RUSH: Now, I have withheld until this moment to mention I’m gonna be out the next two days. And these are vacation days. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you a last minute business thing came up. These are long-ago-scheduled vacation days to coincide with the Memorial Day weekend. You know, it took me awhile to figure out what my staff was doing.
My staff would ask for vacation days on Thanksgiving week. And I’d grant them, sure, what the hell, and then they would dovetail with long weekends and turn a four-day weekend into a 10-day weekend. Well, I’m gonna do it myself now. I’ve decided that I’m going to take the cue from my staff, and I’m gonna maximize vacation time. You know, I could have easily waited and taken these two days some other time, but I’m gonna take ’em tomorrow and Friday.
So we’ve got Todd Herman, still in Seattle? Still lives there. Okay. Todd Herman from Seattle on Thursday and Friday, and a best-of show on Monday. Boy, is it tough deciding that one. Have we decided which one it is yet? We have. ‘Cause I knew people were losing sleep trying to figure out which best-of show to run. Which best-of show is it, do you know off the top of your head? Ah. It’s a combo. Oh, okay. So we’re taking elements of a few shows and combining them into one gigantic best-of presentation on Monday. All right, fine.
Now, I want to make some book recommendations. And these are just the books that I’m aware of that I’ve been dabbling in here, or soon will be. Summertime’s coming up, summertime reading or what have you. One of them is a novel. You know, my good friend Ted Bell has created this thriller series along the lines of Vince Flynn’s series and Ian Fleming, James Bond. His hero is Alex Hawke.
So they’re heading up the mountain in a tram, the tram blows up and there’s a fire. There just happens to be a helicopter of bad guys that somehow snatch Alex Hawke’s son from the burning tram.
“Meanwhile, high above the skies of France, Vladimir Putin is aboard his presidential jet after escaping a bloodless coup in the Kremlin. When two flight attendants collapse and slip into unconsciousness, the Russian leader realizes the danger isn’t over. Killing the pilots, he grabs a parachute, steps out of the plane . . . and disappears.”
Now, Ted writes about Putin a lot. In one of these Alex Hawke books, Putin was in jail, in a Russian jail, having been discovered as a bad guy, criminal, oligarch, friends ruining the country type of thing. And this is Alex Hawke against Vladimir Putin, and it’s called Overkill. And these are page-turners. You can’t put this down. Even the premise here alone sounds crazy, but it’s just fascinating.
And Alex Hawke comes from Bermuda, and he drinks Black Seal rum. You ever had Black Seal rum? It’s 151 proof. And I’m telling you, this stuff — you wouldn’t drink this rum like you would any — this is like cognac. This is to be practically sniffed. It is that potent. But Bermuda has figured prominently in Ted Bell’s books.
And, you know, you might think she’s young to be writing a memoir, but it’s a pre-memoir memoir, is the way that I look at it. Her Christian faith is prominent in the sense that it has shaped who she is. She’s abundantly talented and everybody that works with her adores her and loves her. I remember Sean Hannity first started telling me about Ainsley Earhardt when she would do the half hour news break on Hannity & Colmes. I think it goes back that far, and, if not that far, somewhere about.
Then she started doing little pieces, interviews out in the field with various people that dealt with subjects Hannity was talking about. Her rise at Fox has been pretty rapid and substantive, and it’s just a genuinely fascinating and open, as I say, pre-memoir memoir.
Another one, I’ve met a guy named John Couch. John Couch was the first vice president for education at Apple. John Couch dates back to the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak Apple days. And he is still there. In fact, Wozniak has written the foreword to his book. It’s called Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student’s Potential.
For example, it used to be that people thought — you know, when the iPad came out — “Man, this is gonna be great! Just put ’em in classrooms,” and people did. In fact, the LA Unified School District bought something like 25,000 of ’em. I think that’s the number. But nobody told ’em how to use ’em, nobody told ’em what to do with ’em, and they eventually had to be resold or repurposed or what have you, because there wasn’t a specific plan of action to tell teachers and educators how to incorporate the iPad in the classroom.
Because at the time, Windows was all over the place in the classroom — cheap little laptop computers and so forth. Well, time has gone on, and Apple has updated the iPad software. Now, don’t misunderstand. Couch’s book is not about the iPad. It’s about taking the technology that is all around us and successfully implementing it in education, which a lot of people still haven’t figured out. Technology is everywhere, and it’s being innovated every year. It’s being simplified every year.
