Rush Limbaugh Transcript: Show Us the Emails, Senator

Show Us the E-mails, Senators

June 11, 2007


BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: I was going to call in to the show on Friday and do some minor gloating and take a little credit here for the immigration bill being pulled, but right about the time I hit my third birdie on the front nine I said, "To hell with it, I'm going to keep playing golf." Besides, in all candor, it's not dead. It's still on life support. The president's going to meet with some people: Congress, GOP, probably Ted Kennedy, too, sometime tomorrow. It may even go up to the Capitol. The original meeting was supposed to be lunch at the White House. But they're going to revive this, folks, at some point. The question is, will they fix it before they revive it, and that's something that I've got my doubts. I don't know if you heard this, I don't know if you're aware of this. Dianne Feinstein and some others are claiming that they have never received so much racist communication in all their years in Congress. They're getting e-mails, they've gotten phone calls. They said it's unbelievable, "I never," they're saying, "received this much hatred and racism." Well, I want to see these e-mails. I want to know how many there are, and I think they should release this information. If they're going to start talking about how rotten and racist and filled with rage you who have been calling them are, let's see what they're talking about.

We all receive e-mails from nutcases. I mean, we all do. Why should they be any different? What sets them apart? Why should nutcases not communicate with senators? In fact, I think nutcases will be more prone to communicate with senators and members of Congress than anybody else. We all get e-mails from these people. You don't have to be a Senator to get them, and you get 'em on a wide variety of issues. But the suggestion here that Senator Feinstein and others are making is to assassinate the character of everybody who disagrees with them. That's what this is about, and they're setting the stage here for ignoring these people and ignoring you. When they revive this bill, they're going to try to do this at some point -- and, by the way, everybody's out there blaming Kyl, the president, the Republicans. Harry Reid runs the Senate! The Democrat pulled the bill. The New York Times has got one of the most laughable editorials today on this, blaming Bush, blaming the Republicans, blaming talk radio, which is you-know-who. (Laughing.) Harry Reid pulled the bill. Harry Reid pulled the bill because he wants this firestorm, he wants this thing to go down the tubes with Republicans getting blamed for it. We talked about this last week. He ought to be taking credit for it.


Anyway, what's happening here with these senators, folks, Senator Feinstein and the others who are making these statements, they're using the rubric of racism to smear millions of Americans who have legitimate concerns and raise them civilly. I'm sure there are some nutcases out there, some kooks, we all get them. But the idea here is to try to characterize every one of you who has spent time sending letters, e-mails, making phone calls to the offices of your senators and members of Congress, trying to tar you with that broad brush, that you, too, are filled with rage and are a racist. So they ought to produce these e-mails. Show us the phone logs. Tell us what they have and who's saying what to them. And, by the way, if you're going to go this far, release the running totals of phone calls and e-mails that they're getting and how they're cutting. You know, how many? If you're going to start complaining about this, let's see some of the details. I'll bet most of them are not positive toward these politicians, and I'll belt you most of them are not racist. In fact, this is one of the sly little tricks that the amnesty crowd is putting out there. "Ah, this is just racism. You don't like Hispanics." It has nothing to do with that and everybody up there actually knows this.

This is nevertheless an effort to smear and castigate every one of you who has been calling Washington on this. These people act like they are elitists, think they're above criticism. And they're not. We're not going to roll over on this. I don't care what they think. But they're sitting there, "How dare we challenge them." I'm going to tell you what really gets to me about this, too, when Senator Feinstein and the others start talking about the rage, the racism, and the hatred, do you know that rage and hatred have been the two identifying characteristics of the Democrat Party for six years? The rage and the hatred and the anger that's out there, and you can see it, you can hear it in their elected officials, you can read it on their websites. I mean, they're plenty of deranged people out there. The anger, the rage, all is on the left in this country right now, independent of this bill. There's a lot of legitimate anger and rage over what they attempted to do with this. But, you know, the other side is not racist in this debate. No politician's ever received a racist e-mail or phone call from those advocating open borders? Hmm? So just get ready for this, folks, because the president is going to put this all on the line.


