BRETT: I was at CPAC last week. So midway into the weekend I went down to Orlando, Florida, took the opportunity to catch up with the conservatives over at the American Conservative Union and at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. I had a chance to meet a whole bunch of new friends, reconnect with folks that I’d already known.

It was incredible. The room down there at the Hyatt Regency was packed. It was packed with, folks, like-minded folks who are looking for smaller government, limited government, better border control, better trade deals, you name it. Immigration was a huge issue as well, though. Immigration a huge issue.

When they had the straw poll that they run through the conference revealed on Sunday afternoon, John McLaughlin — who was, of course, President Trump’s pollster and also does work for the Washington Times. When they did the big reveal, the issues were not surprising as being the top issues. They were huge.

Election integrity, immigration, border enforcement, trade deals, national security, all the things that you knew and loved watching the Trump administration over the four years that they were there in Washington, D.C. And the sense that I got in that room, the excitement, the energy, the hunger for a return to some sane policies.

Not the stuff we’ve seen for the last six weeks, but the sane policies that meant prosperity and strength and security at the border and around the world are certainly being begged for. So in immigration news, President Trump mentioned many of those issues with the border policy in his CPAC speech.

He was talking about the migrant crisis, talking about young people, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — and, of course, President Biden reversing Trump policies and the consequences of doing that. Here’s just one really great clip from President Trump speaking at CPAC just last night about immigration on the border.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Joe Biden has triggered a massive flood of illegal immigration into our country, the likes of which we have never seen before. They’re coming up by the tens of thousands. They’re all coming to take advantage of the things that he said that’s luring everybody to come to America. And we’re one country.

We can’t afford the problems of the world, as much as we’d love to. We’d love to help, but we can’t do that. So they’re all coming because of promises and foolish words. Perhaps worst of all, Joe Biden’s decision to cancel border security, has single-handedly launched a youth migrant crisis that is enriching child smugglers, vicious criminal cartels, and some of the most evil people on the planet.

BRETT: What people do not realize is that because of the COVID crisis, you had a greater enforcement at the border taking place than you would under ideal circumstances, even, because you didn’t want to bring the COVID into the country through land channels like that. But what you also had were the cartels, the transnational gangs, the human traffickers all having to come up with new, creative ways to get across the border to what they call “the frontier” down there in the southwestern part of the United States.

They had to get more creative, they had to get more vicious, they had to get more dangerous. And now with essentially the, “Hey, we’re open” sign now being put out by the Biden-Harris administration, well, guess what’s happening? People are running toward the border. They’re making the run, despite the protestations by people like Jen Psaki on the Sunday shows saying, “Well, we’re not telling anybody to come up here.”

It’s implied, it’s understood that the border enforcement is not going to be the same as it was for the prior four years. Well, President Trump spoke eloquently about the need for border security, to have a policy that allows people to immigrate legally into the country but not to come crashing through the frontiers of our border, to present themselves at appropriate border checkpoints.

Having been vetted, having been background checked, having been verified and then being allowed to come into the United States. A healthy border is not a hard thing to create. It just requires enforcement. It just requires enforcement. Well, what happens is, as the progressives will say, “Well, the Republicans, the conservatives, they hate the immigrants. ‘The immigrants are terrible,’ that’s what they’ll say.

“They’ll say they don’t want the immigrants.” Nonsense. Nonsense. President Trump and Rush Limbaugh and the prominent conservatives out there understand the importance to be a welcoming nation but to do it in an orderly manner. In fact, back in 2014 Rush, told us exactly where he stood. Conservatives don’t hate immigrants.

RUSH: It dawned on me yet again that people do not understand principled opposition to amnesty. There’s nothing personal about it. It has nothing to do with these particular 15 or 20 million people. It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with borders. It has everything to do with preserving the country as we know it with a distinct and proud of it, damn it, American culture, which is why every immigrant in the past has wanted to come here.

