RUSH: This morning, CNN, they have a beat reporter on me. Her name is Carol Costello. I’m her beat. Coanchor Kiran Chetry, introduction to… Wait a minute. This is not about Green Bay. This is about the Last Man Standing. This is about I want Obama to fail. I don’t want Obama to fail; I want the country to succeed! I want Obama’s policies to fail. But Obama’s failure to implement his policies is good news, the best news possible for this country. That’s all I’m saying. Okay, you want to hear one of the CNN bites? Okay, here’s Kiran Chetry introducing the correspondent Carol Costello, the Limbaugh beat reporter, the pool reporter at CNN, on me.
CHETRY: Barack Obama has inspired millions to ‘hope,’ including Rush Limbaugh, only Rush Limbaugh hopes something very different. Let’s listen.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, ‘Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: ‘I hope he fails.”
CHETRY: All right, so is the Obama honeymoon already over for some die-hard Republicans?
COSTELLO: (snickering) Well, if you listen to Rush Limbaugh (haughty laugh), it certainly is! Let me ask you a question, though, Kiran. How long did your honeymoon period last after you got married? (cackling)
ROBERTS: It’s still going, right? How many years has it been?
CHETRY: It’s been eight, eight and still, you know, every day —
COSTELLO: Yeah, but that’s not the honeymoon period. Some — some people say their honeymoon period lasted as long as it took to walk down the aisle. Barack Obama, of course, is asking for a lot longer than that from Americans. The question is: Will he get it?
RUSH: Now, the question here is… By the way, this report was then used by another CNN reporter, Rick Sanchez who I even know and who I thought was professional. But Rick Sanchez obviously is not a professional journalist. I just explained in that bite everything I mean about why I want him to fail. There’s no way to misunderstand this, but they get to those four words, ‘I hope he fails,’ and they ignore everything else I said in front of it. They actually put this in context. It is impossible for anybody at CNN to not understand what I was saying, yet they purposely took it out of context, and then Rick Sanchez, who… I wouldn’t trust anything you see this guy do, if you even watch CNN, because he knows full well what was said and what was meant. He might have been assigned this by some editor, I don’t know, but they don’t care obviously at CNN to get it right. And it’s all of course redounded to my benefit.