RUSH: Okay, here we go to the audio sound bites. I appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday. I’ve always suggested to Fox News, “You can have me on and put me on the panel that comes later in the show to analyze what I said — and, if necessary, criticize what I said. I’d be willing to do it.” They’ve never taken me up on it. They probably will at some point. So we’re gonna do it here, and we start — and, by the way, for those of you emailing, it was a totally enjoyable experience.
I never think Chris Wallace is interrupting me. He and I always have an agreement going in that he wants to ask me as many questions as he can squeeze into 12 minutes. He also doesn’t want to get flak from any of you thinking that he’s mistreating me. So he asks me if I’d be kind enough to give him, you know, papal exclusion before the program airs in understanding that all he’s trying to do is get me to say as much as I can about different things.
So they added three minutes to the segment yesterday, but he said to me, “This doesn’t mean I want you to have longer answers. It means I want to cover more things.” So I’m never offended, and I always try to make my answers as brief as I can with him knowing going in. So that I want you to know going into the first bite… He says, “You say that what’s happening to Donald Trump right now is that the left-wing courts, left-wing media, left-wing bureaucracy are trying to, in your words, ‘sabotage his presidency.’ Sabotage?”
RUSH ARCHIVE: Well, actually, yes, and it is driven by two things, actually. The first thing that’s going on, Chris, is in my view, it is preposterous to believe that the Russians had any effect on the outcome of voting in this country. It’s absurd. There is no evidence. Zilch. zero. nada. The New York Times has run two stories that are basically propaganda on this, one in October and one this past week. And, both stories clearly say no evidence. Nobody they’ve talked to has any evidence whatsoever to suggest it. The second thing I think that’s important for people to remember: People that voted for Donald Trump, people that support Donald Trump really, really believe that they were gonna lose the country if Hillary Clinton won. This is not an idle thought; it’s not an exaggeration. They really believe that the country as founded was up for grabs. It was over if Hillary had won, if the Democrats had another four or eight years to do what they do with the judiciary and so forth.
RUSH: This is a point, by the way, that I don’t think is understood by people that don’t like or didn’t support Trump, people that opposed him — and this includes even Republicans. Another way of saying this is that most in Washington never thought the country was facing any kind of a crisis, whereas clearly a majority of Americans who voted think there is a crisis. It’s fascinating to me that the people in Washington didn’t, and it comes down to the elites are fine where they live. Their incomes are up; their job security is supreme. They don’t even have to really worry about meritocracy.
All they’ve gotta to worry about is, you know, politically correct membership status. The effects of their policies don’t impact them. They don’t live amongst a bunch of crime-ridden illegal immigrants and refugees. They don’t have to deal with any of the results of their policies. And, as such, they don’t really experience life like a bunch of Americans who have been stagnating for 15 years in terms of their economic circumstances. And then when you come along and say, “Those people really thought that we were gonna lose the country if Hillary won the election. They really think that.” You know, people pooh-pooh this.
The media pooh-poohs it and the Washington establishment pooh-pooh. They think it’s insane talk. They think it’s extreme talk. “What do you mean, ‘lose the country’?” It doesn’t mean that we’re gonna lose America. There’s always gonna be an America. But what kind of America is it gonna be? And I think, to the extent that Democrats want to win again — and I know they do — I think it’s something they should look at. They were actually fostering — and look at what’s happened to them! They’ve lost 1,200 seats all across the country since 2010. Actually, outside the presidential race, you can go back to 2008 to trace this decline.
There’s a reason this is happening. People were rejecting what the Democrats were doing. People were rejecting en masse every chance they had, every Obama policy. The only thing they didn’t do was vote against him, and we all know why. There’s two primary reasons for that, which we don’t need to rehash here. The fact is that everything on this Obama agenda was repudiated in 2016. It was sent packing. Nobody wanted any more of it. And if the Democrats have any hope of ever winning again, they’re gonna have to stop making fun of people who really thought they were losing their country.
I mean, for crying out loud, when you run a bakery shop and you have the government and the media and thousands of people outside protesting your little, small business demanding you do this or you do that or they’re gonna throw you out of business? That, to them, is not America. To see so many people trying to damage them and harm them for all of these rising political increments? But it’s worse. It’s rampant, runaway immigration, and the crime that comes with it. It’s what’s happening to dilapidation of cities where people live and neighborhoods where people live and the never-ending destructive protests and riots and bombing.
