Transcript - Interview: Rush Limbaugh Interviews Donald Trump on the Radio - January 6, 2020 | Factba.se

Rush Limbaugh

00:00:00 - 00:00:07 (8 sec)

We are happy to have you here with us the President of the United States, Donald Trump. It's so great to have you back here, sir. Thank you for joining us.

Donald Trump

00:00:07 - 00:00:09 (2 sec)

Well thank you, Rush, very much.

Rush Limbaugh

00:00:09 - 00:00:35 (26 sec)

OK. I have had a lot of people say to me, they're reacting to the media reaction of the action we took, that you took, against the Quds Force commander in Iran. Mr. President, people being scared that their kids are being scared to death out of their minds that somehow this is going to start World War 3. That that we are now more unsafe than we have ever been.

Rush Limbaugh

00:00:35 - 00:00:44 (9 sec)

Could you explain to people why what you've done here makes us safer, why it was necessary, and why what we did was right.

Donald Trump

00:00:44 - 00:01:07 (24 sec)

Well this should have been done for the last 15 to 20 years. Him in particular. He was there a real military leader. He's a terrorist. He was designated a terrorist by President Obama and then Obama did nothing about it except give them $150 billion and even more incredibly $1.8 billion in cash. You hear me talking about that all the time and you talk about it all the time.

Donald Trump

00:01:07 - 00:01:29 (22 sec)

He gave me all this money. He never wanted to do anything about it. President Bush should have taken him out. He is responsible for the IEDs. That was the roadside bombs and bombs that blow up all over the place and then the sister, which is the big one, the big version that actually knocked out tanks and kills everybody within -- within earshot.

Donald Trump

00:01:29 - 00:01:59 (30 sec)

A really horrible weapon. He's responsible for all those incredible young people over at Walter Reed, where they do such a great job, by the way. And when they lose their arms and their legs, oh no, he gave so much of that technology, much of that stuff was made in Iran, and he should have been taken out a long time ago and we had a shot at it and we took him out and we're a lot safer now because of it. Now we'll see what happens, we'll see what the responsive is, if any, but you've seen what I said our response will be.

Rush Limbaugh

00:01:59 - 00:01:59 (1 sec)

Donald Trump

00:01:59 - 00:02:02 (2 sec)

Our country is a lot safer, Rush.

Rush Limbaugh

00:02:02 - 00:02:32 (30 sec)

They said they got 21 targets they're looking at and you came back said, "Fine, I got 52 of yours." I don't think that they are accustomed to a president like you, sir. I mean you just mentioned it, Obama basically appears them. Obama worked with this guy on the Iranian nuclear deal. What -- A lot of things that will surprise you when you -- when you assumed office and found out some things done previously in policy.

Rush Limbaugh

00:02:32 - 00:02:36 (5 sec)

What was the purpose of American policy with Iran prior to your presidency?

Donald Trump

00:02:36 - 00:03:14 (38 sec)

I don't think they had a purpose. I don't think they knew what was happening. Why does it give them $150 billion much of it going back into terror and you look at what's happening. When I -- they tried to do with appeasement and I can tell you the Logan Act, if there was ever an act that should have been used, they should look at the Obama administration and John Kerry, the Logan Act, because what he was doing with Iran and the relationship that they built up and the things that he said I would certainly love to see that be looked at because I think John Kerry was, personally, I think he was advising them.

Donald Trump

00:03:14 - 00:03:36 (22 sec)

I think that the Obama administration was -- was just letting them get away with murder in the true sense murder, and you know right after they made the deal it wasn't like they were respected. They treated the United States worse than ever before. In fact, I said at least give him a little respect because they treated -- they got worse they actually got more hostile.

Donald Trump

00:03:36 - 00:03:56 (20 sec)

They took 150 billion and they took the 1.8 billion in cash and they got worse. And if you remember right before the payment was made. They took 10 sailors and they humiliated those sailors and they humiliated our country with the sailors down on their knees. And the other reason they released them was they wanted their first payment.

