×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: It is getting just so inexplicable. There’s no common sense explanation for anything that’s happening. I mean, the polling data, for example, on immigration. Right now the Kaiser Family Foundation has put out a poll, and it shows that Republican voters think standing tough on immigration is the most important issue by far, even more important than repealing Obamacare. What are the Republicans doing? Trying to pass amnesty.

Republican voters, Americans of all stripes are all literally melting phone lines in Washington. They are letting all of their elected officials know that they don’t want any part of either comprehensive immigration reform or temporary legal status for the kids coming across the border. And the left says, “That’s a really great thing, Limbaugh, how are you going to make hay out of the fact that the only Republican immigration policy is deporting children? You really think you can make hay about that?” I said, “I don’t think that’s what this is about. And I don’t think that’s how the American people look at this.”


It doesn’t matter that they’re children, because what the American people know is that the parents of these kids are next if something isn’t done here. What the American people know is that if this is not dealt with, there’s no end to this, and there’s got to be an end to it. There simply has to be or else borders don’t mean anything anymore. And if your borders don’t mean anything, it won’t be long before you don’t have a nation. And people are very cognizant of this. This is what they’re tantamount concerned with.

The Republicans in Washington, the Republican leadership, there are all kinds of ways to explain their behavior. Common sense, however, will not answer your questions. I’m going to tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing. It isn’t complicated, ladies and gentlemen. It’s kind of tough to swallow, but it really isn’t complicated. Even though you are melting the phone lines, they don’t care. Their donors are telling them they want comprehensive immigration reform, which is a much different thing than what’s being discussed at the border today with children. The donors, the people the Republicans really think make their lives possible, like I think you make my career possible.

I mean, yeah, I’m a factor. I’m here every day. But if you weren’t, it wouldn’t matter. And I have never placed myself above you in anything, attitudinally. There’s no way you would know this, but each and every day I do this program the only people I care about are you. And it’s a matter of respect. Am I meeting your expectations? You invest a certain amount of time here every day where you could be doing something else. So you have some expectations. My job is to meet them at least, and hopefully surpass them every day. The show is the thing and giving it my best each and every day. And if a day goes by that I don’t, or if I think I don’t or think I haven’t, I go home down in the dumps and start thinking about how to make up for it the next day.


But the Republicans in Congress, those people that matter to them are the donors, because they think that without the money, they couldn’t run for re-election, couldn’t run for election. And if they don’t get the money, then all the votes in the world aren’t going to matter, because they’ll never get them. They put money in front of votes. They don’t get the money to campaign and do whatever else then they’re never going to be able to reach you, convince you you should vote for them. So their donors are really the ones wagging their tail.

Chamber of commerce, Tom Donahue, said within the past six weeks that if the Republicans don’t do amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform, they may as well not even nominate a candidate for president in 2016. Now, that’s a little extreme. But he was trying to make a point, “Hey, do not ignore us. If you guys don’t give us what we want there’s no reason why we’re going to financially support you.”

Now, they look at financial support the way I look at you, loyally admitting that you listen every day to this program. So the bottom line is, the simple explanation is, that for the most part the Republican leadership in the House supports amnesty. There’s no other way to explain what they’re doing. Maybe harsh. Maybe extreme, but common sense if you employ it, they’re not trying to stop it. Why aren’t they trying to stop it?

Well, the people that they think make them possible want it. Therefore, they’re supporting amnesty. What they’re doing, what they’re trying to figure out how to do is to pretend they’re not for it. And that’s why they’re twisted into all kinds of different shapes. While they’re figuring out ways to end up making comprehensive immigration reform possible, different from what’s happening on the border…

That would be simple to deal with, I think. You just shut down DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals]! You just say that we’re no longer going to legalize children from anywhere unaccompanied, and we’re not going to grant them any kind of temporary status. Just end it. Real simple. One sentence. They’re not going to do that either. If they don’t support amnesty, they at least believe that their donors want it and so therefore they’ve got to deliver.

But they know you don’t want it. So they’re on a tightrope. It’s not that they want to blow you off. They want to give their donors what they want while at the same time figure out how to convince you that’s not what they’re doing, and that’s why it’s hard to figure out what they’re doing. That’s why common sense doesn’t apply when trying to answer it.

Now, the problem that they’re running into, the House leadership, is as they try to occupy both sides of this narrow little line — supporting amnesty because their donors do and then trying to make you think they don’t — there is a small number of conservatives in the House who are calling them on it. That’s how I know.

