RUSH: Trump promised it. His economic advisers assured us that it would happen. The Drive-By Media said it was impossible to happen; it couldn’t happen. Trump was deranged to predict that it would happen. Trump was unreasonable. Trump was giving the American people false hope!

Hillary Clinton said that this was dangerous; Trump is proving his incompetence by suggesting that we could grow the economy at an annual rate of 4%. We’re gonna go back in time here and find various bits of evidence of all these so-called experts claiming it’s impossible, couldn’t be done, how it was misleading. It was giving people false hope. It was gonna end up depressing people. It was very irresponsible for Trump to make this prediction.

Yet it was pretty much assured that it was gonna happen based simply on Trump’s policies. The tax cuts, the deregulation, freeing up of money. The ability to use it for expansion and growth, wages increasing. I mean, the ideas that we’ve all believed in to cause the economy to grow work! They worked with Ronaldus Magnus, and they’re working with Trump. The left doesn’t want anybody to think this stuff works. So now the left…

You know what the left’s excuse for the GDP being 4% is? Soybeans! Yeah. That’s right. It’s just a one-time thing. It’s because Trump sold so many soybeans to the European Union and to the ChiComs. That’s all it is. It’s unsustainable. The experts are telling us this can’t continue, it won’t go on — and yet it can get better. It is sustainable and it can continue to grow. The Democrat Party is gonna do everything it can to retard that growth. The Democrat Party’s gonna do everything it can to slow down this economy for the purposes of their winning elections.

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RUSH: You know, I’m not kidding. The mainstream media, the Drive-Bys are saying that the spike in GDP is a one-time spike because of Trump’s trade tariffs. They are claiming that the one-time rise, the 4.1% growth in GDP was caused by — Ready for this? — farmers rushing to sell their soybeans before the tariffs hit the ChiComs. I mean, this is economics malpractice. This is media malpractice, what these people are doing to try to explain this. You know as well as I do why the economy is growing this way.

It’s policy related. It’s all related to putting money in the private sector and letting people have the freedom to do with it what they will: Innovate, invent, hire, grow. There’s no question why this is happening. Now, I realized the Millennial population may not know it. They’ve been taught socialism is a utopia, it’s a panacea — even they’ve never lived under it, except maybe certain states. But they’ve never really seen it. To them it’s just a theory that ends up with utopia and all this stuff.

So they need to have this explained, why this is sustainable, why this happened — and of course, I gladly accept that challenge.

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“Second-Quarter GDP Jumps 4.1% for Best Pace in Nearly Four Years.” When I saw that, I said, “Four years? The Obama GDP was never over 3%.” What is this last four years? And they claim that the third quarter or second quarter of 2014 saw a GDP of almost 5%. I said, “I don’t remember that.”

So I got busy. I went out there and I started looking this up, and sure enough, if you go to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is an arm of the Commerce Department, you’ll find that right there, it’s either Q2 or Q3, second quarter, third quarter of 2014, there’s a GDP of almost 4%. The next quarter is barely over one and a half percent. What’s this? I don’t remember this.

I don’t remember that figurine being promoted and bandied about and heralded. And I still can’t find what it is that caused that. The closest I can get to it is that it was right in the middle of quantitative easing where we were printing money left and right and giving it to the stock market for the purchase of equities to keep the illusion that the stock market was going gangbusters even though Main Street wasn’t.

And then I remembered that there was a time Obama redefined the calculation of gross domestic product to include something as nebulous as intellectual property. No other capitalist or western democratic nation includes intellectual property in the calculation of GDP. And then I remembered — and all of this is still kind of fuzzy — then I remembered that the memory of that quarter was starting to slowly come back as I looked into this. And I remembered that most of it — and this wasn’t reported — most of it had to do with the massive growth of government.

I just can’t remember the specific areas of government, but that massive GDP growth also coincided with an increase in percentage of government spending as a percentage of GDP. The Obama administration did something in the quarter before that with federal spending and quantitative easing, and I just, given enough time, I’ll find it.

But in truth, folks, we haven’t had genuine 4% gross domestic product for economic activity, we haven’t had a legitimate one like this in far longer than four years. I mean, it’s not even close. The Obama administration, on average, was under 2%. 1.8% was the average GDP all the eight years of Obama, even if you factor in that one quarter that was like at 4.8%. This is real. Now, I hear what some of you saying, “Well, Rush, are you saying that that quarter in 2014 wasn’t real?”

