×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: You’re gonna have to forgive me. I’m gonna tell you this up front. The Stephanopoulos story, my fire was lit on this years ago. This, to me, is “been there, done that.” But, see, I’ve gotta fight that because I know to a lot of people this is earth-shattering. See, this is why it takes a concerted effort and a constant use of empathy to do this job well. See, I have the benefit of knowing everything about George Stephanopoulos, Bill and Hillary Clinton, The Forehead, Begala, that whole team, Rahm Emanuel, since they burst on the national seen in 1992.


As such, none of this is a surprise to me. But I can’t come here and say that ’cause that’s gonna sound smug and know-it-all. And I can’t act like it’s old news even though it is, because to a lot of people, sad though it may be, they never heard of George Stephanopoulos ’til he got the gig at ABC. And they had no idea, they’re just now learning what he did. And we don’t know what their impression of it is. When it comes to Millennials and low-information people, we don’t know that they’re bothered by the fact that he used to work for the Clintons.

They might not think a thing in the world wrong with it. They might not think there’s a conflict at all, especially if they’re wedded to the Democrat Party, it won’t matter. Whatever it takes to win. Whatever advantage they can get, they’ll take. I mean, I think intelligence guided by experience should tell everybody that it’s a mistake to look at the modern Democrat Party through the prism of old time politics. There’s no such thing as honor. There’s no such thing as the rules. There’s no such thing as even debate.

I mean, this is all about what you can get away with. Stephanopoulos’s apology, I mean, when you break this down, this guy doesn’t have any remorse. He’s essentially saying, “Please forgive me for donating to AIDS and please forgive me for donating to the environment and please forgive me.” It’s a joint F-U to everybody disguised as, “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, I should have said it earlier.” I mean, this is the guy that asks Romney in the debate in 2012 about contraception? The guy’s never been a journalist in his life. He goes to from the Clinton war room — he was a campaign consultant and advocate — his job was to destroy Republicans, for crying out loud. And he gets hired by ABC without ever reporting a single story. He’s never, ever been a journalist.

The Republicans should have refused to cooperate with this guy from that day forward, and now we’ve left it up to him to tell us that he’s not gonna moderate debates anymore? We shouldn’t have ever sat down for a single debate with him. We shouldn’t go on a single show that he hosts, like the Sunday morning This Week or Good Morning America. It’s a trap. It’s nothing more than agreeing to sit down and let the Clinton war room interview you and then destroy you either at the time or after you leave. And of course people on our side, “Well, we’re gonna be honorable and we understand the lay of the land and we can’t be cowards and we can’t run away. We must face it as it exists.”

That attitude may be honorable, but unless you deal with this and change this, and the only way you can is by avoiding these shows and starving them of your presence, this isn’t gonna change. So it’s a real struggle for me. Part of me wants to say, “Really? You’re just figuring this out?” I don’t mean that in a smug way, folks. I don’t even mean it in a braggadocios way. I’m happy some people are seeing it, and I’ve gotta make sure I stay focused on that. ‘Cause a part of me, I’ll admit, is really ticked off that it’s taken this long, and what it took. Okay, so the guy’s given 75 grand large, 75 large to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation. Okay, that to me is the least of it. But if that’s what it’s taken to expose this, fine and dandy.

But he’s not the only one, for crying out loud. He’s just the tip of the iceberg. As I say, the real question for me is how many other journalists have been buying access by donating to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation or what have you. But nevertheless I’m gonna go through the details because I’m not gonna sit here and openly admit that the whole thing kind of frustrates me, ’cause, as I say, there’s a lot of people that all they know is George Stephanopoulos is a short little, cute guy with a good head of hair who is on Good Morning America.

