RUSH: I checked the email during the break, and all kinds of people are weighing in trying to answer my question: What is the one thing that could stop the Trump agenda? By the way, let me remind you if you missed it: I don’t think all these protests by themselves can derail the Trump agenda. I don’t think all the demonstrations and the rioting and the temper tantrums and all this stuff as demonstrated by the left by itself can derail, slow down, or stop the Trump agenda — and I actually think the more left engages in this, the more damage they’re gonna actually end up doing to themselves.
I think that’s why you’re starting to see now certain people with sympathies to the left like Rahm Emanuel saying (summarized), “Back off it. Come on. Dial it down. We’re not gonna get power back even in 2018.” Rahm Emanuel says, “We’re not gonna get our power back even in 2018.” But they’re not gonna back down. They are going to continue to do this because they’ve got reasons other than advancing an agenda, and I know many of them are obvious. But we’ve always had the question: At what point does this kind of activity hurt, and hurt whom?
If the Democrats and their mindless leftist protesters engage in this kind of activity and it the ends up causing them damage, how so? I mean, with whom? Is it with moderate voters? I saw something yesterday and I mentioned it to you, that moderate voters don’t like all this. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard that said about angry leftists. My entire career I’ve heard the experts say that the Republicans need to stop criticizing Democrats, stop criticizing Obama, stop criticizing Hillary, ’cause the moderates don’t like that.
It makes moderates really nervous, and they run right back home to the Democrat Party. Now the people are saying this stuff could end up hurting Democrats. The Democrats are already hurting. To me, the great, unspoken elephant in the room is that the Democrats are in quicksand. It just doesn’t look like it because of media coverage, obviously, but they are losing seats. They are losing power, electoral power. I know this may appear to cut against the grain.
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RUSH: This is Pam in Atlanta. Great to have you. How are you doing?
CALLER: I’m great. How are you?
RUSH: Fine and dandy. Thank you so much.
CALLER: Small business owner here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’m not nervous at all about the hundred-day agenda, not one bit. Even Paul Ryan has said: we’re on board with the agenda. It’s just gonna take us probably 200 days to implement it. Of course. It’s still Washington.
RUSH: No question about that. So right now you don’t have any red flags raising at all?
CALLER: Nope. My customer base, my commercial business, everything is off the charts for a winter in January. It’s busy, people are optimistic. The quiet group of us that went to the polls and elected Trump without anybody catching us are still fired up, we’re still happy, we’re still behind him, and I’m not sensing nervousness in any of my sectors.
RUSH: No kidding? Well, that’s good to hear. What are you expecting this agenda to be? What are you expecting to come first or to happen relatively soon and if it doesn’t you might get alarmed. Anything?
CALLER: Well, I think, you know, we’re all sort of, especially business owners, middle-class people, we’re all looking for the tax cut and some relief as far as that goes. My business isn’t really affected by the regulations that I know hurt a lot of other businesses. But, you know, I think the tax cut, if the tax cut gets stalled, he can’t do that as he promised, then we may get a little shaky, but —
RUSH: Well, see, here’s the thing about that. I’ll tell you why some people are nervous, and look, it’s understandable. That’s why I made the point, we’re only, what is it, the third week. I think it is wise here not to get off the rails here and you’re smart to do that. But people look at this, okay, we got all three branches, we’ve got the judiciary, we’ve got House, we’ve got Senate, we’ve got the White House.
They can’t stop us. The Democrats cannot stop us. They don’t have the votes to stop us if the Republicans stay unified. So what, hell’s bells, why isn’t the tax cut bill advanced, what is this talk about Obamacare 2018, 2019? It went to replace-repeal, then replace-repair, then, well, I don’t know. Hang on just a second here, Pam.
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RUSH: We are back to wrap it up here with Pam in Atlanta. I didn’t want the abrupt end of the segment to sound rude to you or anybody else. I wanted to be able to thank you for calling. I’ll just run a couple of things by you. By the way, I’m happy you say that you nor any of your fellow Trump supporters are getting nervous yet. But the media is trying. I want to just share with you two headlines: “Voters Await Economic Revival in a Part of Pro-Trump America.” This is a story of out of Wisconsin, blue state, failed for Hillary. AP’s trying to say that Trump voters in Wisconsin are already starting to get nervous that their economic circumstances aren’t better yet.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: This is the 17th day of the Trump administration.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The next headline, this one’s more problematic. You may have even seen some of this on the news. This is a story from TheHill.com: “Republican Lawmakers Face Rising Anger at Town Halls.” Have you seen any of the videotape of these?
CALLER: I have not. But we don’t watch the news —
RUSH: It’s vicious. These leftists —
CALLER: We don’t watch the national news for that information anymore. If I watch the news, it’s my local stuff to catch, you know, who’s being a hoodlum where. I want the weather, and I want —
RUSH: You want the local blood and guts.
