RUSH: Look, here’s what you have to know here if you want to be able to read this NBC story and understand it. You have to understand that the Republican Party, the GOP, the RNC, whoever. They structured — and they do it every year; they change the primary process. They change a number of things about it, based on what went wrong the previous year. And the previous year is four years ago, and they wrote rules four years ago to stop somebody like Ron Paul. Okay, so those rules are still in place, and they’re going to change those rules.

Some of those rules have to be voted on by the convention. Some of those rules can’t change ’til the convention openings. But one of the things in place right now is that the GOP… Because, remember, the GOP has always thought that it was going to be in control of who wins these primaries. “What do you mean, Rush? How do they know who’s gonna vote for whom?” It’s money, folks. They arrange for the donors. They go out and even if somebody doesn’t want to run, they might implore them on to run (like Jeb), and get ’em in and get this whole network going.

Is there any doubt that the GOP wanted Jeb Bush?

Is there any doubt whatsoever?

Jeb may never have actually wanted it. I mean, I’m just basing it on energy level and so forth. But it’s beside the point. The party is never going to write themselves out of control of this process. So when that happens, oh, panic sets in! So reason that Trump ends up here with essentially a 22% bonus in delegates is because the Republican Party set it up so that the front-runner gets bonuses for being the front-runner, ’cause they thought they were gonna be in charge of who the front-runner ended up be.

They wire it or try to in a lot of ways. The problem is, they’re working four years in advance and they’re always basing rules on what went wrong the last time. So the rules are rooted in the past and things they lost control of. So they say, “Okay, we don’t want that happening again,” and they come up with a new rule. But then four years later the process begins, things they didn’t anticipate happen, and they get caught short, which is where they are now.

But the point is that while Trump is out blasting what happened in Colorado and some of these other states, the fact of the matter is, as NBC News is reporting, Trump basically has been awarded a delegate bonus of 22% above his raw support from voters. Without getting into the arcane details, it’s a front-runner bonus. It’s just the way the rules are written. So they’re dealing with that. Now, Colorado comes along and last August, after… I’m sure they did this because of Trump. They’ll never say so.

In last August, Colorado changed its procedure and decided that they weren’t gonna have a straw poll or a primary — and, in fact, instead were going to choose the nominee at the party convention. They were gonna choose the delegates there and the delegates were determined, and there would still be a primary, but the results wouldn’t mean anything. Now, this didn’t happen two nights ago or a week ago. It wasn’t decided recently. It was decided back in August. Now, in my humble estimation I am sure it happened because of Trump way back in August.

Remember the panic levels. This is after we’ve had the first debate, and everybody’s outraged over what Trump has been saying about Mexicans and immigrants and John McCain and Megyn Kelly’s orifices and stuff. They’re just having a cow. So these Republicans in Colorado decide to change their whole procedure to give them control over their state, and Cruz knew it. Anybody could have known it! It was not done under cover of darkness. The rules were not kept in a secret black book housed in the crypt of some former great Republican who perished back in the days of the Civil War.

It was right out in the open. Anybody could go read the rules. Now, it’s fascinate. You know what fascinates me about this? Many things. But in this whole process of the primaries, there have been various leakages from the GOP and from the establishment about their supposed concerns. So we’ve gotten all the news about Rule 40 and how that might come into play, and we’ve had leaks about efforts that are gonna get made maybe to put this candidate in who hasn’t run. They have all kinds of things offered up as distractions.

Yet what happened this weekend at party conventions and delegate selection? Nobody ever said a word publicly about it coming back. Nobody in the establishment ever said, essentially, “Don’t worry. We’re gonna stop Trump at our party convention.” They all said, “We’re gonna stop Trump on the floor of the convention. We’re gonna see to it that he doesn’t get 1,237, then we’re gonna go broke, then we’re gonna do contest.” Everybody talking about that while nobody had a heads-up about what they were planning to do this weekend the party convention.

They didn’t leak that. They didn’t brag about that. They didn’t give any indication whatsoever it was gonna happen ’cause they didn’t want anybody knowing, ’cause they didn’t want it undermined. And as far as the Trump campaign, it apparently worked. Nobody there knew what was going on. Interestingly the Cruz campaign was up to speed on all of it. The Cruz campaign has not closed their state offices as state primaries come and go and end. The Cruz campaign has kept ’em open. The Trump campaign offices (there weren’t very many of ’em) closed.

Do you know that Obama’s 2008 offices in North Carolina are still open? And he’s not running for anything else. “Why Rush?” Because most state offices of Obama’s are used to stop and influence state politics in North Carolina. It’s true of every state where things might be happening and Obama doesn’t want to happen, things about Obamacare, things about gay marriage, things about whatever he cares about. He keeps some of his offices open. He’s fundraisingly left and right. For what? The party, right?

Okay, so these offices are used by the party to stop Republicans at the state level from doing what they can do to undermine the Obama agenda. Trump closed his. Trump used his own money. He’s not a bottomless pit. He’s making a big deal out of it. So he’s gotta focus his funds and expenditures (which come out of his pocket for the most part) on the task at hand at present. But Cruz has been raising money left and right. Nobody’s been talking about it, but he’s been raising money left and right, just as Crazy Bernie has — and Crazy Bernie’s money, he can go back to his donors over and over again because the most they give at one point is 27 bucks. So Bernie’s donors with donate 10 times before they’re shut out, and he just keeps going back to ’em.

