Meg Whitman is a Republican in Name Only.  She’s a RINO Republican.  But she’s gonna go out there and she’s not just gonna vote for her; she’s gonna help her.  She is going to assist Hillary, and she is saying she’s going to recruit as many people as she can to vote for Hillary and to help Hillary.  Now, I have to tell you that — just to me — is treasonous.  Intraparty treason.  You can say what you want about Donald Trump. You may not like Donald Trump. You may think Donald Trump’s whatever you think of him.

But to have somebody who has been thought of as a potential vice presidential running mate, who has been a Republican candidate for office out in California and has gotten beat every time she’s tried, and has been a Republican fundraiser, to publicly — and she’s not alone.  Somebody from the Jeb Bush advisory team, Sally Bradshaw, the other day she said she’s gonna do the same thing, or pretty close.  This is — and I don’t mean treason against United States. 

I’m talking about it’s just treasonous to the party to whom you have sworn allegiance.  People are free to do whatever they want to do.  Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not saying she shouldn’t be permitted to do it.  I’m saying the methodology she’s using. She is actively… She’s announced that she is going to actively involve herself in helping to undermine the values, political values she has claimed to have all of her life.  She’s been a Republican.  That has stood for something. Well, it used to. 

But for many of the years in the past, it stood for something.  What it usually stood for, what people understood it to be was a belief in small government, limited role of government, entrepreneurism, individual liberty, freedom to be who you are and what you want to be to the best of your ability.  All within the realm of compassion, advancement of everybody in America.  It is rooted in the concept of American greatness and American exceptionalism.

This was the Republican Party.  And okay, so you have a nominee you don’t like. So you just chuck all that, everything you’ve been for all your life?  I know there are Republicans in Name Only. I know there’s a lot of liberal Republicans out there.  Don’t… I’m not naive, folks.  Don’t misunderstand.  But this is more than just not supporting Trump.  This is undermining the party.  This is not… She can’t even lay claim to trying to rebuild the Republican Party. 

Some of the anti-Trump people are claiming they’re doing this to save the party, to try to rebuild the party, strengthen the party, ’cause Trump is weakening it.  That’s not what she is doing.  She is willingly, happily participating in the dissolution of it.  And so if there are people out there who have been suspicious of her as a Republican all these years, it seems your suspicions have been justified.  Now, what is the practical result of this? 

Well, let’s circle back to Bill Hemmer’s insightful question on Fox today to Karl Rove. I’m paraphrasing: “Karl, what if everything we think we know about politics is upside down this year?  What if everything we think we know about how you advance in politics and how you get support in politics — how you hold onto support, how you build it…? What if everything we know about it is wrong?  What if what we see as a Donald Trump campaign imploding with a staff near mutiny, and Hillary’s polling numbers rising, doesn’t mean anything?

“Because the people collating information, reporting it, the polling — putting it all together — don’t know how to analyze all this?”  Now, if the answer to Hemmer’s question is, “Yeah, there’s something to it,” then I have to think that what Meg Whitman is doing is only going to strengthen the resolve of people who are supporting Trump.  And when Trump supporters find out about this and other people and actions such as that taken by Meg Whitman, I think it’s going to strengthen their tie to Trump.

I think it’s gonna make them even more intensely desirous of Trump winning, ’cause this is exactly the kind of thing that Trump supporters are fed up with about the Republican Party, how easy it is for so many in the Republican Party to sell out the party and join the Democrats — or not sell out the party, but stay within the party and advance the Democrats’ agenda, be it with amnesty and immigration, abortion, who knows whatever it is. 

Isn’t this one of the reasons Trump has tapped into all of this what we will call country class emotion?  Isn’t it the Meg Whitmans of the Republican Party and people like her who do what they do which has put the Republican Party in the position that it’s in?  So, if there is something to Hemmer’s question, you have Obama yesterday going on and on and on and on about how unqualified Trump is, how he might be mentally the imbalanced, how he’s unsuitable.

And then Obama says, “By the way, you know, Mitt Romney and McCain, I don’t agree with them, but they would have been okay. I could have been satisfied with them.”  I mean, it was the most arrogant display from Obama I’ve seen, and that’s saying something.  He says he does not agree with them but at least he understood that they wanted to respect the Constitution.  “I mean, that wanted to make me throw up.  At least Romney and McCain, they respect the rule of law.  At least Romney and McCain, they understand their limitations. 

