GRETA: Rush Limbaugh On the Record, and you’ll hear Rush say things you have never heard him say before. But first, in our one-on-one interview, Rush Limbaugh tells us what he thinks of President Obama’s “phony scandal” campaign.

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GRETA: Let me ask you, talking about the scandals, President Obama says the scandals are phony. Why do you think he says they’re phony? Because he believes it, or is there a strategy?

RUSH: No, there’s a strategy. You know, I’ve been troubled by something with Obama. You know, I playfully call it the “Regime,” ’cause I know it irritates ’em. But it is, it’s like a regime. And I’ve been troubled, I’ve been amazed. Here is a man whose policies have done great damage to this country, policies that have done great damage to the economy, have done great damage to the American culture, to the American psyche. I mean, there is a malaise, there’s a sense of hopelessness and depression out there and it’s his policies that have done this, and what has always amazed me is how he’s not attached to any of it.

He has an agenda, he’s been implementing it, but the what I call the low-information voters who voted for him and other Democrats do not associate Obama’s policies and agenda with the condition of the country, the economy or whatever. That’s always befuddled me. I’ve never, never known a president to be immune from economic circumstances at an election as he was in 2012. It all became clear to me, there was a New York Times story, I think one of their blog posts on the Web back in February, and it basically said via poll data what I just said to you. It said most people disapprove of the Obama agenda. They don’t like the direction the country’s going. They like him and they think he’s great for the country. And I said, “How can that be?”

Intellectually, how can a majority of people — and you know they oppose Obamacare by 55, 60% in a number of polls. They are worried about jobs. How in the world can they like him, reelect him, and yet disapprove of everything he’s doing? I call it the Limbaugh Theorem. And you hear other people talking about it in the sense that he’s a bystander president or he’s outside Washington. The way he does this, he never appears to be governing. That’s why he’s constantly campaigning. Why is there a campaign going on for Obamacare? It’s already the law of the land. Why is he out campaigning for all this stuff that’s already law? It’s already gonna happen.

My theory is that Obama has positioned himself as an outsider not attached to anything that’s happening. What he has made happen, he positions himself as opposed to it and against it, and fighting for everybody else to overcome what he has done. And that’s one of the reasons why the constant campaign, so he doesn’t appear to be governing, so he doesn’t appear to be part of Washington, so he appears to have this mysterious powerful bunch of forces that are opposing him and stopping him from creating jobs, and stopping him from giving people proper health care, and stopping him from making their home values go up. He’s constantly out there fighting that, and he does that by constantly campaigning and never seen to be governing.

So all of these scandals, he calls them, they’re not a distraction; they’re real. But he likes them because they detract from the absolute reality of what has happened to this country as the result of his policies. Now, let’s take a look selling Obamacare. ‘Cause I mentioned that moment ago. Why in the world are you on a campaign to sell Obamacare? I mean, it’s the law. Yeah, you’ve got an effort by the Republicans, two or three of them, to defund it, but why the campaign? Very simple. You go back to 2010, the 2010 midterms, the Republicans, Tea Party created, cleaned the Democrats’ clocks.

If you go back and look at the 2010 midterms that was one of the biggest shellackings the Democrat Party has had in a long time. The Republicans took back the House of Representatives, but the Democrats lost a total, nationwide, all the way down ballot of over 600 seats, and it was because of Obamacare and the rising debt and the fact that nobody was opposing it and nobody stopping it. Tea Party gets created, these people show up. Now, what Obama and the Democrats really want, what they’re salivating about now is winning the House in 2014. If they get that, hold the Senate, there’s no such thing as a lame duck second term. Don’t even need a Congress. All they are is gonna be a rubber stamp; whatever Obama wants to do in the past two years, just signs it and does it, Congress rubber-stamps it, and we’ve got it going.

