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<\/p>\nRUSH:\u00a0\u00a0Hi.\u00a0\u00a0Welcome back, folks.\u00a0\u00a0Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, and we are right here with you on Christmas Eve, all three busy broadcast hours, one of them already in the can.\u00a0\u00a0And it\u2019s a thrill to be here with you, a fun day.\u00a0\u00a0Telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882.\u00a0\u00a0The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.<\/p>\n
A couple of people who are not Washington insiders have written an op-ed in the USA Today today. It prints out to four pages, and their basic point is that Trump is only gonna get this wall built if he does it using executive power, that the Congress is never gonna agree to it particularly when the Democrats come back and take control of the House.\u00a0\u00a0It isn\u2019t gonna happen.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re never gonna come to an agreement. They\u2019re never gonna give Trump what he wants.<\/p>\n
The last thing in the world they\u2019re gonna do is give Trump what he wants while they\u2019re in the middle of trying to bust up Trump\u2019s base — and that is probably true.\u00a0\u00a0Now, I think there would be a way to do it, but it would require shifting public blame for this in a majority sense or basis to the Democrats, who deserve it!\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re the ones unwilling to capitulate and agree to border security.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s no more complicated than that.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re unwilling to participate in anything involving border security.<\/p>\n
Not just a wall.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re unwilling to appropriate any money whatsoever for border security.\u00a0\u00a0So you heard Trump float the idea that he could get money from the defense budget or elsewhere in the federal budget that the executive branch controls and build it that way.\u00a0\u00a0And you\u2019ve heard Chuck Schumer and other Democrats say, “He can\u2019t do that!\u00a0\u00a0He can\u2019t spend money we have not earmarked.\u00a0\u00a0He can\u2019t spend money we have not appropriated.”\u00a0\u00a0It simply isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
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There are all kinds of departments and bureaucracies and areas of the executive branch with unspent money, and Trump can go get whatever he needs from any of those different departments and allocate it, and he can get started building the wall, and he can do it constitutionally on the premise that he is engaging in an act of national security!\u00a0\u00a0He is the executive.\u00a0\u00a0He does not have some of the executive power; he has all of it!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s on that basis that if he really wanted to fire Mueller, he could!\u00a0\u00a0If he wanted to fire anybody at the Department of Justice, he could.\u00a0\u00a0He can fire anybody.\u00a0\u00a0He is the only source of power.\u00a0\u00a0It is not divided.\u00a0\u00a0There isn\u2019t a committee.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s not a board of directors.\u00a0\u00a0He is the executive, and, as such, he alone has the full power of the executive branch.\u00a0\u00a0And as long as he is executing those powers under the terms of the Constitution, there is nothing anybody can do to him!\u00a0\u00a0The price he pays for blunders in this area is at the ballot box.<\/p>\n
The price any president pays is political.<\/p>\n
If using his executive power angers many people in the country to vote against him and his party, that\u2019s the price he pays for doing it!\u00a0\u00a0But it is not impeachable to act on behalf of national security according to the Constitution, which he is singularly allowed to do.\u00a0\u00a0And if he believes that open borders are resulting in the infiltration of the country of all kinds of undesirables — including terrorists and gangs and whatever — then he is perfectly within his rights to go get money already allocated to the executive branch and build the wall.<\/p>\n
So you question: Why doesn\u2019t he do it?\u00a0\u00a0Well, there are any number of answers to this.\u00a0\u00a0One of the answers is that not everybody on his team is for him.\u00a0\u00a0Not everybody on his team is for a wall.\u00a0\u00a0Not everybody on his team believes in his ideas.\u00a0\u00a0By “his team,” I mean in the administration, in the West Wing.\u00a0\u00a0As we all know, there are people there who — to one degree or another since Trump was inaugurated — have attempted to undermine via leaks and sabotage.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s been one of the curious aspects to me, Trump\u2019s staffing choices.<\/p>\n
