RUSH: We have a couple of surveys out here that have a lot of people stymied, and one of them is from Quinnipiac University. Ninety percent of the people surveyed favor Trump’s trillion-dollar infrastructure spending bill. Ninety percent. Ninety percent of Republicans. Ninety percent of Democrats. Ninety-one percent independents. Ninety-two percent men. Eighty-eight percent women. Ninety-two percent white college graduates agree.
So it’s overwhelming. And there are people out there trying to figure this out ’cause it doesn’t jibe. Republicans, 90% favor trillion-dollar government stimulus. This is not just Trump voters. This is everybody. And it doesn’t make sense, because all of these years everybody has assumed that it’s Republicans and conservatives who would oppose this in numbers close to 90%. And yet here they are supporting it. It’s not a surprise that 90% of Democrats would support this, but that 90% of Republicans, slash, conservatives has got people pulling their hair out.
CNN with basically the same question. Seventy-nine percent approve of the government spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure. Seventy-two percent Democrat, 79% Independent, 87% Republican approval in the CNN poll. Why do you think this is? ‘Cause a lot of people are saying, “This doesn’t make any sense. Look at the numbers of Republicans that opposed Obama’s stimulus.” Now, I think it’s easy. I think the explanation here is easy. And it’s one of the reasons that people are rock-ribbed ideological miss what’s happening.
Some of these rock-ribbed Republicans and conservatives are still trying to figure out how Trump won. So they’re still in a state of confusion over that. Well, let’s compare the two stimuli. The Obama stimulus, otherwise known as the Porkulus bill, was never going to be spent on the claims Obama made: rebuilding roads and bridges and schools. Everybody knew, on the Republican side, because they know who Obama was and is. Obama is a Big Government liberal, and when Big Government liberals spend Big Government money, it’s usually spent on welfare or similar type things.
In the case of Obama’s stimulus, most of it went to union groups state by state by state. They weren’t any new roads built, other than those already scheduled to be repaired and built. There weren’t any new school repairs, and there weren’t any bridges. None of the things that Obama got the money for actually happened. But Trump has been very specific about what he wants to use this money for. He wants to rebuild roads, bridges, and he makes a point of airports. And he talks about how dilapidated they are compared to other modernized airports in other places around the world.
And I think all this reflects is a realization on the part of American people. The American people, many of them, and particularly on the Republican side, think the country is falling apart in a whole bunch of different ways. We’re falling apart culturally. We are falling apart in our politics. We’re falling apart politically. And I believe it’s nothing more complicated than people actually do think that we need to modernize some things in this country. And I believe that if you would deeply ask these people, if you would find these people that make up the people saying 90%, say, agree with the premise, you would find that the vast majority of them think that this is a legitimate responsibility for government, state and federal combined, to make sure that the airports are modernized and not falling apart, to make sure bridges are not gonna collapse down the road, to make sure dams are okay. The stuff that people assume government does anyway, that’s government’s responsibility, state and local.
I mean, the private sector gets hired to do these projects. That’s another aspect of this. You’re gonna spend a trillion dollars, but who’s gonna get it? It’s gonna go to jobs, it’s gonna go to contractors, it’s gonna go to people who get hired to build and rebuild and refurbish these various projects. This money is literally going to end up — I think people trust Trump on this — this money is literally going to end up in the economy. It’s going to end up as commerce. It’s going to create jobs. It’s going to have demonstrable upside results.
I think it’s just a simple matter of trusting Trump when he says this is what he’s gonna do, plus he’s a builder. And they look at Trump’s properties, they see the buildings and other things that Trump has built, and they are all modern, and they’re all state-of-the-art, and they all look cool. And this is what Trump’s expertise is. And I think people agree with Trump when he runs around complaining about the state of infrastructure in this country.
As he points out himself, you can’t drive along the FDR, head up by Yankee Stadium on your way to the George Washington Bridge, you can’t help but look up at some of those tunnels and bridges and wonder how many days they’ve got left before they start to fall apart. They’re rusted out here. You can’t miss it just looking at it. You go through the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel and you see whole sections where the bricks have fallen, and you wonder, did they fall on a car driving in front of you? What happened? Where are those missing tiles?