He can’t be stopped. That’s why they want it. But they remember 2010. So he’s out there trying to change public opinion on health care so that it doesn’t replicate in 2014 what happened in 2010, the midterms. He cannot afford for a bunch of Tea Party people, a bunch of anti-Obama voters to show up in 2010 voting against him and holding the House for the Republicans and maybe winning the Senate for the Republicans. That’s one reason he’s campaigning. The second reason he’s out campaigning is simply to continue this notion that he’s not of Washington that he’s outside fighting against these powerful forces doing everything he can to stand up for the American people.

It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a president get away with four and a half years of not being seen as responsible for anything he’s done when everything that’s happened is because of him. He can’t be stopped. The Republicans don’t have any power. All they can do, maybe, if they get the cojones, is stop things, but they can’t make anything happen. The Republicans are totally powerless in terms of legislation and Washington. They have the House, but nothing in the Senate.

They can’t stop him anywhere. Yet he’s out acting like he’s gotta overcome all of this opposition and all of these mean people who want to prevent the American people from realizing their dreams, these dastardly Republicans. So the phony scandals, it’s just another vehicle to continue the same modus operandi and, by the way, to continue to blame the Republicans being cold-hearted, mean-spirited, extremist racist, sexist homophobes, War on Women, all that stuff.

GRETA: Why do you think, though — I mean, a lot of people are unhappy about the phony scandals, at least the Republicans, because a lot of people hate the IRS. In early May he says this is a serious problem. Now it’s phony, and it’s just a campaign tactic? Is that what you’re saying?

RUSH: He’s got a slavish media. He can say whatever he wants and he’s not gonna be called on it by the media. He can do pretty much everything he wants. I should have added in my previous answer to your question that he couldn’t get away with any of this without a slavish media. I mean, the media doesn’t question him, and, in fact, is on board with his agenda and is trying to help him advance it. I’ve gotten to the point where what he says is irrelevant. I can give you quotes of what he said in 2002, 2005, 2007 about health care. I can give you quotes of what he said about global warming and all these things and they’re irrelevant. What you have to do is watch what he does.

He’s always going to tell you he’s not doing what he’s doing. He’s always going to position himself as having nothing to do with what’s happening. He’s always gonna position himself as “it’s the Republicans, they’re constantly complaining, whining. I fixed the IRS. I fired whoever did this. It’s reprehensible.” All he’s gotta do is talk about how reprehensible he thinks it is, the media reports: “Obama thinks IRS scandal is horrible,” and that’s it. The thing that you have to know is everybody says, “I wonder if there’s a smoking gun, a memo, between Obama and the IRS?” There doesn’t need to be one. He hires people, puts them in these places, he knows what they’re gonna do. They’re all miniature Obamas.

There won’t be a smoking the gun. There doesn’t have to be a memo. He doesn’t have to give people that work for him instructions or a manual on how to screw the Republicans or stop conservatives. That’s what they want to do themselves, plus they want to make him happy. So I think it’s incredible what’s happening. I think it’s out-of-this-world incredible that we have somebody whose policies have led to the malaise and the destruction of the economy and the hijacking of the health care industry, and he’s not held accountable for it.

I think it’s been out there; it’s plain to see. The Republican Party wants a new base. They just… The Republican leadership isn’t conservative. They’re not particularly crazy about conservatives. I mean, I’m a fairly prominent media conservative. I get more grief than the Taliban gets. I get more grief than Al-Qaeda gets. And all conservatives do because we do constitute a threat to the way Washington views the country. And I don’t think it’s so much conservative versus liberal, although it is. But it’s Washington versus the rest of the country, is what’s really transpiring now, and Washington has a mind-set and a desire for the country that doesn’t dovetail with a majority of American people.

GRETA: So what is the future of the Republican Party, based on what you say?

