RUSH: Bruce in Rockville, Maryland. Great to have you on the EIB Network, Bruce. Hello.

CALLER: Hello. Good afternoon. Just wanted to let you know, Rush, that I’ve been a lifelong Democrat. I have to admit also that I had voted for Obama twice, but as of last week I changed my party affiliation to Republican so that I could vote for Donald Trump in the Republican primary coming up in Maryland.

RUSH: Well, welcome home, sir. It’s great to have you with us.

CALLER: Well, I’ve been listening to you for years. I don’t always agree with much of what you say, although I am getting more and more into it. But it’s always been great entertainment. The reason I’m for Trump is basically Albert Einstein says, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.” You keep electing these politicians — whether they’re Republican or Democrat — and we keep ending up with the same thing,” or in the case of the last eight years, nothing. So it’s about time. Let’s try a businessperson. I am a very small businessman. I started my business, bought a franchise here seven years ago. I work very hard and very long hours for my customers to make them really excited, and I think that what I see from Donald Trump is a businessman who gets people excited.

RUSH: All right, the question I have for you is only because time is dwindling here. You’ve been listening for a long time; you’ve been in politics a long time. Trump comes along. Trump’s been around six, seven months. Why only last week or whatever it was did you change your mind? What was the catalyst?

CALLER: I saw all the noise that’s going on. If people don’t want Trump because they don’t think he could be a good president, that’s one thing. But all this other stuff that’s revolving around, I decided that I needed to make my voice heard to say stop listening to all of the other stuff and think about the country.

RUSH: What other stuff? You mean people nitpicking at Trump over tweets and this kind of stuff? Is that what you mean?

CALLER: Yes, sir. And the abortion thing. So he didn’t say it politically. His whole thing is, “I may not be political, but I can help this country.”

RUSH: See, that’s what I thought. I think many Trump supporters did react to it that way. Many Trump supporters, this is not what’s animating them. These are people haven’t had a raise in 15 years. By the way, do you know some of the things being written about Trump’s supporters now? It is some of the nastiest stuff I have ever read, and it’s being written by conservatives. I’m gonna cut ’em some slack and not mention their names, but this stuff is outrageous, what they’re saying about your “average white Trump supporter,” the way they’re being characterized. It’s… Man, there’s a lot of fear out there. That’s what it has to be.

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RUSH: You’ve got some conservative bloggers writing about “white Trump supporters” like they deserve to fail. They’re losers. The fact they haven’t had a raise in 15 years is their fault; they deserve to die. I mean, this anger! It’s like they’re taking support of Trump personally. It’s the strangest thing.

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RUSH: Yeah, look, I’m not… I don’t want to mention any names. I’ll tell you why. Because these conservatives that are writing these pieces, they’re gonna regret this. This campaign is gonna be over at some point, and people are gonna have long memories, and I really think it’s … I don’t know. It’s unfortunate. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about here in just a second. Now, what is happening — and it’s been going on for a couple of weeks, maybe even longer. There is a contingent of conservative media — and I guess it probably includes some people on TV and radio, too, primarily at one blog or another.

Again, I’m not gonna name any names because that’s not the point. You might not even know these people anyway. But I’ll give you an example. Let me read something that was written a couple weeks ago, a column about Trump’s appeal. Everybody trying to figure it out, and it doesn’t make sense to a lot of quasi-establishment types or pure establishment types. It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people who consider themselves to be just straight-down-the-line mainstream conservatives.

So they’ve exhausted themselves. They’re trying to diminish Trump. They’re trying to diminish his support so that it goes elsewhere. They’re scared to death Trump’s gonna get nominated, scared to death’s Trump’s gonna go to elected, for all the reasons that I’ve discussed. I don’t need to rehash those. But since that hasn’t worked, since writing critical things of Trump hasn’t worked, the frustration has now begun to boil over, and these people are writing about Trump’s supporters.

These are people that work at publications that ask for donations from people. These are places that sell subscriptions to people. “Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class are ‘immoral’ because that demographic’s way of life deserves to die out.” The white working class deserves to die out. “It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. [N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

They’re already failures. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not NAFTA’s fault. It’s not TPP’s fault. It’s not Mexico’s fault. It’s not the fault of illegals. They’re failures. The people supporting Trump are failures. They’re angry. They know they’re failures. They know they’ve failed in life, and so, rather than blame themselves, they’re seeking to blame anybody else. They’re nothing but victims, and Trump comes along and makes ’em feel like they’re special and makes ’em feel that Trump’s gonna get even with the people that screwed them.

