RUSH: The Trump budget. You know, I fell into a trap yesterday. My friends, I erred. I made a mistake. And in making the mistake I can demonstrate how easy it is for, even people like me, the most highly trained, the most highly aware specialist, people who know left and right, backwards and forwards the tricks of the trade in Washington politics, what did I do? I looked at Trump’s budget, and I said, “Well, you know, presidential budgets never survive anything. Presidential budgets are always dead on arrival because all budgets originate in the House.”
And I thereby made the mistake of equating the Trump budget with every other presidential budget, a mistake further compounded by failing to remember my own admonition to many of you: This is a different president. This is a president who we’ve never had anybody like this before, who has never governed like this before and is redefining the way Washington works, and in many ways is turning it upside down.
OMB Director Mick Mulvaney
So I want to withdraw my claim yesterday that Trump’s budget is DOA, and I want to restate what I actually think of it today combined with a couple of sound bites from the Office of Management and Budget director, Mr. Mulvaney, because I think Trump’s budget is one thing. It’s exactly what Trump said he was gonna do during the campaign. It’s exactly why Trump was elected. And it does exactly what Republicans and conservatives have been claiming needed to be done ever since I have been a conservative and following all these things.
And yet Washington reacted the way it always does. “The president’s budget is dead on arrival. The president’s budget takes food out of the mouths of hungry people. The president’s budget sends the homeless further into the dark,” blah, blah, blah. And you can’t look at Trump nor his presidency the way you’ve always looked at presidencies before. He’s a different animal. He’s governed by different motivations. He’s not of Washington. He doesn’t want to become of Washington.
It’s a short way of saying that I think Trump’s budget is going to have much more weight and has a much more distinct possibility of being enacted, much of it, than any presidential budget heretofore.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mark from London, Ohio. This man held on for a couple of hours yesterday and we ran out of time at the end of the program and I promised him that I would allow him to complete his thought because he was on a roll here, and he gave us his number so we called him back. We welcome back to the program Mark, thank you, and how are you doing?
RUSH: I appreciate that. I want to pick up because — I really do. I’m not trying to ignore that. I want to get to you and what you think and I want to remind the audience from yesterday to today that your point was that people need to see Trump as he really is and not make the mistake of plugging him in to the way Washington always is. You describe him as an avalanche or as a flood, that he has a momentum behind him.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And he’s not gonna be stopped, no matter what they think. In fact, there’s already stories about how long — there are betting parlors now on how soon before four years will Trump leave the White House.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: That he won’t serve the first four years. That meme is already being established. You think that he’s a whirlwind and is gonna come in and just continue to dominate Washington even though that’s not reported?
CALLER: Yes, sir, I do, and I compare him to a modern-day George Washington. George Washington was up against incredible odds. But you have to think Providence was at work in his behalf. And time after time he kept going, he survived through Valley Forge and every disappointment, one defeat after another they’d come back and win. And if I had the time to elaborate — and I’m sure you know what I’m talking about — there are very many things that happened in the American Revolution that just amazed the whole world, they couldn’t believe it.
But I believe that kind of momentum is behind Mr. Trump, and a year ago, who would have ever thought we’d be where we are now? And considering everything Mr. Trump has overcome, all these adversaries and all these problems he’s having now, I don’t think it’s any kind of a big deal. I think he’s gonna get through it. I have an illustration to kind of make my point. I know you like stories and illustrations, but you remember the old story about the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike or the dam?
RUSH: Be very, very careful here given what happened to the reporter calling a tennis player — start putting fingers in dike stories — I know you can do this. Be very, very careful.
CALLER: (laughing) Yes, sir. Yes, sir. But, anyway, he was a hero because he — I forget how long he sat there and stopped the thing from leaking or flooding or whatever, but I think that’s kind of what happened is here comes Hillary Clinton and there was a leak in the wall, and she stuck a finger in it, then another one popped out, and she stuck another finger. And before long she had all 10 fingers in and all 10 trying to stop the leak. Then here comes Obama and here comes the press and here comes all the Democrats, and all of them together don’t have enough fingers and enough toes to stop this momentum that is behind the Trump movement. And it’s a movement that’s all over the world.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Do you think, do you think that Trump is winning, in terms of advancing his agenda, in terms of keeping campaign promises, do you think Trump has actually accomplished a lot of things?
CALLER: He’s accomplished a lot, in spite of, you know, a few setbacks here and there, I think he’s accomplished a great deal, yes, sir.
RUSH: If I wanted to go down a list-by-list item, Trump said this during the campaign, yep, check that off, done that, said this, done that, said this, I could go through about 75% of the things Trump promised to do he’s already addressed, and in one way or another, you could make the case that he has begun the work and is on the way to having those things accomplished.
Now, I imagine saying that there are many people, “That’s crazy. Are you watching the news? Trump’s not getting anything done. I mean, Trump is being sidetracked, he’s being diverted. I mean, Trump, the judges are stopping him, Trump hasn’t got anything done, Trump’s embarrassing, Rush.” How many of you think that? I imagine a lot of you do. It’s hard not to be in the media jail. It’s hard to escape it.
But I’m here to tell you that Trump has pulled off an amazing number of achievements already. Getting his cabinet confirmed and some of the things that they’re doing. The jobs that have been created, the factories that have not moved; there’s any number of things here that he said he was gonna do that have been done.
And right now you’d be hard-pressed to find a full-fledged failure. That’s why everybody’s paying so much attention to repeal and replace Obamacare, ’cause they’re hoping that this blows up in Trump’s face. And I still maintain that the people in Washington, media, establishment, think tanks, still do not know how to analyze, watch, observe, deal with Donald Trump. We shall see. I appreciate the call very much, Mark.
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