RUSH: Peter in Madras, Oregon, glad to have you. Glad you waited, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, it’s great to finally talk to you, Rush. It’s awesome.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I was just wanting to point out that the Democrat voters really don’t have any candidates, and I think that they’re all kind of leaning towards Trump. And I don’t think it’s because —
RUSH: Now, wait. Wait. That’s a… Hold it. Hold it. You’ve lost me. This is another example. You said you don’t think the Democrats have any candidates, but they do. They’ve got Hillary and they’ve got Martin O’Malley and they’ve got Biden and they’ve got Bernie Sanders, and there are people excited about all of them.
CALLER: I don’t know. It doesn’t really seem like that. I mean… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I always see the other side of it. But when I was listening to Trump on 60 Minutes, he also talked about that it didn’t matter if it cost him votes, he still wanted to get national health care that would work for everybody. And, I mean, along with that, and his tax increases for the hedge fund and all of the other things. I think that… I’m in full support, I’m a big Trump guy, and that’s why I like him is because he has his own thing, and he is gonna do what he wants to do, so —
RUSH: Okay, so what you’re doing, then, is you are hoping Democrats are losing interest in Hillary and Sanders and the others, and you’re hoping that they will sidle up to Trump?
CALLER: Well, I don’t… I’m not hoping. I think it’s already happened and we just don’t see it yet. I think that there’s so many registered Democrats that are in favor of Trump, but I could be completely wrong. I’m kind of speculating.
RUSH: Hang on, now. Where have you seen that? The only place you can see that is in polling data. Where have you seen it?
CALLER: Well, I mean, when you had your polling data on African-American votes, I think you said it was 25% are in favor of —
RUSH: 25%.
CALLER: Yeah, 25% of them are in favor of Trump.
RUSH: That is true. And they would predominantly all of them are Democrat, do vote Democrat.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So you think it’s even bigger than that.
CALLER: Well, I think it extends even more than that. I think that you’re getting a lot of people that see Bernie Sanders, you know, his taxing the corporations ’cause they’re making too much money, that’s unrealistic. But when they see Trump’s tax plan, it’s a lot more viable, and, you know, it’s a lot more realistic. And I think that he’s kind of swaying voters away from that crowd.
RUSH: Okay. So here’s what we have here, folks. I’m pretty confident of this. What we have here is someone who likes Trump and is seeing some things that he doesn’t believe are being accurately reported in either the news or in polling data. One of the things is that the excitement level that Democrats have across the board for their candidates is not really what the media would like us to believe. So I’m assuming here that what you really think is the media is not giving us the real full story here, that Trump’s popularity is much more massive than what it’s being said to be, either as reflected in polling data or just the general tenor of news stories.
But when you boil it all down what he’s asking here is how many Democrats might be tempted to vote for Trump down the road. And I don’t know if that would become relevant until after the primaries are over and Trump actually is the nominee. In the primary process, there are some open primary states where that could matter and be a factor, but not enough to gauge any kind of national indication or activity.
So the idea that there’s not nearly the excitement for Democrat candidates that the media would portray, it’s possible. It’s possible. But again all of it is supposition right now, or in some cases, “Gee, I hope this is happening.” You just hang in there long enough, time will tell.
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RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Starting here with number eight. This was last night on the O’Baxter… (coughing) Excuse me. The O’Reilly Factor, the Fox News Channel. I guess the boycott is over. There was a boycott, right? (interruption) Was there another sit-down with Roger? (interruption) Oh, I missed that, another sit down with Roger? That’s a lot of powwows. Well, anyway, the boycott — whichever way it went either from Fox to Trump or Trump to Fox — was lifted and Trump of us back on from Trump Tower last night with O’Reilly, and O’Reilly said, “Did Putin go up to your office and did you guys, like, bond or anything this week? He is in town.” You get along with Putin?
TRUMP: No, I didn’t know anything about him coming to my office. But I will tell you that I think in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A and our president is not doing so well.
O’BAXTER: Okay.
TRUMP: They did not look good together. Putin is now taking over what we started, and he’s going into Syria, and he frankly wants to fight ISIS, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. You know, I said that a year ago, and everybody said, “Oh, that’s terrible.” If he wants to fight ISIS, let him fight ISIS! Why do we always have to do everything? But he wants to go in, he wants to fight ISIS. I’m looking at Assad and thinking, maybe he’s better than the kind of people that we’re supposed to be backing.