“At least Romney and McCain… Why, but Trump? My God, he’s unfit! He’s ill-tempered, he’s unsuited, he is not qualified, he’s unsuited to be president.”  The next question’s obviously: “What are you gonna do if he wins, then?”  But that performance that we got from Obama yesterday? I predicted it. He just got into it about four months, five months sooner than I thought ’cause that’s exactly what Obama’s gonna do when the next president is inaugurated. 

If the next president does anything that might look like it’s taking on or unraveling the Obama agenda, that’s exactly what he’s gonna do.  He won’t be able to go to the Oval Office or the pressroom, but he’ll be able to go anywhere he wants and blow his dog whistle for the media to show up, and that’s exactly what he’s gonna do.  He’s gonna question the new president’s veracity, qualifications, and say how he just can’t sit idly by and watch the eight years of sweat and hard labor he put in to transforming this country be unwound by somebody who’s not qualified or may be unfit.

And I think he would say that about whoever the next president is, in that circumstance.  So you got a little bit of an advance view of what our future looks like with Obama as ex-president.  But my point is, what if all of this stuff that Meg Whitman’s doing and Obama’s performance yesterday, is actually cementing support for Trump out there and everybody’s missing it because what they see is Trump apparently not knowing what he’s doing, misfiring, aiming at the wrong targets, talking about things he ought to have dropped by now? What if none of that matters?  What if what matters is that people are fed up with people like Obama and Meg Whitman and all these others that make up the political elite class? Because, believe me, that’s why Trump’s there. 

That’s why Trump is winning, is because that group of people is big enough to enable him to beat 16 challengers in the Republican primary. (interruption) No, I’m not — no, no.  No, I’m not doing that.  I’m not trying to get everybody to not panic. I’m just responding to a question I heard Bill Hemmer ask.  I thought it was an interesting question.  Because so much of what’s going on, a lot of people in the establishment haven’t understood it since day one. 

And they to this day I think a lot of them don’t understand why Trump has the support that he’s got.  And I’m not here in denial.  I’m not sitting here thinking that Trump’s running a masterful campaign.  Don’t infer that from what I’m saying.  I guess my point is this.  That the movement that appears to be put together and led by Trump actually existed before Trump came along. The people fed up with the Republican Party, the Tea Party types, the people fed up with the Republican Washington establishment, Democrats included.  When Trump came along — and this is not to put him down. 

Now, don’t anybody misunderstand.  He came along and connected with it.  Whether he intended to or not, he came along and connected with it, and the people loved him and trusted him and probably still do.  They look at him as a fighter, and they look at him as somebody that’s not taking guff from anybody, be it Khizr Khan, be it Hillary or what have you. 

But the political professionals see a campaign imploding, and they also see a campaign staff in mutiny.  They see the staff of Trump in mutiny.  And there are stories out there that Manafort, the guy brought in is getting frustrated, Trump won’t listen to him, Trump won’t listen to anybody.  Howard Fineman had a tweet yesterday saying he had it on good authority that Manafort was close to quitting. He wasn’t gonna quit but was frustrated ’cause Trump won’t listen to anybody give any advice. 

So they’re putting the stories that there’s a mutiny going on in the campaign.  The stories are also out there that Trump is lost, he has no idea what he’s doing.  Now there are even the stories, “Rush, you should have know, Trump’s mission is to destroy the Republican Party.”  People are now saying that this is all part of the plan, that Trump’s out there to get Hillary in the White House, to destroy the Republican Party based on his record, all of these disparate, various explanations for what people don’t understand. 

Let me ask you this.  Mr. Snerdley, in your lifetime — and you are, what, 45?  Fifty?  Okay, 60?  Okay.  In all of your life, have you ever seen a presidential campaign like this that is not third party or not fringe or what have you?  Never.  Nothing even close to it, right?  So all you can do, therefore, is measure it against what you have seen, which is the usual well-oiled, highly scripted, very expensive television ad after television ad after television ad campaign featuring public appearances with stump speeches by the candidates that are always the same.  You have never seen a candidate literally defend himself day in and day out. Even if they accuse him of having gout, he goes after them.  We’ve not seen this. 

And so since the only experience you have is of these well-oiled machines with strategists and consultants and ads and polling and focus-grouping then it would be easy to say, “My God, this is out of control. This doesn’t make sense. This is not how you did it. This is horrible.”  But you only say that because you’ve never seen it before.  In fact, if you’ve ever seen anything like this, the closest to it’s Perot, and Perot is not even that close.  Perot didn’t want to win.  He had another agenda.  But Perot even had a much more structured, what would characterize as well-oiled campaign and staff.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Meg Whitman is exactly what I was talking about in my monologue of the previous hour about cronyists.  Meg Whitman’s a billionaire.  She has decided to throw in with whoever’s gonna win the election in her world.  She’s decided that she wants to sidle up to Hillary. She wants to participate in the cronyism.  She wants to be on Hillary’s good side.  She doesn’t want to be thought of by Hillary as an enemy, as a member of the Republican Party.

