RUSH: We are here wrapping up a big week in Los Angeles, and it is Friday.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: Live from the Left Coast at our satellite studios in Los Angeles, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: There it is. I’ve been waiting for that all week. That’s the big Johnny Donovan show open, folks — and that’s right. We are here in Los Angeles. Yes, we are. It actually is my iPhone’s Locations Services. It identifies where I am as Los Angeles, and it’s been a great week. I had a great week last night with some old buddies. My buddy Stan Shuster has this great place in Beverly Hills called the Grand Havana Room.
You can go in there and smoke cigars and eat dinner. They had the football game on and the Red Sox game on last night, and I hadn’t seen these guys in a year and a half or two years. Oh, man, it was great. I’m wondering, what should I share? I’m not gonna tell you who it was. They begged anonymity. That should tell you something. (chuckling) No, it doesn’t tell you anything. But I’ll give you an example.
One of them very sheepishly said, “Rush? Rush?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to tell you something. Don’t want you to get mad.”
“Why would I get mad?”
“I just don’t want you to get mad.”
“What is it?”
He took a couple of puffs on his cigar; took a sip of his single-malt, 25-year-old, imitation scotch, and said, “I’m getting an electric car, but it’s not because — it’s not because I’m a big environmentalist wacko! Don’t get mad! It’s not because was that.”
“If you like an electric car, go get it. What kind are you gonna get?”
“I’m gonna get a Tesla. I’m gonna get a Tesla.”
Another guy said, “Yeah, best car in the world. Best car, safest car. Best damn car you can get.”
I said, “Wow, this is really cool.”
He says, “Yeah, yeah. The thing does zero to 60 in 4.8 seconds.”
I said, “Now, wait a minute. You’re trying to sell me on an electric car on how fast it does zero to 60? That’s not why you buy an electric car.”
He said, “That’s right, that’s right. Actually I got this thing because, Rush, my commute is really long out here. I’m spending $400 a month in gasoline. I gotta do something about it. It’s not because I’m an environmentalist wacko.” He was just desperate that I not think he had gone over to the dark side on global warming, and then he started the sales pitch.
“Oh, Rush, you’d love it, being the high-tech guy that you are. You know how you raise and lower the windows in it?”
I said, “No.”
“Well, it’s got this touch screen in there, just like your iPad! If you want to put the window down, you put your two fingers on there and on the window and, ‘Szzzz,’ you scroll down, and the window goes down! It’s so damn cool.”
The other guy said, “It is. It’s the best damn car in the world — and, you know, it’s the safest car.” It’s like they were selling me on it, like begging me to okay it. (interruption) No, no. He doesn’t have it yet. He’s not getting it until December. It’s being made or maybe repaired. I don’t know. (chuckling) No, I didn’t want to test drive it. Folks, they were so, so hoping that I would not disapprove. It was almost like the poor guy was sweating whether he should tell me.
He wanted to tell me, he’da felt guilty if he hadn’t, and… (interruption) No, there was no paparazzi. No, no, there was no paparazzi. The paparazzi didn’t know where I was going last night. I mean, Stan Shuster would never call the paparazzi and tell ’em who’s showing up at his place because it’d kill the place if he did that. Too many people would go in there.
Anyway, then the same guy says, “Now, Rush…” Folks, this is really something. “Rush, we gotta give Obama some credit.” Now, that got my attention. The electric car, you know, “Yes, sir; yes, sir.” Fine and dandy. If you like it, that’s cool. I have no argument. Just don’t tell me you’re doing it to save the planet. That tells me you’ve been duped. But if you like it ’cause you’re gonna save money or something…
I did ask, “How far can you drive in the thing?”
“Three hundred miles. I can get all the way to Vegas on it.”
I said, “That’s big. So you’re gonna buy a car in 2013, almost 2014 that will go from LA to Vegas without you having to stop!”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so cool. That’s so cool. Is there a gasoline engine as a backup in case?”
“Nope. Nope. You don’t need it. Never. Never.”
I said, “Well, how long does it take to charge?”
“Overnight. You pull in the garage, plug it in, it charges overnight, and the next day you’re ready to go.”
“Okay what happens if…? I don’t know how far it is from Vegas. What happens if you’ve got, say, 20 miles left on your charge, but you’ve got 25 miles to get where you’re going? Is there a way you can pull a stop and get a quick charge?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. You pull in there and you plug it in for about an hour and you get an additional, like, 10 miles or whatever.”
“That’s a ‘quick’ charge, an hour?”
