RUSH: Most of the country I think is like Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose, they have no idea what Obama’s plans are but they’re hopeful. At this point I think most of the people that voted for Obama don’t really care. Snerdley told me during the break that he had four people, eight requests, people that are not even political, his good friends called him and asked — because they thought he had pull since he knows me — they asked him to get tickets for the inauguration on January 20th, and these are people that couldn’t care about politics at all. Snerdley said to them, ‘Do you have a hotel room?’ ‘No. No. We don’t need a hotel room.’ They live in California, by the way. ‘No, we don’t need a hotel room.’ Snerdley said, ‘You are going to travel 2,500 miles without a hotel room, to stand out among 240,000 people –‘ and you’re not going to be in the front row, I don’t care what tickets you get ‘– to watch a speech in Washington in the middle of January? ‘Yeah, yeah, we gotta get there. Can you help us?’ Now, Snerdley is getting exasperated as he tells me the story. I had to calm him down. I said, ‘You have to understand what this is. This is the exact scenario of the death of Princess Diana.’
Remember when we watched that and we said, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Millions of people lining the street, all those flowers, people writing notes to a dead person and hanging them up in the street signs and so forth, what the hell is going on? And then, ladies and gentlemen, we figured it out. In such a pop culture and media-centric world everybody wants to be on TV, everybody wants to be part of the story, everybody wants to say, or to be able to say that they were there. And that’s what’s going on here. You have people who may not have even voted for Obama who are getting all caught up now in all of this, the historical nature of it or what have you, the first-time aspect of it. And what they see, if they spend time watching the Drive-Bys, what they see is everybody going bonkers, like this has never happened, why, this is the greatest, and they just want to be part of it, they want to be able to say when it was over that they were there. They may even get on TV while they’re at it, maybe a Drive-By will interview them. But it is a mistake to assume that all of this throughout the country is a devotion to Obama policies, ’cause nobody knows what they are, really, it’s a devotion to a charismatic demagogue; it’s a devotion to a creature. And all of this, I must say, is very creepy, the behavior of all of these Americans.
We’re talking about the first black human being elected president, but as I said, I’m past that. These are human beings. You know, Americans are human beings to me. People are human beings. Ideas are what count here. But most people haven’t gotten there yet, they’re still caught up in the pomp and circumstance, watching all these people get messiahnized and caught up in this cult-like thing is creepy. We’ve seen this before. We have seen this before. It’s just creepy. They don’t care. Right now they don’t care. He could bomb Baghdad all over again and be applauded for it. He could say, ‘By the way, I have intelligence that they are going to attack us from a suburb outside Paris, and I’m sending in troops and I’m bombing,’ he’d be applauded. The French would applaud. There is nothing he can do wrong right now. It’s creepy. And, you know, the funny thing, as the Newsweek guy says, he goes out and makes these speeches and he backs off and watches everybody watch him, and he looks around, ‘Boy, they’re buying this messiah game that I’ve created.’ He’s a creature. He’s creepy. People are going bonkers. It’s creepy, very singular, highly manipulative, and creepy.
Snerdley, it doesn’t matter, your friends, don’t think they’ve lost it. They’re just caught up in something they don’t have the strength to resist. It’s, ‘I want to be on Jerry Springer show’ syndrome. In fact, Dianne Feinstein who heads the committee that passes out the tickets, she had to go on television yesterday saying, ‘Hey, do not sell these tickets. People are scalping them, don’t put ’em on eBay.’ They’re not going to give out the official tickets until right before the event to avoid scalping. They’re not supposed to be paid for, these tickets, there are 240,000, they’re freebies. Do you think I could call a Democrat member of Congress and get inauguration tickets? I could not. I don’t want to. I will watch it on television. I don’t go to Washington. This would be the worst day to go to Washington. Going to Washington is bad enough on a normal day. Look at what happens to Republicans when they spend the night there. Just takes one or two nights, maybe a week. But this particular day, we will watch it on TV. I don’t want to ask anybody for tickets. You know I don’t do that anyway. I don’t want to be obligated to anybody. If I start asking for inauguration tickets and they give me some, do you know what the payback is going to be someday? I don’t even want to contemplate it.
All right, last night, Situation Room, Bill Schneider, a report about President-Elect Barack Obama.
SCHNEIDER: While three-quarters of Americans believe President Bush is doing a lousy job, three-quarters believe President-Elect Obama will do a good job.
RUSH: What?
SCHNEIDER: What’s he going to do exactly? Most people are not clear exactly, but they have great expectations.
RUSH: You heard right, they are polling people on Bush’s approval rating and people’s expectations of Obama. Seventy-five percent believe that Obama will do a good job. Have you ever heard of such a poll before? What’s he going to do? They don’t know. They just have high expectations. Let’s go back. Friday night, Charlie Rose, Tom Brokaw on PBS.
ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.
BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.
ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.
BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?
BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.
ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.
BROKAW: Two of them. I don’t know what books he’s read.
ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know.
