RUSH: You just know the Drive-Bys, the State-Controlled Media, have been going through their Nexus database, they have been trying desperately to find any examples of your host — that would be me — over the past two, three years, whatever — claiming Obama was a Muslim. And they can’t find it ’cause I never said it. But they want me to be the one who said it, and they can’t find it. Folks, I don’t know about you, but this is a Friday I’m ready for.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: I mean this week and the past couple days here have been frenetic to say the least. So here we are on Open Line Friday. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. When we go to the phones, talk about whatever you want, especially today, because I’m ready for you people to carry this baby today, and I never, very seldom say that. I mean I used up, I have exhausted 150% of the half of my brain that I use. Did I give ’em the phone number? Yeah, okay. They know it anyway. I mean it’s the same number for 22 years.
You remember all those pictures that we used to get of Obama that the media would take that had the halo effect over him? And the media wonders why we think what we think. There’s a picture on Drudge now that I swear makes Obama look like he has angel wings. He’s standing outside the top of the stairs getting on Air Force One, the door to the aircraft is open, the way he’s standing — you look at it, and it looks like he’s an angel. He got angel wings. And here are the headlines that Drudge has linked under the picture. ‘Shock Poll: 24% Think Obama Muslim.’ ‘White House: Obama is ‘Obviously’ Christian.’ I’m going to get into this in a minute, but what’s obvious? And, by the way, as much as the media and the Democrat Party hates Christians, why are they trying so hard to make him out to be one? They don’t like Christians! Let’s be honest about it. But now they’re hell-bent on convincing us that Obama is one. And then Drudge has the New York Times Edward Luttwak piece that I talked about yesterday where Luttwak writes back in 2008 that Muslims think Obama is a Muslim because his dad was.
And in AP: ‘Rumors Gain Steam,’ and now they’re all over the media, they’re tying themselves in knots trying to figure out how you people believe this, how stupid are you? Who’s responsible for this? How did this whole business that Obama’s a Muslim get started? And they’re looking desperately to find my name at the beginning of this trail, and they won’t find it. Did you see the picture? Honest to Allah — he-he-he-he-he-he-he — it looks like they’re making him look like an angel. All right, before we get into details, and I want to take this seriously because Bill Burton said it’s obvious he’s a Christian.
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RUSH: Hey, media? Let me help you out here. I know you’re going out there and you’re searching. You’re desperately searching, you’re trying to be the, quote, unquote, ‘journalist’ to uncover that moment when I, El Rushbo, long ago said, ‘Obama is a Muslim.’ The closest you’re gonna come is June 11th, 2008, when I quoted Moammar Khadafy, when he said that Obama is a Muslim. Moammar Khadafy, June 11, 2008: ‘There are elections in America now. ‘There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama. All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.’
September 9th, 2008: ‘Obama’s Muslim Faith Slip Bolstered by Khadafy.’ We highlighted it at RushLimbaugh.com. That’s the closest I’ve ever come: Quoting Khadafy. And the reason Khadafy says that Obama’s a Muslim is because Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Muslim — and in Islam, if your father is a Muslim then you are. What your mother was (his was an atheist, by the way) is irrelevant. That’s why Khadafy was out there saying that Obama is a Muslim. So, yeah, was I quoting Moammar Khadafy. That’s as close as I ever came.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I’m one who follows the news. In fact, I’m on the cutting edge following the news. I know what the news is going to be before it’s reported because I know libs. There is a new standard in our country for determining if somebody is something. Well, there are many standards, but one of the latest standards is United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. The real question here in determining whether or not Barack Obama is Christian is to ask this: ‘Does United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald have enough evidence to indict Obama for being a Christian?’ Fitzgerald’s definition of evidence seems to be evolving, and so that would be one way that we might direct the media.
Just ask Pat Fitzgerald: If you were going to indict Obama for being a Christian, do you have enough evidence to do so? Now, let’s go back to Bill Burton’s statement — and, by the way, it’s a gaggle. There is no audio of this. But he was asked a question yesterday by the media, and he said (Bill Burton, White House spokesman), ‘And so the president is obviously a Christian. He prays every day. He communicates with his religious advisor every single day. There’s a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis — and his faith is very important to him, but it’s not something that is a topic of conversation every single day.’ Okay, let’s break this down, because this answer — while intending to be thorough and end-of-story — is evasive.
