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<\/p>\nRUSH: Welcome back the EIB Network, and Rush Limbaugh back at it after a couple of weeks off for Christmas. Not much happening. We are happy to have here with us the president of the United States, Donald Trump. It\u2019s so great to have you back here, sir. Thank you for joining us.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Rush, very much.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay. I have had a lot of people say to me — they\u2019re reacting to the media reaction of the action we took, that you took against the Quds Force commander in Iran. Mr. President, people are being scared to death, their kids are being scared to death out of their minds that somehow this is gonna start World War III, that we are now more unsafe than we have ever been. Could you explain to people why what you\u2019ve done here makes us safer, why it was necessary, and why what we did was right.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, this should have been done for the last 15 to 20 years, him in particular. He was their real military leader. He\u2019s a terrorist. He was designated a terrorist by President Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it except give them $150 billion and — even more incredibly — $1.8 billion in cash. You hear me talking about that all the time, and you talk about it all the time. He gave them all this money. He never wanted to do anything about it. President Bush should have taken him out. He\u2019s responsible for the IEDs.<\/p>\n
Those are the roadside bombs and the bombs that blow up all over the place — and then the sister, which is the big one, the big version, that actually knocks out tanks and kills everybody within earshot. A really horrible weapon. He\u2019s responsible for all those incredible young people over at Walter Reed — where they do such a great job, by the way — where they lose their arms and their legs and all. He gave so much of that technology. Much of that stuff was made in Iran. And he should have been taken out a long time ago. And we had a shot at it, and we took him out. And we\u2019re a lot safer now because of it. We\u2019ll see what happens. We\u2019ll see what the response is, if any. But you\u2019ve seen what I said our response will be.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, yeah.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Our country is a lot safer, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: They said they\u2019ve got 21 targets they\u2019re looking at, and you came back and said, “Fine. I\u2019ve got 52 of yours.” I don\u2019t think that they are accustomed to a president like you, sir. I mean, you just mentioned it. Obama basically appeased them. Obama worked with this guy on the Iranian nuclear deal. What…? A lot of things had to surprise you when you assumed office and found out some things that had been done previously in policy. What was the purpose of American policy with Iran prior to your presidency?<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: I don\u2019t think they had a purpose. I don\u2019t think they knew what was happening. Why did he give them $150 billion, much of it going back into terror? If you look at what\u2019s happening… When I first came into office, I went to the Pentagon, and they showed me 18 “sites of confliction,” meaning conflict, over there. And every one of them was started by Iran, either their soldiers or they paid for soldiers, soldiers for hire. I have no idea what they tried to do with appeasement.<\/p>\n
And I can tell you, the Logan Act… If there was ever an act that should have been used, they should look at the Obama administration and John Kerry, the Logan Act, because what he was doing with Iran and the relationship that they built up and the things that he said, I would certainly love to see that be looked at because I think John Kerry was… Personally, I think he was advising them. I think that the Obama administration was just letting them get away with murder — in the true sense murder.<\/p>\n
And, you know, right after they made the deal, it wasn\u2019t like they were respected. They treated the United States worse than ever before. In fact, I said, “At least give him a little respect,” because they treated… They got worse. They actually got more hostile. They took the $150 billion and they took the $1.8 billion in cash, and they got worse. And, if you remember, right before the payment was made, they took 10 sailors.<\/p>\n
And they humiliated those sailors, and they humiliated our country with the sailors down on their knees. And the only reason they released them was they wanted their first payment. It was just before the payment. If they had taken them after they got the money, they would have never released them. They\u2019d be there now. Well, they would be there now with me. But they would be there for a long period of time. But you remember the 10 sailors that were —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: — 15 feet across the line, probably they weren\u2019t. They don\u2019t even know if they were in Iranian waters. But they said they were slightly in Iranian waters. So they humiliated them. But they released them because the money was due the following day, and they said, “Oh, we don\u2019t want to…” Hey, why should they turn down $150 billion over the 10 sailors? But they humiliated those sailors and our country.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, he also lifted sanctions on Soleimani as part of the Iran deal. And it looks like, to me, anyway, that Obama looked and that administration looked at building Iran up as some way stabilizing the region. As though Israel\u2019s not the good guys, as though we\u2019re not the good guys, that Iran needs to be made stronger — this is what they believed — otherwise that whole region is kind of a tinderbox. But the thing that really is true about this is the Middle East has changed in priority. Because of the massive improvements made in domestic energy in the United States, we\u2019re no longer dependent on that region.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Right. Well, it\u2019s right, and one of the things that changed… I know you talk about it. If you go back 10 years or eight years or maybe even five years, Israel was the king of the Congress, right? Our Congress protected Israel and fought for Israel. Now you look at the way the Democrats in Congress are treating them, where you have AOC and you have Tlaib and you have Omar, and they are actually, you know, anti-Semitic. They are totally against Israel. The things that they\u2019ve said…<\/p>\n
