Friday on his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh advised his listens to ignore the media hype because President Donald Trump is tapping into voters concerns about immigration.
Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of RushLimbaugh.com):
LIMBAUGH: Let me run through these immigration numbers again. Department of Homeland Security Press Secretary Tyler Houlton said in a statement, ‘Following the implementation of the administration’s zero-tolerance policy, the June 2018 Southwest Border Migration numbers declined by 18% when compared to the previous month,’ This is, of course, illegal immigrants attempting to get in the country in the southwest border down 18% because of the zero-tolerance policy.
Reuters has a story. This is from earlier this morning. It’s a poll. It’s a Reuters/Ipsos poll. “Immigration tops the economy and health care as the most important issue determining Americans’ vote ahead of the midterm elections in November, a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll shows. Reuters/Ipsos data shows that immigration became a top concern for registered voters in the United States after the Trump administration in May announced its ‘zero tolerance’ policy on illegal immigrants, saying they would be criminally charged.”
Uh, actually, the zero-tolerance policy was announced April 7th of 2018. Sessions was acting after a Department of Homeland Security report found that illegal border crossing increased 203% from March 2017 to March 2018. And then Reuters says here, “The policy became a political lightning rod in mid-June with disclosures that thousands of children were separated from their parents who were accused of crossing illegally into the country.” Wrong again.
It only became a lightning rod when the media decided to lie about it all and claim that Trump zero-tolerance policy separated children from their parents for months. It does not! It never did! Children were only separated while their parents were booked, and this predates Trump anyway. This was nothing but a faux, manufactured crisis. It’s typical of the left. This is… Scott Pruitt, supposedly all of these violations? Nobody ever knew about the massive screw-ups in the Obama EPA because the media never covered any of it.
The pollution of rivers, the mistakes made that were legion. But you never knew because the media never told you about it, ’cause the media was there to cover up for and to shelter and shield Obama from any form of subjective criticism, and they succeeded. You know, I think… I’m gonna go out on a little bit of a limb here. You know why Donald Trump got elected. What issue, what issue’s at the top of the list of people that voted for Trump? Immigration. What about it? Illegal immigration.
People openly getting into this country with no effort to stop them. The Republican and Democrat Party both advocating for amnesty and continuing to let any number of people in. Donald Trump’s elected because he’s the one guy in the campaign with a position that said, “Stop it!” So Donald Trump gets elected on that basis, and there were other things, too, but that, I’m convinced, was at the top of the list. It might have been tight. The top five might have been close together, but it was at the top.
The media then immediately begins on a charted course to destroy Trump’s popularity and to specifically drive a wedge between Trump’s voters and Trump. As part of that campaign, they lie about it and suggest that they are succeeding. After others here and there about, “Yeah, some Trump fans are very nervous.” Remember every special election the media would tell us that people now realize they erred greatly voting for Trump and are eager to vote for the Democrat now to make amends for their mistake. Every special election!
And yet they were wrong every time because the Republican won practically all of them. There wasn’t a bit of factualness. There wasn’t a bit of truthfulness to any of the allegations that Trump was losing his base. And yet throughout the past months, year and a half or longer, the media has been trying to suggest that many Trump voters are embarrassed and wish they had not voted for Trump, wish they could do it again — and in fact, cannot wait for the next election to go out and correct their mistake.
Immigration today remains the No. 1 issue in the Reuters poll and any other because people are fed up that nothing is seriously being done to stop it and that Trump is not being offered any assistance in doing so. Well, in the midst of this comes this story about chirp being separated from their parents, and the same technique is used. Every time the story is reported, it’s along the lines of “The whole country is shocked. Donald Trump has gone too far now! Donald Trump has a really stepped in it now.
“I don’t care what the American people think about abortion,” said the media, “the American people do not think that children should be separated from their families.” Slam dunk! Everybody in America thought that that was happening and that Trump was responsible for it. That was the image presented by the media, and I’ll bet you that’s not even close. I’ll bet you the number of people that were genuinely upset about that is far fewer than what the media would lead you to believe.