And Hillary doesn’t even know what hit her.

And Cruz much the same way, can go back to his donors and keep his offices open and keep working these states where delegates are chosen. And, by the way, even after every state primary, the delegates in many cases have not even been chosen, the actual people. And that’s another thing that’s been going on. The Cruz people have been in there trying to determine their guys end up being chosen or selected or elected as delegates at these state conventions, for the second and third ballots, at the convention.

Trump has not been doing that. I’m sure that — well, I can only guess. But I’m sure that Trump looked at his massive lead in national polls, his massive lead in all these primaries that he’s won and has just assumed that the sheer power and force of that was gonna sweep him through 1,237 before we get to the convention. And that all this stuff that’s happening now was not even gonna be necessary because he was gonna win this outright. And it’s clear, and it has been clear for a while, the objective is to make sure he doesn’t. And in this the Cruz team and the GOP team are working as a united front against Trump.

Apparently Kasich is doing what he can to help Trump by trying to block Cruz at various spots in these primaries. So you have a situation where it appears that Cruz and the GOP are united in their efforts to stop Trump, ’cause if Trump doesn’t get to 1,237, what the GOP and Cruz are hell-bent on making happen right now is that Trump can never get to 1,237. He can’t get there on the first ballot with pledged, bound delegates, and then once we go to second and third ballots, he can’t get there, ’cause that’s being wired right now. By “wired,” I mean they’re getting pledges from these delegates, the Cruz camp and the GOP.

Now, second ballot, if nobody gets 1,237, that’s where the GOP and Cruz forces will split apart, and Cruz will find out what it’s like to be Trump right now. That would be on the third ballot. Make no mistake, the Republican powers that be do not want Trump, and they don’t want Cruz. They did want Jeb. They wouldn’t mind Kasich. They are drooling over Paul Ryan. And they would take Romney again. So that’s the immediate universe of people that they might be thinking could be their salvation.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me give you the numbers here very quickly, just to put this in perspective. This is the latest that I have been able to put together. Ted Cruz won Utah with 69% of the vote. He got all 40 delegates. This is in recent weeks here. Ted Cruz won delegates out of Louisiana that were available that had not been bound or pledged at the primary. Ted Cruz won the delegate race in North Dakota 18 out of 25. Trump only got one delegate in North Dakota. You might be, North Dakota, North Dashmota, doesn’t matter. All these things add up now, folks.

Remember, the conventional was Trump was gonna sweep everything, and all of this was gonna have been over either by now or the end of April. Ted Cruz won Wisconsin, everybody remembers, got half of the vote, almost half of the vote there, and 36 of the 42 delegates. He did it by winning most of the congressional districts. The delegates in Wisconsin were apportioned by CD, congressional district. And Cruz went into Wisconsin and didn’t work the popular vote; he worked districts.

So he got 36 out of 42 delegates. Trump gets six. And remember Wisconsin was the beginning of the 100-day plan, all of that in capital letters. The GOP to stop Trump, a 100-day plan that began April 5th, Wisconsin primary.

Colorado. Ted Cruz won the Colorado delegate selection process. It didn’t happen with the Colorado primary. And that has been known since last August. Ted Cruz won all of the delegate races in the Colorado delegate selection process. And he ends up either with delegates that are bound to Cruz or they are unbound leaning to Cruz. Some are committed, some are not, but they’re leaning. It’s a total of 34 delegates. And this is the event over the weekend that Trump is basically upset about, claiming that people have been disenfranchised, ’cause there’s gonna be straw poll. There’s gonna be a Colorado primary. It isn’t gonna matter.

Trump’s saying it’s not democracy, it’s disenfranchisement, people’s votes are being stolen. But states can do it however they want. The delegate selection process, the party controls it, not the voters. Cruz has been winning the “other” category as well in the race for actual delegates. He’s even picked up some delegates that were supposedly bound to Trump in places like Georgia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. So here are the totals. And the Colorado win now, by the way, that’s a crucial thing for Cruz. The win in Colorado gives him the eighth state in which he has a majority of delegates.

That means, according to the rule 40(b), he can win the nomination on a second and third ballot. Rule 40(b), until they change it, nobody can be nominated unless they amass at least 50% of the delegates in eight states, and Colorado is Cruz’s eighth state of securing a majority of delegates. The way that worked out, here are the final numbers: 758 Trump, as we stand now, as is close as anybody can get to it. 758 Trump; 533 Cruz; 732 available via upcoming primaries waiting to be bound. That means they will be bound by whoever wins in the remaining primaries.

There are 77 unpledged delegates out there waiting to be nabbed as a result. So basically what would that be? There are 809 delegates that are available. Now, Trump needs 65% of those remaining, let’s say 732. He needs 65% of those to get to 1,237. So far he’s gotten 45%. Up to now, Trump has secured 45% of all delegates. If Trump got 50% of the remaining delegates, his total would be 1,120 delegates after June 7th. And the number needed is 1,237.

So then the argument would begin, “Well, is 1,120, is that close enough to just call it for Trump?” And the Cruz gang, “No. There’s no such thing as close. The rule says 1,237, and we’ve never modified that rule, and we’ve never changed that rule. If nobody gets to 1,237 it’s hello contested convention.” And that would be correct. But the Trumpists are gonna be working hard, and they’re gonna be reminding everybody of all the tricks and chicanery that’s been pulled against them. So, in a sense it’s just now heating up.