RUSH: I really don’t know because politics is too unpredictable. There is anything that we’re not even conceiving as possible — a scandal or some such thing — a that could happen which could cause people to start voting against Democrats in droves, regardless what the Republicans do. So it’s dangerous to start predicting the demise of political parties and so forth, and I’m not doing that. I just sharing with you the sense I get, as a conservative after 25 years of doing this, on this show, and watching it all, and so much of it on the surface intellectually doesn’t make any sense. There has to be a reason. These Republicans are not stupid. They have to know that agreeing with the Democrats on issue after issue after issue is gonna equal Democrat victory after victory after victory.

GRETA: Who do you admire in Republican politics, and why?

RUSH: (heavy sigh) I admire any who are bold enough and brave enough to speak about what they truly believe. Ted Cruz is one. Sarah Palin is another. You know, any of them who are fearless and have the courage of their convictions and have no compunction about saying it. They’re not embarrassed of themselves. They’re not insecure. They firmly believe what has to be done and they’re willing to stand behind it. Those are the people I admire.

GRETA: What are the chances those people would ever get a nomination in the Republican Party? Probably not big.

RUSH: Um, I don’t… Why would that be the case?

GRETA: Because they’re outside the mainstream of Republican politics as you outlined it.

RUSH: Well, I don’t think mainstream Republican politics can’t be beat. I mean, there’s a battle for the party going on. And, sure, it’d be a tough battle. But there’s no other option. You don’t want to go third party. That just ensures the Democrats are a majority party forever. You don’t want to do that so you have to do what you can to work within the Republican Party to take it over. I think the right conservative candidate could score. Reagan did it. I know a lot of people say, “Will you stop talking about Reagan?” Reagan, there’s only one of him. But Reagan is a real-life example of what could be done, and what happens when a prominent conservative triumphs. The country and the Democrat Party set out trying to revise history about him and destroy his reputation and image, and so forth. It’s a never-ending battle. Greta, a lot of people are probably saying, “Why? Why are Republicans and conservatives so,” for lack of a better word, “disliked?” The real battle, folks, that I think is going on is, on the one hand, the country is founded with liberty and freedom and the government as a servant, versus another view which says the government is all powerful and all everything, and it’s the people who are servants. That’s what the battle is right now.

GRETA: In the arena of ideas, what would you do to solve a problem like Detroit, or even something bigger, like the incredible growing class of poor people?

RUSH: Well, which do you want to do first?

GRETA: Either. Take your pick.

RUSH: Okay, Detroit. The first thing you gotta do is analyze what really happened there. Why did it go wrong? Now, there are some obvious things. The city has been run by Democrats unchecked since… I think the last Republican mayor was 1957, okay? That town has been a Petri dish of everything the Democrat Party stands for, everything the Democrat Party loves: Massive unions, massive pensions, pay people pensions and health care long after they’ve stopped working. The math doesn’t add up. You have massive warfare states where citizens are given things left and right in order to buy their votes. You had no opposition whatsoever. Then in the case of Detroit, you throw race into the mix, and you bring on Mayor Coleman Young, who causes riots in 1967 in Detroit. Mayor Young caused a “white flight” to suburbia and Detroit is left with nothing but liberal Democrats running it. It is what it is, and anyplace in this country that has similar circumstances, the same fate is gonna happen to ’em. Now, what was your other thing about poverty, how to bring people out?

GRETA: Poverty, yeah, because LBJ said the War on Poverty, we’re gonna have legislation to try to eradicate it. Poverty’s growing. It’s not getting better. There are a lot of people suffering.

RUSH: Yeah, imagine that. And it’s been the number-one issue of the Democrat Party out of their mouths for… Well, since 1964, when LBJ first started to care about poverty. Percentage-wise, there are the same number of people. In fact, under Obama, it’s gotten worse. Four out of five American families are experiencing poverty. Nine million jobs have been lost since Obama took office. Nine million! They’re just gone.

