RUSH: We got breaking news. Trump says he can win the White House without unifying the Republican Party. Trump says that he might get rid of Paul Ryan running the convention. Paul Ryan says, hey, I will step down if Trump asks me to step down. I will not be the convention chairman. If Trump wants me to go, I’ll go. And I guarantee you there will be a lot of Trumpists that are gonna say, “Yeah, right on, you do that. You skedaddle.”
Anyway, we just have unending Trump and Republican Party news today. I’ll give you a sample here, just to work through some of the headlines. One of the big themes in the Drive-By Media over the weekend is that Trump — and we’re gonna sort through this all day, by the way, as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears. The Drive-Bys are trying to say that Trump may be moderating his position, specifically on taxing the rich and raising the minimum wage.
But the AP has taken it even a step further than the rest of their brethren in the Drive-By Media. They have an article: “Trump as Nominee Improves Odds for Parts of Obama’s Legacy.” The AP story claims that Trump is probably gonna preserve Obamacare and the Iran deal, as well as Obama’s outreach to Cuba, and even Obama’s push for transgenders. That’s an AP story.
Now, there’s no doubt what they’re doing. They’re trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his supporters. I don’t know how much of that you want to believe, but if all of that’s true, why is the GOP establishment up in arms? I mean, if all of that is true, if everything the AP is reporting about what Trump’s agenda is, well, then it’s right in line with the GOP Establishment, or pretty close to what they would do.
Anyway, it’s getting hot and heavy, and it’s becoming apparent to me, and I didn’t think it would take long, but it’s becoming apparent to me that the Drive-By Media’s gonna shift course here and they are going to try to take Trump out. I think they’ve probably been humiliated and embarrassed over how they seem to be lapdogs for Trump during the campaign. There’s also the possibility that they did this on purpose like they did with McCain. Set everybody up and at the end of the day they’re gonna be pushing the Clinton agenda and the Clinton campaign, the Clinton candidacy.
Don’t forget, this is the bunch, this is the group that the White House, this Ben Rhodes guy admits that there’s nobody in the White House press corps that knows anything. They’re 27 years old, they don’t know anything about foreign policy. The individuals, the media people, the journalists, they don’t know anything. You can lie to ’em left and right and they’ll just believe it because they’re ideologically predisposed to believe and support Democrats.
So this guy Ben Rhodes said, you know, we lied through our teeth. He didn’t use those words, he said we basically just made stuff up about the Iran deal. We knew they’d believe it and carry the water, and they did. He said, most of these White House press corps people are 27 years old, average age, and the sum total of their political experience is covering campaigns and candidates. Which makes sense. I mean, if you’re gonna have a White House press corps state controlled media and you’re gonna have it cover the White House, why not have people in there who are used to covering campaigns.
And remember, the way the leftist media covers campaigns, they don’t expose the left, the template is the daily soap opera, will our people win? Will our guy prevail in the old theory I gave you, the MacGuffin in any story is what the hero wants, and the hero the Drive-Bys are covering is always the Democrat, doesn’t matter, Hillary, Obama. So what the hero wants becomes the focal point of the story, i.e., coverage, not what the hero is proposing. And the illustration all during Obamacare, you never once saw the Drive-Bys expose it. They never talked about what was in it.
That was left for us to do. That was left to alternative media. That was left to outside the Beltway media, but the inside-the-Beltway media, the White House press corps and the Drive-By Media never once reported on the substance, the content of Obamacare. The coverage was always will Obama win, will Obama get what he wants. And of course with every story where there’s a hero, there’s a villain. And the Republican Party or the Republican candidate is always the villain. Will the villain deny our hero what he wants? And that’s it.
That is the sum total of coverage and why I always call it the daily soap opera that suffices as the daily news agenda in the Drive-By Media. So we have the AP now trying to drive a huge wedge between Trump and his supporters by essentially saying Trump’s selling out on everything, except trade. He hasn’t sold out on trade yet, but the intimation is that that’s coming, and he hasn’t sold out on immigration and the wall yet, but that’s coming. He wants taxes on the rich and wants to raise the minimum wage. Trump is offering alternative answers to these things depending on the hour of the day. Then we have the Paul Ryan contretemps.
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RUSH: A theory that I espoused on Friday made the Drive-By Media on the weekend and some of the Sunday shows where others were asked to respond to it.
