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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: You know all that talk about how Barack Obama was gonna be the postracial president and Barack Obama was gonna be the postpartisan president and all that? And, of course, it was all bunk ’cause the country ended up more divided than we have been in many, many moons under Obama. But yet look at what the Trumpster is doing here. He’s out there, he’s literally stealing one of the hugest coalitions of the Democrat Party, and that’s organized labor. He’s literally stealing it from them while they watch it happen.

And this all began with the Democrats back in November of 2011 admitting that they were writing off as — an electoral objective — the white working-class voters of America. This was an Obama initiative, and they did it… The Democrat Party made a tactical — actually a strategic decision to abandon the white working class because they had a grander idea. They were gonna go out, and they were gonna appeal to all of these disparate minorities: The sexual minorities, the gender minorities, the racial minorities, the ethnic minorities, the religious minorities, the vaginal minorities.

I mean, every minority you can think of! They were gonna go get ’em all, and they couldn’t do that while also appealing to the white working class because in the Democrats’ new construct, the white working class was the enemy. The white working class — white people in general — were the people doing all the discriminating against these new, precious minorities. And I think what got the Democrats all hyped up on this… You know, they believe what they read in their own media, and their own media has been touting this upcoming, approaching, can’t-do-anything-about-it demographic shift in the United States.

We’ve heard that the demographic shift is such that the white majority’s days are numbered in this country — and, as an aside, justifiably so because the white majority created all this discrimination and slavery and racism and bigotry and discrimination and Christianity. So it’s good that they’re losing their majority. The problem is for the Democrats that the white population of the country is still 78%. So they maybe were a little early here, and by writing off such a huge percentage of the white working class, in terms of people that are going to seek votes from, they calculated really badly. There aren’t enough.

Even if you get all of these obscure minorities, and then even if you get all of them to show up and vote, you still are nowhere near overpowering or outnumbering the white working majority that you have just sent packing. And we’re seeing the results of this. As I keep telling you, the Democrats have just lost electoral seat after electoral seat. I mean, they’re down over 1200 seats starting with the 2010 midterms. And they only have 16 governorships in the country.

And now have you heard what is happening in the race for the new chair of the Democrat National Committee? (interruption) Yeah, I’m gonna get to all this Trump stuff. Just hang on, folks. I’ll tell you something. What Trump’s doing is amazing, but I am also focused on the opposition, ’cause I find that’s where the fun is. That’s… When liberals are out of power, that’s when they get funny and that’s when it’s safe to laugh at ’em, always keeping them at arm’s length. But if you doubt what I just said, from The Daily Caller... We have the audio; we’re working on getting it now.

“Sally Boynton Brown, a white woman running for chair of the Democratic National Committee…” In other words, the woman who’s going — the person who’s gonna head up the entire Democrat Party, the DNC, the job formerly held by Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz. “Sally Boynton Brown, a white woman running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Monday that if she is chosen to lead the party her job will be to ‘shut other white people down.'”

Quote: “‘My job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt,’ Brown said during a DNC candidate forum. … ‘My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, “oh, no, I’m not prejudice; I’m a Democrat; I’m accepting,”‘ Brown bellowed during the forum, which was hosted by [P]MSNBC’s Joy Reid. Brown began her three-minute pitch by chiding white Democratic leaders over what she said is the party’s failure to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement.”

There’s a winning majority movement for you, and this is the Democrat Party today: The white majority is the focus of evil and now the person that wants to head the DNC — and she’s not the only one. Some of these other candidates also have the same attitude. So the Democrats look like they’re about ready to make this official. Not just an Obama campaign strategy, but now an official movement to discard fully — well, I don’t know what percentage of the 77% of the population that’s white, what percentage of that is white working class, but it doesn’t matter.

Just throw it away in exchange for what they hope for is this demographic shift that’s gonna make all these minorities, when you add ’em up, the new majority. And all they’re doing is alienating their own constituency. Do you realize one of the bulk groups in the white working class is union people? And the Democrat Party has owned them forever! Frustratingly so. And now Donald Trump is literally stealing some of these union people right out from under the Democrats while they look at it happen, and apparently don’t have any problem with it. I mean, if anybody’s headed to postpartisan America here, it looks like Donald Trump.

