RUSH: Jake in Highland, Michigan. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome to our program here.
CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. Thanks for taking my call. It’s an honor to talk to you. I try and listen to you every day. My question is about Donald Trump. I received an article from Catholic Vote, and it’s basically talking about why we can’t vote for Donald Trump. I’m not old enough to vote yet, but I just like to act like I’m going to vote in the primaries.
RUSH: How old are you?
CALLER: I’m 17.
RUSH: Seventeen.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: But this article was talking about basically all the things wrong with Trump, and one of them was like how he cheated on his wife — or two of his wives, actually, and how he was with different women like every night. He talked about that in his book and basically how he was bragging about it, and obviously that’s a huge character flaw. So I haven’t really heard you talk about that much, and I was just wondering what you thought about that.
RUSH: Well, if you talk about that with one, it doesn’t apply to just one. Not everybody has those kinds of behaviors in their past, but I would remind you, Jake, in the right places stuff like that’s a resume enhancement. I’m not trying to be snarky here. The Democrat Party, things like that, that’s a resume enhancement. I don’t care what Trump’s done, he’s a piker to Bill Clinton.
Now, I don’t say that to justify Trump. Don’t misunderstand. There’s a double standard here. People tried to say things about it with Bill Clinton, but his supporters came out, “No, no, no, this just proves this guy, it’s just sex, it didn’t stand in the way of doing his job. His wife didn’t care, by evidence she didn’t care. She had to know about it, so everything’s fine, leave him alone. You Republicans are just a bunch of prudes. You are a bunch of dryballs. You just don’t want anybody having any fun. Well, keep going, because it isn’t gonna matter because the American people wish they were like Bill Clinton.”
And there may have been, depending on the kind of people you’re talking about, some truth to that. But there will be some people. The point is, Jake, there probably already are some people who have doubts about Donald Trump for that reason, those reasons, as they relate to character, as well as his braggadocio behavior and so forth. He doesn’t have universal support out there by any stretch.
CALLER: Okay. Yeah. I definitely understand what you’re saying there.
RUSH: You’re wondering why it’s not a disqualifier, how can someone like that have as much support as he does, or what is your question about it?
CALLER: Well, I wanted to know what you had to say about it, and at first I was kind of surprised that I had never heard, like, the liberal media bring it up at all. But then I was kind of thinking about it and I realized they’d kind of be downsizing Clinton, too, if they criticized Trump for doing what he did back then. I’ve never been a Trump supporter, but, like, I’ve never hated him, either.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: So I just don’t know if that’s the type of person who I’d want in office, I guess.
RUSH: Well, there are a lot of people happy to hear you say it, because one of the things that has been happening in our country, even before you were born — you’re 17 — is what a lot of people refer to as the decay or the rot in the culture and how what used to be taboo in terms of words you can say on TV, for example, or behaviors on TV that you can televise now are standard, no big deal, and worse. So there is a slow erosion of the kinds of morality and cultural standards that there used to be in the country, and a lot of people think that the erosion and the rot and the decay has bled over and explains a lot of what’s wrong in politics.
So you’re not alone in your point of view. People of voting age today, in many people’s minds, it’s something that’s been determined here to not be a disqualifier. Not long ago it would have been. Not long ago something like this would have been a disqualifier, negative ads about it would have finished somebody off, and it would have been rendered a campaign dead on arrival. Now it’s not so much.
And if this interests you, the Federalist Papers, the number escapes me, but the character of the executive, meaning the president, was written about extensively by James Madison in the Federalist Papers, and he wrote extensively why it’s the number one virtue, or should be and was back then, the number one factor. I’ll dig it up and put it up at RushLimbaugh.com, just a matter of reaching into deep, dark depths of my memory, but I appreciate the call, Jake. Thanks very much.