RUSH: Kamala Harris — who embarrassed herself, in my opinion, interrogating Brett Kavanaugh — had her presidential candidacy announcement over the weekend. It was yesterday in Oakland. Twenty-thousand people showed up, and the Drive-Bys are making a big deal that that’s even bigger than Obama’s candidacy announcement, which I guess is supposed to tell us that, “Wow! Wow! This babe is gonna be even bigger and better than Obama!”

Now, she’s just one of the crowd that wants the Democrat presidential nomination, including our old buddy Howard Schultz, the founder and inventor of Starbucks. But Howard Schultz is making a bunch of leftists really mad because he’s gonna run as an independent. And they worry… That means he doesn’t need a party nomination to run. He’ll get on the ballot enough places as an independent and then could take away votes from whoever the Democrats nominate.

Now, Howard Schultz — if you just look at him by himself — is your average, straight-line, right-down-the-middle, left-wing liberal. But! But! He’s not the radical left wing that all of the other Democrat nominees are likely to be. So in the circle… Well, it’s not a circle. You have to look at these people on a straight line, because a circle is the wrong way to plot ideologies. People put ideologies on a circle so that they can say that Nazism intersects with conservatism, which it doesn’t.

Nazism… I’m just gonna tell you. Nazism, which is National Socialism, is much, much closer to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than to any Republican conservative you could think of. Nazism doesn’t even approach close proximity to conservatism. But it’s right there on the same side of the dividing line as the Democrat Party socialism is or as American socialism or communism is. I’m not talking about the Holocaust here. I’m talking about government policy.

Do not anybody confuse what I’m saying.

I’m not saying these people are Hitler.

I’m saying that National Socialism, which was his belief system — and it started with health care for everybody, and it had every tenet that Ocasio-Cortez talks about or any of these other left-wing radicals. If you plot ideologies on a straight line, liberalism will never intersect with conservatism. But if you plot ideology in a circle, the left can show you at the top of the circle where Nazism and conservatism intersect. It’s one of the biggest lies in all of political science.

So if you plot Howard Schultz on this line, you’ve got the radical left — so far left, they’re off of anybody’s chart. But that’s now mainstream Democrat Party. Howard Schultz is going to appear to be to the right of these people, while still being the old-fashioned mainstream liberal that many people still think that they are. So that’s why the radical left is not happy. Plus he’s got a lot of money. He has donated a lot of money to left-wing causes, Democrat causes, and now he won’t be doing that.

He’ll instead be spending it on himself. So they’re very, very worried about that. Grab sound bite No. 18 and No. 19. We have two of them. This is Howard Schultz on 60 Minutes last night. He’s no longer the CEO of Starbucks. He got out of there… (sigh) I don’t know when. But, man, is it a testament to entrepreneurism: A coffee roaster becomes a multi-gazillionaire. I’ve been to a Starbucks one time, and I didn’t get anything.

I walked in. It was in Pittsburgh. I was with somebody who wanted to go. I’ve had Starbucks coffee in the bag you make at home. I thought, “This is meh. What’s the big deal?” But I’ve never had a latte with two shots or whatever you put in it or whatever you do, and it doesn’t say I don’t relate to the common man. That’s not at all the case. Don’t misunderstand. Just haven’t. I’m not one of these raving Starbucks fans.

Anyway, he was on 60 Minutes, and this was, I guess, his announcement.

SCHULTZ: (haltingly) I am seriously thinking of running for president. I will run as a centrist independent —

RUSH: See?

SCHULTZ: — outside of the two-party system.

RUSH: See?

SCHULTZ: We’re living at a most fragile time.

RUSH: See?

SCHULTZ: Not only the fact that this president is not qualified to be the president.

RUSH: See?

SCHULTZ: But the fact that both parties are consistently not doing what’s necessary on behalf of the American people and are engaged every single day in revenge politics.

RUSH: See? See what I mean? What you mean, running against a president not qualified to be president? He got elected, didn’t he? What is qualified? He meets all the constitutional requirements. What do you mean, he’s not qualified? And you are? That’s like saying somebody’s not worth the $2 million they’re making. Well, somebody’s paying him that for some reason. He must be worth it to whoever’s pay ’em.

“He’s still not worth it.”

“This guy’s not qualified to be president.”

He got elected. You probably can’t be. How do you explain that? One more bite. Howard Schultz continuing…

SCHULTZ: (haltingly) Every American deserves the right to have access to quality health care. But what the Democrats are proposing is something that is as false as a wall, and that is free health care for all, and which the country cannot afford.

