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RUSH: I was watching Karl Rove on the Fox News Channel today, and he was going on and on and on about Trump’s off-the-charts negatives and unfavorables in polling. He said it’s unprecedented, there’s never in the history of American political polling, never been anybody with negatives as high as Donald Trump’s. I’m watching this and I’m thinking something doesn’t make sense here.


How can you have somebody so obviously popular? I understand polarization and all that. I understand you have some love, gonna have some hate. You don’t want polarization in a politician, though. In some other public endeavors it’s okay. But in politics, nobody’s gonna vote for you ’cause they hate you. So it doesn’t work. But I said how accurate can this be? I mean, it almost doesn’t work for me, doesn’t make any sense. Massive unfavorables 25, 30% say they’d never vote for Trump, and yet he’s setting records in terms of turnout and numbers of votes and winning every county in five Northeastern states.

So there’s some things that have to, I think, be explained here because I don’t buy this negative stuff as being all that relevant, is where I’m going with this. For two reasons. They never talk about, when discussing Trump’s negatives, how high Hillary’s are. Hillary’s not sitting out there with universal love. Hillary’s negatives are practically as high as Trump’s are, and so are Cruz’s. And then they say, “Well, look at all the people that say if Trump’s the nominee, they’re never gonna vote for him.”

Well, look at the Sanders supporters who say that if Hillary’s the nominee, they’re not voting for her. And then the same thing Cruz. If Cruz the nominee, some people are not gonna vote for him. So there’s nothing unique to Trump here, is my point. They’re trying to make it look like, you know, certain members of the establishment, certain members of the media, trying to make it look like all of this negative stuff is exclusive to Trump, and it isn’t. Hillary’s negatives are almost as high. Cruz has his own set of negatives. But there’s even more to this.

You know, pollsters always talk about negatives in a vacuum. They say here are the approval-disapproval ratings of candidate X. But elections are not conducted in a single candidate vacuum. You’re gonna have, “What is your opinion of Trump?” “I hate Trump; I love Trump.” What about Trump compared to Hillary. It’s gonna change. But that’s not how they’re doing the polling. That’s not how they’re doing the reporting. They’re reporting on these negatives for everybody: — Trump, Cruz — as though they’re in a vacuum.

Otherwise there wouldn’t be this notion of lesser of two evils that’s so frequently applied to politics. But there are, because these polls and these elections certainly don’t occur in a vacuum. Do you know one of the biggest landslides in American presidential history, Richard Nixon in 1972 when he was hated? Richard Nixon was hated and yet he won one of the biggest landslide victories over McGovern in 1972. He was personally unpopular. Eisenhower didn’t like him. The Kennedys didn’t like him. They said he had no class.

Even Republican people who did like him thought he was a nerd, thought he was socially awkward, and they didn’t like admitting that they were his friend. It’s amazing that Nixon ever won anything because his negatives were always through the roof. Except for one TV appearance Roger Ailes ran in 1968, Nixon had a return, it was one of the early town halls, and Roger Ailes produced it, and it was just Nixon in the round with people asking him questions, and Nixon came off — it was four years before the landslide win — but he came off in that 1968 town hall as personable, likable, unthreatening. It was remarkable.


I remember, I was 17, I watched it, I remember watching it, I remember being impressed by it. I didn’t know who Roger Ailes was at the time. But I did know later that Ailes had produced that whole thing and had conceived the idea. But the bottom line is in 1972 Richard Nixon was hated. He was hated, you know, Watergate had happened. It hadn’t become anything yet, but I cannot emphasize, for those of you who were not born yet or who were young and not paying attention, Donald Trump’s negatives are nothing compared to what Nixon’s were.

Now, Nixon’s polling negatives were not that high, but I’m just telling you, don’t doubt me, he was not liked, the Democrats despised him. That’s why he gave the left so many things like OSHA, tried to buy off their friendship here by giving them a bunch of new government agencies and so forth. The media hated him, too, big. Oh, my gosh, the media hated Nixon maybe more than they hated George W. Bush. But it didn’t matter, is the point, because the mood of the country — see, it wasn’t in a vacuum.

