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RUSH: Now, the Republican Party. We have three Republicans who have announced they’re gonna run. It’s Mark Sanford and it’s — well, hang on a minute. Mark Sanford, the guy that told Obama that he was a liar when he was in the House. Obama’s making some speech and this guy said, “You lie.” What’s this guy’s name? Joe something or other, Joe Green, Joe Brown. Anyway, there’s one other.

Mark Sanford is the former governor of South Carolina, former member of Congress. This is the guy who gave it all up for a woman in South America. This guy got caught up in an affair of the heart. He lost all perspective, proving one of my oft-stated, Undeniable Truths of Life, and that is – (interruption) Joe Walsh, that’s right. Lust/love, the only human emotion that will make you do things that in a rational state of mind you would never do. This guy gave it all up because he was infatuated or in love or whatever with some woman down in Argentina. He left his family, left his wife, left the job, nobody knew where he was. When they finally caught up with him he said he had been hiking solo on the Appalachian Trail trying to get in touch with himself and with nature, whatever.

It was finally exposed to be a gigantic lie. It was a huge embarrassment for everybody involved. He went out, paid his penance for a while, now back in American politics, and he says that he’s going to seek the Republican nomination against Trump in 2020, primarily because he believes the Republican Party has lost its way.

He says he’s upset with all the spending. He’s upset with the size and the expansion of the deficit. He’s very, very, very concerned that the Republican Party, which used to stand for those two things, fiscal responsibility, economic growth, getting rid of the debt, paying down the annual deficit, the national debt, that’s out the window now. Trump’s spending like we’ve never had anybody spend before. The Republican Party has lost its way.

Well, I’m gonna remind you. For those of you new to the program, that’s not a sentiment with which I disagree. I just disagree with the timing. I don’t think the Republican Party lost its way with Trump. Trump is the result of the Republican Party having lost its way. And do you know when you can trace Republican Party having lost its way? Where do you think, Mr. Snerdley?

If you were playing Jeopardy! right now and the big $25,000 prize hinged on you answering this question correctly, when did the Republican Party of the modern era lose its way? (interruption) Exactly right. In the post-Reagan era. And why did the Republican Party lose its way? (interruption) No, because they abandoned conservatism! They abandoned conservatism and pretended to be conservative and dibbled at it and dabbled at it. They talked about it, but they never implemented it — or rarely.

They promised to during campaigns, but once they got elected there wasn’t any. It fooled people for a while, but that’s when you trace the Republican Party having lost its way. And it’s always been frustrating. Ronald Reagan shows the way: Straight-down-the-middle conservatism. He won two landslide elections in 1980 and 1984, proved a whole bunch of conservative theory that you can cut taxes and double the size of government.

You creates revenue that Washington would otherwise never get by cutting taxes, that you can create new jobs and lower the deficit and lower inflation by cutting taxes, eight years of it — well, six. It took a couple of months to get the tax cut passed and then another 18 months for it to kick in after it was implemented. But all during this time the Washington establishment, including both Republicans and Democrats, did not like Reagan because they didn’t like conservatism.

They don’t like anything that deemphasizes the role of government on a day-to-day basis, and they don’t like anything that deemphasizes or shrinks the size of government. So they pretended to love Reagan and they all wanted to be in the spotlight. But privately, they were plotting how to take control of the party once Reagan’s two terms were over and get it back on track to where it was the Harlem Globetrotters… Well, the Republican Party was the Washington Generals to the Democrat Party’s Harlem Globetrotters.

That’s when Washington functions, when the Republicans know their place, and that is as losers in the minority party. That’s when Washington functions. That’s when the media’s happy. That’s when everybody’s happy. But when that goes astray, that’s when the left loses it, and that’s what we’re in now. We were in it during the eighties with Reagan. The Washington, D.C., order was upset. I’m not kidding and I’m not exaggerating.

Washington, D.C., functions in peace and tranquility when the Republicans know their place, and that is as a minority that occasionally wins the White House but still does not try to dismantle any aspect of the Washington establishment. Instead, the Republicans and Democrats work together to maintain it, maybe even grow it. So what happened when the Republicans won the House for the first time in 40 years in the 1994 elections? The Washington insiders went bonkers. The media went nuts.