RUSH: Mr. Schultz, do you think we’re idiots? If you’re gonna run around and your campaign is gonna say, “Every American deserves the right to have access to quality health care,” they’re gonna think you’re offering free health care! That’s exactly the trick that Obama pulled off! The day Obamacare was signed into law, people all over this country thought that they had free health care that day! Talk to doctors. People were showing up at the doctor’s office expecting not to have to pay.

So when you run around out there saying, “Every American deserves the right to have access to quality health care,” they’re gonna think that you’re offering free health care. And you sit there and claim “the Democrats are proposing is something that is as false as a wall, and that is free health care for all…”? That’s exactly what they’re gonna think you’re proposing. And you know it! He knows it! He knows how these words are gonna sound. They’re trick words.

If you’ve got a voter base that does want freebies… This guy’s not gonna run against people wanting freebies. That’s the whole Democrat Party voter base. It’s not that they want freebies; they’re demanding them. But they don’t care how much it costs. I saw somebody… Oh, get this. Pocahontas… Well, I’m sorry. Fauxcahontas, Elizabeth Warren, took out after Dan Snyder. Dan Snyder owns the Washington REDSKINS! Make sure you heard me on that.

It was announced that Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington REDSKINS, went out and bought a $100 million yacht, and right on cue, Fauxcahontas tears into him. He’s got no right to buy that yacht. He didn’t build that yacht, and that $100 million could better be used for free health care or free education or free this or free that. Back in the old days, folks, when one of these left-wingers would come along and promote free education…

As Kamala Harris did. That was her centerpiece in her announcement yesterday: Free education everywhere from kindergarten on. Free education, expensive education, that’s not the problem. What we’re teaching people is the problem, and all of these people advocating free education, free health care? The Democrat Party is a built-in market for free. They’re out there demanding it.

Now, I can remember the days when somebody like Ocasio-Cortez or Kamala Harris or Fauxcahontas would come along and propose all this and we would say — thinking that we would win the argument — “Well, how are they gonna pay for it?” And I’m here to tell you, you better forget using that argument in terms of winning public opinion against somebody offering free stuff. It no longer matters. It no longer works. People don’t care how it’s gonna be paid for.

They don’t think they’re gonna be paying for it no matter what you tell ’em. They are demanding it, they think they’re gonna get it. We have a national debt of $21 trillion. We have an annual budget deficit that is approaching $800 billion. We can’t afford anything any politician is promising to give away. And we haven’t been able to afford anything — the Treasury is going to have borrow a trillion dollars. Let me get this.

“U.S. Treasury Set to Borrow $1 Trillion for a Second Year to Finance the Deficit.” Where are they borrowing a trillion dollars? This is not chump change. Where are they going to borrow a trillion dollars? Who has a trillion dollars to lend to the United States? Where are they going? Where are borrowing?

Well, they’re getting it from the ChiComs, the Japanese. They’re selling Treasury bonds is how they borrow a trillion dollars. My point is this. We don’t have any money. So the Democrats, I don’t care who they are, can come and promise every freebie in the world, and there aren’t enough Americans that are gonna ask how are we gonna pay for that. They don’t care anymore!

We’ve been asking, “How are we gonna pay for this?” for years. We have been trying to tell voters that all of this expansive government is gonna end people’s access to money, and it hasn’t done any of that. It actually has become a straw dog.
It’s as though money doesn’t really exist when you’re talking about government. I’m talking about the mind-set of average American voters. What things cost is as irrelevant to them as whether or not there’s gonna be water in the faucet. It’s expected, they don’t think anything about it, as much as they need, it’s there when they turn on the tap.

And they look at money, federal money, government money the same way. And I don’t mean in terms of government checks, Social Security, welfare. I’m talking about the philosophy that the government has run out of money. They don’t see that. “How’s the government run out of money when they’re spending money left and right, giving it away here, giving it away there. If they’re gonna give it away, I want mine. If the government is Santa Claus, I want presents under my tree every day.”

The idea that there isn’t any money for it doesn’t even cross their minds. I’m trying to tell every Republican and conservative it’s a waste of time to ask Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “How are you gonna pay for this?” Because her voters do not care. Her voters don’t ever think it’s gonna be paid for! That’s the real rub. When you tell ’em, “Well, your tax rate under her is going up to 70%,” they’re gonna say “not me. My tax rate’s not going to 70%, but the guy that just because the yacht for the Washington Redskins, he’s is going to 70.” And they applaud it. Or Bill Gates or some of these other people, Warren Buffett, their tax rates goes to 70, fine and dandy. Theirs isn’t. They don’t think she’s gonna tax them 70%. And they don’t care what the result of other people being taxed 70% is.

