RUSH: You know, the more you get into this, the worse it actually is. Listen to this. This is from the Washington Post story with the headline: “Eight Ways Trump Got Rolled in His First Budget Negotiations.” This, in the Washington Post, is their number one roll, and it’s understandable. The only thing that didn’t get any money in this budget is Trump’s wall. Everything else — including everything Trump opposes — got a budget increase. Try this: “There are explicit restrictions to block the border wall.
“We knew last week there would be no money to start construction on a project… But the final agreement goes further, putting strict limitations on how Trump can use new money for border security… Administration officials have insisted they already have the statutory authority to start building the wall under a 2006 law. This prevents such an end run.” Can I translate this for you? And, by the way, it’s true. Trump has been running around saying legislation from 2006 authorizes the building of the wall — and, for all intents and purposes, it does.
This budget has put a restriction explicitly on building the wall! Now, some of the quasi-Republicans in the media who are trying to soften the impact of this are saying, “Well, yeah, Trump didn’t get the money to build the wall. But, man, is there all kinds of new border security in there. This is a win for Trump because there’s all kinds of new border security authorizing more freedom and latitude and leeway for ICE and Border Patrol people and all that.”
The truth of the matter is that this budget explicitly takes aim at building the wall and says it cannot happen. So where does this come from? is the point. Who wrote this budget? Did the Democrats write this budget? Well, that’s what we’re led to believe. What we’re led to believe is the Democrats wrote the budget, and they used the threat of a government shutdown, and once again those rascally Republicans (who thought they were gonna do an end run again on the United States) were brought up short because they know a government shutdown will be blamed on them.
They will lose every election thereafter, and so they caved. That’s what we are supposed to believe. And the Republicans seem content with that! The Republicans — mystifyingly — seem content with the spin that they’re scared to death of a government shutdown and therefore the Democrats can’t be opposed. Now, I know this budget reflects Democrat Party thinking. I know that… What I just read anything from the Washington Post. I know this represents their ideology. They don’t want a wall. They don’t want any limitations on illegal immigration. They want their sanctuary cities funded and acknowledged.
And all of that happened. But did the Democrats really write it, or is this somebody else’s work? It may be six of one, a half dozen of the other, because the Washington establishment is for the most part very liberal and very progressive. The community of people that we’re talking about, not all of the population of Washington, but those that have any contact offer tie with government, 94% voted for Hillary. So the actual governing portion of Washington, D.C. (and even the surrounding areas of Virginia, Maryland) is overwhelmingly big government liberal.
And those are the people who are the power behind the throne. And the Republicans just don’t stand up to ’em. That much is abundantly clear. Which is why Trump was elected. Look, I hate being repetitive. I’m just saying that this is all going to fall on Trump’s shoulders. And I think he’s fully aware of it. I think he knows. I think he was hoping for something different. I think he was hoping that the Republican Party would actually unify behind his agenda and his election. And that may have been a bit naive, but I think he was hoping for that. I think he was probably a little surprised at the disunity and the division after his election, certainly after his inauguration.
But all of this is an elongated wake-up call. So we’ll see. We’ll just have to let it all play out and see what happens. But this is… There’s nothing in here. I mean, if I were, if I had the job… If my job were to carry the water for the Republican Party, I don’t know how I would do it. I don’t know how in the world I would! If that was my job — which it isn’t, for those of you in the media. But if it were, I don’t know how I could. I don’t know where I’d do it. I don’t know where there’s water to carry here. And if I tried, you people? You’d throw me overboard, if I tried.
There’s nothing here that’s defensible, at least when it comes to the areas that we’ve talked about here: Funding cities, funding Planned Parenthood. How in the world can anybody come to a Republican voter and say, “Hey, hey, hey, we got ’em right where we want ’em! Hey, hey, be patient we’re if we go to. Hey, hey!” There’s no way I don’t know how you would carry water for this. Not that I want to; don’t misunderstand. I’m just coming up with new ways to explain what a sellout, disaster, betrayal — whatever you want to call this — it is.
Okay, let’s go to the audio sound bites. As I mentioned, there’s lots of other things going on out here, and one of those things going on is the ongoing battle between Trump and the media.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Sean Spicer, White House Daily Briefing. The sharks are out asking and asking about the budget deal, and how it squares with Trump’s agenda and his campaign. John Roberts of Fox News: “What do you say to conservatives who feel like they didn’t get a whole lot of out of the spending bill? There was no money for the wall. There were no cuts to sanctuary cities. Funding for Planned Parenthood was maintained. What do you say to those people?”
SPICER: People have to keep in context. We’re talking about 2017 funding, right? So this is something that most presidents would walk into office and that would have been done. Because the last Congress didn’t do this under President Obama, we have an opportunity to get some of the president’s priorities infused to the last five months of 2017. That’s a big step forward. Remember, this is 2017 funding. This is something that he wouldn’t normally even have a shot at because it should have been done. So infusing his priority in the 2011 budget cycle is actually something that he’s able to have a say in, which is a big deal the remaining five months. The 2018 budget will address those things.
RUSH: Okay, so let me translate this. What he’s saying is, “Under normal circumstances we wouldn’t have even had this, a newly incoming president. The budget would have been done last September, October, and it would have been done. Nothing he could have done about it anyway, no matter what. This was an incomplete budget, and so they had to finish it.” nd Spicer is saying, “A lot of Trump’s wishes are in this budget.” But what he really said was, “You wait for Trump to really get into gear in 2018,” meaning the 2018 budget, which starts October 1st of this year.
The fiscal year is October 1. So what Spicer is saying is, “Look, we wouldn’t normally have had any input in this at all because this would have been a done deal from the last Congress. But since it wasn’t a done deal, they had to finish up the spending. There’s not a whole lot of opportunity for Trump to fix anything here, ’cause this is not normally something he would have been involved in anyway. But the next budget starting this fall, when we start negotiating, that’s Trump’s budget, and that’s when you better start paying attention.” That’s what Sean Spicer just said. That’s what that means.
(translated) “Don’t pay any attention to this! This is a previous administration’s budget that was incomplete. We had to fill the stopgap, and that was that. This doesn’t mean anything! You just pay attention when we start putting together our first budget. This isn’t Trump’s!” I’m just saying that that’s what he said. (pause) Uh, no. No, no, no, no. I don’t remember that. What I remember is Reince Priebus on this program the Friday after the election saying, “No excuses. We got no excuses now.” But look, Spicer is saying… Just to repeat this, he’s saying, “In a normal year, this wouldn’t have happened.
“In a president’s first year, the first nine months of that year are irrelevant in terms of the budget because it would have been done under the previous president’s watch, with a previous Congress. In this case, the previous budget was not complete. It was a series of CRs, and so we had to fund the government for the rest of this year. It was not considered important enough to go to the mat on because it’s not even our budget. Our budget starts with the next budget, which will be negotiated this fall, and the fiscal year begins October 1st.” Spicer was simply saying, “That’s when you’re gonna see Trump get in gear.”
I think if you go back to the first hour of the program, I got close to predicting this.