On Tuesday's The Last Word on MSNBC, host Lawrence O'Donnell called Rush Limbaugh a "drug addict" as he recounted a discussion between the conservative talk radio host and Texas Senator Ted Cruz over the issue of blocking ObamaCare.
After showing a clip of President Obama attacking Senator Cruz, O'Donnell did not acknowledge the point that making the American population dependent on an inferior government-dominated health care system, a la Britain's National Health Service, would make it difficult to return to a preferable market-based system, as the MSNBC host went along with Obama's distortion that conservatives have admitted that people would find ObamaCare preferable after they experience it.
After a clip of President Obama, presumably referring to the Cruz/Limbaugh consersation, O'Donnell mocked Limbaugh as he responded:
He (Obama) said we can look it up, and so we did. That refers to something Ted Cruz said to Rush Limbaugh last month. Here is Ted Cruz, explaining the evils of ObamaCare to drug addict Rush Limbaugh in terms that Rush can understand.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, September 24, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC:
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: As Ted Cruz was mounting his fake filibuster on the Senate floor today, as you can see, he is still doing at this hour, President Obama sat down at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City for a candid conversation with former President Bill Clinton about his health care reform law. And the President tackled the Cruz opposition without ever using the word "Cruz."
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What we are confident about is that when people look and see that they can get high-quality, affordable health care for less than their cell phone bill, they're going to sign up. They're going to sign up. And part of what I think the resistance that we've seen ramp up particularly over the last couple of months is all about is the opponents of health care reform know they're going to sign up.
In fact, one of the major opponents when asked, "Well, why is it you potentially shut down the government at this point just to block ObamaCare?" He basically, fessed up. He said, well once, you know, consumers get hooked on having health insurance, and subsidies, then they won't want to give it up. Now, that's, you can look at the transcript. There's one of the major opponents of health care reform. It is an odd logic. Essentially they're saying, people will like this thing too much and then it will be really hard to roll back.
O'DONNELL: He said we can look it up, and so we did. That refers to something Ted Cruz said to Rush Limbaugh last month. Here is Ted Cruz, explaining the evils of ObamaCare to drug addict Rush Limbaugh in terms that Rush can understand.
SENATOR TED CRUZ (R-TX): As you know, the exchanges are going to be up and running shortly. On January 1, the subsidies are scheduled to kick in. And President Obama's strategy is very simple. He wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar because he knows that, in modern times, no major entitlement has been implemented and then unwound.
RUSH LIMBAUGH, TALK RADIO HOST: That's right. He gets as many people signed up to those exchanges as possible. It makes it all that much more difficult to take it away from them.
CRUZ: That's exactly right.
O'DONNELL: President Obama also talked about opposition to the law in red states and told the crowd about the new version of "keep your government hands off my Medicare."
-- Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center.