Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Hastert, Foley Scandal

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Rush's Urgent Interview With Speaker Hastert






In the midst of a congressional scandal that has many conservatives seriously questioning Republican Party leadership, talk titan Rush Limbaugh was able to secure a rare interview with the man of the hour, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois).

In it, Limbaugh addressed some of the grave concerns that are currently facing the party faithful, including whether or not Hastert properly dealt with gay sex allegations against now- former Rep Mark Foley (R- FL) when they first arose.

Did he have all of the information now available?

And because some conservatives have asked Hastert to resign as House Speaker over this still- unfolding mess, including at the editorial pages of the Washington Times, Rush dealt with that question upfront. Limbaugh feels that Republicans must learn to better fight back against last- minute onslaughts of negative campaigning from Democrats that utilize their mainstream media friends.

In addition, Rush asked the speaker about the timing of these allegations and whether they fell into the partisan "October Surprise" category, where last- minute bombshells are dropped in order to distract from the party's message.

From Limbaugh's official transcript:

RUSH: We're happy to be joined now by the Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert. Mr. Speaker, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to speak to you again, sir.

SPEAKER HASTERT: Thanks, Rush. Great to be with you today.

RUSH: Now, I guess the big news is, the Washington Times' admittedly conservative editorial page, has asked for you to step down and resign, and you have said you're not going to do that. Correct?

SPEAKER HASTERT: Well, yeah. I'm not going to do that. What we've tried to do is -- focused on this Foley thing is -- do the right thing. We had two messages. There were two pieces of paper out there, one that we knew about and we acted on; one that happened in 2003 we didn't know about, but somebody had it, and, you know, they're trying -- and they drop it the last day of the session, you know, before we adjourn on an election year.

Now, we took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone. We asked for an investigation. We've done that. We're trying to build better protections for these page programs. But, you know, this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we've tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism -- and we've worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it -- and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.

RUSH: Well, it's clear to me that what the Democrats are doing here in some sort of cooperation with some in the media is to suppress conservative turnout by making it look like you guys knew this all along but because you're so interested in holding the House rather than protecting children that you covered it up.

SPEAKER HASTERT: Yeah.

RUSH: And I like what you said yesterday, if I may editorialize this way, when you said, "Look, somebody knew this long before we knew it. Somebody knew about those instant messages," and you asked for an investigation into who knew what when. We know that a couple of newspapers in Florida knew a lot more than they were willing to release, and Brian Ross of ABC admitted that he knew about this all the way back in August but he didn't have time for it then because he was worried about the Katrina anniversary and September 11th and so forth. Is that investigation you've called for going to go anywhere? Who's going to chair that? Who's going to run that?

SPEAKER HASTERT: Well, first of all, you know, we've asked the federal government. We asked the FBI. I don't think you could ask anybody better than the FBI, and they have brought this investigation forward. We've also asked the State of Florida, because it's my understanding that's where most of these messages circa 2003 came from. So we've asked the State of Florida to come forward with an investigation as well.

RUSH: Many of my listeners watch all this, and they see a predictable pattern. They've been watching politics and observing it for many years now. They see that this is a strategic political, or politically timed, release of information, particularly based on how long ago it has been known, and there is -- I have to tell you there's -- a hunger and a real craving amongst conservative voters for Republicans in Washington, House and Senate both, to simply refuse to be set back on your heels and accept this defensive position and just go on offense and strike back at these guys.

"Hey, Mark Foley is not what the future of this country is about. It's about protecting the nation, national security, prosperity, ongoing efforts to maintain a good economy, not destroying the health care system," and this sort of thing. Is there a problem that Republicans in the House and the Senate have about going on offense when these kind of things happen?

SPEAKER HASTERT: Absolutely not. We are going on offense, but you have to answer the concerns that people have on the Foley situation. I've tried to answer 'em. We've made the page system safer. We're going to work to make it even more safe, but the fact is, we hit the high time of Wall Street today. The economy is good because we've done the right things on holding taxes down, on holding litigation down, holding regulation down -- and I'll tell you, if we lose this election, if this goes back over to the Democrats, it'll come back in spades.