That’s all they know about him. And the fact he looks good on TV makes him a good guy. They don’t know a thing in the world. They don’t know how mean he is. They don’t know what he lies about. They don’t know he set out to destroy Republicans and using the ABC vehicles to do it. Some of them may not even care, such as partisanship has come to exist in the country.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I checked the e-mail during the break and people said: “Okay, Rush, can you give us some examples of what you know that we may not know because we haven’t been alive long and are paying attention.” Sure. Let’s go back to the campaign of 1992. This is Bill Clinton, Der Schlick Meister, and he was opposing George H. W. Bush, Bush 41. And in that campaign, Bush 41 was lagging behind because he really didn’t take Clinton seriously. Very few people did.

Clinton was not a front-runner. Clinton was, in fact, not even considered serious. People thought Clinton was running to set himself up to succeed in 1996. But then Ross Perot entered the scene, and that threw everything, that threw all the formulas out of whack, and Clinton kept plugging away while Perot distracted everybody, chipping away at Bush 41. If you were old enough and alive and paying attention, Perot just took this country by storm with one C-SPAN speech about government spending and responsibility and so forth.

He divided the Republican vote. Pat Buchanan was also involved on the Republican side, and I made an early endorsement of Buchanan just to make sure that the primary in the Republican Party had a conservative voice ’cause everybody thought the tendencies were that Bush would want to moderate more than he had been and get away from pretending to be the third term of Reagan. So Clinton was allowed to sneak up. Clinton was allowed to sneak up. In the Democrat process, he just kept winning and winning late. He went on Arsenio Hall and played the saxophone, and the low-information crowd ate that up. And it got serious.

Clinton became the front-runner, and Perot was finally dealt with, but during that campaign it was George Stephanopoulos and James Carville and Paul Begala that were running the Clinton campaign operation, and they called themselves “the war room.” And their purpose, like the bimbo eruptions division, was to simply set out and destroy anybody who came forward with any credible criticism of the Clintons either regarding a Clinton scandal or anything else that Clinton was talking about, say potential policy or what have you.

There were people on the Republican side doing everything they could to discredit Clinton. Whitewater was effervescing and bubbling up, and the bimbo eruptions were all over the place. And back then the Republicans were making a morality play. They were trying to convince the American people that you wanted no part of Bill Clinton. He was immoral. He had no character. We needed character and leadership. That campaign was replete with this stuff, and Stephanopoulos was in the lead of this group with Carville and Begala to destroy any and all — women didn’t matter, whoever came forward with criticism of Bill or Hillary, they were out there to clear the decks.


That was Stephanopoulos’ expertise, that’s what he was paid to do, and that’s what he has done ever since. Even while working at Good Morning America, he has been a Clinton operative. He has been a Democrat Party hack. That is who he is. He has never, ever been a journalist. It got so bad during this campaign that George H. W. Bush agreed to go on Larry King Live on CNN one night, and out of the blue during a caller segment, guess who got through? George Stephanopoulos.

George Stephanopoulos working the Clinton war room just happened to keep dialing the call-in number for Larry King Live and just happened to get through and there’s Larry King acting shocked and surprised that Stephanopoulos made it through. But then he eagerly stepped aside and let Stephanopoulos take over the show and start grilling George H. W. Bush. And, as was typical, George H. W. Bush made one reference to the fact that he thought this was kind of screwy, that a campaign operative of his opponent would be permitted without him knowing to appear on Larry King Live to grill him. He made a very fast reference to this, did not make an excuse of it, and engaged Stephanopoulos.

Stephanopoulos repeatedly challenged Bush’s honesty. I mean, it was an all-out personal assault. Larry King, acting befuddled and bemused sitting there watching this as though he had nothing to do with it, and nobody, nobody believed that Stephanopoulos just happened to get through. Everybody thought it was set up, either with our without Larry King’s knowledge. But somebody in the control room gives Stephanopoulos the number or they even may have called him.

They put it out that Stephanopoulos just happened to be dialing in, just happened to get through, and just happened to get past the call screener and just happened to end up debating George H. W. Bush. The Republican reaction was outrage at first, but then the usual thing took over. “Well, we can’t complain. That’s unmanly. That is cowardly. That is not good. We’ve got to take everything that comes our way because, after all, we’re seeking the most powerful office in the land.” So we sit there, and because of our sense of fair play, we allow the deck to be stacked against us.