Those bridges and tunnels, the tunnels particularly, have been there for who knows how long. In some cases, yeah, you gotta go back to Robert Moses who got the Triborough Bridge built and all these things in New York. In some cases it’s a hundred years for some of these things and there hasn’t been any modernizing. People see this each and every day. You go to the airports in this country, and it’s a ditto.
You know, I’ve got Apple TV, and Apple TV has a bunch of screen savers. If you put the setting to download new screen savers every month, then you get new ones, and what they are are 4K — well, you can’t get 4K in the — They’re high-definition, slo-mo drone footage of some of the most beautiful places in the world. That’s the screen saver for Apple TV. And I noticed in the last three weeks that there are cities and airports that I’ve not seen. I take pictures of these and try to find, where is that? And most of them are in Asia. Many of them, some of the stuff in Hong Kong, some of the stuff in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Dubai.
We have nothing like it in this country. Skylines of cities in Malaysia put us to shame. Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m saying it’s patently obvious to anybody who observes that we haven’t modernized a whole lot of our infrastructure in many, many years, and yet people are very aware of how much money has ostensibly been allocated for it. Then you add the experience people have at the airport with the TSA and with the hassle it is to get to the gate, get on your airplane, and what you have to walk through to get there and so forth.
I think it all resonates. I think 90% of the people in this country are common-sensical and realize that we have fallen way behind on simply maintaining the status — you know, the Golden Gate Bridge, I’m fascinated with the Golden Gate Bridge. I have been to the top of the South Tower. When I lived in Sacramento, I on the air expressed the desire countless times, especially after I saw the movie A View to a Kill, which they ostensibly staged a fight scene on top of the North Tower. They did, actually. And I met somebody in the highway patrol who arranged for me to get to the top of the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge.
And the way you do it is this. You drive down there to the bridge and you go to the bridge authority office and you get in the golf cart. They know you’re coming. It’s all preset. Get in the golf cart, and they drive you out to where the South Tower intersects the bridge, and you go in a hatch like you would find on a submarine, and inside there is an elevator that holds two people. And it’s not a luxury elevator. It’s a construction elevator with a floorboard and not much on the side or top.
I had a little video camera and I had to put my camera on top of my head and hold my arms up for the other people in the elevator to have room. It goes very slow. You go up there, and you can hear the bridge moving with the traffic and the wind. It’s dark. Every 10 or 20 feet is a 10-watt lightbulb. And you just keep going and going, because it’s slow. When the elevator stops, you’re still not there. You have to climb a 30-foot ladder to get to a hatch that opens like a literal hatch at the top of a submarine that’s wide enough for one person to go. Then you finally climb up to that ladder, 30 feet, 20 feet, whatever it is. It’s a straight-up ladder. It’s not a stepladder. It’s a ladder built onto the side of some wall in there. You climb up there, and there you are, you’re on the top.
I looked at this and I imagined building this in the Great Depression. And they got it done, along with the Bay Bridge, in four years. And it has withstood everything the world’s climate has thrown at it. It’s painted every day. It’s constantly painted. They never are not painting it or doing maintenance on it. It requires it, all the fog, the rust prevention that they have to do. I got an education on just how many cables, the strength of the cables that are anchored on both sides of the bridge in the earth to support the cables and the roadway that’s supported by the two towers.
It just impressed upon me how difficult building that bridge was, especially with the technology we didn’t have back in the 1930s when this was done. And that bridge has been maintained. That bridge is every bit as functional and as new, modern as it was when it opened. But look what it takes for that. But you can’t say that about a lot of the other infrastructure in the country. I’m only focusing on the Golden Gate Bridge ’cause I’m fascinated with it. I’m sure there are other places just as good, just as maintained, not trying to slight anybody here. I’m sure the George Washington Bridge — well, no, I’m not. (laughing) I’m not. But that’s only because I haven’t studied it. And the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is even bigger than the Golden Gate, even longer than that.