Now, I realize… Now, don’t jump to any conclusions. I realize some of you might be saying, ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait just a minute, Rush. I hope you are not all-in on this.” I know what you’re saying. “Trump, a Republican, gaining the praise and favor of union leaders who are questionable? I mean, we’ve had our problems with them. Are you sure you want to jump all…?” I’m not jumping in on it, folks. I’m just telling you what’s going on here. I think it’s fascinating to watch. And I tell you, official Washington…

If you watched Fox last night, if you watched CNN, there was a narrative, and the narrative: “Trump had the greatest day of his presidency yesterday.” The narrative is this: That Trump had a horrible day Saturday. I mean, virtually everybody on Fox, it didn’t matter how many panelists they had, every panelist said the same thing. “Trump had a horrible day Saturday! Oh, my God, it was embarrassing! First Spicer, then Trump goes over to CIA. Oh, it was just embarrassingly bad! We were all worried.”

And then yesterday came and they said, “Trump got a second chance at his first day, and Monday was his real first day. We’ll throw Saturday out,” and what they were talking about was what a great day he had. I mean, from the morning ’til the night, Trump agenda after agenda, meeting after meeting. He stole the unions. The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Sent packing. This morning the Keystone pipeline and the Dakota thing also sent packing. And it is monumental. He’s just signing executive orders. He’s reading them before he signs them. I noticed that.

He’s actually reading these things. That’s good. That’s good. Obama didn’t read them. I didn’t see him read them, he just put the John Henry on there. Trump’s actually taking the time to read these things, and he doesn’t ask an aide what he’s signing. He reads it and then reads it to people, he reads it to the media, and then signs it, puts his signature on there. But it is… I mean, the politics of this are just flat-out stunning. I think much of this is what a lot of Trump supporters foresaw. I think a lot of people supported Trump knowing full well or hoping full well that this is the kind of thing that would happen.

‘Cause I think one of the things that’s not quite understood by the Drive-Bys as they look at people that supported Trump, they look at people that attended Trump rallies, they still don’t know what they’re dealing with. They don’t know what they’re dealing with in Trump yet, I still maintain. But they’re really, really out to lunch when it comes to Trump’s supporters. They have no idea. They are wrong in many of their assessments about why Trump supporters support Trump, and the one thing they leave out…

I mean, they get some of it right. The one thing they leave out, they have no clue — they think they do, but they don’t know precisely — just how much opposition there is to the Democrat Party in Trump supporters. They haven’t the slightest idea. They are underestimating that aspect of the Trump support base. They are underestimating the animosity that Trump supporters have for liberalism and for the Democrat Party and what they have done to this country.

It’s a combination. Trump supporters are a combination of things. There’s varying degrees of literal support, visceral support for Trump, and there are Trump supporters who support him for those reasons plus they just have had it. They have had their fill of the destruction that has been brought about by the Democrat Party, and I can go down the list. You know the things: Obamacare, immigration, taxes. That leads back to Obamacare. Economic stagnation and the focus… Let’s not forget to mention this.

Many people who support Trump are very much aware that the Democrat Party considers them the enemy in this country, the white working class. The Democrat Party has signaled them as the enemy. They have politically behaved as though they’re the enemy. And the white working class is very much aware that the Democrat Party considers them the enemy or the problem — the location, the focal point of all the supposedly wrongs and I always in our country: Racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, all of those things. They are headquartered in the white working class.

The white working class is very much aware of it. So the Democrats are digging their grave each and every day while they think they are rebuilding. It’s great to watch. And I tell you, our old buddy Jonathan Martin who used to be at Politico who occasionally would send me an email asking from a contribution for me in a story he was writing. (He doesn’t do that much anymore. That’s okay. No big deal.) He’s now at the New York Times, and there’s a piece in the New York Times by Jonathan Martin today about how the Democrats are gonna come back.