Newt Gingrich got the Ronald Reagan treatment that Donald Trump is now getting. If you want peace — and I’m gonna expand on this as the program unfolds because, folks, I’m sensing some wavering out there among you deplorables, among you Trump supporters. I’m sensing just the tiniest bit of wavering. And you know where? You know where I’m seeing it? I have a few people starting to talk to me about how they wish Trump would do more to make the media like him, or at least do more to make the media stop focusing on him all the time.

And it’s understandable, it’s human emotion, and it is fatigue. The people that voted for Trump would much rather see Trump receive accolades. They would much rather see Trump be celebrated rather than constantly ridiculed, laughed at, made fun of, attempted to be destroyed and all that. And I need to remind everybody here today and every day going forward what is at stake, and what this was always gonna be if Trump won, and it’s only gonna get worse. It’s 365, 24/7. That means all the time.

What you’re seeing now, it’s not gonna change. There’s no way to buy off the media. There’s no way to placate the media. There’s no way to soften the media. The only thing to do is to keep defeating the media and the Democrats politically. So I will expand on this as the program unfolds. (interruption) Yeah, Bill Weld. Bill Weld’s the other Republican seeking the nomination. The Republican Party is responding by saying, “Okay. Well, we’ll just eliminate the primaries in three states and we’ll just erase you guys.”

But, I mean, I know where Sanford’s coming from. (impression) “The Republican Party’s lost its way. Donald Trump is no longer the Republican Party.” No, he’s not. But Donald Trump is not the reason the Republican Party is lost. Donald Trump has come in and picked up pieces of what used to be the Republican Party. Look, I’m not making this up. When Washington, D.C., is peaceful and tranquil and when you do not notice any acrimony is when the Republicans agree to be the minority party.

I may be exaggerating, ’cause in the modern era I don’t think there are a whole lot of Republicans that want to lose. But I’m telling you, in the old days pre-1980… Do you know how many Republicans were in the House of Representatives before Reagan won in 1980? It was 130 — 130 out of 435! The Democrats didn’t even let ’em into some committee meetings, and Republicans didn’t care as long as they get to go play golf with people. It was their role to be a permanent minority since the days of FDR.

Reagan blew all of that up by becoming a winner and bringing a lot of Republicans along and having the Republican Party finally be defined as it should be: The party of conservatism. But all the while, establishment Republicans were doing what they could to undermine that after the end of Reagan’s second term, and they did. But the American people that voted for Reagan, two landslide victories, they didn’t want the Republican Party to go back to permanent minority status even if that’s what it meant for there to appear to be peace and tranquility in Washington and in the media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, folks, I pulled a Joe Biden here. I erred. I misspoke. I’ve been talking about Mark Sanford being from North Carolina. He’s not. He’s from South Carolina. I knew that. I just got — well, I got a little lazy out there, all the action in the special election, Trump’s rally tonight in North Carolina. But Mark Sanford is from South Carolina.

Let me grab Ed in Whitesboro, New York, as we get started on the phones. Great to have you on the program, Ed. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. Thanks for having me. I wanted your opinion about something I’ve been thinking about, you know, because the Republicans have been watching Trump roll around in the mud here. A lot of them have been retired and I view these people that are retiring, these guys are falling on the sword, so to speak, just to get rid of this guy. And I was wondering in regards to your monologue about them running, you know, a candidate, do you think it’s possible they would do that just in a possibility of shaving off enough votes where Trump could lose?

RUSH: Running a candidate when? In the presidential election?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: No, no, no. No, no, no. This effort’s gonna be made in the primaries. But it isn’t gonna work. You’re basically asking me if there are enough Never Trumpers to cause Trump to lose. Right?

CALLER: Yeah, because it almost seems like, you know, there’s times when it doesn’t look like there’s that many, but, I mean, they had 40 of ’em, you know, when the election came for the House, they had 40 of ’em leave, and we’ve got more retiring. And it almost seems like they’re just doing it on purpose, you know, so that way they can say, well, the Democrats ruined it for Trump and not them. You know, I’m just very suspicious of them. And I’m a conservative.

