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RUSH: So what do we have here? We have the Philadelphia Eagles having been disinvited to the White House. Do you know…? This may shock some of you. In 2017, last season in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles did not have one player who knelt at any time in any game in the National Football League. Not one player. I imagine hearing that you might be surprised, well, then, why is all this going on? Why is Trump disinviting them? If the Eagles didn’t have anybody that knelt during the anthem, then what’s this brouhaha about?

Well, the brouhaha is that there were only gonna be three, maybe five Eagles plus the owner and the mascot attending. Even though none of the players knelt during last season at all, they’ve been out there, you know, dissing Trump and criticizing Trump and getting on top of microphones claiming they’re not gonna go to the White House; they don’t want to go to the White House. And when the Eagles informed the White House that the traveling party would be 10 or fewer, Trump said, “Well, what the hell? Don’t even bother.”

And then that started this giant shouting match with the mayor of Philadelphia getting in on it. We have audio sound bites of all this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back to the Philadelphia Eagles non-visit to the White House, the traditional visit to the White House after you won the Super Bowl or the Stanley Cup or the World Series. Now, again, in the entirety of last season the Philadelphia Eagles were one of the few teams in the NFL where not a single player knelt during the anthem a single time. The record, by the way — the team with the most players kneeling the most time during the most games — was the Seattle Seahawks, followed I think by the San Francisco 49ers.

But the Eagles didn’t have anybody that knelt. So everybody said, “Well, what’s the problem here?” Well, the Eagles have a bunch of players who said right after the Super Bowl, “To hell with Trump and to hell with the White House. We’re not even gonna go! To hell with that,” you know, ’cause Trump had been berating players as a bunch of SOBs for kneeling. So when the Eagles called the White House and gave them the traveling party for the visit, which was to be this week, the number in the traveling party was 10.

Three to five players, the owner, equipment guy, and the mascot. So Trump said, “To hell with this. I don’t… Ten people? No sense in having a ceremony.” So they’re not gonna do it. The NFL Players Association says that President Trump’s cancellation of the Eagles’ visit to the White House “has led to the cancellation of several player-led community service events for young people in the Washington area.” Okay, fine. But I have a question here. The players are no longer gonna do their D.C. community service events ’cause they’re not gonna be in Washington.

Why not?

Why not do them anyway?

Why can’t these players independently go to these community service events just because you’re not going to the White House? Wouldn’t it be one ups-man-ship on Trump to go ahead and go to Washington and attend these community service events that you had slated rather than just cancel ’em and walk away from ’em? Well, I’ll tell you. Let me answer my own question. The reason why these players are not independently attending these community service events is because this is about blaming Trump.

This is about showing up Trump. It’s not about the community service events. The players association can say whatever they want. Now, a lot of people — and I have to acknowledge this. A lot of people think that Trump is playing this one a little bit over the top, that there’s no reason to take this stand on this. Okay, ten players. Not a big deal, not enough for a ceremony, but why cause this kind of problem anyway? Well, let me share with you the way Trump operates and the way people look the things and what Trump is really doing.

Folks, you have to be able to see the long game and to have some very broad, wide vision if you ever hope to understand Donald Trump. Do you all remember the PATCO strike, the air traffic controller strike, in Ronaldus Magnus’ first term? Eleven thousand air traffic controllers went out on strike, they violated a federal law in doing so, and so Reagan fired them. He fired them all, in his first term, early on in his first term, and everybody was aghast.

“You just don’t fire federal workers! The air traffic control system? These are seasoned professionals. You just don’t do this.” But Reagan did it. Now, who might have been watching when Reagan did this? Do you think the Soviet leadership might have been watching? Do you think the ChiComs might have been watching? I will guarantee you they were, and I will guarantee you after four years of Jimmy Carter making a mess of everything — and the Soviet Union and the ChiComs and other American enemies probably laughing their heads off.

All of a sudden here comes this guy Reagan, who’s making jokes about bombing them, who’s making it clear that one of his three objectives is to wipe them out? And they see him come in and fire 11,000 people and break federal law? I guarantee you that Reagan firing the air traffic controllers did much more than just fire the air traffic controllers, and it sent signals to all kinds of people that I will guarantee you nobody was even thinking about. I think the same thing is happening here. What’s on Trump’s next agenda?

This so-called summit meeting with Kim Jong-un — and is this not a joke? He’s demanding somebody pay for his hotel suite in the top-line hotel in Singapore, and so there are groups stepping forward to pay the bill. This guy’s acting like a spoiled-rotten kid of some parents, which he probably is. In the meantime, here comes Trump telling the Philadelphia Eagles, “Don’t bother. If you’re only gonna bring 10 people here, it’s not worth my trouble. It’s not worth my time.”