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RUSH: Donald Trump’s saying that he had nothing to do with Sarah Palin endorsing Paul Ryan’s primary opponent. The mama bear, the mama grizzly is out there saying that she’s going to join in the effort to “Cantor” Paul Ryan there. He does have a primary opponent for his seat in the House of Representatives. Trump said, “I had nothing to do with that, nothing to do with Sarah Palin endorsing Ryan’s primary opponent.” Also, Paul Ryan has written an op-ed blasting Obama’s Iran deal saying Obama “misled the country.”
That may be the most strident criticism of Obama we’ve heard from an elected Republican in I don’t know how long. You believe that? The Speaker of the House actually said that Obama “misled the country.” Holy smokes! If this keeps up, he may actually say Obama lied to the country. It’s the same thing. Look, here’s what we had. Don’t forget, we had Jonathan Gruber, who lied to everybody about Obamacare and was bragging about how he got away with it. Remember that?
Gruber was running around proudly at cocktail parties where people had open mics, bragging about how they were able to lie to people and convince them that all kinds of things about Obamacare were true that were not. And now we got Ben Rhodes admitting that, hey, we told all kinds of falsehoods about the Iran nuclear deal, the big one being we said that we were dealing with “moderates.” We weren’t dealing with the extreme ayatollahs in Iran. “No, no, no! We had found some moderates in Iran who were reasonable and responsible, and we were able to deal with,” and it turns out that wasn’t true at all.
They were dealing with the ayatollahs and the extremists hardliners — the anti-American, “Death to America!” faction — in Iran all along. And did you hear what the haughty John Kerry said in a commencement speech? You know, every time the Drive-Bys do a story that’s designed to drive a wedge between Trump and his supporters, something comes along to undermine them. And this one is the haughty John Kerry (who served in Vietnam, by the way), the secretary of state, who actually said in a college commencement address that we are all aiming for a borderless world, a world without borders.
And this will not come as a shock to anybody. This is exactly what everybody is afraid the globalists want. This is exactly what people think is tied up in these never-ending trade deals and the never-ending illegal immigration, the numbers of which just continue to expand. “A world without borders.” John Kerry is out there saying so. And so, when that happens, all Trump’s gotta do is point to what powerful Democrats and powerful members of the establishment — powerful members of the ruling class — are saying. And it just cements his support even greater.
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Let’s go to the audio sound bites. On Fox & Friends weekend Saturday, they played a clip from this program from me to set up their discussion on this. This is the clip that they aired.
RUSH ARCHIVE: If Trump, in order to get Ryan’s support, moves toward the Republican agenda, it’s not good for Trump. That would be an error. It would be maybe even an unforced error. Trump is where he is precisely because he’s not perceived as being part of that. If there’s compromise here, it better be not Trump moving to Ryan. I know, that’s blasphemy to some, but I’m sorry, it is what it is.
RUSH: Clayton Morris at the Fox News Channel reacted, and we have Tucker Carlson, affectionately known here as Chatsworth Osborne Jr., also weighing in.
CARLSON: It’s the truth. I totally agree with him. Millions of actual Republican voters just voted for Donald Trump. Who’s to say what it is to be Republican? Republican voters just weighed in on that he question. Donald Trump needs help. He’s never run for office before. People like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney could be helping him. What about the millions of people that voted for him? I feel like the Republican leadership is saying to them, “We don’t want you in our party. We consider you morally suspect and socially beyond the pale. We don’t want you in our club.” I think it’s a bad message to send to voters.
RUSH: That’s pretty much what I think. I think that’s what all this establishment stuff is all about. You know, the important thing to remember about the establishment, too, folks, this is a key element of it, by the way, and that is that rising in it, progressing in it, climbing the ladder in the establishment is not much to do with merit. This is one of the things people have figured out about it. It’s more due to connections and networking, which inexorably leads to privilege, based on who you know, based on your family ties.
Now, this is not unique to the establishment. These kinds of things exist in every structure of human beings, be it in a city, be it in a school, be it in a college, a high school, or whatever, there’s always the big clique, and there’s always the unsullied and the outcasts and what have you. There’s always the ruling class in any organization whatsoever. But here at the highest levels of our country where we’re supposed to have the absolute best and the smartest, according to textbook, we’re supposed to have the best and the brightest running things. And they are supposed to be interested in genuine national interest, not self-interest. But the perception is that it is devolved to self-interest.