The mood of the country at the time, McGovern was a Looney Tune. He was in bed with all these Chicago sixties protesters, the Abbie Hoffmans and Jane Fonda, all these weirdos, the Bill Ayerses and these domestic terrorists. The sixties radicals who, by the way, are running the country today. The very people, I mean, their descendants and some of them running the country today, sixties radicals. What McGovern represented, he was considered dangerous.

My point is, ’72 could teach everybody that high negatives are not by themselves disqualifying. But the anti-Trump people out there want you to believe that they are. And you’ll see it everywhere. Why, Trump can’t win, look at his numbers with women. Why, Trump can’t win, look at his disapprovals. It doesn’t mean anything right now. We haven’t even had the convention yet. We haven’t even had the campaign.

And I’m gonna tell you something else. You know, in November who knows what’s gonna become of these negatives, after the convention and after the campaign. And I’ll give you a little secret here. If Trump’s the nominee and if he does unload on Hillary Clinton as he’s promising to do, let me just tell you something: You do not know how many gazillion Americans are going to be delirious and orgasmic with delight and support.

There are gazillions of Americans who have had to suppress, have had to swallow, have had to sit there and take it, whatever the Clintons have gotten away with since they entered the public national scene in 1992. They’ve gotten away with everything, the dirty right-wing conspiracy, all this stuff, and nobody ever goes after ’em, nobody ever hits the Clintons, nobody seriously. Republicans have never tried it. They get away with giving $225,000 for a speech, various bankers and so forth. Stealing stuff out of the White House, claiming to be broke, and now just rolling in money and so forth, and all the other unlikable things about her.

If Trump hits her and criticizes her like the Clintons haven’t been, you’re gonna have people on that basis alone vote for the guy, in my opinion, ’cause I don’t think people understand how pent up the frustration and the opposition to the Clintons at what they have seemingly gotten away with all of these years. And I’m reminded of our caller from Philadelphia yesterday, the guy Sean, was going on and on and on about how the Republicans have never fought back. Bush didn’t fight back, and Trump does, Trump fights.

He said, “You know what? I disagree with 80% what Trump believes, but I’m voting for him ’cause he’s a fighter.” Eighty percent. You wonder why the establishment’s going nuts. They hear something like that, and the guy meant it. He was a well-spoken guy. So you can take some of these Trump negatives and you can wipe ’em out if he is the nominee and goes after Hillary. And I don’t mean just “Crooked Hillary.”


I mean, if he exposes this email stuff and Benghazi and her general incompetence and Hillarycare and how she covered the bimbo eruption, all of that stuff, if he goes after that, because nobody ever has, nobody’s ever had the guts, nobody’s ever had the courage to do it because they know the media’s gonna come after ’em. That alone is gonna wipe out some negatives.

I’ll tell you something else. The infighting between Trump and Cruz has distracted attention from I think the major story that their rise-to-the-top spots here is caused by — let’s not forget what’s driving this whole campaign, and that is the utter registration of the Republican establishment by Republican voters. I mean, it’s known but it’s taken second or third place because the competition now has so tightened between Cruz and Trump and we’re on the verge here of finding out where it’s all gonna end up.

But the way this all began hasn’t changed, and that is, all of this is happening, Trump exists because he’s anti-establishment. And do not doubt me on this: Washington still does not get what Trump symbolizes. They go after, they say his speech yesterday was empty, it was vacuous, it was silly. Doesn’t matter. He had the great memorable line about not bowing down to globalization anymore. Yeah, he mispronounced Tanzania, called it Tanzania. Well, Obama called it Marine corpse, Obama said 57 states and nobody says anything. When Trump mispronounces Tanzania, everybody harps on it.

But what Trump symbolizes is a big, fat “screw you” from the country to the people running the country. And that alone is garnering him support that the establishment cannot understand. They still do not understand the depth to which people feel this. And, by the way, there’s a companion story. It is from the Daily Caller. Headline, “Democratic Strategist: Trump Will Beat Hillary Like ‘A Baby Seal'”

By the way, Salon.com, the second story this week, Salon.com demanding that the Democrat establishment get rid of Hillary, that she’s guaranteed to lose, she’s got too much baggage, she’s too corrupt, and she’s not Bernie. They love Bernie at Salon. But my point is there’s not total unity out there on the left, on the Democrat side. “Democrat strategist Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders,” who I never heard of, but they found him here at The Daily Caller, “believes Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton like a ‘baby seal,’ and that working class whites who havenÂ’t already left the Democratic Party for cultural reasons will do so now for economic ones.

Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, not to be confused with Jim “Mudcat” Grant, said, “I know a ton of Democrats — male, female, black and white — here [in southern Virginia] who are going to vote for Trump. ItÂ’s all because of economic reasons. ItÂ’s because of his populist message.”

But there are a bunch of pull quotes I could share with you here about how he thinks — two things — he’s gonna beat Hillary like baby seal, means he’s just gonna cream her in the election, but that he is going to just have at her with oppo research and criticism that is going to be successful. And he’s a Democrat strategist out there. And if that indeed happens, I’m just telling you, some of these negatives out there which are already being looked at mistakenly in a vacuum, are not gonna matter anyway. Ditto Cruz, by the way. Same thing if Cruz is the nominee.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Dave “Mudcat” Saunders was involved in the John Edwards campaign. I recognized the name. He said something very curious here that’s gonna tick some of you off, but I’m just gonna tell you. He thinks that Trump is gonna beat Hillary like a baby seal, he means landslide win over here. And if you read deep into the story, here’s why. Quote, Dave “Mudcat” Saunders: “Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have very similar messages; theyÂ’re just dressed in different clothes. I think youÂ’re going to see a lot of Sanders people jump to Trump.”

A Democrat strategist thinks that Trump is gonna win big by getting Bernie’s voters ’cause there’s not much difference in his estimation in Bernie or Trump, other than their clothes.

Dominic, Pensacola, Florida, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush it’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you.


CALLER: I was gonna touch on the Tanzanian industry but you already said that he mispronounced it, so I’ll ask about (unintelligible) poll numbers and the negatives of Trump. You know, you said that it doesn’t make sense that he has such high negatives that he’s done so well, but honestly Rush he’s only done well in blue states. I mean, he did well in Florida which went blue last year, and also the Northeast is blue. But in the red states he couldn’t get 40%, Mississippi being the only exception. I mean, the only states I believe he puts in play are red states, like Arizona, where Hillary is already polling 7% above him.

RUSH: There’s some credence to that, but, by the same token, what you’re saying is Trump’s done well in liberal Northeastern states, but in real Republican red states he’s not climbed to 50%. But with Cruz didn’t do anywhere near as well in those states where he was supposed to do well either. That sounds like a dead connection to me but I think we’re gonna find out here in Indiana. I mean, Kasich is there, but he’s not. This is gonna be a good test. Indiana should be Ted Cruz without question, right? I mean, it’s Hoosier, it’s conservative, it’s upper Midwest.

If you look at Indiana six months ago, as you look at the map, Indiana you’d put in the Cruz camp. You might not now, given the things that have happened in the campaign so far, but it’s made to order for Cruz just in terms of the way you would handicap it. It may not end up being that way.

Let me try to make this point a little bit differently. I still think it’s fascinating to focus on the negatives of the way people are trying to do it to disqualify Trump. If you take a look at the people doing it, they’re establishment types and they’re doing it in a vacuum. That’s why I went to the pain, the trouble of pointing out that one of the most reviled public figures of his era, Richard Nixon, won in a landslide. The fact that Trump’s negatives are being touted here by the establishment, I think it is significant, and even though they are that high, he’s doing amazingly well and is popular at the same time.

My only attempt here is to try to talk people out of believing these negatives are that relevant because they apply to everybody. Hillary’s negatives are high. All politicians are kind of looked down on these days by voters. Cruz’s negatives are high. And if you look at some of the early exiters from the Republican primary, their negatives were not high. And where are they? They’re gone. You know, Trump may not a gotten 40%, but some didn’t even get five in some of these states.

So I know everybody wants to put whatever quiver they can in the bag to say, “I got the bit of information that will prove to you Trump can’t win and we’re making a big mistake.” People did the same thing with Cruz. I just don’t think — it’s too soon. There’s too much yet to happen. Nobody can possibly know what’s gonna happen in November yet, despite what they might tell you.

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