Behind the scenes at Limbaugh’s SOTU appearance
Rush explains how another of Trump’s pure-genius victories from the week past actually transpired.
Now, I know many of you want to know the story of the State of the Union address on Tuesday night and how that all happened, and someday I hope to be able to tell you the entire story. I can’t tell you the entire story now without divulging medical details that I, frankly, don’t want to give. I don’t want to give people an opportunity to start investigating and writing about and pronouncing opinions and this kind of thing. People know enough about what I have.
It’s late stage. It’s advanced lung cancer. But there’s good news associated with the diagnosis and the treatment. So we are where I am to have the first procedure that will set up the beginning of treatment. This is Tuesday, and it is scheduled for 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We took no clothes, Kathryn and I. We just… We went Grub City with shorts, T-shirts. I mean, the whole week’s gonna be in the hospital.
There’s no reason to take a coat and tie. There’s no reason to pack a whole bunch of stuff that you’re never gonna use. “Light” was the byword. The procedure was gonna be 5 o’clock in the afternoon. I’d have to show up for it at 12 noon to do the prep, talk to the doctors and so forth. At 9 a.m., the phone rings. I’ve got the number in my address book. So it’s the White House. I answered the phone, and they said, “Can you hold for President Trump?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Rush! Rush! How you doing, buddy? Great to hear from you! Hey, look, what are you doing later today?”
I said, “Well, I have a serious medical procedure that’s gonna start — all this — at 5 o’clock.
“Well, look, what’s the doctor’s name? I want to call him and have him delay it for a couple days ’cause I need you down here tonight.”
I said (chuckles), “Uh… (chuckles) Mr. President, um… I’m stunned.”
He said, “Look, your health comes first; there’s no question. But can’t they just do half of what they’re gonna do and then send you down here? Believe me, you don’t want to miss this. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be great. You don’t want to miss this.”
Well, I don’t know what’s up. He told me he wanted me to be his guest at the State of the Union, that he was gonna mention my name, recognize me. I hung up the phone and for the next hour and a half, I agonized — I literally agonized — over what to do. Kathryn and I are both sitting in the hotel room. As time is marching on, we’re faced with the possibility of having to ask an entire medical team to broom their schedule and reschedule to accommodate this.
An hour and a half later, I called the president back and tried to tell him no. Remember, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I have no idea. I just… He’s told me, by the way… I should say, he has told me that he’s gonna present me with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but a couple weeks from now in the Oval Office. I had no idea at this particular time on Tuesday morning that this was gonna happen at the State of the Union, and he didn’t tell me during all these phone calls.
Which is what makes this another genius Trump move. I read somewhere or other earlier this week that the reason Trump did it this way was that he felt waiting for a small, quiet WH ceremony in a couple of weeks would effectively deny Rush the wider recognition he wanted him to have, that the Fake News media would just ignore it or cover the whole thing up. Which was almost certainly correct, the safest of assumptions.
Given how the rest of the week since has gone, I also strongly suspect that Trump anticipated the explosion of rage and murderous hatred from the rancid Left, a response that has disgusted so many Normals across the nation. Trump handled this the way he did in part as a provocation he knew the frothing, flailing lunatics couldn’t possibly resist. He baited them, they bit down hard, and it ended up hurting them badly.
Again.
So I called him back around 10:30, intending to be as persuasive as I could, to thank him and just say that there was too much here to overcome to get down there, including the medical schedule. The doctors and everything have been scheduled. This story, if I could tell it — and someday, I’m gonna be able to give you every detail here. But for people that do not know Donald Trump, this story will explain him, his essence, his attitude toward life.
There simply is nothing you can’t do. There’s nothing that can’t be done, and there’s not a single obstacle that can’t be dealt with — and it’s not even hard. It’s not even… He didn’t have to stop and think for a moment about this. Now, granted he’s got presidential power. If he wants to clear us into Reagan National, if he wants to send a car for us and get us from the airport to the White House, he can do all of that — and he did, and he was willing.
But the fact was that this is what he wanted, but not for him, you see? It was for me, and he wasn’t going to let me talk myself out of it. Part of me is not wanting to create any problems for him. I mean, he’s got so many more important things to do than deal with logistics, and I told him. He said, “You think I’m gonna do it? I’ve got people here! What do you mean? I’m gonna call a guy here; in an hour, all this will be done. All you gotta do is find a way to get the clothes.”
Lots, lots more to the story at the link, all of it fascinating. We’re fortunate indeed to have these two men. The flipside, unfortunately, is that they’re both damned nigh irreplaceable. The hole created when they exit the national stage will be deep, wide, and difficult if not impossible to fill. It’s probably the only hope the Democommies have left. Somehow, we must see to it that it remains a vain one.
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