Patterico's Pontifications

8/30/2016

Rush Limbaugh: I Never Took Trump Seriously on Deportation

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:28 am



The three-minute clip is worth listening to in its entirety, to hear the caller rip up Rush with the facts:

Here is the transcript:

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call, Rush. I just wanted to comment on your comment that you just made about Trump and his illegal — and his deportation shift. I just distinctly heard you say it’s not considered a flip-flop. And I just want to tell you, you’re doing a disservice to all of us Republican primary voters who didn’t vote for Trump that are struggling with whether or not to vote for Trump, when you diminish the impact of his single policy that he ridiculed all other candidates for for over a year.

I mean, John Kasich classically said on the debate stage — he laughingly said — “Come on, folks, this isn’t serious. He’s not gonna deport everyone.” And Trump went ahead and ridiculed everybody who wasn’t for deportation. And for all of us who were saying that it was a con job, that it was a snow job — that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s unqualified to be president — for you to sit here and say that now that he adopts all the positions of everybody he ridiculed as not even being a flip-flop and it’s no big deal? This is why so many Republican voters have such a hard time going to the con man!

RUSH: Well, in the first place, I don’t think Trump has actually changed that much from what I he said. And I am also not aware that he told every Republican they had to agree with him or else whatever he was gonna do to them, he did. I’m just… The point of… What is it that you’re —

CALLER: With all due respect, Rush, on Chuck Todd’s show he specifically said when asked the question, “You mean, you’re gonna rip the families apart?” He said, “No, I’m not gonna rip the families apart. They all have to go, even the US citizen children.” He then got in the middle of the debate between Marco and Ted. When Ted wanted legalization and Marco wanted citizenship as part of a comprehensive plan, he said, “They’re both wrong, they’re both being absurd, they all have to go or we don’t have a nation of laws.” Come on! You were watching the debates as the rest of us were! You know exactly what he said and you know exactly how he ridiculed everybody on that stage!

RUSH: Yeah? Well, I guess the difference is — or not the difference. I guess the thing is… This is gonna enrage you. You know, I could choose a path here to try to mollify you, but —

CALLER: (chuckles)

RUSH: — I never took him seriously on this.

CALLER: But 30 million — or 15 or 10 million… Excuse me. Ten million people did.

RUSH: Yeah, and they still don’t care! My point is they still don’t care! They’re gonna stick with him no matter what.

As Allahpundit notes, Rush sure did seem to take the idea of mass deportation seriously in November 2015:

I’m the mayor of Realville, and I do happen to react literally to things. So when people say things, I interpret what they say literally. I’m not gonna assume they don’t mean it. I’m not gonna assume they’re exaggerating. When somebody says something, I’m gonna believe they mean it. And if they say, “There’s no way we could do it! We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t round up people. We couldn’t find them! We couldn’t separate the families.” Well, there are people that know how to do it, and have been doing it for a long time. All we would have to do is ask them how they do it.

So is he just saying that he didn’t take Trump seriously on the issue? If so, did he ever say this? It appears not. He sure did seem to believe him on the whole “Mexico will pay for the wall” thing:

This is not to trash Rush specifically, but the phenomenon of putting your faith in a huckster, and then sticking with him even when he nullifies the very reasons you initially believed in him.


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