RUSH: Have you heard the latest name tossed in the hat here for potential press spokesman for Trump? Kimberly Guilfoyle. So let’s… Who are the names that we know that are in that pot, in that hat? We have Laura Ingraham is in there. Monica Crowley’s name has been mentioned. Sean Spicer… He won’t get it. He won’t get it, ’cause I think Trump’s gonna go all female all the time on this job. Kimberly Guilfoyle? I didn’t know this because I don’t really care about this stuff, but I learned this today. She’s half Puerto Rican. (interruption)
I didn’t, either. So it’s therefore concluded that she’s Latino, and so Trump could kill two birds with one stone. “Put a woman out there and counter this idea that he hates women and is a misogynist, and a Latino.” This is the way people in Washington think. You know, you would put people out there not because they’re maybe the best at it or good at it but because they satisfy some of these concerns the Democrats have about things, the way they look at people. So this is how they continue to try to plug Trump into their playbook.
Am I leaving anyone out? Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley — Kimberly Guilfoyle is a new edition to that list as of yesterday — and Spicer. Is there anybody I’m leaving out here? Yeah, I can’t think of any others, but that does not say there aren’t. Anyway, I’ll get back to Earnest here in just a second. Since I’ve gone off on this tangent, let me stay on the tangent and finish the tangent. Reince Priebus was doing a radio interview yesterday (I think it was with Hugh Hewitt) and the subject came up about press secretaries in general and the White House, the Trump White House theory of it, ’cause Trump’s a different case.
He doesn’t need the media to get his message out. Trump, I think, is gonna continue to do rallies, for example. I think Trump is going to continue to tweet, and I think Trump is very much aware that he has the ability to go right to the American people and doesn’t need the Drive-Bys to filter what he says. He doesn’t need to impress the Drive-Bys, so they report favorably on him. He doesn’t need any of that. So they’re gonna have decide whether or not they want to continue to behave according to convention and have a press secretary.
They will have a communications office, but whether or not there is a daily press briefing is another matter. Then another version of the story is that they’ll still have the press briefing but it isn’t gonna be on TV. There won’t be any cameras. And let me tell you something: If there are no cameras in there, then it’s gonna be real. You regular listeners know my theory about cameras. You put a camera anywhere, and you forever change what otherwise would have happened. You put it on a street corner — you put a camera that people can see or that people know is there — and it’ll change the way everybody behaves, because everybody is self-conscious.
Only the truly professional have an ability to scrub their self-consciousness. That’s, I think, the key ingredient actors need, by the way. In order to become somebody else, you’ve got to be able to shed your self-consciousness, and most people can’t. When they see a camera, they become obsessed with how they look. And they’ll try to find a mirror or a window to see what they look like and then make sure they stand in the right place so the camera gets ’em the right way. And if they have to talk, then they’re aware people are listening.
It just changes everything, a camera, particularly if it’s not normally there or not. After a while the camera is forgotten. I once watched a TV series on the LeFrak family. They were building a building in in New York City. It was shortly after I moved there, and the documentary makers had cameras every day in every meeting that these builders had, the executives, and I happened to run into these guys a couple of weeks after the documentary aired at (of all places) Le Cirque. And I was compelled. It was a great documentary, and I learned a lot how buildings are made.
I walked up, and I congratulated ’em. I said, “How in the world…? Why’d you let the cameras in?” They said, “You know, after the first week we forgot they were there.” “You forgot they were there? It took ’em 30 minutes to set up every day!” “Yeah, but you don’t even notice it after awhile,” and that’s true. But not for TV people. In the pressroom, they know there’s a camera there. Look how the House of Representatives and the Senate were changed when they added cameras. It’s just… Folks, I’m not being critical or naive.
It’s just a fact of life, and when you’re talking about amateurs, it really affects things. And what happens wherever there’s a camera is much different than what would happen if it weren’t there. So the theory is being bandied about, “Take the cameras out of the pressroom, and what will happen is that a lot more substance will take place. If the reporters know that they aren’t being televised or videotaped while they’re doing what they do, and if the press secretary knows the same thing…” I know, you’re saying, “What about iPhone cameras and things?” I understand.
I’m just telling you what’s being bandied about, and the reason for taking the cameras out of there is to reduce the showbiz factor of all this and to make it more real. Then there’s talk about cancelling the press briefing on a daily basis altogether. Why do this? The Trump thinking is, “What point is served here? I send a guy out there who’s determined not to tell you what I’m doing. That’s his job: To not tell you what I’m doing! His job is to not give anything away that we’re thinking in here.
“All I was talking about was changing the seating chart,” and that’s a big deal, too, because the seating chart, whatever is in the front row is considered to be the biggest people in the clique, the most powerful people in the room. And if you’re in the front row, the tendency to be noticed by the press secretary is greater than if you’re in the middle of the pack or even at the end. And Priebus was talking about rearranging the seating order that had nothing to do with seniority and bigness of newspaper.
And they’re all ticked off about that. So they don’t know what’s gonna happen now regarding the press secretary and the briefing and all that, and they’re fit to be tied. I’m just telling you, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump scrubs it. Now, Snerdley, you know, you are still so much an insider that any suggestion that I make that constitutes a dramatic change in the way things are done, you look at me like, “No, no, they would never do that.” I’m not predicting they’re gonna do it. I’m just telling you I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it.
