RUSH: Steve Wynn on Tuesday appeared on a political program in Nevada called Ralston Reports. The host was Jon Ralston. Wynn is livid. You know what’s happening? A bunch of people are speaking out against Obama — his economics, his plan, his presidency the large — and they’re holding nothing back. Jack Welch came out and basically accused somebody of doing something with the unemployment numbers. And everybody then jumped in Jack Welch chili.
“Jack, what are you doing? Don’t go there, man! It’s not a conspiracy. They couldn’t get away with that! I mean, it’s not all Democrats at the BLS. Come on, Jack.” Conservative pundits were warning other conservatives like me, “Be very, very careful. I wouldn’t go the conspiracy route. It’s a statistical anomaly, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Jack Welch came back with a column in the Wall Street Journal today which says (paraphrased), “To hell with you! I was right about that strange job report.”
So he’s doubling down on it. Now here you have Steve Wynn. This is the second or third time, if not more, that Steve Wynn has come out highly critical of Obama. Now, what’s interesting to me about it is that when this kind of stuff happened in the past, there would be an outcry of protest from the media. “How dare you talk about the president of the United States that way! How dare you say he doesn’t know what he’s doing! How dare you accuse the president of not wanting to create jobs! How dare you!”
Like with Welch they said, “How dare you accuse the administration of fudging the unemployment numbers! How dare you!” Normally these guys react, “Okay, okay.” The uprising in the media would chill these guys out, and they’d slink away and not say any more. Now they’re not slinking away. They come out, level their criticism, and people say, “How dare you do that! Why, who do you think you are?
“You don’t talk about the president that way,” and they’re coming back now and saying, “Oh, yeah? Not only was I right last time, I’m double right this time.” And there are more and more people pockmarked all over the country — business owners, small business owners, large corporations, major corporations — making statements. And they’re enacting business policies that let their customers and their employees know that if Obama is reelected, it’s gonna be Armageddon.
More and more business owners are letting employees know, “I may have to fire most of you. I can’t afford to keep this business open with all the requirements that I’m gonna have to pay.” What would you do? One business owner said to his employees, “What would you do if I automatically withheld half of your paycheck from you? You’d quit working. What’s the point if half of your paycheck is gone before you even see it?”
And the business owner said, “That’s exactly what happens to me. My tax rate’s over 50% after I pay all of you. I can’t afford it anymore, if this guy is reelected and piles more tax increases and health care on top of that.” More and more people in the private sector are speaking up. Normally there’s a fear of doing that. It’s always bothered me that that fear exists, to be honest with you.
But if your business is regulated by the government, and you’ve got a president who will lie; who will sit idly by and watch an American citizen jailed for something he didn’t do all to make you look good? I mean, if you’re a business owner and you watch Obama successfully secure an arrest and get some guy thrown in jail for something he didn’t do — the video filmmaker in this Middle East uprising?
If your business happens to be regulated by the government, and you think we’re dealing here with a statist and a totalitarian, the odds are you will shut up. You’ll not call attention to yourself, not want to make ’em create a regulation that deals specifically with you and your business. So you sit there, you say nothing, and you hope that the guy loses the next election, and you do what you can behind the scenes.
But now people are starting to speak up, and they’re starting to act, and they’re starting to warn their employees. I don’t want to make too much of it. I just get the sense that something’s happening out there. I’ve had this sense before and I was wrong, so I don’t want anybody go to the bank on this. It’s hard, folks. It’s very hard to separate my dreams and my hopes and desires from interpretation of what’s happening out there.
You know, I want so much for the things I’m sensing to be happening because of what I think is going on out there. But it’s very difficult to be purely objective and to not get caught up in anecdotal evidence about things, which oftentimes doesnÂ’t matter. It’s not scientific. It doesn’t tell you anything. If you hear a couple of random stories you cannot project trends. But if you plug those random stories into what may be trends like the polling…
Regardless of the wild fluctuations, there’s no question that polling is trending to Romney, and particularly the independents. In the swing states and nationally, it’s trending to Romney. But then you have to temper that because you know that the people that do the polls can really make them say whatever they want them to say, at any time.
So it’s with guarded optimism that we watch all this. But I want you to hear Steve Wynn. Steve Wynn had a couple of sound bites here on the state’s NBC affiliate’s the Ralston Report. Jon Ralston said, “You called the president a socialist, Mr. Wynn, and you used a memorable phrase that business leaders were, quote, ‘sitting on their thumbs until he’s gone.'”