CALLER: Yeah!
RUSH: You want to see who’s been robbed, who was in a car crash, that stuff.
CALLER: Exactly. I don’t… Nobody trusts the national news anymore. I mean, it’s just… It doesn’t even seem relevant to us.
RUSH: Right on. I’m so happy to hear you say this. You know, I’ve been doing this so long, it’s hard to set aside the fact that this kind of stuff can affect the way people think.
CALLER: It’s not. We’re working hard, we’ve got kids in college, we’re doing day-to-day to make our little piece of America great. And we’re sick and tired of a very small slice of this whole pie running the moral and the national agenda.
RUSH: Boy, you’re damn right about that. You are so right on the money about that!
CALLER: They were right to carry a sign, they were right to assemble wherever the hell they want and say what they want. But they’re just a small percentage of the slice of this pie, and the media is choosing to give them the glory. And there were lots of fine women that marched in Washington that day.
RUSH: Well, hell, the media is the pie.
CALLER: They focused on the nut jobs. It’s just the nut jobs.
RUSH: Well, I’m so happy to hear you say this. I really am. But here’s my concern. I’m gonna go ahead and tell you my concern. Okay, let’s make up a Republican member of Congress, Freddie Slobodnik, and Freddie is euphoric. He’s just been elected to Congress on a Trump wave and he’s gone to Washington. He’s gotten sworn in, he’s got his committee assignments, he’s ready to go, and he heads back home for his first town hall meeting with the people that elected him, and what does he find?
A bunch of angry, militant, enraged, on-the-verge-of-insane people who show up at his first town hall meeting and start throwing spitballs and other things at him and accusing him of all kinds of traitorous behavior, and they try to make it look to Mr. Slobodnik like they are the people that voted for him, but they already feel betrayed. They’re already angry. They can’t believe that he hasn’t stood up to President Trump yet. And the objective is to scare our little imaginary congressman here, Congressman Freddie Slobodnik, into losing his resolve.
And the reason this worries me is because it’s worked time and time and time again. And I’ve seen some of the video of this. You’re not watching out there, Pam. But I have seen some of the video. And you know what this is? It’s almost a redo of the Tea Party town halls that took place in 2010 with incumbent members of Congress, and they were livid. These are people who have never been in politics before. They had never joined a protest march. They never done anything. They were not being told to show up by a singular leader.
They were just fed up. They were fed up with Obamacare. They were fed up with all the spending, fed up with the stimulus, fed up with the national debt, fed up with it looked like there wasn’t gonna be a future for their kids and grandkids. And they showed up at their Republican town halls and demanded that these people stop it, that they do what they could to stop it, and that’s when they were told, “Well, we can’t do anything with the numbers we have! We need the House.” So these voters gave the House.
Then we heard, “Well, it’s not enough! We need the Senate.” They gave ’em the Senate. Then they said, “Well, you know, we really can’t overcome Obama. He’s still in the White House. We need the White House.” We gave ’em the White House, but they’re not happy with who’s in it. That’s the rub for me. So the left has now seen what happened at those Tea Parties town halls, and now they’re co-opting the strategy and are showing up at Republican town halls as leftist opposition, and they’re trying to intimidate and they’re trying to bully and they’re trying to frighten.
And Tom McClintock, who is a solid conservative — you never have to worry about him wavering — had to leave his own town hall with police protection in California because of this. These are dangerous. These people are bordering on committing personal violence, all for the show, all to scare these people into abandoning the Republican agenda. Making them fear for their lives. No doubt fear for their families. I mean, this is vicious stuff. This stuff needs to be prosecuted. It needs to be charged and prosecuted.
This whole idea of “dissent” being a time-honored part of American culture? This isn’t dissent, and this isn’t peaceful, and they don’t have the right to destroy property. They don’t have the right to threaten and to intimidate. They don’t have the right to invade space. This stuff needs to be stopped. Republicans run many of these states. They don’t run California, but they run many of these states, which means they control the justice angle in these states. We need to get serious about this because I’m telling you the thing that worries me… I’m just gonna answer my own question.
The thing that worries me is the impact all this is gonna have on Republicans.
Folks, we’ve seen it. And then you add something to this — and I’m not trying to be the harbinger of pessimism here, not at all, ’cause we can stop this from happening. We have to be aware of it. The Republican establishment, the Democrat establishment is all one establishment. And I don’t care what anybody has told you, and I don’t care what the reporting is, the Washington establishment is still up in arms over the fact that Trump is in the White House, and that is not shaped by party affiliation. It’s shaped by if you are in the establishment, Trump is an abomination. Trump is an insult. Trump is an affront. Trump is an embarrassment.