RUSH: Well, let me put your mind at rest on one thing. There aren’t enough Never Trumpers to cause Trump to lose the presidential election. The Never Trumpers have always been a very small, very finite number of people. They are predominantly so-called conservative Washington and New York axis, the New York-Washington corridor. They are think tank tips, columnists. They would think of themselves as literary artists.

But Biden — every measure you want to look at, they don’t have a constituency. “What do you mean by that, Rush?” Okay. Look, folks, some of this is not easy. I’ve known these people all my lives, and this departure of theirs from conservatism simply ’cause of Trump, it’s created a lot of friction.

But where do these people work? They either write op-ed columns or they work at magazines. Every magazine for which they work, with a couple of exceptions, is dying. They’re doing fundraisers or they do cruises to supplement their subscriptions because there aren’t enough.

I’m not saying this as a critic of any business. I’m just pointing out that they don’t have a huge constituency. If the Never Trumpers represented a wide swath of the American public, they wouldn’t be in the financial straits that they are in. Their magazines would be thriving. Their subscriptions would be expanding and increasing. And they aren’t.

They are given a lot of airtime because they hate Trump. You know, the media loves Republicans that criticize Republicans. The media loves Republicans that hate other Republicans. So they’re becoming stars in the Drive-By Media, but they’ve always been establishment types, and they’ve always had good relations with the Washington establishment types. And they’ve now joined forces here in their anti-Trump status. But in terms of representing a percentage of the electorate, they don’t.

Believe me, they have lost a lot of supporters. They’ve lost a lot of donors. They’ve lost a lot of subscribers. And they’re picking up some of what they’ve lost from Democrats, not Republicans. And this also, this is one of the many things that has frustrated Never Trumpers to no end.

You know, for the longest time the Never Trumpers — and by this specific group I’m talking about conservative, quote, unquote, intellectuals — they thought they were the engine of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. And they sought donors and subscribers on that basis, that they were necessary to keep conservatism alive, that they were the ones that had the oomph and the power and the ability to get conservative policies in front of elected officials and get them implemented.

And then Donald Trump comes along and blows the whole ruse sky-high by basically illustrating they haven’t been accomplishing much at all. Trump comes in and in two years gets more of the conservative agenda implemented than anybody has since the end of Reagan. These guys have been exposed. So they’ve gotta hate Trump. They’ve gotta come down on Trump.

Trump has basically shown that you don’t need to send think tanks and magazines a bunch of money in order to get conservatism implemented. You just have to elect the right guy. And what’s really been amazing about it, here these guys are, these Never Trumpers, who — we’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt – have been working tirelessly their entire professional lives to see all kinds of various conservative policy implemented. Here it is being implemented, and they hate it!

It’s one of the most amazing things to me to observe, which can give rise to other questions. The answer to your question, there aren’t enough, they do not have a voting constituent — not a single one of them that’s got a candidate that’s gonna run for anything anywhere, particularly for the presidency.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here we go. Jennifer Harper has the news for the Washington Times: “Trump-bashing has become a tradition in broadcast news, with anchors, correspondents and pundits supplying near non-stop negative coverage of President Trump and his administration. The coverage has been, on average, 90% negative according to a series of studies by the Media Research Center.” I think it’s higher than that. If you go to MSNBC, it’s 100% negative. If you go to CNN, it’s 100% negative. Where is there any positive coverage of Trump anywhere?

When there was one mildly fair headline in the New York Times, the left went bonkers and demanded that the Times change it. Where is there any favorable coverage of Trump in the Drive-By Media? I don’t think there is any. But it’s a dual-edged sword. Because while this Trump hatred is intensifying throughout the left and the Drive-By Media, the Democrats are seeking to conduct their primary nomination process. And this Trump hatred is so intense, and it is so focused that the Democrat presidential hopefuls can’t get covered.

Trump is getting… This is an astounding number. Trump is getting 11-times greater (or more) coverage than then Democrat presidential candidates are. “‘From June 1 through August 31 … the networks devoted 838 minutes of airtime — nearly 14 hours — to coverage of President Trump personally, the vast majority of which was negative,’ writes Rich Noyes, who led the study. ‘The airtime devoted to Trump was eleven times greater than that spent on the leading Democratic candidate … Joe Biden (just under 74 minutes)…'” Now, one other thing. The Democrats are trying to hide Biden.

