RUSH: Steven in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s nice to speak to you. You’re my number one role model. You’ve got me to figure out myself and figure out who I am. So I appreciate what you do and what you do every day.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Really appreciate that.

CALLER: You’re welcome.

RUSH: You haven’t robbed any banks or anything, have you?

CALLER: What?

RUSH: You haven’t robbed any banks or anything like that? (laughing)

CALLER: No. No. (laughing) Rush, I have a question. Well, actually it’s not a question. It’s more of a observation. I watched a documentary, and after watching that and seeing what Putin is doing and knowing what our president is doing, I was wondering if you saw this connection between Putin and Obama and that basically there is no difference between them, and that although one of them is a KGB officer, and the other is, as you mentioned earlier, from ACORN, fundamentally they’re no different from each other. They’re basically the same exact people, and that brings me to something that I figured out. In my opinion the reason why Obama hasn’t been doing anything is because he does want Putin to expand the Soviet Union and he does want socialism in our country, because, again, he’s been doing nothing. He said in 2008 that he wanted to fundamentally transform our nation, so that sort of would make sense why he’s basically just sitting there constantly drawing red lines and basically saying if you cross those red lines, then there’s gonna be consequences, and ultimately —

RUSH: But there never are.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: There never are. Well, you may have a point. It would be hard for people to accept the premise that they’re the same because Putin is looked at as a brute bully, take whatever he wants whenever he wants it, take no prisoners kind of guy. Obama’s image is not that. Obama’s image is scholarly, learned, brilliant, smarter than everybody else that’s ever lived, so far ahead of us we can’t hope to understand what he’s thinking. We would be silly to even try. But you’re speaking in terms of worldview.

Now, you may have a point in this sense. When you say that Obama isn’t really troubled by what Putin is doing, because he’s spreading socialism, communism, and Obama’s all for that, I think what may in fact be more true is that Obama doesn’t think that the United States is any different than any other nation. And, if Putin wants Ukraine, then it’s not for us to stop him. But he knows that he’s president, and he knows that some Americans believe that the US should be, and should play the role of, outpost for freedom and defender of liberty, so he’ll go through the motions of drawing the red line and trying to, you know, intimidate these others: “You better not do that or else you’re gonna deal with me.” Of course then nobody ever has to deal with him.

I mean, the story in the Politico today is the worst thing that’s happened here is that his vacation’s in jeopardy now. Right here. Obama’s vacation plans in jeopardy. Vladimir Putin has put Obama’s vacation plans in jeopardy. Not Vladimir Putin is attempting to commandeer a country and enslave its citizens. No, no, no. Vladimir Putin has put Obama’s vacation plans on hold. That’s serious stuff. Vacation plans are big deals for people that don’t work very hard.

Obama has been asked about American exceptionalism; and his answer is (imitating Obama), “Well, you know what? I think if you asked the Russians, they’ll tell you they think they’re exceptional. And the British, they’ll tell you that they think they’re exceptional.” And what he means by that is, who are we to say we’re better than those? We’re not better than anybody. In fact, Obama believes the United States and its imperialist military has always been the problem in the world.

Obama may believe that Putin’s doing what he’s doing because we, George Bush — and, by the way, folks, you know, you might laugh about this, there are a bunch of liberal media people that are blaming Bush for this. I kid you not. A couple of ’em on MSNBC. I don’t want to mention any names over there, but a couple of those people, I think a couple of prominent newspaper leftist columnists have blamed it on Bush. I kid you not.

So I don’t think you’ll ever persuade people that Obama is like Putin in the sense that he will deploy his military to conquer other countries and put them under the United States flag, but he won’t stand in the way of anybody else going wherever they want in the world, because he is of the liberal mind, who are we to tell ’em no? In fact, that’s almost out of the liberal national anthem. Who are we to tell ’em no?

The way that works is, the real belief in this Regime about the Iranian pursuit of a nuclear weapon is, well, who are we to tell ’em they can’t? We’ve got one. And nobody told us we can’t. Who are we? What right do we have to tell the Iranians they can’t build a nuclear bomb? And that’s the way they look at it. So with Putin on the march, I think Obama’s view is it doesn’t matter, but he’s a gotta act like it does, even if it means delaying a vacation. Syria, it doesn’t matter, doesn’t care. But he has to act like he does. “So here’s the red line. You better not cross it. Oh, you crossed it. Now I’m really mad. I’m gonna draw — you better not cross, I’ll get really, really mad.” Never does anything about it. And of course that’s the bottom line.

Look at what he does. Zip, zero, nada. A lot of talk, a lot of trying to sound tough, but I think it’s all rooted, Steven, in the fact that Obama doesn’t think it’s any of our business to stand up for the freedom of people in Ukraine, even though we promised them that we would in two agreements. Bill Clinton and Obama reaffirmed it in 2009. We promised them that if they would gut their army, gut their military, get rid of their nukes, that we would protect their borders. What country’s ever going to believe us again? And that has been operative for quite a few years now, not just now. But even though we promised them that we would, we’re not going to.

Does anybody really think Obama would use any kind of force whatsoever? He’s gonna send Kerry over there and they’re gonna talk sanctions and this kind of stuff, but it’s never gonna matter and happen. And that’s all for show, to make some in the stock market think that Obama is traditional in the sense that America is the defender of liberty and freedom in the world. But that’s so passe now.