But since they’re already failures, they deserve to die out. White middle class working lifestyles deserve to die out. The white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized not by outside forces nobody did it to them), they failed themselves.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities” of white working class people “is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.” They are drug addicts; they are alcoholics. Man, I’m aware of Democrats and the media insulting Republican voters. When the Democrats and the media start in on that, it’s unusually Southerners who go to church, who are pro-lifers. They make them out to be hayseeds, uneducated Bible-thumping hicks, the people Obama calls bitter clingers.

But I am not aware… It’s probably been thought before. I have not seen these kinds of really angry, vitriolic things written about people that support Trump. Obviously what’s happening is that the efforts these people have made to warn Trump’s voters that he’s not what they think he is and he’s inexperienced — that he’s charlatan and he’s a carnival barker, that he’s not worth your time and he’s dangerous — that’s not working. They have failed to harm Trump by criticizing him. So in their desperation, they’re going after Trump voters.

It’s not just one or two of them. It’s become a theme in several places. The problem is that all this is gonna be over at some point. You know, there is going to be a Republican nominee at some point. And there will be the usual call, as there are every four years, there will be the usual calls for unity. But I don’t know what people who have been told they deserve to die, that they’re immoral, that they’re inherent failures, that time has passed them by; they’re basically a bunch of incompetents. You couldn’t blame them if they don’t forget about it.

Of course, the theory is they’re too dumb and stupid to even know this is being written about them. And another theory is that nobody in the Trump camp will admit that they are one of these people, so nobody’s gonna take it personally, because nobody’s gonna admit that they’re a loser and deserve to die out. So there may be some safety in it, you know, for psychological reasons. But still, it’s really over the top kind of stuff. You start blaming voters for the fact that you can’t persuade people, you start blaming voters that your guy is losing, or maybe you don’t even have a guy.

You just don’t like the front-runner in this race and you resent had you seen success or what have you, I’m telling you, folks, within the Republican establishment all areas under, a lot of people deathly afraid of what a Trump victory would mean for their and their lifestyles. This guy Michael Gerson, former George W. Bush speechwriter and columnist at the Washington Post. He had a very, very caustic piece about me recently.

Apparently what really ticked him off is when I opined that one of the reasons establishment people so feel threatened by Trump is that they might lose their standard of living, because they might lose their position in the power structure, which might… He really took offense that I was in any way saying that their virtuous attitude about Trump was in any way related to personal wealth or money. And I’m telling you, when they tell you it’s not the money, it’s the money. It’s the money for everybody.

The people that are voting Trump, many of them… Not all, by the way. It’s impossible to typecast the Trump supporter. They come from too many different places. They’re not all monolithic, just like most constituencies aren’t. But to go down this pathway claiming that these people who haven’t had a raise in 15 years just ’cause of their own incompetence, their own inability to modernize, their own inability to get with it? They deserve to be sitting there in poverty if they’re gonna be that stupid.

These are people that have voted Republican time and time again. They probably… These same people probably voted for McCain. They probably voted for Romney. Some of them, they probably voted for George W. Bush. Some of them probably subscribe to some of these websites and magazines now where they’re being insulted. So there’s a lot of people who are very personally frightened by what’s. And I’ve been making the point from the get-go.

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RUSH: And this is Sheldon in San Francisco. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Yeah, I’m first-time caller. I think your intelligence and outlook is very refreshing. I want to thank you for your show. I was a Democrat before. I’m a Donald Trump supporter. I’m also a black American. I think Donald Trump is just what America needs, and I think it’s really annoying how the nitpickers, every time they get a chance, they just try to act like… They’re so arrogant about the nitpicking too. They act like they’re so perfect and Donald Trump can’t make a mistake. The man is not perfect. He made a few errors as far as what he responds to. But he really cares about America, and he is a doer, not just a talker. This man has been very successful. He’s a very successful person, and all they do is nitpick the guy. Why don’t they be billionaires? If they’re so smart, how come they’re not billionaires? I think Donald Trump is just what America needs, and the fact that he is rocking the boat —

RUSH: What would it take for you to become disgruntled or dissatisfied with Mr. Trump?