RUSH: That was October 29th, the Friday night before the election. So we’ve confirmed now, thanks to Bill Schneider and CNN, the American people don’t know what he is, they just have expectations. Charlie Rose and Brokaw, and the two Newsweek guys, they don’t know what he is but they think it’s creepy. (laughing) Do you know what Obama’s approval rating is? Do you know he’s got an approval rating? They have taken a Barack Obama presidential elect approval poll at CNN. The fill-in host John Roberts revealed the results.
ROBERTS: 64% of Americans have a positive view of what Obama has done since he was elected.
RUSH: (laughing) What’s he done! It’s the same thing you could ask with his career in the Senate, what’s he done? He’s acting presidential. This is what I told you in the last hour, Snerdley and the rest of you, he is acting presidential. He was acting presidential in Berlin. He hasn’t done anything, except leak, and he went in and bullied George Bush.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: As you watch the news — and as you listen to me tell you about all of this Princess Di-type fawning behavior on the part not just of our fellow citizens, ladies and gentlemen, on the part of the Drive-By Media — keep something in mind. Fifty-two percent of voters went with Obama. Just 52%. This is not a nationwide thing. Fifty-seven, 58 million voters voted against Obama. But the Drive-By Media, they are keeping this up. They are making this look like it’s a groundswell. They’re creating this image that people say, ‘Oh, I gotta be part of this!’ They were part of the Obama campaign. The Drive-Bys were. They are part of the president-elect’s staff, and they will be part of his administration. Make no bones. The Kansas City Star is laying off more people. A couple other newspapers are laying off people. You think, ‘Well, okay, the Obama campaign staff is being fired.’
No, they’ll end up somewhere in the administration, doing something. These people are part of the Obama campaign team. The public is far more skeptical of Obama than the liberal reporters in the Drive-By Media are leading you to believe. I want to warn you about this. It’s very important, because the way this is all coming down, the way it’s being reported is you… Once again, the objective is to make you feel like you are odd, weird, just an oddball, that you’re cast out. You’re just kooky. ‘The whole country loves Obama. The whole country wants to go to the inauguration. The whole country is caught up in it,’ and you’re not, and you’re saying, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ They want you asking yourself, ‘What’s wrong with me.’ Remember, this President-Elect Obama is ‘acting presidential.’ The media is acting as though he is president. They are creating this mistaken image that he is loved and adored by everybody, not just in this country, but in the world.
We did not have a record turnout for this election. Keep this in mind. Despite the lies in the media about it, we did not have a record turnout as was predicted. The public is far more skeptical and levelheaded than the reporters are. The Chicago Tribune five hours ago was talking about ‘inauguration mania.’ Folks, there’s always inauguration mania! Every time a president is inaugurated, there’s mania about it. It’s just in this case (breathless), ‘It’s Camelot. Camelot is back!’ This is the Washington social culture. Sally Quinn, the ‘social doyen’ of DC, she’s happy to have dinner parties again. She invite people that dress right. She’s going to invite people that speak right. She can invite people that look right. Oh, it’s a grand day! Obama’s back! JFK is back! Camelot is back. But there’s one person who’s not going to the inauguration: Toni Morrison. She was on Charlie Rose… Let’s see. I guess it was last night. Toni Morrison is the one who called Bill Clinton ‘the first black president,’ by the way. Rose says, ‘When you realize he was president of the United States, since everything you’ve written is touched on race.’
MORRISON: Yeah, I felt some exhilaration.
ROSE: Some?
MORRISON: Yeah.
ROSE: Why just some?
MORRISON: Exhilaration.
ROSE: I mean —
MORRISON: Well.
ROSE: — this is hallelujah! Jesus Christ! You know?
MORRISON: I don’t want to put too much weight on that.
ROSE: You hope! Yeah.
MORRISON: You know where my real feeling…?
ROSE: You know what! You know what! On religion — Oh, I just said that!
MORRISON: (laughing)
ROSE: You don’t want to put too much weight on — you know.
MORRISON: One man.
ROSE: No!
MORRISON: This is an exceptional man.
ROSE: Right.
MORRISON: He’s not an African-American. He is that particular one.
ROSE: (whispering) Yeaaaaah.
MORRISON: You know, he’s really specific; and his talents and his abilities and his intelligence, and what I call wisdom.
RUSH: Yeah. She’s not going to the inauguration, though. This is the next bite.
MORRISON: No.
ROSE: WHA–? WHAT? It — This is not going to happen!
MORRISON: Eh, it’s too many people.
ROSE: Oh, come oooon!
MORRISON: (laughs)
ROSE: This is not going to happen!
MORRISON: What’s not going to happen?
ROSE: (sputtering) Yuh– Yuh–
MORRISON: I’m not going to not go?
ROSE: Yeah, you’re going.
MORRISON: Okay.
ROSE: You’ve got to go!
MORRISON: Do you think?
ROSE: I really do.
MORRISON: I don’t have a dress.
ROSE: I’ll get you a dress!
MORRISON: (laughing)
ROSE: I’ll get you a dress!
RUSH: She can’t go, Toni Morrison. Why should she have to go? She already saw the first black president: Bill Clinton! Why should she have to go to the inauguration? She doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t have a dress. Too many people. She even said, ‘He’s not an African-American. He’s that particular one.’ She’s seen all this before in Bill Clinton. She didn’t want to go. Charlie Rose is going to get her a dress and make sure she goes.