RUSH: Carly Fiorina was on Fox & Friends today, and she was asked by Steve Doocy, “So at the end of the debate last week you talked about how we should look at Hillary Clinton. As we look at the news this week that they have turned over to the FBI her e-mail server now turns out the server’s blank and wiped clean. What does that tell you?”

FIORINA: The old adage comes to mind: The cover-up is always worse than the crime. So exactly right. We now know that her server went to an IT company somewhere in New Jersey, and they spent a lot of time from 2013 on making sure the server was clean. It is, as I said, weak. She has lied about her e-mails, she has lied about her server, she also lied about Benghazi. But the more we hear, the worse this gets. It certainly broke every rule in the book. It may well turn out to be criminal.

RUSH: Okay, so that’s Carly Fiorina on Hillary Clinton. CNN last night, Don Lemon speaking with host of the TV show called The Big Interview. This would be Dan Rather, about the presidential race. Don Lemon said, “Have you ever seen anything like this Trump stuff? You ever seen anything like this in all of your years covering politics?”

RATHER: I have not. I’m fond of saying I’ve been to goat-ropings and space shots and been covering presidential campaigns a long time. I’ve never seen anything like this… Many Republicans fear… He’s definitely tapped into something. And I know that the other Republican candidates see him as sort of a sun-powered, perpetual motion, all-American bull-shine machine, but a large section of his party doesn’t see him that way.

RUSH: Right. So Dan Rather thinks he is in for the long haul. You ever heard of goat roping? Can’t say that I have, either. But Dan Rather… (interruption) He been to one. And… (interruption) “I’m fond of saying I’ve been to goat-ropings and space shots and been covering presidential campaigns a long time. I’ve never seen anything like this. He was around when the Perot phenomenon was happening. Would he not…? How many of you people think that the Perot think is vastly different from what’s happening now?

How many of you think it’s much the same thing? I mean, Perot? Can anybody say third party? There was no pledge from Perot. I mean, Perot… You know, you look at the differences in Perot and Trump. Snerdley, off the top of your head can you cite any? I know it’s an unfair question because there are some things. (interruption) Well, yeah, Perot didn’t brag about how rich he was, but he did in his own way, and others did it for him. He didn’t do it exactly as Trump does, but I’ll give you an example.

He’s out there describing how the federal government wastes money. (impression) “Hell! Hell, Larry! You know, they’re running around and they’re buying all these 737s and 757s. Hell, I don’t need all that! I have two of ’em myself. What you need to do is get a bunch of Lear 55s. You can save about $150 billion and get rid of…” Well, how does he know that? So it was subtle (chuckles), but it was the same thing. I think there was a… How many of you in this audience…?

Let me just ask you. I know I can’t see your hands raise, but how many of you think that Trump is in this to win it. That’s the big question. Snerdley, you think Trump’s in this to win it? (interruption) Snerdley says he don’t know. Dawn, you think Trump’s in this to win it? Dawn thinks he is. Brian? No. Don’t know, or don’t think he’s in to win it. Brian doesn’t know, and I can tell by the way he’s saying it, he doesn’t care. So how many of you think Trump’s in it to win it?

I can tell you Perot was never in it to win it, and that was a huge factor. That was important to me. How do I know that? How did I know that, do you mean? Because it was borne out to be true. He quit when it looked like he was gonna win! I knew… (interruption) I predicted he would get out. I predicted if it looked like he was gonna win he would get out ’cause he didn’t want to win. I mean, what was that thing? He didn’t go somewhere, somebody didn’t go to his event ’cause some daughter was getting married or some such thing.

I happened to find out what Ross Perot’s reason for getting into the race was, and it was personal. I have a lot of respect for Ross Perot. You can’t take his achievement away from him. You can’t. He’s a unique, genuine American in a whole lot of ways, but I knew he did not want to win the presidency. That first speech he gave at the National Press Club that got all this attention… I’ll never forget Christopher Hitchens, the late Christopher Hitchens was on C-SPAN the next day.

