RUSH: Merry Christmas, everybody, and happy holidays to one and all from all of us here at the EIB Network. I’m Rush Limbaugh, and this is one of my most favorite times of the year, and I would not rather be anywhere today than right here, right where I am. I know many of you are out and about engaging in hustle and bustle, trying to take care of last-minute requirements, demands, desires. Many of you are traveling, trying to get where you’re going. Whatever you’re doing, stick with us for the next three hours, and it will be more enjoyable than you imagined.
Telephone number, 800-282-2882, and, if you want to send an email, I check those. I scan subject lines. That’s how I find emails that interest me. There are too many to read all of them. That address is ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
So the president signed the tax bill today, and CNN’s very upset. CNN’s upset that the president was happy. CNN did a panel discussion after the president signed the tax law, and they observed, “You know what? This is the first day we’ve ever seen this guy have any joy in the job,” and you could tell they were not happy about that. They were very uneasy. The worst thing in the world is if Trump starts to like this in their view, and they said, “Look at how expansive the guy was!
“He sat there and talked to the media for 20 minutes during the signing ceremony, and he did it all off the cuff. He answered every question, snarky and otherwise. After he ended it, he did three encores!” He tried to get out of there; the Drive-By Media wouldn’t let him. Then he took the helicopter out to Joint Base Andrews to get on Air Force One to come down here where the action is after the holidays. And he stops on the way, gets out of the helicopter, and walks over to greet military personnel standing on the other side of a fence.
He took the opposite direction he would need to have taken to get on Air Force One. He went over and thanked a bunch of people, and CNN says, “Look at this! Look at this. He’s enjoying this. I’ve never seen him this joyous. I’ve never seen him this happy.” And, you know, there’s a contrast here, folks. I had a story today, saw a story today that was published by our old buddies at NewsBusters: “Jorge Ramos Says He’s Now Having the ‘Worst Time’ of His Life in U.S.” Jorge Ramos miserable, unhappy!
“Nearly a year into the Trump presidency, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos says he’s experiencing ‘the worst moment I’ve had in the 34 years I’ve been living in the United States.’ ‘With Donald Trump there, I have never been treated so badly. I have never been insulted so much. We’ve never been attacked so much. They have never tried to run us out as much as now,’ Ramos vented in an interview with the Spanish radio network Cadena SER.
“Ramos, who proclaimed himself ‘if not an enemy, an opponent’ of Trump in the interview, complained about the massive blowback he has received since deciding to use his media platforms to openly oppose” Trump in the presidential campaign and in Trump’s first year in office. “‘Now the social media networks are terrible… Before if someone wanted to insult you, they had to do it in person or by sending you an anonymous letter. Now they do it through the social media networks and the daily insults — you can enter my Facebook or Twitter — and they are there all the time,’ lamented Ramos.”
Aw, poor Jorge!
Poor Jorge is finding out what it’s like to be a conservative in the United States of America. Poor Jorge! It got me to thinking. You know, during this time of year I’m naturally joyous and upbeat. Well, look, I don’t want anybody getting the wrong idea. Not all the time. I’m not superhuman; do not misunderstand. But on balance, I’m up during this time of year, and most of the times of the year. But it got me to thinking just how many people in the country today are in fact miserable because of the successful year that Trump had.
And Trump’s successful year means great things for the country. Make no mistake about it. Trump having a widely successful, way-beyond-expectations first year is phenomenal for the country. Details, examples coming up. Just setting the table here. John Brennan is one of these angry guys. He’s the former CIA director for Obama, and he tweeted something out about Trump’s behavior at the United Nations — Nikki Haley, actually. He’s very upset. He thinks this is the example of a madman, of a tyrant.
This kind of stuff is simply unacceptable in a free country like the United States. He is fit to be tied. I’m looking for the actual tweet. Here’s Brennan’s tweet: “Trump Admin threat to retaliate against nations that exercise sovereign right in U.N. to oppose U.S. position on Jerusalem is beyond outrageous. Shows @realDonaldTrump expects blind loyalty and subservience from everyone — qualities usually found in narcissistic, vengeful autocrats.”