So Meg Whitman is just the latest addition to the billionaires for Hillary bandwagon.  And it’s all rooted in cronyism, not patriotism, not party loyalty, nothing to do with issues.  Meg Whitman wants to be close to power.  She doesn’t care if it’s Hillary Clinton, she doesn’t care if it’s Barack Obama.  All she knows is that if Trump is president, he’s not gonna be crony with her.  Trump is not gonna do any special favors for her.  So she’s gonna throw the Republican Party overboard and sidle up to Hillary, and not just say she gonna vote for Hillary, she’s gonna help Hillary. 

And then there was this yesterday from the Wall Street Journal.  “Hedge-Fund Money: $48.5 Million for Hillary Clinton, $19,000 for Donald Trump.” So $48.5 million hedge fund, Wall Street, big bank money to Hillary Clinton, $19,000 for Donald Trump.  “Political donations from people at hedge funds have vaulted this election,” and it’s all going to the Democrat Party.  And yet everybody out there in low-information land thinks that all these Wall Street fat cats are a bunch of fat Republicans who are racist, sexist, bigot homophobes.  And yet they’re all Democrats sidling up to power.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  You know, look at this headline here, folks.  It’s from the Associated Press.  The revered, the veneered and respected Associated Press.  Ready for this headline?  “In Blow to GOP Unity, Trump Refuses to Back Ryan, McCain.”

Over here I have a story of all these Republicans saying they’re going to support and help Hillary.  And over here I have a story headlined in the AP: “In Blow to GOP Unity, Trump Refuses to Back Ryan, McCain.” And they’re giddy.  Oh, they’re excited, the AP is. 

Welcome back, folks, Rush Limbaugh, the cool Rush Limbaugh here, the hip El Rushbo at 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. 

I’m not kidding.  The Politico, I mean, they’re hooting and hollering here.  “HP CEO Meg Whitman Backs Clinton, Denounces ‘Demagogue’ Trump — Hewlett Packard CEO and prominent Republican fundraiser Meg Whitman pledged her support to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, castigating her Republican opponent Donald Trump and labeling him a ‘demagogue’ for good measure.

“In a phone interview with The New York Times, Whitman promised to donate a ‘substantial’ amount to Clinton’s campaign to help her oppose Trump, whom she claimed ‘undermined the character of the nation.'” She says, “I will vote for Hillary, I will talk to my Republican friends about helping her, and I will donate to her campaign and try to raise money for her.”

Really?  Donald Trump is undermining the character of the nation? Bill Clinton didn’t do that? Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t do that?  Half of the Democrat Party’s protest constituent groups don’t do that?  You seriously, Ms. Whitman, want to talk about undermining the character of America and focus on Trump?  I mean, he may be a lot of things, but Donald Trump has not done one thing that detracts from the character or the reputation of this country, for crying out loud.  I can give you a list of Democrats who you seem to want to sidle up to who are doing their level best to destroy this country as it was founded, who are doing their level best to transform this country away from its intentions as founded.  For crying out loud. 

And, by the way, they have a huge list, the Washington Post has listed all of these highly respected, dignified Republicans who, as a matter of principle, cannot support Trump.  They are heralded and they are celebrated.  I’m telling you, when every Trump supporter sees this, it just cements them tighter with Trump.  Richard Hanna, Republican, New York, moderate Republican retiring this year, I think he’s one of the few actual officeholder Republicans to denounce Trump.  Henry Paulson, Hank Paulson, the Treasury secretary of the bailout era. Richard Armitage, who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and got away with Scooter Libby being sent to jail for it. 

Brent Scowcroft. Alan Steinberg, regional EPA administrator. Kori Schake, National Security Council and State Department aide. Doug Elmets, former Reagan spokesman.  Jim Cicconi, Charles Fried, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Peter Mansoor, Larry Pressler, Arne Carlson and Robert Smith, a former judge on New York’s highest court, the court of appeals.  It’s actually kind of a pathetic list.  I mean, that’s it.  That’s it.  That’s the Washington Post list of GOP watchdogs who are treasonously abandoning the Republican Party. 