GRETA: So —

RUSH: Because of his policies. Well, the arena of ideas? This is where the Republican Party’s understand standing up. They’re not pushing back. They’re not articulating what is the opposite to this. One of the things… You can point to successful people all over the country. No matter how successful, there are different levels of it. You point to ’em. How’d they do it? That’s all you have to look at: How did they do it? Well, there are recipes. They cared. They worked hard. They had ambition. They learned what they had to learn. Some of them might have had connections here and there, nobody does everything by themselves. But you’re certainly not gonna eradicate poverty by creating dependency! Santa Claus is not a cure for poverty. It isn’t gonna happen. All it is, is a way to buy votes. That’s why the Democrats want amnesty.

GRETA: Do you think President Obama likes his job?

RUSH: I have no idea. I don’t know him. I’ve never spoken to him. I don’t know how to read those kind of tea leaves just watching him. All I can do is read what other people have written about he doesn’t show up early or whatever. I’ve read people say that the job’s beneath him. “He really needs to be running the world, to be challenged, to be invigorated. The United States is chump change. He needs the United Nations. He needs to be running the whole shebang.” I don’t know what’s true. I don’t know whether he likes his job or not. I think he does and is relishing the opportunity to put into play what leftists have only dreamed about in faculty lounges for 50 to 75 years. I think he’s thrilled with the opportunity he has to transform America and move it away from this unjust, immoral way it was founded and make it fair for everybody. I mean, whatever he’s trying to do to it, I do think he’s probably obsessed and very absorbed with that. Whether he likes getting up and going to work every day and dealing? I don’t think he likes having opposition, because it’s beneath him. He doesn’t want to negotiate with opponents. He just wants to wipe ’em out — in the political sense. Just get rid of ’em. That’s his modus operandi. So I don’t think he likes the process, like Dukakis did.

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GRETA: Straight ahead, Rush Limbaugh has much more to say. He insists, “Washington doesn’t want to find waste and fraud.” What does he mean by that? You’ve not heard this, and now you will, straight from Rush. Plus, you will find out the real reason why Rush loves his job. Our sit-down interview with Rush Limbaugh continues next.

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GRETA: You have never heard this before. Rush Limbaugh telling us: In the eyes of Washington, waste and fraud are no big deal. Once again, here’s Rush Limbaugh.

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GRETA: Why is there no enthusiasm to go after waste and fraud? We did a story last night in which we’re paying money to dead farmers — and I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat, I cannot understand how that is not seized upon by a politician and run with that. I would think it’d be popular.

RUSH: I would, too. But, see, I mean, the answer to that again is: Washington doesn’t want to find the waste and fraud. Not really. Maybe a couple of isolated examples when they say, “Look what I find here, I’m shutting this down,” but they don’t want to. They don’t want to make the government smaller. I’ll give you an example of the way this works, I think — and I wish I’da known this 25 years ago, or 30.

For all of our lives, ever since the late sixties and early seventies, we’ve been hearing, “We’ve got to stop our dependence on foreign oil,” right? “We’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to.” The global warming debates has been about it, but we’ve got to stop importing so much oil. Every party, Republicans, Democrats, it’s been a mantra. Well, there’s an oil boom going on in one of the Dakotas. I always get confused which one.

Fracking.

Fracking has made this country entirely energy independent. If we would go get every oil reserve that we’ve got, that we could get right now with fracking, we would not need a barrel from the Middle East. Why aren’t we doing it? Why is Obama not okaying the Keystone pipeline? Obama himself said, “We’ve got to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil.” Republicans have said it.

Why aren’t we going and getting our own oil? Why are there restrictions on getting our own oil on federal lands and efforts made on private lands?” Why? Prince Alwaleed Bal — whatever his name is the other day — starts talking about, “If you guys continue fracking, we in the Middle East are going to have a big problem with it.” They don’t mean it when they say it, Greta.

So when they talk about ridding the country of waste and fraud, they say it. They think people want to hear it but when it comes to doing it be, it doesn’t happen, does it? Washington doesn’t want to get smaller. Washington doesn’t want to take itself out of people’s lives. Washington does not want to reduce its power or its size.

GRETA: But waste? I mean, like, paying dead people? I mean, how could…? I don’t get how anyone could think paying dead people is a good idea.

