RUSH: Here’s Richard in St. Louis. It’s great to have you, sir. You’re up first. Hi.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Question is, with signing the bill and going forward, could this possibly be a slippery slope when the Dems do — or when and if they reclaim power back? Could this be a, you know, crisis for — gee, I don’t know — global warming or guns or, you know, could this be some type of other grab for them using this tactic going forward?
RUSH: Well, let’s take a look at the history of this. Can I ask you all to return with me to the years 2009 through 2016, the regime of Barack Hussein O? Do any of you remember all of the executive actions that took place, and do you remember a couple of the executive emergencies that were enacted by Barack Hussein O? At the time they were enacted, we all practically in unison objected, and said Obama was going outside the Constitution in many of these things.
He was simply using executive actions for things he could not get legislatively, and I didn’t hear any worrying about a slippery slope then. There are currently 31 current states of emergency the United States is living under at this very moment in time. The slippery slope argument I don’t think applies because Trump is not the first to do this. Obama is. You might want to say, “Well, does the fact that Obama did it mean it was a slippery slope because now that’s allowing Trump to do it?”
No. ‘Cause look, the Democrats never said a word when Obama was doing this. And when Obama was doing it, he was running around saying (impression), “I can’t do that. I’m not a king. I — I — I can’t do these things on my own.” But then he would go do many of them. A lot of them had to do with Obamacare. Obama was issuing executive actions and emergencies all day long about who was exempt from the personal mandate of Obamacare or other aspects of it. We were raising hell about it. Nobody cared.
Pelosi herself has said, “You better not do this because what if we come back if we win the White House and we decide to declare climate change an emergency action and then start doing things?” There’s nothing stopping them from doing that if Trump does or doesn’t do this. Just because Trump does this does not mean… He can’t be hemmed in by this. I’ve been around long enough to have grown weary and fed up with Republicans choosing the no-action route based on the doors that it might open.
“Well, we can’t do that! If we do that, that might cause Democrats when they get back in power to do X, Y, Z.” That happens as the evolution of government takes place, and I think we have chained ourselves. We have put limitations on ourselves. Basically, people who didn’t want to take any risk, people who didn’t want to really fight for something, always used the, “Well, gosh, you know, if we do this, what are we opening the door for the Democrats to do?”
I’m just here to tell you that Nancy Pelosi or whoever the Democrats elect if they ever do again… If Trump didn’t do this, that doesn’t mean they’re not gonna use a national emergency on guns or climate change or what have you. I oppose the direct causation here, that the Democrats will behave — the Democrats will be constitutional, the Democrats will be nice people — unless we force their hand. Screw that! Besides, Trump made the point today: This isn’t about keeping campaign promises. This really is a national emergency.
We are facing an invasion, and this stupid budget deal is essentially engraved invitations. We’re building reception centers. We’re working with cartels to bring unaccompanied minors and drop them off at these reception centers, waiting for anybody to come claim them as their own. You know, what Donald Trump has done here has focused these people, and I think caused them to finally open up about who they really are. They’ve taken away all the stuff they used to hide behind, and they’re just blatantly out in the open about who they are and what they believe.
This bill is an outrage. Not signing it? (sigh) You know, I go both ways on this. If he hadn’t signed it, there would have been a shutdown, and then after a passage of time he would be getting people (sobbing), “We can’t be responsible for the shutdown again! We need to sign it!” So the pressure would have been on to sign it even if he hadn’t. So I think the calculation here is this is divided government. This is exactly what happens. There is no compromise here, and Trump knows what he’s up against.
He knows these people have no desire for him to succeed, particularly now as we’re officially in the 2020 election season. They’re also still running their coup. There is no way Donald Trump is going to get anything that is gonna benefit him or his voters or his reelection campaign — anything. He’s not gonna get it no matter what he does. He cannot… He cannot force the Democrats in the House to stand down on this. There isn’t. So he’s got to find other ways to deal with what he thinks is a national emergency, and he does.
I mean, he came down the escalator in June of 2015, and this was his lead issue. Even today, in this Rose Garden press conference… He even today brought up the fact that the Republicans in Congress in the first two years of his administration didn’t want to do anything about it, and one of the reporters from the gallery shouted, “Are you talking about Ryan? Are you talking about Ryan?” Trump didn’t want to mention any names. But you know as well as I do that the first nine months of Trump’s first year, the Republicans all thought that there was something to this Russian garbage.
They didn’t help Trump accomplish anything ’cause they thought he was gonna be impeached or that the election was gonna be overturned somehow. They really did. So they didn’t want anything Trump was for to end up being implemented. So there was no assistance to repeal and replace Obamacare or do the wall. So now he’s got the options that are available to him to continue to accomplish what he has always said he wanted to accomplish. I don’t know what other alternative there is. But the idea that we shouldn’t do this because Pelosi might do it or the next president might? They can do it regardless!
The National Emergencies Act has been in place since 2006.
Everything’s political, don’t forget, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So I just want to remind everybody here: We’re gonna have people all over the media start complaining about Trump and his unilateral actions and his acting outside Congress and so forth. And I’m just telling you: Like much of everything that’s gone wrong in this country, it started (in the modern era) with Barack Obama. When Barack Obama was governing outside the realms of the Constitution, you didn’t hear any media concern about it. He was out there and playing all kinds of games with various Obamacare deadlines, depending on the group of people.
He was exempting people from the mandate. He was changing sign-up dates at random for other people. He was exempting entire industries from most of the onerous regulations shortly after it was signed into law. Recess appointments when the Senate wasn’t in recess! Of course, the press sat there, they marveled at it, just like the press marveled at what a good liar Bill Clinton was. The press is sitting there and they know that Clinton’s lying to them, and rather than do stories about that, they do stories on how “little white lies are actually beneficial.
“They save a lot of hurt feelings, and they smooth out rough edges, and they take stress and tension out of relationships — and besides, isn’t Clinton really good at it?” And the same thing with Obama. There was never any accountability in any way, shape, manner, or form. Now they’re out there talking about, “What about the rule of law? What about the…?” The rule of law? Remember when Obama said, “I have a pen and I have a phone”? What did he mean by that?
It means, “I don’t care what Congress does. If they don’t give me what I want, I’m gonna do it anyway,” while telling people he didn’t have the power to do it. There’s no new ground being broken here. The new ground being broken is this budget deal. The new ground being broken is this consortium of Republicans and Democrats — or maybe I should say Democrats and Republicans — who are doing everything they can to thwart any kind of reform in the area of illegal immigration.
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