RUSH: Let me grab Darrell here in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Welcome, sir. It’s great to have you with us on the program today.
CALLER: An honor to speak with you today, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir. I just got a quick comment for you about these poll numbers about Trump’s favorability — or, you know, his standing. I’m from Pennsylvania, and I don’t see it. You know, I wasn’t a Trump supporter from the beginning, but I’m definitely a Trump supporter now, and the only thing I see is people getting really pissed off about —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We don’t hear about this. You were not a Trump supporter, but you are now?
CALLER: I was not in the beginning. I did vote for him.
RUSH: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you’re a Trumpster. You voted for him. Okay.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Still, you were not predisposed to Trump from the outset. Okay, got it.
CALLER: But I just see people getting more ticked off at the Republicans that are not standing behind him and definitely the Democrats. I have a lot of Democratic friends that voted for Trump, and I don’t see them shying away, either, as far as they’re concerned.
RUSH: I have to tell you, that’s a good point. Nothing but anecdotal evidence, I know. I haven’t run into anybody — and I know a lot of people in my sphere voted for Trump. I don’t know a single of ’em —
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RUSH: What I was gonna say is, it’s purely anecdotal. I know a fairly decent amount of people all voted for Trump, and not a single one of them has bailed. And I would know. I mean, these people tell me these things. Now, there’s frustration like you can’t… Well, you can imagine. I’m sure you feel it yourself. There’s all kinds of people that are frustrated. No tax cuts, same song and dance on the Obamacare repeal and replace. But the people I know who voted for Trump are not abandoning the ship.
There is disappointment; I have to tell you. I’ll tell you how the disappointment manifests itself. The anger is at Congress, the Republicans primarily in the House and Senate. That’s palpable. That anger is palpable. I think the disappointment is rooted in people’s — I guess it was a belief or hope that Trump was really gonna be able to ride into that town and get a grasp of things and use the skills that he has written about in his books to quickly begin to effect change. There’s also this. I have to share you this too.
In talking about the opinions that my friends have, many of them — and this kind of surprised me. Many of them were shocked at the degree — the consistency of the degree — of hatred for Trump in the media, which I didn’t hold back when I learned. I said, “Are you really surprised at that? What did you expect?” What they tell me they expected that after a certain passage of time, and everybody’d realized that Trump won; things would settle down into some sense of normalcy. I think even Trump thought that, based on some things that he said to me back in February.
But the point is, I haven’t encountered anybody yet who’s even close to renouncing Trump. I haven’t found anybody that voted for him that is even close to saying it was a mistake. Have you? These are people… They’re not happy with what’s going on. Don’t misunderstand. And actually… No, that’s not true either. Some of them are. Some of them are well aware of some of the really substantive changes that have happened. The numbers of illegal immigrants trying to get into the country is way down. Food stamp use is way down. The stock market is doing gangbusters.
In a lot of ways, there are people whose lives are daily impacted by these changes who are very, very satisfied with it. Which leads to even more frustration. What I hear more than anything — and, look, it’s all anecdotal. I’m not trying to make this as a sweeping scientific statement. What I hear more than anything is, “Can you imagine how much better it’d be if the Republicans were cooperating?” It’s what I hear more than anything.
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RUSH: Jackson Center, Pennsylvania, Trump territory this is. And we have Josh with us on the phone. How you doing, Josh? Welcome.
CALLER: I’m doing great, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. Great to talk to you again. First I’d like to say, I’m union, I’m on a pipeline, and I probably would not be working if Hillary would have been elected. I was with Trump from day one.
RUSH: There’s no question you wouldn’t be working. If you’re pipeline, no way.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. My question would be, what do you think would happen if Trump would even get a little bit of positive press from the media, half of what Obama got. If they were honest and told us the good things that he is doing instead of telling us that nobody likes him, his policies are negative. They attack him constantly, but we support him. We elected him on his agenda. He told us very clearly every day what his agenda was, and we elected him. Let him get it done. Tell us what he’s doing and tell us it’s good and his ratings would go through the roof.
RUSH: Well you’re answering your own question there, and —
CALLER: Well, what do you think?
RUSH: I’m sitting here, I’m processing this, and I can’t get past the fact that it wouldn’t happen, so you’re asking me to participate here in a hypothetical.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Now, we can play the game here, but I think we have to manage our expectations. I don’t think it is even conceivable even in the wildest hypothetical that Trump would get even half the positive coverage Obama got because Obama’s coverage was 150% positive, it was redundantly positive. Your real question, if Trump were to get just any, 10%, 10% positive coverage, say on the achievements that have happened in the economy, there is no question that it would have a huge mitigating factor on his negative numbers, the approval numbers, his perception. It would change the White House attitude. It would make them more optimistic and less combative because they would think, “Hey, we’re getting some positive coverage. Maybe we can get more.”
