RUSH: John McCain has had it in for Donald Trump I don’t know for how long. I think McCain’s had it in for Trump even before Trump ran for president. But you remember shortly after Trump announced, the name McCain came up, and Trump made it clear that he doesn’t respect military people that get captured, you remember the fallout from that. I mean, the media, a lot of people were just aghast. “How could you say that? This man is a national hero. He was tortured for his country.” And Trump didn’t back down from it.

So you can understand McCain seething about this and not letting it go. And he hasn’t. He delighted in thumbs down his vote killing the latest attempt to reform Obamacare in the Senate. And now he made a speech. He made a speech, he just blasted nationalism and by extension he blasted Trump, and he’s blasting everything about Trump that people like and support. It was in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center. McCain was awarded the liberty medal. And here’s a portion of what he said.

MCCAIN: To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century — to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain the last, best hope of earth — for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems —

CROWD: (cheers)

MCCAIN: — is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

RUSH: Okay. Now, let’s parse this, because there are a lot of people — and you heard the applause — a lot of people who agree with McCain on this. “To fear the world we have organized…” This is fascinating to me. McCain clearly is a member of the establishment. He’s a proud member of the establishment. He’s probably on the committee that determines who gets in and who gets thrown out.

He is demonstrating here a perfect illustration for anybody wondering what the establishment is and what they think. McCain has spelled it out for you. “To fear the world we have organized…” Now, this stems from the belief that America is great, that America’s the good guys, that America is the solution to the world’s problems, that America is the last best hope of earth.

And “that we have organized” means we, as the beacon of freedom. We, as the nation which fights for it and which defends it and seeks it for anybody who wants it. We have fought our own wars. We have helped other nations in wars where their freedom was at stake. We have rebuilt Europe, the Marshall Plan. All of these things constitute what McCain means when he says “the world we have organized.” This is a profound belief in the power of the United States.

And then he adds, “The world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century.” Believe me, he’s talking about the period of time basically post-depression, World War I, all wait to the end of the twentieth century. “To refuse the obligations of international leadership,” meaning we have shaped the world. We have organized it. We have determined the good and the bad. We lead the fight against bad and evil. We define the good.

But now Trump and his nationalism want to refuse the obligations to continue the leadership role that we gave ourselves in the past 75 years. And to refuse these obligations of international leadership and to refuse our duty (as a result of this leadership) to remain the last, best hope of earth, for the sake of some stupid nationalism like getting rid of NAFTA and putting America first, making America great again? That’s junk stuff to McCain!

There is no making America great. America already is great. What do you mean? We’re the world leader of this. We’re the world leader of that. We organized the world. The world is ours, and it bends to our will, and why do we want to abrogate? That’s what McCain thinks, and that’s what the establishment thinks. And then he goes on to say this is “unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans…”

What’s wrong with all this? Theoretically, it’s right on the money. But what’s wrong with it all? I mean, the answers kind of leap out at you, don’t they? It’s not any great mystery. The world we have organized? Well, maybe we did, but it’s falling apart, nd we haven’t been leading the world in I don’t know what area for however long. We have been led by people who want to diminish the role of the United States in the world, Senator McCain.

This is the problem. What you’re missing, sir, about this nationalism that you despise is its real intention is to once again assert this leadership of the world, to assert this guiding light and beacon of freedom. Because for way too many recent years people in your club have been buying into the notion that whatever the United States has been doing the last 75 years has been hurting people. The United States is the problem.

The United States is blamed for climate change. What is that? Destroying the planet, no less! United States is blamed for this, it’s blamed for that. We have to sit here and listen to how socialist and communists worlds and nations are much preferable to ours. What world do we lead? The United Nations exists to fleece the United States, to blame the United States. Barack Obama openly admitted that his purpose was to transform the United States, which means cut it down to size.

It was Barack Obama who started this process of taking America out of the leadership role, and you couldn’t say enough good things about him, Senator McCain. It was Barack Obama and his two terms — and everybody he hired to work with him — who set about to make Iran a nuclear power? How in the world would a United States-led world permit that to happen, for the good of humanity? Senator McCain, with all due respect, you’ve got this totally backwards.

Your club or members in your club were actively presiding over the decline of the United States as a leader in the world, as a beacon of freedom.

Your definition of open and leading the world is to open our borders and let the disadvantaged race in! Sorry. That’s not what leadership of the world means. But too many people think leadership of the world meant we need to act on our guilt. We have guilt that we are so wealthier, so richer, so more advanced than most nations on earth, it isn’t fair, and so we must let the downtrodden in because we’ve made them downtrodden.