No, it was real, but the way they got it was outside the U.S. private sector economy. It didn’t result from economic activity within the private sector. This does. My friends, it is crucially important that people understand why this happened, because this is a direct response or a direct result of the implementation of policies that had not been implemented in this country in at least eight years. And that is why this economy is growing by leaps and bounds.

Now, the experts are saying, “This is unsustainable. This was a one-off because of the sale of soybeans.” And if you doubt that, grab audio sound bite number 6. I just want you to hear this. We put together a montage of how desperate the Drive-Bys are not to credit Trump for this.

STEVE LIESMAN: Soybeans, the magic bean has moved GDP.

JIM PETHOKOUKIS: How much of this number was going to be sort of soybeans.

ALIX STEEL: Getting those soybeans out there before any kind of tariffs hit.

DAGEN MCDOWELL: Buying by overseas of soybeans ahead of these retaliatory tariffs.

CATHERINE RAMPELL: Farmers that grow soybeans had a huge surge in exports and we’re going to see that reverse.

CHRISTINE ROMANS: Soybean exports, stockpiling ahead of what many feared would be a trade war.

RUSH: That trade war is its own element to this that is also a positive that nobody here apparently knows how to analyze and properly credit and understand. But the idea that these people could mobilize their agricultural sales apparatus quickly enough to beat the imposition of tariffs to cause the economy to grow so rapidly is absurd, folks.

So we have a massively growing economy because of soybeans? Why do they insult our intelligence. And some of these people that you just heard are on Fox.

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RUSH: Check these headlines from the New York Times: “Why Friday’s GDP Number May Be a Size Too Big,” and, “Europe Averts a Trade War with Trump, But Can Europe Trust Trump?” Now, you compare similar headlines when the Obama administration had similar stories to tell rarely, and it’s a totally different thing.

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RUSH: As part of the GDP story, I mentioned that — if you go back in time, when there was — and it was not very often — but when there was positive economic news to report about the Obama administration, far different than what we’re seeing today with Trump.

For example, “Consumers, Soybeans Fuel U.S. Second-Quarter Growth.” Another story, “Why Friday’s GDP Number May Be a Size Too Big.” “Europe Averts a Trade War With Trump. But Can It Trust Him?” There’s one story here, Breitbart: “Report: Chinese Are ‘Awed’ by Trump’s ‘Skill as a Strategist and Tactician.’”

But here. I’ve got a story from Forbes, October 23rd, 2014. This would be smack dab in the middle of the second term of Obama. “U.S. GDP Grew 3.5% In The Third Quarter 2014.” Now, wait just a minute. Wait just a minute. This is the quarter that is reported to have grown near five — that’s right! It was revised down a couple of months later. That’s what I had forgot. It never was near 5%. They revised it down.

“U.S. GDP Grew 3.5% In The Third Quarter 2014.” And the headline of the story, very supportive of Obama, very optimistic of what this means for the future of the U.S. economy. Everybody very, very happy about it in the Drive-By Media. Here’s the New York Times headline, same story: “Third-Quarter G.D.P. Rose 3.5%, Lifting Hopes for U.S. Economy.”

See the difference? Here we have 4.1% economic growth, and experts say it’s a point too high. Experts say it’s not sustainable. Experts say it’s all due to soybeans. It’s a one-off. Experts say, “Yeah, they had a trade deal with the Europeans, but can the Europeans trust Trump?”

“On Thursday, the boosters won at least a temporary victory with a government report that estimated the nation’s economic output rose at a healthy 3.5 percent annual rate in the third quarter.” That’s October 30th, 2014, in the New York Times. Just to point the difference.

Here’s another one. This is the New York Times today. “The U.S. economy continues its surge, growing at a 4.1% rate in the last quarter. Many experts expect a slowdown later this year.” The next headline, New York Times: “G.D.P. Grew at 4.1% Rate in U.S. in Latest Quarter,” with some asterisks, meaning it’s not real.

So exactly as expected, the media reporting the number and then trying to tell people it’s not real, that it’s artificial, or that it is unsustainable. So, you see the variance here in the way this is being reported back in 2014, all excited, all happy, people should feel good about it. Today it isn’t real, don’t count on it, can’t be sustained, it’s a little bit top-heavy, don’t really believe it.

And of course if it’s in the New York Times then that’s gonna be the flavor of reporting elsewhere throughout the country, the AP, CNN, and other places, when in fact it makes absolutely perfect sense related to the policies that Trump has implemented.

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RUSH: CNN website October 11, 2016. It’s a headline: “Trump Promises 4% Growth. Economists Say No Way.” October 11th, in 2016. Experts and the media seemingly are always wrong, and yet they keep citing the same experts. It’s stupid and insane.