Just like Candy Crowley stacked against Mitt Romney in a debate with Obama over Benghazi. None of this is new. The media are not journalists. They are Democrat Party activists, and they have been — well, for a long time. But I’m telling you it’s been since 1988, 1992, that they have openly just cast aside this pretense of objectivity.

And believe me, that’s what Stephanopoulos’ hire at ABC actually was. It was the network formally throwing off this idea that they’re objective. They weren’t gonna hide behind it anymore. Okay, we’re gonna hire a Clinton campaign operative. We’re gonna put him on Good Morning America. We’re gonna put him on our Sunday show as the anchor.

They were telling everybody this show’s not about journalism anymore, and there’s nothing objective here and we’re just gonna stop the pretense. That was the message. I can give you countless other examples of this. But that’s just one.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You want another Stephanopoulos example? This was reported in the year 2010. It was in The Politico. One of the founders of Politico, John Harris, wrote that there was a conference call every morning in 2010, five years ago, at 6:30, seven a.m. There’s a conference call every morning between the Obama chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and CNN Democrat strategist Paul Begala. He’s been at CNN now… He’s not been an anchor; he’s been an analyst and a strategist.

So you have Rahm Emanuel, Paul Begala, and James Carville. You know who else is on these conference call? Stephanopoulos. Every morning the Obama chief of staff, the first thing he did was have a conference call with all of these Democrat operatives because they’re all buddies. They all trace back to the Clinton administration. Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, Begala, and Stephanopoulos. The purpose was to set the agenda of the day for the media. That’s 2010.

It’s from that that Stephanopoulos gets hired at ABC, and we are to expect that the moment he gets hired at ABC he forgets doing all of this and he shoves that all aside and he removes that from his life, and all of a sudden becomes an objective anchor and reporter with no concern for the outcome of events? It’s a magical thing. That’s what ABC wanted us to believe. I remember flipping a wig when they hired the guy. It was only the latest.


There’s a incestuous revolving door in Washington. People that worked for elected officials — president, senators, members of Congress — then head to the news media for a while, then back. Take Carney. Jay Carney was a reporter and an executive at TIME Magazine. He’s hired by Joe Biden to be press secretary. Then he gets hired by Obama to be press secretary. Then he goes back to the media. It’s no different than Stephanopoulos. It’s all the same thing.

The Republicans put up with it as the lay of the land. “Just what we have to deal with. The way it is.” Look, as I say, I’m walking a tightrope today because to a lot of you, this is new. Well, maybe not in this audience. You people know the lay of the land as well as I do. You’ve been here for the duration. But to a lot of people, Stephanopoulos is just this cute little guy with nice hair that is on Good Morning America, and he walks red carpets before movie premiers. He’s this cool little guy out there.

The last thing they associate with Stephanopoulos is politics, and all of this is probably a little news to them. But even at that, I’ll wager that a lot of these low-information people are struggling to find anything wrong with donating money that’s supposed to help people in Haiti or overcome an earthquake or who have AIDS. “What’s so bad about it, huh? Why are those Republicans so mean?” I guarantee you there is a lot of that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Caleb in Huntington, West Virginia. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to speak to you today.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.

CALLER: My point is on the sound bite that you played earlier from C-SPAN regarding George Stephanopoulos, one caller mentioned that I listened to your show regularly to know what his “enemy” is doing. If he listened to your show, he would know that you had actually told him that George Stephanopoulos was not a true journalist so it was not a conflict of interest anyway.

The guy’s been likely in the pocket of Clintons since he was an advisor for them. So it wasn’t a conflict of interest because he’s not a journalist. My second point was, when was the last time a liberal apologized for anything until it furthered their agenda or they were out getting in front of something to create damage control? So either they felt that it was a conflict of interest or they believed that their viewers saw it as a conflict of interest.