There’s not a person I know that wants to deport, try to round up 15 or 20 million people and send ’em packing. It isn’t practical. It isn’t going to happen. What everybody wants is the border secured with active limits on the amount of immigration so that the flow is two things: economically acceptable and productive, and that something that used to happen automatically begins to happen again; that’s assimilation.

Every time I tell people that there was no immigration in this country for over 40 years, from the 1920s to the 1960s, seventies, they’re shocked. You’d be amazed at the number of people that do not know we totally closed the borders after the wave of European immigration in the 1920s. And we did it for one reason. That mass arrival of immigrants needed to be assimilated.

Now, they wanted to be. They wanted to become Americans. They had to learn English. They learned American custom. They became acquainted with American holidays. They studied for citizenship. All of this they wanted. And it took that many years to assimilate. All the opposition to amnesty is not personal to these 15 million people. It is, A, rule of law. If we lose the rule of law, that’s all we’ve got. We are seeing how really precariously structured this country really is.

We’ve got a document, the Constitution, that is the law of the land, and we’ve now got a president who, when he doesn’t like it, pretends it doesn’t exist. There is no mechanism other than censure or impeachment to deal with that. And the Republicans have taken both off the table. So there’s no signal that he must stop. If this continues, the United States is not gonna be what it was founded and the Constitution spells out. Somebody asked me on the phone recently, “Is it the honor system, Rush? Is that how it’s worked for 200 plus years, the honor system?”

What the caller meant was was it just high elected officials, presidents are just duty-bound to obey the Constitution? Well, partly, but it was respect for it, but it was also respect for the law. There was a reverence for it. Now, there’s always been opposition to it. Since the days it was written there have been people opposed to it. I don’t mean to present a Pollyannish picture here.

But it is precariously balanced. If any given president or succession of presidents just decides to pretend it doesn’t exist, and if the other two branches of government aren’t gonna do anything about it, then it won’t exist, and this country, there will always be an America, but it won’t be what was founded. Who knows what it will be, but it won’t be. That’s what people are worried about.

They’re not worried about being overrun. It’s nothing personal here. It’s a desire to hold onto America and make it a beacon, keep it a beacon. Stand for something. We’re losing our economic stature and status to the ChiComs now. There’s a reason for this.

And when you realize that amnesty and open borders is a weapon used by the anti-American left, that’s reason enough to oppose ’em. When you realize who wants open borders, when you realize the political and ideological motivation behind it, you are duty bound, talk about the honor system, you’re duty-bound, I would think, to stand up and oppose it.

It isn’t personal. It has nothing to do with ethnicity or race whatsoever. And, by the way, don’t go crazy crediting all these amnesty people with love of humanity. They don’t want these people to ever be self-reliant. They want these people to be voting as dependent incompetents.

The political powers that be that are trying to make this happen see a wave of potential registered voters who are unskilled and uneducated and will never be self-reliant. Therefore they are always going to need support from government. They are seeking dutiful, respectful, appreciative dependents.

The open borders crowd has no love for these people. That’s the thing that really bugs me. These people are pawns and there is no desire for these people to come here and become the best they can be. That’s not gonna serve the purpose of the political class. The value of these people is as future voters.

The Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass, and as people in the old days, not so much true right now, but in the old days as people worked hard and moved themselves out of the lower quintiles of poverty and up until the middle class and beyond, they became less and less dependent on government. The Democrats had to replace them. And so Ted Kennedy thought after 40 years of no immigration, well, let’s open the borders.

That’s what it was all about. It’s inhuman if you ask me. And these people get away with getting all the credit for compassion and caring and big hearts. The people pushing this, in my mind, are the people who have the least real human concern. These are just pawns.

It’s offensive in every which way you can think of. That’s why whenever you hear people talk seriously about this, border security is always the first thing required before anything else in a deal to take place, provable, demonstrable. That would mean years of border security before we do anything on amnesty.

