RUSH: Donald Trump, the media is going nuts. I just watched a little, by the way. David Gregory on CNN is just beside himself that Tillerson called Trump a moron even though everybody’s denying that. “You just can’t have a volatile, this is too volatile, this kind of volatile.” He got stuck on the word “volatile.” “This volatility, people are afraid of the president, telling the president the truth, this can’t stand, the Iran deal, oh, it’s horrible.”
And then Wolf Blitzer says, “Well, it’s gonna get even worse now. We have to take a commercial break, but we’ll come back.” These people are unable to give it up and so Trump is toying with them. This is last night in Washington at the White House. During a meeting, senior military leaders and their spouses, Trump spoke to reporters about the gathering, and Trump and two reporters had this exchange. Now, when I saw this on TV, it was hard for me to hear it. Trump’s a little bit of an echo. He’s far from the microphones and the shutters here are going crazy. But see if you can hear this.
THE PRESIDENT: You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: What’s the storm?
THE PRESIDENT: Could be the calm before the storm.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: What storm, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: We have the world’s great military people in this room. I will tell you that we’re going to have a great evening. Thank you all for coming.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: What storm, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: You’ll find out.
RUSH: (laughing) “You’ll find out.” That’s another one of those movie lines. “You’ll see. You’ll find out.” Trump had dinner, hosted a dinner with military leaders and their spouses, and so the president said, “You know, you guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.” All the military people there. And a reporter said, “What’s the storm?” “Could be the calm before the storm,” Trump says. Female reporterette: “What storm, Mr. President?” “We have the world’s greatest military people in this room. I will tell you that, we’re gonna have a great evening. That you all for coming.” “What storm, Mr. President?” “You’ll find out” is what Trump said.
So ever since then — I saw it on Fox, and as soon as the bite played they cut to senior political analysts to try to cut through the sludge here to figure out what Trump mean, and they all thought it means war with North Korea. And then I started hearing about how that would be devastating. You can’t have a war, conventional or otherwise with the North Koreans because of the number of people in South Korea who would die and Samsung would get blown to smithereens. And Samsung gets blown to smithereens then there’s no screens for the new iPhone. So you can’t have Samsung destroyed, you can’t have all these people — they were talking about this.
That’s all Trump said. Senior political analysts were suggesting that a war with North Korea can’t happen because Seoul, South Korea is right there. I mean, those people would all die. I mean, Kim Jong-un is not crazy, blah, blah. They’re going nuts trying to figure this all out. So we have a montage, classic Trump. He owns the media. They know it. They resent it. He tweaks them all. Did you see what he tweeted the other day?
Snerdley, did you see this? Trump asked out of nowhere, “Why don’t we have hearings and investigate the journalists for their fake news?” You know, it was like a golden oldie from the campaign that was resuscitated, brought back to life, and they had a cow. They can investigate people all day long, but you can’t investigate them because of the First Amendment.
Oh, speaking of which, I’ve got a great history lesson coming up on the Second Amendment. But after Trump told them that this may be the calm before the storm with all the military people in the White House, Trump plays ’em like a Stradivarius, sends ’em scrambling to figure out what he’s talking about.
CRAIG MELVIN: A curious comment from President Trump.
CHRIS CUOMO: Why did he say that? It comes as officials tell CNN President Trump is prepared to decertify the Iran nuclear deal.
JOSHUA GREEN: There were three U.S. Green Berets killed. Some kind of retaliation coming?
ABBY HUNTSMAN: Could it be something they’re dealing with with ISIS?
NICK KRISTOF: I think what he was trying to do was send a signal to North Korea.
CHUCK TODD: Having to do with Rex Tillerson, when he refers to storm, he’s referring to that.
DAVID IGNATIUS: It’s part of his strategy. It makes people nervous and that’s what he wants to do.
MATT LEWIS: It could be nothing. It could be just Donald Trump talks, he says things. It could be something.
RUSH: Whatever it is, they went batty trying to figure it out. It’s the most fun thing to watch when Trump starts tweaking these guys because they know it and they can’t help it. They know he’s tweaking ’em. They know he’s putting ’em on, but they can’t resist it. (interruption) No, I have no idea what he was talking about, no clue. But it wasn’t that we’re gonna hit North Korea. I will guarantee you it wasn’t that. Well, I say I guarantee. I don’t know, but if we were gonna do it that’s not how there would be a prelude to it. Of that I’m confident.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned earlier, ladies and gentlemen, and I caught during a break a roundtable discussion on CNN, David Gregory and others, Wolf Blitzer, beside themselves over Trump and whatever’s going on with Tillerson and Trump saying, “You’ll see soon.” Whatever his big secret is, they’re going nuts. And I said that it seemed to me, it was a quick glance at it, that David Gregory seemed incoherent. Everything was volatile this, volatile that. So Cookie went and got the bite. And my instincts were right on the money yet again.
GREGORY: At a time that’s volatile like this. The state of affairs in America at a really volatile time. This is incredibly volatile, and most of the volatility comes from this transparent, volatile speech from our own president.
RUSH: What’s happening here? There’s incoherence everywhere. There’s incoherence at halftime at the football game last night. There’s incoherence on CNN. Everything’s volatile. The volatility of the speech, the volatility of the transparency, the transparency was volatile. Harvey Weinstein was volatile. The volatility there, man, that’s off-the-charts volatility.
What are they talking about? They don’t know. They are so discombobulated that they’re now drifting into incoherence. They truly are.