RUSH: Let me share with you a couple of thoughts, opinions, things on this whole Obamacare thing. I’ve had people ask me… It happened yesterday at the Els for Autism charity golf outing, in which my team of me, Marvin Shanken of Cigar Aficionado and The Wine Spectator… He’s a publisher and a great guy, an expert on men’s lifestyle, top-drawer stuff. His magazines are beautiful. And Mayor Giuliani, who’s been on our team since this tournament started years ago, and our pro yesterday was Branden Grace from South Africa.
I had people asking me at every stop, whenever we ran into ’em… We had a sizable gallery following, surrounding people stationed at various holes, and people would come up and virtually all of them saying or wearing things that let you know they support Trump and that they’re paying attention, that they’re excited. They’re optimistic and so forth. People would ask me specific details about things, and it’s a situation where the last thing you want to do is get into a knock-down, deep discussion of this stuff.
It’s a golf tournament. Everybody’s out there to escape it. So I’d just tell ’em, “I think everybody’s gonna be okay. I think everything’s gonna be fine.” Folks, I do. I want to tell you why I’m leading up to this. (interruption) Why are you looking at me with such doubt on your face? Now, I can imagine there’s some people who are gonna have conniptions over this. But I happen to believe Trump, and by that I mean I have enough confidence in Trump.
I don’t believe Trump is going to say things on the campaign trail as often as he did, as purposefully and consistently as he did, and then be one of these guys that goes to Washington and just says, “Well, to hell with that,” and does whatever he can get away with. In other words, I really believe that of all the people in Washington that can come up with the best way to fix anything, it’ll be Trump. Again, experience guided by intelligence and vice-versa.
Now, it’s not doubtless. I’m not a Fanboy. But I have… I just don’t believe Trump is one of these typical Washington people who says things just to say them and then has no intention of following through. In other words, I believe Trump’s dead serious that Obamacare’s bad and it’s gotta get fixed and that he’s gonna do what he can to do it. It’s a faith thing, and I will wait to be proven wrong if that is the case. But I say that because I think what’s really going on with all of this stuff is a massive power struggle.
I think that the old hands at Washington power are testing and challenging Trump and trying to engineer Trump failure, Trump embarrassment, Trump problems or what have you. Power is a very sacred thing to those who have it and those who want it, and those are a different kind of people. We’re talking real power here, the kind of power that determines who gets what out of the $3 trillion federal budget. The power to determine who gets penalized for doing what they do and who gets rewarded for it.
It’s just an incredible amount of power, the power that deals with other nations and states in the world. It’s an incredible amount of power. You and I, we’ve never had that kind of power. I don’t know how many of you aspire to it. I never have. So all I can do is study it from afar. But people in Washington think they’ve got it, and they’re all vying for it to one degree or another. It takes many forms — connections, networking — and then the actual acquiring and use of real power. When you’re talking about that kind of power, it’s a small group.
But I think there’s a huge power struggle going on here, and I think it’s between people in the establishment and Trump. That goes without saying. But I think it involves leadership of both parties, and I’m sure Trump is aware of this. I’m sure he’s under no illusions, and certainly he’s got the kind of people advising him that are clearly aware of it. As I listen to Trump, you know what I think he wants? I think he wants to stand aside and do nothing. I think he wants this thing to implode because I think he wants it to run its course.
He said this enough times. How many times has Donald Trump said, “You know, the political thing to do is just stand by doing nothing. Just let this thing crash and then the Democrats get to blame for it ’cause it’s their bill! But the minute we put a fix on and attach our names to it, then it’s all on us.” You’ll note that in hardly any reference to this does anybody ever call it Trumpcare. You notice? And nobody calls it Republicancare.
It’s still Obamacare, and I expect the Democrats to try to do something about that nomenclature before very long. When Trump says that he’s gonna… All I mean is if Trump says he’s gonna build a wall, I think that he’s going to do it. What I think that means is he’s serious about tightening the procedures we have for who gets in here. When he talks about stopping terrorism, I think he’s dead serious about it. He really…
When he talks about creating jobs and keeping jobs in America, I just believe he means it, and I think he means it in his heart, and I think he’s hell-bent on following through on it. This is all I mean when I say I trust him to deal with it. When he says that Obamacare is a disaster needs to be gotten rid of, I think he means it. Look, folks, for a year and a half he said this stuff 10 times a day, five times a day, and it never changed. He never gave himself wiggle room on any of this. It was pretty matter of fact.