I thought all these people were saying they feared for the party, they wanted to rebuild the party.  How do you do that by giving money to Hillary Clinton?  How do you rebuild the Republican Party by — these are the same people that told us, us Tea Partiers and us conservatives, every four years they told us we had a duty to hold our nose and support the nominee.  They told us that we had a responsibility to handle our losses with dignity and remain unified and support the party, be it for the presidential nominee or any other officeholder.  And look at these cut-and-run experts. 

Now, these are the people claiming that they wanted to save the party from Trump.  They couldn’t stand by and watch Trump take down and destroy the GOP.  So what’s their recipe?  Publicly announce that they are going to support Hillary Clinton, some of them publicly announce they’re gonna donate to Hillary Clinton, and then others, in addition to all that, publicly announce they’re gonna help her, they’re gonna advise her.  Republicans. 

This is why there is a Trump. 

And then the other AP story:  “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain, two of the party’s most powerful members.  He also ripped into New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte in the same interview with the Washington Post.  All three have primary challengers and each disapproved of Trump’s criticism of the Muslim-American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq.” 

Nice try, AP.  Something tells me that Trump’s decision to not endorse these candidates happened before the media found out about Khizr Khan and that the whole thing happened.  I think Trump has openly expressed his lack of enthusiasm for some of these people long before anybody ever heard of Khizr Khan. 

“Trump’s rebuke to Ryan carried particular derision,” says the AP.  “‘I’m just not there yet,’ Trump said, closely echoing Ryan’s own demurral before eventually endorsing Trump, when he told CNN on May 6, ‘I’m not there right now.'”  That’s what Ryan said. 

Let me check something here.  Yeah, here it is.  It’s on Drudge.  Let me see what — I thought I saw a link or headline yesterday that Ryan — it wasn’t something Ryan said.  It was somebody else talking about Ryan.  I know what it was.  Somebody said that they knew that if Trump were elected, that Ryan was gonna do everything he could to undermine a President Trump.  And I don’t remember who that was.  In fact, I didn’t even click on the link, so I don’t think I ever knew.  I just saw that and asked myself, “Do you want believe that or not,” and I throw it up in the air.  Yeah, I can believe it. 

So here you have a list of — let me count ’em up — one, two — it’s too many to count.  At least 15 Republicans proudly bragging about defecting and joining and supporting and donating to Hillary.  And the AP, “In Blow to Republican Unity, Trump Refuses to Back Ryan and McCain.”  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Cindy in Waterford, Michigan.  Cindy, great to have you on the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  Mega dittos.

RUSH:  Thank you.

CALLER:  You know, I’m a former HP employee.  I was laid off last week, and with 20-plus years of work with them.  And one —

RUSH:  What did you do?  What did you do at Hewlett-Packard?

CALLER:  Well, I started as a programmer.  The last seven or eight years, I’ve been a software tester.

RUSH: Oh, so you’re an engineer?

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  Okay.

CALLER:  And one point that I don’t think is being made about Meg Whitman’s endorsement of Hillary is that HP has a 70% offshore hiring policy, and Trump has been very vocal about this policy.

RUSH:  Oh, yeah, that’s a great point. Silicon Valley, all those firms are big into the expansion of immigration because they want to be able to do what Disney did.

CALLER: Yup.

RUSH: They want to be able to bring in highly skilled, highly educated foreigners that will work for dirt —

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  — and be able to fire their native American working for.

CALLER:  That’s what they’re doing.

RUSH:  Right, and so Trump is opposed to this.   Meg Whitman, she doesn’t admit that. She says, “You know, this guy’s a demagogue! This guy’s horrible. This guy would destroy America as we know it.” So she’s a gotta go sidle up to Nurse Ratched.  I’m sorry you lost your job.  That’s… What are you gonna do?

CALLER:  I don’t know right now.  I was three years from retirement.  I’m working with my financial advisors to see if there’s any way of retiring now. 

RUSH:  You don’t sound nearly old enough to be retiring?

CALLER: (giggles) I’m 62 in a week or two. (giggles)

RUSH: No kidding.

CALLER:  Yep.

RUSH:  Have you gotten your first Social Security check?

CALLER:  No.  No.  I’m not supposed to collect Social Security ’til I’m 66.

RUSH:  Sixty-six.

CALLER:  So that’s why I’d like to work three or four more years, if I could.

RUSH:  So you live in Waterford, Michigan.  HP has an office there?

CALLER:  They have one in Pontiac.

RUSH:  Pontiac.

CALLER:  It’s a neighboring city, yes.

RUSH:  Yeah, yeah, Pontiac. The Detroit Lions used to play there.

