This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by the imaginary Obama family feud
By Simon Maloy

Top of the second hour, and Rush was back to attacking Obama, even though he's “sick and tired” of him. Rush noted that Tom Brokaw got an exclusive interview with the president, and asked Obama: “What can the Israelis learn from your visit to Buchenwald? And what should they be thinking about their treatment of Palestinians?” Rush also aired Obama's response, in which he said there's “no equivalency here,” and said that the moral traditions and empathy of Judaism will ultimately give the people of Israel the strength and sense of purpose to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinian people. Rush credited Obama for saying there's “no equivalence,” but nonetheless attacked him for suggesting that the Israelis have any obligation to do anything to achieve peace. They've bent over backwards over the past 60 years, Rush said, and they're still attacked, and when they defend themselves they're accused of responding disproportionately. They're accused of atrocities, Rush said. Rush then repeated his outrage that Obama would say this one day after praising Islam. Obama “has something against Israel,” said Rush, and Rush knows this because of who “mentored” him -- people like Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan (who never mentored Obama) and Bill Ayers (who also never mentored Obama).

Then Rush had a new Obama topic that he promised he'd get to after the break -- Obama invoking his great-uncle's experience liberating that concentration camp at Buchenwald. Rush said that Obama said numerous times that he spoke to his uncle about Buchenwald, but the uncle said that Obama has never spoken to him about it. After the break, Rush read a quote from Obama on the campaign trail: “I had an uncle who was ... part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months.” Rush purported to contrast this with a quoted from Obama's great-uncle in an interview he gave to Der Spiegel: “He couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war. My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it. They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details.”

What should immediately jump out at you from those two quotes is that the contradiction Rush says exists is not there. In the first quote, Obama talked about the “family story” about his uncle. In the second quote, his uncle said he told his story to his sister and brother-in-law, who told it to Obama. No contradiction whatsoever. Regardless, Rush said this was the reason Obama talked about his grandfather -- not his uncle -- today at Buchenwald. Rush thought this was all about Obama's “narcissism” -- he has to place himself by indirect family presence, because of his narcissism, at the center of every place he's going.

Anyway, leading into the break Rush took a call from “Karna” in Washington, DC, who found herself upset at the lack of media coverage of Obama's “amassing of executive power” through the appointment of czars. Rush had to go to break, but he came back to Karna after the break, reading from a USA Today story on House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-MD) disagreement “with a major proposal President Obama advanced this week to help trim health care costs.” What Obama is doing with all these czars is “unconstitutional,” said Rush. Karna agreed, explaining that she worked for six years on the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, and that she was shocked at the number of staffers working on the NSC right now. Armed with these snippets of information, we determined that “Karna” was Karna Bodman, a fact she later confirmed after twice noting that she had just finished writing her latest political thriller. Sadly, this remarkable feat of fact-finding and research was the most exciting thing we took away from their conversation, which consisted of Ms. Bodman and Rush voicing outrage at the many ways in which Obama is not Ronald Reagan, peppered with Rush's usual gripes about Obama being a “statist” and “authoritarian” who wants to destroy the country for his own benefit.

After the break, Rush returned to Obama's uncle, doubling down on the non-existent contradiction, playing a sound byte of Obama from today: “I've known about this place since I was a boy hearing stories about my great uncle who was a very young man serving in World War II. He was part of the 89th Infantry Division, the first Americans to reach a concentration camp.” To this, Rush responded: “His uncle has told the UK Telegraph, 'I don't know how he knows this. I've never talked to him about it.' ” Again, there is absolutely no contradiction between what Obama said today (or on the campaign trail) and what his uncle told Der Spiegel.

Closing out the hour, Rush took a call from a man who graduated from Fresno State, and confessed to Rush that he had used the Limbaugh Letter as a research tool for just about every paper he wrote in college. Rush said that made his day. This just goes to show that you never know how crazy things will get on “Open Line Friday!”

Greg Lewis and Lauryn Bruck contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights from Hour 2

Outrageous comments

LIMBAUGH: Then let's go to the Der Speigel interview. Der Speigel says, “Mr. Payne, early in June your great-nephew, Barack Obama, will visit the former concentration camp Buchenwald, which you helped liberate at the end of the war. Will he be traveling in your footsteps?” Charles Payne, the great uncle: “I don't buy that. I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We've never talked about that before. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me, I'm sure, but for political reasons.” So today he changes the story to his grandfather who told him all about World War II because his first effort to say his uncle told him all about it, the uncle blew up by saying, “Ah, we've never talked about it.”

So Der Spiegel says, “What do you think would be the motive for his trip? ”Well," the great uncle says, “First, I think he already had the trip in mind. Cairo on the one end, Normandy on the other, time for Germany in between. Second, perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards.”

“Well, now at first” -- this is Der Speigel again -- “Obama claimed that one of his family members was involved in the liberation of Auschwitz. How did this misunderstanding come about?” The great uncle: “Wel,l he couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war. My sister and her husband were both great storytellers. Sometimes they made up things to go along with it. They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division. Apparently they mixed up a few details. Of course, it came out immediately he was wrong since there are enough people in America who knew that Auschwitz was in the east, and that camp was liberated by the Red Army.

”Afterwards, Obama called you," Der Speigel said, “What did he want to know?” The great uncle: “Well, he wanted to know where this camp was that I'd helped liberate. I told him it was Oberdorf and that it was a sub-camp of Buchenwald concentration cramp [sic] and I described a little bit of what I had seen.” So he called after. Anyway, so the uncle never talked to him about it. So the story yesterday became his grandfather who told him all about it, World War II and so forth.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: OK, we do have -- I was wrong, folks. I will admit that I was wrong when that happens. It's not very often, so it's not a problem. Obama did mention his uncle, his great-uncle who told Der Speigel and the UK Telegraph he has never talked to Obama about his experiences liberating concentration camps. This morning in Germany after visiting Buchenwald, Obama said this:

OBAMA [audio clip]: I've known about this place since I was a boy hearing stories about my great-uncle, who was a very young man serving in World War II. He was part of the 89th Infantry Division, the first Americans to reach a concentration camp. They liberated Oberdorf, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps, and I've told this story. He returned from his service in a state of shock, saying little and isolating himself for months on end from family and friends alone with the painful memories that would not leave his head.

LIMBAUGH: His uncle has told the UK Telegraph and Der Spiegel, “I don't know how he knows this. I've never talked to him about it.” I said he talked with his grandmother -- his grandfather, and he did when he was talking to Brokaw. I said he had changed from his uncle to his grandfather because the stories had con -- but I was wrong, he did mention his uncle today in the speech.