CALLER: Nothing. Nothing he do would make any disgruntled. Call it intuition, call it whatever you want to, but I think he’ll really be good. I don’t think he will do these things that will make me switch.

RUSH: Let me ask: Does it bother you that lately he’s had to revise what he’s saying, in some the cases two or three times?

CALLER: No, it doesn’t because he’s not a politician. Politicians are so smooth talking to each other. They pretend like, “Oh, well, the response is incorrect! That means that (unintelligible),” they say. That’s a joke, that’s really a joke. This (unintelligible) the fact that he does (unintelligible) —

RUSH: Are you ever…? At any point in the past few months, as long as you’ve been paying attention to Trump, has anything happened that has really worried you, frightened you, has made you ask, “Does this guy actually know what he’s doing?”

CALLER: Absolutely not, ’cause I realize (unintelligible) talking (unintelligible) setups, they’re just trying to (unintelligible) the public. That’s what politicians do. Nothing he has said has worried me about Trump. It worries me about the other people that have attacked him. That’s what worries me. What Donald Trump has done does not worry me at all.

RUSH: Donald Trump says that in eight years, two presidential terms, he could eliminate the $19 trillion national debt. Do you think that’s possible?

CALLER: Well, anything is possible. I mean, he would make an effort, Rush. And we certainly need somebody that does that for sure. I mean, whether it’s possible or not, I mean, I don’t know if it’s mathematically possible. But he will at least make an effort, and I believe he’s the first person to do so.

RUSH: Sheldon, you’re from San Francisco. Are you white, middle class, broke, poor, out of work for the 15th year? Are you a failure and blaming it on other people and Trump is your salvation?

CALLER: No. Not at all. Not at all. I’m very successful. I have a college degree. I’ve been very successes businesses myself. So no, I’m not like that at all.

RUSH: All right. I’m just trying to fit the profile here. There’s nothing Trump’s ever said that gave you pause? There’s nothing Trump’s ever said or done? Like, did you worry when he started tweeting out pictures of other candidates’ wives? Did your skin crawl? Did you get nervous at any of that?

CALLER: No (unintelligible).

RUSH: Let me ask it to you. Sheldon, let me ask you: Are you worried at any time that Trump’s blowing it? Are you worried that he’s overdoing it, maybe too much outsider stuff and he’s in danger of blowing it? Have you ever had that fear?

CALLER: Sometimes I fear that he shouldn’t let people interview him that are gonna set him up. I think some of these interviews just try to set him up, ’cause they’re all biased. They all agree with each other. If you notice on TV, they all agree with each other. They all have the same opinion, mostly. They pretend like they are flexible, but most of them, they all agree with each other. It’s really a big joke. That’s why I listen to the radio ’cause at least on the radio, you have actual different views. On TV, it seems like all the people agree with each other.

RUSH: Not only different views, but different perspectives and generally rooted in truth and fact, honor and the American way. I totally understand what you’re saying there. But, Sheldon, one more thing here before I let you go. You just said that he ought not do interviews with certain people.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Obviously you’re talking about his interview with Chris Matthews but you have to understand that Trump thinks that he can persuade anybody. He can change anybody’s mind. He’s not afraid of talking to anybody. I mean, Matthews calls, and he doesn’t see Matthews as an enemy. He doesn’t see Matthews as a representative of the other side that wants to do him in. He sees an opportunity to straighten out a knucklehead.

CALLER: (laughing) Yeah. That’s true. I think Trump is a good person. He might be naive as far as how (unintelligible) other people can be, but that’s not his fault that other people (unintelligible).

RUSH: Well, yeah. Like you just said, he shouldn’t do certain interviews, and a lot of his supporters agree. There ought to be places he ought to know, “There’s nothing to be gained going there.” No matter how good he thinks he is, no matter how pervasive he thinks he is, there are some places out to destroy him, and he ought to know that before he goes there. And so people say, “You know what? Does he have competent people behind him?

“Does he have people trying to sabotage him on his own team? Does he have anybody that knows what they’re doing?” And the answer always comes, “No, the guy’s an outsider. Don’t you understand, Rush? Outsider means outsider! You can’t look at Trump and judge him in any way the way you would judge any professional politician. He’s a totally different animal.” I get this all the time. You might be believe it, from people who think I’m being unfairly critical of Trump.