None of this happens where the elites live. So they don’t face it. It’s always happening out there in flyover country to them. But this was a real sentiment, and the reason that it’s important also is it gives Trump a wide berth. If you think that we’re on the verge of losing the country — and by that, your kids’ futures. If you think we’re on the verge of losing that, you’re not gonna be worried what Donald Trump did on The Apprentice ten years ago and it isn’t gonna make you divorce him.
The traditional ways of destroying politicians are not gonna work on Trump because he represents too much that is too important to too many people to have it derailed by traditional political games. And that’s why I think that the media can’t destroy Trump, ’cause they didn’t make him. And these two points — the fact that people thought we really were gonna lose the country and that people gonna stick with Trump no matter what — are the two things that I don’t think his detractors have bothered to take seriously.
They ridicule the idea that people think we’re gonna lose the country. They laugh at it. They mock it. They make fun of it. But I’m telling you, it is real. And it’s not over! They’re gonna continue to support Trump because they can see right now there are people that want to take Trump out, led by the media and who knows who else in the establishment. They can see it. They know full well if they could they’d find a way to make Hillary president. Short of that, make Pence president and have the Republican establishment back in charge of things. So it’s still dire consequences as far as Trump voters are concerned.
Here is the next bite. Question Chris Wallace. You use a phrase which I have to say I only heard for the first time in the last couple of weeks, the deep state. And that’s the notion that there’s an Obama shadow government embedded in the bureaucracy that’s working against the new president. I think some people are gonna think that’s right on and some people are gonna think it’s awfully spoliator.
BEGIN ARCHIVE TRANSCRIPT
WALLACE: You also use a phrase which I have to say that I only heard for the first time in the last couple of weeks, “the deep state,” and that’s the notion that there’s an Obama shadow government embedded in the bureaucracy that is working against this new president. I think some folks are gonna think that’s right on and some folks will think it’s awfully conspiratorial.
RUSH: Well, I would love to claim credit for that, but actually I think a reporter by the name of Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept — who has got a relationship with, what’s his name, Assange. I think he actually coined the term. And I think it works. I don’t think there’s any — who’s driving this business that the Russians hacked the election? It’s the Democrat Party. It’s Hillary. It’s Obama. It’s all those people who just can’t accept that they lost. They’re intellectually —
WALLACE: And you think they’re behind the leaks, too?
RUSH: Absolutely. Of course they are. They’re trying. Look, they can’t win at the ballot box. You know they’re down 1,200 seats since 2010? They’ve become a marginal party, electorally. All they’ve got is their embeds in the bureaucracy and the judiciary, and they’re pulling out all the stops. There’s no question. This business that the Russians hacked the election? This is a serious, serious allegation that is impossible. The Russians could not have had any impact whatsoever on voting, either how they were cast or how they were counted.
In fact, if you want to say they did, they did their job! Hillary won the popular vote. How could they possibly have had any…? This whole premise — and it’s been driving news coverage here ever since Trump took office and even before. You don’t need any more evidence than that to suggest and to know that the left — which is run by Obama and Hillary and the hierarchy in the Democrat Party — is doing everything they can to undermine, to sabotage, and to prevent Trump from implementing his agenda. There’s no question about it.
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RUSH: There isn’t. I don’t need to add anything. That was well stated, coherently stated, cogently stated, and there’s nobody reasonable who can disagree with it. (interruption) You think somebody can reasonably disagree that they’re not trying to undermine the Trump agenda? Hell’s bells. There’s no question about it.
We can squeeze one more in here. Question: “You suggest there’s some things that Trump may be doing wrong. You said that you’re skeptical about his idea they’re gonna come up with a new executive order on the so-called travel ban and that this new one’s gonna pass muster with the federal courts. You’re skeptical about that?”
BEGIN ARCHIVE TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Not so much skeptical. I think they’re going to do it, and I think they should do it, because the judiciary, again, is pockmarked with judicial appointees that Democrat presidents have made for years, and they’re in there for life. As we have seen in the first executive order… You know, Chris, his executive order hasn’t even been ruled on. The judge in Seattle said (paraphrased), “Well, the president said during the campaign that he wanted to ban Muslims, and…” It’s irrelevant.
They’re not even using the law to try to stop the president on this. I think what the president has to do — and I was happy to see it. This rally was something that I hoped he would do, and in the rally he really focused on domestic agenda. Look, here’s the thing. Donald Trump has nobody helping him other than the people that voted for him. Obama had the media; Obama had the judiciary; Obama had all kinds of support. At an Obama press conference, typical question, “What enchants you?” I mean, Obama was never challenged seriously by the media.
