WALLACE: He is the most-listened-to talk show host America, who this week said the budget deal Congress handed to the president was an outrage by both parties. Rush Limbaugh joins us live from his EIB studio in Florida. Rush, welcome back to Fox News Sunday. We are delighted to have you for your annual visit.
RUSH: Yeah, and it’s great to be back. Thank you very much for having me, as always.
WALLACE: All right, so I know that you are a constitutional conservative, an originalist. Do you really have no problem with President Trump declaring a national emergency and taking money that Congress refused to give him?
RUSH: No, I don’t. I just listened to your panel and I think so many… It’s all minutiae. All you guys were talking about was the minutiae. Katie Pavlich had it right: We have an emergency. This is an invasion. The very existence and definition of American culture, American society, the rule of law. Why does nobody talk about the fact that millions and millions and millions of people are breaking the law coming here illegally and that the Democrat Party wants that to happen? We can’t have the breakdown of rule of law and law and order this way.
That alone would suggest that this has gone on way too long and we need to stop it. The argument that there are drugs coming into the country? Can anybody deny that they are coming in and it needs to be stopped in its destroying future generations of the country? We are so caught up in the game of how Washington debates issues. “Is this a fact? Is that not a fact?” It is undeniable that we have a major immigration problem and a political party that needs a permanent underclass of voters that wants that parade of illegal people who are uneducated —
WALLACE: All right.
RUSH: — don’t even speak the language. They want them here.
WALLACE: All right, I —
RUSH: It’s a crisis.
WALLACE: You and I have this agreement —
RUSH: It really is a crisis.
WALLACE: — that I can interrupt you so I can keep things moving —
RUSH: (pointing) You have dispensation.
WALLACE: — because, as Donald Trump has said, you speak for three hours.
RUSH: (laughing)
WALLACE: But I want to ask about this, “the game” that you say we play in Washington, because the fact is when President Obama took executive actions, you were outraged. And, as you would expect, I’ve got a couple of examples of Rush Limbaugh over the years. Let’s put them on the screen. In June of 2012 when President Obama deferred action against the DREAMers, you said this. “Forty years ago Richard Nixon was hounded out of office, supposedly for his illegal actions — and I’m telling you that whatever Nixon did pales in comparison to just this Obama move today.”
In November, 2014, on reports that Mr. Obama was going to protect millions of parents of DREAMers, you said this: “We can’t just stand idly by and try to find some political opportunity while the president basically shreds the Constitution and flushes it down the toilet.” So, here’s my question, Rush. I understand that you like what President Trump is doing and you didn’t like what President Obama was doing. But that’s the concern here, is that to the degree that you give the president more and more powers, yes, you’re going to get some things — executive powers — from one president, you like. But you’re going to get things — executive powers — from another president that you don’t like.
RUSH: You may look at it that way. I don’t. I look at it as right and wrong. What Obama was doing was furthering this existing problem. He was politicizing this using whatever executive powers he wanted to use. Yes, I objected to that, but primarily because of what he was doing with these executive powers. He was taking action that I deemed to be harmful to the country. I look at what Trump is doing as something he has to do because he’s not getting any cooperation from both parties.
Let’s be honest here. Both parties have people that are still trying to get rid of Donald Trump. I read this bill, the spending bill. This bill is outrageous, the things in it. Welcoming centers for newly arriving illegal aliens and all kinds of medical care for them? The purpose of this bill, I think, was to eventually be used by the Democrats and some Republicans to tell the American people, “See? Electing Trump was pointless, worthless. He can’t protect you. He can’t stop us. He can’t do what he said he was going to do because we hate him so much — we’re not going to allow him to do that.” That’s what this bill is. So, to me, all of this boils down to, “Where the heck are we going as a country and what kind of country are we going to have?” And, if anybody is willing to go to the limit to make this country remain as founded, they’re gonna have my support.
WALLACE: All right. President Trump talked about you on Friday. Here he is…
THE PRESIDENT: Rush Limbaugh, I think he’s a great guy. Here’s a guy who can speak for three hours without a phone call. Try doing that sometime. For three hours he speaks! He’s got one of the biggest audiences in the history of the world. I mean, this guy is unbelievable.