Now, let’s parse this for just a second. The irony here and the contradictions are mind-boggling. But the most important thing this illustrates is that here is a guy who is the former director of the CIA of the United States, and he has a problem with Americans looking out for Americans first. He has a problem with America standing up for America. He has a problem with America as the undeniable superpower of the world. He has a deep-rooted problem — and this guy ran the CIA! Now, what kind of horrors were these people engaging in?
If they don’t believe their country is great, if they don’t believe that their country’s national interests should be the predominant thing in global relations, then what the hell did they do when they were there? And scarily, we know. They were trying to transform the United States. They were trying to cut the United States down to size. And Brennan has, whether he knows it or not, inadvertently admitted it here. “A threat to retaliate against nations that exercise a sovereign right”? Nobody told them they don’t have the right to vote the way they wanted to vote.
All Nikki Haley did was say: We’re gonna take names. You want foreign aid from us and you’re out there criticizing us and undermining us? You better think again. We’re gonna be taking names. (Somehow, that is insulting? That is beneath the dignity of the United States.) What are we supposed to, Mr. Brennan, just sit there, bend over, grab the ankles, and let ’em have their way with us? What are we supposed to do? What did we do when you were running the show? “Vengeful autocrats.” That’s how we would describe Obama. Vengeful. Angry.
Trump isn’t angry. Even CNN admitted it today. Trump is joyous and happy. But, anyway, I got to thinking. If Jorge Ramos says he’s now having the worst time in his life in the United States, could we not say that that must mean that Trump is kicking butt? Does that not mean that things are really going great for the United States and the Trump agenda and this is why Jorge is in such a foul humor? And they’ve been in a foul humor ever since election night when they lost, when Hillary lost and Trump won, and they hadn’t been able to get out of the funk.
And they have been living just like I told you. They have been living in intense rage and hatred. So when I saw this from Jorge Ramos, I began thinking of a lot of other people who are not gonna have a great Christmas. Now, normally when we ponder this, we ponder the less fortunate. We ponder the thirsty, the hungry, the homeless, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the forgotten, the ignored, the made-fun-of. You know, that group of people.
But that’s not who it is this year. Think of all the people who are joined at the hip in misery with Jorge Ramos. How about the people who work at ESPN? Many of whom have lost their jobs. Now they’ve lost their CEO. Now there’s real talk of downsizing. How about all the people invested in the National Football League? What a horrible year the NFL has had, on balance and in comparison. How about all the people who lost jobs within the government? This is one of the great secrets, by the way, folks.
It’s one of the many untold and unwritten stories of the first year of the Trump administration. I’ve got a headline here that will illustrate it: “Hundreds of EPA Employees Have Quit Under Trump — Over 700 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have quit or taken early retirement during the Trump administration so far, bringing the EPA close to employment levels not seen since [Ronaldus Magnus].” That’s since the 1980s. Now, this story is actually from a week ago, and we mentioned it a week ago, but what is happening, one of the great…
It’s been reported on. It hasn’t been highlighted. But one of the great things that’s been happening all year in the Trump administration is the elimination of tens of thousands of burdensome regulations. The downsizing of various federal agencies. It’s not just the EPA. There are a number of these bureaucracies where Trump said he was gonna drain the swamp and clean ’em out, and he’s doing it. He’s doing it mostly by attrition.
Mostly these are career leftists who are like Jorge Ramos and they’re miserable and they’re unhappy, and they have found that they can’t overcome it. Even hiding as members of the deep state, they can’t overcome the obstacles a Trump presidency presents. So they’re quitting. They’re quitting. They’re lost. They don’t want to be around the winners. In addition to Trump getting rid of personnel, the numbers of regulations… Have you wondered why the economy…? Let me ask you a question. The tax cut was just signed into law today.
The tax cut has always been something on the come. The tax cut has always been something that was gonna happen. “We hope it’s gonna happen. It’s supposedly gonna happen. They promised us it was gonna happen.” And we’ve been told that the stock market and the economy is roaring, in part, on the assumption the tax cut is actually gonna happen and become law. But that doesn’t explain all of it, does it? How can that explain this robust consumer confidence? How can it explain robust consumer and corporate investment?
How can it explain robust consumer confidence? How can it explain all the new manufacturing jobs? The tax cut bill “may be” coming. That doesn’t explain it. What does — and it is something that we have highlighted from time to time here — is Trump, at the various cabinet level bureaucracies, is literally erasing mountains of regulation, federal regulation installed by unelected bureaucrats who have to answer to nobody. They can write regulations. Fish and Wildfire, EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, the Small Business Administration.
