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RUSH: Not running? Biden called a press conference for the Rose Garden to say he’s not running? Holy smokes, why do that? (interruption) A big press conference in the Rose Garden, and Biden just made it official: He will not run for president. Obama’s looking on like, “You better say what I told you to say, Joe.” Well, that’s the look on Obama’s face here. (muttering) I sound like Bruce Babbitt here. Biden’s out there with his wife, the lovely and gracious Jill, greatest wife ever except for Trump’s. Great doctor, all that. Joe told us at Democrat convention. (interruption) He had his clothes on. A press conference in the Rose Garden to say you’re not running? Well, is there a big sigh of relief or a big shhhh escaping of air in disappointment for what might have been, what could have been?


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Joe Biden’s taking longer than anybody I’ve ever heard to say he’s not running. He just went through a laundry list of things that need to be fixed in this country as though he and Obama have not been in charge for seven years. He just listed all these things, talked about extremism and the hatred and violence caused the LGBT community and the institutional racism and all of these things. We thought that all this stuff was gonna get solved in the first term of Obama! And Biden’s sitting out there talking about, “I feel great about the future of this country!

“I’d rather live here than live anywhere else in the world,” and then he made the point the only… (interruption) No, no. Two things. I never thought he was gonna run. I have always thought this was a smoke screen. He’s never even gotten close to winning the nomination. This was not gonna be the time that he was gonna win. I never bought into this. I think this was a head fake. I think it was a feint and it was a distraction. But he reiterated here. Just before I had to turn on the microphone and resume the content portion of the program, he reiterated that the Republicans are not the enemy. (summarized)


“They are the opponents, and we can’t do anything in this country without consensus. We have to cooperate. We have to work together. We have to cross the aisle.” I thought was listening to a Republican, in that vein. What was noteworthy about that, of course, is that Hillary Clinton in the debate said in answer to a question about her biggest enemies, named the Republicans. And Biden for the second time now has said the Republicans are not the enemy; they’re the opponent.
He’s still talking, and he’s going through this litany of things wrong that need to be fixed, that the next president’s gonna have to deal with. It’s surreal, folks. It’s like the debate was, listening to these Democrats up there on the stage talk about this country as though they haven’t been in charge for seven years.

You know, Obama’s facial expression is, “Okay, Joe. Okay. Fine, fine. Wrap it up, Bud. Let’s move on here. You’re still talking.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Biden speech — “speech” — the Biden appearance. You know, this speech was a classic “I’m running for president speech.” This laid out an agenda. His remarks established a pathway that he thinks the country should be on and he would put us on and is going to put us on. It did not jibe whatsoever with somebody announcing they weren’t gonna run.

I want to state again. I have been laughed at, mocked, and made fun of by my friends because I told them all along you’re getting sucked into something that isn’t gonna happen. Joe Biden is not going to run. I can’t tell you the number of people that told me that I was missing this. No, you’re the ones missing it. This is a smoke screen for something. He’s not gonna run.

He makes this announcement, this big announcement in the Rose Garden with Obama standing next to him, his wife standing on the other side, the day before Hillary testifies on the Benghazi hearing, clears the way for her. He did not endorse her, did not mention her, did not throw his support to her, but this set of remarks that we got would have been — the media would proclaim this is one of the greatest coming-out speeches ever for a candidate announcing his intentions to run for president. It went on. In fact, I’ll tell you something, folks.


He kept talking and kept talking, and I was worried that he was gonna change his mind in the middle of this and talk himself into running after all. And I think Obama was a little worried about that, too. This did not sound like somebody that was announcing he wasn’t gonna do something. You know, we all like to peek behind the curtain. We all like to get into the room where we’re not permitted and wonder what really went on in there. And this was so odd that it makes me think he really wanted to do it and powerful forces warned him not to. I couldn’t answer the question, “Well, why? Why would that happen?” But this was just so incongruent.

And then you add to it this litany of defects that he cited in the country, as though these people haven’t been in power. It’s just confusing. It’s classic of leftists, in that sense. But this speech — I want to reiterate this point. This speech was an “I’m running for president” speech. I’m convinced he wanted to do it. Well, not “convinced.” But this is so much like a speech by somebody that’s going to do something, and it would have been said to be one of the best ever such speeches. And yet it’s to announce he wasn’t gonna do this.