RUSH: Now, before you throw that out, I want to take you back to me on this program about 15 months ago when this whole story hit that it was Assad gassing his own people, and posed the possibility that I couldn’t believe that. I think it was ISIS and disguised as Syrians opposed to Assad that were being gassed and so forth, and they were leveling the charge that they were being gassed by Assad. It was actually ISIS doing it, and it turned out that happened to be right. And so here’s Trump. He’s right on that. He’s on this page.
The one thing that Putin has not done is attack ISIS yet. He has attacked our allies. He might get around to attacking ISIS. But you know what my favorite part of this bite? O’Reilly’s question is: “Did Putin go up to your office and did you guys, like, bond or anything this week? He is in town.” And Trump says, “No, I didn’t know anything about him coming to my office,” meaning: He coulda shown up there, yeah, with everybody else who does, but I didn’t see him. I wasn’t there. I didn’t know anything about his going to my office.
Instead of saying, “No, he didn’t come to my office; I don’t know anything about him going,” as though, “He did go but I didn’t happen to be there,” and so he got snubbed. So Trump has said, by the way, that he did not think what Brady said was an endorsement. Just so you know in there. He’s not gonna throw Brady overboard. Trump himself is has posited that thought. But Trump has also said that Putin is a much stronger and better leader for his country than Obama is for ours. (interruption) No, I’m not… I’m just saying, in addition to what he said here about Putin, he has also said that Putin’s a much better leader for Russia than Obama is for us.
Looking at the clock. I’ve got a couple of bites here. Forbes is estimating that Trump’s wealth is not what it is, and Trump is disputing that. We’ve got that. The Trump bites are all over the roster today. Some related to Hillary, some related to Bill Clinton.
Let me come back, put ’em all together and we will continue with your phone calls as well, too, so sit tight, folks.
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RUSH: Quickly back to the phones we go. Paul in Freeport, Maine, welcome, sir, to the program. Hello.
CALLER: Hey. Hey, how are you?
RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you. How are you?
CALLER: I’m excellent. Thank you. (silence)
RUSH: (pouring into glass)
CALLER: Did I lose you?
RUSH: (silence)
CALLER: Come on.
RUSH: Hello?
CALLER: Hello, Rush? Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’m having trouble with my phone. I’m sorry.
RUSH: Trouble with your phone. Oh.
CALLER: Yep.
RUSH: You want me to go to somebody else and come back?
CALLER: Oh, no, I’m good now. I’m good. Thank you.
RUSH: Okay. Okay.
CALLER: So, I didn’t hear your question, sir.
RUSH: I don’t have one.
CALLER: Oh, okay. I’m actually calling… The reason why I called is I heard that caller before who mentioned that he thinks there’s maybe a lot of Democrats who are leaning towards Trump and that just haven’t come out yet. Uh, I’m one of those Democrats. I’m a registered Democrat up hear in Maine, and I usually vote who I think is gonna do the best job. I voted for Republicans, independents, Democrats. But I do tend to lean to the left. But I tell you what, Donald Trump got my attention when he started talking about immigration.
He got my attention when he wasn’t afraid to talk and say things in ways that nobody else in this country would. And, you know, looking at his tax plan, I don’t pretend to understand everything about it. But on the surface, right now, still looking at it from the 30- or 40,000-foot level, you know, it looks like, you know, there may be some substance there. That’s definitely worth looking at. You know, he’s got my attention so much that I’m actually considering changing my party affiliation here in Maine so I can vote for him in the Republican primary.
RUSH: Man, oh, man, oh, man! You sound close here to all-in.
CALLER: I… Uh, you know what, Rush? If the elections were to be held today, I think I may just pull that lever for Donald.
RUSH: Did you vote for Obama twice?
CALLER: I did, and I’ve been totally disappointed.
RUSH: No excuse for the second time.
CALLER: You know, I wasn’t a big fan of Mitt Romney, and maybe I should have given him more attention than I did. But, you know, I kind of was hoping to stay the course, and it’s been just a disaster.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the evidence that it was gonna be a disaster was all there in the first four-years.
CALLER: (chuckles) Yeah, I’ve listened to your program for a long time and I probably should have listened to you better back then.
RUSH: Well, it doesn’t matter when you get it right, as long as you ultimately do.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: What is it about the tax plan, Trump’s tax plan that you like?