You go back to the past and you look at the things that they\u2019ve said about Israel and Jewish people, it\u2019s incredible. Ten years ago, that would have been unacceptable. It would have been… It would have been… Nobody could have even believed it. I still can\u2019t believe it! You know, I\u2019m a little bit old-fashioned, right, in that sense, \u2019cause I\u2019ve grown up and there was always great protection and reverence for Israel, and now it\u2019s the opposite. In the Democrats, it\u2019s almost… It\u2019s almost a negative. They\u2019re going out and what they do for Tlaib and what they do for Omar — Representative Omar, Minnesota — and AOC, I think it\u2019s incredible the way they talk about Israel. It just was unthinkable to do that 10 years ago and sooner.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I actually think that you\u2019ve had a role in driving them even more insane than they were. Let me give you some evidence. Let\u2019s go back to the day you came down the escalator and announced your candidacy. You announced the slogan Make America Great Again, and, all of a sudden, Make America Great Again becomes some wildly controversial prospect. And I\u2019m asking myself, “What in the world is controversial at all? How can anybody disagree with America being great, becoming great, remaining great?” and yet it was. How do you explain that?<\/p>\n
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THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, politics has changed a lot over the last couple of years. For instance, I want low taxes. They want to raise your taxes. How do you think that works? I couldn\u2019t win as a politician. I don\u2019t think Abe Lincoln could win as a politician. Borders. They want open borders. When you see the people that we\u2019re sending back and we\u2019re capturing now at record levels, in many cases they\u2019re murderers and they\u2019re people, they\u2019re drug dealers, and it\u2019s incredible. They want open borders. That means all of these people are gonna be pouring in.<\/p>\n
And, of course, good ones will come in too. But you have tremendous numbers of really bad people, including murderers and rapists and others. They want open borders. They want sanctuary cities. They don\u2019t want a strong military based on everything — I mean, we have to fight like crazy to get the strong military, and we have to give up things that we wouldn\u2019t give up if we had the House, as an example, if we were able to have enough. You know, we\u2019ve always needed their vote because it was always very close.<\/p>\n
In fact, the first two years we had a very, you know, tiny majority, so we always needed their votes. But when you see they want higher taxes, right? They want much more regulation. You know, I cut regulations more than any president in history by far, even though they were there for four and eight years and, in one case more than that, we\u2019ve got the all-time record, that was probably as important or more important as the tax cuts, the biggest — including Ronald Reagan — the biggest tax cut we\u2019ve ever had.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re actually taking in more revenue now than we did when we had the higher taxes because the economy\u2019s doing so well. But, you know, when you see them with open borders, Rush, you say — and sanctuary cities and all of these other things — you say, “Where are they coming from?” Well, Israel is sort of the same. I put that in that same category. As far as I\u2019m concerned, they\u2019re anti-Israel, totally anti-Israel.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, it\u2019s always perplexed me that you have drawn them out. They have now — with Twitter in the past two or three days since the attack on Soleimani, you literally have the Democrat Party and elements of that party openly supporting Iran, an enemy of the United States, openly supporting the terrorist actions of that country, and this is a country that beheads homosexuals and transgenders \u2013<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.<\/p>\n
RUSH: — and has no human rights for the very constituency the Democrat Party claims to represent. Yet here they are tweeting their support for these people \u2013<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Right.<\/p>\n
RUSH: — simply in opposition to you.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: That\u2019s amazing. Like, as an example, take the wall. They were always for the wall. And then I wanted it, and they went against it. In fact, I said, if I had it to do again, I would have come out totally against the wall and I would have gotten their votes. Okay? All I had to do was come out against the wall. “I am opposed to building the wall.” And we would have gotten all the votes we needed.<\/p>\n
No, it\u2019s almost like they\u2019ll try and do whatever is the opposite. I think they\u2019ve lost their minds, you want to know the truth. I really do. It\u2019s a terrible thing to say. Nobody\u2019s ever seen anything like it. Like even impeachment hoax, you take a look at that, and they have nothing, they have nothing. With one of the biggest investigations in history, they found nothing, the Mueller report, they found absolutely — think of it — they spent $45 million, two years, it\u2019s a hoax.<\/p>\n
They spent all of that time, all of that money, had brilliant people that happened to be, you know, very, very — they were crazed — they were crazed. I mean, these people were dying to find something on Trump. They found nothing. I think there\u2019s very few people that you\u2019ve ever met who could have had that. They had so many investigators, they were calling people that I haven\u2019t seen in years, and they got nothing.<\/p>\n
