RUSH: Now, let us move on to another area of attack that came up in the Drive-By Media after the press conference yesterday.  During the press conference yesterday, Trump named Republicans who lost by opposing him.  He mentioned Mia Love.  He mentioned Barbara Comstock.  There were a bunch of Republican RINOs who hate Trump, who don’t like Trump tweets. They don’t like Trump’s manners and all that, and they openly ran against Trump in what are considered blue states.

They ran in Virginia, other places, and they thought that they would really score some points by beating up on Trump.  They ended up losing — and Trump called ’em out and pointed out, if they had been on his team, they would have won, like all these people Trump championed in the Senate.  Nine out of 11 candidates that Trump supported won.  In the process in the Senate — this is a just a big point — gone are a bunch of “I Hate Trump” people.

Corker’s gone, Flake is gone, McCain is gone.  The replacements are people that are gonna owe their elections to Donald Trump and who like him to begin with.  Josh Hawley in Missouri is an example.  But they just… They think Trump was behaving like Mussolini, by calling out these Republicans that didn’t support him.  They think (sputtering), “It’s just outrageous what Trump did.  This is… This is dangerous! This guy’s this out of control. It’s Hitler-like, to be calling out people that didn’t support him and like sound like they’re almost being threatened. ”

A Breitbart story here. And speaking of, look, I spent a lot of time yesterday explaining to you why I think the Republicans lost the House. If you weren’t here yesterday, very briefly, I think a bunch of Republicans decided to retire, 45 of ’em, because they believed this blue wave crap that the media and the Democrats began spouting in December of 2017.

I think many of them are already opposed to Trump. Many of them believed that Trump’s election was an oddity, a one-off and it was some kind of aberration and that everybody hated Trump and that Trump was gonna take the Republican Party down to beneath the gutter, and they didn’t want to be part of it. Paul Ryan was one of ’em: I don’t want to be here if the Democrats are gonna win. And so they retired.

And that’s 45 incumbent seats that then became open. And it was so unnecessary. Why believe the media, blue wave stuff. It didn’t happen. It wasn’t gonna happen. But they acted like it was. And I think it was a big, big factor. And at the root of it was a bunch of Republicans that didn’t like Trump, didn’t think Trump was gonna be any good and didn’t think Trump was gonna do anything other than destroy the Republican Party.  They wanted to get out before any of that happened.

And of course the exact opposite turns out to be true. Having lost the House, Republicans are now more tied to Trump than ever, whether they like it or not. And a bunch of people who quit the House because they thought Trump was gonna destroy everything saw Trump promoted and sponsored candidates win over in the Senate. And were there some House races that Trump — you know, mayors, mayoral candidates like DeSantis here in Florida.

So the Breitbart story, “Trump Pins Down 8 Republicans Who Resisted His Help and Lost in 2018 — President Donald Trump called out the Republican 2018 midterm election candidates who rejected his help and lost their races.” Now, we talked about this yesterday. But I think that Trump did this is fascinating, that he did this, it’s a teachable moment here. There isn’t anybody else who would have pointed this out and called names.

Can you think of any other Republican president after having, say, lost the House would start blaming people by name, saying this wasn’t necessary, but they thought they had to oppose me and look what happened. Those things are just not done. But here again, Trump is very simple.  He’s not complicated. You be nice and fair to me and I’m gonna be nice and fair to you. But if you’re gonna come out and undermine me, if you’re gonna rip me to shreds, I’m not gonna take it and I’m gonna fire right back at you. And this is not hard for people to figure out.

In fact, one time on this show he explained that’s the way he looks at things. If you were not nice to me in the past, I won’t forget that, unless you join me now. If you join me now, I will forget all the mean, negative things about me you’ve ever done. Now, let me tell you why this was important, if you ask me.

By pointing out who lost and why and by pointing out who won and why, Donald Trump was saying to the entire elected class that he is the path to Republican victory. And I’ll, frankly, wish there were more. I wish it wasn’t all on his shoulders. I wish that the Republicans had some help. Now, this is not to criticize Republicans in the House and Senate who are Trump supporters. I’m not claiming he doesn’t have any.

It would be great if Trump was not the only guy we could send out. But what he’s doing is building his party. It’s not his fault that he ends up making people winners!  He’s being blamed for that by the media and the Democrats and being called Mussolini or Stalin-like, but it isn’t his fault that he makes people winners! Because he can make people winners, he’s building the Republican Party, and it is Trump’s party right now. And, boy, do they hate that in elite Beltway establishment circles.

I think of those 45 Republicans who retired. I think we could have won half of those or more if any of these Republicans had hung in there and if just some of them had embraced Trump. I think Barbara Comstock could have won if she would have embraced Trump. But, no, it wasn’t to be. And we’ll never know, really, for sure. But the evidence is pretty clear that those who did embrace Trump stood with him, wanted him around, wanted him to help him, they did pretty well.

And remember, we’re not trying to buy Democrat votes here. This is building the Republican base. There’s nobody that works harder than Trump. Thirty or 35 of those rallies. I was at the one in Missouri, and that was the third one that day. Trump got there at 8:30, landed 8:25, maybe 45, didn’t leave ’til after 11. What people don’t see when those things are over, you know what Trump does?  And you can’t avoid it because nobody can leave until he does.

If you’re backstage in the backstage area wherever the president is, you can’t leave until he does. And when he came offstage after signing autographs there he immediately went to an area where he was posing for one on one photographs with every uniformed police officer that was there, state trooper, security person, anybody working in the arena that was in that segment of it, even if they were concessionaires, he pauses, he took pictures.

He was in no hurry to get out. At no time did he make anyone anywhere near where he was think he wanted outta there. At no time did he give anybody there the impression he had no time for them. And I know because I was kind of eager to get out there. I was gonna get home late as it was.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  We’ll go to Los Angeles. Kimberly, I’m glad you called.  Great to have somebody from LA on the phone with us. Always love that.  How are you?

CALLER:  I am great.  I am so happy and so proud of you and my president, Donald Trump.

RUSH:  (laughing) Thank you very much.

CALLER:  And I’m very happy that Jeff Sessions had to hit the road.

RUSH:  Yeah. You know, that whole thing is kind of unfortunate.  Jeff Sessions is a fine, fine guy. He just wasn’t, I don’t think —

CALLER:  He wasn’t the man for the job.  He wasn’t the man for the job.

RUSH:  Well, it wasn’t what Trump was looking for in the job.  That’s not to say that Trump wants an attorney general that’s a personal lawyer.  He just wants a battler in there that — to a bunch of people in the legal establishment, Jeff Sessions may be the best attorney general in their lifetimes.  To people in the legal establishment who have a reverence for the law and that kind of thing would look at him that way, but he just wasn’t what Trump, I think, thought he was gonna be.  Anyway, I’m taking away from your time and don’t hurry because I will keep you through the bottom-of-the-hour break here. Go ahead.

CALLER:  Okay. I wanted to say that I am an African-American, I live on the West Coast in La La Land.  I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and I’m going to vote for him 2020.  And I just want your listeners to know that African-Americans for Trump exist. We’re not crazy. We don’t think badly of him.  We embrace him. We think he’s wonderful. And I just thank you for carrying this flag for us, because more and more and more people are gonna get on the Trump train and —

RUSH:  Well, I tell you what.

CALLER:  — vote for him.

RUSH:   I can’t tell you how many people are thrilled to hear you say that and hope that it’s true.