They're going to do what they can to revive this. I don't know if they'll succeed, but they certainly are going to try. If they bring it back, they should fix it. And by fixing it, border security first has to win out. If that doesn't, the rest will follow. If they just get serious about shutting this down, if they would just do that, then everything else will fall into place here. The idea that they don't know this is absurd, because they do. They are not interested in tightening up the border. They want to make us think that they are, and they want to make us think that this bill contains serious enforcement measures, but as you and I all know, it doesn't. The president has had six years to prove he's serious about border security here. I'm not talking about hiring a thousand or 2,000 more agents. I'm talking about legitimately securing the border, whatever it takes, and it just doesn't seem that that mind-set exists anywhere on the pro side of this bill. Almost 60% of the illegals coming to our country are from Mexico.

So to point that out and oppose open borders is racist? Yes, that's what they're trying to say. The Mexican government can intentionally send its people here, and to oppose that is racist. To point out that most of the people who are uneducated and don't speak English, that's racist? It's not, but that's what they're trying to suggest here in an ongoing effort to eventually be able to say, "We don't have to listen to these critics. We don't have to listen to these e-mails and these phone calls that we're getting. We're getting them from a bunch of racists, and we're not going to do legislation up here and we're not going to have our bill shaped and formed by a bunch of angry racists," and so forth. That's what they're setting up here, just to warn you. We can point out the cost of all this to schools, to hospitals, the entitlements that exist in this country, that's racist to point this out? That's what they're trying to say.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: What I am saying to Senator Feinstein and these other people who are claiming that they've never gotten this volume of angry, enraged, racist e-mail, prove it. Prove it. Everybody goes out and makes all of these claims. Let's see it, prove it, show us some, give us a running total, give us a tally of how it's going out there.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Paul in mid-Kansas, ah, he doesn't want to identify the city for some reason.

CALLER: Ah, I'm on the road. I'm on the Kansas Turnpike, Rush.

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: I just wanted to say that we should inform Mrs. Feinstein that our current policy, our current immigration policy is already racist. It's very much in favor of our neighbors to the south border. If someone comes over from China in a shipping container where half of those people die, the other half that survive get sent back to China. If somebody comes floating over the ocean on a boat or a piece of raft of some sort --

RUSH: Like from Sri Lanka. Yeah.

CALLER: -- we send 'em right back. So we don't do the same thing with Mexico. We don't apply our immigration policies uniformly and we show a great deal of --

RUSH: That's actually a good point.

CALLER: -- racism to the Mexican people.

RUSH: We are biased against all other people, because 60% of the illegals in this country are from Mexico. You're absolutely right.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: You understand what Feinstein is doing, though. She's trying to tar and feather good people like you and others who have called them to complain and to voice their opposition to the bill, they're setting this up so as to be able to disregard and pay no attention to this criticism, because it's "coming from a bunch of racists." But you're right. That's an excellent point we'll fire back at them with it.

CALLER: Absolutely, Rush. They're trying to pin the blame on us where it's really them that's accepted the situation and have actually benefited. They're standing at the border with a blue stamp to stamp them as blue Democrats right as soon as they cross the border, and they can't control the border but the one thing they can control is they can try to get these people to vote for them.

RUSH: Right. Precisely. That and expand the welfare state, expand the redistribution of wealth, expand government and so forth. There's a whole lot of things that politicians like about this, and they're totally unconcerned about the long-term consequences to the country. Here's a thought as well, folks. Rasmussen Reports did a lot of polling on this bill, and they got some very accurate results. Only 26% of the American people supported it. From last Friday, this is just a paragraph pull quote from the entire article: "The reality is much simpler and has nothing to do with legislative tactics. The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it." Pure and simple. "Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don't like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed." The opposition to this crossed every line, crossed every boundary, crossed every marker, and yet they are still going to try to revive this and force it down our throats. You know this is coming and it makes you wonder. You know, we have our founding documents. We're all taught in civics 101 about the will of the people, the consent of the governed. When something is as widely opposed as this and yet the effort going to be to revive it, probably in its same form -- because amnesty is what they want. They want amnesty in the bill. "Nothing else works." They need illegals to be immediately legal. To hell with citizenship! They need them to be immediately legal for what their idea of this legislation is to work, and it makes you wonder. This is the kind of thing I think that the Founding Fathers would be turning over in their graves if they knew this was going on, when there's this much broad opposition to something, and yet the elected representatives of the people are still trying to ignore that and force it down the throats of the people, of the governed. Fascinating.