WALLACE: Now, you’ve gotten upset with me and some others for saying that President Trump listens to you. But let’s go back to what we were talking about, which is last December. Vice President Pence goes to the Republican Senate leaders and he says, “You’ve got a continuing resolution and the president has authorized me to tell you he’s going to sign it,” and then you get on the radio and some others get on the radio and the House Freedom Caucus gets up and they say:
“Look, this continuing resolution doesn’t have a dime for the wall and he shouldn’t sign it.” The very next day, after they told the Senate Republican leaders he’s going to sign it, the president says, “No, I’ve changed my mind.” And you put on the radio that he sent a message directly to you saying, “Hey, I’m not going to sign this bill.” So, look, I’m not saying that you’re a puppet master. But would you agree that he cares about what you say and what you’re millions of listeners hear?
RUSH: Of course he does. He cares about what everybody thinks. But I don’t make policy. Can I take just a brief few seconds to correct what happened here? I’m on the radio. I’m reviewing this bill. It’s horrible. It doesn’t even have the $1.6 billion that the Senate bill had in it, so I said —
WALLACE: This is back last December.
RUSH: Yeah, last December. He’s getting less than nothing, and I said, “He can’t sign this thing. This is crazy.” I get an instant message at that moment from somebody close to the president with the message: “Don’t worry. He’s not going to sign it. He was never going to sign it.” So I report that. The media then takes that to say that he was almost ready to sign it. He had the “D” in his first name signed and then somebody ran in and said, “No! No, Mr. President. Rush Limbaugh says, ‘No!'” That’s not what happened. And, if these people in the media really thought that I was telling him what to do and when, they’d be calling me.
They’d be asking me about it. They would want to get down to the dirty details. I haven’t had one call. I haven’t had one inquiry. People don’t really believe what they are saying about this. It’s just another effort to continue to try to diminish the president, diminish Trump as somebody who doesn’t know what he’s doing, can’t do it without guidance from the so-called wacko right. It’s not at all the way he’s governing, and there isn’t anybody doing what I do that has a thing to do with actually making policy for this president.
WALLACE: Okay. I’m going to switch subjects now. (laughing) We’ve had enough about the wall. Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe is going to say on 60 Minutes tonight — I’m not predicting this; he’s already done the interview — that after James Comey was fired, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, raised the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president. Here is McCabe…
MCCABE: The discussion of the 25th Amendment was — was… Rod simply raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort.
WALLACE: Now, McCabe says that there was no serious conversation. As you just heard, he says this was raised. Rosenstein says to the degree that it was discussed, it was sarcastic. Why do you call what was going on inside the FBI a silent coup?
RUSH: Because these people are unelected. They took it upon themselves to overthrow the election results in 2016, ignoring the potential real collusion and conspiracy between Democrats and Russians to undermine the Trump candidacy and the Trump presidency. The Mueller investigation, I believe, is a cover-up of all of that. It’s to distract everybody’s attention. Again, the Washington game. We are losing sight of what happened here.
People unelected — simply because they don’t like a guy’s hairstyle or like where he came from — decide the American people’s decision was invalid, and began a systematic process to get him thrown out of office. This is a silent coup. These guys, if you ask me, ought to be the ones in jail. They ought to be the ones under investigation. What they have done, working with agents in the Obama intelligence agencies, is simply unprecedented. This is a kind… This is one of the greatest political hoaxes that has ever been perpetrated on the people of this country, certainly in a couple of generations.
WALLACE: Federal prosecutors… Speaking of people in jail, federal prosecutors have recommended that Paul Manafort — for a few months, the president’s campaign manager in 2016 — that he serve up to 25 years in prison. It’d basically be a life sentence.
RUSH: Right.
WALLACE: He 69 years old now.
RUSH: Right.
WALLACE: What do you think of the sentence, and should president pardon Paul Manafort?
RUSH: I do not know about presidential pardons on something like that. I just think that every one of these things that has happened here is designed to make it look like there was some kind of collusion between Trump and Russia. Manafort is probably going to die in prison. They have him in solitary confinement. All of these are process crimes that have been committed. There isn’t one crime that has been found under the umbrella of what they were ostensibly looking for: Collusion between Trump and Russia. It’s serious, Chris.