But I just think people are very attuned to the fact that the United States is not keeping pace. And yet they’re aware of how much money this government spends on stuff. And then they read the other day where California just spent a hundred million dollars in legislative bills on fairness? And, meanwhile, they’re worried the Oroville Dam is not gonna hold up, but we’ve spent a hundred million dollars on fairness? Believe me, more Americans than you would know are aware of this kind of stuff and think it’s long past time the United States got its act together and modernized airports and made sure that bridges were shored up or were not gonna plummet or collapse. Same thing with potholes in highways.
Look at New York City. How many people live in a block? You have a couple skyscrapers, condos and apartments. Thousands of people living in a block. The streets ought to be paved in gold with the tax revenue just for the block! They aren’t, obviously. But a trillion dollars to make America great again, people in this country think that’s a valid investment. But a trillion dollars to buy votes for the Democrat Party, no way. That isn’t gonna help them.
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RUSH: Somebody here wants to weigh in on the stimulus and why 90% support it. This is Klein in Des Moines, Iowa. Welcome to the program. It’s great to have you here, sir.
CALLER: Thanks Rush. I just wanted to mention that the first thing that popped in my head when you mentioned that 90% is most people understand that Trump’s gonna get three times more done with that money than any other politician would have.
RUSH: Do you really think that? I mean, that’s a specific thing to say. You think people are confident Trump is going to actually get three times the value for that trillion dollars?
CALLER: Yeah, I do. And it’s actually gonna get done. You know, right now they do so many surveys and studies and spend half the money, and then a year later it’s yet to be even started. And I think Trump’s actually gonna —
RUSH: Well, that’s true. The lawyers get their share, and then the environmentalists get their share, and there’s a whole bunch of different hands in any kind of allocation or spending, appropriation, and by the time you end up with a net amount, it’s way below what has actually been appropriated, ’cause so many people are taking their cut out of the deal. Well, anyway, thanks. I appreciate it. It’s interesting.
I don’t doubt that people are confident Trump will get it done. That’s why he was elected. He’s a builder. I don’t doubt that people believe it’s needed. But the real thing here, folks, maybe I should emphasize this again. Let’s go back to what the traditional ideological divide in the country is. You would think that the automatic response to this by Republicans and conservatives would be to oppose it. “Government? Trillion dollars?” In the first place, they would ask, “Where we gonna get the money? We don’t have the money!”
The second thing they would say is, “It’s not the government’s job, for crying out loud, we’ve spent our whole career, we’ve written, we’ve established think tanks, whole identities predicated on the fact that we oppose this kind of stuff and now all of a sudden you’re for it?” So they’re scratching their heads trying to figure this out. It boils down to one reality, and that is most people are not ideological, sadly. They’re not.
But I think the reason why those old rules of thumb don’t apply here, and the polling data, if we choose to believe it, indicates it doesn’t apply, how in the world can 90% of Republicans and 91% of independents support the government growing by a trillion dollars? Which is essentially what we’re talking about here. And I think it boils down to substance. I think people have certain beliefs in the role of government. What is it for? And in many cases, it’s kind of like definition of federalism, which that word causes most people to misunderstand what it actually is.
Federalism actually is the system where the states and local communities do the vast majority of things under the belief that people closest to a situation should be the ones to deal with it, to resolve it, repair it, fix it. The other part of federalism is that by virtue of our founding, the federal government’s supposed to be distant and involved in as little as possible.
The federal government is only supposed to do the things no one else can do, such as wage war. The states cannot wage war. There would never be unity. The federal government has to wage war. The federal government has to provide for the national defense. The states can’t do that. But when it comes to things like bridges and highways, well, the national highway system, the Interstate Highway System, that again was the federal government. The states could not have done that themselves unless all 48, 50 would have gotten together. I’m sorry, 57 had gotten together. But the federal government can get it done, design it and so forth.
