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RUSH: The Washington Free Beacon has the story. Actually, a lot of different websites have the story. “Clinton Foundation Head Accused Clintons of ‘Paranoia’.” Look, I’m going to have to do this story in stages. There’s no way I can do this in one segment getting all the audio sound bites in with it. But I do want to get started on this because I’m already factoring in mixing telephone calls and everything for a properly and well-balanced program, as only a highly trained broadcast specialist could execute without a producer.

Oh, speaking of, folks, look. I’m sorry. This is inside baseball, but I just can’t — since I reminded myself of it… (interruption) What? You don’t think I should mention it? (interruption) Yeah, I’m not gonna mention any names. (interruption) You don’t think I should mention this? (interruption) Why, it’s no big deal. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? (interruption). Do not put doubt in front of me like this. Here I was proceeding full speed with confidence and bravado, and now you’re making me doubt what I was gonna do?

It’s harmless. What could go wrong? What in the world are you worried about if I… (interruption) It could all go wrong, did you say? (interruption) I’m not gonna mention any names. I was never gonna mention any names. It’s not a big deal. I just saw the — it’s too inside baseball. You know what, even if you understood it, you wouldn’t care. (interruption) You think they would? Oh, now you’re really confusing me. You think they would care? Talking about you, folks, the audience. (interruption) Well, now that this cloud of doubt has been seeded, I shall pause and consider whether or not to discuss and just stick with the Hillary stuff here, because the audio has been discovered.

“Clinton Foundation head Donna Shalala privately expressed concerns about Bill and Hillary ClintonÂ’s mental state in the mid-1990s, saying they had become ‘paranoid’ and fixated on ‘right-wing conspiracies,’ according to previously unpublished audio recordings obtained by the Washington Free Beacon,” committing a random act of journalism.

“In 1994, four years before Hillary Clinton said a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ was trying to take down her husbandÂ’s presidency, top aide Shalala said this theory was already embraced by the Clintons. ‘TheyÂ’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. Thinking people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff,’ said Shalala.” And she was in a good position to know. She was chairman of the Children’s Defense Fund from 1992 to 1993 where she worked with Mrs. Clinton and she left there and Marian Wright Edelman took over.


In ’93, Bill Clinton appointed Shalala to be secretary of Health and Human Services, and she served for eight years in that role, becoming the nation’s longest serving Health and Human Services secretary. Then she went to the University of Miami so she’d be close to Janet Reno. They took a pickup truck trip together. Remember that? Shalala was actually talking about what fun it was to get in Reno’s pickup truck and they went just pedal-to-the-metal and hit the road.

She was recently appointed president of the Clinton Foundation. “The tapes are part of a series of interviews with Hillary Clinton and top aides,” conducted by Haynes Johnson, who used to be at the Washington Post. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Haynes Johnson. He was on the Sunday shows all the time back then. The Washington Free Beacon got a hold of him from the Wisconsin Historical Society on the University of Wisconsin campus because Shalala was the president of the University of Wisconsin before the Clintons tapped her for greatness in 1993.

“The recordings provide additional insight into how Hillary Clinton was affected by her unsuccessful push for health care reform … Aides feared at the time that Hillary Clinton had become ‘paranoid,’ ‘burnt out,’ and prone to angry outbursts, according to the tapes.

‘[The Clintons are] feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about [conspiracies] all the time,’ said Shalala. ‘That there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we donÂ’t have a chance, people donÂ’t understand how much good weÂ’ve done. Our message isnÂ’t getting across because these people are beating us up.'”

She’s talking about talk radio. Folks, there was no Fox News then. There was no conservative blogosphere. It was just me and what the Clintons refer to on the tape — you will hear it in a moment — as the “Limbaugh clones.” How about that for a tease?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the Clintons now, ladies and gentlemen. This is, again, the audio that’s been found at the University of Wisconsin in the archives by the Washington Free Beacon. It’s Donna Shalala telling everybody just how paranoid the Clintons were back in 1993 and 1994, and specifically over Clinton’s health care plan that Hillary was trying to get implemented. Shalala said it was embarrassing. They really do believe this, this vast right-wing conspiracy out to get them and foil them at every turn.