Now, on the other hand, I was out in Los Angeles last week, and after the program on a couple of days I had occasion to run into my golf buddies. I didn’t get to play much golf but I ran into them anyway, and they’re ardent Trump supporters. They said to me, “Boy, Rush. These pictures look bad, separating the kids and…” I said, “Would you? Come on! Have you people learned nothing? Do you not recognize media hocus pocus when you see it?” “I know, Rush. I know. But the pictures, really tough.”
“What you’re telling me is that you don’t have the guts to defend Trump when somebody bitches at you about it. That’s what you’re telling me. Are you really ready to throw Trump overboard because of…?” “Well, no, of course not.” “Do you really believe that every kid’s being separated forever from his parents when he comes here — and by the way, do you not stop to think that many of these parents are not even coming with their kids?
“They’re sending ’em alone all the way up through Mexico on a train! Did you ever stop to think that maybe what’s really going on here is not what the media tells you?” “I’m just telling you, Rush, it doesn’t look good. Pictures.” “How long is it gonna take me to get you to realize the media lies to you about this stuff and you’re falling for it when you know better?” I tell you this because this is how powerful this stuff is.
Even people who know that the media’s a bunch of lying sacks of whatever will see a story about children being separated from their parents and they’ll believe it hook, line, and sinker and they’ll think it’s horrible and that Trump is gonna be damaged by it. I’m here to tell you that I don’t believe it was a massive amount of people.
We’re talking about 2,000 kids. We’re not talking about permanence here. If anybody did that, it would be the Obama administration. These kids would arrive without their parents into Texas and Arizona and southern California. The Obama administration would put ’em on buses and airplanes and fly ’em all over the place country and essentially dropped them with foster parents.
They were separated from their real parents who were still down in Guatemala and El Salvador and what have you. There wasn’t any whining about it. There wasn’t any crying about it. There wasn’t any hand-wringing about it because the media didn’t report it! Now they come up with this faux, imaginary story that every child arriving in America illegally is being separated from his parents because Donald Trump hates people.
And it just ticks me off when people start believing this stuff, when they know better. When they know the media lies. When they know the media exaggerates, makes it up. When they know the media is out to get Trump. They don’t even stop and question it because it’s about the children. We do more for the children of the world than many parents around the world ever do on their own.
It just offends me to no end the idea, the allegation that because the United States happens to be run by a Republican president, that all of a sudden we hate kids! I’ve had my fill of this. During ’95 budget battle, Republicans were accused of starving kids. It was a lie then; all this stuff is a lie now. Immigration is still the number one issue because people are fed up with illegal immigration, and they want something done about it! Now we have this cockamamie objective to get rid of ICE.
Now, you suggest getting rid of the FDA or getting rid of the EPA or getting rid of the Department of Education and you watch what these same people do. “You can’t do that. Why, that’s outrageous. Those departments are for the betterment of America. You can’t.” Now, the same people that will not stand for government getting smaller all of a sudden now want to get rid of ICE.
Now, Rasmussen has some numbers on this. Yeah, I’m ticked about this. I really am. I’m sick and tired of this stuff and people not questioning it. At least some of the people I run into. “Those pictures look really bad.” What pictures? “But, Rush, you have to admit –” No, I don’t have to admit anything, other than you’re being fooled by it when you know better. Yeah, it does tick me off.
Anyway, from Rasmussen: “A growing number of Democrats are calling for abolishing ICE. But even among voters in their own party, there’s not much support for the idea.” Maybe that’s because voters think government needs to be even more aggressive in deporting illegal immigrants. You know, this abolish ICE thing on the radical left, look at how rapidly this has taken off, look at how rapidly the media has made this a mainstream thing.
I will guaran-damn-tee you 99% of the people who voted for Trump do not want to get rid of ICE and a whole bunch more. But if you listen to the media, you’d think, “Why, this is really becoming a big, mainstream idea to get rid of ICE.” It isn’t! “New Rasmussen national telephone and online survey finds only 25% of likely voters favor getting rid of ICE.” Twenty-five percent, that’s even high. And that’s just a bunch of people saying “yes” because they think it’s the smart thing to do.
Half the people taking these surveys don’t know which way’s up and which way’s down depending on the time of day. “Sixty-nine percent of Republicans, 53% of voters not affiliated with either party oppose getting rid of ICE. Democrats agree 44 to 36 bad idea to get rid of ICE.” Here’s Mike Pence. He went out to the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement today and he addressed the employees there. It’s audio sound bite number 20. And here it is.
