RUSH: So, a big signing ceremony at the White House in mere moments for the peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. And we mentioned the significance of this a couple of times. The real significance of this is that the Palestinians have sort of been rendered irrelevant in the whole deal. In the past, it was the Palestinians which were the focus, the focal point. They could stop anything from happening, and they did.

I remember Bill Clinton offered Yasser Arafat virtually everything he wanted back in the mid-1990s, and Arafat ran away from that deal faster than he’s probably ever run because they didn’t want a deal. They wanted to continue to be able to complain and whine and moan.

So, the thing about it is is that the inside-the-Beltway swamp dwellers have one way of doing things, and they’ve got one way of doing things for peace in the Middle East, for negotiating with communist governments and all that, and none of it, none of it really ever works. And that’s just fine with Washington bureaucrats. When there is no solution, then you still have a need for bureaucrats supposedly working very hard for a solution. In many cases the worst thing that can happen is a solution.

So, here you have Donald Trump. You have an outsider who doesn’t know of the way — well, he knows of the ways of the swamp, but he doesn’t subscribe to them. He doesn’t believe in them. He’s frustrated like any normal human being who is sufficiently informed on these matters. What is the point here? I mean, if we’re gonna have Middle East peace, we’re gonna have Middle East peace. If it’s really gonna be an objective, then why don’t we have it? We’ve been working on this for 70 years, been going on the same way.

So, Trump comes in with Jared Kushner, and as Ari Fleischer just tweeted, one of the fascinating things about today’s peace agreement is how the tactics of the Trump White House were the opposite of what the experts called for. For decades the experts did the same thing over and over. Every administration tried the same thing, and it always involved — I’m adding this. This isn’t in Ari Fleischer’s tweet. It always involved deference to the Palestinians. Trump said, look, these are the people holding it up. They don’t want a deal, so I’m gonna go around ’em. And he did. And in addition to that, he brought in different powers in the Middle East rather than the usual suspects.

So, he goes to the United Arab Emirates; deal. Goes to Bahrain; deal. Lo and behold, we have two powerful Middle East regimes willing to sign a deal today, and they’re gonna sign it in moments in the White House, for a peace arrangement between the UAE and Bahrain and Israel. Trump and Kushner were mocked, they were laughed at all along the way, claiming they were novices and didn’t know what they were doing. But as Ari Fleischer points out, they proved right.

And I have to tell you, folks, when the Netanyahus, Bibi Netanyahu and his wife, when they arrived at the White House today, what an image it was. You know what was unique about it, what was different about it? This may be the first time in 12 years that the prime minister of Israel was permitted to enter the White House through the front door. That’s right. Bibi Netanyahu and his wife were greeted by President Trump and the first lady, Melania, at the front door.

It was a great photo, great photo-op. Trump looking austere and presidential. Melania looking beautiful. Both looking like they belonged exactly where they were. Austere is not the right word. August. They looked confident. They looked like they were exactly where they were intended to be. And Netanyahu looked like he knew that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. (interruption) Well, no, during the Obama years, Netanyahu wasn’t permitted to go in the front door. Just like the Dalai Lama.

Do you remember the Dalai Lama, when he left the White House, they sent him out the back door with the garbage? Do you remember the photo? I do. We probably have the photo somewhere in our archives. It was the same way with Netanyahu. I remember the first time Netanyahu was in the White House during the Obama administration, Obama was rude to the guy, and it gave rise to many people saying this guy’s got a problem with Israel, meaning Obama.

And Netanyahu was brought in the back door, and he was taken to some room if the West Wing. And Obama said, now, you sit here. You sit. I’m gonna have dinner with my family, and I’ll be back. And you better think about what we’re doing here, what you want, because I’ll be back. I mean, the implication, you’re not good enough for me to have dinner with. So you sit here with your group, and you do whatever you do, and I will be back, and we better have something to talk about when I get back.

I mean, the animus that the Obama administration had for Netanyahu, it was impossible to miss.

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RUSH: So the signing ceremony is about to begin, the whole ceremony has begun at the White House, Donald Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This is truly historic, and it is I don’t think going to get anywhere near the proper weight and coverage that this event deserves.

