RUSH: Audio sound bites I want to start with now. This is Inside Edition. Pop culture, low-information voter TV. Correspondent Megan Alexander reporting about Donald Trump’s call to temporarily stop admitting Muslims to the US. Listen to this.
ALEXANDER: While many are condemning Trump’s Muslim proposal, conservative talk radio is standing by him. Here’s what Rush Limbaugh said.
RUSH ARCHIVE: He’s confident that a lot of his voters are gonna be able to strip away the bombast and be able to get to the nuts and bolts of what he’s saying, the kernel of truth of what he’s saying.
ALEXANDER: Even though Trump signed a pledge not to run as a third-party candidate, speculation is running wild that he may change his mind if he fails to win the Republican nomination.
RUSH: See, there’s a classic example. Now, this is a low-information show. I mean, it’s pop culture. What is it? Entertainment. Inside Edition. Big whoop. But she’s still a product of J school, and you hear how she opened this? “While many are condemning Trump’s Muslim proposal…” Who are these “many,” Megan? It’s people like you. Most are not! That’s what the news of the day is, Megan. Poll after poll after poll, a plurality, a majority — no matter how you define it — happen to agree with Trump. Yet she opens her report, “Many are condemning what…”
Meant to convey that, “Ah, most people are condemning what Trump says. You know, he’s in a vacuum. He’s on a small, little island of support! There he is out there, and he’s got these wacko supporters like Limbaugh,” blah, blah, blah. Totally missing it. Failing royally and grandly to understand it. By the way, this third-party pledge business… Here again, folks, your host is looking awfully prescient. You remember when this all happened? Trump’s out there; Reince Priebus had just gone to Trump’s office in Trump Tower.
Reince Priebus comes down from the tower waving the agreement, “Look what Trump did! Trump signed the pledge! He signed the pledge!” I said, “Wait a second. That’s not the only thing that just happened here.” Yeah, Trump pledged not to go third party, but there was another part of that pledge, and that pledge was that the party would support Trump if he got the nomination. And already John Kasich (whose dad was a mailman), the governor of Ohio, is out talking about how:
“I don’t even think I could support Trump if he’s the nominee.” Other nameless Republicans say, “I’d rather vote for Hillary.” Republican consultants — nameless, running other campaigns — say, “There’s no way I’m voting Trump. No. No, way. If he’s the nominee? No. Even if it’s Cruz, I’m supporting Hillary.” (chuckles) That’s another funny thing. The media is really caught here, and so are the Republicans, because they desperately don’t want Trump, but who’s in second place? Somebody they actually fear more.
They hate Trump; they fear Cruz. Old Ted, he’s been out there biding his time and he has uniquely positioned himself. While the whole Republican Party, practically all of it’s over there with the Democrats and the media, here’s Trump. And then just off to the side there’s little Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz waiting to pick up whatever pieces there might be. And the media’s over here, “Damn, damn we’re surrounded. Oh, my God, look, if we take Trump out, what do we got? We got Cruz. Oh, my God. Where’s Jeb, where’s Jeb?” Five percent. “Oh, no. How much we got left?” Fifty million. “Oh, that’s plenty.” That’s all they can think of. And in none of their strategizing is anybody coming up with any ideas.
They’re just trying to come up with strategies, uses of the money, but ideas, we’re not hearing any ideas. (interruption) Well, that’s a strategy. Mike Murphy? He’s running Jeb Bush’s PAC. What’s the name of that PAC? It’s Rise to Rise or Run to Rise. There’s $75 million in the PAC, and Mike Murphy openly leaked, I mean, he practically announced he’s thinking of a strategy, and that is to just take every other Republican out, just start oppo research, negative TV ads, negative campaigns, negative spots on every Republican except Trump.
The people said to Murphy, “Why are you thinking of doing that?” ‘Cause we want a two-man race. We want it Jeb and Trump, and when it’s just Jeb and Trump, you wait, Republican primary voters, no way are they not gonna elect Jeb. Everybody looked at him and said, “Really? Your evidence for this is…?” (Laughing) Hey, Mike, have you thought about, if you really do this, if you go scorched earth on all these guys, Rubio and Christie and Fiorina and whoever else, Cruz, if you really do go scorched earth, you are taking those people out forever. You’re gonna destroy their potential forever if you really embark on this. Is it worth that much?
And the answer is, yeah, if we take out a bunch of potential conservative Republican nominees, yeah, it’d be worth it. The Republican establishment I think would be fine with a Hillary Clinton presidency if it meant the end of conservative dominance, relevance within the Republican Party, even for 25 years. I think there’s that much animus for conservatives and conservatism, throughout the elites, the ruling class, not just the Republicans. Fox & Friends. This was this morning. Brian Kilmeade and Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Steve Doocy are talking about Trump’s call to temporarily stop admitting Muslims, and they had this little chat that you’ll hear next here.
KILMEADE: Rush Limbaugh put it great yesterday. If every Republican is outraged, and everybody says it’s such a disaster, why is he beating you? If everybody is so upset about this, why does he continue to beat you everywhere?
HASSELBECK: The prediction was that he would make these comments, he made these comments, and then afterward his numbers would plummet. But that’s not what happened.
DOOCY: Will those comments hurt him in the primary? From what we’ve seen so far, doesn’t look like it.
RUSH: Now, to remind you what happened, the first voice you heard there was Brian Kilmeade, and I was bouncing off a comment from Carly Fiorina yesterday, who, in her efforts to seek and win the nomination herself, was running around saying that Hillary Clinton would mop the floor with Donald Trump, that Hillary Clinton would just wipe the floor with Trump. Trump can no way beat Hillary Clinton, so we’ve gotta make sure we don’t nominate Trump. And I said, “Well, if Hillary can mop the floor with Trump, why aren’t you?” And that’s what the Fox & Friends people took and built upon. I mean, if beating Trump is so easy, how come nobody seems to be able to do it? If beating Trump is so easy for the Democrats to do, if it’s so automatic that Trump is gonna lose in a landslide, why is he beating all of you?
By the way, Kilmeade’s writing a bunch of books. He’s got a history book out. I love people that tell the truth about American history. As long as they leave the young child audience to me, they’re fine. And so far Kilmeade has not encroached on Rush Revere and Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans. He’s got a great book: Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History.
The Tripoli pirates, do you know who they were? That was Thomas Jefferson, it was United States’ first involvement with Islamic terrorists. The Barbary pirates, Tripoli pirates, whatever. You ought to go and read what Jefferson has written about them. Anyway, that’s what Kilmeade’s book is about, and I think the last I heard Kilmeade’s book in the list that he’s on, nonfiction, I think he was at number two and climbing. It’s a good thing he didn’t say Killing Jefferson, then people would have been confused. I’m just kidding.
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History. This is crucial. Jefferson was so on the money about this, and he was the first American to be aware of and concerned about and do something about the Tripoli or the Barbary pirates. He got it. He got Islamic extremism.