RUSH: They don’t think it’s a good idea. They just don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. “It’s no big deal. We’re not talking about that much money.” It’s like the foreign aid budget. “It really isn’t that much money.” They don’t think… Greta, at the end of the day, they don’t think we’ve got a debt crisis. I heard one of them say the other day, “Look, you know, I’ve been hearing all my life how the national debt’s gonna destroy this country.

“Well, I’m now 65 years old and the national debt hasn’t destroyed this country. I think it’s…” I forget who it was. The national debt is $17 trillion, up $6 trillion since Obama. Here you have the people who make this country work, the hard workers, the backbone of this country scared to death what’s happening because they don’t think their kids and their grandkids are gonna have any opportunity to acquire wealth.

They don’t think the education system is gonna treat them properly, that there isn’t gonna be a private sector economy big enough to grow enough to cut it up in enough ways that a lot of people acquire wealth for simple contentment and prosperity. It is getting smaller. The government’s snapping it up. That’s what health care is all about. One-sixth of the economy is gone. Government just took it.

They don’t know anything about health care. What’s Obama know? Why do we invest in Obama to run health care or energy? What does he know? He hasn’t done diddly-squat but people think he’s the expert because he cares more. What does Washington know about any of this? They don’t know diddly-squat about it. Yet we invest in them to have total control and power over it.

So waste and fraud, debt? The American people are scared to death of it. Washington? No big deal, Bernanke keeps printing. They keep buying stock and securities with it; show the economy’s growing. Everything’s fine and the next time there’s a crisis like 2008, they’ll go through the same rigmarole and they’ll give us 24 hours to fix it or the end of the world could happen.

It’s a rigged game, and it’s designed to keep Washington functioning as it is, and keep Washington big, and to prevent… Look, when you’re in politics, when you control something, you don’t want to share it. You don’t want to give it away. Don’t misunderstand me. This is all a political battle. I think it should take place in the arena of ideas, in the arena of politics. I’m not casting criminal motives on anybody, here. This is all political.

But there’s no push-back to it from the Republican Party side — that’s my main objective — so they must be complicit with some of it.

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GRETA: Coming up, Rush Limbaugh on the George Zimmerman verdict and race relations in America. But first, Rush gets personal. You’ll hear talk about the radio, his job, and his wife — things never heard before from Rush. That’s on next.

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GRETA: What makes Rush Limbaugh tick? In a rare one-on-one interview, Rush gets personal.

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GRETA: Why do you do your job?

RUSH: I love it. I’m doing what I was born to do. I love radio. I absolutely love it. Radio is the single greatest opportunity I have to be who I am. There are no constraints. I’m not trying to be what other people want me to be. I’m not afraid of — what somebody might think about what I do. None of the normal constraints. It’s just me, and I have the total ability to do it the way I want to do it and to tell people what I think.

And, if it goes wrong the first time, I come back the next hour, the next day and say, “Sorry, folks. What I meant yesterday was…” It’s a never-ending opportunity to get it right. It’s a never-ending opportunity to… I mean, there’s nothing in it for me to lie about anything. I’m not gonna gain anything by lying about what I believe or lying about facts. You know, I really am trying to create the most informed, educated group of participating citizens I can.

If you asked me what the purpose of the radio show is, that’d be it, after the business aspects — which is creating and holding the largest audience possible so as to charge confiscatory advertising rates. But from the consumer standpoint, it’s creating an informed, growing, intelligent, educated, participating citizenry.

That’s why I mentioned earlier, I think it’s a great compliment that all these media people say I’m losing because Obama’s won two elections. I haven’t run against him. I can’t give away money like he does. I can’t buy votes and yet they’ve put me in that political arena to judge me, which must mean that I’m a bigger threat to them than they want to admit. I find it all flattering ’cause, at the end of the day, I’m just a guy on the radio.

That’s all I ever wanted to do, from age eight, was be on the radio.