There was some authors hour or some such thing, and Perot the previous day, they televised a speech he had given the National Press Club where he just railed against the irresponsibility of Washington and the spending and how he would fix it. “They’re flying around in 737s, Larry, and 757s! Get rid of all that. Get some Lear 55s. That’s all the people running our government need. They don’t need to stand up in there. Got room to sit, that’s fine, fine for everybody. Nobody else stands up in airplanes; why should they?”

All right, fine, the next day on C-SPAN, when it was time to take calls, every call to Christopher Hitchens was about Ross Perot and he had no idea what had happened. So he’s getting all these question from C-SPAN viewers who had seen Perot the day before or maybe a couple days before and about 30 or 45 minutes into this Hitchens said, “I’m very much uninformed here. There’s something happening that I’m totally unaware of.” He was there to talk about his book and nobody cared about that. They wanted to talk about what they’d seen Perot do. But Perot didn’t do that speech to win the he didn’t even wasn’t even thinking about running at that point, and he I know that he didn’t intend to win.

I don’t know that about Trump.

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RUSH: We go to Connecticut. Charlie, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: It’s an honor, sir! I hope I’m not takin’ some other country’s share and using their air, you know what I mean? (laughing)

RUSH: Yeah, I feel the same way as you. I’m already laden with guilt here knowing that I’m breathing some Third World person’s air, here.

CALLER: I know. I won’t sleep tonight!

RUSH: I know.

CALLER: All right. If Hillary and the Democratic Party are saying that the Republicans are waging War on Women, why are all the abortions that are being done by Planned Parenthood are mostly female? Who’s doing the war? And why are they all mostly in black neighborhoods? Are they, uh, trying to keep the race down?

RUSH: Well, in fact, that is a comment that Dr. Carson has made I think a couple of days ago, three days ago. He’s been commenting on that very fact. Planned Parenthood clinics, two-thirds of them are in African-American neighborhoods, and he’s been point-blank. Look, on your question about global warming and abortion and so forth. Look, I know you know this, but since you asked, I have to answer the question.

I’m the mayor of Realville. You asked a question; I’m gonna answer it. “Why is abortion not considered a War on Women?” It’s because the War on Women doesn’t exist. It is an entire fabrication of George Stephanopoulos and the Democrat Party, and it is designed as a buildup on what used to be called the soccer mom phenomenon. It’s all rooted in the fact Republicans don’t care about women (except rich women), and it’s just to further this — this narrative that’s been out there. And the Republican Party doesn’t successfully push back against it, and so it survives. You can come up with every example and more, like you just did, Charlie. It isn’t gonna matter until the Republican Party decides it wants to kick it and obliterate it out of reality.

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RUSH: Dr. Benjamin Carson has a piece in TheHill.com: “How to Remedy America’s Social Ills? Exercise the Mind’s Power to Choose, Says Ben Carson.” I’m gonna read some excerpts of this, ’cause it’s fascinating. He begins this way: “Although most of my professional career has been dedicated to studying the physiological dimensions of the human brain, I have always been fascinated with the role that the human psyche plays in our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us.

“So much so, in fact, that as an undergraduate I majored in psychology and at one point strongly considered becoming a psychiatrist, before ultimately making a decision to pursue a specialization in neurosurgery. I mention this because it frames the discussion that I want to begin about the dimensions of the problem of race in this country, and what I see as the best approach to transcending race as an issue that divides us and prevents us from moving forward as one nation under God.

“As a child growing up in a poor family headed by a single mother in the inner city of Detroit, I became intimately familiar with some of the social pathologies that plague these communities: Poverty, poor education, criminal recidivism and involvement with the prison system, and the pernicious cycle of teenage motherhood. Like many of today’s inner-city youths, I too faced a situation in which I did not have an abundance of positive male role models.

“And during those times, there was certainly no well-trodden path from the mean streets of Detroit to college and a successful career as a neurosurgeon.” That path just wasn’t there. “But there were certain intervening events that were pivotal in helping to change the course of my life. The first was that my mother, who could barely read herself, forbid my brother and me from watching television and insisted instead that we read books.

“Reading opened up whole new worlds for me, and both fertilized my imagination and fueled my aspiration to go beyond the confines of my physical environment. The second major intervening event was my acceptance of the wisdom of God. An incident in which I attempted to stab a classmate out of anger forced me to confront a dysfunctional attitude that, if unchecked, would impede my ability to succeed in school or realize my dream of one day becoming a doctor.