In fact, “In 1995, the Clinton White House drafted what became known as the ‘Conspiracy Commerce Memo,’ which purported to show how negative stories about the ClintonsÂ’ filtered into the mainstream media from conservative outlets and talk radio. The existence of the memo was reported in 1997, but it was not published in full until earlier this year. Hillary Clinton appeared to reference this theory during one August 1994 interview with Johnson.” That’s who the tapes are made with.

She said: “YouÂ’ve got a well-organized right-wing media operation, everything from talk radio, radical right religious broadcasting, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Washington Times, which are advocacy journalists.” Folks, this was a profound moment in American history. It really was, because up until 1988 when this program started, the left owned the media, and it was monolithic. Every Democrat knew that the media was a friend and an ally.

They just weren’t accustomed to having opposing media. It hit ’em out of the blue, upside of the head. They didn’t know how to deal with it. They had never had to deal with a genuinely combative media. And here came this program in 1988 which begot a number of local conservative talk shows and eventually Fox News in 1996, and the blogs came along. The Drudge Report’s in there. The Drudge Report started getting really big about 1994, 1995. The Drudge Report was originally an e-mail dispatch, if you remember. The Drudge Report was an e-mail. You know how I first heard of the Drudge Report? Drudge knew that I was gonna resign my TV show before we had told anybody. And I didn’t know Drudge. I said, “Who is this guy?”

So I started getting to know Drudge and so forth. It wasn’t until I forget the year, but his was an e-mail dispatch. Compuserve and other e-mail address e-mail dispatch is how the Drudge Report first existed, and it became what it is today: A full-blown website. And then the Lewinsky thing they say is what put Drudge on the map, but he was on the map long before that. Anyhow, it’s fundamental to remember, it’s crucially important for everybody to remember that here are the Clintons admitting their paranoia — Donna Shalala admitting it — because they didn’t know how to deal with a non-supportive media.

They were flummoxed by it. And all it was was just me on the radio and some other local talk show guys and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and they’re acting like it is the biggest threat to their existence ever. Let’s go to the audiotapes here and you’ll see what we’re talking about. August of 1994, Haynes Johnson at the Washington Post interviewing First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, and here’s what she saying. She talked about being heckled during a July 1994 speech in Seattle.


HILLARY 1994: I have been heckled (pause), you know, for years.

JOHNSON: Right.

HILLARY 1994: I mean, that’s not new. There’s a radio talk radio show in Seattle who is kind of, uhh, y’know, a Limbaugh clone for a week just whipping people up against me. They were men in their twenties, thirties, forties. They… I had not seen faces like that since segregation battles in the sixties. They had such hatred on their faces. The thing that I guess scared me, though, is the peop — the look of the people that he pulled.

RUSH: “The look of people,” the look of the conservative audience. “I hadn’t seen faces like that since the segregation battles of the sixties.” I’m telling you, they were bamboozled, and they didn’t know what to do, and they were genuinely made paranoid about it. Now, this is a study. This was not an ad-lib comment. This is how they decided to deal with it. This is getting together with Carville and Begala and Stephanopoulos, who are all in the war room at the time. And I’m telling you, when she says that they were in their twenties and thirties, “I hadn’t seen faces like that since segregation,” that was maybe even focus grouped.

But she just didn’t ad-lib that, that didn’t come out. It might have been her inclination, but I guarantee you, this is what they came up with as a means of crediting and describing this opposition. Because, remember… Again, I don’t mean to keep repeating myself, but it’s crucially important, folks. They did not know how to deal with any media that genuinely practiced journalism against them. And in 1994, it was the peak, it was huge, and the reason it was, it was because there was nobody else doing anything like it.

The media was all monolithic. It was all what it is today. It was all the same. It was all repetitive. It was the same stories treated the same way in the same order, no matter what source you consulted. Conservative talk radio stood out in a major way because it was so, so different. And to people on the left, Democrat politicians, they were stymied by it. Here’s the next clip, where she continues about how shocking all these people from the right wing were and how frightened they were and how they had to deal with it.

HILLARY: You don’t have any counterbalance to this incredible 24-hour-a-day hate. If you read Limbaugh’s transcripts — and he’s very clever. I mean, he’s not as bald and blatant as this guy in Seattle, y’know, or the guy in, you know, Detroit who calls my husband Caligula because he murders people. We’ve always had newspapers and broadsides taking on presidents and saying terrible things about them. But it wasn’t pervasive! It did not penetrate into every corner 24 hours a day, and I think that’s scary.