WYNN: I’ve created about 250,000 direct and indirect jobs according to the state of Nevada’s measurement. If the number is 250,000, that’s exactly 250,000 more than this president — who I’ll be damned if I want to have him lecture me about small business and jobs. I’m a job creator. Guys like me are job creators, and we don’t like have a bull’s-eye painted on our back.
RUSH: A-freaking-men!
It’s about time.
Who is this skinny little guy who thinks he’s got the answer to everything? He’s got the answer to health care. He’s got the answer to job creation. He’s got this arrogant, know-it-all attitude about everything, and nobody else knows anything. And all he is is a faculty lounge lizard. He and his other buddies are sitting around with their theories and liberalism and socialism and all this, and all they do is talk.
Not one of them has ever been responsible for creating anything of value — job, service, or product — in the private sector. But yet they have all the answers. And in the process of having all the answers, guess who becomes the enemy? Guys like Steve Wynn! Risk-takers, business starters, creators of things, job creators. They become the enemy. If you become successful, you become a target.
You have a bull’s-eye on your back, as far as they’re concerned.
It’s not just Obama; it’s every liberal, and practically every Democrat alive these days now with what’s happened to Democrat Party. Why in the world should people who create wealth for everybody else, for others, for their employees — why should people who create jobs — risk money in building anything? Why should they become targets? Why should they become the suspects in our society? But they are. And Wynn, he’s had it.
We’ve got a neophyte incompetent trying to totally dominate the US economy and take it over and run it himself, and he doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’s doing. And yet he thinks he’s the only one who does. He’s smarter than everybody else. He cares more than anybody else. He understands more than anybody else. And he understands that the successful people in this country really haven’t been. They have cheated, they’ve stolen, they’ve lied, they have tricked people, or they have inherited. Kennedys exempted. They don’t deserve any of it. And this country doesn’t deserve all of its wealth because it stole a lot of what it has. It’s who this guy is, folks. And that’s who the modern-day Democrat Party is.
Steve Wynn said every business guy I know in this country is frightened of Barack Obama and the way he thinks. They’re frightened of him because of the power he’s got and the power that he wants to have that he doesn’t now have and the power he wants to use. And you couple it with the way he thinks, it’s just rampant, total incompetence, and they’re scared of him. We had this sound bite from 2002 of Obama, (imitating Obama) “Well, you know, the rich, they got theirs, they don’t want anybody to take away their stuff.” Exactly. With somebody like Obama, that’s a legitimate fear to have, somebody coming along and taking your stuff. That’s what he’s promising to do. That’s what the redistribution of wealth is all about. Obama’s gonna come and take your stuff. He’s out there chiding and ripping the rich for wanting to hold onto what they have, or anybody. At 200,000 a year, 250,000 a year, you’re rich. You don’t deserve it. You haven’t paid your fair share. You haven’t done your fair share. We’re gonna come for even more, and you don’t know what you’re doing. Only Obama does.
I tell you, there’s a boatload of resentment out there, and most of the people feeling it don’t have the courage, guts or the desire to speak up and say it. They’re already targets in general. Why become a target specifically? So they sit out there and seethe and they hope that the rest of the country sees things as they do and this guy gets defeated. Here’s the next Steve Wynn bite.
WYNN: The president has tried to put himself between me and my employees by class warfare, by deprecating and calling a group that makes money billionaires and millionaires who don’t pay their share. I gave 120% of my salary and bonus away last year to charities, as I do most years. I can’t stand the idea of being demagogued, that is, put down by a president who’s never created any jobs and who doesn’t even understand how the economy works.
RUSH: Yeah, but he thinks he does. He knows better than Wynn. He knows better than everybody else. This is the guy who told everybody not to go to Las Vegas the first three months in he’s in office. (imitating Obama) “The days of getting on the corporate jet and going to Las Vegas, those days are over.” He basically shut down the hospitality industry. He stigmatized people who are seen in public enjoying themselves. He stigmatized people who were paying to go to resorts. Didn’t want the rabble coming after ’em. Which is what Obama was trying to gin up. Every business guy I know in the country is frightened of Obama and the way he thinks. These guys must think they live in Venezuela, ’cause Obama talks about business almost the way Chavez does. It’s illegitimate until the state owns it, illegitimate ’til the state controls it, illegitimate ’til the state runs it.