RUSH: Now, last week, as you know, I was given the prestigious William F. Buckley Jr. award for Leadership in Political Thought by the National Review Institute. And, in my remarks, I was scheduled to go 15 minutes. At 30 minutes they gave me the hook. I understood it. They clearly told me 15 minutes. They had to stay on schedule to get to the dancing by 9 o’clock. I guess it was 9:25 they came out and got me.
I was right in the middle of a riff on it’s not hard to defend Donald Trump. I was explaining to everybody in the sold-out ballroom at The Breakers hotel and resort here in Palm Beach that it isn’t hard. Defending Donald Trump is nothing more than defending ourselves, defending the people that voted for him.
Last night Trump had a rally in Kentucky, and Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, showed up, and I want you to hear it because this is how you do it. This is how easy it is. I can’t tell you the number of people, “Rush, Rush,” emails, “Rush, did you see Rand Paul last night? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Rush, oh, my God.” It’s so rare that somebody defends Trump that everybody that saw it wanted to make sure I saw it.
I’m still amazed that people can possibly believe I don’t know something that’s happening out there, but still those people exist. They’re trying to help. I understand that. But it’s not hard to do. And Rand Paul’s getting fed up that nobody’s doing it, either. Here is what he said from the stage at the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, last night.
PAUL: President Trump has great courage. He faces down the fake media every day. (cheers) But Congress needs to step up and have equal courage to defend the president. (cheers) The whistleblower needs to come before Congress as a material witness because he worked for Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was getting money from corrupt oligarchs. I say tonight to the media, do your job and print his name!
CROWD: Do your job! Do your job! Do your job!
RUSH: Do you hear that crowd? Do you hear that crowd?
PAUL: And, I say this to my fellow colleagues in Congress, to every Republican in Washington, step up and subpoena Hunter Biden and subpoena the whistleblower.
RUSH: And that’s it! That’s all anybody has to do! It isn’t hard. It is not hard. Defending Donald Trump is the same thing as attacking the corruption in the Democrat Party and on the left, and that’s exactly how it’s done. And if that kind of chorus could begin, the Democrats would not have a chance, and the media would not be able to avoid it. Just one senator.
And, by the way, I have to tell you that over the course of the years — Snerdley, you’d agree — Rand Paul’s not been a prominent Trump supporter. He has been, but he was not on the early list. He had to be persuaded to come over, but he’s all-in now. But this, to me, is as simple as two and two is four. Defending Donald Trump is not hard because defending Donald Trump is defending us, defending ourselves, the people who voted for him.
Donald Trump, when he’s attacked, it’s us being attacked, folks. He’s the vessel for the hatred they have for us who elected him. As I’ve said over and over, Trump is transient. All presidents are. They serve four years or eight and then they move on. The people that elect these presidents, you and me, we are forever! Well, in the political sense.
And this movement of Trumps, another point that I made to the august gathering of elites at the National Review Institute, that this Trump voter group out there is not going anywhere. This movement existed before Donald Trump came along. He had the brilliance to tap into it. And it’s not the Tea Party. The Tea Party may have some foundational aspect to it. But defending Trump is easy. Attacking the left is required. It is a must.
I was watching CNN yesterday, and I didn’t mention this yesterday because it ticked me off, frankly, and I didn’t want to be ticked off when I saw it, so I forgot it. I didn’t forget it. I moved it to the side. I made it not a priority. CNN ran – I’m gonna paraphrase here — they ran some kind of a chyron headline: “Trump Defenders Down to Their Last Stand. ‘He did it, but it’s not impeachable.’”
I said, “What the hell? Where’s that coming from?” I don’t know anybody out there acknowledging that Trump, quote, did it, unquote, and that the thing is it’s unimpeachable. I don’t know where that’s coming from. And I haven’t seen it anywhere but CNN.
But congratulations and thanks to Rand Paul. What would you rather have, that or Mitt Romney out there running around doing the kind of silly things that he’s doing and some of these other Republicans scared to death of their own shadows? It isn’t hard. And more than that’s required.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to Rand Paul here for just a second. One of the things that he demanded was the whistleblower’s identity be made public, demanding the media do that. Everybody knows who it is. We’ve told you the name. We’ve outed the whistleblower. Everybody knows the name.
There’s a big misunderstanding about whistleblower protection. The whistleblower’s name is not withheld for personal privacy reasons. You know why whistleblowers’ names are withheld? It’s to protect their jobs. It’s to protect them from being fired. It’s not to protect their identity! That’s the sole reason. And it’s not me saying this.
Matt Whitaker, who is the deputy attorney general before Trump appointed Barr permanently to the gig, he was on Fox News yesterday and made the point that whistleblower identity protection is not for identity. It’s to make sure he doesn’t get canned. There’s no way this guy’s gonna get canned. He’s back at the CIA anyway. He long ago was sent packing because the guy has been leaking.