You can’t just promise that you agree with securing the border and then we make ’em legal. You gotta show three years that you’re serious about securing the border. Then we do it. There has to be some value attached to this or it all becomes meaningless. Which, sadly, way too much of what used to be important is now becoming meaningless as the political class corrupts as much as they can for their own power.

BRETT: Well said, Rush. Spot on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: The media called them “cages” when President Trump was in office, but now with the new administration we’re hearing that they’re called “shelters” and “holding” facilities. Now, if the left is so concerned about COVID and superspreader events like CPAC, then why wouldn’t opening the borders be a cause for alarm? That’s a little hypocritical, isn’t it? Here’s President Trump pointing that out.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The Biden administration is now actively expediting the admission of illegal migrates, enabling them to lodge frivolous asylum claims and admitting them by the thousands and thousands and thousands a day crowded together in unsanitary conditions, despite the ongoing economic and public health crisis, COVID-19 — or, as I call it, “the China virus.”

CROWD: (applause and whistles)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: There’s no masks. There’s no double masks. That was a new one that came out two weeks ago. First Fauci said, “You don’t need masks! No masks, no good.” Then all of a sudden, he wanted masks. Now he wants double masks. No social distancing, no nothing. No nothing. Yet together — and it’s sad, actually, and it’s sad for them and it’s sad for our country.

What the Biden administration is doing to push young migrants into the hand of human traffickers and coyotes is dangerous, immoral, and indefensible. Hard to believe it’s happening. Biden has failed in his number one duty as chief executive: Enforcing America’s laws.

CROWD: (applause)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: This alone should be reason enough for Democrats to suffer withering losses in the midterms and to lose the White House decisively four years from now.

CROWD: (applause)

BRETT: That was former President Trump last night. Let’s hear Rush break it down. He was on this, on the cutting edge of this argument about the Democrat mantra, putting kids in cages, “Donald Trump putting kids in cages.” We go on the Wayback Machine to September 19th, 2019. Here’s Rush.

RUSH: Howdy, Jacksonville, Florida. Great to have you with us, sir.

CALLER: Hey, thanks for having me on, Rush. I appreciate it. And you are a beacon of truth in an otherwise insane world.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, sir. I know how you feel. I feel the same way.

CALLER: You know, something that happened last night that really bothered me. Biden was defending his partnership with Barack Obama, flatly declared that we didn’t cage kids, we didn’t separate families. And everybody knows that’s been debunked, and not one of the other competitors and not one of the moderators called him out on it.

RUSH: Well, of course not. Of course not. This is what I was gonna mention, and I saw that you were up there, Howdy, and were gonna talk about this and I did not want to steal the subject matter of your call. But this has become, the fact that we’re putting kids in cages, this is one of these fake news stories that the Democrats in the media simply evolved with the help of Democrats in politics, elected Democrats, and it’s become a meme. It has become its own hashtag on Twitter and so forth.

And even the most popular picture, the most used picture of illegal immigrant kids inside a shelter, was taken in 2014. Who happened to be president in 2014? Barack Hussein O. Children were separated from their parents. Parents, both illegally immigrating and claiming asylum.

I’ll go through this again. This is the Flores decision, which is a decision from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, brought about by the ACLU. The ACLU created this scenario. And they did it because they thought they were solving a problem. When an adult comes in with a family and claims asylum, that person is immediately detained. The adult claiming asylum is detained, separated from the kids.

The kids are taken to a shelter that’s built for this purpose. This has been around for years, long before Trump even thought about running for president. The average length of time an adult claiming or seeking asylum is detained is 20 days, three weeks. The law says kids cannot be detained more than 20 days. They’ve gotta be let go. But the father or mother will be detained for however long it takes for the asylum hearing to take place.

And so families have been separated by virtue of American law, that happened during the Obama administration and before, kids being separated, photographed behind chain link fences, these pictures are from the Obama administration.

Now, every Democrat knows, Howdy, and every Democrat in the media knows that this has been standard operating procedure. It just became fake news, a way to attack Trump as a heartless, mean-spirited extremist racist. They know that nobody’s gonna correct ’em. Last night was proof of it.

