RUSH: You know, I wanted to be here today, folks, just — oops. We got a mix minus problem. Can you hear that in there? Do you hear the problem? Level check, test — we are in the process here of over – I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do here. I’m gonna explain this snafu here which, we’re going to have to temporarily work around.

I was going to say I’m not gonna let any government shutdown keep me out of here and I’m not gonna let the EIB Network be closed if I want to be here. And I definitely wanted to be here with everything going on. Folks, it’s safe to say in 30 years of doing this program there has never been a month of December like this. There has never been a Christmas season like this, and there has never been a Christmas Eve like this, with this much important news going on.

And I was fretting all weekend that I was gonna miss today, ’cause the arrangements are already made. And what we had started to do here, we’re gonna remodel and upgrade some of our tech equipment here, both in this studio and in the control room on the other side of the glass. And they started working on it over the weekend and then I come along and say, “Look.”

And they asked me, “What are the odds you’re gonna be here on Monday before we start ripping things apart?”

I said, “Not very good. Can’t imagine it.”

But then yesterday I said, “You know what? I gotta come in.” So they had to stop what they were doing and try to put it all back together again just to get ready for me here today. It’s gonna be at least a week or maybe a two-week project to do the tech upgrade. And there’s some furniture stuff involved too. So there was a little snafu here at the beginning. I was hearing what I was saying a split second later. It’s like an echo. And it’s gone away, but have I lost talk-back here?

Everything’s fine. So you guys screwed up at first and we didn’t know it. (interruption) Right. Oh, it was New York that screwed up. Oh, okay. New York screwed up. We don’t know who New York is today so we’ll just slough it off on New York.

Anyway, it’s all up and running now. Here’s the phone number. Hope to chat with you on the phones today. 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

The shutdown is obviously a top priority subject. I just need to reiterate some things about it. We’re hearing that it’s not going to be resolved until the new year. The Democrats have no incentive, really, to solve this until they take control of the House of Representatives on, I think, January 3rd. But I want the president to hold firm on this.

This shutdown is one that the Democrats own. This would be very easy to resolve, and they don’t want to do it. They don’t want to do it, because I’ll tell you, if you look at the media today, the Washington Post today, CNN, folks, they have Trump gone in three months. They think this is gonna lead me to the next subject we’re gonna dissect here today. They believe in three months they will have fractured Trump’s base, i.e., you. They think they will have split Trump’s base.

I’ll tell you why they think that. They think that Trump has made an incorrectable error by firing Mattis and pulling us out of Syria. The Trump base is made up of two distinct types of voters: the so-called populists and standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives. And the populists don’t mind getting out of Syria. The populists don’t mind having power taken away from a bunch of political generals like Mattis and McMaster and so forth.

But there’s another part of the Trump coalition which is conservatives who believe in an active foreign policy. I’m sure you’ve talked to a lot of people that don’t like the fact we’re pulling out of Syria, that we’re abandoning the Kurds, that we’re abandoning allies, this is not good.

The Drive-Bys and the official Washington permanent residents believe that this move by Trump has the potential to split his base. Remember when I said that Trump cannot be destroyed by the media because they didn’t make him. And, by the way, this is true. If the media makes you, they can destroy you. If they don’t make you, they can try to destroy you, but they can’t.

If you become a success and all the media does is report it and acknowledge it, has no role in it, then they can’t harm you. Well, they can’t destroy you. But if your success is owing fully to Media Buzz and hype, like if you do a radio show, but it’s not number one but they treat you like it’s number one and everybody thinks you’re number one but you’re nowhere near number one, if they turn on you then the fact that you’re really number 10 is going to do revealed and you’re finished.

Well, I’ve always said that the media really can’t destroy Trump. Only he can. And there are some who think he’s done that with this immediate withdrawal from Syria. I’m sure you know people that voted for Trump that don’t like this at all and I’m sure you know people that voted for Trump who don’t have a problem with getting out of Syria and with withdrawing half the troops out of Afghanistan. And I’m sure you know some people who think, “Oh, my God, firing Mattis, big mistake.” And I’m sure you know some Trump voters who don’t think it’s any big deal.

So that subject I will explore and explain to your hearts’ content. The other thing is the fed, the stock market, and Mnuchin. This one has a whole different group of people concerned. When Mnuchin started calling the banks — you heard about this? Steven Mnuchin is the treasure secretary, and out of the blue he announced that he’d been calling six CEOs — or let me better say it — CEOs of six of the largest banks in the country. And his point was to ask them what their liquidity was.

Now, these economics people speak in their own language. It’s designed to keep outsiders from not understanding what they’re talking about. When Mnuchin, the credit sky-is-not-falling-phone call is made and reported, and when Mnuchin is checking with the CEOs about their liquidity and assuring them that there’s liquidity, what he’s talking about is credit. Do people have enough money to lend? Because nobody can do anything sizable without borrowing money.

So Mnuchin wanted to call these blanks, get a check on their liquidity and assure them that there was liquidity at the Fed, that borrowing and credit would still be up and running, nothing’s gone south in that regard. But it’s being treated as though an owner of a sports team giving a coach or manager a vote of confidence. It’s relatively certain he’s gonna be fired not long after. So people are thinking, why would Mnuchin do this? Mnuchin wants everybody to think the sky isn’t falling, so his phone call indicates that it is.

This has created a sense of panic in the market that accompanies the fact the stock market is down 4,000 points since early October, now below 22,000. And it involves the Fed and the usage of interest rates. By the way, this is another issue kind of like Syria and Mattis. There are Trump voters who actually think it’s okay for the Fed to raise rates because it’s stability that they care about. There are other Trump voters who think that it’s sabotaging Trump to raise rates because it stalls what is a growing economy, which will ultimately hurt Trump.

The one thing that runs true in all this is that the effort to destroy President Trump is in full swing. It’s being waged on many different fronts. It has eventuated now that many in the Drive-By Media think it is a foregone conclusion, it’s just a matter of time now.

As I mentioned, the Washington Post gives Trump three months — and by three months, they mean three months until this coalition is fractured to the point that the Senate might have 67 votes to impeach if the House Democrats actually bring up impeachment charges.  Now, don’t misunderstand.  I don’t… (chuckling) I don’t think any of this is true.  This is their mind-set.  This has been their objective for two years and is all… What they see is destruction all around us: The stock market, foreign policy.

They think Trump is goofing up left and right, and they’re happy for it to be screwing up. They’re happy for this to happen! As long as they can peg it on Trump, like anything else, the Democrats will destroy whatever or weaken what for as long as it empowers them to so-called fix it later.  There are even some really out-of-control leftists who would willingly take a financial hit if it meant getting rid of Trump.

I don’t think (chuckling) we’re anywhere near that, but I’m just telling you that’s what they think.  That’s why they’re in such good moods when you watch the Drive-By Media.  They think it’s over, it’s just a matter of time now — and at the top of the list is the government shutdown.  They are convinced that most Americans object to this, don’t like this, and, by tradition, blame Republicans (that would be Trump) for this.  And they think Trump has just swerved into a self-destructive move here and so forth.

Whether it was a good move or not irrelevant now.  The point is stick with it. I think it was a good move.  I advocated it before the midterm elections, as you know.  But the president wasn’t listening to me.