“I prayed to God to guide me in becoming more tolerant and forbearing.” Now, hang on a minute. It’s more than that. Just stick with me on this. “There were certainly other societal and institutional dynamics that contributed to the course my life would take. My mother did, from time to time, accept welfare assistance when ends did not meet — but she also worked two or three jobs and was ingeniously resourceful.

“And societal changes concurrent with the civil rights movement helped to break down barriers and open doors for me that might not have otherwise been available. But the major factor in how my life has turned out was — and is — my attitude and ability to choose the object of my concentration. My views on race in this country start from that perspective. While I advocate for a colorblind society, I am by no means blind to the reality of racism. But again it comes down to a matter of focus.

“I believe that if we focus on what divides us rather than what unites us, we impede our ability to transcend differences and work together constructively toward a better future for all Americans,” if we focus on what divides us. I mean, the government forces that focus on us. The Democrat Party insists we focus on what divides us, and they do it as a matter of policy. (By the way, this is my words, not his.) They do it as a matter of policy. It is a technique. It’s one of the things they use to keep people divided.

They don’t want unity. They want divisions. They want people at war with one another. They want to be able to say, “There’s racism! There’s discrimination!” They herald the things that differentiate us. They celebrate those things that divide us. And what Carson is saying here is: It’s much harder to do, but focus on the things we have in common. He says, “I realize that the government can play a role in providing a social safety net, and it is one of the things that I really love about our country.

“But I am much more focused on how high we can rise than how far we can fall. The government has spent more than $19 trillion by some estimates on the ‘War on Poverty’ since 1965. And yet the social pathologies plaguing our society are far worse today than they were when I was a child growing up in Detroit. This points to the fact that the progressive model has largely failed — and it is past time that we try something new.” So, for example, “rather than attempting to fight against poverty,” which we have demonstrated we lose.

We’ve had the War on Poverty, a war against poverty for almost 1965. Instead, “we should be encouraging growth,” rather than focusing on the differences, rather than focusing on dividing line, and focusing on the negatives, what people don’t have. Focus on fixing it! Focusing on growing it! “The mental shift may be subtle, but it has profound implications for how we approach public policy.

“The assumption that people are ‘poor’ grounds them in a mentality that reduces agency and creates more dependency. And more tragically, it obscures the reality that there is an abundance of opportunity that is ready for people who want to avail themselves of it.” But you try talking about that, and how long is it gonna take before you’re told you’re out of touch and don’t get it? It happens to me all the time, when you have a solution to people in trouble, “Why don’t they get a job?”

“Oh, easy for you to say!”

As though it’s an insult.

But it’s a fix. It’s a solution. And there are certain people that just don’t want the solution, that don’t want the fix. And you know it as well as I do. There was a whole race industry, there’s a global warming industry, all kinds of industries on the left where the worst thing that could happen would be a solution. So, anyway, he continues to talk about how he has focused and tried to help others to focus on solutions, fixing, escapes, whatever, rather than dwelling on the differences and telling each other how rotten our country is.

Focus on the differences, point out the worst, and then say, “Boy, this country’s horrible!” Well, that’s not gonna solve anything for anybody, and he wants a “new model in public policy that departs from” all these things that have failed for 19 years. He is “advocating is that civil society — including the corporate sector, education community, the religious establishment … — invest in people, to empower them with tools” and the ways to get out of the circumstances they’re in.

Instead of finding people to blame for it and focus on that, which is another thing the Democrat Party does. So, in other words, take Detroit where he grew up. What’s the Democrat Party do? They spend all their time trying to find the people responsible for it, if they have to make it up, and point fingers of blame at them, rather than… I mean, there are real people in Detroit who are living in inadequate conditions and instead of focusing on that, focus on who’s to blame for it to score political points?

That’s why I say, conservatism’s an intellectual application. It involves fixes, it involves solutions, it requires participation on the part of those that need the assistance. And the minute you go there, the left is gonna hammer you for being heartless and mean-spirited. And that’s what Dr. Carson’s up against and fighting against, and telling us where he thinks the solutions reside.