RUSH: Let me go to Edward in Minneapolis. Edward, welcome. Great to have you on the program. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing well, Rush. First-time caller, longtime listener. You know, my biggest concern here is the Obama holdovers. You know, the layers beneath the cabinet, you know, and the Senate hasn’t moved on filling these positions. There’s a huge vacuum below there. So who’s gonna get all this stuff done and get it done expeditiously, because we’ve got the Deep State here. How quickly can they implement the Trump policies, and why isn’t McConnell getting these things done? Why aren’t these positions getting filled? It’s just frustrating.

RUSH: Well, Trump was asked this question the other day about all of the unfilled positions, administrative and such, in his administration. He said, “Hey, that’s because we’re cutting back on the size of government. We got jobs. We don’t need these jobs filled.” And some people had the reaction, “You do need to fill them, you need to fill them with people who are on your side to nullify some of these Deep State people, and they’re from these Obama and Hillary holdovers that have not gone anywhere.” Now, I agree with you on that. I don’t think there has been enough attention paid —

CALLER: It’s troubling.

RUSH: Well, it is. Now, what was your question about McConnell?

CALLER: Yeah. You know, he should be doing his duty to the party and getting people in these jobs that, you know, are supposed to be —

RUSH: Oh, you mean confirmation, the confirmation process.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, the Democrats can hold up a number of confirmations, as they have. Look, I’m not trying to start fires here, Edward, but when you say McConnell deserves to be doing his duty to his party, you know in his mind he may be. Doing the duty of the party might be denying Trump the tools necessary to succeed.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: You see what I’m saying here?

CALLER: I do, yeah.

RUSH: The Republican Party, the Democrat Party, they’re all part of the establishment. Trump’s the outsider. I’ve said this so many times, I’m sure people are getting mad. See, that graphic — well, it’s gone now. They’ve got a graphic of the hurricane that’s bigger than the state of Florida on this map on CNN. The whole hurricane is not bigger than the state of Florida. But that’s how they make it look.

Anyway, I’m sorry for being redundant here, folks, but this is human nature, and it’s true not just in Washington; it’s true with any group of people who think their club is elite and special. Outsiders are not welcome. And if outsiders force their way in and want to revolutionize the way the group does things, the group and its legacy members are gonna fight it left and right, because the last thing any group needs is an outsider coming in and vastly improving the way the club operates and what the club does.

Now, in the case of the Washington club — and it’s a club, folks — the Washington establishment is a club. It owns virtually every aspect of what goes on in that town. And what’s the primary purpose of Washington? What would you say is the real purpose of Washington, DC? Now, you’re gonna argue with me about this. But I think it boils down to money. Sure power, sure ideology, sure ideas, but Washington, DC, is the most powerful city in the world. Washington, DC, is the wealthiest city in the world because of the IRS, because of tax collections, and because of whatever the government sells in armaments and things like that.

And every year how many trillions of dollars pour through the Washington area, through the Treasury department? Everybody there, one way or the other, is trying to get their hands on as much of it as they can. Not all for personal use. You’ve got lobbyists who are trying to advance the cause of their clients, but they do want to get paid when it’s over. Whenever there is big money present, you cannot discount it. It must be a prime factor in your analysis of what the club or the group is doing.

Now, in the case of the Washington club, they’ve been around for how many hundreds of years? Just to make it simple, they’ve been around 50 years. It’s longer, but let’s just use 50 years, and they’ve got a certain way of doing things. They’ve got a certain pace. They’ve got a certain stature, a certain agenda, certain aura, certain image. And one of the things is that things happen real slow. Things happen real slow. Like it’s been 30 years since tax reform, 30! 1986 was the last significant tax reform, 30 years! Why? Well, that’s just the way it is. Why, we just can’t move that fast.

Well, here comes an outsider, Donald Trump, who, in three months, wanted to totally turn it upside down, reform taxes, simplify. You think they’re just gonna sit there and let this happen? They’ve got all these years of evidence of what you can and can’t do there, and they’re the experts, and then they’re gonna let some outsider who wins an election despite their best efforts come in here and demonstrate that you can actually do tax reform inside of a couple of months? They’re not gonna let that happen if they can help it.

That’s what Trump is up against. Much more than that, too, but that’s a simple explanation of what he’s up against. And he does need all kinds of people around him who understand that and are able to push back against it. And all these people in his administration, somewhere in there, even in the White House, leaking these things — like who leaked that letter that Obama wrote him? Did you hear about this? Obama wrote that letter to be leaked. I saw through that the minute I read. No doubt.