But, remember, to fill positions in Washington in an administration, executive branch, the odds are you\u2019re gonna get some people from Washington.\u00a0\u00a0Everybody in that town is a devotee to one degree or another of the swamp.\u00a0\u00a0Trump has not brought in a bunch of full-fledged outsiders.\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s got some people that are careerist Washingtonians, career government types.\u00a0And I\u2019m sure that he has chosen people he thinks can help him navigate the waters — he being an outsider — on the belief that they are on his team.<\/p>\n
But I have no doubt, for example, that there are people on his staff… You know, the Drive-Bys are trying to tell you that I changed his mind on signing this continuing resolution.\u00a0\u00a0The real truth is that there are people in his administration trying to get him to sign this thing with no deal for him.\u00a0\u00a0There are people on his team that are telling him (because it\u2019s the way they think) that getting a deal with Congress is the best thing you can do.<\/p>\n
You know it as well as I do that many measures of success, when it comes to president and Congress — individual senators and congressmen and members of the House — is, “How much legislation did they pass? How many bills have their names on them?” This is just the way the town works.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s one of the many reasons Trump was elected to blow it up that it works this way.\u00a0\u00a0My only point is, in staffing an administration — and it\u2019s massive, folks.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s so big, Trump doesn\u2019t know them all.\u00a0\u00a0He can\u2019t possibly know everybody.\u00a0\u00a0Now, in his immediate circle, yeah.\u00a0\u00a0But you should take a tour.\u00a0\u00a0You can\u2019t, but you should take a tour through the West Wing.\u00a0\u00a0You would not believe.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t know what you think the West Wing is, which is where the Oval Office is and all the executive offices. They can\u2019t put 5% of the people that work in the administration in the West Wing.<\/p>\n
Across the street is the Old Executive Office Building, now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and that\u2019s not even big enough to house \u2019em all.\u00a0\u00a0I mean, they\u2019re everywhere.\u00a0\u00a0And they\u2019re all working through their superiors — and everybody has superiors — to try to influence the outcome of the administration.\u00a0\u00a0Some try to protect Trump from himself, they think. Some try to advocate and help him.<\/p>\n
But they\u2019re all people who believe that the route to success is this old crossing the aisle, shaking hands, showing Washington works, compromise, process.\u00a0\u00a0How many media people went bananas last week — we played the sound bites for you — when Trump announced that he was not gonna sign this thing, the CR, and that there was gonna be a shutdown?\u00a0Remember A.B. Stoddard?\u00a0\u00a0She went ballistic on Fox News, on you Bret Baier\u2019s show.<\/p>\n
She was beside herself!\u00a0\u00a0She could barely speak because the president had rejected what?\u00a0\u00a0Process and compromise.\u00a0\u00a0Now, you and I both know that process and compromise in Washington equals Republicans caving and getting nothing and Democrats getting what they want.\u00a0\u00a0And that\u2019s what it is, and that\u2019s what A.B. Stoddard was upset about.\u00a0\u00a0(impression) “Trump should realize he\u2019s got the losing position here.\u00a0\u00a0That would be immature thing to do.<\/p>\n
“Trump should realize he\u2019s got nowhere to go on this, that he lost the House.\u00a0\u00a0Trump should realize it! He should take what he should get, can get, and be thankful for it.” And when Trump didn\u2019t do that — when he said, “Hell, no, not signing this thing.\u00a0\u00a0Government shutdown” — and then starts trying to lay blame on the Democrats, they go apoplectic on the basis that Trump has rejected the way Washington works: Compromise and process.<\/p>\n
Well, there are people advising Trump to do just what people like A.B. Stoddard wanted him to do.\u00a0\u00a0“Take a deal, Mr. President!\u00a0\u00a0Take $1.6 billion, take $2 billion and get as much as you can.”\u00a0\u00a0But this is how we show people we are governing.\u00a0\u00a0This is how we show people that we\u2019re cooperating.\u00a0\u00a0Well, that\u2019s not what Trump was elected to do.\u00a0\u00a0Trump was elected precisely to overwhelm and overcome this process because we always end up on the short end of the stick on it.<\/p>\n
We have been fed up for years and years working under these concepts of process and compromise where we always end up losing and our politicians that cave into it are then praised to the hilt as mature. “They\u2019re growing in office!” But we always end up losing somehow — legislatively or otherwise — to the Democrats.<\/p>\n
Well, Trump has totally eschewed process and compromise now.\u00a0\u00a0And his position is that until the Democrats are forthcoming with the amount of money he wants for border security, the government is gonna remain shut down.\u00a0And so it is.<\/p>\n
