RUSH: Here’s Tim, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Great to have you with us. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Mega dittos, El Rushbo. Long-term listener, first-time caller.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hey, I saw Trump’s shout out tweet yesterday. He was tooling around Southern California surveying his wealth in a shiny black Suburban and listening to your show. I’m actually hoping that he’s listening today. There was a Democrat that announced for president yesterday. I think his name is Lessig.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, this is some wacko professor at Harvard or something. Yeah, yeah. Lawrence Lessig or something.

CALLER: Yeah, single-issue platform. He said he’d reform campaign finance, the special interests and lobbyists access to power, then resign and let his VP run the country for the rest of his term.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And as crazy as that may sound, if Trump would put that ahead of his platforms on immigration and trade and military and tax reform, it really is the main issue for both parties. He said that he’s above it, but he hasn’t said that he’ll fix it. You know, say Trump wins twice, where we gonna find another self-funding billionaire to lead the country? You know, he could deflect almost every attack and gotcha question at the debate tonight by refocusing on this one issue and highlighting where all the attacks are actually coming from. You know, and why they want him gone. It’d be a Herculean task. It would take someone with enormous chutzpah. Only Trump could pull it off.

RUSH: Well, he does allude to this. In the last two speeches and maybe in the ones prior, but in the last two appearances, two rallies, he has made reference to the fact that he can’t be bought and therefore can’t be owned. And he’s made reference to the fact that all of this money, this lobbyist and special interest PAC, whatever he calls it, is all aligned against him. Another thing he said was, it was in the same spoken paragraph.

He was saying (paraphrasing), “You know, I come out here and I do an hour, 15 minutes, an hour, whatever, and every speech I do is different. And every one of those guys, they put it on the teleprompter. They have a stump speech. Everybody gives a stump speech. It’s the same thing over and over again. You never know what you’re gonna get with me.” And he related that to the fact that the donors who are putting money behind these people are riding ’em close to the vest to make sure they don’t say anything too outrageous that might destroy their chances. He says, “I got nobody riding me. I have nobody controlling me.”

CALLER: Yeah, he’s above it, but he hasn’t said that he’s gonna fix it. He hasn’t come forward with a plan to take the big money —

RUSH: Well, hang on. I’ve got a break coming up. Hang on through the break here, if you will, Tim, ’cause I’ve got it coming right here, and I want for you to define further what you’re actually talking about. You went fast through it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Back to Tim in Tulsa, Oklahoma. What you’re talking about, just to make sure I understand, you’re talking about the special interest money and the PAC money and the lobbyists and all that, the people who are funding all these candidates. That’s what you want done away with. You’re quoting Lawrence Lessig who’s claims he has one agenda item. If he’s elected president, he’ll somehow outlaw all of that, reform the campaign finance system and then quit? And you think —

CALLER: I think it’s obvious the Beltway elites are screwing us over for the benefit of big donors, and you and I both know some of that control is from other nations and other governments. Look at the secret Pan Asian trade deal that just went through in the dark of night.

RUSH: Look at the first debate, the donors sent the message out to take Trump out.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: So there’s no question.

CALLER: Look at Obamacare. The hospitals, medical and insurance donors are getting a big, fat return on their longtime support on the Hill.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And in the Capitol.

RUSH: Right. So how do you do this, though? I mean, look, there’s a story in the Stack here, Jeff Immelt, this is about the Export-Import Bank, or Import-Export Bank. And he’s threatening, if he doesn’t get his money — and GE doesn’t need any money. GE is profiting famously. Here it is. Right up your alley here, Tim. This is from Reuters.

“GE to Move US Jobs Overseas in Fight Over Export Credits — Flexing its muscles amid a bitter congressional fight over the US Export-Import Bank, General Electric Co (GE.N) on Tuesday revealed plans to shift up to 500 U.S. manufacturing jobs to Europe and China because it can no longer access EXIM financing.” Meaning it can’t get corporate welfare. This is a big battle in the US Congress not long ago. And once again the Republican establishment was all-in with big money on this. And EXIM is not even needed anymore. These corporations have plenty of money on their own. They don’t need free access to taxpayer money.