How the Democrats are gonna rebuild. What the Democrats are gonna do to put it all back together. What the Democrats are gonna do to start winning elections, starting in the midterms in 2008. The headline: “Angry Democrats Study the Tea Party’s Playbook.” Are you kidding me? I read this story, and (laughing) I started laughing and I started cheering and I was at the same time incredulous. “Angry Democrats Study the Tea Party’s Playbook.” Now, what are they gonna learn from it? See, that’s always the thing.

They can study it all they want, but what are they gonna learn from it?

Well, let’s investigate here. “Freshly energized protesters are taking to the streets, members of Congress are being confronted in their districts by constituents angry over health care, and wealthy donors are turning fear into action. Eight years after Republicans united after a stinging electoral defeat to oppose President Barack Obama, Democrats are channeling an even deeper anxiety over President Trump — and a far shallower defeat — into a newfound burst of organizing,” and what the next paragraph says is that Democrats hope to create “a Tea Party equivalent from the left.”

Now, wait a minute. I know what you’re all saying. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! What about Occupy Wall Street? I thought that’s what that was. Occupy Wall Street.” Remember when the Tea Party sprang to life, the Democrats went out and created Occupy Wall Street and tried to tell us that it was organic. And it wasn’t. They bought it, they paid for it, they organized it, they cherry-picked it. There was nothing organic or natural about Occupy Wall Street. Why do the Democrats need to do anything? They already have Occupy Wall Street, and they’ve got Black Lives Matter.

Well, apparently Occupy Wall Street’s days have come to a close. It had a specific timeframe and agenda, and now Occupy Wall Street’s over. But the Tea Party isn’t. The first mistake the Democrats are making is the Republicans did not create the Tea Party. Right here in this story: “Angry Democrats Study Tea Party Playbook.” What they’re missing… They can study it all they want. What they’re missing is something they will never admit: The Tea Party is genuinely organic. It sprang up out of Middle America.

It had no congressional or Republican Party membership. There were no ties. The Tea Party had nothing to do… In fact, the Tea Party was as much opposed to the Republican establishment as it was the Democrat establishment. The Republican Party didn’t create the Tea Party. The Republican Party didn’t organize the Tea Party to go out and do its bidding. The Tea Party existed despite both political establishments. The Democrats are gonna go out and create a Tea Party equivalent, when they’ve already done it: Occupy Wall Street. They tried it again with Black Lives Matter.

It isn’t gonna work.

It isn’t gonna work because it isn’t natural.

It’s like asking people to call Washington. You give ’em a phone number, say, “Call Washington; raise hell,” and then people do it. That’s not organic. If you have to tell people to call Washington, then it otherwise would not have happened, right? So that’s why I’ve never participated in telling people to call Washington (I only did it once to demonstrate what would happen if I did, (’cause it isn’t real. The Tea Party was real. Real people who had never been in politics before — fed up with what was happening — organized and got involved.

There’s none of that on the Democrat side. I mean, that already doesn’t exist. So they want to create what they think was phony. The Tea Party, to them, was a political construct with the Republican Party was behind it. They’re clueless. They remain clueless. Not that they’re no longer dangerous, don’t misunderstand. They’re clueless.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: In addition to the union activity that Trump has scored major points with for the Trans-Pacific Partnership withdrawal, you’ve got these labor leaders — many of whom we have been at odds with all of our lives. Many of these labor leaders, they’ve been in bed with the Democrat Party, they’ve been raising money for the Democrat Party, they’ve been funding the Democrat Party, and now they are in love with Trump as of today. They described the meeting with Trump as “incredible.”

Do you remember the George W. Bush administration push for comprehensive immigration reform? And I told you that on a couple of occasions, emissaries from the White House were dispatched down here to get my mind right on it. I never was in favor of it. And one of the things they told me in trying to convince me to support it was, “This is how we’re gonna destroy the Democrat Party. If we can own the immigration issue, we can own the Hispanic population. We can wipe the Democrat Party out!”

Now, isn’t it fascinating to me (and to you) that here’s Donald Trump actually doing it, but not with immigration? He’s… Well, in fact he’s gonna do it with immigration, too. But the way Donald Trump’s blowing up the Democrat Party is to take away an even bigger constituency than Hispanics. He’s on the verge of co-opting labor, white working-class people that the Democrat Party has decided they want no part of anymore, and here’s Trump sweeping them up. And if this becomes permanent, and if Trump follows through on redoing these trade deals and canceling others and cements this attachment of Big Labor to his administration?

