BRETT: You know, Vladimir Putin has just signed a law that’s gonna leave him ruling Russia into his eighties. Did you see this story? I think he gets to stay in power until 2036. That’s this new law that he signed there over in Russia.

As we went to that break at the bottom of the hour, I said, “You know, coming up, I’m gonna let you hear something. I’m gonna let you hear Rush congratulate somebody.” I’m actually gonna let you hear Rush congratulate President Trump for tweaking the media when President Trump congratulated Putin in 2018.

RUSH: The media is beside itself. CNN cannot drop this. McCain, wherever he is, very, very sick. He rallied to come out and rip Trump for this.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory. The call had to do also with the fact that we will probably get together in the not-too-distant future so that we can discuss arms, we could discuss the arms race. We are going to remain stronger than any other nation in the world by far.

We had a very good call, and I suspect that we’ll probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control, but we will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have. And also to discuss Ukraine and Syria and North Korea and various other things. So I think probably we’ll be seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future.

RUSH: Okay. So McCain just… I mean, he was livid, and so were the rest of the Drive-Bys. All of Washington. “I had a call with President Putin, congratulated him on his victory, his electoral victory,” as though there was any doubt. Now, I frankly believe — and I’m telling you, I know Trump better than any media person out there. And I’m telling you, Trump knows what he’s doing here. He’s jamming ’em. He’s goosing ’em.

This is no different than, “Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, maybe you could find the 33,000 missing Hillary emails.” Trump knows that they’re gonna blow a gasket, and he loves making ’em blow their gasket congratulating Putin. These people are all wound up on still on the fact that Trump and Putin colluded to steal the election.

So here’s Trump congratulating Putin on his electoral victory. The guy is a tyrant thug dictator. There wasn’t any election. It’s like Fidel Castro’s elections or Saddam Hussein’s elections. Got 99% of the vote and the 1% are shot. Trump knows this. He’s just tweaking ’em.

But McCain, this just isn’t something that’s done. Civilized members of the establishment, of the swamp, simply do not congratulate tyrants and dictators for winning elections. It’s just not who we are. As Obama would say (impression), “This is not who we are. This is not our values.” Except when Obama was congratulated, then it was perfectly fine.

BRETT: Then it was perfectly fine. You know what’s incredible? I hearken back. Watching everything that’s happening, whether it’s the challenges we’re facing trying to get back into the Iranian nuclear deal, getting tough on Putin, saying that we can handle the border crisis. It was Bob Gates, Robert Gates — who was that long Washington hand.

Head of the CIA, secretary of defense, Bob Gates who wrote in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that for 50 years, Joe Biden has never been right on any foreign policy matter. He was never right on any foreign policy matter. You had Obama and Biden, and then you had the Democrats who were in the outs during the Trump years, saying that the only reason why Donald Trump won was because of intervention by the Russians, the Russians, the meddling of the elections.

Nobody will ever acknowledge when the Democrats intervene in elections overseas. In 1996, Bill Clinton intervened in the election in Israel to stop Bibi Netanyahu from being the prime minister. Right? He came out in the wake of the assassination of the prime minister in Israel, and the prime minister was, at that time, Yitzhak Rabin.

But he intervened. He interfered on behalf of Shimon Peres against Netanyahu. Later on, he said he tried to do it “in a way that didn’t overtly involve me.” In 2016, Barack Obama, same thing, intervening in Israel to try to stop Bibi Netanyahu. The United States gets involved when Democrats are in office. We intervened in the Mongolian election in 1996 and the Palestinian election in 2006, the Russian election in ’96.

All of these times — time and time again — you have Democrat leaders in our politics intervening overseas, and then they freak out over the notion of President Trump congratulating Vladimir Putin, when President Trump is merely extending a political overture. Doesn’t mean much. It’s just a “Hey, congratulations on getting reelected, and let’s get to work on arms control and China and North Korea and all these challenges that are out there.”

It’s really perfunctory in so many ways. But the Democrats get outraged. “Oh, my gosh!” If Putin stole the election for Trump in 2016, why didn’t they steal it for him in 2020? “Oh, well, that’s because, you know…” But Joe Biden has never been right on a foreign policy matter in 50 years. Bob Gates wrote that.

Bob Gates is not a radical, bomb-throwing partisan.

It’s important to remember what going on at the border right now. That border issue, by the way, is not about the U.S. border, the Mexico and the U.S. border. That’s an international issue that Joe Biden got wrong again, and it’s the biggest blunder yet, and it’s the blurred that started his entire administration.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: The Senate minority leader is Mitch McConnell, and he’s been looking at this new approach coming out of Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, and her desire to create a new tax mandate. You know, she’s talking to the G20 countries out there, trying to set up a global minimum tax.

But now you’ve got had to coronavirus relief package, you got infrastructure floating out there down the road, and McConnell is saying (summarized), “Listen, these plans are a Trojan horse for issues that Democrats have wanted to advance for years, socialist-type schemes.” Here’s what Rush said about the lure.

RUSH: You know, Marxism believes that every culture eventually is going to shed capitalism because of the so-called inherent unfairness and inequality and inequity and disparities, mean-spiritedness, extremism, racism, and go socialist, where everything is sweetness and light and utopia and fair and equal … and, uh, no pay. Yet the U.S. was going the opposite direction. After over a hundred years in existence, they were shocked that it had not — the U.S. had not — turned toward socialism. The U.S. refused to move in that direction.

Remember, socialism is attractive to people who are poor with no hope. Socialism looks good to people who think they’re stuck, who think all the rules of hard work and self-reliance aren’t gonna matter. The deck is stacked against them for whatever reason. Whether they’re right or wrong, their attitudes are what count (perception, in politics, is reality), and they think they’re stuck. The old rules of hard work and self-reliance and steadfastness, all that, they lose faith in it and don’t believe it. So socialism becomes attractive.

Okay, now, folks, I want to add one more thing to this. You hear it expressed by the Millennials as they’ve lost faith in the country. It now seems to be rampant all across the Democrat Party. Upward mobility just seems out of their reach. Hence, socialism looks good. It’s terrible. Not good. Not good. If you’re focused on the greater good, which, of course, we all are here at the EIB Network.

BRETT: Indeed, we are.