So now there are people who are thinking that this compromise is never gonna happen, meaning the Democrats are never, ever, particularly with control of the House only the January 3rd away, they\u2019re never gonna cave. They don\u2019t think Trump has any leverage and they think they have it all.<\/p>\n
And they think if they can humiliate Trump that they might be able to cause some of you in Trump\u2019s base to get frustrated, throw your hands up and give up and fade away and realize that you can\u2019t beat the swamp and never, ever again vote for somebody like Trump who says that that\u2019s what he\u2019s going to do. That\u2019s what they have at stake. And they\u2019re so close to it in their minds that they can taste it.<\/p>\n
Now, the Donald Trump of the campaign, what do you think he\u2019d be doing right now? I tell you what I think he\u2019d be doing. I think he would already have amassed a pile of money, unused, from other areas of the executive branch and the various budgets. And I think that he would have already started on the process of building the wall and that Congress would be going nuts like they are now, like they do anyway. The Democrats would be going absolutely bonkers, and the media would be going absolutely bonkers.<\/p>\n
I saw that Dinesh D\u2019Souza had a tweet where he thinks Trump ought to deliver a major address to the nation on the importance of immigration policy and trade policy, the importance of both those to national security and prosperity.<\/p>\n
I like the idea of a national address. I don\u2019t know the networks would give him the time, though, if he requested it. You know, they don\u2019t have to. But a national address that\u2019s written and promptered could explain what\u2019s going on and why. Doing it during the break between Christmas and New Year\u2019s might not get the largest audience.<\/p>\n
We also had the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was on I think Fox News over the weekend, one of the Sunday shows, and he said that Trump is willing to accept less money to build the wall. He said the new offer is between Trump\u2019s $5.7 billion request and the $1.3 billion the Democrats are offering. Mulvaney said he\u2019s waiting to hear back from Schumer, but he hasn\u2019t heard anything.<\/p>\n
Dick Turban said that all we need is technology along the border like drones instead of some medieval wall. This is such caca. You will find walls around every important business or every important wealthy person\u2019s estate, because they do work. This is absurd. This is just distracting.<\/p>\n
This has now become — the Democrats, there are two things involved. Trump doesn\u2019t get a win, and there isn\u2019t gonna be anything done that would interrupt the flow of illegal immigrants to the United States because the Democrat Party wants them. The Democrat Party needs them and they\u2019re not gonna agree to anything. So there isn\u2019t gonna be an agreement here.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s going to be a showdown of power, executive branch power versus congressional power. And there are many people who think the president has the executive power to start building this wall with money that\u2019s already been allocated in budgets that exist in the executive branch and he can and he does. There will be hell to pay.<\/p>\n
I mean, if you think this is bad, the minute a wall\u2019s construction has actually begun with money that Chuck Schumer and his gang don\u2019t think they participated in allocating or appropriate, they go nuts and they start shouting and yelling “impeachment.” But the fact of the matter is — and the Washington swamp would be too. And I\u2019m sure that there are people in the administration they do not want anything like that to happen, that they think the only way out of this is a negotiated settlement where nobody gets exactly what they want from both sides, just the usual way that these kinds of things end up being settled.<\/p>\n
Does anybody remember, for example, how the 1995 budget deal was solved? Or any other government shutdown. Do any of you remember what happened to end them? I will wager you don\u2019t. I will wager there\u2019s not a one of you that remembers what happened to end any of those shutdowns. You\u2019d have to go look it up. You\u2019d have to Google it. You\u2019d have to Wikipedia it. You\u2019d have to do something to find out.<\/p>\n
How did the shutdown 11 months ago, the Schumer shutdown over DACA, three day shutdown over DACA, how did that end? Do you remember? My point is nobody ever remembers these things anyway. They don\u2019t remember how they end. This is time to take a stand on a premise that has existed since the Trump campaign. And it is border security. If you want to throw the wall in, go ahead and throw the wall in.<\/p>\n
But I think it\u2019s time to take a shot at breaking these people on this right now. I think it\u2019s time to illustrate that the Democrats are acting like a bunch of spoiled brat little kids when it comes to an issue of national security and prosperity and the rule of law. Don\u2019t forget here we\u2019re talking about illegal immigration.<\/p>\n
