RUSH: Here is David in Gap, Pennsylvania. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. God and constitutional dittos. I heard you ask yesterday how you could stop Trump if you choose to, and I’ve been trying to call you for a month already to give you an idea.
RUSH: Let me set that table properly for people that weren’t here yesterday. I was being beat up by my own audience yesterday, folks. It was brutal. I mean, one caller after another was just savaging me. They were calling me everything but a traitor. So I finally asked, “Okay, look. If you wanted me to take out Trump, you tell me: What would I do? How would I do it? Tell me, what would you do if you were in my shoes and you wanted to take out Trump? How would you do it?” And old David here from Gap, Pennsylvania, is calling with an answer. You’ve been trying to get through ever since the challenge was issued, and here you are.
CALLER: Yes. Well, I’ve been trying to get through for a month for this reason because I really enjoy the Trump conversation even though I’m a constitutionalist. I wouldn’t vote for him. But it is a relevant discussion. When you’re ready to stop him, since you’re the head of the party, I don’t think it would be that difficult with your following. All you would have to do is insult Trump, because he will respond like he always does, and properly insult you, and then the party would have to decide if they’re gonna like you or Trump.
RUSH: (laughing) You know, that’s interesting. That might actually convert the party to Trump.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: I doubt it. Because, you know, most of the people that I talk to that are voting for Trump, in their minds, they’re not… They’re just as fascinating a study as what we’ve been studying the last eight years: People who vote for Obama, who are otherwise reasonable people. And this is just on the other side.
RUSH: Well, do you think they’re falling for the same thing? Like, Obama, the slogan was “Hope and Change.” Trump is, “Make America Great Again.” Are those two slogans basically appealing to people in the same way?
CALLER: In a sense, yes, I think so, because they’re not really rational, because they’re not living their lives in the same way these people’s platform is. They’re living their lives, like you often say, in a conservative way. And yet they just want something to happen on that end.
RUSH: Well, let… Since you brought this up, I want to explore this with you. Let’s take a look at Hope and Change and how it affected Democrats versus Trump, who is out there saying he’s gonna “Make America Great Again.” Now, my question to you was: “Are those slogans essentially the same in appeal? “Make America Great Again” appeals to certain disaffected conservatives, Republicans, Reagan Democrats. “Hope and Change” was a direct beeline to a bunch of unhappy and miserable leftists.
You think there’s some similarity there, and I don’t. I think you could make a pretty detailed explanation for how they’re different. You’re talking about two groups of people that are basically otherwise rational who are falling for come-ons — one by Obama, the other by Trump — and you’re trying to figure it out. Because, to you, everybody in these groups are pretty rational, and they’re fairly intelligent. But they’re falling for something, you think.
CALLER: Well, I don’t think that they’re the same group in the sense that they’re same groups of people. I think there’s a vast difference in the two groups. But I do think that, from the study of simply trying to figure out… I mean, they’re voting for something that does not line up with what they say and believe on a daily level. So, you know, in that sense I think it’s the same thing. How they’re ending there isn’t necessarily the exact same process; I agree with you. I just think it’s fascinating that here it is on the supposedly conservative side, and it’s just about as much head scratching to figure out why your neighbor is voting for Trump as it was eight years ago when we were scratching our head trying to figure out why your neighbor would vote for Obama.
RUSH: Well, see, that’s where I part ways with you. I can —
CALLER: How so?
RUSH: No, no. I don’t disagree here. I don’t mean to be critical or insulting. Don’t interpret it that way. I think the Obama personage, the campaign — the slogan, “Hope and Change” — attracted a certain group. But so did his race. The fact that Obama was African-American and the first, so therefore you’d have an historical component. I think a lot of people who were not Democrats or liberals but wanted this country to stop fighting about race ’cause they hate it.
They hate the divisions, they hate back-and-forth, they hate racial arguments, they hate being called racists, they hate being accused of it. So they thought voting for Obama and electing Obama would finally show everybody in the world that we’re not a racist country and we’d be done with it, that it’d be the best way to end that issue. The “Hope and Change” crowd is a bunch of miserable leftists who are always gonna be miserable, and “Hope and Change” to them meant utopia, this grand place where everybody is equal and everybody has the same. There are no losers; everybody’s a winner.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: On the Trump side, on the Republican, the people — whatever group they come from, conservatives, independents, Reagan Democrats… The slogan “Make America Great Again,” I think that’s a factor, but I think —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — the things that people are glomming on to Trump for are entirely different than the things people glommed on to Obama for.
CALLER: Yeah, and I do agree with that. My point would just be to that caller you had earlier today where he’s saying, “Don’t spend so much time on Trump.” Well, I think it’s worthy of our time, because this is… If you’re a political junkie or anybody who likes to watch the demographics of the country and the cultural changes in the country, it is a very fascinating thing. This has never happened before.
