RUSH: Well, yesterday Donald Trump was complicit. Today I, in the same paper, the Washington Post, I, your beloved host, have joined Donald Trump in complicity for Hurricane Florence. We take you to last night, Washington Post website. They posted a video op-ed by a meteorologist named Eric Holthaus about Hurricane Florence and the politics of climate change.
HOLTHAUS: Rush Limbaugh made a comment saying that…
RUSH: These things have become very politicized, as you know, folks. Forecasts and the destruction potential doom and gloom is all to heighten the belief in climate change.
HOLTHAUS: The people that deny climate change, the people that deny that this problem is happening or that are willfully taking steps to make the problem worse, are complicit in these disasters.
RUSH: Mr. Holthaus, is it embarrassing to be you? Is it embarrassing to be this dense? Seriously. People who don’t believe in your cockamamie conspiracy theory of climate change are somehow responsible for hurricanes? Do you really, Mr. Holthaus, believe that? Or is it just something you say because it’s what deranged people on your side of the aisle want to hear and believe? Do you really believe that hurricanes have minds of their own that are able to embarrass human beings that don’t believe that they exist because of climate change?
It’s heart-stopping in a sense how this kind of brazen — it wasn’t that long ago people this dense would never be hired to be on TV or in a major newspaper. If you couldn’t pass a basic intelligence test, that was reason number one not to hire you. But now these people come out with college degrees and don’t even know the basics of their majors, as is the case in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has an economics degree from Boston University and doesn’t know the first thing about economics. It’s a frightening thing.
Oh. You ready for this? There’s a new survey from Yale. I’ve got details on this in a minute. I wasn’t gonna get into this in the opening monologue. According to a survey taken by somebody, there are more gays, lesbians, and transgender students at Yale than there are conservatives. Campus Reform is reporting. Do we believe this? It’s a major university. It theoretically could be true.
Back to Mr. Holthaus. Do these people really, really believe this? I, as well as the president — do you know what complicit means? Complicit means collusion. Complicit means responsible for. Complicit means involved in. I have witnesses. I haven’t been anywhere near this hurricane all week. I haven’t been anywhere near anything that could be influencing this hurricane. I have not learned hurricane language. I don’t know how to talk to them. And yet Trump is complicit, I’m complicit, and they think that I’m the Neanderthal, all of us are the Neanderthals.
Let’s go to back to the audio sound bites. This is what I said from which this out-of-context quote on forecasts being hyped — can anybody deny this, by the way? Can we deny that the left has gotten hold of all these institutions and has politicized every one they control. They politicize how many government agencies?
And when they politicize them as leftists, their politics becomes the defining aspect of their existence, ’cause their politics corrupts these institutions, and they’ve turned all of this dangerous, abnormal, they think, weather into “evidence” of climate change. Man-made climate change. I think that’s what’s crazy, not denying it, not questioning it, but believing it is what’s crazy. Anyway, here’s the entire bite from which that little out of context bit was pulled.
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: We have exhaustive experience with hurricanes here at the Southern Command, and we have great empathy for anybody who is in the pathway of one of these things. You remember the hurricane that hit Houston. It stopped shortly after hitting landfall, and you saw people with their speedboats and rowboats on the streets in front of their homes. This is one of the things that has everybody alarmed for the Carolinas. Not to mention if you get far enough into the state, you go far enough west in North Carolina, you have mountains.
Did you know that people in south Florida go to North Carolina for the summer? I didn’t know that until I moved here. Even after I moved here. “What do you mean North Carolina? Isn’t that a humid hellhole?” “No, no, no, Rush. You get up in the mountains and it’s gorgeous up there. Tom Fazio’s built some golf courses. You ought to go.” Well, I haven’t but a lot of people do. Well, that elevation with this kind of rain is gonna cause torrential mudslides and just water pouring down those mountains into the valleys below.
Also, these things have become very politicized as you know, folks. Hurricanes and hurricane forecasting is much like much else that the left has gotten its hands on, and they politicize these things. For those of you asking, “What’s the politics of a hurricane?” Climate change is the politics of hurricanes. The forecast and the destruction potential doom and gloom is all to heighten the belief in climate change. My experience is that the storms are bad; you don’t want to get into arguments over degrees.
END ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: So clearly in a sound bite where I talk about the upcoming dangers, the devastations, acknowledging that this is a seriously dangerous storm, they pull out this little out-of-context quote to make it look like that’s all I’m saying about it. They’re trying to say that I’m telling people to ignore it! Don’t leave, don’t make any preparations. They’re trying to convince people that I’m saying the weather service is making all this up.
They are the ones who are dishonest and deceitful. And that’s what they have to resort to to advance their political agenda. They’re the ones that cannot talk about this without politicizing it every time they open their mouths.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now look, I don’t want to make you, Mr. Holthaus out there, the Washington Post, and the rest of you out there literally brain-dead climate change activists, I don’t want to cause your head to explode, but this might do it. I’m holding in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers here — aw, gee, I just ripped the page — well, I can still make this work. I have here, official government — which, of course, we cannot doubt, right? — official government data on hurricanes, their history, and their intensity.
And here is the upshot of this. “The average intensity of the 36 most destructive storms has decreased from Category 3.2 in the 1930s to Category 2.4 in 2017.” Let me translate this. It means, since the 1930s to 2017, the intensity of the most destructive storms has decreased, not increased. There wasn’t any so-called political climate change in the ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, or the ’70s. That didn’t get — well, late seventies it got kicked up. Hurricane intensity is decreasing since the 1930s among the 36 most destructive storms. It’s not getting worse. Climate change, whatever the hell it is, cannot possibly be a factor in making ’em worse.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We go to Wayne in Corvallis, Oregon, as we head back to the phones. Wane, thank you for waiting and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing today?
RUSH: I’m good. Thank you.
CALLER: Yeah. You know, the thing that kind of surprised me about that article this morning in the Washington Post is the headliner– yesterday. I thought it would be more like — I think that President Trump got up this morning and put his hands out and said, (impression) “Peace be on the water.” And I think he slowed that hurricane all by himself.
RUSH: Well, I tell you what. Here’s what old Wayne is saying. And it’s — it’s a completely understandable conclusion that Wayne’s coming to. Two days ago, Washington Post runs a story when we’re expecting a Category 4 and it’ll kill a lot of people, flood a lot of things, maybe destroy half of North Carolina. Donald Trump complicit. Donald Trump complicit in Hurricane Florence! It was an editorial in the Washington Post.
Then yesterday they did some video editorial in which I was named also as complicit. The reason why Trump and I are complicit is that we don’t believe climate change. And since we don’t believe climate change affects these hurricanes, then the hurricanes — well, they take matters into their own hands, and they say, (impression) “We’ll show you. You’re gonna deny climate change and us, we’re just gonna kick your ass.” Well, now the hurricane’s weakened. It’s gone from a Category 4 to a Category 2. It may hit as a Category 1; we don’t know.
And what old Wayne here is saying is that I wonder if Trump’s gonna get credit here for being complicit in weakening the hurricane and making it less dangerous and less damaging. And of course it’s a rhetorical question because it’ll never be answered by the lamebrains on the left.