My whole life this has been a major political initiative that every new president tackles. Every new president, my entire life, every new president, every new term has made Middle East peace an objective. Now, over the course of my life, the politics of Middle East peace has changed. I remember during the Clinton years the American Jewish community back in the nineties was a far different arrangement than it is today. They were very much pro-Israel and you had to be pro-Israel if you were gonna get their support.

And the Democrat Party was all-in on Israel. Bill Clinton especially. And it was a way to raise money from the American Jewish community. It was a way to maintain support of the Jewish organizations in Washington. Then as time evolved, liberal American Jewish people suddenly became less enamored of Israel as Netanyahu and other right-wing leaders became prominent. And it was a fascinating thing to watch as American Jewish leaders and prominent Democrats began to not support Israel, began to blame Israel for the problems in the Middle East. And they became advocates of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians became the Middle East equivalent of American minorities. They were unfairly treated. They had a lifetime, multiple lifetimes of disrespect shown them. And the Palestinians became no different than blacks and South Africa, apartheid, it was a fascinating thing to watch. And the Democrat Party began to have shifting allegiances toward Israel.

And then we got Obama, and there was outright disgust for Israel for the eight years of the Obama administration, to the point that Obama’s making nuclear deals with Iran, to the point that the Obama administration was attempting to elevate Iran into the dominant power in the Middle East, despite the fact that Iran is not a U.S. ally. Israel is our ally in the Middle East, and the Saudis are also in the ally column. But it was fascinating to watch.

Then you go back to the Clinton nineties, and here is Clinton offering Yasser Arafat, the PLO, virtually everything he wants because presidents wanted this deal. This was going to get them eternal life in history books. Every president — I can start with JFK, and every president going forward salivated over the ultimate peace deal in the Middle East involving Arab nations and Israel.

They all thought that if they could be the ones that made this happen, that they would get eternal praise, eternal life in world history books. And they all engaged in massive efforts, some of them with silly, stupid proposals like Clinton offering the PLO everything they were demanding, which was not good for Israel. Here’s Bill Clinton essentially selling Israel out. And the Israelis had no choice but than to go along with it, because we are the primary ally.

George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush. Barack Obama is the only president who didn’t care about Middle East peace from the Israeli perspective. But Reagan. Jimmy Carter. Ho. I think about all of these presidents and their attempts to come up with the ultimate peace in the ultimate part of the world where there is ultimate strife, the Middle East. And who does it? Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, Mr. Bull in the china shop, Mr. Stupid, Mr. Dummkopf, Mr. Outsider, Mr. Illegitimate, Mister “he stole the election working with the Russians” has come along and achieved something every American president since the 1950s has been attempting to achieve. And how did he do it? He did it by going at it an entirely different way. He did it by leaving the Palestinians out of the process. This would be like trying to establish civil rights relations while ignoring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And this is exactly what Trump did.

And, lo and behold, it worked. We now have peace in the Middle East, and it’s just beginning. United Arab Emirates, Bahrain. You watch. The Saudis are gonna be signatories to this deal before long. Other Arab nations in the Middle East are going to come along with this. Jordan I expect will sign onto this at some point, King Abdullah there.

And it’s happening because the Palestinians have been, for the moment, left out of the deal. The Palestinians were always the roadblock. The Palestinians were always the reason there was never going to be a deal. No Arab nation wanted the Palestinians in their country. So we had to have a state. We had to have two-state solution. We had to have the Israelis, and they had to have the Jewish state, and we had to have the Palestinians, and they had to have a state, and the Palestinians wanted their state to be where Israel is.

Well, there was no way that was ever gonna happen short of a war. And so this is how the Palestinians — and I’m really giving you the CliffsNotes version here. This is how the Palestinians were able to thwart and forestall Middle East peace, because their demands were not amenable. Couldn’t meet their demands and maintain an allied relationship with Israel.

So Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, come in, and they look at this, and they decide to go about it a whole different way. And leaving the Palestinians out is no mean feat. The Palestinians were a crutch that Arab nations in the region loved to rely on. I’m not kidding, folks. This would be like coming up with massive civil rights legislation in the United States without involving the Reverend Jackson or Al Sharpton or Black Lives Matter or whoever.