RUSH: Yes, it’s scary. It was relentless. And there was no “counterbalance.” See, that’s key. There was no counterbalance? What about all the rest of the media? I’ll tell you what shocked me. And it really did, and we have this in the sound bite roster coming up for those of you… Some of you will remember it. Some of you haven’t heard it. Clinton was flying in St. Louis in 1994 on Air Force One. He’s doing an interview before he arrives with the morning crew at KMOX, our affiliate in St. Louis. He starts complaining about me!

(impression) “You got Rush Limbaugh coming up here when you guys finish! He’ll come up at noon and he’s gonna have three hours — Three hours! — and there’s nobody to do anything about what he says! He has three hours to say whatever he wants and nobody’s gonna say anything otherwise! There’s no truth detector.” Here’s the president of the United States with the biggest bully pulpit in the world complaining about some guy on the radio for three hours. At the time I wondered, “Why in the world…? This makes no sense. The president of the United States ought not be mentioning anybody in the media.

“All that does is elevate them. It conveys importance. Why in the world’s he doing this?” It really… In a media performance sense, in a presidential politics sense it made no sense whatsoever. So the answer had to be, he was genuinely worried about this, and now we know that that’s the case. They were genuinely worried. “It’s a 24/7 talk radio machine! My God, it’s pervasive. Read Limbaugh’s transcript. He’s very clever. He’s not like these local clones who call my husband Caligula.” (laughing)

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me get back here to the Clinton audiotapes that go along with the release of the interview she did with Haynes Johnson, and it’s accompanied by Donna Shalala confirming that the Clintons back then were genuinely literally conspiracy theorists and paranoid. Hillary’s quoted as saying, “‘And then you’ve got respectable mainline journalists basically in a kind of either-or, even-handed mode, you don’t have any counterbalance to this incredible 24-hour a day hate that is being spewed out.’

“Clinton blamed this ‘right-wing media operation’ for fueling public opposition to health care reform — which peaked when the First Lady was heckled by hundreds during her July 1994 speech in Seattle.” That’s not even the half of it. I mean, that was bad, but the whole bus trip that she started in Seattle was a disaster. Anyway, you know, Media Matters… I think I can say this now with… Well, it’s just true. Media Matters for America was started by Hillary Clinton, and I was the target. I am the reason Media Matters exists.


Now their targets have become more numerous. Their targets are now all of conservative media. But when it started Media Matters was, with help from George Soros, to discredit me and the Limbaugh clones. That’s all there was back then. But that’s why there was Media Matters. Of course you won’t find Hillary’s fingerprints on it, but her guy, David Brock, and Sidney Blumenthal’s kid, Max. That’s why they exist. It was specifically established to try to inflict harm, business harm and otherwise, on this program.

So let’s go back to Seattle. This is July 23rd, 1994, Hillary holding a rally, speaking about health care reform.

HILLARY 1994: (shouting) You know, every generation or so a great issue takes the imagination of our country! Sixty years ago it was Social Security! When President Roosevelt said, “If you work hard for a living, you should not be in poverty when you reach your older years!” And he fought hard for Social Security, and the very same people who were against Social Security are against health care reform!

RUSH: Good Lord! She sounds just as bad today as she did then! I had forgotten. She still sounds like your ex-wife screaming at you left and right. “Social Security and the very…!” she sounds robotic. Phew! I had forgotten. All this stuff is now flooding back. And here, ladies and gentlemen, this is Bill Clinton calling KMOX, the Charlie Brennan Show. This happened on June 24th, 1994.

CLINTON: After I get off the radio today with you, Rush Limbaugh have three hours to say whatever he wants.

REPORTER: Would you like to leave a message?

CLINTON: And I won’t have any opportunity to respond, and there’s no truth detector. You won’t get on afterwards and say what was true and what wasn’t!

RUSH: He was being serious. At the time I thought, ‘What in the world? Why do this?” He was being serious. He was genuinely ticked off, genuinely upset that three hours on the radio was something he couldn’t compete with, as president of the United States. And here he is complaining to these things at KMOX (impression), “Yeah, he’s gonna have three hours, and when it’s all over, you aren’t gonna go on there and you aren’t gonna tell everybody what he lied about! There’s no truth detector.” (laughing) Guy’s… Ah, the good old days of 1994.

We had a call all about this. Go back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites, April 16th of this year we had a call from Pete in Seattle.