RUSH: Well, let me tell you what happened here. You’re right. We had a caller earlier this week who was of the same frame of mind as the caller you’re talking about, the guy that called and said, “You’re talking a lot about Trump, and I want you to talk about Cruz, too! Talk about Cruz! 
Talk about Cruz!” And we had a guy calling earlier this week who was gonna make the same complaint and he was listening to the program on hold. He was on hold for an hour and a half, and when he finally got on the air, he said, “You know what?
“I just figured something out here: You do the news on this show. You talk about what’s in the news. And I was under the impression you talked about what you wanted to and you talked about what you wanted people to know and what you wanted people to think. You don’t. You talk about what’s in the news.” And I said, “Thank you. Voila!” And that’s exactly what I do: I talk about the things that interest me. If I don’t do that, I’m gonna be bored and then everybody else is gonna be bored. I talk about the things I care about, and I do it in inimitable ways.
But I do not talk about things I don’t care about, and I don’t have topics. I’ve always said I don’t do topics here. So when somebody wants to slap a quota on me, “Okay, you’ve talked about Trump a lot. Talk about Cruz,” I’m saying, “Trump was making news, and that’s why he was being discussed here,” and nobody can deny that. He’s been making news in all kinds of really… You know, it’s hard to say anything is “unique,” anymore. But you have to admit that Trump is getting away with things that nobody in politics has gotten away with in our lifetimes. It’s newsworthy — and, frankly, fascinating to me — to try to understand it and explore it.
I think there’s value in it. I want to satisfy my own desire for understanding in this sense, about this. I want to understand who Trump’s supporters are and why they’re there. There’s all kinds of lessons to be learned in figuring this out, rather than sitting here just getting ticked off at it. And it’s the same thing on the Obama side. I spend more time here explaining liberalism than the liberals explain liberalism on their own networks and their own shows. Because it fascinates me how anybody can be.
Intellectually, I don’t understand liberalism. And there’s no way anybody can, because is isn’t an intellectual application. It’s not about thinking. Liberalism is totally about feeling. And, ironically, that’s one of the reasons why it continues to seduce people. The emotions have much deeper impressions, make much deeper impressions, and they’re much longer lasting than words that people hear. That’s a tough thing for me to admit ’cause I’m in the word business. I don’t come here dripping emotions all the time.
But it is true. People don’t remember what you say, but they’ll never forget how you make ’em feel. So in this case if Trump is making people feel confident, if Trump makes people feel happy, if Trump makes feel involved, engaged, if Trump makes people feel like that the country has a chance with him, the hell with what he’s saying; it won’t matter. While all the critics of Trump, “Can you believe what he’s saying? Can you believe what he said about Bush? How could his supporters, my God, Rush, how can you excuse what Trump is saying?”
Nobody’s hearing what Trump’s saying. Isn’t it evident by now? Whatever he’s saying doesn’t matter. It’s not costing him any support. It’s all about how he’s making people feel, and I would submit to you it’s the same thing with Obama. And, by the same token, if you have your average wet noodle Republican, could be, who knows, brilliant, smart, whatever, if there’s no charisma personality there — I don’t have anybody in mind. I’m just using this as an exercise. The emotional component of politics is one of the most frustrating aspects of it to me. ‘Cause I don’t know how you battle it.
I don’t know how you talk people out of their emotion. I don’t know how you talk people out of the fact that something or somebody makes them feel good. Who wants to be the one to turn that around and make ’em feel bad? ‘Cause it’s not gonna get you any support from ’em. So you can pound them with words and intellect and brilliance all day long, isn’t gonna matter. That’s what I mean about the bond. The bond is an emotional thing, and that’s why only Trump can blow it up. So the question’s going to be, what would Trump, could Trump, what’s Trump gonna have to do to cause people to start feeling worried about him? And it’s not gonna be the result of what anybody else says about him, I will guaran-damn-tee you.
You could tell your average Trump supporter, in addition to everything else that’s happened now, including what he said in the Saturday night debate, you could go up to him and say, “You know what Trump’s really gonna do? He’s gonna do the exact opposite of everything he says.” It wouldn’t matter. They won’t believe it ’cause they don’t feel that way. Feelings, that’s where trust comes into play, and the Republicans are all finding this now, how do we talk people out of Trump? You’re not gonna talk ’em out of him. Ain’t gonna talk anybody out of anything. Does it work with your kids? To me it’s a new area that needs to be explored.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hope and change is vacuous and vacant and can be anything you want. “I hope I get welfare. I hope I never have to work again. I want change, whatever, and Obama’s gonna do it.” He’s a blank canvas, make him whatever you want. “Make America great again” means something specific. It’s related to the actual American decline. So there is no comparison in the two. And my point is that the vacuous, vacant Obama voters are not the same as people that have become absorbed in Trump.