RUSH: Well, what…? You’re talking about Stephanopoulos’ apology?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, I have that here. Grab sound bite number four. I have that standing by here just a second. There are a bunch of different ways you can hear this apology. The way I hear it is, “Okay, you want me to apologize for helping people with AIDS? I will. You want me to apologize for donating to people who are poor? Then, by God, I will. You want me to apologize for donating to people whose lives have been destroyed by hurricanes? Then by God, I will!”

That’s how I heard the apology.

I think it’s smug, and it’s designed not to be heard that way. But if you listen to it… I’m gonna play it coming up. When you hear my interpretation of it, you’ll have no choice but than to agree with me. He resents having to apologize because, by the way, there isn’t a conflict. He isn’t a journalist! The only reason that there is a stated conflict is because we’re all livings under a ruse, and that is that ABC News is journalism, and it isn’t. ABC News is the Democrat Party.


You know, When you compare Brian Williams to George Stephanopoulos, you know which of those two is actually the greater transgression, don’t you? Stephanopoulos! Brian Williams is like a kindergartner bragging to his friends that he’s the guest star on Bonanza. He just lives in a fantasy world. Brian Williams thinks he’s everywhere and tells everybody.

For some reason, Brian Williams — I guess ’cause you didn’t go to college and he’s around a bunch of people that did — needs to constantly tell people how great he is and how thorough and all this, and he ends up making things up that he ends up believing himself. I’m sure he thinks he was in a helicopter shot down. I’m sure he believes it. You know, that’s just a… Most of the stuff that Brian Williams made up was off the air. Some of it was on the air.

Stephanopoulos? What Stephanopoulos did? Folks, in the old days of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, Stephanopoulos would be gone. They wouldn’t want what they do tainted by this, even though they were really not any different, particularly Cronkite. Don’t get me started! This whole thing’s been a joke on the American people for the last 50 years. But the point is, of the two, Brian Williams and Stephanopoulos?

Stephanopoulos is by far the more serious, injurious thing about journalism, for those who still believe that’s what’s going on here. Dare I remind you…? You know a friend of mine is a guy named Cyrus Nowrasteh. Cyrus wrote a movie that aired on ABC called, The Path to 9/11. Do you remember about that? The Path to 9/11 was an historical, entertaining documentary put together on the basis of facts and intelligence that was known.

It laid the blame for bin Laden not having been dealt with before 9/11 on the Clinton administration. Well, when it came time to broadcast it, Clinton raised holy hell, and he called Bob Iger or whoever at Disney, and he got them to change it. He got them to edit a full minute and 10 seconds out of that DVD. I happen to have the full version pre-edit. But that’s only half the story. The other half of the story is that ABC did not put that movie out on DVD.

They were sitting on a goldmine. At the time The Path to 9/11 came out, they could have sold gazillion copies of it, precisely because of the controversy over what Clinton had succeeded in getting ABC to edit out of it. But they shelved it. Old buddies at ABC. Clinton gets mad, Iger is over there doing the same thing, and they shut it down.


Try this. I don’t know how many of you remember this. This is an American Spectator story from October of 1994. It’s a very, very, very long story, and I’m not gonna read it. I’m just gonna give you the highlights. It was written by Matt Labash. “In May [of 1994], with the help of a $668,000 loan from NationsBank Mortgage Corp. (a NationsBank subsidiary), George Stephanopoulos bought an $835,000 DC building containing a posh apartment above an eyewear retail store.

“Gossips, realtors, and all manner of investigative reporters immediately began asking: How could someone who pulls down a mere $125,000 a year,” working for Bill Clinton in the White House, “with a net worth between $30,000 and $100,000 — afford such pricey real estate,” an $835,000 building? Furthermore, how does somebody with a net worth of 30 grand to a hundred grand and an income of 125 grand get a mortgage for $668,000?