That’s what your club has started turning this country into, and that’s why people are standing up against it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I’m glad Senator McCain made this speech, because this little bite here — this 39-second bite — is one of the greatest illustrations of what the establishment thinks. Well, that’s not altogether true, because there are many in the establishment who don’t think this way at all. Senator McCain’s view of the United States’ role in the world is probably one that was held by most people at least as recently as 1980, ’85, and prior to that.

Although, the United States’ role in the world has always sought to be undermined and from inside our borders as well. The effort to undermine the United States began shortly after it was founded, and it’s had its ups and downs. We’ve always had Americans who hate America. We’ve always had columnists who didn’t want America to be founded. So this is nothing new. But McCain’s view of the United States’ role in the world was at one time true.

You might have to go back to the fifties, actually, for this specific delineation of responsibilities to be accurate. But that’s not… Certainly, in the last 20 years, this is not at all at all what the United States’ role in the world has been, and especially the last eight years, the United States, the purpose was to cut us down to size and make us pay our price.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go through this one more time. I really think this is important. Grab McCain’s sound bite. We’re gonna start-stop this. Again, it’s last night in Philadelphia. McCain has a big problem with Donald Trump. I’m sure that he personally despises him and professionally despises him and, in a way, I mean if somebody had said, “I don’t respect people that get captured,” blah, blah, blah, I can understand it. But McCain holds grudges here and he’s got a serious, serious problem with Trump.

But all that aside, this little excerpt, again, is so valuable in explaining what old establishmentarian guys, the way they viewed the role of the United States in the world and how it isn’t any longer anywhere close to this. But McCain, as a dinosaur and a Jurassic Park resident, remembers the good old days when he came of age and joined this club. And it tells you so much about how McCain has voted on legislation. Let’s quick start-stop. We’ll get back to the phones after this and we’ll move on to reaction to this from other senators and Trump. But here it is.

MCCAIN: To fear the world we have organized —

RUSH: Stop the tape. Stop the tape. What McCain is saying, you people that voted for Trump and Trump, you fear the world. You are afraid. But the United States organized the world. We are the power in the world. We are the superior. We organize this world the way it is. And he next says, “And led for three-quarters of a century.”

MCCAIN: — led for three-quarters of a century — to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership —

RUSH: Stop tape. Stop tape. We’re no longer advancing these ideals. We’re not advancing anything. We’re being cut down to size. The Barack Obama administration sought to blame the United States for most of the problems in the world, as does the United Nations, as does most every other unallied nation which is really just harboring feelings of jealousy and envy and hatred toward the United States because no matter what they do, they can never equate us.

They can never equal us. They can never outproduce us. They can never outcompete us. They couldn’t beat us militarily. And so they have a degree of dislike, envy, or hate for us. But the ideals — and there were days when the American ideal did lead the world, where the American ideal did shape the world.

That’s what we’re all trying to get back to. But before that can happen the United States needs to be reconstituted and rebuilt. We just had too many years of too many people believing that the United States is the problem in the world, that the United States has guilt or should have guilt over the great disparities in the world between ourselves and other nations: economics, wealth, these kinds of things. You look at most of the world’s problems and you’ll find the popular thing to do is blame the United States for it.

Climate change is the first thing on the list. We, our advanced lifestyle, just happens to be doing what? Destroying the planet. That is a serious, serious charge, destroying the planet, and they got all kinds of young people believing it. What’s the fix? The United States must downsize, the United States must admit its guilt, the United States must agree with whatever the United Nations claims and alleges and accuses us of doing.

And we must understand that they’re right and we must admit that they’ve got a grievance and we must do what we can to apologize for the way we have structured the world and the way we have led the world, because we have imposed freedom in too many places. We have imposed and stood up for liberty in too many places, where liberty and freedom are not the choice of tyrants and dictators and other oppressors who lead most other nations on earth. Let’s continue with this.

MCCAIN: Our duty to remain the last, best hope of earth for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.

RUSH: All right, stop the tape. We are trying to once again claim that mantle of last, best hope on earth. But Senator McCain, the United States is not the last, best hope of earth when, for example, we are forced to open our borders and let specifically the downtrodden into our country without any limit and without any concern. All of that is based on guilt, that somehow we have made them downtrodden, that we have enforced their poverty, that we are the reason they can’t get ahead in life because we have shaped the world in this ill-gotten way.