Federalism is where anything the federal government shouldn’t do or can’t do, the states do. Well, that’s the opposite of liberalism. Liberalism wants to give as much as possible to the federal government. There was a story the last couple of weeks, transgender bathroom bill. Trump signed an executive order taking the federal government out of the equation. He sent it back to the states and he said you people figure this out.
If the people in Minnesota want anybody to be able to use any bathroom because they identify as a boy or girl on a given day, you decide. The governor of Minnesota was livid. He didn’t want it. He wanted some distant capital mandating it, taking the heat off of him. He wanted transgender bathrooms, but he didn’t want to be on the hook for it. He’s a liberal Democrat governor. He wanted Washington to mandate it.
This is the difference. Liberals want Washington mandating as much as possible. Federalism says, nope, the federal government you don’t even see if it’s a state or local issue. Well, you know as well as I do that the federal government is involved in so much that you can’t shake a stick at it. And it’s gotten way big, too powerful, and so forth.
Now, this proposal of modernizing roads, bridges, airports, I think these are the kinds of things that most Americans think the federal government’s gonna have to direct it to get it done. But you’re saying, “Rush, airports are not national, and bridges are not.” Which I think offers up something else fascinating. Trump has said that there’s going to be a mixture of federal and state and local private revenue. And people start hearing that, they shake their head, “Well, what? Private revenue?” Yeah. “How’s that gonna work?”
Well, Trump hasn’t explained it yet, but we might be able to imagine what it would be. Partial equity for helping to rebuild a building or a bridge or a road or modernizing a portion of an airport. The point is, it isn’t all gonna be federal money by the time Trump gets around to actually proposing what this is. But I think most people that voted for Trump, and apparently a lot of people that didn’t, really believe this is necessary, bottom line really think that it is a proper role for government.
Now, if you take the trillion dollars and you just start pork barrel spending it, that 90%’s not gonna stay 90%. I think it also means that people do not yet associate Trump with traditional Washington behavior, among things at the top of that list would be pork barrel spending. I think they genuinely believe that Trump is a get in, get out, and fix it, move on to something else kind of guy. I don’t think they see Trump as a traditional politician. That’s why he was elected.
But you have some lifelong Democrat like Obama come along and propose this, and the suspicions are immediate because of experience guided by intelligence. We know what Democrats do with all this big money, and we never see anything modernized, we never see anything fixed. All we see is constituents of Democrats paid off and strengthened.
It’s like the story we had last week. Do you remember when I passed on to you what happens to most of the corporate fine money under the Obama administration? Corporation X commits a crime or a violation, such as BP oil, the oil spill in the Gulf. And so here comes the Obama administration. And after they’re found guilty, the Regime sends the DOJ, the attorney general out to send a message: Okay, we’re gonna fine you. You got two options here. You can pay $50 billion — I’m picking a number here — $50 billion to the United States Treasury or you can pay $20 million to Planned Parenthood.
Well, if you’re BP oil, what are you gonna do? You mean $50 billion to you or $20 million to plan? Yep. I’ll send the $20 million to Planned Parenthood. The Obama administration was using fines to underwrite left-wing, extremist, radical groups. It’s one of the reasons they sought corporate violations. Corporations would roll over. I mean, the federal government comes calling, the Department of Justice, you’re all over. It’s easier to pay ’em the money than to fight ’em ’cause they’ve got all the money they need to hire lawyers ’cause they got a printing press. Corporation doesn’t, they got stockholders.
I don’t think people associate anything like that with Trump. They take him seriously so far. They think he’s being straight with ’em. And when he says he’s gonna modernize this, he’s gonna build a wall, whatever he’s gonna do, they trust that he’s gonna do it. That’s why this health care thing is kind of important, and he’s out there tweeting (paraphrasing), “Stick with me on this. First Phase, it’s gonna be beautiful when we’re finished with it. It’s gonna be wonderful. Don’t doubt me.” He’s tweeting this out to conservative groups and others who are not cool with this health care reform bill as they know of it right now.