Here's Steve in Ogden, Utah, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Rush, what a pleasure it is to talk to you. You're my conservative savior. Hey, I just wanted to mention, I'm livid about this Dianne Feinstein mention. I'm tired of being a guilty white male in America that's shamed into bending over and taking this. That's what they're doing. They're shaming us into slowly taking this bill.

RUSH: Well, they may be trying to do that. As I discussed (I don't want to be too repetitive here), they're setting themselves up for the next time this comes up to be able to ignore the complaints next time. "Eh, it's just a bunch of racists and we're not going to sit here and be governed by a bunch of racists and people filled with rage and so forth and so on." There is a second thing, too. You may have a point. They may be trying to make it tougher for the opposition to hold together because they hope that guilt will descend and people will say like you, "I don't want to be associated with a bunch of racists." I don't think they're going to make that stick, if that's their ploy. I think, in addition, they're just elitists. They're above criticism. "Why, I can't believe it!" Everybody gets these kinds of e-mails that's in public life. It's nothing unique. They think somehow, for some reason, they should be immune from it.


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RUSH: Al in Queens, it's nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Yes. Hi, Rush.

RUSH: Hello, sir.

CALLER: Something you said concerned me.

RUSH: Uh-oh.

CALLER: You said that if we just build a fence, border security first and everything else will fall into place.

RUSH: I didn't say a fence. I said "get serious about securing the border" and make sure that there's not a run-up. We did this in 1986 and since we did this we've had 12 to 20 million come in that time, maybe even more.

CALLER: Okay, so border security first. That's fine. But if we're going to legitimize 12 million people who are going to sponsor over notify 50 million entitled to Social Security benefits, welfare, food stamps, Medicare, I submit to you that the wall or the fence or whatever is irrelevant, because the damage is done.

RUSH: Well, I'm not advocating that now. I'm not saying the rest of the bill's okay with me. You should know this. You should know better than after listening to me regularly on this. All these provisions bother me, but the point is they're going to... I was speaking in the context of bringing the bill back, and if they don't fix it -- and the first thing to fix in this bill is border security and get serious about it. I don't mean just like a thousand or 2,000 new agents. But if they don't do that, the rest of it is all academic. If they do do that, then there's a chance to make other parts of it right. But I think this legislation, this whole topic should not be brought back as another under-the-cover-of-darkness piece of legislation. This ought to be front and center in the upcoming presidential campaign, because that is where the people of this country will actually have a say in the outcome of the whole concept of what to do about immigration. But, you know, too many people are looking at this for all the wrong reasons -- political legacy in the case of the White House; future voters for the Democrats; Republicans worried to death that Hispanics are going to hate their guts and never vote for him again for anything.

Meanwhile, Mel Martinez, the senator from Florida, his poll numbers are down. This is from the Orlando Sentinel. "Immigrant Bill Hurts Martinez in Polls -- An incumbent with a 37% approval rating needs to mend some fences, said Peter Brown, the assistant director of Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. They polled about 1100 Floridians from May 24th to June 4th. Mel Martinez, 37% approval," and, you know, we're just a bunch of yahoo racists. This is the guy running the Republican National Committee, by the way. They had better start listening. By the way, has anybody asked this question to yourself: Why all of a sudden now? This administration had six years to do something on this. The Clinton clowns had whatever number of years. We've had ten, 12 years to get serious about this. Why all of a sudden now is this mandatory? "It has to be done now! If we don't get it done now, why, it's the worst possible thing that could happen." Why now? Well, when you start answering that question and start throwing the variables out and look at the possible answers, you don't find any of them that are good. To do it just to do it is not the best reason to do it. When you look at how the Democrats in the Senate snookered the Republicans on this... When I look at some of the stuff in this bill, it makes no sense whatsoever, and you still to this day have Republicans out there trying to defend it. (sigh) It's the "Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act of 2007."

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RUSH: Listen to this quote from Senator Martinez from last week in the Orlando Sentinel: "The alternative, frankly, is to leave the problem unresolved, to leave the problem lingering longer. The 12 million that are here today illegally will become 13 and then 14 million, only making it a bigger problem. This is the time to fix it." Do you realize, Senator Martinez, this bill doesn't "fix it"? It doesn't fix it! The 12 to 13 that are here are going to become 50 to 80 million. The bill doesn't fix it. We don't have to do anything new, senator, except enforce the law that was written in 1986: Simpson-Mazzoli. Just enforce the existing law. You know, build that fence that you said you were going to build two years ago. Build the fence. Enforce the law. I know. I gotta dial it back here, folks, because I'm starting to sound "enraged," right? I'm going to give all of us a bad name here by not appearing "civil" and "reasoned" and "polite." This is a United States senator, the guy running the RNC thinking if we don't do anything, "Why, the 12 are going to become 13 or 14 million -- and this bill would," what? Make the 12 to 20 million become what? Legal! So there aren't any "illegals" here. (Laughing.) This is what I mean about our guys getting snookered on this, folks.