Well, the American Spectator story shed light on it. The article goes on for another 60 paragraphs to explain how it happened. But, in a nutshell, in 1994 the columnist Jack Anderson reported Stephanopoulos got this way-below-market loan rate from a bank that was owned by Hugh McColl. Hugh McColl had been called by President Clinton “the most enlightened banker in America.”

“A NationsBank commercial loan officer said at the time that this loan did ‘not fit our product matrix’ as banks typically only offer such loans for customers with deep pockets and on a short-term adjustable rate basis. StephanopoulosÂ’ real estate agent even said that ‘nobody making $125,000 could qualify for the property without the commercial property (lease).’ One former senior bank regulator told Anderson that, ‘If his name were George Smith, and he didnÂ’t work in the White House, this loan wouldnÂ’t have gotten made.’

“One NationsBank source stated that such a residential loan on mixed-use properties is such a rarity that it was not even addressed in the ‘NationsBanc Mortgage CorporationÂ’s Program Summary’ or its ‘Credit Policy Manual.'”

The bottom line is, Stephanopoulos gives 75 grand to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and perhaps it’s payback for the help he got way back in 1994 and getting a sweetheart practically no-interest mortgage on $668,000 to buy a dual-use property, eyewear store on the bottom and a posh apartment on top, in Washington on $125,000 a year.

Now, before you start launching, I know, connections and networking enables a lot of people to get a lot of things. Fine and dandy. You want to know why Stephanopoulos remains loyal? There’s no question the Clintons interceded here. There’s no question the public acknowledgement by Clinton, the Hugh McColl guy (imitating Clinton), “This guy, this is what bankers are all about. You call him up, you tell him to give your friend half million dollars, and he does it. That’s my kind of banker. We need to put that guy over at the House bank, in fact. That’d be the perfect place for him.”

So it would only stand to reason that Stephanopoulos would remain loyal to Clinton even when he crosses over to journalism at ABC on Good Morning America and interviewing Mitt Romney and Republican presidential candidates and trying to smear them in debates. Yeah. And then donating money to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation, maybe a little payback for the loan, who knows what. But cronyism is alive and well here. The idea that there’s any objective journalism going on is absurd. The point is, and the caller’s exactly right in what I said yesterday, there really isn’t any conflict of interest because Stephanopoulos is not a journalist, he is not objective, and he’s never made any pretense of being. That’s the bottom line here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Before we get to Stephanopoulos’ apology, I want to give another example of Stephanopoulos for those of you that don’t remember him because you weren’t paying attention or you’re not old enough, to those of you who think Stephanopoulos just a cute little Snuffleupagus-type guy, a cartoon character. “He’s so cute, Mindy! He’s such a cute little guy! Look at him. He’s got these glasses. Look, perfect hair! His wife is comedienne, Ellie Wentworth. The guy wouldn’t hurt anybody.

“He’s just such a nicest guy. Good Morning America? Did you see he was so nice to Robin Roberts? Oh, she had cancer! George Stephanopoulos, oh, he practically cried with her. He was so good.” People don’t know who the guy is. They don’t know of his Clinton war room days. They don’t know of his “bimbo eruption” days. They don’t know of him as a cutthroat Democrat operative. They think of him as journalist like they think of any of the rest of them.


So today we’ve been featuring examples of Stephanopoulos for what he is, what he always has been — and the last thing is is a journalist. He is a Democrat Party hack. He’s an enforcer. He’s an intimidator. He ran the Clinton war room with James Carville and The Forehead, Paul Begala, and he still does. Mrs. Clinton’s running for president, he gave money to the foundation, and he’s hell-bent on getting her elected! You think he’s interested in somebody else winning?

By virtue of that he’s gonna use his power at ABC to destroy anybody that might get in her way. Subtly, like he did with Romney and this mythical War on Women contraception question. Well, this is 1993. They actually made a movie about the war room. The Democrats were so proud of it. The Clinton campaign was so proud of it, they made a documentary that aired on HBO. I think you can still watch it on HBO. It’s called The War Room.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. This is a portion. Stephanopoulos was the communications director for the war room, which means he’s the guy that dealt with the media. He’s the guy that dealt with anything going on in the media unflattering to the Clintons. He was the one calling ’em up and threatening, cajoling, persuading, whatever it took to change the nature of the coverage. Here Stephanopoulos is talking with an unidentified person about information they have about Clinton.