The message should continue to be it is the Democrats who do not want to fix this! It\u2019s the Democrats who are saying “no”! It\u2019s the Democrats who are the obstacle to border security or to reopening the government or whatever. It\u2019s the Democrats who want no part of it. It\u2019s the Democrats who are stopping things. It\u2019s the Democrats who won\u2019t cooperate. It\u2019s the Democrats who won\u2019t across the aisle. It\u2019s the Democrats who won\u2019t compromise.<\/p>\n
All of this is true. All of this needs to be part of the messaging. It is the Democrats who are not interested in securing the southern border. It\u2019s the Democrats who are acting like children. It\u2019s the Democrats who are acting like spoiled brats. That is what needs to be illustrated and with every Republican signing on to this, that objective can be reached. It requires full-fledged support for the president and the premise which every Republican should sign on to.<\/p>\n
I know people are quoting polling data, “42% of the American people don\u2019t want a wall.” You\u2019re gonna get polling data that backs up the Democrat during every controversial issue there is. You\u2019re gonna get polling data that shows Republicans are in the minority on everything. Ignore it!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the Democrats willing to damage the country rather than support the president. It\u2019s the Democrats willing to put the country in great peril because they are refusing to shore up the border. It needs to be demonstrated. And to me this is a golden opportunity. Everything we want to do, everything we want to teach people about the Democrats and illustrate is right here on the table, and it\u2019s already happening. We just need to be pointing it out each and every day<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH:\u00a0\u00a0So I checked the email during the break, and people are asking, “Rush, are you sure that Trump can go get unspent federal dollars somewhere and allocate it to whatever he wants?\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t know.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve heard people saying that that\u2019s not constitutional.”\u00a0\u00a0Let me ask you all a question: Where did Barack Hussein O get his $150 billion, much of it in cash, to drop on the tarmac at Tehran International Airport in the midst of the Iran deal negotiations?<\/p>\n
Where did that $150 billion come from?\u00a0\u00a0Did Obama call his buddies at the Fed and say, “We need you to print me some money”?\u00a0\u00a0Did Obama go to various federal agencies?\u00a0\u00a0Did he go to the defense budget or did he go to a bunch of different places and get the money?\u00a0\u00a0Where did he get cash?\u00a0\u00a0Where do you get that much cash?\u00a0\u00a0I think it was $8 billion in cash.\u00a0\u00a0It may be $8 million, I forget.\u00a0\u00a0But it was a hell of a lot.\u00a0\u00a0Where did Obama get it?\u00a0\u00a0And you\u2019ll notice that nobody in Congress raised a stink about it.<\/p>\n
Nobody in Congress said, “Mr. President, you can\u2019t do that. We didn\u2019t authorize it.\u00a0\u00a0We didn\u2019t appropriate it,” and even if somebody in Congress would have said that, Obama would have said (impression), “I can do it \u2019cause you can\u2019t stop me and I know you won\u2019t and I have the media on my side,” and it would have not changed.\u00a0\u00a0What did we do when Obama said that?\u00a0\u00a0Well, we shouted from the rooftops and we tried to tell everybody that this stunk and that Obama was lying to us about the deal. He gave $150 billion to the mullahs.<\/p>\n
Now, it was also part of a prisoner release.\u00a0\u00a0So some were saying that part of that money was a ransom payment.\u00a0\u00a0The point is that Donald Trump can certainly go find federal money and start building the wall.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m just telling you that he\u2019s probably got a lot of people in his own administration — and I don\u2019t doubt his lawyers are telling him not to do it, either.\u00a0\u00a0I think, in fact, if I may be so bold — and this may not be bold now.\u00a0\u00a0I think other people have probably pointed it out.\u00a0\u00a0But in the early days of the Mueller investigation, Trump\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel…<\/p>\n
The White House counsel. Not personal lawyers, but the White House Office of Legal Counsel, presidential lawyer, presidential adviser and so forth. I will bet you a dollar to a doughnut that almost all if not all, of those lawyers were telling Trump to not criticize Mueller, “Don\u2019t be public. We\u2019ll try to negotiate a deal. We\u2019ll show we\u2019re willing to compromise,” because they\u2019re all Washington people.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re all… Their clients come and go, and presidents come and go.<\/p>\n
But people that live in that town are gonna be there long after presidents come and go, and so their loyalties really are to a system.\u00a0\u00a0Their loyalties really are to a set of circumstances that exist in the establishment inside the Beltway.\u00a0\u00a0So that even Trump\u2019s lawyers that he hired that ostensibly are there to advise him on how to prevail in things probably were preaching compromise.<\/p>\n