And so the purpose of this organization, any organization, is self-perpetuation. And I just don’t see these people just willingly letting an outsider like Trump come in and roll ’em. That’s how they would look at it. This is why, Pam, it really is important for every one of you people that voted for Trump to hang in with it, ’cause you are the only support base he has. Whenever somebody polls you on presidential approval, you tell ’em you approve. That number’s gotta stay positive. That’s it. You know, president’s poll numbers are things that politicians pay attention to.
That’s why I think speed, speed, speed, just ramshackle this. Do what I thought was gonna happen. I thought a pace was gonna be established at the establishment in Washington, Republican, Democrat, media, independent, wouldn’t be able to keep up with, would not know what hit ’em. And they’re trying to slow it down and do things the way they’ve always done it, the way we’ve always done it.
So we will see. But this, “Republican Lawmakers Face Rising Anger at Town Halls,” this is so obvious, just the headline and the first couple paragraphs of the story, so obvious the intent of this story. I can’t tell you how heartwarming it is to hear that you are not watching, reading, or listening to any of this. I think that’s fabulous.
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RUSH: Next stop is Asheville, North Carolina, Jim, great to have you with us at the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: And then a shout-out, dittos to the previous caller. And I just have three points. I am so optimistic, and there is nothing that’s gonna make me wobbly that I can see on the future with Trump, because of the way he’s handling the media. He hits back. He’s teaching Republicans how to fight this onslaught, and the people that I’m around, both liberal, conservative, and moderate, I see a whole slice of life out here in Asheville, they’re getting tired of the media piling on.
So, first, I think Trump is teaching and taking on the media and undercutting, just like you’ve said, their integrity on a daily basis, incessantly. Number two, I am so proud of Mitch McConnell, I want to give a shout-out to McConnell and Paul Ryan. What they’re doing is the devil’s work that has to be done. Previous Republican Congresses and Senates would have reinstalled the filibuster to be nice, to try to curry favor and say, “See? We’re not that bad.”
McConnell and Ryan are having no part of it. And as far as town halls, here’s one. Go look at our great congressman, Mark Meadows, who represents us stellarly. He was bullied, and he had the same thing, and it only strengthened his resolve, I’m sure. So to any freshman congressman out there, look at the people that you want to emulate, ’cause they’ve gone through it, too, and it’s just tempered ’em.
And finally, number three, Rush, I’ll tell you the reason I’m not wobbly, the reason I’m a hundred percent behind President Trump, is because what he’s doing is right. And when you have the right on your side — and I don’t mean right-left, I mean, the correct principles that he’s reinforcing, I’m just excited, I’m over the rainbow, and I hope this call made you more optimistic that these guys are going to help President Trump and the American people get back —
RUSH: Now, wait.
CALLER: And then I have a question on your book.
RUSH: Fine, fine, we’ll get a question in just a second. I’m not pessimistic. You know, it’s a fine line, pessimism and realism. And as the mayor of Realville, I have to stay real, and that means I have to be prepared myself for things that are gonna disappoint me so I can react to them in the right way and not be surprised by them.
And I have this ongoing thing I live by, and that is intelligence guided by experience. You’ve seen it once, it can happen again. You have to be vigilant for it. I do have some concerns. I wish Trump had more vocal support from the Republican side doing what he’s doing, but I understand why he doesn’t because of who they are. I understand they’re prisoners to polls. They’re prisoners to Drive-By Media reporting. They live where the media lives, and whether you watch it or not, they do.
And then the idea that they’re not really crazy about an outsider being president, period, and totally turning upside down the way Washington works. There are some people not excited about that, even if it does mean their side wins.
And then, thirdly, I’m not sure how many Republicans actually want to defeat liberalism and defeat Democrats. I keep hearing all this talk. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is still talking about reaching across the aisle and finding areas in which we can compromise to show that we can. We won the election. The Democrats are losing their shirts everywhere.
There’s no reason to draw back now instead of burrowing forward and burying these people. And I don’t know how much of a desire there is to bury these people. But, boy, I have it, and I know that Trump does. What is it so far Trump’s done that you like?
CALLER: I like his executive orders, number one. Number two, I like that he coalesced Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and started to move and make action even before he took office. And I like most and above all else, again, he’s teaching the Republicans how to deal with the hostile media and really understand, like you have so eloquently put it, that the majority of Americans feel conservative, that the minority is the Democrat, not the majority. Look behind the curtain.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And the thing that makes me happy is that what it really means to keep Republicans to defeat liberalism, make them understand that is, if they don’t move to defeat liberalism, they will be defeated. So just in a selfish interest, Trump and all these elections over the last 12 years that have removed Democrats from power, from city commissions to the United States presidency, all of that should show them that the path to victory, to keep their power base, to keep their seat —
RUSH: I agree. I agree. Look, I’m out of time here, but I know you had a question about the book, so tell Mr. Snerdley. Don’t hang up. Mr. Snerdley will pick up the phone, ask you what your question for me was on the books, or your comment, and he’ll pass it on to me. We’ll deal with it as the program unfolds.
