RUSH: Here’s Bill in Chicago. Bill, great that you waited. Welcome to the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for having me on. And before I get started, thank you for your lifetime of service. I don’t think I can express enough to you just how much you’ve mattered to me personally, and I know I speak for a lot of people also. Thank you, and thank you for letting me on today as well.

RUSH: I really appreciate that. I really do. Thank you so much.

CALLER: Rush, the reason for my call is I wanted to ask if you saw — it was up on Drudge earlier — where Cruz had referred to Trump supporters, borrowing a term from you, as “low information.”

RUSH: Yes, I saw that.

CALLER: So, as a Trump supporter, just to put it out there, you know, for me at this point, I kind of had two issues watching Cruz. Up until now, I’ve heard him lecture a lot about, you know, what’s a real conservative and what does it mean to be a real conservative, and he lectures there, and I’m looking at, you know, the discharge papers on my wall from the US Army. I’m looking at my time in the private sector. It says, “Hey, I think he knows what it means to be a conservative,” number one, and now he just calls me dumb. So here’s my recommendation to Ted Cruz, and I think he can take a note from a guy like Donald Trump. You want my vote, Ted? Earn it. Trump is out there as a leader earning votes. Cruz is out there trying to make me feel like I do or don’t qualify for his definition of what it means to be a conservative, and, at the same time, stealing a page from your playbook about Democrats calling me, a Republican, dumb. Not the way to earn my vote, Ted.

RUSH: Let’s play the audio sound bite. It happens to be sound bite number nine on the roster today. It was on the CBN website, the Christian Broadcasting Network website. The Brody File is the name of the show, David Brody interviewing Senator Cruz. He said, “If it’s not for evangelicals in the Deep South who are keeping Donald Trump alive, you’re on your way to becoming the nominee.” The question was: How are you not winning all the evangelicals? How in the world is Trump winning some of these voters?

I tried to explain that in great detail yesterday and I did so in a way — and I know the Cruz people, they’re not offended by this. I’m actually doing helpful analysis here. I think Senator Cruz, by targeting evangelicals, has limited his appeal. He’s got a much broader appeal than just evangelicals. But his belief has been that those are the people not voting; if you can energize ’em, turn ’em out, that you’ll win. And there’s truth in that. But you can’t take for granted the other people that did vote for Romney in 2012 are automatically gonna show up. So everybody’s puzzled.

“How come Trump is winning evangelicals? You kidding me? Trump, how is he winning evangelicals?”

And this is what Cruz responded.

CRUZ: He does well with a certain demographic of voter. Donald gave a press conference where he said, to quote him, “I love the poorly educated.” Donald is taking advantage of his voters. Donald does well with voters who have relatively low information, who are not engaged, and who are angry, and they see him as an angry voice. Where we are beating him is when voters get more engaged and they get more informed. When they inform themselves, they realize his record.

RUSH: So you’re a Trump supporter, Bill, I’m assuming from what you said?

CALLER: I am, Rush.

RUSH: Right. And you understandably taking offense at that this. The —

CALLER: I don’t take it personally, but I do think it’s insulting to himself if he thinks the way to win the election is to insult right now what is the largest base in the Republican Party.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But I don’t take it personally.

RUSH: It’s every Republican in this race, other than Trump. Every elected Republican, every candidate. A lot of Republicans are stymied. They don’t understand how Trump has done this. They’re not sure just who the Trump voters are. I’ve tried to tell them that, that Trump is reaching a broad-based coalition that includes… Let me tell you who’s in that group. I don’t know if this describes you, but I’m gonna say, folks, there is — and I know this undeniably. There is a significant contingent of people in the Trump camp who have been ticked off since NAFTA, since 1992.

When you hear Trump talk about free trade in his town hall meeting last night with Hannity — free trade, free trade, free trade — and everything related to it had to make up 30%, if not more, of what Trump said last night. He knows who a large contingent of his voters are. And what free trade… They don’t think it’s free trade at all. They think it’s rigged trade and the result is factories they used to work at are closed. Jobs they used to have are gone and more factories are closing and more jobs are leaving, and they don’t see anybody concerned about it.

The last guy that was concerned about it was Buchanan, and here comes Trump. Now, that’s not his base. I mean, it’s not the sole contingent in his support, but it’s a huge number of people. And they’re not ignorant. They are personally affected by what they think the elites have done, and Trump is the only guy talking to them on that issue. But, in addition to that, Bill, Cruz and Rubio and Jeb Bush, they’ve all been trying to figure out how to get Trump supporters to leave him. And nothing they have tried has worked.

They have tried insulting Trump. They have tried frightening Trump’s voters. They have tried telling Trump’s voters that Trump is a fraud, that he’s not a real conservative; that he’s really a Democrat, Hillary donor at heart. They’ve tried everything, and they can’t break the bond no matter what they do. In fact, when Romney comes out and says what he said in that speech last week it drives even more people to Trump, but it solidifies Trump support. The traditional ways of beating a candidate are not applicable here.