And I’ll tell you what, when you can get yourself in a situation where you can climb a ladder of success without having your merit judged, that’s the creme de la creme. When you can advance by how good a brownnoser you are, or who you know and how know and what kind of things that you could make happen, whatever your connections are, this is what they’re all afraid of losing. This is what they want no part of. So when Chatsworth here says that, you know, Ryan and these guys, they ought to be helping Trump, they ought to be doing everything they can to help Trump win.
Yeah, common sense would say the Republican Party has a nominee, they want to beat Democrats, they want to beat Mrs. Clinton, but that’s not the first and primary concern here. The first and primary concern is holding onto that establishment. Can I give you some numbers? I was reminded of this by a friend. Trump is, according to the latest polling data, he’s down. In the Real Clear Politics average of polls he’s down six and a half points to Hillary right now when you average them all out. And because have that, there is panic in the Republican establishment.
I know you’ve run into it same as I have. It seems to be, on the establishment side, universal that Trump’s gonna lose in a landslide, right? It’s gonna be so bad that we’re gonna lose the House. It’s gonna be so bad we might lose the Senate. It’s gonna be so bad it will be a total wipeout. Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s panic city. As we discussed on Friday, I’ve never seen it like this. I have never seen the panic this deep, this acute. I have never seen the pessimism this pessimistic. It is noteworthy. I’ve never seen it. All is lost.
Everything we’ve gained — now we realize it wasn’t much, say some conservatives — everything we’ve gained is gone. Trump’s the nominee, oh. I don’t have the capacity for that kind of fatalism, just in my natural existence. I don’t have the capacity for that that amount of negativism. Some people thrive in it. It takes all kinds. For some people it energizes them, it’s what motivates them. I don’t have it. I don’t have the capacity for that kind of negativism ’cause it’s paralyzing.
But here’s the thing. When Bob Dole secured the Republican nomination in 1996, he was 17 and a half points down to Bill Clinton, and there was no panic in the establishment. They were happy. They were ecstatic. Bob Dole finally was paid back for all of his sacrifices from the battlefield to the Senate to whatever he had helped the Republican establishment do, it was his turn to get the presidential nomination, and he got it. He was 17 and a half points down, and there was no panic, there was no fatalism. There was no “it’s over.” There was no, “Oh, my God, that’s it for conservatism. Oh, my God, we’ve gotta stop and start over, oh, my God.”
No, no, they were happy. I’m talking about the establishment types. You and I weren’t. We saw the bloodbath that was to come. Now, Dole ended up gaining nine points from that 17 and a half down, but he still got beat in a landslide. Remember, that was the campaign where, during one of the debates, Dole’s out there asking, “Where’s the outrage?” Where’s the outrage over Lewinsky and all this stuff that Clinton had done and gotten away with, where’s the outrage? And Clinton replied in a famous debate retort. He looked at the camera, he bit his lower lip, and he said, “No attack ever fed a hungry child.”
“Yeah!” The audience went nuts and clapped and applauded, oh, my God, it was orgasm city. “No attack ever fed a hungry child.” And that was it for Dole, it was over. It was over before it started. Now, Trump’s only six and a half points down, and yet just compare the two. I offer these polling data stats to illustrate to you that Dole never had a prayer of beating Clinton. It was never gonna be in the cards, and there wasn’t any panic, there wasn’t even any sadness at the establishment level. Now, it’s the exact opposite. One more sound bite here on this Ryan business before we have to take a break.
This Charlie Dent. He is a member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He’s a Republican. And he was on CNN with Michael Smerconish on Saturday. Smerconish said, “Charlie Dent, doesn’t Rush Limbaugh have a point here that by sidling up to the establishment all of a sudden he alienates Trump here?” Meaning if Trump decides to compromise with Ryan by moving toward Ryan, rather than Ryan moving to Trump, his question to Charlie Dent is, “Doesn’t Rush have a point? I mean, by sidling up to the establishment, all of a sudden Trump will alienate the very base that got him this far?”
DENT: I would perhaps respectfully disagree with Rush Limbaugh on that point. Look at foreign policy. You know, Donald Trump has talked about withdrawing from NATO. I think that would be a huge mistake. He’s also talked about a number of other issues in that regard that are very unsettling to me, his foreign policy, uh, statement a week or so ago on America first? I mean, that has negative connotations back from the 1930s. Those are the things that maybe Paul Ryan wants to talk about as well as his economic isolationism, which many of us think is a failed course of action.