Trump doesn’t have any of that. He’s got to keep his supporters on board; he’s gotta keep ’em revved up. So the rally was great. But the thing that will really make all this Russia stuff and all this deep state stuff not take hold is getting to work implementing the repeal of Obamacare, getting to work and really doing tax reform, and getting to work and really shore up our borders. Because that is the primary area where people that voted for Trump felt that we were on the way to losing the country. We’ve even lost the definition of immigration.
“Immigration” today, if you listen to the left, equals anybody who wants to come into the country should be allowed. That’s not what immigration is. That’s illegal immigration, and we ought to all oppose it. We are all in favor of immigration that determines who gets in, the quantity of people who get in, whether they assimilate or not. Nobody’s opposed to that. But immigration has been defined now as people flooding the country who are noncitizens. And that’s called “immigration,” according to the culture of the left.
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RUSH: Well, not much to add there. I mean, what would you add, Brian? Anything much there to add? Anything left unstated? Anything ambiguous about that? I was exceptionally brilliant there, too. So let’s go to the obscene profit time-out and we’ll just continue on this big roll when we get back.
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RUSH: All right. Next question from Chris Wallace. He cites the Chris Cillizza piece saying it was very, very smart of me to suggest that Trump get going on the domestic agenda. And he pointed out that by all standards, you know, Trump’s running way behind even Obama. Obama had a lot of stuff done by this time. Trump hadn’t done anything yet. “What do you say to that, Rush?”
BEGIN ARCHIVE TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, now, here I have to tiptoe. (laughs) We’re not talking Republicans and Democrats opposed to Trump. We’re talking establishment versus Trump. Trump is considered to be an outsider. The establishment doesn’t want any part of Trump. They don’t want him to succeed. And I would throw some Republicans in that as well. It’s just the way Washington works. And this is why I think moving forward on this agenda is crucial. You mentioned Obama’s stimulus. Here’s the difference — and this is what Trump supporters know. It wasn’t a stimulus. It was a payoff to unions, Chris. It didn’t stimulate anything! We don’t have a growing economy. We don’t have jobs being created at a replacement level for those we had lost. We don’t have anything Obama said. He lied about the cost of premiums coming down.
WALLACE: But, you — You — Rush, you may be right, and I’m not —
RUSH: No, no. This is important stuff. The —
WALLACE: Well, no, I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying at least he passed his program, and President Trump hasn’t passed any of his programs yet.
RUSH: Well, of course. It makes my point. Here you had… I tiptoe again. You have the historic, first African-American president —
WALLACE: (laughing) You’re not very good at tiptoeing.
RUSH: Well, you know, it’s television. It’s Fox News. I have deep respect. But, no, seriously. You have the first African-American president; you have everybody falling all over themselves to acknowledge that, to reward that. Obama was gonna get everything he wanted in the first year because, if anybody opposed it, they were gonna be accused of being a racist, or bigot, or who knows what. But don’t ignore the substance. The voters know that his stimulus… It doesn’t matter when it got passed; he misled everybody about it. The people of this country are tired of being misled. They’re tired of voting based on what candidates have told them they’re gonna do, and nothing ever changes.
Trump has a wide berth here, Chris. The media did not make Donald Trump, and they can’t destroy him. But the media thinks — and when I say “media,” let me define: ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, L.A. Times. That cadre. They have a formula, they have a blueprint for destroying Republican political officials they don’t like. It’s not gonna work on Trump. He doesn’t fit that mold. They’re trying to every day. It’s kind of comical to watch.
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RUSH: And the media went to town on this one, that the media didn’t make Trump so they can’t break Trump. They’re never gonna stop trying to break Trump. But they haven’t been able to do that since the day he announced. They weren’t able to stop him being elected. But that’s not gonna stop them. But they don’t understand why they’re flailing at this. And I’ve seen some journalists today, “We’re not trying to destroy the president. We’re just trying to hold the president accountable.” You are trying to destroy him! You’re trying to defeat his agenda. You’re trying to make sure that what he ran on doesn’t happen, as opposed to trying to help Obama with his.