PENCE: Opposition of ICE has moved to the center of the Democratic Party itself. Just when you thought the Democrats couldn’t move farther to the left, leading members of the Democratic Party, including candidates for higher office, are actually openly advocating the abolition of ICE, an agency that protects the American people in our communities every single day. The American people have a right to their opinions, but these spurious attacks on ICE by our political leaders must stop.
RUSH: Fat chance. They’re not gonna stop. The thing is that if the Democrats were in power and all of this was going on, nobody’d be talking about getting rid of ICE. They’d just tell ’em to stand down. They’re not gonna get rid of ICE when they’re in power. This is nothing more than a new front and a new way to attack the Trump administration, because they know the media is gonna pick up on it, and the media is going to make it appear and look mainstream when it is actually fringe.
I say that, even though it’s fringe, that’s who these people are. Folks, it would behoove everybody to realize, I keep saying, they believe this crap. They want to get rid of ICE because they want open borders. If we get rid of ICE, that’s not gonna change the law. The law defining illegal immigration is still gonna be on the books even if we get rid of ICE. We’re not gonna change the law. Unless the establishment somehow regains its power and grants amnesty to everybody, which they’re angling to do. But we’re not gonna get rid of ICE. It isn’t gonna happen.
Pence is right. Democrat leaders are picking up on it. You know why? Because if they don’t, there’s gonna be hell to pay from their base. Their base is the radical left. Their base consists of a bunch of big-money donors who have gone over the edge radical left. They almost are prisoners to these people. They have to say this stuff. You think Chuck Schumer and Pelosi really want to get rid of ICE? There’s no way! Maxine Waters, that’s another thing. These people just want to get rid of all cops and get rid of all enforcement of the law as a way of making America fair after years and years of oppression.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I want to inform as many people as possible about as much as possible, but primarily liberalism. I would love for people to get to a point where it is instinctive to reject it, like I was just telling you about my golf buddy I ran into last week that was whining about how effective the pictures of the news were on Trump separating families from kids. I blew up at the guy, and I probably blew up more internally than I verbalized to him, but it ticked me off.
The guy knows better! But he did was worried about it being effective and so forth. And I said, “How about a little leadership? Rather than worrying how effective it’s gonna be and how about standing up when people claim that it’s something that it isn’t, you set ’em straight? You know better than this.” But in the process of this, by definition, the left is pessimism. By definition, liberalism is negative. By definition, liberalism is destructive. By definition, it is punitive. There is nothing uplifting or optimistic about liberalism at all.
Yet I have to talk about it. I do it in a way… I try to laugh at ’em as much as I can while not giving the impression that I don’t take it seriously. I try to inject as much humor as I can. But in the process of doing that, it’s accurate to say that there isn’t maybe an appropriate or corresponding amount of time spent on the positive aspects of America. I have to tell you something else, folks. This is not a complaint or anything. It’s just informing you. Everywhere I go, all I hear is complaints. Not about me. About the country.
All I hear is people complaining and whining about the left and about the media. I can’t escape it. I’m subjected to it by virtue of living, which is understandable. People that I know are fed up with all this. Now, given all of that, I have not stopped believing in America as the single greatest place on earth. I still believe that despite everything the left is doing, that if you want, you can become as successful in this country as you ever have been able to — and maybe more so.
I think in many ways life, just life itself, not only in this country, but around the world, is better than ever. And I think it improves each and every day. I think opportunity is expanding each and every day. Wealth, standard of living, technological advance, medical advance, it’s getting every day. The opportunity for education, to learn, the opportunity to use that education to become whatever you want to be. This is simply and it remains the best place on earth to be the best you can be. Nothing has changed. What’s happening is that all of that is under assault. What’s happening is that all of that is under attack.