The Palestinians are livid. They don’t understand how this happened. Nobody understands how it happened because nobody’s taken the time to actually, with respect, examine how Donald Trump and Kushner have gone about this. Now, we have a couple of sound bites. Here is President Trump while meeting with the minister of foreign affairs, United Arab Emirates, just moments ago.

THE PRESIDENT: We’ll see the Palestinians at some point, but before we see the Palestinians we’ll see other very important countries come into this transaction. They’d be here today, frankly, if we wanted them. So I think that you’ll see some very great things happening in the Middle East. You’re gonna have peace without blood in the sand. For years you had blood in the sand. That’s all you had, blood in the sand. You got nothing for it. They got nothing for it. Now you’re gonna have peace. And it will be a real peace.

RUSH: Gonna have peace, gonna be real peace. We’ll get the Palestinians involved at some point. But before we see the Palestinians, we’re gonna see other very important countries come into the transaction. What does that mean? That means we are going to surround the Palestinians. We’re gonna get every Arab country in that region, as many of them as we can to sign onto this deal, leaving the Palestinians nowhere to go and leaving the Palestinians no allies.

Now, don’t feel sorry for the Palestinians, despite your tendency to want to. Because they have been treated, they have been portrayed as no different than your average American minority, which has been put upon, unfairly treated, discriminated against, da-da-da-da, you know the drill. And it’s not true. It isn’t accurate, particularly about the Palestinians.

Trump has just realized that if you involve them at the beginning of the process, you’re never gonna get any deal, peace or otherwise, ’cause it’s not in their interests. And they’ve gotta be fit to be tied. So he’s going to bring them in a little later after they are effectively surrounded. Here is another part of the ceremony today. This is President Trump presenting the prime minister of Israel with the key to the White House.

THE PRESIDENT: This was a special token of affection given by myself and the first lady to prime minister and the first lady of Israel. And it’s a key, call it a key to the White House, and it’s a key to our country and to our hearts. And you’ve been an amazing leader for a long period of time.

RUSH: Now, I don’t want to sound Pollyannish about this, but many of you who have listened to this program for its entirety, for 30-plus years, have no doubt heard me say that I didn’t expect there to ever be peace in the Middle East until one side loses, meaning I didn’t think there would ever be a negotiated peace. I just didn’t think it was possible.

I thought that peace was not going to be brought about with words, doctors, nurses, clean water, all these ephemeral things. I thought that peace would occur, as it always does, after one side loses. Meaning after a war. I thought that was the only way because I’ve been following it for 50 years, and no matter who has tried, no matter how hard they work, no matter how much they desired it, nothing ever happened.

And I said, it’s not possible the way they’re going about this. They’re not gonna get people to agree to give up what’s necessary. People are going to have to have it taken from them. They’re gonna have to lose it in a war. That’s how peace has always been achieved. Now, some of you may not like hearing that, but it’s the way of the world. Peace always results after one side surrenders.

Look at our peace with Europe, peace with Germany, peace with the Japanese after World War II. They were defeated. They surrendered. That’s when peace broke out. And I thought the same thing would be required in the Middle East, which I thought would never happen, there would be a war. So I thought that was something that was gonna go on and on and on for another 3,000 years and it was just gonna be something that every American administration worked toward, tried to achieve, was applauded valiant for their efforts and so forth.

But this has been something that Trump has seen to from day one, from the moment he talked about moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, this deal was put in motion. This is something that apparently nobody on our side had a clue how to solve. Not a clue. This has been so long in coming, it just seemed impossible. And yet here in less than four years Donald Trump has fixed a massive world problem. It’s literally stunning. And it will not be properly reported. It will not be given its due respect by the media and by the Washington establishment.

But I’ll tell you, it’s gonna be just the opposite, because what this has done, what this deal has done is again demonstrated why we don’t need the current ambassadorial corps, the current State Department, whatever, all of these people have been involved in this, look at who came in and fixed this.

Kind of like the Never Trumpers. The Never Trumpers are watching everything they have devoted their lives to policy-wise be implemented. And they’re livid. They are mad as hell and they hate the guy doing it. So how much could they have really meant what they said they believed in?