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RUSH: Cincinnati, this is Patty. Patty, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Well, hi, Rush, thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Everybody seems to be upset about being labeled a racist for being against the illegals. Well, hey, if I'm standing up for America's laws and the American way of life and that's what I'm protecting, I will gladly take that title. You can call me a racist if that's what that means.

RUSH: No, it's because that's not what racism means, you don't --

CALLER: No, I know, but they're saying that we're racists because of that, and I say that I will gladly take the title, because I want America to be America. I want Americans to be Americans. I want you to be legal. I want you to come here the way our country was established.

RUSH: Yeah, but maybe I'm not understanding. You will take the racist label if that's what it takes to what?

CALLER: To get Congress and the Senate to, you know, back down and to make us --

RUSH: No -- look. I understand the point you're trying to make, but that's the exact opposite thing that would happen. The whole point of throwing the label out is to discredit you and everybody else. The last thing you want to do is accept the label.

CALLER: Hey, but if everybody gets upset about it, everybody should ban together and take it and say, "Yeah, we're racist. This is the way we want our country to be like."

RUSH: (Laughing.) Believe me, I've been where you say you want to go, and you don't want to go there.

CALLER: Oh, that's too bad. Because I'm pretty deep in.

RUSH: Mike, you got audio sound bite 18 in there, ready to go? All right, with us is Dianne Feinstein. This is her statement about those opposing the immigration amnesty bill.

FEINSTEIN: I listened to talk show hosts drumming up the opposition by using this word amnesty over and over and over again and essentially raising the roil of Americans to the extent that, in my 15 years, I've never received more hate or more racist phone calls and threats.

RUSH: Yeah, and see, this is exactly what I told you at the beginning of this program. Talk show hosts. You know who that is, talk show hosts. She's not talking about a bunch of libs and she's not talking about people out there that are on television. You are, in her mind, mind-numbed robots. I'm the pied piper, and I'm playing the song of racism and anger, and you're soaking it all up, and you're hearing what I say that you should say and what you should think, and you are calling and you are making her mad because there's never been this kind of racism and hatred in her 15 years in the Senate. She's never received more hate or more racist phone calls and threats. I say, prove it. I want to see them. I want to see logs; I want to see these e-mails; I want to see what she's talking about here, because it's a setup for discrediting all of the opposition to this, for when they bring this bill back. It really isn't even aimed at you, folks, although it is. The bottom line here, it's to give other senators cover. Well, yeah, we're hearing a lot of complaints, but it's just from a bunch of racists, you know, talk radio crowd, that audience. We don't have to pay any attention. That's what's being set up here. And, of course, this word amnesty, they don't like amnesty because it works. It fits this. It is an accurate description.


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RUSH: Let's go to the Bronx. Denny, you're next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Dittos, great one.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Listen, America has a rare opportunity here. You're so right when you say we're being set up to be categorized and boxed in as racist and ignored. I find it surreal what's happening as our representatives with their purposeful tin ear just completely ignore what 70% of the American people are saying, which is we don't want this immigration bill, it's not right. But now we have an opportunity, we have liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats and independents together on this. I remember you once saying that conservatives, you know, we don't go out, we don't protest, we're not a mob, because, well, we have lives and we have jobs to do. I think that mob, along with all the other rent-a-mobs, need to go to Washington when the president comes back from the G8, tries to resurrect this bill, and I think we need to go out there and let him know that a broad cross-section of America --

RUSH: You know, actually that's a good point. By the way, they all know. They know we're not racists; they know how much anger there is, they're just being obstinate about it. They're going to try to ram it down the country's throat regardless. But this business about Ms. Feinstein, she's going to have to be very careful about this because she's calling a bunch of Democrats racists and she's calling a bunch of moderates and independents racists as well. She thinks it's all just a bunch of conservatives that are phoning her office, and I don't think she has the slightest clue the makeup of those callers and what she's insulting them with.

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