GRETA: Any downside to your job?

RUSH: Well… (big sigh) Yeah. There are downsides to everything. Could you be specific about what —

GRETA: Anything you hate about your job?

RUSH: No.

GRETA: Any —

RUSH: No, because I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.

GRETA: Well, you have to show up every day.

RUSH: Yeah, but I love that!

GRETA: You can’t sleep in, I mean, ’til three o’clock in the afternoon if you ever wanted to.

RUSH: I can on Saturday or Sunday.

GRETA: Right. So you come here every single day thinking, “I love this”?

RUSH: Yeah. The night before, I… Life is show prep. You know, I leave here at three every day, and I go home and show up for two or three hours. By six or seven, I’m back at it.

GRETA: Doesn’t it drive your wife nuts?

RUSH: (laughing) Yeah, it does a little bit. But, you know, she’s busy, too. We’ve got a bunch of joint projects going, and we’ve got our little Two If By Tea iced tea company. She’s the CEO and runs that, and that’s expanding and growing and going great guns. You know, she ran the host economy operation for the NFL for Super Bowls, and she is just… She’s as busy as I am, if not more.

My job is sedentary. A lot of what she does, she’s on the go quite a bit. But we get our times, weekends, vacations and so forth. But we both love what we do, and it isn’t work. That’s the key. I mean, if I don’t want to meet with somebody, I don’t have to now. Things I don’t like about it. I mean, there are things I get mad at every day. You know, misunderstanding what a caller is saying.

Or, you know, I’ll see a media report that is obviously filled with misperception and lies. I mean, everybody goes through that, but that’s not something I would say, “Yeah, I hate that,” because it’s part of it, and I’ve learned to… You know, I call myself the Mayor of Realville, and I live in reality. And whatever happens, it is. And you have to accept it and deal with it. It doesn’t do you any good to wish it wasn’t happening.

Me, my reality is, I have the opportunity to change and correct my mistakes, in public, whenever I want to. It’s really… I’ve got a microphone. Do you know how many people are frustrated that they can’t tell people what they really think, frustrated about the way the country’s going? I get to do all that. You know, at the end of the day, I’m feeling a hundred percent satisfied and fulfilled.

GRETA: Random question: Twitter. What do you think of it?

RUSH: (chuckles) I think it’s representative of the pop culture. A lot of people are on Twitter because a lot of people are on Twitter. It’s one of these where people follow other people to it. I don’t do it much, and the reason I don’t is because you can’t get it back. Once it’s gone and maybe retweeted… I’m very careful. But in addition to that, I want…

One of the reasons I don’t do shows like this is I want people to come to my radio show to find out what I think. I don’t want to satisfy ’em on Twitter. I don’t want to satisfy ’em on Facebook. We’ll post some pictures or things now and then, but they are appetite whetters (faces camera) w-h-e-t-t-e-r-s. I want people coming to the radio show. You know, I’m an old-fashioned media guy.

I think there are things you do to create an audience and to hold it, and one of the things is always leave people wanting more, never satisfy ’em — and certainly don’t make yourself available any time, anywhere, every day. People get tired of you that way.

GRETA: The impact of the Internet on politics.

RUSH: The impact of the Internet on everything is profound.

GRETA: That’s all?

RUSH: Yeah. I mean, it’s allowed for people to be anonymously involved in things, which allows people to be more honest about what they really think.

GRETA: See, I think that allows people who do drive-by hits. I like it is better to know who’s saying what.

RUSH: Well, no. I’m not… When I say profound, I’m not gonna judge whether it’s good or bad because it is. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. What the Internet illustrates is just how much real ignorance there is out there, that has to be dealt with if you’re in any way devoted to improving people’s lives, or the country or growing it. There’s a lot of ignorance that’s out there. It’s on display each and every day.

Proudly.