CALLER: I think the simplification of it, trying to simplify the tax code as much as possible. The numbers, again, I’m not sure how they’re gonna impact everybody, but —
RUSH: You’re a Democrat and it doesn’t bother you that Trump violates political correctness in the way he talks?
CALLER: Not at all. I’m not a politically correct person myself.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: I’m not afraid to mince words, so —
RUSH: Well, there we have it.
CALLER: — it’s good that he is.
RUSH: I hate to be rude, but I’m out of time here, but I thank you for the call. So we had a guy call and say he thinks there’s a lot of Democrats that are supporting Trump, and here’s one in Maine — right on time — saying that he’s one of ’em.
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RUSH: Okay, back now to Trump, and this is classic Trump. This was on CNBC Squawk Box today. John Harwood was interviewing, and they’re talking about his wealth, and Harwood says, “I read this morning that you got $10 billion. Forbes says that you’re four-and-a-half billion, what do you think of the list?”
TRUMP: Number one, I’m a private company. They don’t really know my assets very well. I think that they’re very good people, I like the people at Forbes. They don’t know a lot of the things I own. I don’t think they give me any value for brand, and my brand is very valuable. I’m doing deals right now. In fact, when I leave you I’m signing a branding deal that’s a phenomenal, tremendous, hundreds of millions of dollars in value, all because of my brand. And they give you no value for brand, which I think is fine.
HARWOOD: You think they’re wrong?
TRUMP: And the other thing is there are assets I have that they don’t even know I have ’cause I’m private. So if they value me at four-and-a-half billion dollars, and I’m sure they’ve said I’m very liquid, ’cause I’m extremely liquid.
RUSH: You know, that answer right there is another great object lesson. This is a great lesson for any of you who are up-and-coming public figures and are someday going to be interviewed by the media. If there’s one piece of advice I would give everybody who doesn’t have any experience being interviewed by the media, it is this. They are not interested in what you have to say. In the sense that they are not there to find out what they don’t know. They’re not interviewing you to learn anything. I wish somebody had told me that before I embarked on all this.
I labored under the misconception that the journalist talking to me actually wanted to know about me. I labored under the misconception that the journalist interviewing me was actually trying to satisfy some curiosity about me. And that’s not the case. The agenda is already set before an interview. In many cases, the story outline and premise is already done. They come and interview you so that they can say they talked to you during the interview. The purpose of the interview is to get you to say or do or act in some way that furthers the premise they start with. And the proof of it here, here’s the question. “Forbes says that you’re four-and-a-half billion, not 10. What do you think of the list?”
So Trump begins to answer this in a very reasoned way, by the way, explaining to John Harwood how, “Well, Forbes are good people, but they may not be right here because there’s a lot of things they don’t know how to value.” And he goes into great detail about it. And Harwood didn’t hear a word of it. When Trump took a pause, Harwood said, “You think they’re wrong?” That’s all he cares about. He wants Trump to say, “Forbes is a bunch of losers.” He doesn’t care what the truth is about Trump.
And this is an object lesson for any of you — and I know some of you out there at some point in your lives, you’re gonna end up being interviewed by the media, and you might think that it’s all because they’re fascinated by you and really want to know about you. It’s not the case. If they come to you and say they want to do a profile of you, it’s not because they really want to tell people things that they don’t know, particularly if you are a conservative. “You think they’re wrong?” And Trump goes on to continue to provide detail, which Harwood, it didn’t interest him. He wasn’t interested in the facts. All he was looking for was Trump to launch into Forbes so that he would have a sound bite that would provide click bait on the CNBC website later on. So after Trump gives this answer, Harwood says, “If you spend $100 million by their assessment, that’s a third of all your cash.”
TRUMP: They’re wrong, but I have a lot of cash. If I had — I think — I mean, I’m not gonna go and tell you exactly how much cash I have, but I have hundreds of millions of dollars of cash.
HARWOOD: They said that you said, like 800, and their assessment is 325.
TRUMP: I don’t know. Whatever it is, do you agree it’s a lot?
HARWOOD: (laughing) Yes, it’s a lot.
TRUMP: Okay. It’s a lot.
RUSH: So that’s how Trump turns the tables. “You think it’s a lot? Okay, here.” So the best thing you do is force the journalist to answer a question. The last thing they want to do is answer a question, especially if it is about them.
And, yep, must take another obscene profit time-out. Sorry, folks, it’s just time here keeps mounting and going faster and faster.