×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: Okay, grab sound bite number three. This a prediction that I made going into the debate last night. I said it yesterday on this program.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Somebody’s gonna have some sort of secret bit of information about Trump that we haven’t heard before that they’re gonna accuse him of. Or they’re gonna run lists of names by him and make him defend his relationship with them or his knowledge of them, or some such “gotcha” technique as that.


RUSH: And, of course, it did happen, as Jeb Bush accused Trump of trying to bribe him to set up legalized gambling in Florida. Audio sound bite number five. This is from the debate last night. Moderator Jacob Tapper said, “Governor Bush, Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that the $100 million you’ve raised for your campaign makes you a puppet to your donors. Are you?”

JEB: No! Absolutely not! The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something — that was generous and gave me money — was Donald Trump. He wanted casino gambling in Florida.

TRUMP: I didn’t want it.

JEB: Yes, you did!

TRUMP: Totally false.

AUDIENCE: (laughing)

JEB: You wanted it and you didn’t get it —

TRUMP: I would have gotten it.

JEB: — because I was opposed to casino gambling before, during, and after.

TRUMP I promise, I would have gotten it.

JEB: I’m not gonna bought by anybody!

TRUMP: I promise if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.

RUSH: (laughing) I tell you, folks, I just… Whenever this stuff happens, I just end up laughing. “If I woulda wanted it, I woulda gotten it.” Meanwhile, here’s everybody flailing away on the facts of the matter. Let’s jump back to sound bite number four. This is Roger Stone. He was on Fox & Friends this morning, and he’s a former Trump campaign senior advisor. He’s not now. He’s gone, I think, since the middle of August. But Steve Doocy said, “What about Jeb? Jeb was ready with that ‘you came to me and asked me about trying to get casino gambling in Florida.’ Did it happen, Roger?


STONE: Having been directly involved in that, let me say that the efforts by Trump to, uh, explore casino gambling in Florida happened under Lawton Chiles, not under Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush’s position was so well known from the campaign that Trump’s efforts ceased under the previous governor. Mallory Horne, the lobbyist hired to do that, was a Democrat close to Lawton Chiles, Jeb’s predecessor.

RUSH: So Trump is right on this, according to Roger Stone. It was Lawton Chiles, Walkin’ Lawton (who, by the way, was no dream boat himself), apparently that Trump tried to convince to legalize gambling in the state of Florida. It was not Jeb. Now we move back to Trump. After all of this, Trump had his own words.

TRUMP: A lot of money was raised by a lot of different people that are standing up here. And the donors, the special interests, the lobbyists have very strong power over these people. I’m spending all of my money. Nobody has control of me other than the people of this country. I’m gonna do the right thing.

RUSH: Now, this little thing that happened last night… We had a caller yesterday on this program who offered an opinion that if Trump would continue to make this point and to highlight this point and to continue to point out that every one of his opponents is bought and paid for by special interest money, donors, the donor class or what have you, that he could wrap this up in one night, that the only problem with it is that going forward, how many people do we have in this country independently wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns, and who are willing to do so?

So his suggestion was that Trump, in addition to all that, have a suggestion for eliminating, changing the campaign finance system. Now, this segment in the debate last night was kind of made murky by all the cross-talk that occurred when it was being discussed by Trump and by some of the other candidates. Most predominantly Jeb. But it is my humble opinion that amongst those who have really locked onto Trump, this is another one of the big reasons that I think a lot of people in the establishment haven’t quite yet really figured out.


They know, for example, Trump’s position on illegal immigration and the way he talks about it, the way he characterizes it. They know that that is the number one reason that Trump has as many loyalists as he does. But this is a close second. And it’s not talked about much. But from the standpoint of voters not inside the Beltway — the standpoint of the average, ordinary American voter — they’re fed up with this money system. They are fed up. It’s not just that campaign finance needs to be reformed.

They are fed up with being aced out by so-called donor class. People who are supporting Trump in large part are fed up that ideas do not seem to matter anymore. Because, to them, ideas are what it should all be out. It shouldn’t be about somebody’s appearance. But TV age, it’s gonna be. And, by the way, that reminds me: I’ve gotta delve further on this appearance business. I promised to do that 30 minutes ago, and I got sidetracked. I’ll make a note to myself, too, because I think everybody does it.

Whether they say it or not, everybody is judging every one of those people based on how they look to them. Everybody is. It’s just something you don’t say. Trump said it. “Ooh, that’s uncouth! Ooh, that’s just not done! Ooh, that’s inappropriate” and so forth. But everybody thinks these things. Maybe not the same thing about everybody, but everybody has opinions about the way everybody looks. It’s one of those things that’s never gonna change and you can’t wipe it out of the human brain.

You can’t legislate it out, you can’t penalize it out, you can’t let political correctness get rid of it. It’s just a fact. And in a televised world, it matters more than ever in politics. And a lot of people really resent that and really wish it were about ideas, because it’s ideas that are ruining the country, the wrong ideas. And the right ideas can’t seem to compete with all this money, so Trump’s focusing on that. I think it has a much larger impact in solidifying his support than a lot of people are aware.

And I think it’s been a relatively slow realization on the part of people. It was just as recently as 2007, don’t forget, that the American people en masse — with faxes and e-mails and phone calls — were able to change congressional action on comprehensive immigration reform. In 2007, eight years ago. That’s not that far ago. Eight years ago public opinion was able to stop Congress in its tracks. Today it can’t. Public opinion can’t override the money, and that has people just as frustrated, too.

So those of you who think Trump didn’t do as well as you had hoped?

He did, in this area, and it’s one of the top five that matters to a lot of people.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This