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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: All right. That open-mic tape, let’s just cut to the chase here. That open-mic tape is in a microcosm what this entire election is about. You’re probably saying, “What?” Yeah, it is. That whole thing is exactly what Trump winning the nomination is about. Now, whether it’s gonna see it through to victory in the presidential race remains to be seen.Greetings, folks. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh back at it. Here we are safely ensconced the EIB Southern Command and it’s great to have you here as always. The telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.I want to take you back to when I first heard about this, and I want to share with you my initial gut reaction to this, and then I attempted to — I didn’t have to try very hard because I am one of you — I tried to put myself in the shoes of your average person on the Republican Party side that’s supporting Trump. This is an election and Trump wins the Republican nomination precisely because a whole lot of Republicans are fed up with what? The Republican establishment and the Washington establishment, the elites and the way they do things and the way they run campaigns and the way they run Washington.

And I believe — it was my first reaction and I was hoping it was the reaction of millions of people. Putting aside for a moment what was on that tape — and, by the way, there will be more, folks, do not doubt. If they’ve got that, they’ve got more, so steel yourself.

That’s the point.

I think a whole lot of people are sick and tired of things like this determining the outcome of elections, these October Surprise kinds of things. It may not have been safe to say this back in the year 2000. It might not have been safe to say it in 2004, but a lot of ground has been covered, and there is so much hypocrisy on the left when you get to the subject matter of that open-mic tape, Access Hollywood, Trump running around there with Billy Bush. Who are the people expressing outrage over this?The very people who applaud it and celebrated JFK, who had women trooped into the White House in droves. Bill Clinton, you go through the list of Democrats and entertainers who have made their names on the basis of infidelity and catting around and being celebrated and protected and lauded and held up as great people. “Hey, that’s sex, it’s not their job. Hey, that’s just private life; it doesn’t matter to their leadership.”

There are serious issues facing this country. We are at a crossroads where many people think that the wrong decision by the people in November will doom this country to a generation of further decline, and it needs to be stopped. And this kind of way to derail a campaign or to win an election I just think, I hope, that it has people fit to be tied, and I hope there is going to be a giant backlash over it, because, ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that it does not matter who the Republican Party nominates, this is what’s gonna happen.

If they can turn Mitt Romney into a living, breathing devil, they can do it to anybody. Mitt Romney is, as I have said countless times before, one of the finest human beings, one of the finest men you will find alive today in terms of character, demeanor, manner, you name it. And what were they able to do to him? They were able to portray him as a guy who killed his dog by putting it on the roof of the station wagon; as a guy who didn’t pay his taxes for ten years; as a guy who did not care that the wives of employees of his were dying because Romney didn’t care enough about health care to give these people health care and they died of cancer.

If they were able to demonize Mitt Romney, and they demonized George W. Bush, they’ll be able to demonize anybody. If this is the kind of way they go to win elections, they’re never going to stop winning elections, if this is all it takes. And I think a number of people have become outraged by this. And I don’t think there are very many, if at all, defections from Trump among his core supporters.

Now, we know he needs more than that. And I’m not making any predictions here as to what’s happening, but you go to this debate last night, I’m telling you that the fact that after the first 20 minutes Trump was able to sweep this aside despite every — that debate last night was about destroying Donald Trump’s life. That debate and this whole episode was about destroying Donald Trump’s future, his career, his business, his life. That debate and this whole release of that tape — and I’m not excusing what’s on it, but he’s not the only person to ever speak this way. He’s not the only person to ever seek office.

He may have said these things, but the Democrats have nominated and elected and celebrated people who do these things. And where is the outrage over it? You know, I find it ironic that the Democrat Party wants to throw down the morality card. The Democrat Party, which is responsible for the dissolution of morality in this country. The Democrat Party which is for all these progressive new attitudes in our culture, and now all of a sudden acting like a bunch of prudes, acting like, “Oh, my God, I have never been this outraged. Oh, this is just beyond the pale.” These are the architects of this kind of stuff. If Trump were a Democrat, they’d be covering it up and privately inviting him to parties and yukking it up.