And so we owe it to the people we have deprived to come to our country and get what’s theirs because we have made sure that they can’t get it. This is what’s guiding immigration policy. Well, that and voter registration, of course. But the last, best hope of the world was being destroyed, was being chipped away. It was being torn down to size where it couldn’t lead anything because Barack Obama was doing everything he could to cement the idea that the problems in the world originated with the United States from the days of our founding.

And all that’s happening today, Senator McCain, is an attempt to bring this country back to these ideals you spoke so lovingly about, what we all want. We all believe the United States is a force or good. We all believe the United States is the beacon of hope and liberty for people in the world. We all believe the United States is the last, best hope. But it was being torn apart, it was being torn down, it was being blamed. And it had help from people inside our own country. And finally enough people have said, “Stop, we’re not the problem in the world. We are the solution.”
And that’s all that’s happening here. I just think Senator McCain has lost track of what’s been going on the last 30 years and certainly the last eight years.

Quickly, Tom Cotton, Senator Cotton from Arkansas. Fox & Friends today, Brian Kilmeade interviewed him. He said, “In a time where there’s a lot of Republican and foreign relations sparring with the president, you’re not. In fact, you’re going the opposite way. Why is that?”

COTTON: The American people elected Donald Trump to be our commander-in-chief. If we want to keep our country safe and secure, then it’s important that the commander-in-chief succeed. And I think Donald Trump by and large is getting things right. He’s certainly much more consistent with decades of bipartisan foreign policy leadership than Barack Obama was for the last eight years. So when the president does things like tells Congress and tells our allies that the Iran deal is not in the United States’ national security interests, I’m gonna support him.

RUSH: Exactly. Because it isn’t. There’s no world leadership. The United States is not organizing and leading the world for good when it allows the largest state sponsor of terrorism to freely acquire nuclear technology and ultimately nuclear weapons. What is the sense in that? What kind of leadership is that that you want to exude and praise? That’s just stupid! That’s just dumb! It’s dangerous. And it’s rooted in this crazy belief, “Well,” as Obama said, “Nobody told us when we wanted to do nukes that we could. Who are we to tell any nation they can’t.”

Well, wait a minute. Senator McCain used to be one of those guys that said for the sake of the world American leadership, we would determine who and who doesn’t get these kinds of weapons. We’re now trying to stop Kim Jong-un from using whatever he’s got. Nobody has any opposition to that, but why are the same people eager for the Iranians to get theirs? And sadly one of the reasons is that people want to do business with them.

So there’s a whole lot of stuff going on here. But this nationalism, this populism that’s coming under assault, its real purpose is to once again reassert the United States as the leader of the world and the organizer of liberty and freedom in the world and the defender of liberty and freedom in the world, not to have the United States be seen as responsible for the world’s problems, which is what the swamp currently is constituted as, which is what the American elites, the United Nations, the Ivy League schools are all teaching! That the problems in the world are born of the United States’ dominance and that’s what justifies cutting us down in size.

And there are a lot of Americans who don’t think ill of our country. They still love it, think it’s great, the best place on earth, and want everybody place on earth to be as close as it can to becoming like the United States.

That’d be the best thing could happen for the world’s population! A redistribution of capitalism all over the world would cause the simplest, fastest eradication of poverty known to man. But it isn’t gonna happen if people like the New York Times get their way.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back in July… I think it was July of this year, might have been July of last year. Trump of us heading into Phoenix, and McCain said that Trump was coming in to fire up the crazies. So he called Trump supporters crazies much like Hillary called them deplorables, and Hillary and McCain are both from the swamp, and they both have this jaundiced view of the United States’ role in the world, leadership that we’ve set up.

And we continue, we have an obligation to continue to serve the world and lead it because we organized it. We determined who’s an ally and who isn’t. We determined who’s gonna be a friend and who isn’t. And at one time, folks, a long time ago that’s exactly what happened. That was exactly what happened after World War II. Exactly.

But it was all done in the interests of the United States. It was all done with the national interests of the United States paramount, and that hasn’t been the case for I don’t know how long. But certainly the last eight years. Let me… I could keep going on this for the rest of the hour. But you get the point. I need to get to the phones. Raleigh, North Carolina. Evan, you’re next, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, it is an honor targeting you. I’m 39. I’ve been listening you for basically since you started. So thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: I appreciate that.

CALLER: Just a couple… You know, I was listening to McCain, and I was listening to the segment you had about Apple, and I think there’s one disconnect that liberals have with conservatives or Republicans. People often say that this country is great because it’s diverse, and that’s well and good. It is actually very great to have that diversity. But the origin of it is, our country is diverse because it’s great. If this was such a terrible place to be, nobody would have come here. We have all these diverse people and opinions because people wanted to come to this country because of the opportunities that it afforded everybody — and I think that’s just a pure, simple disconnect between the way I think of things and the way others do.