Donald Trump

00:03:56 - 00:04:09 (13 sec)

It was just before the payment if they had taken them after they got the money they would have never released them. They'd be there now. Well they wouldn't be there now with me but they would be there for a long period of time. But you remember the 10 sailors that were --

Rush Limbaugh

00:04:09 - 00:04:09 (0 sec)

Donald Trump

00:04:09 - 00:04:28 (19 sec)

Fifteen feet across that line, probably they weren't they don't even know if they were in Iranian waters but they said they were slightly in Iranian waters so they humiliated them. But they released them because the money was due the following day. And they said, well we don't want to. Hey, why should they turn down 150 billion over the 10 sailors?

Donald Trump

00:04:28 - 00:04:31 (3 sec)

But they humiliated those sailors and our country.

Rush Limbaugh

00:04:31 - 00:04:56 (24 sec)

Well he also lifted sanctions on -- on solely money as part of the -- part of the Iran deal that looks like to me, anyway, that Obama looked at that administration looked at building Iran up as some way stabilizing the region as though Israel is not the good guys, it's though we're not the good guys that Iran needs to be made stronger, this is what they believe.

Rush Limbaugh

00:04:56 - 00:05:12 (16 sec)

Otherwise, that whole region is kind of a tinderbox. But the thing really is true about this is the Middle East has changed in priority because of the massive improvements made in domestic energy in the United States we're no longer dependent on that region.

Donald Trump

00:05:12 - 00:05:53 (42 sec)

Right. Right. Well that's right. And one of the things that changed. I know you talk about it. If you go back 10 years or eight years or maybe even five years, Israel was the king of the Congress, right. Our Congress protected Israel and fought for Israel. Now you look at the way the Democrats in Congress are treating, where you have AOC and you have Tlaib and you have Omar and they are actually, you know, anti-Semitic they are totally against Israel to things that they've said you go back to the past and you look at the things that they've said about Israel and Jewish people.

Donald Trump

00:05:53 - 00:06:11 (17 sec)

It's incredible. Ten years ago that would have been unaccepted it would have been -- it would have been -- nobody could have even believed it. I still can't believe it. You know I'm a little bit old fashioned, right, in that sense because I've grown up and there was always great protection and reverence for Israel and now it's the opposite.

Donald Trump

00:06:11 - 00:06:32 (21 sec)

In the Democrats, it's almost it's almost a negative. They're going out and what they do for Tlaib and what they do for Omar, Representative Omar, Minnesota, and AOC, I think it's incredible the way they talk about Israel. It just was unthinkable to do that 10 years ago and sooner.

Rush Limbaugh

00:06:32 - 00:06:55 (22 sec)

I actually think that you've had a role in driving them even more insane than they were. And let me give you some evidence. Let's go back to the day you came down the escalator and announced your candidacy. You announced the slogan: Make America Great Again, and all of a sudden Make America Great Again become some wildly controversial prospect.

Rush Limbaugh

00:06:55 - 00:07:08 (13 sec)

And I'm asking myself, what in the world is controversial at all? How can anybody disagree with America being great, becoming great, remaining great, and yet it was. How do you explain that?

Donald Trump

00:07:08 - 00:07:35 (27 sec)

Well you know politics has changed a lot over the last couple of years. For instance, I want low taxes, they want to raise your taxes. How do you think that works? I couldn't win as a politician. I don't think Abe Lincoln could win as a politician. Borders, they want open borders. When you see the people that we're sending back and we're capturing now at record levels, these are, in many cases, they're murderers and they're people that drug dealers and it's incredible.

Donald Trump

00:07:35 - 00:07:55 (20 sec)

They want open borders. That means all of these people are going to be pouring in. And of course good ones will come in too but you have tremendous numbers of really bad people including murderers and rapists and others. They want open borders. They want sanctuary cities. They don't want a strong military based on everything.

Donald Trump

00:07:55 - 00:08:12 (17 sec)

I mean, we have to fight like crazy to get the strong military. And we have to give up things that we wouldn't give up if we had The House, as an example, if we were able to have enough. You know we've always needed their vote because it was always very close. In fact, the first two years we had a very tiny majority.

Donald Trump

00:08:12 - 00:08:44 (32 sec)

So we always needed their votes. But when you see they want higher taxes, right. They want -- They want much more regulation. You know cut regulations more than any president in history by far. Even though they were there for four and eight years and in one case more than that, we've got the all-time record, that was probably as important or more important as the tax cuts, the biggest, including Ronald Reagan, the biggest tax cut we've ever had and we're actually taking in more revenue now than we did when we had the higher taxes because the economy's doing so well.