They probably were preaching the standard things that lawyers tell clients, “Don\u2019t criticize the prosecutor! “Don\u2019t make \u2019em any angrier at you than they already are,” which I thought would be irrelevant.\u00a0\u00a0They\u2019re gonna be angry at Trump as long as he\u2019s alive. But the point is, he didn\u2019t have a whole bunch of Donald Trumps around him.\u00a0\u00a0He\u2019s had people around him trying to rein him in.\u00a0\u00a0And I\u2019m — don\u2019t doubt that some of them have been acting on what they think are his best interests.<\/p>\n
I mean, if you live and work in that town and if the coin of the realm in that town is compromise and process… Here. Just to repeat this, grab sound bite No. 23.\u00a0\u00a0This A.B. Stoddard.\u00a0\u00a0I referenced this earlier.\u00a0\u00a0You may not have heard this last week.\u00a0\u00a0It was last Thursday the Fox News Channel.\u00a0\u00a0This was after Trump vetoed the budget and began the shutdown. Listen to this meltdown…<\/p>\n
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STODDARD: The nation\u2019s fourth graders know this is no way to run a lemonade stand. This is completely irresponsible. The markets are rattling on the prospect of a shutdown. The president time and again is contemptuous of process and of compromise. He doesn\u2019t have 60 votes. He must compromise. He was all for a DACA deal. He refused to take it. He took four positions on the Goodlatte bill.<\/p>\n
BAIER: I get it. I get it.<\/p>\n
STODDARD: He refuses to do the hard work.<\/p>\n
BAIER: If he listens to the Mark Meadows and the Jim Jordans and the other people on the House floor \u2014<\/p>\n
STODDARD: They don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about! This is political malpractice. They\u2019re wrong!<\/p>\n
RUSH: (impression) “They don\u2019t know what the president… The — the — the congressional caucus there, the Freedom Caucus, they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about! Anybody urging Trump to do anything than compromise doesn\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about.\u00a0\u00a0He doesn\u2019t have 60 votes. That means he\u2019s got to compromise.”\u00a0\u00a0He doesn\u2019t even… They don\u2019t even need 60 votes for this!\u00a0\u00a0If Mitch McConnell really wanted to act like the guy running the Senate and wanted to make the rules, they don\u2019t even need 60 votes for this!<\/p>\n
You and I know this!\u00a0\u00a0But that\u2019s not how the town thinks.\u00a0\u00a0The town thinks, “We got these rules, and they\u2019re sacrosanct, and we dare not touch them.”\u00a0\u00a0But the Democrats always do.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes it comes back to bite \u2019em, but the Democrats will do whatever they have to do whenever to win.\u00a0\u00a0We could fix this. Mitch McConnell could fix this so he doesn\u2019t need 60 votes.\u00a0\u00a0Now, it\u2019s not just as simple as me saying it.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a process, and it would require taking a lot of hits in the media.<\/p>\n
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It would require taking a lot of incoming fire that they\u2019re not used to talking about, not to degree that they were on this.\u00a0\u00a0But you hear her. “Political malpractice.\u00a0\u00a0The markets are reacting to this.\u00a0\u00a0The president time and time again is contemptuous of process and compromise.”\u00a0\u00a0My point to you is that I think a large number of people called his advisers (who surround him) believe exactly that.\u00a0\u00a0And I think his first team of lawyers did via Mueller.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe even the current crop of lawyers believes that way.<\/p>\n
“Process and compromise.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the coin of the realm. It\u2019s the way it works here.” Well, that being the case, it\u2019s one of the reasons why our side always ends up coming up short, which is why Trump was elected to kind of blow all of that up, which he is in the process of doing every which number of ways.\u00a0\u00a0And it is causing the predictable meltdown reaction. Nobody should shy away from it because of the reaction.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH:\u00a0 <\/span>I need to make a correction, folks.\u00a0 <\/span>The Iranian deal was not $150 billion.\u00a0 <\/span>It was $1.7 billion.\u00a0 <\/span>It came out of something called the judgment fund.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s some aspect of this Iran deal, my memory is, that\u2019s 150-something.\u00a0 <\/span>And I misspoke when I said $150 billion.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s $1.7 billion was the entire deal that Obama arranged to pay Iran in the middle of the negotiations on the Iranian deal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n