RUSH: Here’s Brian in Las Vegas. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Byzantine Catholic dittos to you, Rush. Thank you so much for having me on.
RUSH: Yeah, you bet.
CALLER: I… (sigh) I just had to call. I’m a Byzantine Catholic. (sigh) I do love the pope and his predecessors before him. The way I see it, and the way he’s been portraying himself since that infamous trip back from Argentina where he said, “Who am I to judge?” it just seems the Drive-By Media tries to mold our thoughts (sigh) about the pope in a way that just isn’t true. If you look at Catholic media, it gives a much better and consistent picture of this pope, and he teaches Catholicism. He cares about the dignity of everyone. And I don’t see his comments, uh, towards — or his answer to the question about Donald Trump as an attack on Trump per se but a way of saying, “Listen, everyone has equal dignity, and if you’re just going to put up a wall or some kind of barrier and not address the problems that people have and how to take care of people, the poor, the hungry, then there’s a problem.”
RUSH: You know what? I must… There is no country on earth that has done more for our own poor and for the poor around the world. We are not the ones that need to be targeted. There is no country on earth that can touch us in charitable efforts, in disaster relief efforts, in doing everything to help. We do not live under a suicide pact in the name of compassion, because you see what’s incorporated in all this is that we’re guilty of something. And we’re not. We lead the world in goodness.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the last caller was classic. The United States is guilty. We’re not treating people fairly. We’re not treating people with dignity. Building a wall is an affront and an insult, and we have no right.
I believe the number is 70% of the world’s refugees since World War II have been taken in by the United States. Every year, year in, year out, the United States admits more legal immigrants than the rest of the world combined. The United States has granted amnesty before to three million illegals and appears prepared to do it again. Mexico, by comparison, has accepted 1,500 immigrants over the last ten years. We took in 1.6 million legal immigrants just last year.
But for these people to advance the things they claim they believe, we, the United States, have to be guilty. We have to be guilty. We have to be underperforming. We have to be not showing compassion or dignity or whatever code word is used to transmit the notion that we’re mean-spirited, that we’re selfish, and that we’re probably bigoted and racist and don’t want people here like that. None of what we have done is credited. None of the good works. Our foreign affairs budget, foreign aid budget, none of it is ever thanked.
We never get any gratitude for what we do. We just are constantly ripped. We are constantly complained about. We are constantly attacked. And people are fed up with it. People are fed up being told they haven’t done enough, that they don’t do enough, that they don’t care enough, that they’re mean-spirited, that they’re extremists, when this is the most loving and charitable, the most giving country the world has ever seen. You know the next line, right? The next line, “Is it any wonder somebody like Donald Trump is racing through the presidential primary process?”
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RUSH: Here’s Madeleine in Westchester County in New York. It’s great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: How do you do? Mega dittos, Rush, from a conservative Republican Catholic senior.
RUSH: Well.
CALLER: I am absolutely disgusted with this pope. I sincerely feel that he’s a communist. The way he talks and the way he acts, I’m very disgusted — very, very, very disgusted.
RUSH: Well, wait a minute, now. Communists disavow the existence of God and religion. They hate it, because it’s a competitor.
CALLER: Well, then maybe “communist” is a harsh word. A socialist is better?
RUSH: Well, I’m just reacting. I think with the kind of corruption going on today, I think it’s entirely possible. I’m not saying that it is. I’m saying it’s entirely… Look, the communists have tried to corrupt our education system. They’ve tried to corrupt any number of institutions. Why wouldn’t they try to corrupt the Catholic Church? It is a big enemy.
CALLER: Without a doubt.
RUSH: Well, anyway, I’m not a Catholic. She is. And you heard her reaction. She’s not the first. Then you’ve got others like our Byzantine guy, caller, a half hour ago — which basically I think it’s Greek Orthodox — who totally believes in the pope, not anything about attacking the United States, which needs to be because we’re not recognizing the dignity of all people.