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RUSH: We had an audio sound bite on the program yesterday from Salena Zito, the reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She’s written in the New York Post, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. She made a name for herself during the campaign by going into all of the small towns that she could in interior Pennsylvania and Ohio, many traditional Democrat states, and she saw nothing but Trump signs.
She found people, Democrats, independents, just could not wait to vote for Trump. She, therefore, believed Trump was going to win even before the convention. She thought Trump was gonna win in September 2015, based on the people she was talking to. And she’s continuing to go back and talk to these people. And they haven’t changed. They have not soured on Trump. They have not softened. They have not lost any enthusiasm.
And in fact she has a column that ran the New York Post yesterday about all this, and this goes to why so many people that voted — actually it’s people that didn’t vote for Trump, too, in the Quinnipiac poll who support to the tune of 90% Trump’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. The headline of her piece: “Trump’s Voters Have High Hopes Even if They Don’t Expect Miracles.” And I think that says it all. They’re not expecting miracles. And this is where the anti-Trump forces are missing it again.
They think Trump is gonna have to hit a grand-slam home run and come through specifically on every promise he made or else Trump voters will abandon him. That’s what they’re hoping on and counting on, and they are wrong. And they’re wrong because they still do not understand the people who voted for Trump. They still hold those people in contempt.
And they’re not interested in getting to know them, they’re not interested in understanding them. They don’t want them to win ever again. They don’t care what those people think. There’s nothing to learn from them. They’re just the nameless, faceless rabble that make up the population of the country, but that’s all they are to the Washington establishment.
“Trump’s Voters Have High Hopes Even if They Don’t Expect Miracles.” And her date line here is Mingo Junction, Ohio. Just one of the countless places that she toured during the campaign, and now as I say she’s going back to these places.
“Many people living in this town of used-to-be’s don’t expect their community will ever return to its glory days. They don’t anticipate the return to a downtown of bustling businesses patronized by a well-paid middle class working at the Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel plant. They want a little fresh paint on the vacant buildings, to cover up the sorrows lining the main business district’s ironically named Commerce Street.
“And they’re not expecting magic from President Trump. ‘All we need is to invest in ourselves with some small businesses up and down the street, and we’ll be fine,’ said Rich Grimm, a retired steel worker. Grimm is aspirational, pragmatic about the return of steel or coal jobs, and determined.”
All these people are Democrats. She makes it a point to speak to mostly Democrats. These people just want a change in direction. They just want America to be what it was when they were growing up. They want to live in a place they think is getting better all the time. They want to live in a place that even though there’s drastic change, that there is adaptation to it, the opportunity to adapt.
Okay, so Main Street shuts down, but what’s gonna take its place? Why does our community have to die? We don’t want our community to die. And in Trump they believe that he has them in mind when he talks about making America great again. So again, the strict ideological analysis of this is people are gonna miss the boat if that’s how they continue to look at this.
And, look, folks, it’s tough. I mean, I know some rob ridiculous conservatives who love Trump who are still, “What is this trillion dollars, I can’t get any arms around it. We’re not supposed to support this. I don’t get this localism. I don’t get this partnership, government, what do you mean, user fees? How is all of this gonna work? It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand the government spending a trillion dollars. Why are we for it? I don’t understand.”
And the confusion there is all rooted in this is just not something we Republicans or conservatives we’re supposed to automatically reject this because the result of this is not something we support, government getting bigger. And I think that’s also the key. If this money is spent outside Washington, how’s Washington getting bigger?
I’m trying to tell you how I think people are looking at this. And I think part and partial to understanding this, understanding public opinion on this, is being honest with what people outside Washington actually think of it and have thought of it for a long time. They don’t trust it. They don’t like it. They don’t believe in it. They don’t think they have any impact on what happens there. Along comes Trump. Boom. In their minds, things have changed.
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RUSH: Just got an email. I’m not gonna mention the airport. “It’s like going to the Third World. English is the second language!” Yeah, I know. I know; that’s exactly my point.