I think he really probably wanted to and somebody leaned on him and said, “Nope, nope, nope.” And the deal was, “Okay, well, I get to go out and say what I wanted to say anyway.” And he did, and that’s why Obama went out there with him, ’cause, believe me, folks, old Joe is old Joe, and he’s a walking gaffe machine. And I think they had Obama out there as a living guardrail if you will, a living restraint.

Cookie is rolling some bites from this speech off and you’ll be able to hear what I’m talking about when we get the bites up and running. You’ll see it sounds exactly like somebody that just can’t wait to run, has got this massive agenda. And one thing he said he’s gonna do, we’re on the cusp of curing cancer, and he’s gonna devote all of his time now to that last bit of funding. That’s all we need, the last bit of funding, and we’re so close and we’re gonna get there. Joe’s gonna go out and cure cancer now with the magic solution every Democrat has: more funding.

You look at the timing of this, you look at the setting of this, everything about this, including 95% of the speech, pointed to him running. The incongruency was him saying he wasn’t going to run.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Ed in Louisville. Great to have you on the program, Ed. You’re up first today. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: Just wanted your opinion. Do you think this is gonna be a repeat of 1984 with Biden not in? As you said, Sanders doesn’t have a chance. Let Hillary run again. Get her out of the way. It’s a lost cause. Let’s just concentrate on 2020?


RUSH: Okay, 1984. I know what he means. In 1984, they let Walter F. Mondale get the nomination because they knew that Reagan was gonna win big, and they owed Mondale. “So let him run now; get him out of the way. We know he’s never gonna win and then we’ll prepare ourselves for later on, 1988.” I don’t think the Democrats… It’s an interesting theory. But I don’t think so. Given what we talked about yesterday and how they’ve lost over 1200 seats down the ballot all over this country — House, governor, state legislature — I think it is an obsession with them to hold the White House.

I don’t think Hillary’s a throwaway in this regard, although she is owed this. They do owe this to her. Who knows what went on behind the scenes to make this Biden thing happen? It’s so odd. I can’t wait ’til the sound bites. Cookie’s rolling them off now. I remember, I was at the Democrat convention San Francisco 1984 and a family friend of ours — this guy’s from Sikeston, Missouri, which is a half hour south of Cape Girardeau. He came up to me at a get up party I attended, and he said, “I’ll tell you what, Rush. I’ll tell you what. You spot me a hundred electoral votes and we can win this election.” I said, “What are you talking about, spot me a hundred electoral votes?” “Damn right, Rush! A hundred electoral votes and we can win this election.”

That’s where they were in 1984.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We had the Biden sound bites, and we have three of them, and you’ll get an idea here when you listen to this. Keep in mind, this a guy who called a press conference for the Rose Garden. He is the vice president, in the Rose Garden. President Obama is standing by his side. Everybody thinks before he opens his mouth that all of this pomp and circumstance is to accompany an announcement that he is running for president.

But he’s not. He gave a speech that anybody announcing for president would really be envious of, except he gave it as somebody saying he’s not gonna run. When I listen to this, one of my initial thoughts was, “You know, he was gonna do this. He was actually gonna run, and this was the speech, and somebody has told him, ‘No, you’re not,’ and he went out and gave the speech he wanted to give anyway,” because it’s incongruent. Here, you can get a flavor for it in the three sound bites that we have. Here’s the first…

BIDEN: It all starts with giving the middle class a fighting chance. I know you in the press love to call me “Middle Class Joe,” and I know in Washington that’s not usually meant as a compliment. It means you’re not that sophisticated. But it is about the middle class. It isn’t just a matter of fairness or economic growth. It’s a matter of social stability for this nation. We cannot sustain the current levels of inequality that exist in this country. I believe the huge sums of unlimited and often secret money pouring into our politics is a fundamental threat to our democracy.

RUSH: Well, then why are you not running? But you see, the country is still totally unfair. The rich are too rich, and they’re getting richer. When? When you are minding the store, Joe! You’re the guy that’s gonna manage the stimulus, made sure that wasn’t corrupted. And you were put in charge of middle class job recovery, and that didn’t happen and isn’t happening. And now at the end, he throws in “secret money pouring into our politics”? These people just can’t get over Citizens United, that Supreme Court decision. They can’t get over it.