Snerdley just said, “If you don’t feed them, they’re gonna write something anyway.” Trump feeds them every day, and look what they still write. There has never been a candidate or president-elect who feeds the media more. These people, since Trump got in this campaign, if they were honest with you, they’ve never had more fun. They may be ticked off the guy’s running rings around ’em and defeated them, but they’ve never had more fun covering somebody. I’ve always thought this was the case, and they hate that.
They are really, really conflicted by the fact their ratings are up, their subscriber base is up. People are paying more attention to all these media outlets, except for CNN and MSNBC, and they love it, and they know Trump’s doing it, and they hate it, they hate everything about it, and they hate that Trump runs rings around them. But a part of ’em likes it as well. But Trump feeds these people. And what we’re finding out is it doesn’t matter, they’re gonna make it up anyway.
Trump knows what their agenda is. Their agenda is to take him out. He knows this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Grab sound bite 25, Reince Priebus. This is on Hugh Hewitt’s show, the one I was telling you about, had these comments about the potential changes in the White House daily briefing. Here’s what Priebus said yesterday morning.
PRIEBUS: I think that many things have to change, and I think that it’s important that we look at all of those traditions that are great but, quite frankly, as you know, don’t really make news and are just boring episodes and, you know, even looking at things like the daily White House briefing from the press secretary. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways that things can be done, and I can assure you we’re looking at that.
I want to reiterate what I said yesterday. I really do believe, folks, that the people in Washington really don’t yet have a grasp of what has happened here. I mean, they know and they’re claiming they know what’s happened, that Trump is an outsider with no political experience and that he’s won. And they know that Trump draws a lot of people to his rallies. And they know that Trump says and does things that don’t register with them, that seem to be inexperienced and disqualifying even, that Trump’s just a neophyte. And they’re looking at his cabinet, and they see a bunch of rich white guys which automatically disqualifies them, and they’re CEOs, and then that disqualifies them, and they believe that it disqualifies Trump with the American people.
They have fallen prey to the idea that what they think is what everybody thinks. Even these people who realize they don’t know where flyover country is, even these people realize they’ve lowest touch with people in the heartland, they still work, they operate under the premise that whatever they think is what everybody thinks, and what they think about Trump is what everybody thinks or is going to think. And so Trump’s making mistake after mistake, he’s putting these rich white CEOs on. You just don’t do that.
Where are the people of color? You just don’t do that. And I don’t think that they yet have a full grasp of the tornado that is headed their way once Trump’s inaugurated. I really don’t. I know how to listen to Trump. I’ve made a special effort at this, and I know the guy upwards and forwards and back, inside out. When he said in West Allis, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night or whenever it was, Monday night, “We’re gonna work so hard for you. We’re gonna work,” he is speaking as honestly as he ever did. He has every intention of shaking things up. Not to shake ’em up. He has every intention of making this country, without any doubt and question, the greatest place on this planet, in positive, good ways.
And I think we’re on the cusp here, potentially, of really whirlwind improvements at a rapid pace. They’re gonna leave everybody gasping for air who are Trump opponents. He’s gonna have missteps. I mean, it’s gonna be fraught with missteps and mistakes here and there ’cause nobody is perfect, and I’m not trying to imply that. I just have a sense of it. I mean, it’s nothing that I can say he said other than, “We’re gonna work so hard for you.”
These are not placeholders. These are people that don’t need these jobs for their resumes or for their egos or for their reputations or anything. These are doers. These are people that do. And we haven’t had that in a cabinet for eight years. We have not had doers. Trump’s military people are doers. Obama’s military people are watchers. They are the political people that wait for orders, politically correct and all of that. They institute odd rules of engagement based on political correctness.
If we get engaged in the military conflict, it’s gonna be to win it. It’s gonna be to wipe the enemy out. All the PC things are not gonna matter. And there’s gonna be caterwauling in Washington like you haven’t heard. You think this is bad now over this hacking, you wait. I think it has the potential to be a lot of fun.
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RUSH: Monica Crowley, Fox News infobabe, is joining the Trump administration. Trump has announced today that Monica Crowley “will serve as senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council, the Trump transition team said in a statement. Top national security adviser retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said he is ‘honored’ to have Crowley join the team, along with retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who will serve as the council’s chief of staff. … ‘I am deeply honored, humbled and grateful to be asked by the president-elect to join the extraordinary national security team he is assembling,’ Crowley said in the statement.”
So she’s the strategic communications senior director for the NSC. That means that poor Doug Schoen is gonna be need a new TV wife. Monica was Schoen’s TV wife. You know, that’s how you talk about that stuff on TV. You know, male-female anchor teams, they call each other “TV wife,” “TV husband.” The real wives and husbands watch with great interest. Well, they do. I know this stuff. I’m a powerful, influential member of the media with countless years experience, and Doug Schoen’s gonna be need a new TV wife. Well, she always appeared with Schoen. Not always, but, for example, in the morning on Fox, sometimes with O’Reilly.