I am smart enough to figure this out on my own, but I don’t have to in this case because the conservative Republican representatives are calling them on it. They’re telling us this is what’s going on. When this is all said and done, when it comes to anything on immigration, they like Obama doing this on his own. They really don’t want to stop him.

All these executive actions, executive orders? Since everybody involved wants the same thing, then the Republican’s job is to make their voters think they don’t want it. So how do you do that? Let Obama do it alone! Therefore, they like Obama doing it on his own, so they don’t take a direct hit, and then they file this lawsuit bill. After they have stood aside and let Obama do what he’s doing, then they file the lawsuit.

That’s part of convincing you that they really don’t want this to happen.

So, in a sense, they are trying to balance deceptions. If you don’t know that, and you’re just trying to use your natural intelligence peppered and flavored with a lot of common sense, you’re going to go nuts trying to figure this out. Because none of this makes any common sense, not from the standpoint of preserving the country, saving the country or preventing Obama from transforming it. None of it makes any sense.

If you look at the Republican Party as an opposition party, none of this makes any sense. But if you see the Republican leadership and the establishment and their donors as essentially on the same page as Obama, then maybe on your own you can start to figure this out and make it make sense. Grab audio sound bite number three. This is Ron Fournier. Now, Ron Fournier is going through a transformation of his own, I think.


I don’t want to blow it here by calling him on it, though. These guys also like to live under a certain amount of cover. Ron Fournier, former AP bureau chief in Washington, former slavish member Drive-By Media, pro-Democrat. He’s now over at National Journal, and he’s sickened. This immigration fiasco literally has him sickened.

It’s almost like he’s seen the light. What he has concluded is that neither party wants to stop this. That’s what he’s concluded, and he can’t believe it. Neither party wants to stop it. He was on Bret Baier last night on the Fox News Channel and the question was: “The Republican leadership wants something. What is it?”

FOURNIER: It means nothing. The Senate’s gone; the president’s not going to sign it. (chuckles) All we have today is Republicans are trying to come up with something so they can say, “Hey, we tried to solve the crisis,” and the Democrats already have something that they can say, “Hey, we tried to solve the crisis.” Both parties know they’re not solving the crisis. What’s happening is our Congress is going on vacation for five weeks without addressing a severe humanitarian crisis on our border. I don’t even have the stomach to parse blame.

RUSH: Now he’s talking about the bill that would provide Obama money for humanitarian reasons to deal with these kids. But he may as well be talking about immigration policy overall. So, “Both parties know they’re not trying to solve the crisis.” Amen! Amen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to immigration for just a second, because that is unbelievable, too. I’m telling you, today is surreal, and it seems like every day is surreal. One surreal day after the next. Chris Stirewalt, who is the Fox News Digital Political Director, says that there is a single reason why the Republicans got back into action to try to pass an immigration bill.

And it was because of a tweet from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. “Why is the House working so hard today to pass a bill to address the border crisis that is dead on arrival in the Senate and would surely face a veto from President Obama if it were to pass?” Well I have answered that in the first half hour of the program.

The reason they’re doing it… They know it doesn’t have a chance in the Senate. They know it doesn’t have a chance even if it got through the Senate. Obama would veto it. That doesn’t matter. Like we told you yesterday, they’re doing this to try to curry favor with Hispanic voters. They’re doing this to show Hispanic voters they love them. They’re doing this to show Hispanic voters they don’t hate them.

They’re doing exactly what the Democrats are telling them they should do. “Come out in favor of the immigration reform deal on the table. Come out in favor of it because if you don’t,” says, for example, Chuck Schumer. “If you Republicans don’t, you’re never going to win the White House and we really want you to win the White House!” Right.


So the Republicans really think… This is not BS. This is not speculation. It’s not satire. It’s not an attempt to be funny. It happens to be really be true. This current Republican leadership actually believes that passing a bill that promises not to deport the kids that are coming across the border now will actually win the White House for them or go a long way toward helping them win because they think that’s what the Hispanic community wants.

It’s come down to this: Disagreeing with anything the administration wants to do is automatically now portrayed as racist, sexist, extreme. I mean just disagreeing, having a debate — simply opposing, disagreeing — equals now racism, bigotry, what have you. That’s the climate. That’s the climate that the Republicans find themselves in. Just disagreeing gets that charge.