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RUSH: In the interests of time I truncated the question for the previous sound bite that Chris Wallace asked me. I’ll go back and get that. He said, “But, I gotta tell you, by historical standards, by this point Obama’s stimulus had already been passed. President Trump is pretty slow on Obamacare, is pretty slow on repealing Obamacare, pretty slow on tax reform, and there’s a lot of disarray inside the Republican Party on Capitol Hill,” and that’s where I said, “Well, now, here I have to tiptoe.” And what I meant by that was that there’s opposition to Trump on Capitol Hill. Obama didn’t…
Look, to the stimulus: The Republicans didn’t have the votes to stop anything Obama wanted to do the first two years. People have forgotten this. But Obama’s election over McCain — and I know we haven’t talked about McCain today. But Rand Paul’s exactly right: We’re lucky McCain did not become president. Rand Paul is exactly right about that. This is purely personal. McCain’s just got his underwear in a wad. It’s a personal thing he’s got with Trump, and maybe some of it understandable. You know, Trump out there saying he doesn’t like military people that got captured like McCain does.
He’s clearly goosing McCain, McCain has taken it personally, and McCain’s out there on foreign soil ripping into Trump as unstable and his administration is in disarray or what have you. I mean, it’s really beneath… Saying that McCain’s filled with dignity and all. It’s beneath all of that. But the point is, back to this Obama business and the timing framework, the Republicans were able to voice opposition to Obama’s stimulus, but they had no prayer of stopping it, and I don’t know how many Republicans actually voted for it. There was…
Look at how many people that were not Democrats voted for Obama strictly thinking they were ending race problems in America, and then Obama gets inaugurated, and I’m sure on Capitol Hill there’s a lot of people saying, “You know, if we just go along with the guy and we praise Eric Holder, we can do a lot to ameliorate race relations.” The point is Obama had steady cooperation based on the historical aspect of his presidency, not because of his agenda. The Republicans really didn’t want to do much to stop Obama because they couldn’t.
They had to talk a good game to keep their base engaged (i.e., us) but Capitol Hill is actively aligned against Trump. If you ask me point-blank… You know, I’ve heard Paul Ryan’s press conferences on Obamacare, and he swears up and down that we’re gonna be dealing with this in March when everybody gets back from the whatever recess, and before they go on the next one. And yet multiple times a week you’ll see stories in the media that it’s getting less and less likely that any action will take place this year on Obamacare.
They want you to see that and they want you to get mad and they want you to get depressed and they want you to hate the Republicans. And they’re doing the same trick on tax reform. You know, Reagan didn’t sign his tax reform bill the first time until August of his first year. It took a while. He won in an unchallenged, unquestionable landslide, and “Tip” O’Neill ran the Democrats and they did their best to oppose, but at the end of the day they couldn’t. They had to go along with it. But there is… You’ll never see it because they can’t dare display this on TV.
But there is unity among some Republicans and Democrats in stopping Trump. And, folks, understand this: It’s not that they opposed the Trump agenda. It’s that they oppose Trump. Trump is an outsider. Trump is an invader. Trump is an interloper. It’s like he’s made his way into Freddie’s Fashion Mart in Harlem. He’s just not wanted, and the last thing that the Washington establishment — the thing they fear — is Trump succeeds. I can’t tell you how much they fear this. Republicans and Democrats alike. I’m not naming names.
‘Cause, look, there are plenty of Republicans that are full-force behind Trump. I’m thinking of guys like Jim Jordan and the conservative caucus, that they’re a hundred thousand percent behind Trump. But you’ve got some establishment types that would not be unhappy if the Trump agenda fizzled. To the extent that Trump is able to get his agenda passed, that’s just another bit of evidence that an outsider can come in and upset the applecart and govern. So Trump has got opposition everywhere he’s going, and it takes many different faces and forms.
Some of it on the Democrat side, the opposition to his agenda is substantive. And on the establishment side, he’s opposed just because he’s an outsider, and he’s making no bones. Look, Trump… One thing Trump doesn’t do is soft sell himself. I mean, when he’s coming after you, he tells you he’s coming after you, and he tells you why. So he’s thrown the gauntlet down here. Now, the Republicans in the House and Senate are on record the past eight years being opposed to Obamacare. They have to come through on this. They’re on record. They have won elections based on their promises to get rid of this.
There have been numerous repeal votes that didn’t have any teeth.
But they still had the votes. They still took them.