Donald Trump

00:08:44 - 00:09:02 (18 sec)

But you know when you see them with open borders, Rush, you say -- and sanctuary cities and all of these other things you say, "Where are they coming from?" Well Israel is sort of the same. I put that in that same category. They're -- they're as far as I'm concerned they're anti-Israel, totally anti-Israel.

Rush Limbaugh

00:09:02 - 00:09:21 (20 sec)

Well it's -- it's -- it's always perplexed me that they have -- You have drawn them out. They have now with Twitter in the past two or three days since the attack on [Inaudible]. You mean literally you have the Democrat Party and elements of that party openly supporting Iran an enemy of the United States, openly supporting the terrorist actions of that country.

Rush Limbaugh

00:09:21 - 00:09:35 (14 sec)

And this is a country that beheads homosexuals and transgenders and has no human rights for the very constituency the Democrat Party claims to represent. Yet here they are tweeting their support for these people right simply in opposition to you.

Donald Trump

00:09:35 - 00:09:54 (18 sec)

It's amazing. Like as an example take -- take the wall. They were always for the wall and then I wanted it and they went against it. In fact, I said if I had it to do again I would have come out totally against the wall and I would have gotten their votes. OK. All I had to do is come out against the wall.

Donald Trump

00:09:54 - 00:10:13 (20 sec)

I am opposed to building the wall and we would have gotten all the votes we needed. Now it's almost like they'll try and do whatever is the opposite. I think they've lost their minds. You want to know the truth. I really do. It's a terrible thing to say. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Like even the impeachment hoax, you take a look at that and they have nothing.

Donald Trump

00:10:13 - 00:10:34 (21 sec)

They have nothing. With one of the biggest investigations in history they found nothing, the Mueller report, they found absolutely -- think of it. They spent $45 million, two years to hoax. They spent all of that time, all of that money, had brilliant people that happened to be, you know, very, very -- they were crazed.

Donald Trump

00:10:34 - 00:10:52 (18 sec)

They were crazed. I mean, these people were dying to find something on Trump. They found nothing. I think there's very few people that you've ever met who could have had that. They had so many investigators, they were calling people that I haven't seen in years and they got nothing. Think of that. Nothing.

Donald Trump

00:10:52 - 00:11:13 (21 sec)

Very few people, and by the way, I'm sure they looked at my taxes. They looked at everything you had to look at. They looked at everything and $45 million and much more than that in the true sense. You know, in the real sense, it was much more than that, and they had 18. I used to call them 13 angry Democrats but they increased it to 18 angry Democrats.

Rush Limbaugh

00:11:13 - 00:11:14 (1 sec)

Donald Trump

00:11:14 - 00:11:29 (14 sec)

That's smart. And very smart, many were tied up with Clinton. They were involved with Clinton but these people couldn't find any. They found nothing. Even I was very impressed with how clean I am, Rush.

Rush Limbaugh

00:11:29 - 00:11:51 (23 sec)

You ought to be. You are -- you may be cleaner than any previous president that we can think of. Anyway, I got take a quick time out. We have President Trump with us for the remaining part of the program the last of the half hour and we'll continue with him right after this. [Commercial Break] And we are back with President Trump you mentioned the impeachment hoax.

Rush Limbaugh

00:11:51 - 00:12:14 (22 sec)

Nancy Pelosi has not delivered these two articles of impeachment that are, frankly, a -- they're both of them jokes. What do you suspect is happening here with this one. What is the politics of this? What are they trying to achieve here? I mean, I know throw you out of office now but what -- what's the point you're not sending these articles over?

Donald Trump

00:12:14 - 00:12:34 (20 sec)

Well I think what they're trying to do is affect the election illegally but that's what they're trying to do. But the reason that I said it because they're -- they are a joke. They are not crimes. There is nothing there. They found nothing. We went through two years of a Muller report. You know that better than anybody.

Donald Trump

00:12:34 - 00:12:36 (2 sec)

Nobody covered it better. And we went through to you [Inaudible] --

Rush Limbaugh

00:12:36 - 00:12:52 (16 sec)

I think I'm more frustrated by it than you are. You have to deal with it but it makes -- it makes a lot of us livid that this is because there's nothing. Everything to this has been made up. It's worse than a hoax. The first part of it was a coup. And this is just a continuation of it.