RUSH: You know, this America first business… I knew this was gonna happen, too. Make America great again. America first. For those of you that that are not aware, loosely speaking here, the phrase “America first” dates to World War II. And it was uttered by people that had no desire to stop Hitler, no desire to enter the war in the European theater to stop Hitler. Their phrase was “America first.” “We don’t need concerns everybody around the world, screw it.”
And over time, “America first” has acquired this isolationist: “We don’t even care if Hitler takes over the world. As long as he doesn’t threaten us, fine with us.” And so, in an attempt here to denigrate Trump, they’re trying to equate “make America great again” with this “America first” business as though it’s just unspeakably unacceptable. “Echk! Only a rube and know-nothing would — would — would talk like that: Putting America first, making America great again.”
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RUSH: You know actually who it was that ran first on the phrase “America first”? It was Woodrow Wilson, well-known Progressive, favorite of the left, way, way back in 1912, internationalist hero, Woodrow Wilson ran on America. But the modern connotation of American first is used to denigrate anybody who says it by trying to tie it to people who supposedly had no problem with Hitler running roughshod all over Europe.
It was, “We don’t need to get involved in that. Leave us alone! Leave it alone. It’s not our concern in the world there. Not our problem.” And, of course, Hitler is everybody’s problem today. And anybody who didn’t want to stop Hitler is some sort of a reprobate of the first order, which is the attempted application today.
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Jim in Richmond, Virginia, I’m glad you called, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Good afternoon. Mr. Limbaugh, for five or six years I’ve been hearing you admonish the Republicans for failure to use their voter mandate to stand up to liberalism, and isn’t that exactly what Trump is doing, using his mandate from the Republican voters to stand up to the Republican establishment? Isn’t that exactly what you’ve been saying that they’ve lacked the backbone to do? Isn’t that exactly what Trump is doing?
RUSH: Well, maybe, but I want to make sure I understand the first part of your thing, the thing that I have been suggesting people do is what?
CALLER: You’ve been suggesting that the Republicans have done nothing with the landslide victories they’ve achieved over the past several election cycles to stand up to liberalism. I’ve heard you mention many times that they’ve basically given in to —
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: — the Democrats.
RUSH: You’re talking about elected Republicans have gone out, they’ve campaigned on X, Y, and Z, they get elected, they do A, B, and C, not Y, Y, Z, and I’ve been urging those people to oppose Obama, stand up. Those are the people you’re talking about?
CALLER: Those are the exact people. Now, Trump has done that with the Republican voters, the Republicans have voted, and said that they want Trump to represent the interests of the country, and now he’s doing exactly that by standing up, using the mandate that he’s just been given to stand up to the Republican establishment. Isn’t it the exact same thing?
RUSH: Well, not entirely, because I’ve been asking the Republican establishment to stop Obama, to stop —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — the Democrats. You know, Trump would not have been necessary if they’d have just done that, Trump wouldn’t have gotten to first base if there had been an official response in opposition to everything Obama’s done. But we haven’t had that. We’ve had cooperation. So what Trump is doing —
CALLER: Doesn’t Donald Trump have to stop the Republican establishment first, doesn’t he have to do that first, because they’ve been effective. So doesn’t he have to basically destroy the status quo that they’re actually trying to put upon him before he can even do anything about the Democrats? I mean, isn’t that exactly what he’s doing?
RUSH: I’m trying to understand what it is that made you call today. What have I said that you think I’m wrong about that you think you’ve proven I’m wrong about.
CALLER: Believe me, I don’t always agree with you, but I’m not prove that you’re wrong. What I’m trying to say is for years you say, oh, my gosh, you know, the Republicans, they’ve been given this voter mandate to stand up against liberalism —
RUSH: Right, haven’t done it.
CALLER: — done nothing with it. Well, pretty much Trump is encountering the same thing from the Republican establishment, and so —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — he’s gotta stomp on that first before he can do anything about liberalism. That’s the comparison I’m making.
RUSH: Oh, wait a minute. Are you suggesting, are you suggesting that the reason Trump has not moved on and really hit the Democrats yet, which is what we all want, is ’cause he’s first gotta take care of the Republicans?
