RUSH: Here’s Gregory in Livermore, California. Hey, Gregory. I’m glad you waited. It’s great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. Good afternoon, Rush. It’s great to be on the program. So let me tell you my thoughts over the last few weeks.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: I’m a lifelong conservative, lifelong conservative activist. I oppose Hillary ideologically, and — given who she is — oppose her viscerally. But over the last week I came to the conclusion — a little over a week ago — that if it comes to a choice between her and Trump, she is the lesser of two evils for the country and for the conservative movement. Let me explain basic foundation for that thought. So holding the presidency, holding the presidency for the party has risks to begin with. Cataclysmic things can happen. Ask George W. Bush. You know, the mortgage crisis happened on his watch. We know that at some point the debt bubble will burst.
We don’t know when.
So when you take a risk by putting your guy in the Oval Office, you need upside.
You need hope that real things will be done to help this country. With Walker, Jindal, Cruz, Rubio, there would be real upside. There would be real hope for real change. With Trump, there is zero chance of that. So we take the downside risk with no hope of upside — and for me, that’s not good enough. I will definitely, definitely stay out of this race. I can’t force myself to vote for Hillary, but for the first time in my life I will stay out of this race. A majority of my friends who were activists from our college days — you know, we took our lumps as conservative activists. The overwhelming majority of them have come to the same conclusion, maybe in a little different paths and a little different language but essentially the same conclusion. So that’s where I stand.
RUSH: Can you detail for me your thinking on Trump being an abject, total failure in the scenario that you laid out?
CALLER: Well, to achieve things, you actually have to believe in something. Name one conservative aspect of public policy that he actually internalizes, that he actually believes to be true. He doesn’t believe in lower regulation, doesn’t believe in lower taxes. He doesn’t believe in, you know, in judicial restraint.
RUSH: Well, wait just a second here. He did last night in his press conference tout his tax plan and claimed that no less than Larry Kudlow, who is a Reagan conservative, has praised it to the hilt.
CALLER: Yeah. Yes. I know that. But he also… He takes positions… This is Trump yesterday. The Trump who was yelling how huge he’s gonna raise the taxes on hedge funds is also the same Donald Trump. So, I mean, yeah. If you put out five positions over an issue, anybody is bound to find something they like because, yeah, obviously. You say five different things, one of those things is gonna be to somebody’s liking. But he never… I mean, come on. He woke up at the age of nearly 70 and became a Reagan conservative? It doesn’t happen that way. He never displayed any of those kinds of beliefs earlier in life. I mean, he is not a radical leftist, but he is your basic New York liberal. I mean, he has been all that. And, you know, to expect that all of a sudden he’ll become a Reagan once he is in the White House —
RUSH: Let me play devil’s advocate with you here.
CALLER: Yeah?
RUSH: I’m not gonna argue with you about conservative bona fides, although Trump last night also claimed that he’s very conservative on immigration, very conservative on trade. He’s very conservative on America winning.
CALLER: Actually, on trade it’s his definition of “conservative.” His definition of “conservatism” on trade is protectionism. This is actually… Is it okay, if I can expound on that point because it’s important?
RUSH: Feel free to expound on the point, yes.
CALLER: Yes. He’s selling… I mean he is a con man. What he’s selling… One of the big reasons people are for him is because he says, “You know what? I know you’re hurting on jobs. You know, high wage manufacturing jobs are all in China and Mexico. I’m gonna fix it. They’re gonna be back here.” It’s a crock on two points. One, the manufacturing jobs in China and Mexico are not high-paying jobs. They pay about as much as fast food workers in America, and they’re not coming back here. And secondly, the jobs are not increasing anywhere, including China and Mexico. Both manufacturing and service jobs are being taken over by automation, and Trump’s claim that he’s gonna create, you know, monstrous amounts of jobs by his protectionist policy —
RUSH: Let’s leave ideology out for a second. Let’s get to his specific claim that he is going to revitalize this country and make it great again. Now, before you answer, the reason that’s resonating is because the people who support him, and a lot of others, think that the people that run in the country, the special people, have ruined it. They have taken a college education and taken it in from a step up to a millstone around people’s necks.