There is no secret money coming in, other than to Hillary Clinton, for crying out loud. You want to talk about secret money, find out who’s donating to her and that foundation of hers and her husband’s. And then ask yourself why. They’re not particularly likable. We’re talking about people giving tens of millions of dollars to a foundation. Secret? You think that’s not gonna end up being used to influence policy or maybe help get her elected? Secret money?

You people on the Democrat side, half of your money if not more is coming from the wealthiest people in this country, and in Hollywood and Wall Street. So this is what I mean. It’s like seven years and they haven’t been here. They just landed from Mars, and they just finished their survey of the circumstances in the country, and this is their report. Here is the next bite. Now, who was it that went out…? It was John Edwards. Remember John Edwards?


It was maybe a campaign appearance speech or maybe it was his acceptance speech as VP for Kerry in 2004 when he said that if he and Kerry were elected, Christopher Reeve would walk again? But if they weren’t elected, Christopher Reeve wouldn’t walk again? Remember that? I can’t tell you how mad that made me. That’s just insulting as it could be. And to use poor Christopher Reeve that way? “You elect John Kerry and me, and Christopher Reeve will get out of that wheelchair and walk again! But if you don’t? Ha!” Well, that’s what he meant. I was kind of reminded of that with this.

BIDEN: There are so many breakthroughs just on the horizon in science and medicine, the things that are just about to happen, and we can, uh, we can make them real with an absolute national commitment to end cancer as we know it today. And I’m gonna spend the next 15 months in this office pushing as hard as I can to accomplish this.

RUSH: Right. So he’s gonna go cure cancer instead of run for president. And nobody’s been working on that, see. That’s something that, again, has been forgotten. He’s gonna pick up the ball on it. And then there’s this.

BIDEN: We need to keep moving forward in the arc of this nation toward justice. The rights of the LGBT community, immigration reform, equal pay for women and protecting their safety from violence, rooting out institutional racism. At their core, every one of these things, every one of these things is about the same thing. It’s about equality. It’s about fairness. It’s about respect. As my dad used to say, it’s about affording every single person dignity.

RUSH: Right. Right. Okay. So you mean none of that stuff has been happening here the last seven years? There hasn’t been any progress on any of that? There actually hasn’t, folks, we’ve been moving backwards on all of this. But it’s amazing. Even after being in power seven years, their complaints about the country never change. Even after they’ve been in office seven years, they don’t have a list of achievements to point to. All they can do is whine and moan and point to all the things you are making go wrong because of your bigotry, because of your racism, because of your lack of compassion, everything’s your fault.

They’ve been in office for seven years now and all of this work still needs to be done. Why? Because you are imperfect. You are not about fairness. You are not about equality. You are not about dignity. You are not about respect. And that’s why they need to stay in office, to force you to not be a bigot, to force you not to be a racist, to force you to open your arms and accept the LGBT community and whoever else, one-armed Martians at 4th and Wabash in Louisville. Who knows who else they think is aggrieved. Joe Biden. And this was all stated by a guy who called this event today to say he wasn’t running for president to do anything about any of this. Nope. All this stuff needs to be done because of you, because of us. We’re the ones that make all these problems real, ’cause we’re not dignified and we’re racists and we’re bigots and they haven’t been able to change enough minds, so they need even more time to do it.

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BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Daniel, Fresno, California, back to the phones we go. Great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. Basically Biden was talking about the inability of America to lead in the world and how we shouldn’t lead alone. And then later in the speech he talked about how we’ve never been more positioned better to lead, and just the whole thing was a dichotomy of the Rush Limbaugh theorem. They don’t take responsibility for anything that has happened, and it’s all doublespeak and they get away with it. And it’s gonna be called a great speech when he was just contradicting himself and lying the whole time.

RUSH: Well, I’m sorry, I’m losing the ability to understand you. You sound like you’re in a barrel and an echo chamber. But, anyway, I get your point. At the beginning of the speech, which we didn’t have here, folks, the beginning of the speech he talks, “We can’t be America alone. We can’t be in the country and the world alone.” And this is the old saw that it’s not healthy to be the only superpower. It’s destabilizing, these people actually believe it’s destabilizing for us to be the lone superpower. So there’s a lot of guilt about that. And then later on he did say we are uniquely positioned to lead, so forth. A lot of it was contradictory and that contradiction is rooted in the fact that he gave a speech of somebody running for president, except he said that he wasn’t.

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