RUSH: To Hannity last night and his guest Steve Bannon, who I last week, during our fourth and a half hour, said that the way to understand what Bannon is doing as he runs around and gets involved in the Alabama election, for example, and others, Steve Bannon, there’s a vacuum. The Republican Party has ceased to exist. The Republican Party has decided to throw in with the Democrats essentially to stop Trump and the Trump agenda. So what I’ve said is that Bannon is actually filling the role out there that the Republican Party would normally be doing. So Hannity had Bannon on last night, and during a discussion of the feud with Corker, Bannon starts with this.
BANNON: He said there’s only two or three senators on Capitol Hill that have President Trump’s back. When you want to talk about why there’s no repeal, no replace, why there’s no tax cut, why there’s no tax reform, why there’s no infrastructure bill, you saw it right there. McConnell and Corker and the entire clique establishment, globalist clique on Capitol Hill have to go. If Bob Corker has any honor, any decency, he should resign immediately.
RUSH: So this is the natural fallout from this. This is essentially mutiny with inside party politics, except it isn’t because Corker is a member of the establishment, and he’s one of the insiders. And it’s now abundantly clear, as Bannon says here, this is it. Now you know why the Trump agenda isn’t moving forward. The sad thing here is, really — I said this a number of times — if they would just three weeks, three months, whatever, five months, work with Trump to move this agenda forward, they could wipe the Democrat Party out for a generation.
But they don’t want to do that. The Republican Party, as it’s constituted inside the Beltway, has no desire to defeat the Democrat Party. None. Sean Hannity says, “Is Steve Bannon declaring war on the establishment that are not working for the men and women of this country?”
BANNON: We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on. It’s a new game in town. We’re gonna cut off the oxygen to Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell’s biggest asset is the money. We’re gonna make it the biggest liability. We’re going after these guys tooth and nail.
RUSH: This is what the Republican Party would normally be doing, is trying to find ways to get the agenda of their president advanced. Hannity said, “Does this mean that the people that voted in 2010 and 2014, 2016, now they have to wait for another victory in 2018 before anything moves?”
BANNON: To take your country back, it’s not gonna happen in just any one election. This is something you’re gonna have to grind out day in and day out for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years. It took us a long time to get here. There’s no magic wand we can wave and drain the swamp. There’s no magic wand we can wave and blow up this establishment. I hate to tell people, you’re gonna have to work. Even safer incumbents like Barrasso and Deb Fischer, they have to understand something. Just voting is not good enough. You have to have a sense of urgency. Nobody is safe. We’re coming after all of them, and we’re gonna win.
RUSH: That’s essentially what I informed you was happening last week in the fourth and a half hour. The difference now is that with Corker we have it on the table. Corker’s a respected member of the Senate. You heard Mitch McConnell sing his praises. So they have now opened up and admitted what their purpose is, and that is there isn’t a Trump agenda. It’s not moving anywhere in this Senate. Whatever happens in here is what we want to happen, and if it’s the Democrat agenda, fine, but it isn’t gonna be Trump’s. And they’ve said it. It’s no longer a matter of speculation, folks.
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RUSH: Got somebody that wants to weigh in on Bannon last night on Hannity. It’s Neil in Matthews, North Carolina. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: As a Trump supporter from the get-go I wasn’t under any illusion that he would get much of his agenda implemented specifically because of the establishment Republicans in the Senate, Speaker Ryan. And I will admit that I was getting a little worried until last night I heard Steve Bannon on Hannity, laid out the battle plan. So I’m greatly encouraged by his words. And I want to know, what is your take on all of this? I mean, do you think that is a plan moving forward?
RUSH: What specifically are you referring to? The comment that you can’t win it all in one election or you can’t change everything in one election?
CALLER: Yeah, that was it. I mean, you know, like he said, you’re not gonna wave a magic wand and get rid of the establishment. The swamp’s not gonna drain itself. You unplug it someplace else, it plugs back up.
RUSH: Here’s the point. What Bannon said that is I think right on the money — and if it encouraged you, fine — I remember telling everybody, not just before this election, but I did specifically before this, that one election isn’t enough. It’s just one election. If we win the White House even with the House and Senate, that it doesn’t mean that overnight all this stuff is gonna change because Trump isn’t gonna have any allies, from the beginning. Trump winning automatically meant that practically everybody in Washington was gonna be opposed and do everything they could to stop him. And in that sense it’s absolutely correct. And it’s not just one election for president. There are a number of elections all over the country that have to also be won.
And then after the elections are won, action has to follow. We won the House, the Senate, we have the White House after the 2016 elections, and look at it. The victorious election didn’t by itself mean anything. It now requires action moving forward. That was Bannon’s point to John Barrasso. He’s the Senator from Wyoming and people have pointed out he’s got 95% conservative rating from all the groups.
And Bannon’s point was, that’s fine, but you gotta do more than vote. You have to join the movement. You have to understand there’s a sense of urgency, that there is a crisis. My point all along has been to you in this audience that the problem is that the people in Washington don’t think the country is in crisis, they don’t think that the country’s threatened by things. Everything in their world is just fine. And they think you’re nuts if you think we’re in danger of losing the country, quote, unquote.
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RUSH: Let me put this another way. Whatever this is that Trump personifies right now, this movement, if you want to call it that, if it’s going to succeed, it has to survive Trump, even if Trump serves two terms, and that’s what I mean when I say you can’t change everything in one election. The other side never admits to losing.
One of the reasons the left is acting as insane as they are is that they refuse to accept they lost. They were cheated against. They just don’t accept it. Republicans do. Republicans lose, they admit it and say the Democrats won and they get their judges. The Democrats won and they get their cabinet members, and they get their appointees, everything they want. The Republicans rubber stamp it all the way through trying to show the voters of America that they can cooperate and that good governance can happen. The Democrats try to stop everything.
This NFL stuff is part of why we spend so much time on it. The NFL story’s a microcosm of all of the things that are out of whack and need to be recalibrated. We’re talking about the value and moral structure of the country, the foundational guardrails that define the distinct American culture. Those things have been under assault for decades.
And one election, just ’cause the left loses, they don’t say to themselves, “Wow, you know what? People really don’t agree with what we want. We have to change.” That’s not how they react to losing. They say, “To hell with this” and force on people what they believe and what people don’t want, and it doesn’t matter.
What is happening in the NFL, the way Trump is fighting back on it and not letting it go, is an example of how all these things are going to have to be dealt with if there is to be change, because the people who have, from our perspective, screwed all of this up are not gonna one day realize that they’ve screwed up and go away.
That’s why I keep telling every audience I speak to they’re going to have to be defeated. And that requires a daily engagement in battle, which is what Bannon’s talking about when he says Barrasso, it’s not enough that he votes. That’s good, but is he on the battlefield? This, frankly, is a problem in the conservative movement, folks.
I’m not trying to irritate people, but the definition of success that the left has is much different than ours. For example, the left’s definition of success is really overtaking the country and, if they have to, forcing what they believe on everybody and requiring people to behave and think the way they demand. Conservative success is a gig on Fox and a book deal, for a lot of people. Dream realized. Or a gig on CNN. But media success is dream realized. Moving the movement’s agenda, “I don’t know if I want to be that much out front.”
Snerdley is looking at me like he can’t believe I just said that. Why? Am I wrong about it? Oh, I’m hitting a raw nerve? I didn’t name any names. What do you mean, they know who they are? Well, then those who lash back at me are going to be those who know who they are? Is that what you mean? There won’t be any lash-back precisely because of that.