But figuring out how to insinuate it into the educational life of a student or teacher in a classroom — organizing plans, doing homework, keep track of things — that’s just now beginning. But Couch’s book here goes way beyond just the iPad. I’m mentioning the iPad only because that was how Apple made their first real pitch, the new pitch into education. But Couch’s book here is about the whole concept of all technology and how it can be unlocked and made as common as rulers or as common as chalk was or as common as the old analog tools that people used in education.
Nobody really knows how to incorporate all this high-tech in a positive, uplifting way, and that’s what Couch is attempting to do. Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student’s Potential. And that really is the key. It’s student oriented, not classroom oriented. It’s oriented toward finding where students are getting the best out of them. Conrad Black — who is a friend of mine for quite a while — has a new book. It’s just out. Conrad thinks it’s short. (interruption) What are you laughing at?
It’s 256 pages, and Conrad says, “Hey, it’s a small book. It won’t…” (laughing) The 256 pages is small. Conrad Black is Canadian. He is a former media baron. He owned the Jerusalem Post, the Canada Post or Canada…? The major newspaper in Canada at the time. He is a real-world intellectual. By that I mean he’s an intellectual who will not be off-putting to people. He’s fascinating. You sit there and you listen and you marvel, and sometimes you want to burst out laughing when you’re not supposed to. Sometimes you just can’t stop soaking it all in.
It will be the week after I got back, or next week, and I’m gonna let you in on a question I’m gonna ask him, because it fascinates me. “Conrad…” Actually, if you knew him, and if you heard him speak, you would think that Conrad is of the establishment, and you would think that Conrad Black would look at Donald Trump and would say, “Don’t you ever darken my door. Do not ever come into my house. You are a reprobate!” But it’s the exact opposite.
Conrad Black thinks that Donald Trump is going to be the most memorable and perhaps the greatest president in the history of the United States. He is unabashed in his support for Trump. He is fearless in his explanations of Trump. He has done business with Trump. He’s been friends with Trump for years. He loves Donald Trump. Donald Trump does not offend him. It’s one of the many ways that Conrad Black, if you knew him, would surprise you. But he’s totally all-in. The title of his book is Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.
As he says, “It’s not a long book. It’s not heavy. It’s only 256 pages.” His biographies of Nixon and FDR are 800 pages, 700… (interruption) I know. Conrad’s Nixon biography is all-consuming, absorbing, and it’s sympathetic. It’s supportive. Conrad Black’s somebody you should seek out anyway. Just find things that he’s written and read them. I guarantee you your vocabulary will skyrocket. He will not intimidate you. It’s not like some writers use words purposely so that you won’t know what they’re talking about. Conrad wants you to know what he’s saying. Fascinating. So here we have Overkill, by Ted Bell, a novel.
We have The Light Within Me, by Ainsley Earhardt, and we have the John Couch from Apple book, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student’s Potential. And Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other, by Conrad Black. Also Salena Zito. Folks, you’ve got to get her book. The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. You’ve got to get this book. It is seminal. It is fundamental to understanding why Trump was elected and why he’s gonna continue to be. Get it!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Salena Zito’s book is titled The Great Revolt, and there isn’t a book like it. It’s not a pro-Trump book, I mean, per se. Salena Zito has become the journalistic expert on who Trump voters are and why. She has spent days, weeks, months in all of these neighborhoods and all these blue states and the areas of these states that elected Trump in a shock, voters that normally would have voted for Hillary and did vote for Obama.
She sent me a note expressing her frustration that her coworkers at various networks aren’t interested in what she’s saying, that they’re not interested in really reading the book. I wrote her back. I said, “Well, welcome to the club, Selena. They don’t care what you think. They don’t care what you found out. They’re only going to try to expose your work as irrelevant or incompetent. They don’t really care.” Like I learned when I first started being interviewed by media. They didn’t care what I thought.
They weren’t genuinely curious about who I was. They saw me as a nemesis, and she is seen in the same way. She really thought that she was gonna help open some eyes of media people who are confused about why Trump won. And they could. They could have a lot of questions answered, and they would help themselves in learning what they’re up against. But they will steadfastly refuse to read the book. It would be that helpful to ’em.
Maybe it’s a good thing they’re not, but it is that thorough.
It’s called The Great Revolt by Salena Zito.
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