They’re trying to keep Biden under wraps. It’s the same thing they did with Hillary, the presumed nominee in the case of Hillary. “She’s presumed presidential winner. Just hide her. Don’t cover her. Hide the flaws. Hide the damage.” They’re doing the same thing with Biden. Kamala Harris has gotten 30 minutes of coverage. Trump is at 838 minutes here, now, folks, from June 1st through August 31st, essentially the summer. Biden has gotten 74 minutes, Kamala Harris 30 minutes, Mayor Pete 15 minutes.

“Wait a minute, Rush. I’ve seen Mayor Pete more than 15 minutes!” No, you haven’t. You’ve seen Mayor Pete in original coverage get a total of 15 minutes in 30 seconds here, 15 seconds there. By the way, this does not count debate telecasts. That’s above this. I don’t think they’re gonna count seven hours that climate change boondoggle. This is straight news coverage, not special events like debates or anything of the sort. Fauxcahontas, Elizabeth Warren, has only gotten 14 minutes of straight news coverage.

“The media mania over Trump is more intense than that of four summers ago, but the pattern is similar. After Trump joined the race in mid-June 2015, he immediately dominated network news coverage with 232 minutes of airtime, twice that of … Hillary Clinton, and six times more than … Jeb Bush.” So why, ladies and gentlemen? I think what’s going on… I think the intensity of Trump hatred — and I know you’ll agree with on this ’cause this is obvious. The intensity of Trump hatred increased after Robert Mueller bombed out.

Remember, all of the eggs were in the Mueller basket. Mueller was supposed to be the icing on the cake, the crowning blow. After two years of a silent coup, Robert Mueller was to deliver the, quote-unquote, “evidence” and the guillotine at the same time. And we all know that Mueller failed to deliver anything and then compounded the error by showing up on TV twice and making it plain he didn’t even know what was in his own report. So since Mueller failed, Trump is getting roasted and reamed and criticized even more because there has to be an outlet for this anger.

There has to be an outlet for this rage and so forth. And I think, folks, that it’s starting to… As I said at the top of the program today, I think there are some of you, some deplorables that are beginning to waver a bit. I only say this based on some people I know and the questions they’re asking me and some of the frustrations that they are sharing with me. A lot of people… Not a lot. The people I’m talking about are starting to wear out with the media. You remember that dinner party I’ve told you about a number of times?

These two guys that I didn’t invite showed up and immediately started saying, “We gotta rid of Palin! We gotta get rid of her.” I said, “Why?” She was McCain’s VP. “Why?” “The media’s destroyed her! We can’t win. We gotta find somebody the media likes.” “Aw, gee! Find somebody the media likes?” These two guys were total prisoners to the media. They were willing to grant the media total power to determine our nominees. If the media destroyed somebody, they didn’t have the slightest desire to defend them and try to beat the media.

They wanted to acknowledge the media destroyed somebody and go get somebody else more palatable. Well, I’m sensing that there is some Trump supporter fatigue on this never-ending media barrage. And look, it’s human nature. You want your guy to be loved. You want… If you support a sports team, you want everybody to love the team. Unless, you know, they’re the dreaded Patriots or the Yankees; then you take comfort in everybody hating them. But in normal human nature concerns, human nature areas, you want there to be some respect for the guy.

You want there to be some acknowledgment of achievement. You want anything. But there is none of that — and, folks, there never is going to be. How many times…? How many times during one of these many-faceted controversies have I appeared on this program and said, “This is what pushing looks like?” What the election of Donald Trump is and what it represents is a literal assault on the Washington, D.C., status quo. It is an assault on the worldwide so-called order, the post-World War II order where the United States was established as a nation that was not to behave as a superpower.

We were to act guilty. We were to act ashamed, at times, of our power and of our success — and we were to allow ourselves to be fleeced as a means of peaceful coexistence with lesser nations. This was America’s role as established by Americans who participated in the establishment of this world order. A second superpower like the Soviet Union was considered a good thing to “balance” the United States. It was people like Madeleine Albright who said, “It’s not good for the U.S. to be the only superpower.