I mean, one conservative policy after another has been implemented by Donald Trump, and the Never Trumper conservative intellectuals are out there trying to undermine him, despite the fact he’s implementing everything they’ve devoted their lives to. Therein lies the reason. He is the one doing it. He is showing that they’re not necessary. He is showing you don’t have to donate to them anymore. He is show you don’t have to support their magazines. You don’t have to go on their cruises. You don’t have to do anything.

They are not the intellectual firepower that is keeping conservatism or conservative policy alive. And they know it. And it is rendering them so mad, they can’t see straight. The same thing is gonna happen with lifelong, inside-the-Beltway diplomat experts who believe only they could achieve lasting peace in the Middle East. Certainly not this rough-around-the-edges, buffoon orange guy, no way. And yet he’s come along and done it, and he’s done it in a way they never even conceived of trying it.

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RUSH: We’ll start this half hour in Milwaukee. This is Chris. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Oh. Well, hi, Rush. And best wishes to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Not only did Trump broker this deal in the Middle East which every other president had attempted to do, he did it after moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, which every other president had disingenuously promised to do. I just think that makes this even a more special achievement. I think it speaks volumes of Trump’s ability and, most importantly, I think it draws a contrast to the rest of the people in government, elected or otherwise, including the Republicans, as to just how pathetically inefficient and inept they are.

RUSH: Well, the moving of the embassy, you know, Trump did say that he was gonna move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Every other president — you’re right — has made the same claim, pledge, promise, what have you. Trump then did it. He’s the first president to even provide anything more than lip service. Past presidents have never even begun the process of moving it. They just claimed that they would do it during campaigns. But after they were elected, zip, zero, nada.

Trump followed through on it, and he followed through on it in a fiscally responsible way to boot. And that was the first sign that something other than the norm was going on here. Something nobody thought would ever really happen. It was enough to just say that you wanted to move the embassy to Jerusalem, but don’t actually do it, don’t actually do it.

You might say, why? Well, the Palestinians think Jerusalem’s theirs too. So you don’t let the Israelis have Jerusalem as the site of the American embassy, ’cause the Palestinians think it’s theirs. That’s what one of the battles is about. So Trump signaled early to anybody that wanted to pay attention that the Palestinians’ concerns, demands, what have you, within the context of Middle East peace, were going to be set aside. They were not going to be considered front and center as they always had been.

Trump has done a number of things here that previous administrations, State Departments, Washington establishment types have wanted credit for trying to do. They’ve wanted credit for wanting to do these things. But they never actually did it. Oh, they had massive deals. They negotiated massive peace deals. And they put on great shows with the Palestinians and the PLO coming to Washington for gigantic meetings at Camp David, the Oval Office, various other locations in Washington. But it was always really for show purposes.

And Trump, yeah, he’s a showman, he does things for show purposes. But Trump’s objective really is to accomplish things. Trump’s objective is to get things done. That’s what solving problems is. That’s why watching these riots in Portland and Seattle is so frustrating. Because when he says we could stop these in a matter of minutes, he’s telling the truth.

If these mayors and if these governors would simply give him the go signal, they could have shut this stuff down, they could have saved all of this private property, they could have saved all of the damage, they could have prevented much of it by sending in forces that would have cracked heads, knocked heads and stopped this. But the Democrat mayors and the Democrat governors didn’t want it stopped and don’t want it stopped even now.

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RUSH: Lamont in Winterville, North Carolina. How are you?

CALLER: Doing fine. Infinite dittos, Rush. I was wondering with all of these peace deals in the Middle East coming through right before election time if you felt that these countries feel threatened that a weak Biden-Harris presidency would lead to a rise in terrorism that would threaten these rulers and their countries.

RUSH: Okay. Do I think peace deals are happening because they fear Biden-Harris and afraid terrorism — no. I think they’re happening because President Trump has found a way to make it happen. I think it’s happening because Trump has given them a blueprint to see why it makes sense. Look. Everybody in that region has wanted peace for who knows how long, except the Palestinians. The only group that’s not wanted peace is the Palestinians.

