RUSH: We start in Chicago. This is Don. It’s your turn, sir. You’re up first. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, 28-day dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listen, last night the president honored, and rightfully so, that Army Ranger, and it was very touching and moving, but at the same time during the speech he dishonored that man by telling Congress that if they brought a bill to his desk with sanctions in it against Iran, he would veto it.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And my son just got out of the Marine Corps, and his best buddy was an ordnance disposal guy, and he’s been to Afghanistan four times, and 95% of those bombs that blew that poor kid up were from Iran. This president doesn’t know how to punish our enemies. He wants to embrace them. It’s dishonoring to our men.
RUSH: Well, you know, this is a tough thing. You’re right. The Iranians supply the IEDs, they supply the roadside bombs. They did it in Iraq as well. The Iranian situation is really convoluted and strange. I mean, the president made it sound to me last night like he got ’em talked into dropping their bomb program. I wonder how many other people heard it that way. When he started talking about Iran, he said (paraphrasing), “Look, they’re not gonna make their bombs. They’re not gonna do centrifuges. We took care of that. So if anybody comes up with a bill to sanction the Iranians, they’re gonna have to go through me. I’m gonna veto. No more sanctions on the Iranians.”
The Iranians haven’t given up on building a nuclear bomb. What in the world is he telling this for? Why in the world tell people that? Of course, then the answer is obvious, it’s one lie after another. It’s just this giant disconnect. When it comes to the soldier, that was such a touching moment last night. Every time that young man was on camera, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I knew what he’d been through, the nature of his injuries and the rehab process, all the surgeries and everything. I don’t know, folks. I probably shouldn’t — so conflicted about this. “Don’t use the guy, please.”
I know he’s sitting up there next to the first lady, and I know that this has been standard since Reagan put the guy that rescued people from the plane crash on the Potomac. It’s become standard operating procedure. By the way, I think Obama set the record with the number of people that he called out in the gallery up there. Gee whiz. But this tweet from the NBC political editor about this, Mark Murray is his name. Let me read this to you again: “ObamaÂ’s ending on Remsburg wasnÂ’t just a story about America — it also was a story about Obama. Nothing has ever come easy.”
Now, I knew that the Drive-Bys in the media were gonna make this all about Obama. They did leading up to it. Everything is always about Obama. Can he save his presidency? Can he get his poll numbers back? Can Obama make us love him again? Can Obama help us convince the American people he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, all of that, I know that’s what it’s about. But to impose himself on this man’s story? He didn’t, actually, unless you want to go that far and maybe think Obama did that for that reason, but this guy from NBC clearly took the opportunity of Remsburg, the Army Ranger, his story, to equate Obama to it? It was a story about Obama, nothing has ever come easy?
Folks, this is a member of the media. This is how they see the guy. This is what this guy’s takeaway he hopes is on the part of a lot of people. The uplifting part of it was that was the genuine applause line all night long, that event. That was the only time there was genuine applause, it was sustained, it was sincere, it was affectionate, it was real, in a chamber where not very much else was real last night. It actually was uplifting to see it from a national standpoint, from a positive attitude about America standpoint. Don, I appreciate the call.
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RUSH: Here’s Jesse in Orlando, Florida. Hi, Jess. Glad you called. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. I wanted to make a point. I think the whole story with the Ranger gives us some insight into Obama’s worldview.
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: Every time he has military guys up there, he doesn’t really celebrate their heroism or doesn’t tell us that this guy killed all these bad guys or saved his mate or anything. He puts them up there ’cause the guy’s a victim, and that’s what he’s celebrating.
RUSH: Let me play devil’s advocate with you and see how steadfastly you can maintain your case here.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: So your point is that he’s just parading them up to show the evils and what can happen to people who join the military, and he’s not proud of it — and, furthermore, when he talks about this man’s recovery and so forth, he’s not praising the military. He’s not praising any of it. He’s praising maybe the guy, maybe the Ranger, but his whole point here is to is, “Look at this poor guy!
“Look what we did to this poor guy, and look what we caused to happen to this poor man, and look at what this poor man had to do to survive what we as Americans sent him off to do,” instead of saying that, what you would prefer him say is, “This man is a hero because of X.” He saved whatever number of lives, killed so many enemy, served so many deployments or what have you. Your point is that everyone cites the achievements of these guys, and he only points to the pain they’ve suffered?
CALLER: Well, correct, and I wouldn’t say in this point, “demagoguing the military,” but I don’t think he’s capable of praising the achievements. All I think he sees is victims, and that’s why this guy was brought up there. You would never see him bring up a guy who wasn’t injured, who did all these heroic things. He only sees victims.
RUSH: Well, that’s true, but what about this? Another devil’s advocate question. Maybe Obama had him up there as a testament to perseverance and overcoming obstacles, severe injuries, left for dead, found face down in a stream of water. He was barely breathing when found, was not thought capable of living, and yet here he is with us tonight because the man is great and strength of character is profound, and he worked hard and he overcame obstacles, and he is with us tonight.