“No, no. That destabilizes the world.” What’s absent? The idea the United States is the good guys. Who wouldn’t want the good guys to win all the time? The good guys should triumph. The good guys should champion. The good guys are the good guys, for crying out loud! We’re the good guys. But not to the people who established this world order post-World War II.

So the Soviet Union going away was not greeted with cheers and support. Now we have the ChiComs to deal with as the second superpower to keep the United States in check and in balance. Now, these are people who are globalists and don’t believe that nation states should dominate. They want a global arrangement, a global order, a global government. Well, Trump is an assault on that. He is an assault on the Washington establishment.

Call it drain the swamp, whatever you know it as. The election of Donald Trump was always a constant, never-ending assault on the status quo, by design. This is what Trump said his candidacy and his presidency would be. And it is aimed at causing this kind of thing!

These people are not gonna go quietly. They’re not going to surrender, the people that hold power in the status quo. And as every effort they invent and implement to get rid of Donald Trump fails, their desperation ramps up, their anger ramps up, their rationality declines. And that’s what we find ourselves in the midst of.

We are in the midst of an irrational, uncontrollable rage and anger on the part of the people desperate to hold on to that which they built, which was not built for the benefit of the people of America. It was built to use the people of America and their labor and their production to guarantee this status quo for elites.

Trump is a full on, head-on assault on it. Folks, it only makes sense that the media, the Democrats, the left, the worldwide status quo would be acting this way. If the tables were reversed, you would be too. But you have to understand that seeing this constant attack on Donald Trump is one of the best bits of evidence of success that you could imagine. And that’s tough. Psychologically, that’s tough.

Success means being hated. Success means being the target of destruction. Yes, in this circumstance, it does. And that’s a real tough thing to psychologically adapt to. Nobody wants to be hated. Nobody wants to be ridiculed or despised. But I’m telling you the people that Trump has focused on and targeted, they’re desperate, made more desperate by the fact that they have failed using every tool they know to get rid of the guy.

They’ve jiggered the justice system. They have used lawlessness and anti-constitutionalism. And not even that has worked. They’re at their wits’ end. Of course they’re going to be focused with anger and irrationality and hatred. And if Trump wins in 20/20, you haven’t seen anything yet, because the damage to the left, the damage to the Democrats is gonna be much worse than it was in 1980 when Ronaldus Magnus emerged triumphant over Jimmy Carter.

Because Trump winning in 2020 will be yet another victory in his stated purpose of draining the media swamp, establishment, status quo. That’s still what his aim is. That’s still what the objective is. He is not pulling back. He’s not softening. He’s not compromising. That’s what all of the tweets are about. If it makes you nervous, you’re gonna have to find a way to deal with it because it’s not gonna change.

And it’s all part of keeping these people off balance and livid to the point now — you want to talk about genius — what kind of genius is it when the Drive-By Media is owned and operated by the Democrat Party? The Drive-By Media is the Democrat Party. The Drive-By Media’s objective is to elect Democrats, particularly to the White House and get rid of Donald Trump. And in the midst of that, that very group of people is giving Donald Trump 11 times more coverage than their own candidates.

Now, you might say, “Well, yeah, but Rush it’s all negative.” Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter in this instance because the Democrat candidates can’t get covered. “Well, that may help ’em, Rush, because their ideas are so damn radical.” Well, I’m just telling you that everything about this is upside down.

Can you name any other Republican who get 11 times more coverage than the Democrat candidates for president? Their whole world’s upside down, folks. They don’t know what to do. They can’t explain this. They can’t fathom their inability to damage or get rid of Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It would behoove everybody to remember something. We just barely survived a coup to get rid of this president, just barely survived it. And that was the Mueller thing. And when that bombed out, when that blew up in their face, the hatred, the intensity of it all just magnifies and multiplies. And that’s what we’re up against.

Trump isn’t changing. What’s changing is the level of intensity and the hatred aimed at him. And it’s making some people nervous. I can see it. I can tell. It’s not hard to figure out. You can watch Fox. Half of the people on Fox — well, maybe not half, but some of the people on Fox — no names mentioned here, who started being all in on Trump, you can see ’em starting to waver now here. And it’s all this surface stuff ’cause everybody wants peace and tranquility and can’t we all just – if not gonna get along, can’t it just be where we don’t hear Trump’s name, this or that. No.