This is during the campaign.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Think of yourself. (pause) I guarantee you that if you do this, you’ll never work in Democratic politics again, nobody will believe you, and people will think you’re scummy. The alternative is, you don’t do it, it causes you some temporary pain with people who tomorrow aren’t gonna matter, and you have a campaign that understands that in a difficult time, you did something right.

RUSH: He was talking to a woman who was a potential “bimbo eruption.” This is one of the many women that were threatening to come forward, women who had had a sexual history, liaisons, with Slick Willie. They were popping up all over the place. A woman named Betsey Wright actually ran the “bimbo eruptions” unit. It was actually “the bimbo eruptions unit” in the war room, and Betsey Wright ran it, and it was overseen by Hillary. Hillary knew what was going on.

Hillary’s job was to make sure that Bill did it in private and nobody ever found out about it. Hillary’s job was to make sure that it was never discovered. And if it was, then everybody got in gear and destroyed the women, or tried to, as in Paula Jones, as in any of them. As in Gennifer Flowers, as in Kathleen Willey, as in Linda Tripp. Now, if you’re a Millennial, these names are all news to you; you don’t know what I’m talking about.

They are women the Clinton administration had tried to destroy because they had all had… (interruption) Oh, yeah, Juanita Broaddrick. She alleged rape, on NBC, and they did the same thing to her. But, anyway, that’s Stephanopoulos, and he’s telling this woman, who they found out that is thinking of going public with the news that she’d slept with Slick Willie. He’s telling her, “I guarantee you that if you do this, you’ll never work in Democratic politics again.

“Nobody will believe you, and people will think you’re scummy. The alternative is, you don’t [come forward]. It causes you some temporary pain … and you have a campaign [i.e. us] that understands that in a difficult time, you did something right.” You get in trouble down the road, we could be there to help you, but you do this…? (Throat-slit motion.) Clinton, Stephanopoulos, in the war room, threatening a woman.

“Oh, he’s just a cute little guy, barely five-six! Did you see the way he hugged Robin Roberts on Good Morning America? Oh, man, it just melted your heart. Just melted it. Diane Sawyer loved it! She loved it when he sat on his lap. Oh, God, it was just the most heartwarming sight. You’re telling me this guy is a partisan? Don’t give me taht.” Here’s the Stephanopoulos…

(interruption) Well, no, that’s the low-information voter reacting to the news here. “Ah, have you seen the way he sits on Diane Sawyer’s lap? She loved it. You telling me this guy’s mean? Come on, Mr. Limbaugh, get serious.” Here’s the apology on Good Morning America this morning. It’s either the whole thing or part. You’ll see. I think this is fairly condescending.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Over the last several years, I’ve made substantial donations to dozens of charities, including the Clinton Global Foundation. Those donations were a matter of public record. But I should have made additional disclosures on air when we covered the foundation, and I now believe that directing personal donations to that foundation was a mistake, even though I made them strictly to support work done to stop the spread of AIDS, help children, and protect the environment in poor countries, I should have gone the extra mile to avoid even the appearance of a conflict. I apologize to all of you for failing to do that.

RUSH: “We forgive you, George! (crying) Oh, my God, we really believed it, too, but we forgive you. You were trying help people with AIDS! (sobbing) We feel bad you’re in trouble, George! (wailing) Oh-ho, my God! He wanted to save the planet, folks! He’s giving to the Clintons to save the planet. He’s apologizing for saving the planet! Oh, my God, what are we are doing to this poor little man? (sobbing) Oh, my God, he’s helping AIDS! (sobbing) How mean could the Republicans be? This is just as mean as it could be! Poor George.”

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This