Tax reform? I know that there are many Republicans who are dead serious about it. A lot of them. The Democrats want no part of it, but they can’t stop it because they don’t have the numbers. So, once again we’re faced here with Trump needing to get the Republicans on board with his agenda. This is where Trump needs to be Trump. This is where Trump needs to show off his prowess as a negotiator and as a guy that “does deals,” quote/unquote. This is a guy, he’s told everybody we got too many dumb leaders that don’t know how to do deals?
Well, it’s time to go in there and do deals.
And it’s time to do deals on tax reform and repealing Obamacare.
Just get the balls rolling!
And, of course, immigration. We don’t have to wait for the wall to be built on this. We can start enforcing immigration law right now — and I think we are, in fact. And you can see how the media’s having a bunch of kittens over that as they’re writing stories about how (impression), “ICE agents are treating every illegal immigrant like Elian Gonzalez and they’re storming homes and they’re throwing innocent women and children out and (flummoxed).” They’re doing their best to characterize this as typically inhumane Republican behavior, when it’s simply the enforcement of the law.
But this is what it’s always been going to look like. You think the queen of England would just sit around while a bunch of people said, “We don’t think we need a monarchy anymore?” ‘Well, let’s throw it up for a vote and if people think I should go back to living, you know, in a flat two-bedroom brownstone, fine, we’ll see what happens.” She’s not gonna put up with it. Well, people in power just don’t throw it open to a vote. That’s why you have power so you can basically say votes don’t affect me. That’s the point of having power, to be immune from votes. It’s really what we’re talking about here when you get right down to it.
So Trump to start doing he’s deals and he needs to start being smart, showing us the smart. He needs to get up there and get in these rooms and get whoever is standing in the way, get ’em in a room, bring up there, be public or maybe not. Maybe don’t put ’em on display, maybe quiet meetings here or there and sit down and talk to ’em and sell ’em on it from the standpoint of what’s good for America, whatever it takes, however he does deals, do it. That’s what I think.
I think the more he does this the greater insurance, that he’s gonna have a wider berth even, that he’s going to have. This is why he was elected. Trade deals are all well and good and, you know, NATO and go around this international and foreign policy stuff, fine and dandy, very, very important. But the stuff so far that’s happened with the miners and putting them back to work, there have been a lot of good things and he detailed a lot of it at the rally on Saturday, that’s not being reported on. So all of that was good, too.
But you get going on Obamacare, that’s such a biggie, and it’s gonna implode. The danger I fear with Obamacare is it’s gonna implode anyway. It’s designed to. It’s designed to kind of black hole itself. It’s designed to suck itself into oblivion. And when it does, then you have a crisis, then you have an emergency. The plan was for Hillary to be in the White House when this happened so that we could then move almost automatically to either everybody on Medicare or single payer or what have you.
You’ve got to get in gear and get your reform plan in there and start working on it before this thing totally folds in on itself. And the speed with which Obama was able to do things versus Trump is irrelevant. The circumstances were all different. Yeah, Obama had opposition. I’m not denying that. But the opposition Trump faces is entirely different. Now, one thing before we go to the break, ’cause I’ve had some emails, “Hey, Rush, we hear you on the Russian bit. Can you move on?”
Look at this. CBS This Morning just today. Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook stated that Russia could have been the reason Clinton lost the election. I’m telling you, folks, they’re not gonna let go of this. I’m gonna keep telling you this ’til I’m blue in the face. This assertion is what provides the opportunity for all the other attacks on Trump. This allegation, which is preposterous and absurd and unprovable because it didn’t happen, that the Russians are the reason Hillary lost?
What that means is the Russians stole the election for Trump. You’ll note there’s no specificity here. They’re just taking the fact that all these intel people say the Russians were trying to hack. The Democrats are not gonna give this up. They will never admit they lost because of their ideas. They’ll never admit they lost because Hillary was a lousy candidate that nobody wanted anymore. They’ll never admit any of that. They’ll never admit they were rejected by the people. The only way they ever lose is if the people do stupid things as a result of cheating or lying or if there’s theft.
They’re gonna continue this business on the Russians because if the Russians stole election, Trump and everything he does is illegitimate and we don’t have to do it and we can oppose all of it because it’s not what the people really wanted. And they’ll even claim that they’re favoring the entire democratic process. Obviously the people didn’t vote for Trump if it took the Russians putting him in the White House. That means people don’t want Trump’s agenda. Do not let this slide. It’s the only thing they’ve got, the Democrats and the media, to justify the continued attacks on the Trump administration.