Think of that, nothing. Very few people — and, by the way, I\u2019m sure they looked at my taxes, they looked at everything you had to look at, they looked at everything. And $45 million, and much more than that in the true sense, you know, the real sense, it was much more than that. And they had 18 — I used to call them 13 angry Democrats, but they increased it to 18 angry Democrats \u2013<\/p>\n
RUSH: Full party.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: — and very smart. Many were tied up with Clinton. They were involved with Clinton. But these people couldn\u2019t find anything on Trump. They would have loved — if I had a parking ticket, it would have been a major story. They found nothing. Even I was very impressed with how clean I am, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: You ought to be. You may be cleaner than any previous president that we could think of. Anyway, I gotta take a quick timeout. We have President Trump with us for the remaining part of the program, the last of the half hour, and we\u2019ll continue with him right after this.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: And we are back with President Trump. You mentioned the impeachment hoax. Nancy Pelosi has not delivered these two articles of impeachment that are, frankly, both of them are jokes. What do you suspect is happening here with this? What is the politics of this? What are they trying to achieve here? I mean, I know throw you out of office and all, but what\u2019s the point here, not sending these articles over?<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think what they\u2019re trying to do is affect the election illegally. That\u2019s what they\u2019re trying to do. But the reason that they\u2019re not sending it because they\u2019re — they are a joke. They are not crimes. There is nothing there. They found nothing. We went through two years of a Mueller report, you know that better than anybody, nobody covered it better. And we went through two years —<\/p>\n
RUSH: I think I\u2019m more frustrated by it than you are. You\u2019ve had to deal with it. But it makes a lot of us livid —<\/p>\n
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THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.<\/p>\n
RUSH: — because there\u2019s nothing, everything to this has been made up. It\u2019s worse than a hoax, the first part of it was a coup, and this is just the continuation of it.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, it\u2019s so sad for our country. I mean, think of it. We\u2019re fighting with Iran, we\u2019re fighting with all of these different places, and, in many cases, doing great, making trade deals, doing so good, our country is doing so good, but I have to spend, and my team has to spend, time on this stuff. They found nothing. Just think of that. For two years an unlimited budget, unlimited talent and they found nothing, and they came up with two articles that aren\u2019t even a crime.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, there was nothing to find. It was all made up. I mean, that\u2019s the frustrating thing here. It was all made up. There was nothing to find. There was nothing to investigate.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: They created a situation that was false, that was fraudulent, and then they investigated the false, fraudulent situation, and they found nothing. It\u2019s hard to believe. The whole thing\u2019s hard to believe. And now, on top of it, they come up with two articles and they put it before — now, what happened is she doesn\u2019t want to get a vote because how can anybody possibly — it\u2019s totally partisan. You know, this is not what they had in mind as they call them the founders, right, they keep saying the founders, founders, but the founders didn\u2019t have this in mind. You understand, it\u2019s like I\u2019ve never heard the word “founders” so much in my life.<\/p>\n
RUSH: They don\u2019t have anything in common with the founders anyway.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. We got I guess 196 or 197 to nothing with the Republican Party, plus we had three Democrat votes, and one person actually left the Democratic — the Democrat Party over it and joined the Republican Party, as you know.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Speaking of which, the Republican Party hasn\u2019t been this unified in I don\u2019t know how long.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Never. It\u2019s never — they say maybe never. And one thing I gave the Democrats credit for, they\u2019ve always been very vicious, and they — and that\u2019s not necessarily a good thing, but what is a good thing is they always stuck together. And here the Republicans stuck together even better than the Democrats. So we had, like, 196 or 197 to nothing. It\u2019s unheard of. You know that because they\u2019re always breaking off and — I don\u2019t know — and this is really for 70 years, 80 years, you know, for some reason it\u2019s in the DNA, they just don\u2019t seem — and in this case they have been so good. And I think the Senate will be the same way \u2019cause the Senate knows it\u2019s a hoax. Everybody knows it\u2019s a hoax.<\/p>\n
RUSH: The Republican Party\u2019s now the party of Trump, I mean, there\u2019s no question about it.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I just think it\u2019s the party of common sense. You know, I view it — somebody said, \u201cAre you conservative?\u201d Well, I\u2019m conservative, but I think it\u2019s common sense. It was — like what we did two days ago with this horrible terrorist. He was a terrorist, you know, they don\u2019t want to call him a terrorist. Now the Democrats are trying to make him sound like he was this wonderful human being.<\/p>\n
RUSH: He was a poet. Yeah, he was a poet.<\/p>\n
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THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, he\u2019s a poet.<\/p>\n
RUSH: He\u2019s reading poetry out there.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, when you read the New York Times and you read the Washington Post, that are totally fake newspapers, by the way, that would have both been out of business except I won, I wonder what happens in — hopefully in five years, right? Hopefully in five years. But I wonder what happens to those newspapers. Who knows. But they do well now, although if you look at the unfunded liability probably they don\u2019t do so well.<\/p>\n