Biden can sit here, go on and on about, “We didn’t put kids in cages.” They most certainly did! But other Democrats are not gonna call him out on it, and certainly the Democrats moderating the debate were not gonna call him out, so he gets away with it. They’ve already gotten away with it. It’s already become a narrative. And Trump has tried and tried to refute it. He’s refuted it with facts. He’s had guests on TV go out. It doesn’t matter. The original lie is out there, and as long as those purveying the lie, Democrats in the media, it’s gonna continue. It’s gotten to the point now that even if there were a correction, nobody would hear the correction.

So it’s just — I don’t know. What do you call it? It’s a phony, fake narrative that has been etched in stone and established. And you know who really believes it? These bordering on insane Democrat base voters. Sometimes I’ll go read a sports story on the Web and I’ll hang around for the comments. You wouldn’t believe the story on Antonio Brown, the number of comments from left wingers attacking Trump. “It could be worse, Antonio, Trump could have put you in a cage with your kids.”

I say, “What is this?” These knuckleheads, these loco weeds — and they all think they’re brilliant – they’ve bought it hook, line, and sinker. It plays well for the Democrats because what do they stand for? Compassion. They love children. They’re the ones killing them! Democrats are sponsoring infanticide. They are now supporting abortion on the day of birth! They are supporting abortion after birth. I’m as mystified at the Democrats getting away with loving and caring about kids as you are, Biden getting away with claiming that they never put kids in cages. They most certainly did. Thank you, Howdy.

BRETT: Thank you, Rush, for that prescient analysis. Here is President Trump at CPAC last night talking about the limitations you experience that the border crossers who are crossing illegally will not go through.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Your family still cannot go out to eat at local restaurants, but Joe Biden is bringing in thousands upon thousands of refugees from all over the world, people that nobody knows anything about. We don’t have crime records. We don’t have health records. What are they bringing in with them?

BRETT: Well, that’s okay. We do know now that they’re getting early access to the COVID vaccines as well, which is an incredible, incredible thing to think about, when you consider all the millions of Americans who have not yet had access to it.

But by reaction to getting up to the border, being able to get across, and then released into the interior, these are folks who are making themselves eligible for something that you could not go get, your spouse could not go get, your loved ones could not go get because they don’t fit the appropriate voter profile or demographic profile or whatever other restriction may be in place.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: We get Rusty in Baxter, Minnesota, first pick up. Rusty, welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

CALLER: Brett, the one thing that every one of these immigrants have in common — man, woman, and child — is that they are all fleeing a country that was destroyed by socialism, and you know what? I grew up in an all-Hispanic neighborhood, mostly Hispanic on the north side of Fort Worth. Let me tell you what Hispanics and South Americans have in common.

They love God. They love family. They love loyalty. They are industrious. They want to work. They don’t want to be… They don’t want to be given handouts. They want to earn what they make, and they’re good at it and for… How insulting is it for the Democrats to sit there and think they’re just a bunch of stupid, poor rubes.

BRETT: Mmm-hmm.

CALLER: They might not lacking in formal education, but they’re not stupid. Intuitively across the world, people want the same thing. They want freedom. They want the government to get the hell out of the way and leave ’em alone, let ’em earn a living, let them earn that money. Everyone. Man, woman, and child. They are all fleeing disgusting hellholes that have been turned into that by socialist policies.

BRETT: And the —

CALLER: What makes them thing they’re gonna continue voting for them? What makes them think that this is a lock for them as far as a vote going forward? I say that they’re make making an astronomical mistake with that. It’s gonna backfire on them.

BRETT: A hundred percent they are. Only a party out of touch with the makeup of people in the United States regardless of ethnic backgrounds or ethnicity or heritage — only a party that is out of touch — could think that, well, because you have people who are Latino or Hispanic who are from the Caribbean, who are from South America, Central America, what have you.