CALLER:  Yaaaaay!

RUSH:  In the Silverdome, I think it was.

CALLER:  Yes, it is.

RUSH: Are you willing to move or do you want to stay in Pontiac?

CALLER:  I’d like to stay where I’m at.

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  All my family is here, and, you know, it would be just a short-term gig.

RUSH:  Well, is there anything like HP, any competing companies that do things that you’re qualified to do that you like doing in Pontiac?

CALLER:  Yes, or in the Detroit Metro Area there are. There’s some opportunities around.  I’ve just gotta apply.  I’m working with headhunters right now.

RUSH:  Headhunters?

CALLER:  Yeah.  That’s kind of how you get most of your IT jobs.

RUSH:  I know.  I once did a headhunter thing, back right when I worked for the Kansas City Royals.

CALLER: Oh.

RUSH: Headhunters were relatively new things, and I had a friend who knew one, so I had to fly to Dallas to meet this headhunter.  And this guy had this weird quirk that if you had a drink — whatever it was, Coke, water, whatever — and your glass sweated, was dripping, if you didn’t like that, he didn’t like you.  That means you were opposed to nature. So if you had a napkin under your drink to keep water from dripping on your pants when you picked up the glass, that was a negative point for you with this headhunter. 

CALLER: (chuckling)

RUSH: I’m not kidding.  But, anyway, I met with the headhunter for about 30 minutes, and I got a bill for $25,000, and I was earning 17. I thought, “What? What? What? What?”  I was working the Kansas City Royals at the time, and I had some time. I went down to… I was down in Dallas watching a Steelers pregame with the Cowboys, and this friend said, “Come by! I got this headhunter buddy.” So met at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas, this headhunter guy.  That’s the only experience I’ve had with one. But I know that means you’re an executive here, right?

CALLER:  No, I’m not an executive.  I haven’t done much managerial. Headhunters around here, what they do is they hire you and then they contract you out —

RUSH:  Oh.

CALLER: — to different companies, and so they pay you and then, like, say —

RUSH:  Oh, really.  So have you been hired by the headhunter, or you’re still interviewing with them?

CALLER:  I’m still interviewing with them.  They’re trying to get me right now into a position at one of the big three around here.

RUSH:  Well, it sounds like it’s gonna work out.

CALLER:  I hope so.  I’m praying so.

RUSH:  You just want another three or four years, right?

CALLER:  Yes.  Yes.  I definitely want another three or four years.  The main thing is insurance.  I mean, you know, the cost of premiums is out the. you know —

RUSH:  No, no.  You’re talking about health insurance?

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  No, that should be $2,500 cheaper.

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  If it cost you anything at all, that’s Obamacare.  It’s more expensive for you?

CALLER:  Well, if I have to buy it myself, you know.  Right now —

RUSH:  Well, most people do.

CALLER:  — my employer — well, I pay a share.

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  But if I —

RUSH:  No, you’re paying it all.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  You’re paying it all.

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  What about your doctor, you like your doctor?

CALLER:  I love my doctor, but I don’t have insurance anymore.

RUSH:  All right, so your doctor doesn’t love you.

CALLER:  Exactly.

RUSH:  Well, I’m surprised.  This is not what we were told.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  By the way, there’s this great recovery going on.  How in the world have you been thrown out in the street with no health insurance?  This is one of the greatest economic recoveries that we’ve ever had in this country.  Look at you, you’ve lost your job, you’ve lost your health insurance, you should still have your insurance, shouldn’t be costing you anything, if anything, $2,500 less. You should be able to pick whatever doctor you want.  Man, there’s a great, great recovery happening out there and somehow, Cindy, you’ve missed it.

CALLER:  I missed it.  I don’t know the right people, I guess.

RUSH:  Must be.  Well, I feel for you.  I really do.

CALLER:  Well, thank you.  And I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to talk to you.  I celebrated yesterday when I found out you were gonna be on for another four years because I would go through withdrawals without you.

RUSH:  Oh.  Well, that’s very kind of you.  I understand the pain of withdrawal, too.  I wouldn’t want that on anybody.  So thank you very much.  I sincerely appreciate that.  I really do. 

CALLER:  Well, thank you.

RUSH:  I’m confident that you’ll find something here.

CALLER:  Thank you very much.

RUSH:  You’re smart person, there’s something out there for you.  You ever been to Flint?

CALLER:  Yes, I have.

RUSH:  And you’re still here to tell us about it.  Thank you so much. Cindy, have a wonderful rest of the day.

CALLER:  Thank you.

RUSH:  You bet.