It’s very clever and very artful, but Burton’s answer is evasive. The fact that Obama ‘prays every day’ does not make him a Christian. Jews, Muslims, every other religious practitioner ‘prays every day,’ some of them multiple times a day. Some of them have calls to prayer which are so beautiful that Obama thinks that they’re ‘one of the prettiest sounds in the world.’ Then Burton said Obama ‘communicates with his religious advisor every day.’ Well, so do religious people of all faiths. What’s a religious advisor? Dawn, do you have a religious advisor? (interruption) You…? Yeah, you do? (interruption) Okay, yeah, you got a pastor. We all have a pastor, a priest, a rabbi. We’ve all got religious advisors.
So Obama communicates with his religious advisor every day. So what? Big deal. He’s making his Christianity sound like it’s a policy thing and he has to have a meeting every day with his Christian policy advisors — and if it is that, if he is having policy meetings with his Christian advisors every day, he needs to replace ’em because they’re giving him bad advice, ’cause this is the weakest answer to try to dispel a ridiculous problem. You know, what’s fascinating about this is not what Burton says, it’s not all these polls; it’s fact that we’re asking the question about the president of the United States. Who’s doing the polls? Why, it ain’t us. The poll is being done by the partisan political operatives known as journalists.
‘Is Obama a Muslim?’
‘Do you think he’s a Christian?’
We’re asking this about the president of the United States.
And then Burton says, ‘There’s a group of pastors he takes counsel from on a regular basis.’ Well, so do people of all religions take counsel from their pastors. Most people get by with one, maybe two, but Obama here has a lot of them, a group of pastors. And then Burton said, ‘His faith is very important to him.’ Yeah. Yeah. Bin Laden’s faith is not important to him. Billy Graham’s faith isn’t particularly important to him. Pope Benedict? (Snorts) His faith is not very important to him. What is this? Obama’s faith is very important to him? We are supposed to be dazzled by this? We are supposed to be mesmerized? We are supposed to be persuaded, convinced? Wow. Who knew that Obama’s faith is very important to him?
Faith is important to millions of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, terrorists, Buddhists. Atheists! Atheism is a faith. It’s very important to those people. Obama’s mother was a atheist. But none of this, none of it relates to the question of Obama’s Christianity. Zip, zero, nada. This didn’t cut it. Then Burton calls Obama’s Christianity ‘obvious.’ Well, uh, isn’t that the point, ladies and gentlemen? It isn’t obvious if we’re polling it. Let me correct myself: It isn’t obvious if Obama’s own media is polling it. Bill Clinton’s Christianity was obvious. Clinton was in every black church he could find. Clinton was out there claiming to be the first black president in a spiritual sense. George W. Bush’s Christianity was obvious.
He talked about it. He talked about it in ways that defined him as a person. Clinton did, too. Clinton was also very obvious about it because every time there was a sex scandal, we had him standing in front of the Reverend Jackson and others, ‘religious advisors,’ and they were having prayer meetings and they were holding hands and so forth. It was obvious that Clinton was a Christian. It was obvious that George W. Bush was a Christian. It was obvious that FDR was a Christian. So obvious that nobody ever asked. No one even thought to ask, ‘Is Bush a Christian?’ In fact, when they talked about Bush being a Christian it was to criticize him. We had stories and articles: ‘Is Bush’s faith guiding policy?’
When Bush talked about the desire of every human being to be free, that that’s part of our creation, remember how they cringed? The same media that now apparently so love and respect Christianity that they are damn well convinced that Obama is one, and they are damn well persuaded that we’ve gotta believe it. But Bush’s Christianity? They didn’t like it, and they don’t like right-wing Christianity. They don’t like Pat Robertson and they don’t like Billy Graham and they don’t like Jerry Falwell. They don’t like Billy Sol Hargus or Billy James, whatever it was. They don’t like NASCAR Christianity. They don’t like Christianity that talks about pro-life. They hate it! The ruling class doesn’t want to get anywhere near it.
