RUSH: President Trump, the Trumpster, appeared on Fox & Friends this morning on the Fox News Channel, and one of the three that were interviewing him (all three of them in there) Ainsley Earhardt, [Steve] Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade, and… Who was it? One of them asked with grave concern about the 600 jobs open in the government that need presidential appointment to fill the jobs. (paraphrased exchange)
“Are you working on that, Mr. President? Are you working on that?”
Trump said, “No, they’re not necessary. I have no intention of filling many of these open positions even if they are appointed. We don’t need ’em. Six hundred jobs? Let’s cut ’em.”
Open mouths.
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RUSH: Now, I mentioned right before the top-of-the-hour break that Trump was on Fox & Friends today and said, “What do you mean 600 jobs are open? I may not fill ’em. We don’t need ’em.” Snerdley looked at me like… You should have seen him. The look on your face was, “Trump’s an idiot.” Is that what you think? Under him, he should fill the jobs? (interruption) It’s what…? It’s what he said he was gonna do. It’s nothing shocking.
You even gave me a story. It’s in Politico: “Trump is Delivering on His Promises.” Why is anybody surprised by any of this? Trump was as open as any politician’s ever been about his agenda. Five times a day, he’s making speeches at rallies, and he’s telling anybody who will listen what he’s gonna do. And as he’s arrived in Washington, he’s started doing it — and once a week, we get a story like the one in The Politico today.
This guy’s keeping his promises. That’s another thing. That does not happen. Promises and what really happens, the promises are understood to be come-ons, never to be acted on. “What does this guy think he’s doing, acting on these things? This is bad for all of us. We can’t permit this to work.”
Some people think Trump’s blowing it. These are appointed positions, meaning Trump could put his own deep state people in there for the rest of their lives and that he ought to fill the jobs. There’s 600 of these appointed positions at various places in government. Go ahead and put your own acolytes in there, put your own Trump activists in there to do your work after you’re gone. That’s what some people think. But here’s what happened. Brian Kilmeade said, “You have 600 open jobs that you could appoint. What’s going on, Mr. President?”
THE PRESIDENT: Well, a lot of those jobs I don’t want to appoint because they’re unnecessary to have. You know, we have so many people in government, even me, I look at some of the jobs, and it’s people over people over people. I say, “What do all these people do? You don’t need all of those jobs.”
KILMEADE: No idea that you didn’t want to fill them?
THE PRESIDENT: Many of those jobs I don’t want to fill. There are hundreds and hundreds of jobs that are totally unnecessary jobs. And instead of being credited with that bad messaging, they say, “Oh, you have to fill hundreds of jobs.” I say, “Isn’t that a good thing? It’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.” We’re running a very good, efficient government.
RUSH: I’m sorry, folks, these are my sentiments exactly. The government’s the one thing that’s not supposed to grow. The U.S. economy is supposed to grow. The two things can’t really happen together. For government to grow, it’s gotta take money from our economy to grow or print it or what have you. The idea that government should be there when it’s needed but not be Santa Claus and mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and all that. I love this! Six hundred jobs, what are they gonna do that isn’t already being done?
What he means by “people over people,” that’s Trump-speak for, “My God they’ve got 15 people all doing the same thing at this department, that department, why do we need any more people doing the same thing?” People over people is the way Trump speaks of redundancy.
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RUSH: By the way, I should point out here in that sound bite, Fox & Friends asking Trump, Trump says, “Nah, I’m not gonna replace the 600 jobs,” Brian Kilmeade, even Kilmeade couldn’t believe the answer. The idea of government having everything it does funded and all of its people there and we could never shut it down, oh, my God. Even somebody like Brian Kilmeade gets sucked into the idea that nothing can ever make the government smaller, oh, my God, panic city if they — (imitating Kilmeade) “You mean you’re not gonna fill the jobs?”
Six hundred, by the way, 600 jobs, that’s not even statistical in terms of the number of jobs that need to be cut. Wait ’til you see what Trump has planned for the EPA. And I’ll tell you, our buddy Ajit Pai at the FCC, oh, man, this guy is really, really rolling back all this silly regulatory stuff. He’s getting rid of net neutrality, and he’s turning the FCC into the actual commission on communications and broadcasting and dealing with the spectrum and making sure it’s properly assigned, meaning frequencies that are used for every form of communication out there.
But the FCC has been involving itself in your life in ways that are traditionally not constitutional. The FCC just appropriates for itself the power to regulate the internet. Who the hell do they think they are? So he’s rolling that kind of stuff back. My Millennial tech bloggers hate it. They love government. They love regulation. They love control.