missouri, not far from St. Louis. Welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you. Rush, I am incensed, truly incensed that you are so worked up and in a dither because Donald Trump is actually having the nerve to go after the validity of Barack Obama’s birthplace.
RUSH: Wait a minute.
CALLER: And he’s just not going to leave the issue alone. You’ve been chuckling about it because he’s having so much nerve to just not leave this issue alone. And the fact of the matter is that his citizenship has been a suspicious issue from the very beginning, and not one high Republican or you has ever really tried to nail him on this issue, and if it does turn out that he is not a true citizen, then I think all of you should hang your heads in shame because of all the destruction our country has had to suffer ever since he was elected, in spite of being the fraud that we know he probably really is.
RUSH: So you’re mad at me?
CALLER: I am furious. I wanted you and anybody else to go after him on this issue before he was elected. It would have been the easiest way to have stopped him. It would have been a no-brainer. But nobody would. And so he was elected and everything was just hidden under the rug. And now look what we have had ever since.
RUSH: Just a moment. There were court cases. Judges threw it out. Judges looked at it. There were any number of efforts made to get to the bottom of this.
CALLER: Well, how is Donald Trump gonna get anywhere with it, then?
RUSH: Well, why aren’t you mad at Trump for not getting into it earlier? Why are you mad at me for pointing out what Trump said? How come you’re not mad at Trump for not being on this for two years? Trump’s a late arrival here.
CALLER: Trump is not the one who has the show that’s supposed to be exposing all the political —
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: — mess in this country. You are.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You’re the one who’s supposed to be enlightening everybody, and you did not do as much as you could have done to enlighten us to how big a fraud Obama is, and, you know, if it does turn out that he’s not a citizen, I think you should hang your head in shame, because our country has suffered so much —
RUSH: Now wait just a second, Angela. Throw this birth certificate business out, I gotta remind you there is no evidence whatsoever Obama was not born in Hawaii. There’s something he doesn’t want us to see about the birth certificate, but there’s nothing to glom onto here other than his reticence in having the birth certificate seen. I am the only one who proclaimed the guy a fraud. I’m the one who did not go along with Obama. I’m the one who said I hope he failed. I’m the guy who took all the arrows for a whole Republican Party and everybody else for suggesting this guy was a fraud and filled with deceit, that he’s not who he said he was on the basis of policy and the things that he had planned for this country.
CALLER: But the fact that there was no evidence was the very reason why you should have gone forward. I have evidence that I’m a citizen. Why didn’t he have to produce the evidence? Nobody made him do it. Not even you, and you and everyone else should have made him provide the evidence.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: He shouldn’t have been able to get away with that.
RUSH: So what do you want me to do now? You’re mad at me for playing Trump. You’re upset with me for —
CALLER: No.
RUSH: — airing sound bites of Trump?
CALLER: I’m upset because now Donald Trump has to come in and do the job that you and the high-ranking Republicans in office should have been doing before the election.
RUSH: Well, look, he did produce a copy of the short form birth certificate which the government of Hawaii has vouched for as completely authentic. He did produce evidence which a state in this country said was good enough for them.
CALLER: Well, then why is there anything Donald Trump can be going after, why are we even talking about it? There must be an issue.
RUSH: You know, if I were afraid of this, as you are alleging, I wouldn’t even be playing Trump sound bites, or if I were, I’d be making fun of Trump and telling him to shut up and go away, but I’m not.
CALLER: Well, he’s apparently willing to take the risk of — (crosstalk)
RUSH: Let me tell you something.
CALLER: — in case it turns out that he’s wrong.
RUSH: Okay, if you want to focus, Angela, on what should have happened before the election, we can do that, and I can focus on the stupidity of half the country that voted for the guy, and I can talk about all the stupid things the media said and all the tricks that were played to convince people that he’s not who he was. But today it’s 2011 and those days are over and we are living in the midst of this guy destroying the economy and going back and talking about a birth certificate right now is not the most effective way of stopping this guy. I would love nothing more than for this guy to be proven a fraud. I would love nothing more than for all of this to have been a giant trick. I would love nothing more than for him to get nabbed at this, but there isn’t any evidence of it yet. I would love nothing more to see what happens when it’s proven, if it could be, that he’s not a citizen. What happens with legislation when everything he’s done is unqualified, everything he’s done is illegal. Everything he’s done has gotta be wiped clean. Can you imagine that battle? I would love to see that.
You’ve got me pegged wrong here. But I deal with what is. I don’t deal with what-ifs. “If” is for children. And we’ve got certain things that are the reality of the day that have to be dealt with, pure and simple, and that’s where I am on this. No more and no less. There’s no magic wand that can get Obama unelected. You can hope and you can dream but you are locked in a fantasy if that’s what you’re waiting for. That isn’t gonna happen. The focus needs to be on making sure he’s not reelected. But there is no way to unelect the guy. It isn’t going to happen. Having said that, oh, yeah, I’m like all of you, I would love for this guy to be a total fraud when it comes to the birth certificates. He’s a fraud on practically everything else. If he’s born somewhere else, I would love for conclusive proof of that. That would be fun. Just to watch the Democrats and the media. That would be worth the price of admission and whatever they charge for it. But until such things happen, if, when, whatever, there’s a reality that has to be dealt with day in and day out.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I think you’d have a tough time finding anybody who has spent more time, who’s talked more about Obama’s lack of records and his lack of school transcripts. The fact that he’s not written anything as president of law review at Harvard, that’s just unbelievable. A law review head honcho who doesn’t write, who hasn’t been published? His medical records? Every other normal document? Obama is clearly a very secretive person. He likes to make up stories about his life, as we just mentioned again today. He says he went out and pumped gas. His own! He didn’t do it for a living, but he says it in such a way as to make it look like he had a job pumping gas. He never did. But you gotta understand, too:
The original claim that Obama was not legally qualified to be president was started by Democrat operatives, which is one of the things that made me suspicious about it. The claim got started by a guy named Larry Johnson, who’s been a spokesman for the Democrat Party. He’s the same lunatic who wrote a New York Times op-ed claiming we had no reason to worry about Islamic terrorists. This is about a month before 9/11. The guy who started the Obama birth certificate rumor, Larry Johnson, is the same guy who claimed he had tapes of Michelle Obama calling people “whitey.” Now, this has not deterred me. The last time I got in trouble on this subject was (chuckles) I had a guy on the phone talking about Obama and “the messiah” and all this stuff.