And he’s on the road. I mean, people are already putting checkmarks on promises kept in terms of jobs saved, companies not moving, these kind of things; meetings with CEOs and various other business groups and them coming out and saying they’re the greatest meetings they’ve ever been involved in and so forth. So there’s a story here. This is Real Clear Politics, and this is actually from yesterday: Despite All of Ryan’s Efforts to Save Obamacare, Trump Still Wants to Let it Blow on its Own.
And the actual headline here: “Trump: Republicans Putting Themselves In “Very Bad Position” By Repealing Obamacare, Let It Implode.” Now, what this is: “At a listening session on healthcare Monday morning, President Trump said Republicans may be putting themselves in a bad position by repealing Obamacare ‘because it’s gonna blow itself off the map. And I tell Tom Price and I tell Paul Ryan, I tell every one of ’em, I say the best thing you can do politically is wait a year because it’s gonna blow itself off the map.'”
Now, he said that publicly too. But he always follows it up by saying something else. “But we can’t do that because it’s gonna hurt real people.” Real people. Not CBO statistics, and they’re not nameless, faceless people represented by numbers. Obamacare imploding is going to cause real harm to a lot of people. He makes that point, and he goes further and says and at that point they’re running a risk, is Obama still gonna get the blame or will we get some of it for letting it all happen. You can go either way on what he really means by this and what he would prefer.
But then you add to it Paul Ryan, according to CNN today, is adamant. He’s not backing off one aspect of his bill, not a single aspect. He doesn’t care about the blowback he’s getting, the trashback he’s getting, the feedback he’s getting, the criticism, he’s not gonna back off any of it. So I think that represents the power struggle that is going on.
Trump says on this video: “And I have to say this, just in closing, and then I want to hear some of your stories. And we’ll let the press stay for your stories, if you like.” Remember, this is a listening session on health care yesterday morning. Trump said: “The press is making Obamacare look so good all of a sudden. I’m watching the news. It looks so good. They’re showing these reports — now, this one gets so much and this one gets so much,” individual people and how the benefits are so great now with Obamacare.
“First of all, it covers very few people. And it’s imploding. And ’17 will be the worst year. And I said it once, I’ll say it again. Because Obama’s gone — you know, he — things are going to be very bad this year for the people with Obamacare. They’re gonna have tremendous increases.
And the Republicans, frankly, are putting themselves in a very bad position — I tell this to Tom Price all the time — by repealing Obamacare. Because people aren’t going to see the truly devastating effects of Obamacare. They’re not gonna see the devastation in ’17 and ’18 and ’19. It’ll be gone by then. It’ll — whether we do it or not, it’ll be imploded off the map.
“So, the press is making it look so wonderful so that if we end it, everyone’s going to say, ‘Oh, remember how great Obamacare used to be? Remember how wonderful it used to be? It was so great.’ It’s a little bit like President Obama. When he left, people liked him. When he was here, people didn’t like him so much. That’s the way life goes. That’s human nature.
“The fact is, Obamacare is a disaster. And by — and I say this to the Republicans all the time — by repealing it, by getting rid of it, by ending it, everyone’s gonna say, ‘Oh, it used to be so great.’ But it wasn’t great.” And then he adds the caveat. I say let it fade away, but “that’s the wrong thing to do for the country, the wrong thing to do for our citizens.”
So what do you make of this? I think we can determine what Trump would actually like to do. And again it’s the common-sense thing. This thing was designed to fail. With the proper communication, which is always what’s missing on the Republican side, but Trump can handle that himself. The proper communication, all this stuff can be explained. He can tweet it. He can call Oval Office addresses or what have you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, I do. Oh. Mr. Snerdley is asking me a question. I fully expect to be purposefully taken out of context and misunderstood in my comment not long ago that I have trust in Trump. Oh, I can imagine how that’s gonna blow up. But we’ll explain more about that in the days ahead.