“Of course they want to see an inflow of illegal immigrants coming in, because of course they…” No. People want the same things. Like you said, a job. They want security; they want to low crime. They want all of that. And for whatever reason, somebody got it in their mind that, “Well, no, we’ll just bring people in unfettered, unscreened, undocumented, and we’ll just put them in the neighborhoods that we think that places them the best.

“And, you know, people will just deal with it because, you know, there are similar last names involved.” Believe me, go and talk to anybody in any community in in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, throughout the broader West. You’re gonna talk to people who want the same thing: Security borders. It doesn’t matter if they’re seventh generation in the United States or first generation in the United States.

People don’t want people coming in that we have no idea who they are, any more than you’d want someone coming through your window at 3 o’clock in the morning to sleep in your living room, not knowing who they are. That’s just how it is. Rusty, you are a hundred percent correct.

We create these narratives in our minds if we’re a progressive and say, “Well, those people of course would be totally good with that and they’re gonna be good with that. We’re gonna move the people around according to our own wishes and desires.” It’s unbelievable. Stephanie in San Antonio, Texas, is up next. Stephanie, welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?

CALLER: Hey, first-time listener, first-time caller.

BRETT: Thank you.

CALLER: The voting fraud, where they just mail you votes, sounds a lot like Columbia House in the eighties where, every time you moved in and out of a dorm, you could get 14 free tapes and just promise to pay ’em back.

BRETT: That’s right!

CALLER: One year I think I earned 16 CDs and cassettes for free, and they couldn’t find me ’cause I kept moving in and out of different dorms and apartments.

BRETT: (laughing) Did you tape the penny to the form? Did you at least tape the penny and mail it in? (laughing)

CALLER: I was honest enough to tape the penny.

BRETT: (laughing)

CALLER: But I moved in and out of dorms every semester. In the summer, I had two different apartments; then I moved back home for a while. Then I moved back into the dorm.

BRETT: (laughing)

CALLER: So I think I had five addresses in one year.

BRETT: That’s right. This is exactly what it’s like. The mailing fraud is like that. That is exactly what we’re talking about. It’s just, “We’ll just shotgun out 50,000 ballots to this neighborhood and I’m sure that only the people they’re addressed to will be the people who fill them out. No problem,” especially when you’ve got ballot harvesting happening as well, which is a wholesale version of the Columbia House thing. (laughing) No disrespect to the Columbia House; it served its purpose at the time.

CALLER: Yeah, but Columbia House is out of business.

BRETT: (laughing)

CALLER: In 10 years, America will be out of business.

BRETT: Wow. Stephanie —

CALLER: It’s a bad business model, and Columbia House is out of business. Do we want to be out of business?

BRETT: No. No, we do not. Stephanie, you are a welcome first-time caller and listener, and we appreciate you finding the Rush Limbaugh Show. Thank you so much for coming by today. That is Stephanie checking in. That’s a big deal. That’s a really, really huge deal, folks, and we have to understand this, that if we don’t take our voting franchise at least as seriously as we take free stuff in the mail, we’re making a humongous mistake, because we will be bankrupted.

People much smarter than I have come out and said in recent weeks and months, “You know, you could have open borders, but you can’t have open borders and socialism. You can have socialism, but you can’t have socialism and open borders,” and that’s the great crisis of our time. Again, it means something to be an American.

You heard that from Rush in the first hour and in the second hour. It means something to be an American. There is an inherent value in being an American and voluntarily emigrating here into the United States. The first segment of this hour you heard that from Rush talking about what the process was like, an orderly approach to bring about assimilation into the culture.

If you wanted to go and recruit somebody to be an attorney, you would expect that they would go through the process of going to law school, taking the bar exam, getting a law license, then practicing law. But if we were to use the progressive model, we would just pick a guy off the street and say, “Congratulations. You’re a lawyer. Start picking up clients.” That’s just crazy. We should treat the voting franchise in our country at least as seriously as we treat becoming an attorney or a doctor or a politician.