What happens is that everything that’s best and bright and brilliant about America is under a daily, constant assault. It has to be defended. And I’ll admit that in the process of defending it, I may not spend enough time reminding people how great we have it and how much you are in control of your destiny. But if you are gonna grab your destiny, if you’re gonna reach out and grab it and start controlling it, you have got to stop either being affected by the media or stop watching it
Because, I’m telling you, that if you have enough of a diet of that, you’re gonna lose all ability to be optimistic. They’re gonna drive it out of you. You cannot escape it unless you turn it off. It takes a Herculean effort to ignore it while you’re watching it. It takes incredible boundaries to be able to maintain your upbeat, positive attitude about America and your life while watching the media.
You’ve gotta have boundaries to where the crap they tell you bounces right off and doesn’t affect you. Very few people have strong boundaries like that. But both things are true at the same time. We live in the best country on earth, and it’s never been better. It’s also never been worse in some ways. But the fact that it’s never worse in some ways are not canceling out the greatness that exists in this country, primarily in our people and the opportunities that exist for being the best you can be, however you define that.
But there are people working on you every day claiming that you can’t do that, and that you shouldn’t do that, that it’s unfair if you become the best at something, that it’s shortsighted, that it is something you should feel guilty of. People are being worked on constantly, daily by the media and the left to feel guilty and bad about being happy, about being content, about being successful. Because they show you a never-ending litany of all the misery and sadness, and then they blame you for it!
And you cannot pay attention to this stuff. These people are poison. The media is a constantly injected poison into the very nervous system of this country each and every day. And if you don’t have the ability to have a personal antidote to watch it and ignore it, it’s gonna affect you.
Now, I have that ability. It is my job, it’s my requirement, and I have those boundaries and I’m able, because I know them, I instinctively know that what they do is destructive. Let me give you just a recent example here. Listen to this. Let me read you a headline: “Pence to Democrats: Stop ‘Spurious Attacks on ICE.’” Let me read you the first paragraph. This is a classic example of the subtlety of media lying, media crap, and media distortion that works on way too many people who do not know yet how they operate.
“Vice President Mike Pence on Friday continued the White House’s efforts to make a controversial border security agency a major midterm election issue, saying it arrests ‘criminal illegal aliens’ who are ‘poisoning our youth.’”
Who the hell has made ICE an issue? Not Pence. Not Trump. But here’s Roll Call claiming they’ve made it an election issue. And notice that the implied statement here is saying that ICE arrests, and then they have in parentheses “criminal illegal aliens.” So if you don’t know how to read this, you’re gonna think that Pence and Trump are crazy and that Pence and Trump are telling ICE to go out and arrest innocent people because they’re extremists who don’t like people. That’s the way this is written.
Who was it that first began talking about getting rid of ICE? It wasn’t Trump, and it wasn’t Pence, and it wasn’t anybody in their administration. It was some leftists somewhere, somebody in Antifa, Black Lives Matter or La Raza or wherever picked up dutifully by the media, then Pence today, after weeks and weeks of this stuff goes and makes a speech to ICE defending them, and Roll Call does a story claiming that Pence and Trump are making ICE an election-year issue.
And that Pence had to go out there and tell them, “You’re doing great, you’re doing great by arresting ‘criminal illegal aliens,’” in parentheses, as though Pence knows that ICE is arresting the innocent, but that’s what we want to happen because we don’t like these people. It’s outrageous, just the first paragraph is all you need to know to see how the media totally distorts what’s happening.
Trump and Pence are not making it election-year issue. So the left comes out and assaults something, people who believe in the agency stand up to defend it, and they get the blame for turning it into a campaign issue? You see how angry I’m getting here? Well, multiply this 10 times a day. And I’m telling you if you cannot expose yourself to this and then let it all go at the end of the day, it’s gonna continue to affect you.
This is why it would probably be advisable and helpful if I did spend a little bit more time in reminding everybody the virtues and the greatness and the possibilities here in America. But I also rely on the fact many of you, most of you who have been here 30 years; you know that that’s what I think, and you know that that’s the case. And what’s really happening here is an ongoing effort to help more and more people understand crap like this first paragraph in Roll Call!
As I say, there’s 10 or 15 examples like this every damn day from the media. CNN yesterday with the chyron graphic at the bottom: “Is Donald Trump a racist?” Little Brian Stelter, the media guy, hosted a panel discussion, “Is Trump a national emergency?” You gotta remember, the low-information, mind-numbed robots watching this crap out in the airports and other places that don’t know diddly-squat believing it.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN