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RUSH:  Okay.  We’re gonna start on the phones with Robert in Tampa.  Robert, I’m glad you called.  Great to have you with us the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Great to speak to you Rush.  Good afternoon.  How are you doing?

RUSH:  Very well, sir.  Thank you.  I appreciate that.

CALLER:  I had a question about Donald Trump’s speech this morning, and I was wondering: Is this the beginning of a new tactic, to come out swinging and trade insults back and forth with the Democrats in a “race to the bottom,” which is what I’ve heard time and time again?  Are we gonna get specific in this race?  I know it’s early, but it was refreshing to hear Donald Trump come out as plainspoken as he was instead of this kind of —

RUSH:  Wait a minute, now.  I’m confused. I thought your… Your first question, “Are we going to continue to think low? Are we gonna get specific?” as though you were unhappy with this speech.

CALLER:  I am unhappy, because the American people are suffering, and are suffering greatly, and what this comes down to is the electorate, is what it comes down to.  Forget all the speechmaking and all the insults because they’re gonna be there.  But 270 is the number.

RUSH:  Why do I never get calls like this when it’s only Republicans being insulted?  When Democrats are insulted, I get calls like yours saying, “When’s this gonna stop?  When are we gonna raise the level of discourse?” But when Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and Obama are out there destroying Mitt Romney at this time four years ago, I didn’t hear a single person worried about “the tone of the campaign.”  In fact, when Harry Reid was lying about Romney…

Some “friend” told Harry Reid that Romney hadn’t paid his taxes in ten years.  This is after Romney killed the family dog by making it ride on the roof of the station wagon on family vacation, after Romney didn’t care about some employee’s wife dying of cancer.  And I didn’t hear anybody complaining about the lowball nature of the campaign.  Now, all of a sudden, Hillary becomes the target, and it’s, “When are we gonna get back to specifics, Rush? The electorate…”

You know, we’ve got serious issues out there.  You said it yourself out there, Robert.  It’s early, and the official campaign hasn’t even really begun.  But I think what’s going on here is push-back, perfectly timed.  Let me tell you something: The Democrats… It is obvious. If you listen to the media, you have heard Obama praised to the hilt for how he defined Romney in June four years ago, when Romney didn’t have any money to spend.  Romney had a lot of money, but not money he could spend before the convention. 

So you’ve had all these commentators praising Obama and his campaign for being brilliant for defining Romney in June.  You’ve probably read stories where that’s when the election was won.  Okay, fine.  Democrats are doing it again.  They sent Hillary out there yesterday, and every other aspect of the Democrat campaign is aimed at marginalizing Trump or destroying Trump or defining Trump in a negative way.  And I look at this today as push-back, which we don’t normally get on our side.  We got some push-back today.  And we got not just push-back. We got, “Oh, this is what you say about me?  Well, here it’s double for you.”

It may sound schoolyard, but that’s exactly what is happening today.  It’s long overdue.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  You know, Hillary’s speech yesterday was practically nothing but personal attacks on Trump.  When are we gonna get specifics about issues?  Mrs. Clinton’s speech yesterday was fraudulent from the get-go.  Hillary Clinton began her speech yesterday under the assumption… It was odd.  You know, it tried to do two things.  It tried to portray a really solid, growing economy while being critical of it at the same time. 

I was listening to it and reading it on two separate occasions, and I’ve always — during this whole campaign — been fascinated how the Democrats talk about how this country is in such bad shape.  They’ve been running it for 7-1/2 years!  They’ve been in charge of it, everything.  There hasn’t been any serious push-back.  They’ve gotten everything they’ve wanted, and they’re continuing to whine and moan.  That’s why I talk about selling pessimism. 

I’ve never seen apocalyptic pessimism sold so well.  But they’ve mastered that.  And then at the same time she’s portraying herself as a great fixer, as a great improvement.  But was that it?  There was nothing specific.  All we got was the same rigmarole about roads and bridges needing to be repaired.  Well, I thought we fixed that with the first stimulus bill in 2009.  I know. I’m being facetious.  There wasn’t any money that went to roads and bridges.  That’s the point.  We’ve already been bled dry for that. 

Obama already said, “We need to rebuild roads, bridges, crumbling schools!” That’s why we needed almost $1 trillion in his second month in office.  He got the money.  He’s gotten pretty much everything. In the last budget, he got more than he asked for, so the Republicans could be seen as cooperative, so the Republicans could hope people would see them as making government work and making Washington work.  So Obama got even more than he asked for. 

Tax revenue is coming in at a record clip, and the economy still has 94.7 million people not in the workforce.  And Mrs. Clinton comes along and starts mouthing the same complaints about the economy that Obama mouthed during his campaign and even after he had been inaugurated in office.  So I’m sitting here and I marvel after this. “How did they get away with this?”  And I say to myself, “It all comes down to one thing: Good intentions.  They always get the benefit of the doubt on good intentions.” 

Their branding has been such that we are not supposed to examine the results.  We’re not supposed to look at the outcome of their governance, their policies.  Doesn’t matter.  We’re only supposed to look at their intentions, which is the same thing as looking at their big hearts.  They love people. They want the best in people!” Never mind that they never deliver it.  All that happens is the overall situation worsens for the greatest number of people.  So you listen to Hillary make her speech, and you just scratch your head. 

But were there any real specifics? It was all platitudinal things about how she was gonna improve this and make that better.  And I’m saying, “What needs to be better?  You guys have had a 7-1/2 year run here at utopia.  Why isn’t it utopia yet?  You’ve had 7-1/2 years!  How many more years do you need to perfect the human condition?  Which is what progressivism claims to be all about.  How many more years do you need to get the economy right?  How many more years do you need to accomplish what you want to accomplish? 

You’ve had 7-1/2 uninterrupted years! But she didn’t get specific.  All she did was impugn and malign Trump over and over again, and I didn’t hear anybody after that speech whining and moaning about how Mrs. Clinton didn’t get to the issues.  I didn’t hear anybody whining and moaning about how Mrs. Clinton didn’t get to the specifics.  I didn’t hear anybody whining and moaning about how Mrs. Clinton took the campaign to the gutter.  No. 

originalAll we got, predictably so, from the usual Drive-By suspects was what a great speech it was and how Hillary finally took it to that reprobate Trump.  So Trump answers in kind today, and did get specific on some issues as well.  And all of a sudden now, as I say, here we are worried about “the tone.” Here we are worried that “the campaign has descended into the gutter.”  Let me just tell you something: Half of this country’s in the gutter.  Have you ever spent any time on Twitter?  It’s a sewer.  Sad to say, a lot of people react to it. 

Sad to say, a lot of people think that’s what daily conversation is, is combat.  I mean, you gotta deal with what is.  You can sit there and do one of two things.  You can sit there and lament that our culture has gone to total rot and criticize the people who are rotten and have taken it there, or you can try to relate to them however you think you can. Try to convert them away from the Democrat Party, or to at least expose the people they support the Democrat Party is a bunch of frauds.

But, look, everybody has Millennials on their minds, do they?  Everybody has the young vote on their mind.  Seems axiomatic in every campaign.  Well, I have to tell you: The Millennials are a pretty pessimistic bunch.  They’re pretty apocalyptic bunch.  But the problem is they don’t blame current officeholders for it.  They just think the country’s run its course.  They need to be told something different.  Thomas Sowell.  I interviewed Dr. Sowell for the Limbaugh Letter within the past year, and he said something to me that totally surprised me, which doesn’t happen much. 

So much so that I gave it away before the issue was published and told you what he said.  He said… You remember this? He said that he believed… He was really scared that if Iran attacked us with a nuclear weapon, that Barack Obama would not retaliate, that he would surrender.  And I remember reacting in a shocked and surprised way.  “Dr. Sowell, surrender?  I can understand maybe not retaliating, but surrender?”  “I really think he would, Rush.  I think he would surrender.  I think there is no way Obama would ever reciprocate in kind. 

“There’s no way Barack Obama would ever hit Iran in a similar way.  And since Iran had shown that they’re willing to nuclear hit us, to stop the next one, he would surrender.”  I said, “You mean we would become a Sharia law satellite?”  He said, “I’m scared to death that that’s what would happen. Exactly.”  Well, where do you think today’s Millennials are?  Let’s take the universe of Millennials, the 18-to-34 demographic, and let’s compare it to World War II, just for the fun of it. 

I’m not saying one’s better than the other one.  When the Japanese attacked us Pearl Harbor, and when, of course, FDR decided we needed to enter the European Theater, what happened?  We had people, the whole country mobilized behind the effort.  Women started working in the factories.  That’s where Rosie the Riveters comes into being.  Our manufacturing engine just went into maximum high gear.  We started producing airplanes and weapons and tanks and armaments.  It was incredible the way this country ratcheted things up for the war effort.

Even after 9/11. What happened after 9/11?  How many young men immediately joined the military?  Well, do you think…? What do you think would happen now? Here we are in Barack Obama’s America in 2016. We’ve had how many terrorist attacks here?  We’ve had at least one a year since Obama’s been in office.  Now, we’ve not had mass like 9/11.  We haven’t had anything like Pearl Harbor.  But do you detect, after any one of them, any scintilla of emotion that says, “Retaliate”? It’s the exact opposite, is it not? 

Do we not start looking at reasons why we are to blame for it?  Do we not start looking for reasons to justify, for example, why Mateen did it, or the San Bernardino Two?  Do we not start asking, “Why do they hate us so much?”  The question: Is Sowell right? Not just on Obama, but if something like that did happen, do you think the military-aged segment of our population… Look, you can’t… (interruption) Okay.  Do you think that there would be a majority of uploaded mind-set for retaliating? 

You look at World War II.  I went to the American Cemetery at Normandy.  You go to the Vietnam memorial, and the one thing that’s gonna strike you is the number 19. That’s the average age of soldiers who were killed.  By definition, they’re the most fit. They’re the most capable.  That’s who gets deployed in a conventional war.  Now, having said that, I must also… You know, one of my great areas of appreciation is what happened at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day where the Rangers rappelled straight up the cliffs. 

We don’t fight wars that way anymore.  That kind of fighting is not necessary anymore.  Now we got laser guide missiles. We could take… If we were trying to take France, take Normandy today, there wouldn’t be a massive landing of troops on the beach.  We would have laser-guided bombs taking out those German guns, if the German gun installations were the same.  If they were, that’s how we’d deal ’em.  We wouldn’t have to put people on the beach rappelling up the cliffs to take ’em out.  We could take ’em out in other ways.

But even at that, I’m talk about the mind-set. What percentage of the 18-to-34 population today, if we were seriously attacked by a genuine enemy that was without question an act of war, what do you think the mind-set would be?  Surrender, or, “No, no, we can’t retaliate. That would just make it worse! We can’t. No, no, no.  If we retaliate, it’s just gonna expand. It’s gonna make it worse.”  Dr. Sowell is of the opinion that we don’t have a national mind-set today that would mobilize in defense of the country, that it’s a cultural thing. 

Now, this is a long, circular way of getting back to these two speeches, Hillary’s and Trump’s today.  And our first caller asked, “When am I gonna get to the substance? When are they going to stop the name-calling and so forth?”  Name-calling is how people communicate today of a certain age.  It just is.  And if that’s the group you want to reach, if that’s the group that you want to learn what you think, you have two ways you can do it.  Take the high road and hope that the high road’s attractive and they come to you.

Or you can speak their language and start talking about your enemy the way they talk about theirs, as a way of relating to them.  Hey, I’m throwing out possibilities here.  But my point is I don’t think this is bad, all this talk about, “When are we gonna get to substance?” There’s gonna be plenty of time for that.  The substance, by the way, people are living it.  People are living the misery.  People are living the doom and gloom! The difference is, they’ve been told it’s the best it’s gonna be.  They’ve been told our best days are behind us. 

Not in so many words. 

We’ve been told to manage our expectations. 

“This exceptionalism stuff? Nah.  Get rid of that.”

There isn’t anybody out there inspiring people to shoot for the stars.  There isn’t anybody trying inspire people to be better than they are. Well, there actually are. We have a couple sponsors who do, John Maxwell and so forth. But I’m talking about in the political world. When’s the last time from the Democrats? Is there any Democrat who ever spoke like John F. Kennedy spoke?  Is there a Democrat today speaking of upbeat optimism, America can-do spirit, greatness and all that — and the future’s in your hands and you can make it what you want and the world is possible?  No.  It’s the exact opposite of that.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Pat in Grass Valley California.  Not far north… It’s actually Northeast of Sacramento.  Great to have you, Pat.  Hello.

CALLER:  Oh, hi.  Hi, Rush.  Yeah, thanks for taking my call.

RUSH:  You bet.

CALLER:  I’m calling about the gentleman who called last hour to complain about Trump not sticking to the issues or something like that.

RUSH:  Well, he was concerned that it was too much name-calling back and forth and we weren’t getting substantive and getting the actual issues that are gonna determine the future of the country.

CALLER:  Well, then he must be getting his news from NPR, which I call National Propaganda Radio —

originalRUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  — because if you read Trump’s speech, you’ll see that it’s all policy.  Every… He just goes down point by point by point Hillary’s abysmal record as secretary of state.  He’s not pointing to, you know, petty stuff like the Democrats did with Romney. You know, carrying a dog on his car.  He’s talking about people who died in Benghazi.  He’s talking about Hillary’s support for the TPP that’s gonna ruin the economy, make the economy even worse.

RUSH:  Right.  It’s a disastrous foreign policy that’s put this country at greater risk.

CALLER:  The foreign policy, the financial policy, all of the money that she’s taken from — the millions, as you pointed out, the millions of dollars that she has earned and Bill has earned.  Hundreds of millions of dollars, $21 million she’s earned in two years giving speeches that she won’t release to the public.  So this guy should just read Trump’s speech and go down and look at the facts.  And I wish Trump would give this speech every day, because maybe then eventually the press will start covering some of these points or… I don’t know how to get the word out there.  You know, I just went to the NPR website after you mentioned that headline, that Trump just gave the speech that Republicans have been waiting 20 years for.  Well, it’s very interesting. You know, that’s by Mara Liasson who’s supposed to be, you know, sort of a conservative or sort of a —

RUSH:  No, no, no, no.  Just because she’s on Fox, don’t think that.

CALLER:  Yeah, well, she’s just as bad.

RUSH:  No, no, no, no, no, no.

CALLER: There’s two stories on it, and all they do is highlight the rhetoric, and they don’t point out any of the facts: All of the money that she got from the Middle East, the jewels from the sultan of Brunei, the $25 million from Saudi Arabia, and all of these countries that not only kill homosexuals, but they torture them. They kill them in the most unbelievably horrible ways that you can’t even discuss on the radio.

RUSH:  Why do you think that doesn’t bother the left?  I mean, here they are. They’re the big champions of gay marriage, big champions of gays being treated fairly, the big champions of… You know, here comes Mateen, goes in an dshoots up a gay bar in Orlando. Why do they not mind? Why are they not concerned that Mrs. Clinton is bought and paid for by countries that kill homosexuals?

CALLER:  I have been asking myself that question for 35 years —

RUSH:  I’ll tell you what it is.

CALLER:  I see journalism… I studied journalism. I worked at the Stanford Daily. I got my degree in journalism, and I was routinely told by everybody, you know, “Oh, you can’t say that.”

RUSH:  Wait, wait, wait. We’re not talking journalists.  These are Democrats with bylines.  I’m not kidding now.

CALLER:  Oh, I agree.  I agree, I agree.

RUSH:  Pat, the answer to the question is, “They don’t consider the Saudis an enemy.  The greater threat to gays in America is us, is conservatives,” and that’s what they tell everybody. 

CALLER:  Well, you know, you have… I guess you’re right.  But you have to really kind of… I mean, that’s pretty twisted, if you ask me.  I mean, that’s —

RUSH:  It is twisted, but they are glued partisans.  Hillary Clinton is their candidate.  The Democrat Party is their party, and it doesn’t matter what the specifics are.  It doesn’t matter what the policies are.  It doesn’t matter the contradictions, the hypocrisy.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s just… All of that… Like, you’re upset at NPR for n ot reporting the specifics of Trump’s allegations of Mrs. Clinton being bought and paid for and maybe even blackmail-able now by whoever it is that has given her hundreds of millions of dollars on the come. 

She’s destined to be president. It’s in the cards, it is ordained, and that’s what’s gonna happen.  The details don’t matter.  Remember, it’s the way journalism is today.  Hillary, what does she want?  The presidency.  That’s the MacGuffin.  That’s the story.  “Will Hillary Clinton get what she wants?  What will we do to help her get what she wants?” What she wants to do as president is irrelevant.  It’s assumed it’s gonna be good because she’s a liberal, so they’re not concerned about that.  Their concerns are keeping us out, defeating us, and making sure that Hillary gets what she wants. 

That’s journalism today.

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