CALLER: I mean, I could see how you could think that but, again, I think that he’s subtly trying to tell Americans that, you know, your success is out of your hands, and again, we are paraded victims in front of us. We’re not paraded folks that have achieved great things because they’ve achieved great things. An example of this would be television shows on TV nowadays are always about the boss coming and learning from the little people, you know, it’s not the little people learning from the boss how to be great.
RUSH: Oh, yeah. What is that show?
CALLER: Undercover Boss?
RUSH: Undercover Boss. Oh, yeah, and so the boss is this detached, distant —
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: — doesn’t know diddly-squat until he actually does the work and then he learns from the underlings how to really do the work because he’s incompetent, doesn’t know anything, he shouldn’t even be in the job, right?
CALLER: Right. Well, all of society tells us that success is out of your hands.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And what happened to the great days where you can make anything for yourself if you work hard and are smart, et cetera?
RUSH: That’s what he said last night. He said it over and over again. You don’t believe him.
CALLER: That’s right. You can’t tell people that anymore because if you say that and then you have unfortune, it’s your fault. Right? If you aren’t successful, it’s your fault.
RUSH: Okay, so just trying to follow you here. So if Obama says all you gotta do is work hard and devote yourself to it. You put in the extra hours, and you work hard, and you make it, that pays off in America. But if it doesn’t pay off, if you do everything, you work hard, you don’t slack off, if you invest every bit of ambition you’ve got, and if you fail, then it’s, what, your fault?
CALLER: You can’t tell people that these days. And this is not related to the military guy, but the whole attitude of your destiny is in your hands to a degree, it’s been taken out of our politics and out of our society.
RUSH: Well, now, I know that Obama wants as many people as possible to think that their destiny is in his hands. But folks, Jesse here has a point. You have to be old enough to be able to remember, but not that long ago in real terms, military heroes — Audie Murphy was one. It’s a great example. Audie Murphy used to be celebrated for all of the enemy soldiers he killed or captured, while saving American lives. That used to be part of any ceremony that honored an American military hero. Audie Murphy was not alone, but he may be best example in terms of name recognition that you could use. So Jesse has a bit of a point. But don’t you think on this that Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt, that he really wanted to honor Remsburg’s stick-to-itiveness and his will to live and his ability, his drive, his whatever to overcome these injuries and near death and come back and continue to improve?
CALLER: I think the heroism should have been part of the narrative and it was excluded.
RUSH: So, by heroism, you think some of his achievements should have been mentioned, not just the fact that he was found face down in the road?
CALLER: Exactly. Exactly. Did he bring up the guys that got Osama Bin Laden in one of his previous State of the Union address? I don’t think so. I think the only people we’ve ever seen —
RUSH: Well, but you can’t. You make those guys targets if you do that. You bring those guys up to the House chamber, “And here’s the team, SEAL Team Six that captured and killed Osama Bin Laden.” They’re targets for the rest of their lives. Those guys are never made public, unless one of them leaks.
CALLER: All right. Well, in the past he brought up a gay soldier. And that was part of, again, the narrative. They didn’t honor the soldier for their achievement. They honored the soldier because the person was gay.
RUSH: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Point taken. Exactly right. We know what that’s about. That’s sadly true. (interruption) Well, I know, there were so many heroes last night up there sitting next to Moochelle. Never seen that many. And one of them — by the way, there was a hero, there was a woman up there last night that found a job. That’s why she was there, she found a job. She’s a woman. And that’s why she was there because as you know, this country has a War on Women. But this woman overcame that war. She found a job so she was up there sitting next to Moochelle.
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RUSH: All right. I’m gonna tell you what I think now. Just to summarize, our previous caller, Jesse, basically was saying that Obama had Ranger Remsburg sitting next to Moochelle last night, he was a hero for overcoming something terrible that happened to him. Not for being a military hero, but for enduring, for overcoming something in parentheses, something America made him do, end parentheses. That was Jesse’s point.
I’ll tell you what it was. I think Ranger Remsburg was there to send a message. The message was, “Look what my predecessor did to this country. Look what George Bush is responsible for. Look at all the horror that I have to clean up. And look at the struggle that we’re all in, still trying to fix the mess.”
If you want to have a military hero sitting next to Moochelle, there’s a really popular movie now that’s been made from a really popular book called Lone Survivor, and it’s also about a SEAL team in Afghanistan. This is an Army Ranger, Remsburg. Marcus Luttrell is the lone survivor of his unit. A fascinating story. They’re on a mission in Afghanistan and they are spotted by, of all things, goat herders. And they said, “Okay, what do we do, take these guys prisoners or do we let ’em go?”
They knew if they let ’em go that the goat herders would tell the Taliban, and they let ’em go. The goat herders told the Taliban, and the Taliban came and wiped out every SEAL in the unit except for Marcus Luttrell. He survived. That’s a heroic story. Military heroism. Marcus Luttrell wasn’t injured to the extent that Ranger Remsburg was. So Jesse may have had a point. I do think there’s a subtle message here. Look what this country was before I became president.