Kim Jong-un and the North Koreans and everybody else sees the media jumping all over Trump, but Trump doesn’t buckle; Trump doesn’t waver. Now, do not laugh at this, because it is probably the case that Kim Jong-un is getting a message on the eve of his summit that this is not somebody you mess with, if he already doesn’t understand that. I think he already does get that about Trump. But what we have in Donald Trump is somebody unabashedly America first, and it may seem kind of inconsequential — America first relating to the Philadelphia Eagles and their nonattendance at a ceremony to honor them winning the Super Bowl.

But Donald Trump is not buckling, and I guarantee you people around the world — and not just Kim Jong-un and not just the ChiComs and not just Putin, but domestic opponents of Trump. I guarantee you the special counsel is seeing this. Any number. Regardless what they say publicly about it, I will guarantee you that they are getting the message that you cannot bully this guy. If anything’s gonna happen, you’re gonna end up being bullied if you cross him.

If you cross America, if you do anything that’s going to reflect or put America in a bad light, you’re not gonna get away with it with Donald Trump, and he doesn’t want a bunch of people coming to the White House who are not gonna respect the flag. He doesn’t want a bunch of people coming to the White House who want to try to to make a demonstration and a protest out of it. It’s not gonna happen on his watch. People are getting the message here.

So there’s a lot more in these little events than most people would stop to consider. But you have to take the time to consider them, because while we’re watching all this stuff in the media, so are our enemies — and our so-called friends and so forth. I learned to think this way from Elaine Donnelly. I met her early on in this program, and she was a foreign policy specialist, and she was (at the time) in Detroit. She was just a brilliant strategic thinker, and I would urge you to keep things like this in mind when you see these little apparently inconsequential things. They’re not inconsequential.

Nothing a president does is really inconsequential in terms of the message or signal that it sends wherever.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: CNN thinks they’ve got a scoop here. CNN’s running, “Yeah, the reason that Trump canceled the Eagles’ visit to the White House is because he was infuriated that so few of them were gonna show up.” Well, yeah. I’ve been telling you that all day. That’s not news. Of course, now CNN is trying to claim that it’s all Trump’s fault; that the Eagles are right not to go, because CNN’s gonna side with anybody that hates Trump — and CNN is gonna keep hemorrhaging audience in the process.

Now, we got an audio sound bite just in from LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers. This was an interview with an unidentified reporter. “Do you have any comment on [President] Trump uninviting the Eagles to the White House after most of the black players decided not to go?”

JAMES: I actually just found out about it when I was walkin’ up to the podium. I didn’t really digest it enough, but, uh, it’s typical of him. (pause) I’m not surprised. Um, it’s… (pause) You know, typical of him, and, um… (pause) I don’t know. I mean… I mean, I know no matter who wins this series no one wants an invite anyways. [sic] So… (pause) It won’t be Golden State or Cleveland goin’.

RUSH: (impression) “So, I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t digested it yet I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t really know, I don’t know, but let me tell you anyway, even though I don’t know. I don’t know. And no matter who wins this series, no one wants the invite anyway. So it won’t be the Golden State Warriors or the Cleveland Cavaliers going to the White House anyway.” Okay, cool. Well, let me just remind everybody what has happened to African-American unemployment in the year and a half of the Donald Trump administration.

Not that this might matter to players in the NFL and the NBA, but black unemployment is at an all-time record low — an all-time record low. Just in from Rasmussen — let me repeat this — they have a new poll out that says black voters are now nearly twice as likely to say young black Americans are better off now than they were in the closing years of the Obama presidency. In other words, they were asked when Obama’s regime was wrapping up, “Are you better off now after eight years of Obama?”

Ttwice as many are saying they’re better off now after a year and a half of Trump than after four years of Obama. The progress that African-Americans are making economically is undeniable, and it’s true of all minorities. Hispanic-Americans? Unemployment, statistically, is at an all-time record low, and the economy is booming. So here we have outliers. But look, it’s not all one-sided. Trump called the players that kneel SOBs. I understand this.

But I think these players making it racial may be a mistake. If you don’t want to go because you don’t like Trump — if you don’t want to go because Trump’s not your cup of tea, you’re a Democrat and he’s a Republican or whatever — but Trump is not a racist. Nobody ever said Donald Trump was a racist his entire life, until he started running for the White House as a Republican — and then, like every other Republican, he automatically became a racist.

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