People are proudly posting what they don’t know, although they don’t know they don’t know it. But, I mean, you can’t… I’m not gonna condemn it. That would be like condemning the Beatles. I mean, it is what it is — and you have to, when these things happen, figure out a way to use them in ways that either make you happy for, you know, hobby purposes or enjoyment or maybe maximize ’em in a business way.

But it’s there. It’s something that… Greta, I used to be able to prep my radio show as recently as 1992 — that would be four years into it — with three newspapers, maybe four, because nobody was reading even that many of them. Three to four newspapers I was more informed than anybody in my audience. Not possible anymore. I cannot single-handedly acquire all the information that is available now, as I used to be able to do in prepping the show.

So there are areas of the Internet that I have staff go and get and send me what they find, and it all goes to the printer behind me and at 11 o’clock I start going through it and putting together the radio show. But it’s just massive. The competition in what I do has never been greater. There have never been more people doing what I do. There have never been more people wanting what I have.

There have never been more people wishing I wasn’t doing what I’m doing. The competitive aspects of this have never, ever been greater. One of the things I’m most proud of… I mentioned that back in 1988, I was it. My radio show was it, the only national media, and it was that way for seven or eight years. Then Fox starts in 1997 and all these other conservative talk shows started, and none of it cannibalized me.

We created a whole brand-new media piece of the pie. We actually expanded the media pie. I have not lost audience as all these conservatives have started doing radio shows, the Internet exists, Fox News. It’s been fabulous. I think the existence of this massive right-wing media is another reason why the mainstream media is now so openly partisan.

They are openly trying to eliminate their opposition. They can’t get away with the pretense that they’re objective and simply reporting the news. The gig’s up. Everybody knows now what they’ve always been: They’re partisan leftists trying to advance the agenda the Democrat Party with rare exceptions. So it’s out of the bag, and so the partisanship and the friction and the battles, they’re not going away. They’re only gonna get more intense.

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GRETA: Coming up, Rush Limbaugh says he was shocked by the George Zimmerman verdict. Why does he say that? Rush answers that question next.

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GRETA: Rush Limbaugh going On the Record about the acquittal of George Zimmerman and race relations in America. What do you have to say about the Zimmerman verdict?

RUSH: I was shocked, to tell you the truth. I was surprised by it. I thought the makeup of the jury and the condition of American pop culture and the fear of civil unrest would cause the jury to say, “You know what? Let’s come up with some form of guilty and get outta here.” I was really proud. They looked at the evidence and said this case has been overcharged and the prosecution didn’t prove anything. The defense ended up proving it. So I was happy about it, but I was prepared for a verdict that had nothing to do with the law simply because of the forces, the pervasive forces out there have been trying to gin people up, and the sheriff’s office running PSAs, “Please don’t riot!” That’s like saying, “Please don’t think pink.” What are you thinking? There were people who were subtly, in a subconscious way, encouraging civil unrest, and I thought the jury would be aware of that. It’s a small town. Sanford is a small town. Who wants to live in that kind of circumstance? I thought they’d just say, “The simplest way to get rid of this is come up with a little bit… What’s one guy?” But they didn’t. So it was really, I think, uplifting.

GRETA: What do you think about O’Reilly’s statements on race?

RUSH: What are they?

GRETA: Well, I guess you didn’t hear them then.

RUSH: No. What did he say?

GRETA: He’s gotten into… Basically, it’s a much more involved discussion, but he has talked about the terrible things that are going on in the inner city and the families are deteriorating. Basically the social issues.

RUSH: Well, you know, I’ve had black people calling my radio show for 25 years who have said — and they profess to be conservative — “Rush, the problem is what the Democrat Party and what big government policies have done to the black family. They’ve destroyed it. Seventy percent of kids are born without a father.” This isn’t news. I mean, I’ve had people calling me for 25 years talking about this.

I’ve responded and said it in my own way. I’ve gone so far as to say — I don’t know what O’Reilly said, but — I think the policies of the Democrat Party have destroyed the black family. I’ve said this for how many years, because I think it happens to be true, and the Republican Party has nothing to do with this. The Republican Party has no power over blacks. They don’t listen to them. It’s Democrat Party policies.