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RUSH: Let me expand on something. We’ve had a bunch of callers today. It’s just eventuated ’cause I asked a question: What do you think could derail the Trump agenda, and I don’t mean the question to be negative. I understand how you would interpret the question to be negative because the derailment of the Trump agenda is obviously something we don’t want to contemplate but I bring it up because people are trying. I mean, the effort is underway. There’s a full assault underway to stop the Trump.
Here comes this executive order on vetting people coming into the country, and the leftist judiciary just shuts it down and says it’s not constitutional. And I don’t know if Trump is surprised by this. I don’t know if they were caught by surprise that this was going to happen. I kind of think they were. And so now it may not survive. It may not survive. Now, interestingly, Mr. Kelly, the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified before Congress today, and he pretty much said that they are going to be as vigilant, if not more so, in trying to find out who’s coming in, what their intentions are, where they’re from, all these things, with the objective being to keep the country safe.
And I think, if you look so far… DeVos, I think, is the seventh cabinet secretary to be confirmed. There are still… Sessions is still not over at the Department of Justice yet. Rex Tillerson just shows up at the State Department last week. I think when Trump’s cabinet gets in place, you’re gonna start to see things humming. I actually think that Trump’s cabinet is going to be a more actively involved cabinet than most presidential cabinets are. It’s a sense that I have. These are all people that are doers, and they’ve already made their mark in the world.
They don’t need fame. They don’t need money. They don’t need any of the things that attach to these jobs. They have demonstrated success in their chosen fields. They are at the pinnacle in their chosen fields. Therefore, they have made their money, their fortunes or what have you. And they have all the fame in the world that they want. So the pursuits that others would have here are long ago decided. These people are here to roll up their sleeves and actually accomplish things and do things.
And they’re all of the same mind-set President Trump is, that there are things drastically wrong in this country and have been going wrong for a long time that need to be reverse and turned around. I think once this cabinet is fully installed and Trump starts having cabinet meetings with all of them, I think you’re gonna see this agenda actually take off. The agenda as it relates to what happens up on Capitol Hill. Like our caller from Asheville was singing the praises of Mitch McConnell.
Fine and dandy; I like that, in terms of McConnell not caving and reinstituting the filibuster that Dingy Harry blew up. But at the same time we had a story yesterday: “Mitch McConnell Goes Public in Opposition to Various Trump Stances.” Well, what’s that? Well, we know what it is. And part of is just the way Trump speaks, and some of the things that Trump is doing, and then McConnell wanted to be on the record that he’s not up to speed with this stuff. He’s not happy with some of these things that Trump is doing and the way Trump is saying them. And I think it is a…
Well, it’s a potential minefield out there. You’ve got a guy that’s outside the political system and is coming in. It’s like a bull in a china shop, folks — and these people are all in the china shop, and in their minds they own the china and they own the shop. And here comes this guy roaring through, not caring what gets broken in the process of fixing things, and they’re just… The pace that he wants to use, they’re not accustomed to.
The direct confrontation with the media? Believe me, Republicans don’t want any part of that. They’re not on board for any of that. So I’m not being… I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but I just… These are things that Trump’s gonna have to be aware of as he attempts to advance the agenda.
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RUSH: Sean in Palm Beach Gardens, great to have you. We got time to squeeze you in. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, ma’am.
CALLER: I love your show, and what I want to say is, and when I’m not working, I try to catch up, but I’m always working. I would like to call the mainstream media to stop, stop covering the protesters. We have seen the women’s march, the women parading around as women’s private parts. We have seen what happened at Berkeley. We have seen what happened at NYU. Enough. Enough. And there was another protest after that.
The media is giving way too much attention to these people. I think what the media needs to do, and I know that most of the mainstream media will not do it, but those who are conservative can stop putting the cameras on them, report the damage they’ve done, and I think start focusing on the positive. Start focusing on the fact that Democrats are holding up our president from approving the most highly qualified cabinet the likes this nation has ever seen, to make America great again. And I have had enough of protesters. And I know both Democrats and Republicans agree with me.
RUSH: I certainly do. I love you, Sean. I think that’s just fabulous. It’s a sad fact it’s never gonna happen, but I love hearing you stick it to ’em! They’re doing it exactly on purpose for the exact opposite reasons that you — They are trying to promote these people! They want more protests, they want more chaos, they want more unrest. Anything they can do to derail Trump. That’s the purpose. I’m so happy to hear today it’s not affecting any of you. That’s so great.