So, Senator Cruz comes along and says, “Well, you know, it’s kind of the low-information voters,” and uses Trump’s quote, “I love the poorly educated.” That’s not what Trump meant by that. But what’s going on here, as I have also stated over and over again — and this, Bill, I’m sure does apply to you. For whatever reasons — and they probably differ from person to person, it’s one of the things you can’t name. It’s an intangible. There’s a bond. The Trump supporter has a bond, a connection with Trump, that only Trump can break. Only Trump can violate it. Nobody else created the bond. Therefore, nobody else can defeat it or break it. The media can’t. The media did not make Trump. People are not supporting Trump ’cause the media has sung his praises.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, here’s the bottom line. Cruz is gonna have to realize that he’s not going to accomplish much by trying to take voters away from Trump. They’re locked. There’s a bond there you can’t break. The only guy that can is Trump. The Republican Party cannot take Trump supporters away because they didn’t put them there. Well, they’re responsible for it, but they haven’t promoted Trump. There’s no reason. Trump’s the only guy that can break that bond. Therefore, what Cruz has to do is get Rubio’s voters. He’s gotta get Kasich’s voters.

He’s gotta go out and get people who were for Ben Carson. In the process, if that peels away some Trump people, fine; but you’re never going to get Trump voters by telling them that Donald is this or that or that they are low-information or that they don’t get it. And you’re gonna need those voters, if you succeed. If the Cruz people succeed… I will acknowledge there’s a third scenario. The third scenario is that neither Cruz nor Trump get 1,237 but that Cruz goes to the convention with a bigger number than Trump.

But if you’re gonna do that, you may as well go all the way. But I understand the thinking, and it’s valid. If either one of those two scenarios happen — if you get to 1,237 and get the nomination, or if you beat Trump but remain short of 1,237 — once this convention’s over, you’re gonna need those Trump voters. A lot of those Trump voters (I don’t know what percentage; people are saying it’s anywhere from 15% to 25%, maybe 30%) are Democrats, moderates, independents, liberals.

They are white working-class voters who are not enthused by Hillary or Crazy Bernie. And they are with Trump on this free trade, immigration stuff. You’re gonna have to keep those people on your side. So don’t… You know, don’t go out and tough talk to them now, because you’re going to need them if you get the nomination. There are plenty of votes in the anti-Trump quadrants or sectors, if you will, of the Republican Party. It would probably be more beneficial, productive to focus on those, ’cause nobody’s gonna talk Trump voters out of supporting him right now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I went back. I wanted to find this quote that Trump talking about loving “the poorly educated.” I wanted to find the entire quote, and you know this quote, I’m gonna read it to you here. I’m sorry if you think this is Trump promotion; it’s not. I’m actually promoting myself. I’m using this as an example of confirming things I’ve already said. Everybody’s puzzled why people support Trump. They see Trump as this blustery, braggadocios oaf who’s running around stepping on people and insulting people, but that’s not how his supporters see it.

I have gone… I’ve gotten hoarse explaining this to people. It’s no different than trying to explain the bond. You know, all these people ask, “Why aren’t you hitting Trump? Why aren’t you trying to destroy Trump? Trump’s surviving because you won’t go out and hit him. You can’t.” That’s not the way. If you want to defeat Trump, you’re not gonna do it by insulting him or his voters. You’re just gonna drive them closer together. Now, here’s what Trump said. It was after his win in Nevada. He said the following.

Quote: “We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. We’re the smartest people. We’re the most loyal people. And you know what I really am happy about — because I’ve been saying it for a long time — 46% with the Hispanics.” He’s talking about Nevada. “Forty six percent. Number one with Hispanics. I’m really happy about that. So. Thank you. So, I’m very proud of you. This is an amazing night and, you know, I love the country. I love the country.

That’s Trump. Humble before and to his supporters. People don’t see humility in Trump. The people are outraged by him — the people that can’t believe he’s winning, the people that can’t believe reasonable people would support him — they don’t see any of this. They only see what scares them, what frightens them, what angers them, and they think everybody else should. But Trump signals directly to his supporters often is that he is deeply appreciative. Now, this, “We won with the highly educated. We won with the poorly educated,” he’s simply acknowledging he loves them, too.

I mean, they were surveyed. The exit polls sampled the people that voted, and they qualified them, certain levels of education and income, as they always do, and in the group of people that did not have high school diploma, Trump won. He referred to ’em as “poorly educated,” not “stupid.” He referred to them as “poorly educated,” not “ignorant” or “dumb.” He was not insulting them, and he was not calling them low-information. He was praising them, and they heard that. I’m just telling you that if you’re trying to separate Trump from his voters, you are going to… It’s an impossible road, ’cause he’s the only guy that can do it.

He built the bond. He created it. Nobody else did. He’s the only guy that can bust it, that can break it. So the path for Cruz (is who we’re talking about here) has got to be outside the Trump universe. And, according to all the data, there’s plenty of ’em. If you add up all these people not voting for Trump, it’s more than 50%, so there’s plenty of people there for Cruz to target, some of them still voting Rubio, some of them still voting Kasich, some of still wanting to vote Ben Carson. But they’re there, and that’s where he ought to go.