Donald Trump

00:12:52 - 00:13:11 (19 sec)

Yeah. It's so sad for our country. I mean, think of it, we're fighting with Iran. We're fighting with all of these different places and in many cases doing great, making trade deals and doing so good, our country is doing so good. But I have to spend and my team has to spend time on this stuff. They found nothing.

Donald Trump

00:13:11 - 00:13:22 (11 sec)

Just think of that for two years. And -- and unlimited budget, unlimited talent and they found nothing. And they come up with two -- two articles that aren't even a crime.

Rush Limbaugh

00:13:22 - 00:13:31 (9 sec)

Well that was nothing to find it was all made up. I mean, that's the frustrating thing here. It was all made it was nothing to find. There was nothing to investigate.

Donald Trump

00:13:31 - 00:13:55 (24 sec)

They created a situation that was false, that was fraudulent, and then they investigated the false-fraudulent situation and they found nothing. It's hard to believe the whole thing's are to blame. And now on top of it they come up with two articles and they put it before. Now, what happened is she doesn't want to get a vote because, how could anybody possibly, it's totally partisan.

Donald Trump

00:13:55 - 00:14:07 (13 sec)

You know this was not what they had in mind as they call them the founders, right. They keep saying the founders, founders. But the founders didn't have this in mind. You understand. It's like I've never heard the word founders so much in my life.

Rush Limbaugh

00:14:07 - 00:14:11 (3 sec)

But they don't have anything in common with the founders anyway.

Donald Trump

00:14:11 - 00:14:27 (16 sec)

Yeah. You know we got a hundred, I guess, 196 or 197 to nothing with the Republican Party, plus we have three Democrat votes, and one person actually left the Democratic -- the Democrat party over it and joined the Republican Party as you know.

Rush Limbaugh

00:14:27 - 00:14:31 (5 sec)

Speaking of which, the Republican Party hasn't been as unified and I don't know how long

Donald Trump

00:14:31 - 00:14:52 (21 sec)

Never. It's never -- I -- they say maybe never. And one thing I gave the Democrats credit for, they've always been very vicious and that's not necessarily a good thing. But what is a good thing is they always stuck together. And here, the Republicans stuck together even better than the Democrats. So we had like 196 or 197 to nothing.

Donald Trump

00:14:52 - 00:15:09 (17 sec)

It's unheard of. You know that because they're always -- always break it off and I don't know. And this is really for 70 years, 80 years. You know for some reason it's in the DNA. They just don't seem. And in this case they have been so good. And I think they said it will be the same way because the Senate knows it's a hoax.

Donald Trump

00:15:09 - 00:15:11 (1 sec)

Everybody knows it's a hoax.

Rush Limbaugh

00:15:11 - 00:15:14 (3 sec)

Well it doesn't. A The Republican Party is now the party of Trump. I mean there's no question about it.

Donald Trump

00:15:14 - 00:15:28 (14 sec)

Well, I just think it's a party of common sense. You know I view it -- somebody said, "Are you conserve -- ", well, I'm conservative. But I think it's common sense. It was -- like what we did this -- this two days ago with this horrible terrorists. He was a terrorist. You know they don't want to call him a terrorist.

Donald Trump

00:15:28 - 00:15:34 (5 sec)

Now the Democrats are trying to make him sound like it was this wonderful human being.

Rush Limbaugh

00:15:34 - 00:15:37 (3 sec)

He was a poet. Yeah, he was a poet. Used to be poetry out there.

Donald Trump

00:15:37 - 00:15:53 (16 sec)

Well, when you read the New York Times, you read The Washington Post, that are totally fake newspapers by the way, that would have both been out of business except I won. I wonder what happens and hopefully in five years, right, hopefully in five years. But I wonder what happens to those newspapers. Who knows.

Donald Trump

00:15:53 - 00:16:13 (20 sec)

But they do well now. Although if you look at the unfunded liability, probably, they don't do so well. But you look at what they write. It's so fake, it's so phony and now they're trying to build him just like they did Al-Baghdadi. Al-Baghdadi was the number one terrorist in the world. We got him. They wrote very little about it, relatively speaking.

Donald Trump

00:16:13 - 00:16:36 (23 sec)

That story disappeared very quickly, as you know. But they tried to build him up into a -- into a relatively wonderful man. He was a total bad guy. Now he founded ISIS. He was doing it again. He was trying to do it again. You know I wiped out ISIS by our -- during our administration we wiped out the entire caliphate 100% of the caliphate and we wiped him out.