The argument has not made a dent in people. The government does not have to be fiscally responsible in the eyes of way too many Americans. It isn’t necessary. All of the warnings, all of the supposed pratfalls, all of the supposed disasters that are gonna happen from all this debt, people don’t see them. Where are they? They’ve got jobs more than they’ve ever had, they’re getting bonused, Trump recovery is doing well. “What do you mean we’re not gonna have any money?”

And the Democrats know it before anybody else knows it. Obama, Pelosi, Kamala Harris, they know that they can promise to give away everything and it’s only gonna help. It isn’t going to hurt them with people. This is how horribly out of kilter our entire government is and our politics as well. Because in the end it sure as heck does matter. But to the average American voter, free health care and free education are becoming demands, expectations.

And they could not care less whether there’s any money to pay for it or not! Because it doesn’t cost anything to them. And whoever it’s costing, if anybody, has the money! The billionaires, the wealthy. And they’re not paying their fair share, so there’s plenty of places to get the money. So Howard Schultz sitting here saying, “The Democrats are proposing something as false as the wall, and that’s free health care for all. The country can’t afford it.”

The country can’t afford to give anybody health care! Not one person, if you talk about really affording it. We don’t have the money. We already don’t have the money for what we allocate and appropriate every year, period, much less adding anything to it. But don’t tell that to the average American voter. It used to be 30, 40 years ago a madcap liberal would come along and offer free this or free that.

I remember in 1984, the Reverend Jackson was running for the Democrat presidential nomination promising the moon. Free this, free that. He’s promising everything. And I was doing commentary at a Kansas City radio station. I did a little commentary, “Reverend Jackson, where are you gonna pay for this, how we gonna pay for this?” I got in trouble for being disrespectful to a Democrat presidential nominee.

But back in 1984, the question resonated. “How are you gonna pay for it” was a question that got people thinking, “Yeah, we can’t afford it, we don’t want government getting that big, this is crazy. We can’t give things away to people that aren’t gonna appreciate it.” But we’ve lost that aspect of government spending. Now if we’re giving away money to illegal aliens, if we’re paying health care and education for their kids, then why the hell are you not offering it to me and my kids?

So expect these Democrats to be offering everything under the sun, the moon. And also expect that when you ask how are you gonna pay for it, expect that question to be met with deaf ears.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I got an email. Mr. Snerdley actually got an email from a member of Congress. I’m not gonna mention a name. A member of Congress says, “I was just listening to Rush talk about Kamala Harris offering free health care and how conservatives would be wasting their time bringing up the price issue. So, Mr. Snerdley, could you ask the all-knowing Mr. Limbaugh: If we can’t use the fact that it’s bankrupting the country as an argument, what should we be using as an argument?”

My point is that bankrupting the country has already happened, and it doesn’t bother anybody! The country is bankrupt! If it isn’t, somebody explain to me what bankruptcy is. We’re borrowing a trillion dollars, and the only reason we’re not bankrupt is we have a printing press. My point here is that the people, the Democrats are promising free stuff to don’t care. It’s not an argument that it’s gonna cause them not to support free stuff. That is an appeal to citizenship, is it not?

“You need to oppose free health care. The country can’t afford it. The country can’t afford free education for everybody. That’s not what good citizenship is.” That argument’s not gonna resonate with these people. Citizenship? That’s so tired. I think the way to approach it, rather than to say, “We’re running out of money, we’re bankrupt,” because who’s gonna believe that? The government’s still up and running. It’s spending left and right. There doesn’t seem to be any problem with all the debt.

I think the way to approach it — and I need to think longer and harder about this, because no matter what we say, the response is gonna be, “Well, yeah, you say I can’t have it, but such-and-such has it. The rich have it. Why can’t I have it?” and then you start preaching morality to them. “Well, you know, it’s just not right that every citizen get something free.” It’s a tough thing. It used to work. It used to resonate with citizens that it was an improper thing for citizens to be demanding all this from government.

But now the Democrat Party has built their base on people who expect it, and who don’t care if the country’s bankrupt because if it is, it sure seems like it’s perkin’ along just fine to everybody. So I have the some answers to this, but sadly I’m out of busy broadcast moments. But I’m gonna address this tomorrow because actually it’s an excellent question, and there does need to be a political response to people like Cortez and Kamala Harris. But now I have to take a brief break. Back in a second.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Whatever will be provided free can’t be provided free to everybody. There’s gonna be rationing. There’s gonna be lines. There’s gonna be unhappiness. There’s gonna be misery ’cause it can’t be done. That’s one of the ways you approach it.