Now all of a sudden it is crucial that we understand Obama’s a Christian because it’s important to him. But we didn’t have to ask it about FDR, we didn’t have to ask it about Clinton, we didn’t have to ask it about George W. Bush. Nobody asked Burton, ‘Okay, he’s got all these religious advisors. Does he listen to them? Does he listen to their message?’ because he said he never listened to Reverend Wright. He can’t tell you what Reverend Wright ever said when he was a member of that church for 20 years. Did you know that Reverend Wright used to be a Muslim? Did you know that? You might have known that and forgotten it, but Reverend Wright used to be a Muslim and now he’s a black liberation theologist. Which is some sort of Christianity, but he used to be Muslim.
So nothing is ‘obvious’ about Obama’s Christianity, Mr. Burton, and the telltale sign is that you even have to say it. We’re polling it! You see, Obama’s Christianity is the opposite of obvious. ‘What do you mean by that, Limbaugh? What do you mean! How can you sit there and say ‘Obama’s Christianity is the opposite of obvious’?’ Well, glad you asked. Let me ‘splain it. He has a Muslim name: ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’ He had a Muslim father and an extended Muslim family in Kenya. He was partly raised and educated in Indonesia by a Muslim stepfather. He has Muslim half-sisters and brothers, one of whom continues to reside in a three-by-five-foot hut in Kenya. His mother was a self-proclaimed and unaffiliated atheist. Obama professed no religion and belonged to no church until he joined Reverend Wright’s Trinity Church in Chicago.
He did this in his late twenties and his mentor there, the estimable Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was a Muslim who converted to black liberation theology, which is a highly exotic (let’s be politic here) highly exotic form of Christianity in the American, even black American, context. It’s pretty exotic. Obama’s great literary intellectual role model was Malcolm X. One of Obama’s religious advisors is a Chicago Muslim, Eboo Patel. Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf (or ‘Ruuf,’ however he pronounces the last name) the controversial Muslim leader behind the plan to build the Islamic Center and mosque a couple blocks from Ground Zero wrote the afterward to Eboo Patel’s 2006 book: Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action.
So the Ground Zero mosque imam wrote the afterward to Obama’s religious advisor’s book. The religious advisor is a Muslim. So, Mr. Burton, Obama’s Christianity is the opposite of obvious. You have to dig deep here to find it. Now, having said all that, none of what I have said means that Obama’s a Muslim and none of it means that Obama’s not a sincere Christian. If he’s going to say that he is, fine. We will accept that he’s a Christian. I still find it amazing we’re polling it. And I have to laugh. Have you seen the latest examples of the media trying to convince us that he’s not a Muslim?
Pictures of the beer summit! Pictures of Obama with a brewski. ‘See! He can’t be a Muslim; he’s drinking beer. You know Muslim don’t approve of alcohol.’ They’re going to great lengths. But he’s not ‘obviously’ a Christian. We have to take that on (ahem) faith, if I may use the word. We have to accept his Christianity on faith, to believe that he’s telling us the truth because his Christianity is not obvious by any intellectually coherent definition of the word. (interruption) Well, no… The reason why some people are confused is Obama has spent 20 years listening to a racist, bigoted preacher who has a special place in his heart for the Nation of Islam who used to be a Muslim. It’s not obvious, Mr. Burton, that your guy is a Christian.
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RUSH: Now, here’s the point. On a lot of personal things like religion, I have no idea what Barack Obama believes. I mean this NASA mission to make Muslims feel good about themselves, they had to walk that back. I mean that was a head scratcher, wasn’t it? The new purpose of NASA is outreach for Muslims to make them feel good about math and science? See, I think Obama is aloof; he’s disconnected; he is condescending; he’s stubborn; he is devoted to outmoded, failed economic ideas. He is destroying this country whether by accident or by design. He’s an elitist who thinks he’s smarter than everybody in the room. I think there’s a personality quirk to understand Obama, and I’ve referenced this countless times. This is the guy who if he ever got a C the professor would turn it into an A. This is a guy who has been told how smart he is all of his life. And he has believed it. He’s so much smarter than the rest and these stupid idiots in the media say, ‘Yeah, we’re just not quick enough to keep up with Obama. He’s going to have to slow town for the rest of us.’ Give me a break. He’s not smarter than anybody else. Depending on how you define the term smart, he could be stupid.