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: I remember that bus tour very well, because we sabotaged practically every stop. At every stop we engineered more anti-Hillary health care bodies, people, than Hillary had supporters. There was even one — help me out on this, Mr. Snerdley. I got a vague memory that we even caused them to change the route one day. They had their announced route, everybody knew well in advance what the stops are gonna be, and they — under cover of darkness — changed the route so that they could go to a place that was unannounced.

They announced that they were gonna be there just two or three hours in advance, hoping to at least have one stop where Hillary supporters outnumbered the detractors, and we even sabotaged that one. (laughing) Now, I use the word “sabotage” lightly. We didn’t do anything. We’re just talking about the Hillary health care tour and her bus tour and she’s highlighted this thing, and it was made to look like she is going coast to coast on a bus to demonstrate all of the massive national support for Hillarycare. And it didn’t exist.

Hillarycare was not supported by a majority of people, just like Obamacare never was. Hillarycare wasn’t, either. But they were trying to create the impression that it was with this bus tour with all of these supporters lined up as just average, ordinary people rabidly supporting the idea. We were able to turn out more people just here on the radio, you know, “Hey, Hillary’s coming to Dodge City tomorrow! It’d be great if you could turn out and greet Hillary.” That’s all we had to say. We didn’t have to say turn out and boo. Because they were, as Pete said here, they were polite. But you could tell they were frustrated.

END ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: Oklahoma. That route was Seattle, and it down through Oklahoma and then back northeast heading to Washington. It was a disaster. But, yeah, it was Kirby Wilbur, that she was talking about these tapes, this Limbaugh clone, the Seattle crowd. That’s what she was talking about, and (summarized), “They looked like people I hadn’t seen since the segregation days of the sixties! They looked so scary, and then I saw they were armed I said, “Oh, no!'” She was just… (interruption)

The thing is about the sixties, Hillary was one of those people. She was one of these rabid anti-establish protesters and so forth. But it all boils down to one thing: They had never encountered opposition media opinion that’s what they didn’t know how to deal with. Something that simple. They had been fawned over, they had been… Well, the media just sucks up to ’em all the time, always has. And they didn’t know how to deal with the opposite.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The point is, folks, that the Clintons probably still think all of this, is the point. We’re not just reliving history; we’re learning things about history that relate to today. I think if the Clintons believed that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy — we know they do now — back in the nineties, ’94 and so forth, I mean, they’ve gotta be of the same attitude and mind-set today. And it will help anybody in explaining, understanding about why and how they do what they do.

Here is Shalala, by the way, talking about all this. And again this is from August of ’94, Haynes Johnson interviewing the now-president of the Clinton Foundation. She was then the secretary Health and Human Services. And the question that Haynes Johnson asked her, “You’ve been watching a president and first lady in an extraordinarily interesting situation. How have they changed, Ms. Shalala?”

SHALALA: They’ve become paranoid. Paranoia. They think people are out to get them, this right-wing conspiracy stuff. There is a feeling in the White House, and I don’t know whether it’s Carville or Begala or who’s giving the materials, but sitting on the desk of their staff are these materials on this right-wing conspiracy. My reaction to that is, so what? So what’s new? So we got Father Coughlin and, you know, in 1994.

RUSH: Father Coughlin. So that’s who I was to Donna Shalala was Father Coughlin. But she says, “So what? Nothing new here.” But she’s right here. “I don’t know whether it was Carville, Begala.” It was Carville, Begala, and Stephanopoulos that were feeding the Clintons this stuff. Make no mistake about that. So then Haynes Johnson said, “Well, how is this paranoia manifested? How does it come up? Does it come up in conversation? How do you know they’re paranoid?”

SHALALA: Feeling sorry for themselves. They talk about it all the time. That, you know, there really is a conspiracy out there to get us. That we don’t have a chance. People don’t understand how much good we’ve done. Our message isn’t getting across because these people are beating us up.

RUSH: That’s just incredible to me, the fact that she would admit this. This was not something for a time capsule. This was active of the day, 1994, so here is their Health and Human Services secretary out there telling a journalist that they’re paranoid because they can’t get their message out because of talk radio. They have all the rest of the media. They had the same media they’ve always had. They had the three nightly newscasts, which back then were big. They had all the newspapers, back then were big, and every damn network newscast, every damn newspaper just sucked up to the Clintons left and right. I mean, we were a tiny little voice of opposition. They were obsessed by it.

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