Just opposing — intellectually opposing what Obama wants to do — equals all of these horrible characteristics. The media enforces it because the Democrats want that to be the way all this is characterized. So the way it works is this: “Why is the House working so hard today to pass a bill to address the border crisis that is dead on arrival in the Senate and would surely face a veto from President Obama if it were to pass?”

In other words, why are they working so hard on something they know isn’t ever going to happen? Because they’re trying to practice the art of deception on a very narrow tripwire. They want amnesty, but they want Obama to get all the quote/unquote “credit” or “blame.” But for their donors, their donors must see that the Republicans tried to make it happen. The Republican donors know that it can’t happen right now.

The Republican big money donors, however, apparently want to see that the Republicans are trying to make it happen. Ergo, the Republicans are authoring legislation that would give the big donors what they want: Reform amnesty and certain kinds of treatment here at the border with the kids. So they pass a bill that doesn’t have a prayer, and they can say to their donors, “See? We tried!

“Look, it’s everything you wanted in it. But Harry Reid said no and we can’t control Harry Reid. But we tried! We tried!” They say the same thing to Hispanic voters. “We tried! We do love you! We do respect you! We do want you to vote for us. See what we did?” But it doesn’t have a prayer. So after they try it and it gets shot down, Obama does what he does using his executive actions, and he gets the blame while the Republicans get what they want.

Because it’s what their donors want. The reason they’re back at it today, is Dan Pfeiffer went to Twitter. “Moments after House leaders scuttled a scheduled vote,” shortly after two o’clock… Boehner and the Republican leaders pulled their immigration bill yesterday. This is the funding for Obama to do whatever he wants to do with the kids.

“Moments after they pulled the bill, Pfeiffer tweeted ‘…the House GOP once again proves why the President must act on his own to solve problems.'” So Pfeiffer is out there and he’s gloating. (summarized) “See! Look! The House Republicans once again they can’t get anything done. So only Obama can.” This is a message guaranteed to hit low-information voters right in the brain.

This is a message directly aimed at low-information voters.

It’s a message that justifies what Obama has been saying out there on his little campaign trail. (impression) “Hey, you know what? I just wish they’d stop hatin’ and do their jobs! But if they don’t, I’m gonna have to do it on my own.” The Republicans come along and they pull the bill — as it should have been; it was a lousy bill — and Pfeiffer goes out and says, “See? This is why Obama has to act on his own!”

So the Republicans, to counter that, are back in action today trying to pass something. Because they’re dancing on so many pinheads of deception. They’ve got to try to convince you they don’t want Obama getting away with this. They’ve gotta try to convince you that they’re trying to stop Obama. And they’ve gotta try to convince their donors that they’re trying to make all this happen. And then they’ve got Dan Pfeiffer to deal with.


You know, we’re lucky there wasn’t a hashtag on this. If there was a hashtag, we might have had people actually changing parties yesterday. If the Democrats had really pulled out the big guns and added a hashtag to this tweet, ah, folks, I shudder to think. I’m getting heart palpitations thinking what might have been yesterday. Thank God they didn’t do a hashtag attached to the tweet. Chris Stirewalt says that “had Pfeiffer waited a bit to gloat, it might have been harder for Speaker John Boehner and his team to get members back from the exits to start working on a new compromise.”

But once Pfeiffer from the White House went out and tweeted: well, see, these buffoons can’t do anything, that’s why Obama’s gotta to do it. They were forced back in. This is what happens when you don’t stand for anything. It’s what happens when you don’t have your own cause. It’s what happens when you’re not willing to push back. It’s what happens when you’re trying to balance yourself on the tripwire so that if you fall off, you can’t get hurt. That’s really hard to do.

“The message made it clear to frustrated members just how the president planned to use their failure to advance a bill. ‘Exhibit A,’ as one leadership aide described the tweet to Fox News First.” See? This is exactly how Obama’s going to do it. The House Republicans come up with an idea to pass a bill. They fail. Failure is the only an option because Harry Reid won’t deal with anything they send him. So they goad the Republicans into passing a bill in the first place. They goad them by saying you guys are never going to win the White House if you don’t get on good standing with the Hispanics.

So they go pass a bill and no chance for it to ever see the light of day and Obama says: All right. All right. Now I can go out and say, “See, I have to do it myself.” Thereby, justifying his extra-constitutional behavior because the Republicans just can’t do anything.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. So I’ve set the table. What is happening today? I’m not really sure, but I’m going to tell you what I think is going on, because I’m not there. The House is going to vote today on what’s called the Blackburn bill. This is Marsha Blackburn, Republican, Tennessee. She has introduced language that essentially freezes DACA. DACA is the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that Obama initiated in 2012, the dreamers, in which he just proclaimed with a stroke of a pen that any child in the country illegally under 16 is automatically legal and can stay.