I don’t care whether they’re signing on with Republicans or not. The point is, they’re abandoning Democrats, and the Democrat Party has always been a coalition of constituency groups that have a couple of things in common, but no more than a couple. You’ve had the feminists. You’ve had African-Americans. You’ve had this minority, that minority. You’ve had Big Labor. The one thing they had in common was love of Big Government and hatred of conservatism, and the Democrats throwing them away is a relevant step in Trump scooping them up.

Trump is scooping them up with policy. The Republicans aren’t. This is a key point to make, and I think a lot of people say, “Trump ran as a Republican, but these people are joining Trump.” And it’s gonna be fascinating to watch this all play out. And I don’t think the Democrats are aware of what’s happening to them. They obviously aren’t. And now the latest this morning, about 11 o’clock, Trump signed executive orders advancing the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. Those are two pipelines that Obama and the Democrats had stopped, and the reason they did was not climate change. It wasn’t to protect the environment.

Don’t fall for any of that. Warren Buffett owns the trains, and it’s the trains transporting the oil when you don’t have a pipeline. So Warren Buffett was opposed to the pipelines, and Obama loved an association with Warren Buffett and Warren Buffett’s money, and he also was able — and Hillary, too — to scoop up environmentalist wacko money by denying the construction of the pipelines. But the left’s objection to these pipelines had nothing to do with the environment, folks. Literally nothing to do, because pipelines are eminently safer than trains and over-the-road trucks.

They’re eminently safer for accidents or what have you. And, by the way, the Dakota pipeline does not traverse one inch of sacred Indian ground. That’s another lie that’s been told. The reason the environmentalist wackos oppose these pipelines has everything to do with capitalism. They don’t want anything built with the powers of free market economy. They want government in charge of as much as they can secure, and they want the government being anti-capitalist and pro-socialist. And this is the primary reason. And they just…

They shrouded their opposition to this in environmentalist terms to scoop up gullible voters like Millennials and others who’ve been made to believe that the planet’s not gonna be habitable by the time they reach 65 because of climate change. It was a giant, giant snooker that Hillary and Obama and the Democrats were engaged in. The Keystone protests are not about the transmission of oil or fossil fuel. It’s all about anti-capitalism. Here’s Trump, by the way, at the White House — this is late yesterday afternoon — with union leaders applauding Trump for terminating the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

THE PRESIDENT: This is a group that I know well, whether personally or just because I’ve hired thousands and thousands and thousands of you. We just officially terminated TPP.

UNION LEADERS: (applause)

THE PRESIDENT: And I’ve just signed a document — a very powerful document — and we’re gonna have trade, but we’re gonna have one on one, and if somebody misbehaves we’re gonna send them a letter of termination, 30 days. And they’ll either straighten it out or we’re gone, not one of these deals where you can’t get out of it; it’s a disaster. So gonna have plenty of trade. But TPP wasn’t the right way.

RUSH: And here’s Trump to the union leaders after all this, telling them that he’s gonna bring jobs back to the United States…

THE PRESIDENT: We’re gonna put a lot of people back to work. We’re gonna use common sense and we’re gonna do it the way it’s supposed to be done. We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that are taking everybody out of our country and taking companies out of our country, and it’s gonna be reversed. I think you’re gonna have a lot of companies come back to our country, companies that left —

RUSH: Okay. Stop the tape. We’ve all heard Trump say that stuff. Here is Sean McGarvey, who is North America’s Building Trades Unions president, speaking to the media about the meeting with Trump.

MCGARVEY: We just had probably the most incredible meeting of our careers with the president and the vice president and senior staff, when the president laid out his plans about how he’s gonna handle trade, how he’s gonna invest in our infrastructure and how he’s gonna level the playing field for construction workers and all Americans across this country. And then took the time to take everyone into the Oval Office and show ’em the seat of power in the world… The respect that the president of the United States just showed us — and when he shows it to us, he shows it to three million of our members in the United States — was nothing short of incredible, and we will work with him and his administration.