CALLER: I believe it would get Congress on board with Trump and get them behind him —
RUSH: No question.
CALLER: — as well.
RUSH: There’s no question. That’s exactly why it isn’t gonna happen. It wouldn’t take much. It would just take 10%. Just give anybody an excuse to climb on board. That’s why they’re not gonna do it, Josh.
CALLER: Well keep delivering your message, Rush. We’re listening. We’re behind you.
RUSH: Josh, listen to this. I just got this story from the New York Times. It’s actually our old buddy Jonathan Martin. It’s a three-day-old story. This is a story that had Pence setting up his own presidential run for 2020, which everybody denied. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. “Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow.”
Listen to this paragraph. “In interviews with more than 75 Republicans at every level of the party … expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.” Seventy-five Republicans, Josh, talked to the New York Times, the Democrat Party’s PR wing and organ, and started trashing Trump and openly admitted they’re making contingency plans, hopefully with Trump not involved, 75 different Republicans did this.
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RUSH: No, no. This story goes back to… It’s actually a Sunday story that was published on Saturday night. It’s our old buddy Jonathan Martin who used to be Politico, and he still sends me the links to every story he writes. He heard me discuss one. “It’s nice to know you’re still opening the links.” I said, “Yeah, well, for you I do.” “Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow.”
Now, this was the story that had as its primary focus the fact that Pence was supposedly setting up his own PAC and his own group of donors and his own campaign under the theory that Trump either was gonna be rejected — nobody wanted him to run again — or Trump was gonna decide on his own. Pence denied that, as you would expect. But also in the story was this little paragraph here: “But in interviews with more than 75 Republicans…” This is the New York Times talking to 75 different Republicans “at every level of the party — elected officials, donors, strategists, consultants…”
In other words: Republican residents of the swamp. They went out and they found 75 Republicans in the establishment who would talk to the New York Times about squeezing Trump out for 2020. And these 75 Republicans “expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would even be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.”
Meaning: There’s a bunch of Republicans secretly planning on running themselves, that Trump’s gonna essentially be primaried. They’re gonna run after him. The party let the New York Times know that they’re making plans themselves to dump Trump. That’s how this is gonna be interpreted. I go back to something Ted Cruz says frequently. His first realization upon arriving in the Senate after being elected was how the central focus of everybody in the Senate was reelection. Not the issues that took them there and not the causes in which they believe, because all of those are academic if they don’t get reelected.
So even senators who show up after winning election, and they’re not up for six more years, are still singularly focused on being reelected. Which means fundraising, fundraising, fundraising, speeches, speeches, speeches, events, events, events, donors here, donors there, donors everywhere. Now, that would lead you to believe that if reelection’s the primo issue, that there’d be great sensitivity to voters and their concerns. Apparently, the more that happens, the more we see that more and more Republicans don’t seem to be bothered.
Because, as this kind of thing gets reported, the anger at Republicans, congressional Republicans out there in the country has got to be increasing. And we know that it is. People don’t hold back on this. And yet they don’t seem to be affected by that at all. And Louie Gohmert is just the latest Republican to say that if you guys don’t get your act in gear, we’re gonna lose the Senate in 2018.
And if that happens, folks — if the Republicans lose the Senate in 2018 — that is gonna be one of the most single-handedly sabotaged events in history, self-sabotage. The Democrats are the ones that face challenging reelections in 2018. More Democrats up for reelection are in states that Trump won handily. The Democrats ought… (sigh) If things were normal, the conventional wisdom would be that the Republicans are gonna end up with 60 seats in the Senate following the 2018 midterms, only because of the bleak nature for the Democrats.
If the Democrats are able to convert their current scenario that has them losing another eight seats into reclaiming the Senate, this will be one of the greatest self-sabotage acts that a party has engaged in, if that happens. And if we’ve got 75 members of the Republican Party in the swamp openly telling the New York Times that they’re making contingency plans for there to be no sign of Donald Trump in 2020? Why, people find out about this, and it’s just gonna infuriate them even more.
‘Cause I’ll tell you, the call we got from Josh: “Rush, what would happen if Trump just got 10% positive coverage?” And I think he made a valid observation. If that were to happen — and it won’t because of his observation. If that happened, can you imagine the Republicans that would eagerly switch to supporting Trump if he were getting some positive coverage on substantive economic things that are happening because he’s president?
