RUSH: Here’s Ron in Greeley, Iowa. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Wow. Rush, good to talk to you. Great show as always.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I’ll make it short. The Trump phenomenon is not a hundred percent new. Everybody forgets about Jesse “The Body” Ventura. I’m sure you didn’t.

RUSH: Oh, jeez, you know what? Can you hang on? I took your call and totally ignored the clock. I didn’t look at the clock. I ran out of time. I’m sorry. My bad. Good call, bad host.

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RUSH: I’m gonna get back to Ron in Greeley. here in just in time. I’m already getting… Snerdley, I’m getting allegations here that I purposely took that call with only five seconds remaining because I “don’t want to expose the Jesse Ventura conspiracy theories that everybody knows are true.” I didn’t know there were any Jesse Ventura conspiracy theories. We’re gonna get back here to Ron just a second.

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RUSH: Now, back to Ron in Greeley. Ron, I really… You know, I got caught. I looked at the secondhand, not the minute hand, and I thought I had much more time than I had. I didn’t mean to be rude like that and I’m glad you were able to hold on so that you could make the point that you wanted to make about Jesse Ventura.

CALLER: It is your show, Rush; I’ll wait. I just wanted to say that the phenomenon of Trump isn’t 100% new because of Jesse, and what made Jesse was the debates. When they had the RINO and the Democrat and him, the question asked was about educational spending. And the Republican guy was gonna spend this much on education, and the Democrat was gonna spend this much on education, and it came to Jesse. “Well, they spent this much on education last year; I’m gonna find out what they did with that,” and that changed the game right there. They were all scrambling, and for the rest of the debate it was trying to cover no more politics as unusual. It was on your show. That never made the national media. I only heard that on your show. How long ago was that?

RUSH: Well, I don’t know when Jesse ran, but when he did we had him on the show. I remember the reason we had him on this show. He was confronted by some student. He was standing in a door some university doing a —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: — James Maddox impersonation or Lester Maddox impersonation. Some student standing out there demanding this and demanding that, and he said, “Why should we pay for it? If you want to go to school, why don’t you pay for it yourself?” And everybody erupted in applause, and everybody said, “Yeah! Where’s this been?”

CALLER: That happened after the election, though. He’d already won.

RUSH: So I made a call, we had him on the air the next day, and, you know, he was who he was. And I told him… I told him, we were gonna be watching. “We’re gonna be watching,” and he eventually —

CALLER: Imploded.

RUSH: He did. He eventually… It all got to him. I don’t know that Jesse “the Body” actually ever thought he would win.

CALLER: Yeah, I thought he was cartoonish, and I do think Trump is cartoonish, and I don’t think that our next president is gonna be the man to comment on the menstrual cycle of a moderator in a debate. (pause) I just don’t.

RUSH: Well, Trump —

CALLER: I’m glad for what he’s saying. I’m glad he’s coming out there and bringing issues up.

RUSH: Well, but Trump said that that is not what he was talking about.

CALLER: Well, yeah. Well, okay. (snickers)

RUSH: Well, he did. I’m just telling you what he said. He said that would… He said that’s what he called deviant. It’s deviant to think that. People who think that were deviants, like you. So in Trump’s world you’re a deviant out there.

CALLER: Yeah. Well, it’s just… I like the political un-correctness. I mean, we need that. We really need that now. And he’s not the only one, though. I’m a firm Ted Cruz supporter, and he’s been on the cusp of it, too. But he doesn’t get the glory and the grandiose that Trump does.

RUSH: Well, nobody does!

CALLER: Ben Carson. There are a lot of good candidates who are speaking out and speaking their mind, but they just don’t get the media attention that Trump does.

RUSH: What are you saying here? Are you saying that you are seeing some candidates that are starting to sound like Trump, or that they’re just…?

CALLER: No, no. These guys are up front with it early on, too, but they’re not as grandiose or — how do you want to say it? — in your face.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah.

CALLER: You know, they’re blunt. I mean, they come back with what needs to be said. They’re not being politically correct about anything, but they just don’t get the attention that Trump gets.

RUSH: You think Trump’s gonna implode like Jesse “the Body” did?

CALLER: I think Trump’s too smooth for that. He’s pretty high on himself already. Jesse was, you know, good with himself. But when he started winning, when he won… I don’t know if he got too high on himself, but, ahhhh, I don’t think the governorship was really for him. Did he win two terms?

RUSH: Who, Jesse?

CALLER: Yeah, I can’t remember.

RUSH: I can’t, either, so it must not be that memorable.

CALLER: (laughing) But he did some great things, and it was politically incorrect.

RUSH: For a while. But you know what happened? Let me tell you when the beginning of the end was for Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Because you have a point. I mean, you’re saying that you in effect don’t want to elect a showman. You want somebody substantive and serious and not somebody that’s gonna be flying off the handle with what you think are kind of questionable comments.

What happened to Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the word leaked out that after he was elected, he was serving in office, that basically what was going on in the governor’s mansion was a bunch of pizza parties every night. It wasn’t being taken very seriously, the job wasn’t, it was pizza parties here, pizza parties there, and the voters said, “Wait a minute, now. We elected this guy. We expected him to actually do some things based on his campaign.”

At first tried he to, tried to implement some things. But, you know, I ran into him at a golf tournament out in Lake Tahoe some years after he had left office, and I was on the putting green, I was talking to Michael Wilbon. It was the year I started ESPN, I was gonna start, it was the summer, it was July of whatever that year was, and I was on the putting green with Michael Wilbon who came up and welcomed me to ESPN.

And Ventura walks out of some building and comes to the putting green and literally storms up to me and starts asking me some question about government spending. “Rush, do you think –” I don’t even remember what the question was. I wasn’t there for that, so I just said, “No, no, I don’t think that’s the case at all.”

“Well, I do. I do.” And he started in on something. I wish I could remember what it was. I have one of the greatest memories in the world, and I just can’t remember this, though. But he was still into it then. It was not a conspiracy thing. I forget what it was. But, you know, I love all these guys. I mean, these people are funny in their own right, their personalities in their own right. And the fact that occasionally now and then one of them can upset the political applecart, you just have to love.