“Yeah! Oh, man, it’s so cool, Rush! I’m not getting it because I’ve gone to the dark side on the environment. I want you to understand.” Now, that was after we talked. This guy, he’s such a great guy, and he’s a great script writer. He said, “Rush, we gotta give Obama credit for getting bin Laden. I mean, come on, Rush! Come on, you gotta admit!”
I’m thinking, you know, this is what happens when I don’t see these guys in a year and a half. They fall prey… Well, I mean, the whole world’s aligned against conservatives out here, and they get sucked in, and it becomes a big thing to give Obama credit for things. That gives you cred with the head honchos that work in your industry.
“Come on, Rush, you gotta admit, I mean, that took guts!”
I said, “Yeah, Valerie Jarrett called him off the golf course when she decided it was time to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they tried to get Osama. They had three previous occasions when they said, ‘We got bin Laden in our sights,’ and Obama wouldn’t pull the trigger. But Valerie Jarrett finally said, ‘Okay, somebody’s gotta be the man hear,’ and she decided to do it, and he was on the golf course, so they pulled him in, they put him in the president’s jacket, they moved him in the Situation Room, and they said, ‘Sit here and look concerned,’ and they took his picture.”
“Come on, Rush, you can’t say that! He’s president of the United States. Look at what coulda gone wrong! He could have been Jimmy Carter’d. The helicopters could have broken down. It coulda all gone nuts. Some SEALs could have been killed. It could have been a disaster. It coulda ruined him political. You gotta give him credit, Rush!”
I said, “Look, if you want to, that’s fine,” and they all are Chris Christie groupies. They just love him. I kid you not. So I taunted ’em a little bit on that, and the first time they didn’t hear it. Maybe if they heard it, it didn’t quite register. Chris Christie is their guy. They also are convinced that Hillary’s gonna be the nominee. It was like back in 2007: It’s inescapable, Hillary Clinton is the nominee and we don’t have anybody that can beat her except Chris Christie. That’s it. That’s the way it shapes up.
They said to me, “Well, what do you want? You think Cruz? Come on, Rush! Not even you believe that. You can’t believe that! You can’t believe that Ted Cruz is actually gonna have a future in politics.” I didn’t say anything ’cause this was a fun evening. I didn’t want to even go into politics. I’m listening to this stuff, and when it got to Christie, I said, “This fear that we’ve all had of Hillary Clinton for so many years, why? She was supposed to be the nominee in 2008 ’til Obama came along.”
“How did that happen? All the cards were in the deck were stacked in her favor, right? It was a fait accompli, it was her turn, she was owed this by the Democrats — and then they found somebody better, somebody who wasn’t even qualified? He’d been a senator for a day and a half. He’d given a speech at the convention. His wife was cool. That was it! That’s all it took to unseat Hillary. Do you guys understand who really is gonna be fighting for the Democrat presidential nomination 2016?”
They said, “Who?”
I said, “Rahm Emanuel, Chris Christie, and Andrew Cuomo.” They didn’t hear me say “Chris Christie” in there, or it didn’t register that I had said Christie was gonna be in the Democrat race for the nomination. So maybe they’re so fixated on it they didn’t hear, so I tried it again and then they did hear.
“Aw, come on, now! You’re just yanking our chain. Look, Rush, I can’t believe you’re missing this. Christie is a real guy,” ’cause I’d asked ’em about him.
I said, “Okay, you guys, let me ask you a question: Do you think that Chris Christie’s gonna do a Rex Ryan, go in and get a lap band surgery or something before he runs?”
“No. Come on, Rush! This is 2016. Christie is a real guy. It’s gonna happen help. It isn’t gonna be a problem. This guy, he doesn’t take any prisoners. He kicks butt. You hear the way he talks to the unions? You hear the way he talks to the media?”
I understand that, ’cause so many on our side just wants somebody to fight back. That’s my lament, too. I said, “Well, you know, are you troubled that Christie kind of threw his own nominee overboard the week before the election when Obama visited New Jersey?”
“He had to do that! Rush, come on. Come on. He had to do that. Don’t you understand? His state had been devastated by the hurricane, and Obama’s got the money. He had to do it. He’s got to be governor.”
So despite all this, it was fun. It was a great, great time. I love these guys, and to me, this is just fascinating. We talked a little about Steve Jobs, the lost interview that has been found from 1995 and Netflix has, and we talked about what these guys are doing. It was great, and I hadn’t seen ’em in over a year and a half. It’s always great when you get together with your cigar buddies and you’re chewing the fat, having fun. But that’s what I did last night — and, no, Snerdley, there were no paparazzi.
No, no big deal. (interruption) What do you mean, “disappointing”? Why would that be? (interruption) Well, I… (interruption) Snerdley’s saying he loves to see me in the celebrity press. It happens when with it happens.
Related Links