I saw a poll the other day: 42% of the American people — after two years of this — believe the Russians tampered with votes and affected the outcome of elections. There is no evidence to suggest so and Rosenstein has said that that’s the case when the indictment of those Russian internet trolls was announced. But wearing a wire to somehow entrap the president of the United States? This is classic. You asked me one time when I was here: “Deep state?” You liked the term. This is it, and it’s all of Washington, D.C., and it’s all arrayed against Donald Trump and it’s designed to get his approval numbers down maybe into the thirties or twenties.
They can then go to him and say, “Mr. President, you’ve lost all support. You have no support,” or then… This is been an effort to impeach him. The effort that was underway for collusion didn’t work. Now the Mueller report that may not happen is going to be used to continue to leak things that may be in it. They’re going to ratchet this up for the next election and we’re gonna face two more years of this collusion stuff. I think it’s just… It’s something people need to be paying a heavy price for for what they’ve done on the investigatory side of this.
WALLACE: All right. Let’s talk about the next election, 2020, is there anyone in either the announced or potential Democratic presidential field who you think would offer President Trump a real challenge?
RUSH: First thing I’m doing here is I’m trying to be one of the first to book a first-class seat on the train to Hawaii —
WALLACE: (laughing)
RUSH: — after they enact the Green New Deal or whatever it is from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I think what we’re going to have… These people are so convinced they are going to win, that that’s why so many are running — and they are going to be in a contest to see who can out-extreme the other. Who can move the country furthest to the left the soonest? It’s going to be very entertaining to watch; I hope it is eye-opening for the American people. If I had to pick somebody —
WALLACE: You have somebody who you think, “That person could give the president a run”?
RUSH: Well, I don’t know any of them right now that give the president a run. The front-runner will probably be right now Joe Biden — 77 years old, plagiarist, nicknamed “Plugs.” I think he’s the guy that they are probably thinking is the leader in the polls right now. But it’s going to be very crowded. They’re gonna be knocking each other off; that’s gonna be fun to watch. Incumbency carries with it a lot of power, as you know, and I think they are convinced they’ve already won this election like they were convinced in 2016. They’re getting way ahead of game, and I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as they think to win the presidency.
WALLACE: Okay, let me ask about that, because you talked about the Green New Deal and the trains to Hawaii. You’ve also got —
RUSH: Isn’t that great?
WALLACE: You —
RUSH: Isn’t that wonderful?
WALLACE: Well, yeah. What was it in Back to the Future? “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” or, apparently, tracks. It calls for Medicare for all, calls for huge increases on taxes on the very wealthy. How potent an issue do you think the president has — and how much do you think you will make this case — that the Democrats want to make this a socialist country?
RUSH: I think it’s a huge case because we are not a socialist country, and even a Fox News poll the other day they pointed out how many people prefer capitalism. We’ve done a real disservice to our young people. You look at this Green New Deal and you look at the things that they think are true. They live in the greatest country ever. They have more opportunity for contentment, happiness, success, than ever. And they think they live in a country that’s unjust and immoral. They have been ill-educated, maleducated.
And it’s really a shame. I know young people who really think by the time they’re 65, the country — the world — is not going to be habitable because of climate change, which is another hoax! There’s no evidence for it. Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what’s going to happen in 50 years or 30. Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next ten years.
They’re always for way, way, way out there. When none of us are going to be around or last to know whether or not they are true. In the meantime, they get the push for more government, Big Government, more tax increases, more control over people. It’s sad what has been done in K-12 education and higher education to these young people.
WALLACE: All right.
RUSH: I mean, graduating economics degree graduates like Cortez —
WALLACE: Rush —
RUSH: — that doesn’t know what you could put in a thimble about economics. It’s really a shame, and it’s a problem going forward. They’re gonna have to be defeated, beaten.
WALLACE: Rush?
RUSH: Yes?
WALLACE: Thank you. (laughing)
RUSH: Is that it?
WALLACE: Thank you for joining us, again.
RUSH: Oh my gosh, that’s it. We are out of time? Aw, gee.
WALLACE: We’re out. Fourteen minutes flew by.
RUSH: It really did. It always does. Thank you so much.
WALLACE: Anyway, it’s always good to talk with you. Anytime you want to come back, you’re always welcome, sir.
RUSH: I appreciate it. Thank you very much. See you next time.
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