This whistleblower leaked a lie to the New York Times that Donald Trump was told by Vladimir Putin to fire Comey. The New York Times ran with it. Everybody else picked it up. It was a lie. He was sent packing. It was in 2017. There is no requirement the whistleblower’s name be protected for simple privacy reasons. It’s job protection. You might say, “What’s the difference?” It’s a big difference. And Rand Paul calling for the identity, the media knows who it is.
We have a call. I want to grab this call before we go to these audio sound bites, I promise. This is Trish, who is on her way to Louisiana for a Trump rally. Trisha, great to have you on the program with us. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: Good. So I was at the rally last night. It was my 25th rally, and never, in all the 25 rallies I’ve been to, have I heard the crowd go that wild when Rand Paul insisted that we make the media do their job. People were screaming at the top of their lungs. The stadium was shaking. It was unbelievable.
RUSH: You’ve been to 25 Trump rallies?
CALLER: Yes, sir. And I’m on my way to the 26th.
RUSH: So you’re driving? You’re driving down to Louisiana?
CALLER: Yes, sir. I’m somewhere in Kentucky on the outskirts of Kentucky heading into Tennessee.
RUSH: Well, that’s what I call devotion.
CALLER: I love this president.
RUSH: I mean, some people go to every Major League Baseball park in their lives. You’re going to every Trump rally you can.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: Now, when you were there and Rand Paul came out with his defense of Trump and his demand that the media do their job, on the audio that I just played, it did sound like the place erupted.
CALLER: Yes, it did. It was louder than anything at any rally I’ve ever heard.
RUSH: Well, now, that’s saying something because these rallies are all loud. They are all filled with excited, exuberant people. So that’s saying something if that moment was louder than anything you ever heard.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: What did that mean to you?
CALLER: It meant that the people were taking a stand and that they were not gonna allow the media to run this impeachment inquiry. They were not going to allow this to happen, and I’m telling you, we’re standing up and we’re going to stop it. There is no way they’re going to get away with this. No way.
RUSH: Trisha, thank you. That’s exactly right. Folks, the reason that I moved Trisha up in advance of when I was gonna start taking calls was that very statement. It was louder than anything. People are clamoring for Trump to be defended because they know what’s at stake here. They are clamoring for it. When Rand Paul came out and did it and when he called out the media, that place erupted.
Now, the reason this is a big deal is that many people think that they are the only ones who see things or feel things or think things. I can’t tell you the number of times: “Rush, you gotta tell people X, Y, you gotta tell ’em.” It’s what they personally think. And I say, “Everybody thinks that.” “Okay, good. I don’t know.” And the reason you don’t know that everybody thinks that is because the media doesn’t cover you. The media doesn’t go out and cover your reaction to things.
And if they happen to see it when they’re doing something else they impugn it and laugh at it, say it’s no big deal, just a bunch of crazed people in a cult, something like that. But the fact of the matter is I’ve told you people are seething with rage out there over this. Millions of people are seething, and they’re getting angrier and angrier every day as the media continues its basic unfairness and its outright lying, its outright character assassination and its willing participation in a coup to overthrow and overturn the 2016 presidential election.
People know that that’s what this is and they are fed up with it. And whenever there is an opportunity for them to express the sentiment like last night, they do it. That’s why I want to play these sound bites of the Drive-Bys going out and talking to people in battleground states desperate to find people who hate Trump, desperate to find evidence that the media is succeeding in creating hatred for Trump and opposition to Trump.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Grab the Rand Paul sound bite, number 14. I opened the program with this. This certainly deserves being repeated. One of my often-shared laments — and not just now, but over the years — has been the reluctance of Republicans to defend their presidents or themselves — or, if I might even say, their reluctance to defend their friends in the media when they’re under assault.
It’s gotten so bad lately that last week and the week before — and maybe even three weeks ago now — the Drive-By Media was filled with stories, “Republicans are saying how difficult it is to defend Trump. It’s getting harder and harder to defend Trump.” It just infuriated me because it’s not hard to defend Trump. The Never Trumpers are people supposedly bright. How in the world can they cite one thing about the leftist alternative that they would prefer? How do you not defend Trump? How do you not defend yourself?
It isn’t hard to do, and I want to show you how it sounds when it’s done, and I want you to listen to the audience reaction when it happened. This is last night at the Rupp Arena in Lexington. Trump had a rally for the governor, Matt Bevin, running for reelection. He brought Rand Paul up to stage, and Rand Paul let loose, and I want you to listen not just to what Rand Paul says. Listen the reaction in the sold out, standing-room-only crowd.
PAUL: President Trump has great courage. He faces down the fake media every day.
CROWD: (cheers)
PAUL: But Congress needs to step up and have equal courage to defend the president.
CROWD: (roaring cheers)
RUSH: Listen to that crowd!
PAUL: The whistleblower needs to come before Congress as a material witness because he worked for Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was getting money from corrupt oligarchs.
CROWD: (grumbling and boos)
PAUL: I say tonight to the media: Do your job and print his name!