Ask the Democrat candidates. They can’t even get the media to stop talking about Trump and they would be one of the primary beneficiaries. Never forget, peace and tranquility in Washington, in the media, only happens when Republicans agree to be the minority. And when they agree that they’re okay with losing.

Back to phones, Rachel, Great Falls, Montana, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: So here’s the thing. We all pretty much know that Trump is fairly amoral about some of his personal life choices. But the thing is, pretty much we believe the same thing about every other politician. The difference is he’s honest and open about it.

RUSH: Interesting point. Give me an example of what you’re talking about.

RUSH: Well, just think about all the different scandals that there are out in the world about all the different politicians, you know, all these things that come up, “Oh, look. He was in blackface here. This person had this affair with this mistress over here.” Well, those are things that most try to keep hidden, but with Trump we kind of knew —

RUSH: How about all these phonies traveling around with Jeffrey Epstein?

CALLER: Exactly. Exactly. So all these things come out and none of us are surprised because we already assume that that’s the case, that there’s gonna be hidden things about all these politicians.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: The difference with Trump is that they’re out in the open —

RUSH: Mark Sanford: “The Republican Party has lost his way, morality and –” This guy ran out on his family and wife for a woman in Argentina on a goat farm and lied about it. He said he was on the Appalachian Trail becoming one with nature like the Indians. Same baggage, the same baggage, exactly what you’re talking about.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Except Trump never abandoned anybody. And he would never be found on the Appalachian Trail. If he had gone somewhere, he’d tell you where it was, and it would be one of his golf courses. Nothing against the Appalachian Trail, don’t misunderstand, that’s where Sanford said he went. But he didn’t.

So you’re thinking that Trump is at least up front about it. He’s not a phony about it. He’s not trying to hide it. And the things that he’s doing trump all that or are more important than what these detractions are. Is that your point basically?

CALLER: Yeah. Absolutely. He’s actually doing the things that he said he was gonna do for the country.

RUSH: Exactly. In a nutshell, there it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Darren in Vancouver. Great to have you with us at the EIB Network, sir. Hello.

CALLER: How are you, sir?

RUSH: I’m well. Thank you.

CALLER: Well, what I wanted to say is, to your friends who are getting wobbly on Trump, we cannot capitulate to the abuse or we will never see the end of it.

RUSH: You know, that’s a good point. If anybody caves, if you sue for peace they’ve just learned how to beat you every time.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Make it uncomfortable for you, make you miserable, and you’ll fade away.

CALLER: Yep. And you’ll get more of it, and it will be worse.

RUSH: Yes, that’s exactly right. I’m glad that you reminded me of that. What he’s talking about, in the very beginning moments of today’s stellar broadcast, I mentioned that some people I know are getting weak-kneed, getting wobbly. They’re simply tired, folks. They’re tired of the media onslaught. They wish it would stop. They think Trump could stop it.

They wish Trump weren’t so constantly criticized. It’s making them nervous. And I remind everybody, “Look. It can be no other way. And it’s gonna get worse.” I have to remind people what this is. Trump’s election and his presidency and his reelection is a declared — there’s nothing stealth about this — this is declared warfare on the Washington status quo.

The Washington establishment, the globalist array, the European Union, Trump — and he’s as serious about it today as he was during his campaign. Trump isn’t backing off. Trump is not toning it down. He’s been very clear what this is about. This is what pushback looks like. It was never gonna be easy. These people were never gonna say, “You know what? You’re right. We have been running things too long and we have been forgetting most of the — you’re right. You’re right. Trump’s right.” That’s never gonna happen.

You can expect more of, “You know, Trump is not well. I think there needs to be serious medical, mental examinations of the president. He’s not well.” This stuff’s gonna continue, it’s gonna ratchet up. You’ve got people that have never analyzed Trump, never diagnosed him that are gonna be sitting there passing judgment, all of that and more is going to continue.

And human nature, frustration mounts as they fail, every effort they’ve made has failed.

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