That’s what he’s talking about expanding with the stroke of his pen. And White House is sending signals, “You know what, he just might legalize all 11 million. He might do five or six million, he might do 11.” Well, if he’s going to do five or six million, how are we going to know which ones? One of the big problems and I’ve said this I don’t know how many times — one of the big problems the Republicans have is they’ve got no confidence. They literally have been beaten down.


It’s to the point now, folks, that when Obama makes an argument, they assume he has won it simply by making it. They are so beaten down, they don’t think they can even win in a debate against Obama. They don’t think they can beat Obama. Obama proclaims a position, states a position, and it’s just assumed that everybody’s going to agree with him. They believe, even with Obama plummeting in the polls — folks, Obama is at 39 percent in Gallup. He’s at 40. The economy is a mess. The jobs being created, I have details, nothing to write home about. There’s no recovery. There is nothing for Obama to hang his hat on, but they believe, I’m telling you, they believe that he is just as popular today as he was in 2008. They must. It’s gotten to the point that all Obama has to do is make an argument and they think it’s over.

They think everybody agrees with Obama when he says something. And they don’t want to be seen disagreeing with Obama because that’s racist or it’s being mean, I don’t know what. But I do know what causes it. No confidence. Absolutely no confidence. Being a puppet, either the donors telling you what to do or your voters telling you what to do, but having no sense of self.

So anyway, back to the legislation. The House is going to vote on Blackburn’s bill that would freeze DACA. No more kids. The problem is, as I’m reading this, and I’m reading this from Heritage, here’s what they say. “To be clear, Heritage would have preferred language to freeze DACA be rolled into the supplemental. However, it’s undeniable that the president’s unilateral actions have become the focus of the debate.” It looks to me like the Blackburn bill is a separate bill. It’s not part of the big thing. It’s not part of the supplemental. It’s not part of the bill that will send Obama some money. And if that’s true, it’s toothless.

Again, I could be wrong about this, but it looks like this is the way that they’ve set this up. Give the conservatives the vote they want on freezing DACA, the Blackburn bill, but it’s a stand-alone. It’s over there. It’s not in the main bill, which is called the supplemental. So once again, those practicing deceit, they can say they voted against DACA. They voted against any more kids being made legal. They can run around at town hall meetings in August and when they run for re-election, “Hey, hey, remember I voted against this. I voted against DACA,” but it wasn’t part of the main bill.

So they get cover while in the main bill, the supplemental, they go ahead and vote for the authorization of some money for Obama to deal with this as he wants. Now, again, I’m only assuming this because of this one little paragraph in a release by the Heritage Foundation where they say we would have preferred language to freeze DACA, the Blackburn bill, be rolled into the supplemental, which means it’s not the supplemental, which sounds like it’s a stand-alone over here. We’ll see. But as best I can tell, that’s what’s happening today. That’s what the Republicans are doing in their vote today.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It is two separate bills. The Blackburn bill freezing DACA is a separate bill from the supplemental. Obama’s going to ignore it anyway, and it isn’t going to be passed by the Senate. So again, it’s a public perception thing that is taking place. Look, there’s lots more to do, folks. We’ll move on to it and get into your calls when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jean in Harvard, Illinois. You’re next, Open Line Friday. Welcome to the program. Hi.

CALLER: Congratulations on your 26th anniversary. Long-term listener, 24/7 member.

RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

CALLER: I’d like to challenge your terminology. Obama is using the illegal alien children as human shields to promote himself and his amnesty policy to protect him from all criticism. We can’t attack amnesty without being seen as hurting those children. Secondly, he’s also the human-trafficker-in-chief. He wants to bring them in by the airplane load, not in the smaller groups the coyotes use, and who is placing them in families? Is it those who have redefined what families are? These children are ripe for exploitation.

RUSH: Children are ripe for exploitation, yes, no question about it. And you are right in your first claim that Obama’s hiding behind, they’re human shields. In fact, I watched a show on Fox not long ago and the question was: I don’t know how you Republicans are going to win, because it seems like what you’re saying is that you don’t want to take care of children. And furthermore, you want to deport a bunch of children. Would you tell me how that is a winning political idea? And you’re exactly right. That’s why they’re doing this.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This