RUSH: Listen to this!
CROWD: (cheers) Do your job! Do your job! Do your job!
PAUL: And I say this to my fellow colleagues in Congress, to every Republican in Washington: Step up and subpoena Hunter Biden and subpoena the whistleblower.
CROWD: (cheers)
RUSH: Right there it is. There’s much more to gain standing up and defending Trump, and if you don’t want to defend Trump, attack the people who are attacking us! It isn’t hard to do. Rand Paul just did it, and I told everybody at the beginning of the program, I was inundated beginning last night with people. “Rush! Rush! Did you hear Rand Paul? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You gotta play Rand Paul. Oh, my God. It was great.” People have been crying for this. They have been hoping that something like this would happen.
Rand Paul has shown that it isn’t hard to do, and he’s also demonstrated that you’re not gonna get beat up for doing it. You’re not gonna get savaged. You’re gonna be appreciated! So let that be a lesson. ‘Cause this has been, as you well know, a big bugaboo of mine. (sniveling) “It’s becoming so hard to defend Donald Trump.” No, it’s not. It isn’t hard at all! All you have to be able to do is defend what you believe! I have a piece here. There’s a story here from The Federalist, “a female, former-Democrat immigrant…” Aw, darn, the name of the author didn’t print. I will find it.
I never heard of her before. I’ll find her name. “10 Reasons I Like Donald Trump, From a Female, Former-Democrat Immigrant.” But there’s one line in here about the Never Trumpers and how in the world they can’t defend him. She can’t understand why they don’t defend him and why they are doing nothing. Let me run through the ten things, the ten reasons. “First, he is sui generis,” one guy “a singularly unique individual who has single-handedly transformed almost everything about American politics…
“Second, by loudly questioning everything in his unorthodox way he has made us re-examine many things: our bloated bureaucracy, some of our egoistic federal civil servants who believe they’re in charge of our [country], the much-vaunted liberal international order…” Man, that’s a big one. That could be number one in my book. “[B]y loudly questioning everything in his unorthodox way he has made us re-examine many things: our bloated bureaucracy, some of our egoistic federal civil servants who believe they’re in charge of our republic…”
These are the people testifying to Pencil Neck’s committee: The interagency national security group. They think they run foreign policy. They think they run the country. When Trump doesn’t use them and uses somebody else, he’s doing impeachable things — and, of course, Trump has made many people reexamine the liberal international order that John McCain was so insistent on protecting. Saritha Prabhu, P-r-a-b-h-u. Saritha Prabhu is her name. “Third, he loves America, and his love is genuine, palpable and almost retro. We could do with a little of that nowadays, swimming as we are in a sea of self-loathing, self-flagellation, and history-rewriting from the left.”
Boy, is that powerful. The left is so self-loathing. But what does that mean? It means they hate themselves. And the way they manifest that, we’re still a slave state, we’re still bigoted, we’re still racist, we’re still imperialist, we’re still colonialists. Even though we’re not, they hate. They hate themselves, and they beat themselves up as a way of beating up the country.
“Fourth, he says what he thinks.” He is remarkably accessible. That’s true too. There’s never been a president that talks to the media more. He loves every question. He loves it. He loves talking and paring with these people. He’ll take any question they ask him, and he’ll tell them exactly what he thinks. She says here he’s “the only president who can’t seem to resist answering questions thrown at him.”
Fifth, he is a non-ideologue. Meaning he’s not conservative or liberal, not ideological. That’s a point I’ve been making from the get-go, that he’s not an ideologue. The things he believes are things in his heart but it’s not because he’s a conservative he thinks things. It’s that what he thinks happens to be conservative, but he may not even put it in that framework. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what label he gives himself.
“Sixth, his care for American voters seems genuine, especially toward the people who voted for him and show him unflagging support.” What have I told you? At every one of these rallies there is a bond Trump has with these people that voted for him and that attend these rallies, and he makes a point, it might be 30 seconds, might be two minutes, might be a half hour, but he lets them know how deeply he appreciates them.
Appreciates them being there, appreciates them showing up, appreciates them voting for him. He lets them know. They know that he cares for them and deeply appreciates. “Seventh, he has had the greatest influence, perhaps, in transforming how we talk about needless, endless foreign military incursions.”
Eighth, he has challenged the ChiComs. Ninth, he says he’s president of America, not president of the world. And she writes here: “In a sane, common-sense world, Trump’s recent United Nations address touting these ideas would be lauded; instead they were pilloried as isolationist and dangerous. But that is the cognitively dissonant media world we live in now — what is pragmatic is framed as radical and transgressive. Tenth and lastly, I like his chutzpah and pugilistic style.”
Then she throws in she doesn’t like or agree with everything he’s said and done, he’s got ethical and moral failings like anybody else in D.C., but with a difference. He’s not a hypocrite about it. He’s never pretended to be something he’s not, which cannot be said of his critics and adversaries.