Like the guy who called and said, “I got a pipeline job. I wouldn’t be calling you with a job if Hillary Clinton had been elected.” You who probably voted for Trump, you know a lot of people. I venture to say that you haven’t found very many of ’em mad at Trump in all this. But the anger at the Republicans now, that’s palpable, and yet they keep compounding it. It just… It’s not a mystery. I understand it completely.
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RUSH: This is Westin in Philadelphia. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Rush, how the hell are you today?
RUSH: I’m very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: (muffled cell throughout) Good. Hey, listen, (garbled) you’ve been talking about today, ties into something you said last week that I heard and I was trying to get through to you ever since. You were talking about the left and the anti-Trumpers and everybody else and they’re gonna get rid of Trump, you said, or they’re gonna get rid of Trump’s voters. I said, “That’s a profundity,” and that’s what climate change/global warming has all been about. It’s been about getting rid of the Trump voters.
Look at the regulatory policy and tax policy that this country has had the last 30 years. It’s all been driven by this hoax. And you would say to yourself, “Why? Why would we purposely chase industry out of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania?” Let’s look at West Virginia, just most recently with Obama and Hillary. We’re gonna chase coal out of West Virginia. Why? Why would anybody think of doing something like that? Unless, of course, you wanted to literally chase away these people, or —
RUSH: Well, wait a minute, now. You just admitted it’s been a 30-year plan here, and those voters have been Democrat for all these years. It’s only this election they became Trump voters. So if your theory holds, the Democrats have been trying to get rid of their own voters.
CALLER: No. Well, that’s not the case, Rush, because the middle class… When middle class prospers and become upper middle class, they change who they are. They no longer are Democrats. They are people with a self-interest. (garbled) This climate change has all been about a slow-growth economy, really, and sometimes a no-growth economy. But (garbled) take away a man’s livelihood, you take away his ambition for everything in life.
RUSH: Oh, I get it.
CALLER: You take away his ambition to get married, to have a family. (garbled) Look, it even boils down to the opioid crisis that we have. You have whole sections of this country where despondency has set in. That’s what it means. It ties into what you’re talking about.
RUSH: Right. And your theory, then, is that’s where people turn to the Democrats, when they lost everything —
CALLER: Absolutely. Last year, Rush, this country had the lowest birthrate in its history. So the home (garbled) —
RUSH: Well, that’s ’cause of feminism and its assault on the sperm count.
CALLER: That’s all part of it. But it all works out to, you know, in these regions, the Rust Belt, where you have literally, I mean, broken families, families… When you don’t have faith in an economic future or faith in your own future or your country’s future, you are not exactly a population or society that reproduces. And you’re right. It’s all been about that. What it boils down to, everything that the left does has been about demographic policies. Literally. You can see it with the way they’re infuriated with the white middle class voter who’s voted for Trump. And, you know, this article and these articles in the New York Times, they realize: Hey, if this guy is allowed to bring back prosperity and optimism, I mean, what are we gonna do? How do you then say —
RUSH: No, I totally… They cannot allow this guy to do any of that. They cannot. Whether your theory holds water or not — and I must say, your theory has a lot of attractive aspects to it to me. But regardless that, they cannot allow Donald Trump to be seen as in any way improving the lot in life for the middle class or for anybody. They don’t want Trump to be perceived as somebody making positive changes, improvement, upwardly mobile changes for a majority of the American people.
Now, your theory that climate change is just one of many policies rooted in demographics designed to literally take away self-reliant possibilities from many people in the middle class. Make it impossible for them. Like coal jobs gone, pipeline jobs gone. Blue-collar, white-collar, middle class jobs gone. Take the opportunity to earn a living away, and you automatically convert them to Democrat voters who become dependent. You combine that with illegal immigration and amnesty, and you have a party in power in perpetuity.
Interesting theory, and I do not immediately discount it. That’d be an interesting thing to add to the litany of reasons for climate change when trying to persuade particularly nonpolitically oriented people. I appreciate the call, Westin. Thank you very much. You know, along these same lines, technology is ramping up even while the left did indeed… I mean, Obama made it plain know plain he was gonna destroy the coal industry. This is why Westin’s theory is interesting to me. Obama ran on it very openly. He promised during his campaign that he was gonna attack the coal industry.
He was gonna put it out of business and make it the stupidest decision in the world for a business to stay in coal. It was gonna be cost prohibitive, there wouldn’t be profits, all under the guise of sustainability, clean energy, renewals, and saving the planet and so forth. But what if the objective was actually — and you couple that with the fact that the Obama campaign openly admitted that they were abandoning white middle class workers-voters in exchange for a coalition of added-up minority groups.