RUSH: Here’s John in Northern Michigan. John, hi. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: Well, I was kind of hoping to comment and hear your thoughts on what I’ve been hearing in the news a lot lately. The proverbial smartest person in the room is a confusing term to me. It seems to me that the smartest person in the room, or an incredibly smart person can be good or evil, and why does everybody automatically assume that the smartest person in the room is good and whatever they say or do is good and they just follow him or her blindly?
RUSH: That’s an excellent question.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: Well, I think the root of that is that depending on who’s doing the categorization here, the fact of the matter is that the smartest people in the room usually aren’t the smartest people in the room. Mrs. Clinton is nowhere near the smartest woman in the world. And I don’t think Obama is particularly smart or competent. But the conventional wisdom is just the opposite, that those two are the smartest. You can throw Clinton in there, Bill Clinton, too. The liberals are smart, and you hayseeds are idiots, and that’s just the way it is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to audio sound bites. Grab 25 and 26. This afternoon at the White House, President Obama got mad. He got mad at a reporter’s questions on Syria. He had joint press conference this afternoon with the president of the Republic of Korea. That’s South Korea, obviously. The woman’s name is Park Geun-hye. And during the Q&A, a reporter said, “Mr. President, does the United States have a core national security interest in stopping the slaughter in Syria, or merely a strong moral desire to see the violence end. And at what point does the cost of not intervening in a more direct way than you have done so far outweigh the cost of doing so?”
OBAMA: I think there would be severe costs in doing nothing. That’s not we’re not doin’ nothing. That’s why we are actively investing in the process. Uh, if what you’re asking is, uh, eh, uh, “Are there continuing reevaluations about what we do? What actions we take in conjunction with other international partners, uh, to optimize the day when — or to hasten the day when — we can see, uh, better situation in Syria?” we’ve been doing that all along and we’ll continue to do that.
RUSH: Right. Okay. Fine and dandy, as far as it goes, but then the president obviously thought that answer was a little mealy-mouthed, so he continued…
OBAMA: You suggested even in your question a perceived crossing of a red line. The operative word there I guess, Steven, is “perceived.” And what I’ve said is that we have evidence that there has been, uhh, the use of chemical weapons inside of Syria. But I don’t make decisions based on “perceived,” and I can’t organize international coalitions around “perceived.” We’ve tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well. But, in the end, uhh, whether it’s bin Laden or Khadafy, uhh, if we say we’re taking a position, uhh, I would think at this point the international community has a pretty good sense that we typically follow through, uhh, on our commitments.
RUSH: Man, what a smart guy. I understood everything he was trying to say, didn’t you? Man, and that’s rare, folks, that I have been in the presence of such smartness and such brilliance. I mean, he really, really, really handed it to Bush there! Did you hear that? “I can’t organize international coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We’ve tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out very well.” This poor reporter, he just wanted to know, “At what point are we gonna go in there and save people in Syria?” and Obama said, “Screw you! Bush messed up; I’m not going to. Next question.”