RUSH: The Drive-By Media is livid at me, ladies and gentlemen. The New York Times mentioned over the weekend that I am the lone member of the conservative media that has not congratulated, Obama (although I did). I am the lone member of the conservative media that is not showing the proper deference for the historical achievement (even though I did). I am the lone member of the conservative media that is not kowtowing and giving Obama a chance to settle in and become president before criticizing him. That’s true. I know who he is. They’re telling us they don’t know who he is. Brokaw and the guys at Newsweek, they don’t know who he is. I do. I’m not going to be surprised by anything that happens. But nevertheless, the thing that really set ’em off over the weekend was when I referred to Obama and Rahm Emanuel as ‘Chicago thugs.’ Let’s go CNN’s Reliable Sources. The LA Times’ Doyle McManus and Michelle Martin from National Public Radio are discussing media coverage of the incoming Obama administration. Doyle McManus says, ‘If you’re worried about predominantly liberal reporters going into the tank for a president that they’re disposed to like, look at Bill Clinton’s first six months: absolute chaos and it was covered at absolute chaos.’
MARTIN: For every Chris Matthews, there’s a Rush Limbaugh who called the new incoming chief of staff and the President-elect ‘thugs.’ So I think that there’s these dual narratives going on all the time. Just sort of pretend that — that this is all one big soup and everybody is just kind of a little vegetable, in that soup is wrong.
RUSH: Whatever that means. Now we go to the McLaughlin Group. This is John McLaughlin talking with Eleanor Clift of Newsweek.
MCLAUGHLIN: Rush on Rahm!
RUSH ARCHIVE: He is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug just like Obama is a good old-fashioned Chicago thug. On the night of the Clinton election Rahm Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, Rahm Emanuel grabbed a steak knife, and he began rattling off a list of betrayers. And as he listed their names he shouted, ‘Dead! Dead! Dead!’ and he plunged the steak knife into the table after every name.
MCLAUGHLIN: Question: Are conservatives up in arms about the Obama triumph, and does Emanuel — the Emanuel appointment only add fuel to the fire, Eleanor?
CLIFT: That’s the most enforced listening to Rush Limbaugh I’ve had in my lifetime. (snicker) Rahm Emanuel helped Bill Clinton put through the trade deals, welfare reform. He is a pragmatic politician.
RUSH: Okay, yeah, pragmatic politician. From the liberal point of view, ‘pragmatism’ is doing everything as far left liberal as you can. But this ‘Chicago thug’ business, it even had the skirts over at The View all in a twitter today. They couldn’t believe that I would refer to The Messiah and the newly elected Obama as a ‘Chicago thug,’ nor could they believe I would say that about Rahm Emanuel. I must confess, ladies and gentlemen, thinking of them as ‘Chicago thugs’ was not my idea. Normally, I’m a very original guy, as you people know. I come up with my own stuff, my own observations, but I must admit that I stole the ‘Chicago thug’ business. Let me give you a quote from The Politico, August 26th of this year: ‘Bill Clinton believes the Democratic nominee, far from practicing a unifying, transformational brand of politics, has the political instincts of ‘a Chicago thug,’ one longtime associate said.
‘Clinton has told people that Obama allowed surrogates to try to suppress Hispanic turnout in the Nevada caucuses, and played ‘the race card’ in reverse against the Clintons in South Carolina and other states.’ So when I saw that story on the Politico by John Harris on August 26th, that’s the first time I made the mental association of Obama and ‘Chicago thug.’ But actually we’ve been talking about thugs on this program for the longest time: the union thugs. We finally found out last week the root of the word thug: a bunch of renegade robbers and murderers in India known as the Thuggees. They would befriend people traversing the countryside. They would walk with them, offer to help them (this goes back to the seventeen, 1800s) and they’d befriend them and make them think they were allies and help them in any danger — and after they’d befriended them while the Thuggees would rob them and murder them and rape them and so forth, and move on down to the next unsuspecting bunch of people. So the Thuggees — it’s thug with two E’s on the end, the Thuggees — actually forms the root word and the origin of the word thug. I don’t like admitting to copying people, but I must tell you I got this from Clinton during the primaries.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let’s go to Ella in Meridian, Mississippi. Great to have you on Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I love your program very much. I was just going to let you be aware that some of the ladies on The View this morning were having a conversation of why you were calling Obama a thug. Maybe you should let ’em know where you got it from.
RUSH: I did, in the first hour of the program.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: All in due course. Barbara Walters has invited me, or she has this series every December, the ten most fascinating Americans, or fascinating people in the country, and I have been on that list once. I am on it again this year. She has named me one of the ten most fascinating and the interview is coming up soon —
CALLER: Well, good.
RUSH: — because the show airs in December. So I’ve heard all about The View today. I think what’s happened here with the election, if I were to ever shut up they’d have nothing to talk about on that show.
CALLER: That’s right. That’s good. Okay. I just wanted to let you know.
RUSH: I appreciate that, Ella. It’s because I’m the only one not bending over and grabbing the ankles, that’s exactly right. The New York Times did the story, everybody on our side is caving in, everybody on our side is caving in one way or the other. As I said last week, I don’t care what his skin color is; I don’t care with his wife wears; I don’t care where the kids go to school; I don’t care where he was born, I don’t care, he’s my president. I don’t care where he goes to eat dinner; I don’t care what kind of airplane he flies on; I don’t care where he grew up; I don’t care where his grandmother lives; I don’t care where his aunt lives — well, I do care about his aunt and his brother, living in squalor, for some old-fashioned reason, that’s important to me and meaningful. But what I care about is Barack Obama’s ideas. I’m not caught up in the historical nature of this. I’m past it. We can’t get caught up in the historical nature of this and let that overcome our common sense.
This guy is president of the United States. He is the most powerful man in the world now. His ideas and what he’s going to do and how he may reshape the country are what’s most important to me. Not sitting around and telling myself, gee, what a good person I am because my country elected a black man. I’m over that. That’s good, we did that, but you can’t sit around and pat yourself on the back for too long, because this stuff’s all going to matter. Now, as I said, Barbara Walters, the whole media apparatus, the Drive-Bys are all in an uproar because last week I referred to Obama and Rahm Emanuel as Chicago thugs. Do we remember all the times the left — I’m looking it up. I’m going to be armed — all the times they called Cheney a thug, Rove a thug, Bush a thug, and a murderer? Hitler? I mean, this one-way street stuff, it may silence other people, but it isn’t going to silence me.
As to the Chicago thug business, I’m actually kind of embarrassed. I’ll admit this again, I’m going to say this one more time. Barbara Walters said, ‘Rush, you know the question we’re going to ask you now, I’m going to ask you one question –‘ we got the sound bites coming up. I stole the Chicago thug business. Normally most of my stuff here is original, and I take great pride in it. But this I stole. I must give credit where credit is due. One longtime associate of Bill Clinton said that Barack Obama has the instincts of a Chicago thug. So I should have given credit to Mr. Clinton. Well, I did mention that he said it when he first said it, but when I stole it, I did make it sound like my own.