I said, “Well, wait a minute. Don’t be too quick to condemn Obama as a messiah because he’s got a lot in common with God. God doesn’t have a birth certificate, either.” Well, I caught hell on the leftist blogs for that, if you will recall. You remember that? Yeah, “God doesn’t have a birth certificate, either.” So where is all this coming from that I have been a lapdog on all this? I have studied the issue. “Dear Rush…” I got an e-mail here during the break. “Dear Rush: What’s it like? I can’t imagine what it’s like getting nagged from a woman on the radio that I wasn’t married to. I’m very impressed at your composure. Gregory Kaplowitz.” (laughing) Patience is my middle name — and Kindness. I’m probably the politest host in the history of talk radio. I take great pride in that.
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RUSH: This is for all you birthers out there. Fox News is reporting that if Donald Trump gets elected president, his wife Melania would be the first foreign-born first lady since Louisa Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, who was the sixth president. (laughing) They’re actually reporting this. (laughing) That if Trump’s elected, his wife will be the first foreign-born first lady since the sixth president of the United States. (laughing)
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RUSH: Bangor, Maine. Matt, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, God bless you, Rush! Trega trega trega dittos!
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, I’ve been trying 23 years to get in touch with you and thank God I did today. It was 23 years ago — God rest her soul — my mom, as I was cutting the grass in the backyard, came out and said, “You gotta listen to this guy,” and I’ve been listening to you faithful ever since, buddy.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Now, listen, I got a comment and I got a question for you.
RUSH: All right, go ahead. Go right ahead.
CALLER: All right, the comment is yesterday Barack was talking before Al Sharpton’s group and he tried to bring it down to, you know, “How many you people out there are married?” You know, well, everybody out there says, “Yeah!” Then he said, “Well, how many y’all get everything you want?” and there’s a little chuckle, and, “You know you gotta compromise.” Well, then remember the DNC ran those ads during the campaign was like a takeoff on Ozzie and Harriet? I forget the name of the two people, you know, sitting at this kitchen table, the husband and wife?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, here’s my example, to bring it down for those poor people that live in Rio Linda, make it easy. I’ll keep the math simple.
RUSH: (chuckles)
CALLER: Say you’re only making a thousand dollars a month, okay? That’s $12,000 a year annually — and then come tax time, they sit down, and the wife is doing all the bills. So the husband realized he gets a tax bill for $18,000. “Honey, what is this?” Well, they find out he’s only making a thousand, but his wife is on side spending $500 a month buying shoes and all the nice clothes she likes. So he sits there and says, “Honey, we can’t sustain this. We gotta get our finances in order.” So according to Barack and I suppose he’d compromise with her and say, “Okay, instead of spending $500 more a month, let’s only spend $250 more a month.” You’re still gonna be $15,000 in the hole when you’re only making $12,000 a year. It makes no sense. The husband has to stand up and say, “Honey, we gotta live within our budget. We’re only making a thousand, we can only spend a thousand,” right?
RUSH: Well, but, I don’t even… Live within our budget and Obama trying to give this lesson?
CALLER: Well, I understand, I understand. But no, listen: Rush, my question to you is this. If you run for president, of course you gotta cross the T’s and dot the I’s, right? And you fill out the the paperwork. How come that paperwork isn’t a matter of public record where you could just see what the candidates have on public record?
RUSH: Uhhhh… (sigh) I don’t really know.
CALLER: Well, that’s what I’m thinking. It should be a matter of, you know, doing a Freedom of Information request and you see all the forms they fill out become eligible to even be the candidate, right?
RUSH: Well, this has been brought up. McCain had to be vetted, McCain had to prove it, and a lot of people wondering why Obama didn’t have to prove it. There really is… In terms of a lot of paperwork to run for president you have to fill out forms for exploratory committee and so forth, but really how extensive can it be? It doesn’t appear Obama had to produce anything, or that what he produced was sufficient. So that’s the only thing you can go on there. McCain had to be vetted in a satisfactory way. If Obama wasn’t, then of course you would have to ask, why? (sigh) Well, that would just be open endless speculation as to why.
It could be the same answer as the reason why McCain and Republicans didn’t want to criticize him. There was just an historical element to Obama’s candidacy, and who wants to be responsible for blowing that up? So that could be a partial explanation. I’m not sure. Well, I’m gonna look more into that. This whole birther thing has made me wonder just who do you have to present what paperwork to, to prove your qualifications out there? We just assume that… The question’s never been raised about anybody else that ran for president, has it? (interruption) Who? There was one other guy that we questioned where he came from? In the 1800s? All right. Well, we’ll have to find out how these people proved it. (interruption) The 1800s guy it was never resolved but somebody raised the question about whether or not he was legitimately qualified citizenship and all that? We’ll find out.
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RUSH: It was Chester Arthur who people thought might have been born in Canada rather than in Vermont. The only other example of a president questioned on his eligibility based on place of birth, Chester Alan Arthur. People thought he was born in Canada.
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