CALLER: Exactly. That’s exactly —
RUSH: Okay, but who’s complaining that Trump isn’t hitting the Democrats?
CALLER: Well, he’s gotta do both. He’s fighting a war on two fronts there. But, you know, if you just listen to what Ryan said, Ryan infuriated me last week. If he’d have said nothing, I would have been fine with that. If they wanted to get behind closed doors and do as you suggested and start talking about Supreme Court nominations and what he would actually do with the presidency if he was fortunate enough to win, that would have been one thing. But for the establishment of Ryan and the Romneys and that whole group to continue to play the part of a they’re relevant, the Republican voters have shown that they’re not relevant. And for Ryan and the rest of the establishment Republicans to actually put forth the premise that, okay, well, we’re gonna take Trump and we’re gonna mold him like we want him to do, and, to me, in watching the news over the over the weekend —
RUSH: Well, Trump better not do that. If there’s any compromising here, it better be Ryan moving in Trump’s direction, not the other way.
CALLER: Oh, absolutely. And that’s exactly what I’m saying. I mean, his original statement —
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: — I reject your agenda, too, Mr. Ryan. You’re a non-winner. I mean, the object is to win. I mean, the absolute object is to win.
RUSH: No question about it. It’s interesting, Ryan, by doing what he did, by the way, some people are theorizing, speculating that Ryan actually did a smart thing by giving other House members cover to join up with Trump and so forth, but he’s a gotta play it, you know, Ryan Ryan’s camp is the donor class. I mean, that’s who the establishment listens to now.
A lot of people got mad that he said what he said. But Trump reacted to it the right way. Everything was fine. And Trump is out there, he’s launching into Jeb, you know, Trump has a point about this. I know pointing these things out makes some of you never-Trumpers upset, but I take you back to the first debate, and it was Bret Baier of the Fox News Channel back on August 6th, and the first question even before Megyn Kelly got to Trump and the women question, Bret Baier asked for ’em to raise their hands and take the pledge.
I’m not a big fan of raising your hand stuff at debates, but this was worthwhile. He said, I want a show of hands, how many of you will pledge tonight, August 6, 2015 to support whoever wins the nom. And Trump’s the only guy that said he wouldn’t take the pledge. All their hands shot up. Trump said, nope, I’m not taking the pledge. Everybody was stunned. Everybody was shocked. They figured, well, there he’s done it, he’s stepped in it now, he’s officially imploded, he’s finished after this.
And Trump gave his reasons for not doing so. He said, look, the Republican Party’s already waiting for me to step in it. They’re not being fair to me. Why should I take this pledge? If they’re not gonna help me, if they’re not gonna be supportive, why should I do this? But every other one did. Including Lindsey Graham. They all did. And now that Trump’s the nominee, who is it that’s backing out on their pledge. Jeb Bush is one, and Trump is going after him. He says, yeah, this is dishonorable.
“Jeb Bush signed a pledge and basically it says IÂ’m gonna support the person who wins the Republican primaries right? And it said that very strongly and he signed the pledge and now he says heÂ’s not going to honor the pledge. ThatÂ’s very dishonorable. I think he should honor it. Even if he doesnÂ’t love me. And itÂ’s hard for him to like me. But remember this, look, I hit him hard. Do we agree? Alright. Who cares? I mean I hit a lot of people hard and theyÂ’re like, my friends now. And they hit me hard.”
But “Bush posted to Facebook on Friday a message that included the statement, ‘In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire life.'”
You know, we mentioned this last week. Dick Cheney, it didn’t take long when George W. Bush, 43, and George H. W. Bush, 41, both came out and said they’re never endorsing Trump, they’re not gonna go to the convention. It was not very long, it was hours and Cheney came out and said, I’m all in. He’s the nominee of my party. Something is going on there, in addition to just the Trump endorsement.
But, look, I’ll tell you something else out there, Jim. It’s good for Trump that these guys are not endorsing him. It helps him. If the Republican establishment, the Bushes immediately get on board, some of the Trumpists will say, “Wait a minute. What’s going on behind closed doors that we’re not hearing about?” They’re so distrustful. If the Bushes get on board, that’s the establishment getting on board behind Trump. That’s not good. I’m just saying it doesn’t hurt Trump that they’re not endorsing him, my only point. Doesn’t hurt him at all.