How in the world can anything that Obama’s doing regarding economic policy, growth, American exceptionalism, how can any of it be called smart, much less brilliant? He’s aloof; he’s disconnected; he’s elitist; he’s condescending; he’s arrogant; he doesn’t hold news conferences; he apologizes for his country; he doesn’t understand this controversy about the mosque at Ground Zero or, worse, he does understand it and is just giving us a thumb in the eye. He spent the country into debt hell. He’s anti-free markets. He’s anti-individual. He doesn’t think individuals are capable of taking care of themselves. The government has to grow and do it for everybody. I know he’s a statist. I know he’s inexperienced. I know he has horrible judgment. I don’t care about his religious beliefs, frankly, unless he’s lying about them. It doesn’t matter to me. Because like the Tea Party, we got a hell of a lot more problems with Barack Obama than whatever his religion is. I mean he’s confusing. We’re gonna play that Tom Brokaw-Charlie Rose bite again today where they admitted they don’t know much about him. Nobody knows anything about him. We’re having to ask people in polls whether or not he’s a Muslim, for crying out loud.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, electing Barack Obama president is the equivalent of marrying somebody without knowing a damn thing about them until the next day, and that unusually happens when you’re drunk, and in a place like Las Vegas. And when that usually happens you go in for a quickie divorce, but we can’t do that, so we’re kind of stuck with this.
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RUSH: Port Angeles, Washington, this is Dee. Great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. Hello. And it’s so good to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: Thank you. What I’d like to say today is there’s another media that they’re trying to snow… (sigh) They’re trying to inundate us with the Obamas. And one of them is the Ladies’ Home Journal, September issue, Michelle Obama is on the front of it, and I was so turned off when I saw it. I don’t know thousands of people, but I know quite a few people, just people in passing that, in their opinion, feel that Obama, President Obama and probably his wife are actually Muslims by their actions and by their deeds —
RUSH: Why?
CALLER: — they both —
RUSH: Because of what Ladies’ Home Journal is doing?
CALLER: Well, she would have to have the same beliefs and the same ideals as he has or they couldn’t live together.
RUSH: Oh! (laughs) Believe me…
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: That’s not the case. (laughing)
CALLER: They both hate America. They both both are elitists —
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: — very much so —
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: — very much elitists —
RUSH: Condescending.
CALLER: — and flaunt.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: And this is to the point to where they are telling us how we need to live but their standard of living is much different.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And we’re constantly trying to adjust.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And we will. But they need to get out of the way. Our elitist government —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — needs to get out of the way so that we can handle this. We don’t need them to micromanage our lives.
RUSH: Exactly right. Dee…
CALLER: I am so turned off I’m going to rip off the cover. I’ve canceled my subscription.
RUSH: To the Ladies’ Home Journal?
CALLER: To the Ladies’ Home Journal.
RUSH: Yeah? I’m surprised it took this long. Dee, thank you very much for calling.
CALLER: And thank you.
RUSH: It’s great to have you.
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RUSH: Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, during her show today on MSNBC, during a conversation about the Pew poll on whether or not Obama is a Muslim, this is what Andrea Mitchell said.
MITCHELL: In the statement from the White House, it doesn’t make it clear, but you know this very well from your reporting, he gets those devotionals on his BlackBerry. This is a very new way of getting your religion from an American public used to seeing presidents and their families going to church.
RUSH: (laughing) Who knew? So that’s how he’s doing it. Obama’s going to church via the BlackBerry. He gets those devotionals downloaded to his BlackBerry every day. The American people are used to seeing their presidents go to church, but, no, Obama’s getting his devotional from the BlackBerry. By the way, his devotionals come from his Muslim advisor, too. He’s got a Muslim religious advisor. Andrea, I can’t believe you fell for this. Andrea, Obama is texting God, and God texts back. That’s what’s going on on the BlackBerry.