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RUSH: Now, usually, ladies and gentlemen, the pattern for Donald Trump during the primary season has been that when he has lost a primary, he immediately changes the narrative the next day, usually by announcing an endorsement. So you got Christie endorsing, which changed the narrative of a Trump loss.


Sometimes the endorsement happens the night of a loss, usually next morning. Same thing happened with Dr. Carson after another Trump loss. Carson comes out and endorses Trump, and that changes the narrative. It’s smart. Trump has no new endorsements to announce, so what he has done today is he has revealed his plan explaining how he has going to have Mexico pay for his proposed wall. And the way he’s going to do this… It’s a Bob Woodward story in the Washington Post.

Trump says he’s gonna cut off the so-called remittances, i.e., the wired money transfers that Mexicans send back home every year, every month, whatever. The Mexican illegals working here send a lot of money that they earn back home. It’s one of the reasons why the Mexican government is so much in favor of illegal immigration. There’s a bunch of reasons why the Mexican government’s in favor of illegal immigration to the US. One of those reasons is that much of the money earned by illegals gets sent home to family members back home.

For example, in 2015 you know how much money we’re talking about here?

It’s $25 billion.

“Nearly $25 billion was sent home by Mexicans living abroad in 2015…” That’s not just the US, but the lion’s share of it is, “mostly in the form of money transfers,” rather than people writing checks. And this data comes from the Central Bank of Mexico, their version of the Federal Reserve. Now, Trump is not planning on using that money for the wall per se. That would be stealing. (ahem) Instead, Trump says that he would withhold those wire transfers until the Mexican government ponies up the five to $10 billion he estimates the wall will cost.

So the objective here is to have a plan that reinvigorates the campaign, that changes the narrative, that takes it back to a center issue of Trump’s campaign that has created so much excitement, and then advances it. Because the wall is such an old story, the narrative on the wall has become, “Eh, he’s never gonna build a wall! Everybody knows that. That’s just Trump talking. That’s just Trump lying to his supporters. But he’s not gonna build a wall, and Mexico’s not gonna pay for the wall!” That has settled in; so Trump has to counter that and has done so in the Washington Post.

Again, he’s just going to withhold those wire transfers, keep that money from reaching Mexico until the Mexicans agree to pay for the wall. And it’s obviously an attempt to make everybody stop saying that there’s not gonna be a wall. Here is the specific plan of how he’s going to do it. The odds of this working? It could be done. I tell you what, a lot of Trump supporters are gonna applaud it. They’re gonna dig it. They are gonna be supportive of this.

We have all kinds of polling data out there today, including from Quinnipiac, which talks about how the American people think about this campaign and what they want in a leader. And basically it is 53% of you say you want a leader who will do or say anything to save this country and to establish this country’s prominence once again around the world.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Findlay, Ohio. This is Randy. I’m glad you waited, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Good to talk to you.

RUSH: Same here, sir.

CALLER: You started out the program today talking about Trump and the money transfers from the United States, and my question was, how is that legal or constitutional?


RUSH: Have you ever heard of the Patriot Act?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, the Patriot Act pretty much offers this umbrella of national security, and all Trump would have to do is go to Congress, go to a FISA court, he said he would threaten to change this rule that would make this legal under the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law to cut off a portion of the funds sent to Mexico during these money transfers commonly known as remittances. That’s how he would do it.

CALLER: Okay. Well, I send money to Mexico and I’m a citizen. I’m not an illegal alien, I’m an American citizen, and how is that — I guess what I’m wanting to know is does he or his supporters have any concept of freedom anymore?

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: In other words, if —

RUSH: You’re asking questions I have to answer here. When I answer the question everybody’s gonna get mad at me. The premise here is Trump — everybody’s claiming Trump’s lying, he can’t make Mexico pay for the wall, Mexico’s not gonna pay for the wall, you Trump supporters, you better understand he’s lying to you. By the way, this plan has been on Trump’s website forever. The Drive-Bys just discovered it, and I know about things on websites that people don’t read. My own is a great example. But this is not a new plan. This plan’s been up there. It’s just Bob Woodward happened to come across it. “Whoa,” he said, “what’s this?” So he’s had it explained to him and the idea is for Mexico to relent and pay for the wall so that the transfers take place.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: There you have it. That’s the objective. Done deal.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, Randy, Findlay, Ohio, if you’re still out there, the US has stopped remittances before. This is not something that Trump just crazily snatched out of thin air. It happens frequently. As recently as February, US banks stopped servicing the accounts used by money transfer operators in Somalia. The US government has successfully seized money in the accounts of criminals who smuggle illegal immigrants across the border. There’s all sorts of things on this score like asset forfeiture.


From our buddies over at National Review: “In the early 2000s, Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard and other state authorities suspected Mexican crime syndicates were moving money through Western Union wire transfers, and sought to seize money in Western Union accounts. The figures were mind-boggling, according to the prosecutorsÂ’ testimony: $500 million a year in Western Union payments from Arizona, and $2.5 billion a year in payments for people-smuggling overall.” And we have stopped remittances before.

There’s another thing you can do. You wouldn’t even have to seize the remittances. You could just tax them. You could pull an Obama and you could impose a massively high tax rate. You could do that legally, too. Simply set up a tax rate on wired money transfers out of the country to a specific place, like Mexico. Hey, if you can tell a landlord that he’s gotta rent to a criminal — by the way, you know what that’s really all about, folks? It’s never just about what it seems. It’s not about evening the racial score.

You know what this is really all about? You have a landlord that refuses to rent to a criminal, Obama says, “No, no, no, you have to because our racial justice system’s been so unbalanced, you’re guilty of racism when you refuse to rent,” you know what that’s really all about is seizing your property. What do you think the penalty’s gonna be to the landlords that fail to follow Obama’s dictates and rent rooms to criminals. You don’t think they’re gonna be able to come in and make the play for your land, for your property, absconding it, claiming that you are misusing it or what have you?

And one thing about authoritarian figures, private this, private that, they don’t like anything private. Private property, private guns, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The more they can take away from you, including your private this or your free speech or what have you. This is who these people are, folks. Don’t blame me. This is who they are.

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