Any number of these bureaucracies can write regulations — and with Obama, this is primarily how he implemented his agenda. Obama didn’t pass a lot of legislation, either, contrary to what they want you believe about Trump. (impression) “He hasn’t marshaled his forces! He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know how to use Washington.” Neither did Obama. Obama didn’t wait around for legislation. Much of what Obama did was via executive action and executive order, and Trump is unwinding all of that and not stopping at Obama — and they’re not finished.
They’re gonna be doing this, the Trump administration, for as long as they’re in office. They’re gonna be eliminating regulations, wiping them out. They’re gonna be getting rid of all the burdensome ones they can. That, my friends, is part of the discussion as to why the economy is roaring. I don’t want to say too much about it because this is actually a stealth project. They’ve kind of snuck this one by the Drive-Bys and the Democrats. Oh, they know that regulations are coming under the knife, but they don’t know the extensive nature of it.
Because Trump’s not bragging about it. I mean, he mentions it now and then, but always as an afterthought. But I’m telling you: It’s one of the top-three agenda items in this administration and it’s something that they’re doing each and every day and they’re, for the most part, doing it stealthily. They’re not holding giant press conferences, celebratory meetings at the White House when they cancel every 10,000 regulations. They’re just doing it. But as these regulations get cut, they have real-world impact. What is a federal regulation but a barrier?
A federal regulation is a roadblock.
A federal regulation, state regulation, any government regulation is an impediment.
We’re getting the roadblocks out of the way. We’re taking the impediments out of the way. People want to do business — certain types of business — are finding out there are fewer roadblocks. People are more comfortable investing and growing in all aspects of the economy. And this is one of the central reasons why the economy has been growing by leaps and bounds even before the tax cut bill was signed into law today. I’m not gonna say any more about that, because I don’t want… You know, the left listens here, folks. The left thinks the White House takes their cues from this program. I got audio sound bite evidence of it again today.
They think talk radio is actually providing the intellectual energy for much of the Trump agenda, which is mind-boggling, but I’m not gonna try to disabuse them of it. But I’m not gonna say any more, because this regulation erasure is happening at a rapid rate. It’s not publicized — not ballyhooed, if you will — and it is deeply substantive. It matters a lot. This is another reason why so many bureaucrats are quitting. With the elimination of regulations, you can say good-bye to their power, good-bye to their ideological reason for being there.
So on balance, it’s all good.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: How about some of the other people that are miserable this holiday season? And, by the way, it’s their fault. There are ways out of this for them, but they’re so tied into all of this. How about all of the men whose lives and careers have been torpedo by the #MeToo movement, all of these allegations of sexual harassment, true and untrue? You think that’s a happy bunch of people? How about all the leftist women and their vagina hats still miserable that Hillary lost. They’re still miserable, still living with their cats, still living with their dogs.
And they’ve even got it worse because they keep telling themselves how bad it is. They make up things that have gone wrong. I mean, they’re living in total misery. So is Mrs. Clinton. And how would you like to be Bill Clinton with now everybody in your former friendship group turning on you and calling you a pervert, too? All the Drive-Bys. Think of the Drive-By Media. The Drive-By Media has to be under the influence leading groups of unhappy people. They have thrown everything they’ve got!
They have thrown journalistic principle and standards overboard because they thought they had an emergency. They threw the kitchen sink. They did everything including violate every rule and every tenet of journalism they’ve been taught, for one reason: To destroy Donald Trump. And as the year ends, Donald Trump is ascending and is joyful and appears happy, which is always the best revenge, folks. Success, happiness are always the best revenge. The Drive-Bys are fuming. They’re irritable. They’re angry.
They are frustrated that they don’t seem to have the power to be able to ruin Donald Trump or anybody in his family. Meanwhile, it is members of the Drive-By Media falling by the wayside in the sexual harassment scandals. How about all the Obama and Clinton people and their FBI buddies sweating investigations by Congress? And don’t doubt for a moment they exist. All the people who spiraled out of control after trashing Trump and Trump voters: Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell, Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep. Hollywood! It’s misery, unhappiness, despair, at Christmastime.