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Trump’s Flooding the Zone, But Needs Congressional Action

by Rush Limbaugh - Apr 21,2017

RUSH: The AP is reporting that they had an interview with Trump and that Trump says he is going to introduce a massive tax cut, tax reform package next week. In the interview with the AP, Trump says the plan will result in tax cuts for both individuals and businesses. He would not provide any details of the plan, saying only the tax cuts will be bigger, I believe, than any tax cuts ever. That’s wonderful, that’s fabulous, that’s great. However, it won’t mean anything if he can’t get any cooperation on Capitol Hill.

The Investor’s Business Daily has a little editorial today titled, “This Do-Nothing Congress Is A Travesty — Shortly after Donald Trump won the election, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Republicans had to ‘go big, go bold, and do things.’ So far, the GOP has not delivered.”

Do you remember on Friday after the election we had Reince Priebus on this program, and I began to ask a question. He knew right where I was going, and before I finished the question, Priebus said — (interruption)” What is going on up there? Usual computer problems. The computer is firing itself, folks. I mean, it’s launching items on its own.

Anyway, Priebus said, “I know, I know, no excuses, no excuses.” And that is exactly right. What he was referring to, when the Republicans got control of the House they said, “Well, we can’t really do anything with Obama in the White House until you give us the Senate.” So we gave ’em the Senate. And then they said, “Well, we can’t really do anything here because Obama’s still in the White House.” So we elected Trump. Then they said, “Well, we can’t really do anything ’cause we don’t have 60 votes.” And people have thrown their hands up in sheer frustration.

So Trump is gonna introduce this, and I think I know what’s going on. You know, if you listen to Mnuchin, if you listen to some of the other administration people, the news has been, “I don’t think we’re gonna get to tax reform this year, certainly not by August, like we originally hoped. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.” And the reason it isn’t gonna happen, “We need the savings from our repeal and replace of Obamacare. ‘Til we get that, we can’t do tax cuts.” And Trump’s watching all of this. He knows full well what he promised, and he knows full well what his voters expected.

So as I said earlier, Trump’s over at the Treasury department today, and with whatever power he can muster via executive order, he’s trying to dismantle elements of Dodd-Frank which is an absolute — it’s one of these great liberal things disguised as a consumer protection bill, but all it did was put shackles on the entire financial services industry under the guise that everybody in it is a criminal already and all they do is rip off the customer, so we’re gonna make it really hard for them to do business. And Trump’s gonna dismantle that.

He’s also taking some action via executive order on taxes. But I think what Trump is doing is flooding the zone and basically trying to put pressure and highlight the fact that it’s not him. He’s promising and trying to do everything he said he was gonna do. But the people saying, “I don’t think we can do it” are not Trump. They are people up on Capitol Hill. Now, I know, I know, one of the jobs of an effective president is to be able to get control of situations like this and bend congressional opposition to his will and win. And I fully expect more of that to happen.

I’ll tell you why. I touched on this earlier this week, and it’s just my opinion. I don’t really have any hard-core evidence of this other than observing what you’ve observed. And my humble opinion is that the entire Washington establishment has been behaving, has been comporting themselves in such a way as to stall and delay and limit and prevent as much of Trumpism actually happening as they can, under the belief that at some point Trump’s gonna burn out, grow tired and weary of it, and either resign or the Democrats are gonna impeach him or something.

And I think behind this is a lot of the donor class telling House and Senate Republicans, “Look, you want to continue to receive our support, you’re gonna stop this stuff, you’re gonna stop that wall, you’re gonna stop these stupid trade things he’s trying to do, you’re gonna stop this stupid tax package, and if you don’t, you can forget us sending you any money.” I mean, that may be a little broad in my projection, but I think something like that’s happening. ‘Cause these people didn’t want Trump to win.

After he did win they got even angrier so they’ve been trying to wade him out, essentially. And they’ve had allies on the Democrat side doing what they can. The one exception here is Gorsuch. You know, they made tracks to get Gorsuch confirmed and they pulled the nuclear option. That was good. But on some of these other things, it is clear — the Obamacare repeal and replace, tax reform, some of these big things, there just appears to have been a lack of similar degrees of energy between Trump and the Republicans up on Capitol Hill. And look, folks, I don’t know, as I say, just intelligence guided by experience, something tells me that there are enough — and it’s not all of the Republicans, don’t misunderstand. But there are enough of them that really didn’t expect Trump to win. Like Lindsey Graham.

Lindsey Graham said before he became a Trump supporter after Trump bombed Syria, Lindsey Graham said during the campaign, “I would just as soon lose and be in the wilderness for 25 years than I would rather win with Trump.” And I don’t think he was alone in expressing those sentiments. Establishment’s the establishment. The way they do things is the way they do things. An outsider come in and start showing how easy comparatively it is to get things done after these people been telling us for 20 years, “We can’t do this, can’t do that,” and here comes a guy straight out of the chute running rings around ’em.

We can’t have that. We can’t have it discovered that you can actually get things done for the people here. I think that’s largely what’s going on. What’s gonna change this is Trump’s not going anywhere. What’s gonna change this is that Trump is not intimidated by it, and he’s not going anywhere, and he’s not going to be impeached, and the Democrats are not gonna put him in jail, and these asinine, insane leftist protesters are doing nothing but damaging themselves and the Democrats, not Trump.

So Trump’s flooding the zone, massive tax reform, he’s gonna present it next week. Obamacare. Now the story is that they’re coming together and they may have found a way to get the Freedom Caucus on board. I’ll just remind you, if either or both of these things happen, then it’s sayonara for the Democrats in 2018 and 2020. It’s sayonara. It’s over. Some people are already of the opinion that the Democrats are toast in ’18 and ’20 already, simply because of the way that they have been behaving since the election.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Nobody’s told me that I’m wrong. I mean, nobody’s called and said, “No, Rush, that’s not what’s happening up here.” Nobody’s called me and told me I’m wrong when I say there are some people have been delaying and stalling and waiting Trump out. In fact, Louie Gohmert in the newsletter interview told me I was right about some of them. He didn’t name any names; doesn’t have to. We know what is happening. This is not hard to figure out.


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