RUSH: I want you to imagine… We’ll get into… Look, I know, I know. There’s stuff to be said about this. But for the moment I want you to imagine you’re Obama and you’re wherever you are, and you’re sitting there, and every hour you watch your agenda shredded. And then you hear your former donors and people that loved you praise Trump the way they never praised you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, he’s meeting with car executives, too, this morning in Washington.

Now, stop and think of this. Most people say, “What do you mean, auto executives? Didn’t Obama save the auto industry?” You go back to the 2012 Democrat convention and what was the slogan? “GM is [something] and Osama is dead?” I forget the exact slogan, but you know, Obama took over General Motors, supposedly gave it to the unions, and “saved” the auto industry by having the government buy it. What in the world is Trump doing meeting with these guys? Well, here’s a little bite. Trump promising carmakers he’s gonna help ’em. This is at the White House…

THE PRESIDENT: We’re gonna make the process much more simple for the auto companies and for everybody else that wants to do business in the United States. I think you’re gonna find us to be from very inhospitable to extremely hospitable. I think we’ll go down as one of the most friendly countries, and right now it’s not. I mean, I have friends that want to build in the United States. They go many, many years and then they can’t get their environmental permit over something that nobody ever heard of before. And it’s absolutely crazy. And I am, to a large extent, an environmentalist. I believe in it. But it’s out of control, and we’re gonna make a very short process, and we’re going to either give you your permits or we’re not gonna give you your permits. But you’re gonna know very quickly. And generally speaking, we’re gonna be giving you your permits. So we’re gonna be very friendly.

RUSH: There again. So Trump’s with the auto executives, and that seems to be going along just fine. Now, I want to go back to the union guys for just a second, because I’m well aware that there are many of you out there who have some trepidation over this. I mean, let’s be honest: Up until this year if you mentioned the name Richard Trumka or Jimmy Hoffa Jr., I mean, this was like… This was bad news. These guys were aligned with the Democrat Party, they donated to the Democrat Party, they propped up the Democrat Party, they elected the Democrat Party.

They were for Big Government. They were for everything that we opposed as conservatives. They raised money, they campaigned — they did television production, commercials — for Democrats. They excoriated Republicans. They had made these ads showing Paul Ryan pushing his grandmother over a cliff in a wheelchair. They did some despicable things. They hated the Republican Party. They hated conservatism. They hated the idea of small government. They were in bed almost literally with the Democrat Party.

Now all of a sudden, these same guys are singing the praises of Donald J. Trump. Are any of you worried about this, or is there some caution/reservation about this among any of you? I mean, have they changed? Are they still the same people that loooove the Democrats and looooved Big Government and looooved anybody that opposed Republicans? These the same people that whatever the issue was — abortion, immigration — whatever the Democrat Party’s position on it was, these union guys were lockstep. Have they changed? What’s changed?

What has made them abandon the Democrat Party? Is it substance? Is it Trump and these trade deals and actually opening up job opportunities for labor unions? Didn’t the Democrats do that, or was this another instance where…? Like the Democrats get 93% of the vote of the African-American community but really never do anything for them. Angry African-Americans have been angry for as long as they’ve been voting Democrat! They are lives haven’t improved; the Democrat Party hasn’t made that big a difference in their lives, in their fortunes, in their futures. But they keep voting Democrat.

The unions were the same.

The unions were constantly angry, constantly enraged, always ripping a new one for Republicans and so forth. They were just total lockstep with the Democrat Party, even though all the Democrat Party did was talk a good game. The thing that united union workers and the Democrat Party seemed to be a common hatred of conservatism, small government, you name it, with the mistaken belief that the Republican Party was inexorably tied to big business. The Democrat Party’s the party that’s become inexorably tied to Big Business and Big Wall Street and Big Bank. So all of a sudden, these same guys just can’t get themselves enough of Donald Trump. They just loving them some Donald John Trump.

Who’s changed?

And depending on how you answer that: Is there any concern?

I’ll let you ponder that.

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