Look. There may be some pockets of Arab resistance. But the primary the obstacle to Middle East peace has been the Palestinians. They’ve not wanted it. They have talked a good game. They have made it look like they want it, but every time — you know, Clinton was not the only one to offer them a package that they couldn’t say no to. Just that Clinton’s package was everything they demanded and then some. And Arafat ran away from it faster than you’ve seen anybody run away from anything. Wanted no part of it. He wanted to get out of there before somebody overruled him and signed it. That’s how good it was.

So, no, I don’t know what some of these people might fear regarding the Biden, Kamala Harris ticket. I guess they couldn’t be blamed if they were of the belief that that a liberal Democrat administration would not stand up to terrorism. And I can see where it would be some kind of a factor. But I really think that this is happening because of Donald Trump.

And look. I’m not being a sycophant here, folks. I’m not sucking up or cozying up. There’s one dramatically different ingredient in all of this. And it’s Trump. And if Trump were the buffoon that CNN says he is, if Trump were the buffoon that the New York Times and the entire Democrat Party says that he is, there wouldn’t be this Middle East deal. It wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t be able to command the respect.

If what they say about Trump on the left were believed by these people, there wouldn’t be any of this. Trump obviously has brought a lot of experience to solving problems, and there’s something else in this, too, folks, that you cannot ignore. Donald Trump is known around the world as the guy who wants to make America great again. Now, in this country, that’s controversial. And it’s an amazing thing that it’s controversial.

Never in my life — you know, I grew up in the Midwest where patriotism was as natural as breathing air and drinking water. And never in my life did I think the concept of putting America first, of making America great, should threaten anybody. We’re the good guys. America is the good guys. We don’t conquer. We liberate. We do not steal from nations around the world. We purchase things from them. We sell them things. We’re not perfect, don’t misunderstand. But we are the good guys. We are the solution to problems in the world.

Donald Trump obviously believes this. Trump instinctively believes in the goodness and the decency of the United States of America as a country as founded and as a measure of our people, our population. And I gotta tell you, when his campaign began in 2015, when I saw Make America Great Again create a bunch of hate on the part of Democrats, that was an eye-opener for me. And that’s just four years ago. At 63, 64 years old, that was an eye-opener to me. Make America Great Again?

You know what the left thought that meant? And to this day is telling people what it means? It means a return to slavery. Oh, yeah. It means a return to the antebellum South. It means a return to the plantation economy. It means a return to servitude by American minorities. That’s what Make America Great Again means. Nothing could be further from the truth. Make America Great Again has nothing to do with 250 years ago. Make America Great Again is an acknowledgement that the people who’ve been leading this country have been selling it out on the world stage for things like globalism and trade agreements which do not put the United States first.

We have allowed our back pocket to be picked because we have been seen as the problem in the world by a bunch of people who had no business leading this country. We are not the problem. And Trump has never believed we’re the problem. We’re the solution. So Make America Great Again has become Keep America Great or Make America Great Again because COVID-19 came along and dealt a serious blow.

But stop and think, how in the world can that be controversial? How in the world can Make America Great Again be understood by people to mean a return to slavery? You heard anything so ridiculous? There isn’t anywhere, anywhere a movement based on that. Nowhere. And yet the Democrat Party is trying to convince people that’s what Make America Great Again means? It’s patently absurd.

But then why, why are the Democrats so opposed to America being great as we know what that means? Why are they so opposed to America being a superpower, to being a great economy, to being a great outpost for freedom and liberty? Why are they opposed to this? Because that’s what Make America Great means. Make America Great means it’s the place where all of these people around the world want to come.

If this country is such a rotten place, why do people of all races, creeds, and colors risk their lives still to come here? It’s because it is still the best place on earth for liberty and freedom and prosperity. And I do not, for one, understand how a political party that opposes that even has a chance at winning the White House. How in the world can a political party opposed to freedom, opposed to liberty, opposed to prosperity, opposed to the United States as the shining city on a hill, how can a party like that even have a prayer of winning?

Well, the answer is they have poisoned enough minds in this country to believe that America doesn’t deserve any of that because America’s a racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic place riddled with unfairness, riddled with discrimination. It just makes me sick. And if the Democrats win, what that means, I don’t even want to think about it.