They have destroyed the credit markets. They have destroyed the housing market. They have destroyed everything they’re touching, they’re doing fine. Trump comes along and basically the message he’s saying, he’s not extolling a conservative message. He says, I’m gonna fix this. I’m gonna put it back to where you and I are in charge of what happens in this country. The greatness of this country is gonna be defined by how good it is for us. That’s what people are reacting to. They’re not reacting to him ’cause he’s a conservative.
CALLER: Yes, Rush but, you know, that saying “make America great again” is a slogan just like “hope and change.” What is different?
RUSH: Yeah, but it’s much more specific than hope and change.
CALLER: So how exactly is he going to create those jobs?
RUSH: Well, “hope and change” you fill in the blanks. Make America great, that’s pretty simple to understand.
CALLER: No, not really. I don’t know what “great” means in his language, you know, because it could — you know, things are gonna be great, I’m going to fix it. Fix what? I already told you why —
RUSH: The way people are interpreting it, we’re gonna become the superpower again that dominates the world with our goodness.
CALLER: In what way? In what way is that gonna happen? And how is that any more specific —
RUSH: Because he’s going to stop the people who are ruining the country from doing what they’re doing.
CALLER: And what are they doing? What are those people doing, Rush, how is he going to stop them and what are they doing? He’s been part of — again, it’s like with — you keep saying that, you know, Democrats pretend that, you know, they were in Guam all these years or something, that they’re not controlling the White House. I mean, he’s been part of this establishment for decades. He is a crony capitalist. He has been friends with these people for years. All of a sudden he is going to, you know, put them all under house arrest. I mean, he doesn’t know —
RUSH: Okay, so then would you believe, if somebody said that he actually may be their agent.
CALLER: No, I don’t believe that he’s their agent. I don’t go into conspiracies. Agent means that it’s a plot. Agent means that there is a meeting somewhere where they say, “You go out and you pretend that you’re against us and then we’ll divide the goodies.” There was never any such meeting. What I’m saying is that he doesn’t know any life other than crony capitalism. How is he going to fight something which he internalizes completely? I mean, he doesn’t know —
RUSH: Well, the only thing that I’m telling you — and I’m playing devil’s advocate with you — the only thing I’m telling you is that the people supporting him — look, I’m getting blue in the face trying to explain why this is happening. I’m sure you’ve heard me go through all of this, and I don’t have the moments, the minutes here to do it again. But I can explain for every one of these objections you raise, I can give you a substantive reason why people are investing in him. Whether they’re right or wrong, you know, time will tell. But they have had it with the people running the show now.
They’ve had it for the last 30, 40 years. They’ve had it with being aced out. They’ve had it being sneered at. They’ve had it with being mocked and laughed at and not listened to. They’ve had it with being asked for money to promote causes and the causes never get promoted. To grant you something, he said something last night that cannot happen, folks, and I’ve gotta tell you. He said he’s gonna make Apple bring iPhone manufacturing back to the United States. There’s no reason Apple can’t make them here.
Folks, that will not happen. It can’t happen. We don’t have the setup for it. The factories that make iPhones in China employ 500,000 people. They make 200 and some odd 30, 40 million iPhones a year. We don’t have factories that big. We don’t have that many people that would do those jobs. But even if we did, the iPhone that you buy today for $199 on contract, sign your two-year deal with your carrier, would cost $2,500 if manufactured in America. That’s not something that could be changed overnight and still have the product be affordable.
It’s not a criticism of America. It’s just the way things — 500,000 people in one factory. The factories have hospitals. The factories are entire cities, little cities. And there are multiple of these factories. They don’t make just iPhones. They make everything Apple makes and they make everything Samsung makes and all of the suppliers are just down the street. So that’s a slogan, but that isn’t gonna happen. And to that extent, I don’t know how many of his supporters actually think that specific kind of thing is gonna happen. This is what we don’t know. But, anyway, Gregory, I appreciate the call. Thanks for your patience here in explaining yourself as well as you did.