RUSH: What do you mean it will come spades? You mean they'll reverse the work?

SPEAKER HASTERT: You'll see higher taxes. You'll see more litigation. You'll see more regulation. That's what they're all about -- and we won't have this economy. We worked to protect this country against terrorism, passed legislation to do that. We've had to fight guys like Leahy every day to make this thing happen, but we've done it.

RUSH: About the page program: Is it really in bad shape? I mean, you have the Foley incident. We don't know if there was ever any real contact between Foley and any of these pages. I understand he sent these e-mails that could be viewed as predatory, but is the page program really in a dire circumstance here?

SPEAKER HASTERT: There's two sets of e-mails first of all -- or text messages I guess what they are -- and one set or bunch of them were done in 2003. We never knew about it. Someone else held those all the way from 2003 until now. The next set was -- the other one was -- something that the family asked Representative Alexander to look into. He contacted the counsel in our office. Our counsel put him to the page board. The page board confronted Foley, and this was Katrina message that said, basically, "How did you get through the hurricane? Are you okay?" But the parents wanted him... We did know what the text of that message was because the parents held it and they didn't want it revealed, but we stopped it. We went to Foley; told him to stand down, "Don't do this." We asked if there was any sex or explicit language in this message. There was not, and we thought we had the thing revolved. On the other hand, we're trying to do better.

As I said, since I've been speaker we've taken the pages out of a dilapidated building; put them in a safe building, given them 24-hour supervision, put more people in the page building so that they have contacts. They have people who look over them and work with them all the time. They are under, basically, 24-hour supervision while they're in Washington. This happened when the pages left Washington -- and, you know, we're in the same situation with parents all over America in trying to make sure our kids are safe, and we want to work to make sure all this text messages messaging stuff and computer stuff is safe, too.

RUSH: Mr. Speaker, I'm hearing a lot of people -- I'm in Florida, and of course there's a lot of press talk about this and individuals including in Washington -- who are saying, "Well, we've known for a long time of Mr. Foley's sexual orientation." When the first set of e-mails hit and the red flags of alarm went up, was there any hesitation on the part of the Republican leadership to not deal with this in public at that point because of his sexual orientation and not to appear to be gay bashing?

SPEAKER HASTERT: No. First of all, what we knew is exactly what I told you. The parents contacted us. They wanted someplace to go to because they didn't want this contact to go on, and what we knew about it was that Foley contacted this kid through e-mail and asked him how he got through the hurricane, the Katrina hurricane. He was from New Orleans, I guess. The other part of it was, well, we didn't know anything else other than what they told us. We went to Foley, confronted him. He said he wouldn't do it anymore. He was sorry. He was just trying to talk to the kid -- he liked the kid, nice kid -- and he wouldn't do it anymore. We told him not to do it anymore there or to anybody. Period.

RUSH: I know time is limited. Let me ask you one question that's unrelated to this. As is exemplified today in the Washington Times editorial -- and there are others in the so-called conservative movement, pundits who have written op-eds in various publications in recent weeks -- suggesting that it might be good for the Republicans to lose control of the House because they have failed to govern as the conservatives they campaigned as.

All the spending, I mean, you've heard the complaints. Is there...? This is sort of a silly question. I think I know what your answer is going to be, but I still want to put it out there. Is there anything to be gained by -- is there a lesson you guys in the House could be taught -- by losing this election?

SPEAKER HASTERT: Look it, we could lose and let the Democrats be in power for ten or 15 or 20 years, 40 years, like they were the last time. Because once they get power, they can solidify that power, just like we've been in control for 12 years. I would like to put that on. But if you look at what we've done over 12 years, the fact is, over the last four years we've had flat spending on everything except national defense and homeland security.

If you look at what we've done with the budget and the economy, the last year was the first time that we ever cut real non- -- you know, spending that we did, and we cut spending $40 billion, and, you know, that's the first time that's been done. But, you know, that's what our record is and that's probably why the Democrats don't want us there.

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