CALLER: You can’t just act like it’s too big a problem to fix, though. It’s just like illegal immigration. We’re a nation of laws. You know, make it illegal to give large contributions to people that are on the Hill and in the Capitol and enforce it, you know, inspect. You have to start somewhere. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m sure it’s complex. I mean, any time you have power and you have money you’ve got a natural marriage, but there’s gotta be a way to inspect. I mean, we can see Hillary Clinton’s e-mails now and the FBI’s gonna come up with all of her private e-mails and find out if she was selling access with Bill Clinton’s speeches all across the world.

RUSH: Oh, come on, we already know. See, that’s the thing about them, we already know she was doing that and nothing’s gonna happen to her, nothing’s gonna happen with this e-mail thing. It would have happened by now. She’d a been indicted, if she was going to be, it would have happened.

CALLER: I agree with you.

RUSH: They’ve got everything they need here. Now we’re hearing, in addition to the fact her server wasn’t wiped, which means some of these things can be recovered, that’s not good news for her that the server wasn’t wiped, but we’re also hearing that some inspectors generals have looked at the this and they don’t find anything really wrong with what Hillary’s done, really nothing to see here. Then the next day we hear something entirely different, and it’s hard to keep track. One thing we know, she’s been selling access to herself as future president for years. That’s what the Clinton Crime Family Foundation is all about.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: These people are not loved. I mean, they’re not giving money to Hillary ’cause she beautiful. They’re not giving money to Hillary ’cause they want to go to cocktail parties with her. It’s not why this happens. So you’re saying here come Trump —

CALLER: Eighty percent of the congressmen, lead congressmen, they go straight in and they start doing lobbying.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: You know, they lose the election but they still get millions of dollars to go spread the influence from all the big donors and probably governments around the world —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — to buy the votes of all the people that are still on the Hill.

RUSH: And all of this is why ideas don’t matter anymore, and yet the American people, the American voter thinks it’s about ideas. They want it to be about ideas. They want the right ideas to triumph, bad ideas to lose. They want the competition to be about ideas and instead it isn’t. Now, it’s nothing new. Tim, I’m sure you’ll agree that money in politics is nothing new, but it seems to me that it’s reached a level that I’m not familiar with it being. Now they make no bones about who’s running the show. It used to be that the big-money donors were known, they might have even had some respect, but the big-money donors were kept over there, they weren’t talked about much, they did get the private access, but we didn’t know about it. They didn’t publicize they were having parties and confabs. And the parties at least went through the motions of making voters think it’s about ideas.

Now that’s even out the window. Now you’ll get McConnell and Boehner and they’re making it clear that they are following the money and it doesn’t matter what you think about it, that’s what they’re gonna continue to do. So it’s gotten even more intense and more predominant. It’s always been. Jesse Unruh said back in the sixties that money is the mother’s milk of politics, but it seems you’re right, that now it’s become oppressive. So you have self-financing people like Trump, but you raise a good point. How many of those do we have that are gonna want to put it at risk in a political campaign.

CALLER: You see the huge insurgent from the outsiders in this election, you know, the people that aren’t in government, and I think that’s why the corruption in Washington is out of the closet. You know, it’s no longer the secret uncle in the closet that nobody’s paying attention to. It’s out in the open and everybody knows about it, and I think that’s why the majority of the Republicans want somebody who’s not involved.

RUSH: Republican voters, yeah.

CALLER: So you make that your primary issue, you double down on the thing that’s already skyrocketed the insurgent candidates to plus 50%, you know, on the Republican side.

RUSH: So just to close the loop, you think no matter what they throw at Trump tonight, if he somehow turned it all around and made this the reason he’s doing what he’s doing in addition to making America great again, he could just swat it away like a bunch of flies?