Donald Trump

00:16:36 - 00:16:59 (23 sec)

And, you know, got little credit but our our people know that we did it, Rush, because if people like you and Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and so many others. Your friends at Fox and Friends in the morning are so good. You know, people are getting it, they really get it because of social media and my Twitter, without Twitter, I think, we'd be -- we'd be lost.

Donald Trump

00:16:59 - 00:17:01 (3 sec)

We wouldn't be able to get the truth out.

Rush Limbaugh

00:17:01 - 00:17:19 (17 sec)

Yeah. That's a -- that's a good point. People still say to me, "You'd need to ask him to stop tweeting." So what I tell them, "Look it's the only way he can get his message out and it's not a negative at all, people." He needs to you need to dial back the drama, needs to dial back the chaos. I disagree with that.

Rush Limbaugh

00:17:19 - 00:17:23 (5 sec)

I think you're doing exactly what you have to do given the circumstances presented to you.

Donald Trump

00:17:23 - 00:17:45 (22 sec)

Well I wish I didn't have to do it. I wish we had legitimate newspaper and legitimate media. We don't. I mean, it's much of it is -- is really, I call it corrupt, it's the corrupt media. And you know it's very internal. You understand this better than anybody. If they do a story in me, I immediately know if it's false or not false so I don't mind a bad story of if it's right.

Donald Trump

00:17:45 - 00:18:05 (20 sec)

But I know. A person reading the story doesn't know that it's false. So I'm able to tell them through social media. I don't even call it Twitter. I call it social media because it goes to everything, you know, goes to Facebook, it goes to Instagram and we have hundreds of millions of people. You know we have a tremendous amount of people just on one side.

Donald Trump

00:18:05 - 00:18:07 (2 sec)

I'm up to I guess close to 70 million people.

Rush Limbaugh

00:18:07 - 00:18:12 (4 sec)

Yeah. They're jealous as they can be [Inaudible] Of course they want you to stop.

Donald Trump

00:18:12 - 00:18:27 (16 sec)

I just had dinner -- I had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg the other day and he said , "I'd like to congratulate you." in front of a large group of people so I'm not that -- But he said, "I'd like to congratulate you. You're No.1 on Facebook." And, you know, it's it's incredible. And that's --

Rush Limbaugh

00:18:27 - 00:18:30 (3 sec)

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You had dinner with Zuckerberg?

Donald Trump

00:18:30 - 00:18:30 (0 sec)

Rush Limbaugh

00:18:30 - 00:18:33 (3 sec)

Oh, wait the world finds out about that. And he just did.

Donald Trump

00:18:33 - 00:18:55 (21 sec)

You have semi-breaking news, I guess a couple of people might have reported it but they're not like you. So I just got a list to TSL Power 50, the No. 1 show on radio. There's a guy named Rush Limbaugh. Did you ever hear of him? Rush Limbaugh, No. 1. Have you? And this is the 50 most influential and most listened-to streaming talk shows in the country.

Donald Trump

00:18:55 - 00:19:05 (11 sec)

Rush Limbaugh, No. 1. So I hope you saw that but now we've just made your interview. But your viewers have to know that, your listeners have to know that. No. 1. Great job.

Rush Limbaugh

00:19:05 - 00:19:25 (19 sec)

Thank you, sir. You know your timing is impeccable you're a you're a broadcast specialist from The Apprentice and so forth and you've -- you're right up to the break here. I can't thank you enough for this. I wish we had even more time. People love you, sir, and they are grateful, and they know what they know that you still are focused on them, that you're still implementing the [Inaudible] --

Donald Trump

00:19:25 - 00:19:26 (1 sec)

I love 'em. I love 'em.

Rush Limbaugh

00:19:26 - 00:19:32 (7 sec)

They know that too. Thank you so much for your time and have a great, great rest of this day and year. Hope it's the greatest year of your life, sir.

Donald Trump

00:19:32 - 00:19:46 (14 sec)

Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Rush. Thank you for everything and congratulations on your incredible success. I really -- it's so important for this country what you do. Thank you very much, Rush.

Rush Limbaugh

00:19:46 - 00:19:48 (1 sec)