But you look at what they write, it\u2019s so fake, it\u2019s so phony, and now they\u2019re trying to build him just like they did al-Baghdadi. Al-Baghdadi was the number-one terrorist in the world. We got him. They wrote very little about it, relatively speaking. That story disappeared very quickly, as you know. But they tried to build him up into a relatively wonderful man. He was a total bad guy \u2013<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: He founded ISIS. He was doing it again. He was trying to do it again. You know, I wiped out ISIS. During our administration, we wiped out the entire caliphate — a hundred percent of the caliphate — and we wiped him out and, you know, got little credit. But our people know that we did it, Rush, because of people like you and Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and so many others. Your friends at Fox & Friends in the morning are so good. You know, people are getting it. They really get it. And because of social media and my Twitter. Without Twitter, I think we\u2019d be lost. We wouldn\u2019t be able to get the truth out.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah, that\u2019s a good point. People still say to me, “You need to ask him to stop tweeting so much.” I tell \u2019em, “Look, it\u2019s the only way he can get his message out, and it\u2019s not a negative at all.” People say, “He needs to dial back the drama, needs to dial back the chaos.” I disagree with that talk.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I think you\u2019re doing exactly what you have to do, given the circumstances presented to you.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I wish I didn\u2019t have to do it. I wish we had legitimate newspapers and legitimate media. We don\u2019t. I mean, it\u2019s… Much of it is really… I call it corrupt. It\u2019s the corrupt media. It\u2019s — and, you know, it\u2019s very interesting. You understand this better than anybody. If they do a story on me, I immediately know if it\u2019s false or not false — and I don\u2019t mind a bad story if it\u2019s right. But I know. A person reading the story doesn\u2019t know that it\u2019s false, so I\u2019m able to tell \u2019em through social media.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Right.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: I don\u2019t even call it Twitter. I call it social media, \u2019cause it goes to everything. You know, it goes to Facebook, it goes to Instagram, and we have hundreds of millions of people. You know, we have a tremendous amount of people. Just on one site I\u2019m up to, I guess, close to 70 million people.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah, they\u2019re jealous as they can be of that too.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Now, for Facebook, I had dinner —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Of course they want you to stop.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/APP-100119-Zuckerberg.jpg\")
THE PRESIDENT: I had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg the other day, and he said, “I\u2019d like to congratulate you,” in front of a large group of people. So I\u2019m not… (chuckles) But he said, “I\u2019d like to congratulate you, you\u2019re number one on Facebook,” and, you know, it\u2019s incredible, and that\u2019s —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Wait a minute! Wait a minute. You had dinner with Zuckerberg?<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: I did. I did. I had dinner with him.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Oh-ho! Wait \u2019til the world finds out about that.<\/p>\n
THE PRESDIENT: Oh, I know.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I guess they just did.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: You have semi-breaking news. I guess a couple of people might have reported it but they\u2019re not like you. So I just got a list, the TSL Power 50. The number one show on radio has a guy named Rush Limbaugh. Did you ever hear of him, Rush Limbaugh?<\/p>\n
RUSH: (laughing)<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Number 1. Have you? This is the 50 “most influential and listened to streaming talk show[s] in the country,” Rush Limbaugh number 1. So I hope you saw that. But now we\u2019ve just made your interview.<\/p>\n
RUSH: (laughing)<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: But your viewers have to know that. Your listeners have to know that. Number 1. Great job.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you, sir. You know, your timing is impeccable. You\u2019re a broadcast specialist from The Apprentice and so forth, and you\u2019ve gotten right up to the break here. I can\u2019t thank you enough for this. I wish we had even more time. People love you, sir —<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well —<\/p>\n
RUSH: — and they are grateful, and they know that you still are focused on them —<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: I love \u2019em.<\/p>\n
RUSH: — that you\u2019re still implementing the agenda that you ran on.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: I love \u2019em. I love \u2019em, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: They know that too. Thank you so much for your time and have a great, great rest of this day and year.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you. Thank you.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I hope it\u2019s the greatest year of your life, sir.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Rush, and thank you for everything, and congratulations on your incredible success. I really… It\u2019s so important for this country what you do. Thank you very much, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you, sir.<\/p>\n
THE PRESIDENT: Thanks. Bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE PRESIDENT: He should have been taken out a long time ago. And we had a shot at it, and we took him out. And we're a lot safer now because of it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":332725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n