But the reason this happened — and it’s gonna happen again — they can’t afford. Folks, this is what it looks like. I kept telling people over the weekend when people were asking my opinion on it, I said, “This is what it looks like when you take on the establishment. This is exactly what it looks like.” It isn’t gonna be pretty. It isn’t gonna be clean. It isn’t gonna be pristine. The establishment, with everything they are invested in the establishment, remaining the establishment and in power, they are just not gonna sit back and trust this to your votes. They’re not gonna trust this to an election, to a campaign. Not gonna trust it at all. They’re gonna do everything they can to destroy whoever it is that wants to take control from them.

And, in the process, they’re gonna destroy that person so as to send a message to the next guy, “Don’t even think about it. Don’t even try. Look what we did to Donald Trump.” “Look what we did to whoever,” is the message. When this whole thing began — when it became clear that what this was, was going to be an effort to unseat the elites, the establishment, whatever you want to call ’em — you have to have a sober understanding of who they are and what it means to them. And they’re not just going to throw it open to what they think is a fair election.

They can’t control a fair election! I think that, given the circumstances in which this campaign is taking place and the various stages of challenges facing this country, this kind of throwdown, this kind of October Surprise… I have a feeling. I’m sure it depressed a number of you. “Oh, no, no. There we go again.” After that, I am confident a whole slew of you got livid and angry and fed up that this is what always happens, and none of this has anything to do with the issues on which you have chosen to support Trump — or not, depending.

And the people who have signed up for Trump, I can tell you, are livid that this is the kind of thing that always seems to end up determining the outcome of an election, and these are the kind of things that are never thrown down against Democrats. The Democrats get away with all of this hypocrisy, the left gets away with all of this hypocrisy. I was thinking over the weekend — I was asking and I was thinking at the same time — what are the odds that there’s a potential backlash brewing over this kind of thing?

Because you can make book that this is the kind of thing that’s gonna happen. They’re gonna lie. They’re gonna destroy. The left, the media, the state is going to destroy — however they can — anybody, every four years, on the Republican ballot, who claims to be seeking to unseat the state, Democrats and media complex. And like I say, folks, it’s not insignificant. They did the same thing to Mitt Romney. In that case, they made it all up. But it stuck, didn’t it? And they did it, didn’t they?

So for everybody who’s saying, “See, we gotta get rid of Trump, man! We gotta throw Trump overboard. Trump’s damaged.” They’re gonna do it to any of you who try it. The same kind of thing is gonna happen to anybody and everybody. If you want to throw Trump overboard, you know what you ought to do? You ought to just concede the presidency to the Democrats and apologize for ever trying, and hope that they forgive you. Because that’s the message being sent here. There isn’t a single one — Ted Cruz, take your pick.

Take your pick of any of these Republicans who had won the nomination. You think this wouldn’t have happened? You think there would not have been an October Surprise? You think there wouldn’t have been lies about… Do you realize that there is not a human being alive…? This is another key point, folks. When I say, “This is what it looks like when an outsider seeks to unseat the elites…” The elites, the insiders, establishment, whatever you want to call it.

They all, particularly those that are in elective office, live their lives for one another: public consumption for purposes of election. They live their lives, they file their taxes, they dress, they speak. Everything they do is designed to hold up under the klieg lights of campaigns. In the process, they are phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ rollers. They become robots, political robots. When they speak about politics, it’s a recitation of issues from a handbook and playbook.

It isn’t real. You know it and I know it. But it’s how they guarantee reelection. It’s how they guarantee reelection in the first place. Well, somebody from the outside… Let’s use Trump, since he’s the candidate. He’s not lived his life for this kind of exposure. He has not lived his life with the constant realization and planning and scheming that whatever he does or doesn’t do must be done in specific ways.