The Democrat Party became the father, the Democrat Party became the husband with federal programs here, and that’s why I’ve asked African-Americans, “You keep voting for 50 years for these people that are promising you this panacea, and nothing’s changing.” And they all say, “‘Cause the Republicans are racists, and I know they don’t like us.” It’s bogus. It’s silly. The Republicans are not racist. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! You know, it’s an unfortunate thing. I think this is… Detroit, the black community? The Democrat Party is their savior, right? How’s it working out for ’em?

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GRETA: Straight ahead, Egypt, Russia, what does the world really think of United States? Rush Limbaugh tells you what he thinks next.

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GRETA: Now more with Rush Limbaugh…

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GRETA: Let me jump to international affairs. The Middle East, our standing in the world.

RUSH: What? What? Standing in the world?

GRETA: Yeah. How we doing?

RUSH: Who cares? Do you care?

GRETA: Well, to the extent that we have to… If — if there — is any influence on world problems, I do care. I don’t want —

RUSH: With John Kerry, Hillary? Influence? We’re a joke. You go back to 2008 and the campaign and we were told that the world hated America. They hated Bush. They hated us because of Abu Ghraib, they hated us because of Guantanamo Bay, they hated us because of 9/11. They hated us for all these reasons. They hated us because of Republicans. They hated us because of Bush. “We need Obama to make the world love us. We need Democrats and liberals, people who understand Europeans.” We’ve got all that, and we don’t have any influence over what’s happening in the world, and I don’t see we’re trying to exert any.

GRETA: It’s expensive. I mean, we spend a lot of money on it.

RUSH: Well, yeah, we spend a lot of money on everything but there’s never an accounting for how much it works. Look, I want to be careful about something here because the people in the US military and some people in the Foreign Service are really true patriots, and they really are trying to represent and maintain America’s best interests in all of these places around the world. I don’t want to appear to be casting aspersions. I just…

I think the short answer to your question is that, contrary to what most low-information voters in this country think, I don’t think that the rest of the world is enamored of Obama. If you read the foreign press you get the truth about the incompetence, about the economic destruction. You read the British papers, British media, you get the truth reported about what’s happening in this country, because they’re not part of the agenda.

You look at Egypt. I thought Morsi was Obama’s guy. I thought the Muslim Brotherhood, that’s who Obama wanted. Well, Egypt’s military said, “Screw all of you,” and they kicked Morsi out and took back control of the country for better or worse. John Kerry is in Russia and Putin’s fishing. These people are… I think they’re clueless, and I don’t think they have slightest idea.

They don’t have a reverence for the country that you and I — well, at least your question indicates. To them, America’s the problem in the world. America, as a superpower, makes the world out of balance. It was better when the Soviet Union was around. Madeleine Albright even said this! The Soviet Union kept us in check. A competing superpower was able to help the United States be restrained.

These people — liberal Democrats, leftists — think that the American military’s the focus of evil in the modern world, that we are imposing freedom on people, if you can believe that, and that United States is destroying the planet with global warming, with our capitalism, with our wanton consumption of resources.

And they’re about cutting this country down to size. People like me think the United States is the solution to problems around the world. But when you’ve got people who think the United States is responsible for these problems — and on occasion have gotten close to apologizing — then, you know, I just don’t take seriously what they’re doing.

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GRETA: Coming up, more with Rush Limbaugh up close and personal. Stay tuned.

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RUSH: So, I just love radio. It’s just, you know, that’s what I was born to do, and I love it. I don’t know… I can’t imagine not doing it.

GRETA: And millions of listeners can’t imagine radio without Rush Limbaugh, either. We want to thank Rush for taking us behind the scenes of his radio show and for taking the time to talk with us — and thank you for being with us. Make sure you go to GretaWire.com and let us know what you thought of our interview with Rush Limbaugh.