RUSH: Exactly right. I would say that the foundation for all that you said is freedom. Freedom was the magnet. Freedom and everything freedom entails. Without freedom, entrepreneurism doesn’t exist. Without freedom, greatness doesn’t exist. Without freedom, controversy doesn’t exist. It was freedom that drew people to the United States, and it was our Constitution that guaranteed no limits on that freedom in the Bill of Rights.

It was specified. Things government could not do, that served as the magnet. And of course it drew all kinds of people here. But it is the Constitution and our founding and our founding documents that make America great. The left will tell you that what makes America great is our diversity and to them, we now know, all that means is skin color. The reason for that is they have an agenda. Their agenda is anti-anything in power.

That means victimizing anybody that isn’t in power. So they have been on the attack against while the men and women who are Christian. That’s basically what the left’s enemy, who the left’s enemy has been. Now, they don’t specify it that way. They specify it with different terminology. They talk about power versus weakness, discrimination, inequality, unequal-ness and all of this kind of stuff.

But if you look at who they’re attacking and if you look at who they fear, it’s very clear, and so dividing people is also paramount in liberalism. You have to divide people. You have to create the chaos. You have to create victims. You have to create people who are willing to blame everybody but themselves for whatever is wrong in their lives. Once you do that, then you can set up bogeymen, and the two bogeymen that have been the most successful for the left are the Republican Party and conservatives.

They have been those who have caused all these victims such pain by way of racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination, and you name it. And so dividing people by things that don’t really matter in terms of who a person is, is simply how they create numbers for their strength in battle, because it stands to reason. Take all the minorities and add them together and you’re gonna have a greater power, greater force than whatever majority that you are fighting.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Trump has reacted to McCain. Trump’s doing one syndicated radio show after another today, radio row is what they call this. Snerdley came in today and said, “By the way, they called me at the White House today.”

I said, “Why?”

“To tell you that they know you don’t do guests and they didn’t even offer the president because they know that you can probably say what he’s gonna say better than he does anyway, so don’t be offended that –”

I said, “They said that?”

“Well, pretty much, yeah.” And that’s true. Radio row, I would not be there. Anyway, Trump is there, and he responded to McCain. Here, grab sound bite number 22. You can listen to what Trump said here. It’s this afternoon. He was asked about McCain’s criticism, the sound bite that we played. Here’s what he said.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, well, I hear it. People have to be careful because at some point I fight back, you know. I’m being very nice, but at some point I fight back, and it won’t be pretty.

RUSH: Well, we know that. (laughing) “I’m being very nice right now, but, you know, you keep it up and I fight back. And it won’t pretty.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Trump had a press conference with the prime minister from Greece. His name is Alexis Tsipras. It’s a joint presser. And John Roberts, the White House correspondent for Fox News said, “Mr. Prime Minister, with respect to the president, March of 2016, you said that the potential of a Donald Trump presidency, quote, ‘I hope we will not face this evil.’ And I’m wondering, if after spending time with the president you have changed your mind, if you are the same mind.” Now, that’s the question, but it is answer here is Trump, not the prime minister. So here’s what Trump says.

THE PRESIDENT: A number of countries were a little bit nervous at the beginning, and I have very good relationships with the leaders of virtually every country I’ve dealt with. But the reason they were concerned was because I will not allow our country, the United States of America, to be taken advantage of by so many other countries all over the world.

If you look at our trade deficits, massive trade deficits with virtually every country. You look at our jobs moving out to certain countries, and the companies are leaving and they’re firing the people and the product is made elsewhere and then it’s sold back into the United States. I’m not gonna be allowing that, so I can understand how certain countries and the leaders of certain countries may feel. But we’re just not gonna allow the United States to be take advantage of.

RUSH: There you have it again, in a nutshell. So you have McCain’s worldview that we created the world that we wanted and we’ve been leading that world for 75 years and our responsibility is to keep doing that, and Trump is trying to abrogate that. McCain is so out of touch on this.

What Trump is pointing out is we have been taken advantage of for, what, 40 years, however long we’ve been blamed for all the evils in the world and the lack of prosperity and so forth. All Trump is saying is those days are over. And we’re gonna put America back into that leadership position that McCain so values but doesn’t realize we’ve lost.

And, you know what? A lot of other swamp dwellers don’t realize we’ve lost it because they’re content with the idea that America is to blame and that America needs to be cut down in size for whatever reasons. So this all has come together pretty well today.