“Because I’m running for office, so therefore I can’t do this, and I can’t do that, and I can’t do this. I must do this; I must do this.” He’s not lived his life that way. They do. They construct their finances, their tax returns, their public disclosure forms, financial disclosure forms. Everything they do is designed to pass muster to the klieg lights of so-called media examinations every four years when they run for office — or, in the case of the House, every two years. But somebody on the outside…

It doesn’t matter who. It could be Trump, could be Anastas Mikoyan. Take your pick of anybody that would ever seek the presidency who’s not from the world of politics, and the same thing would be the case. They have lived their lives totally differently. They’ve been real. They may have been bankrupt, they may have earned a lot of money, they may have taken advantage of the tax code, they may be married three or four times. Who knows what it is? But they’re not phonies in the sense that the insiders are; so this is what it looks like.

It’s always gonna be this way, whether it’s Trump or anybody else.

Anybody on the outside, by definition, runs the risk of being exposed by the insiders as somebody unfit and unsuited and ill-tempered precisely because they don’t come from the world of politics. The best illustration of this is the argument over Trump’s tax returns. I’ll guarantee you that, if Donald Trump back in 1995 or even 1990 thought that he was gonna run for president someday, his tax returns would look entirely different. His career would look entirely different.

It would be structured entirely differently. It would have been structured in such a way as to pass muster under the phony examination of political publicity. So there’s not somebody out there… We don’t have them. There’s not a human being — there’s not a normal, red-blooded American man — who has not said something to somebody that, if exposed, would not be embarrassing, would not be humiliating, would not get them in trouble. There is not a single person in this world — male, female, straight, gay, you name it — who could survive what Donald Trump has been subjected to, because everybody would be subjected to and we all have committed quote/unquote “sins” as defined by the political class.

And who knows who has collected tape on us? Who knows, with the advent of cell phones, what kind of video and pictures there are out there? And who knows who can be bought off and provide it? Who knows who can be paid to lie about you? The candidate clean and pure as the wind-driven snow does not exist. But they try to tell us they do exist in the political world, and they don’t there, either. Mister or Miss or Ms. or Mrs. Perfect does not exist. There is not a single human being — and I mean this.

You can take the most moral man you know — it can be your grandfather, could be your father, could be anyone — and there’s dirt somewhere, because we’re human. And men talk a certain way. Women talk a certain way. Do not think they don’t. Everybody talks certain ways. Everybody. And, if you are seeking to unseat the establishment, if you are seeking to win the White House from outside the world of politics, they are going to destroy you. This is what it looks like. It was never gonna be pretty. It was never going to be fair.

It was never going to be left open to an unchallenged election. It was never going to be left to chance. The challenger was always going to suffer an attempt at destruction, no matter who he or she was or is. The establishment simply cannot afford to be ousted. They’re not gonna put up with it. They wouldn’t tolerate it. They’re gonna do everything they can to hold onto it, which is also natural. People with power just don’t sit around and let it be taken away from them, which is what an election they lose would be.

So you can’t… You’re not gonna get a pristine campaign. You’re not gonna get a perfect candidate. You’re not gonna get somebody who doesn’t have any smudges or doesn’t have any smears on them. You’re not gonna find anybody. And especially you’re not gonna find them in the political world, either. They’re the biggest collection of phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ rollers you can find. They define their lives by that so that they can survive specific things like this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All these people on the left and the media running around outrageously offended? They’re not offended in the slightest by what Trump said! They’re capitalizing on it. They’re the ones that set up this permissive society! They’re the ones who have shred the boundaries. They are the ones who have erased… These are the people that take money from people in Hollywood that produce some of the most depraved content we have seen!

And they celebrate it and they applaud it and they call it great art. And it’s far, far more destructive in terms of how it is portrayed than what Trump’s talking about on some bus in a studio lot at Access Hollywood. So the hypocrisy on this is tenfold. They get to act like they’re righteously indignant and like this is the greatest assault on morality and decency, and these people have presided over the destruction of decency!

In song lyrics that they produce, music, in books they write, television shows that they produce, movies! For these people to act like they’ve never heard these words before and never heard them used this way? It’s opportunism. It has nothing to do with the issues. It has nothing to do with the future of this country, and my guess is that a slew of Americans are fed up with all of this kind of rotgut determining electoral outcomes, particularly this year. And I am hoping there is a huge backlash over this entire tactic.

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