CALLER: Well, and he’s good at that, too. He’s good at taking a question about something that he said and turning it into an attack on the person that he originally said it about. I mean, he’s great at stop, drop and roll. I mean, the guy can pull it off for sure, but if he says, “I know why you asked me that question. You’re trying to make me say something or do something that’s gonna finally harm my enormous popularity, and the reason is because I’m not controlled. You guys are controlled. You guys are controlled.” Look at the press. Look at the other people on the stage. “I’m not controlled and I know they want me gone. All the big donors and everybody that’s involved in the corruption and the entire system, they want me gone. So I know why you’re asking the question. Now here’s what I’m gonna do.” Wouldn’t that be perfect? Just turn it right back around on ’em.

RUSH: Well, he’s totally capable, I know that. You remind me of something that I said before the first debate back in August, on August 6th, that I thought would happen, and it didn’t. Now I’m thinking about it again and it might. Remember, you might remember my saying that I expected — let’s go back to August 6th, what was happening? Trump was in full bombast mode back then. Everything he was, was the greatest. Everything he wasn’t, was a loser. Everybody that was not with him was a loser. He was on that huge braggadocios, funny-as-hell role.

And I fully expected Trump staying in character ’cause we knew what they were gonna do, try to take him out ’cause he’s not serious candidate, looking for the slipup that they know he’s gonna make that will disqualify him and make people want to get rid of him and all that. I expected him to, in his own way, mock the whole process as a setup and phony scenario. “What do you mean we got three minutes and 30 seconds? Who the hell can say anything in 30 seconds besides me? None of these people up here can tell you what they mean in 30 seconds. I can do it. I’m better at it than anybody else.”

I fully expected him to sort of make fun of the whole thing, which is what his candidacy up to that point was doing. And I still think that in one of these debates, depending on the frustration level, he might go that way. I don’t think it would be in a sense of disrespecting, but maybe relating to the American people. “These aren’t even debates,” he could say. “I’m not debating anybody but you,” and he can look at the moderator. “You’re asking me a bunch of stupid questions that nobody watching this thing cares about. And this is crazy. This isn’t advancing anybody’s ideas. This isn’t advancing anything. What are we doing up here?” And I guarantee you if he did that the right way he’d get the same kind of applause for his campaign and approach that he’s getting now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here are the details on the GE story: “Flexing its muscles amid a bitter congressional fight over the US Export-Import Bank, General Electric Co. on Tuesday revealed plans to shift up to 500 US manufacturing jobs to Europe and China because it can no longer access EXIM financing. The largest US industrial conglomerate said it will move production of some heavy duty gas turbines and 400 jobs to Belfort, France, in exchange for a credit line from France’s COFACE export agency.

“The deal will support GE bids for international power projects. US plants in Greenville, South Carolina; Schenectady, New York; and Bangor, Maine, will lose out on those jobs if GE wins the power bids, a GE spokeswoman said.” So I’ll tell you how this is gonna end up. Whatever else happens, the Republicans are gonna end up being blamed for it, or at least they’re thinking that they’re gonna get blamed for it. And so to avoid being blamed for it, they will do everything they can to make sure GE, the Export-Import Bank…

You know, Ted Cruz had a great speech on the floor of the Senate about this. This was a debate back in August. This was the one where he said that Mitch McConnell and the leadership had lied to his face about this. It’s just another illustration of the powerful money people directing and sidling up to government in this new phenomenon of cronyism that’s no longer hidden.

It’s just right out in the open, right in our faces. You know, Immelt is just tight with Obama. Obama put him on the jobs council or some such thing. They had a jobs summit and he put Immelt in charge of finding and creating domestic jobs. And I don’t know if Immelt is still running that, but if he is, here he is threatening to take GE jobs overseas. Even if he isn’t still running the Obama jobs commission, what good was that anyway?

Here’s Randall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Randall, it’s great that you called and great to have you on the program. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. Rush, I wanted to explain to you why Donald Trump is doing so well with everybody.

RUSH: Ok, yeah. I’d like to hear ’cause I really don’t have any idea.

CALLER: Well, Donald Trump is saying what we are seeing. In other words, when Donald Trump says, “We’re being overrun at the border,” we see that. When Donald Trump says, “Illegal immigrants are killing and raping women,” that is something that we see. When Donald Trump says, “We have idiots that are running our country,” if Mitch McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and Barack Obama aren’t the antithesis (sic) of idiots, then I don’t know what is. When Donald Trump says that a squirrel could have done a better job at delivering a better deal from the Iranians than Kerry, it’s a thing that we see.

These are all physical things that we see. It’s not like… It’s not like somebody saying that, you know, “These people are coming over here for love.” They’re not coming over here for love! They’re coming over here for our stuff, plain and simple. And Donald Trump is just plain putting it out there and saying, “No, these people are overrunning us. These people have killed and have raped and have hurt people. Drunk drivers have crashed into people.”

RUSH: Wait a second. Wait just a minute. Don’t you understand? The US is responsible for this. We conquered these people! We mistreated them! We took their country, we took their land, we took their buffalo. We took everything away from them! We put ’em under Spanish rule. Don’t you think it’s about time they got even? Don’t you think it’s about time the US was cut down to size? (This is the Democrat view if things, by the way.)

CALLER: That’s the Democrat view, but do you know what really needs to happen? We need to just take over Mexico. Since they all want to come over here, why don’t we just take them over? I got, you know… I think it’s New Mexico and Old Mexico. There’d be Texas and Tex-Mex.

RUSH: Now, that’s not gonna happen out there, Randall.

CALLER: It’s not gonna happen, but as far as we’re concerned, these people are trying to invade us.

RUSH: Okay. Here’s his point. And, folks it’s valid. This is something that I can use. I think he’s got a great point when he says everything Trump is criticizing is not theoretical; it’s real, because we know it. We see it. In other words, a lot of people will try to gain your support by warning you what is going to happen. And they’ll try to persuade you that if you don’t get up to speed real fast and understand what’s happening, all kinds of things — A, B, C, D, and E — are gonna happen.

Trump has come along and is simply acknowledging what is happening that everybody sees. It’s not a question of whether or not you trust or believe Trump; you can’t help it! He’s simply uttering the truth. There’s no question that what he’s saying is true.
People have seen it. People are experiencing it. So that removes one of the huge barriers between the people and politicians, and that’s trust. It’s not even a question of trusting Trump. He’s not lying to you. He’s simply voicing what everybody sees that nobody else in Washington will voice.

And in fact, when you do voice it, they try to tell you you’re wrong.

“You got it wrong! You’re xenophobic, you’re racist, you’re nativist.”

Somehow it’s your problem when you point it out, and the problem is rooted in your racism. It’s in your bigotry, or your xenophobia, or what have you. And you pull your hair out because it’s none of that. You’re just simple telling what you see. “Look at what’s happening here, and you’re not doing anything to stop it. And it ought not be happening. It’s wrong. They don’t and shouldn’t have the right to come here and do what they’re doing.”

But people in Washington to whom you lodge these complaints say, “You don’t understand. It’s just a precious few number of people. The rest of these people, why, they’re in the shadows, and we need to get them out! They’re coming here as acts of love,” and then you start choking with frustration and anger. So it really boils down to there isn’t any BS. But I still maintain that in addition to that, the fact that whatever has happened in Washington, there aren’t any Trump fingerprints on it.

This anti-Washington mentality is bigger than I have ever seen it in the total number of years I’ve been hosting the program, and we’re now into our 28th. Now, it’s always there. There is always a segment of the population that is totally detached from Washington, distant, and wants no part of it and doesn’t trust it. It’s bigger than I’ve ever seen it. They call it “populism” as a means of impugning it. Populism means there’s no rationality to it.

“This is just runaway emotions and we gotta stop this! We gotta get a check and handle on it. You people… We can’t allow you populists to run things, ’cause you’re not thinking.” But we are. You are. You don’t have to think. You know what’s happening. The fact i they — the elite, the Beltway, whatever — try to talk you out of what you know to be true and then insult you by telling you it’s only your rotten attitudes that make you see and think that, means the divide is wider than I’ve ever seen it.

The thing is, again, people in Washington, they’re not confused here. They’re not disconnected. They know full well. They’re just in denial. They don’t care.