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RUSH: So I’m like everybody; I’m watching this last night, and there was a picture. There was a picture on my TV, and I guess it was around 9:30 or 10 o’clock, somewhere in that neighborhood. President Trump and Little Rocket Man were exiting whatever room they had spent some time in, and they were on the move. They were headed to their working lunch room.

And I notice that as they’re walking along, Trump is kind of shepherding Little Rocket Man. Trump made sure he was right next to him, side by side. But Little Rocket Man seemed a bit diminutive to me. And I think I’ve got this guy pretty much sized up, which I’ll get to in a moment. I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

They finally get to the room where they’re gonna have the working lunch, and there are not too many people in that room. It’s a rectangular table, and from our vantage point on the right side table was Trump and Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, and they had a couple of translators and maybe an additional person. So six people per side.

And then on the Nork side you had Little Rocket Man and his group. And I’m looking at this picture, and I’m just imagining — remember the story we had yesterday of all these 400-some-odd think tank, foreign policy intellectuals who are upset that Trump is blackballing them from his administration because they had ridiculed him, criticized him all during the campaign.

All during the primaries, written and signed letters claiming Trump was a disaster. And now they expect Trump to just forget that. Presidents are supposed to forget what’s said about them during campaigns and be bigger than all that. And these guys are upset and their feelings are hurt because they haven’t been hired.

And now they claim that Trump is not acting presidential because he’s actually blackballing them. But it wouldn’t just be them. It would be the entire Obama foreign policy operation and the media. Watching that picture, I think their head exploded, I think they were blowing up. I think that they were coming more and more unhinged. They’re looking at that picture, and they, A, can’t believe this is happening.

I don’t believe that anybody thought this was gonna happen. I think the media — and, by the way, folks, excuse me for harping so much on the media. When I use “media” now, I’m being inclusive of the entire opposition to Trump. As you know, I think they lead it. I don’t think the Democrat Party leads the opposition. I think the media does. The media gives the marching orders, not take them. And I’ve been of this opinion since Trump was in the campaign.

I think they were all caught completely flat-footed with the success of this meeting. I watched ’em all day yesterday. I watched ’em last night. And to a network — we’ll exclude Fox — to a network, expert after expert condemning it, ridiculing it, no chance, no way, Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, we’re on the verge of a potential disaster, all of it.

And the remarkable thing was that I don’t care how many of these people on the left and all the networks spoke, they sounded identical, whether they were journalists, whether they were think tank people, former Obama administration, they had one line, two lines, and it was identical: Trump incompetent, Trump’s gonna get snookered, Trump is dangerous, Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, this could be the worst disaster in American history. Those were the themes, and they were all over the media all day yesterday and all of last night.

Now, I happen to know, and so do you, because I’ve told you, I happen to know that a deal like this or a summit like this — you know, Mike Pompeo’s been working on this for months. All kinds of behind-the-scenes work that nobody saw has been going on for months. It was known yesterday, it was known last week that this was gonna happen unless Kim Jong-un did something to blow it up.

But this meeting wasn’t gonna happen if this agreement wasn’t gonna be signed. And that’s just standard, day-to-day tradecraft. Any administration practices that policy. Just like you don’t grant a witness immunity without knowing what he’s gonna say, you don’t show up at one of these things without knowing the outcome. And I’m here to tell you that if this deal was not gonna be signed last night, that Trump would not have shown up. And his people would have advised him not to show up, even though he would not have needed the advice.

Well, guess who else knows this? The media. They know this! Anybody in Washington knows this is how these kinds of things work. And yet there they were all day yesterday, all night last night, “It’s not gonna work. Trump’s gonna blow it up. Trump’s out of his league.” Trump’s out of his league to a sheltered, pot-bellied little dictator? Trump is out of his league to Kim Jong-un? They insult our intelligence.

I think — and this is shocking to me — but I think they were totally caught off guard. I think they’re sitting there yesterday — well, what was really going on was they were hoping it was gonna blow up. They wanted it to blow up. They wanted Kim Jong-un to humiliate and embarrass Trump. So when that didn’t happen, I think that they were caught completely flat-footed with the success of this meeting, and especially the signing of the declaration which reiterated the Norks’ pledge to get rid of nukes.

The experts did not expect any of this. And one reason why is Obama couldn’t pull it off, and if Obama couldn’t do it, why, then, nobody could. And don’t laugh. That is how they think. I was reading, there’s a piece today in The Atlantic by a guy named Jeffrey Goldberg. And it’s the most amazing thing — and there are many like it today — analyzing how this is a disaster, but it might not be and if it is not a disaster, we’re cooked.

One of the mentions in this piece as to why Trump is not taken seriously in foreign policy is that — are you ready for this? — he has not sat down with Thomas Friedman at the New York Times and done an extensive foreign policy interview. And because of that, Trump is out of his league. I read this, and I believe they think it. Thomas “Loopy” Friedman apparently is the definition in official Washington of whether somebody has legitimate foreign policy credentials or not.

How screwed up is that? And apparently the Washington establishment subscribes to it. It’s mind-boggling. It’s another illustration of the great and wide disconnect that exists between the political class, the elected class in Washington, and the rest of us.

So they’re caught short, totally shocked, totally surprised. So now they have to find a way to condemn it. They have to find a way to blow it up, because they were caught flat-footed. They never thought this was gonna happen. And don’t laugh when I say “because Obama couldn’t get it done.” If he couldn’t, then nobody could. The fact that Trump did makes Obama look bad, other previous presidents look bad. That can’t stand, either.

So I was watching early this morning, and I predicted this. Not that that matters. But they need a narrative today that they can consistently use all day to describe Trump as a failure and as having gotten snookered by Little Rocket Man. That narrative is that Trump has announced the end of war games. Trump has suspended military exercises with the South Koreans in the neighborhood of North Korea, the South China Sea. Of course, the ChiComs.

They have glommed onto that as their narrative, and they’re portraying it as actually a win for the ChiComs, that the ChiComs have succeeded, North Korea, ChiComs working with North Korea. Trump was bamboozled. Trump was totally snookered. Kim gave up nothing, and Trump has suspended war games.

When was the last time the American left cared about the military? They have traditionally opposed war games on the basis that they’re games, on the basis that they’re wasteful, on the basis that it’s unnecessarily militaristic. Well, Trump has canceled them, so he said to Stephanopoulos ’cause it’s too expensive. They don’t accomplish anything. They know how powerful we are. We don’t need to have war games for the Chinese to know how powerful we are, the North Koreans. He’s exactly right about it.

So that’s been the ongoing narrative of the day, that encapsulates everything the opposition and media want to convey about Trump being snookered, Trump being bested, Trump screwing up. And yet the reality on the ground is we have never been here before. Nobody has ever pulled this off.

Now, Susan Rice — get this — Susan Rice, whose son we adore, by the. We must remind everybody we adore Susan Rice’s son. He’s at Stanford. Susan Rice this morning said (paraphrasing), “Well, all this means is that Kim Jong-un wasn’t in the mood to change when Obama was president. Obama clearly could have done this and more if Kim Jong-un had been ready.”

So, you see, it doesn’t matter who the president is. All credit is due to little Kim, Little Rocket Man. Trump is simply a bystanding beneficiary of Little Rocket Man deciding he wants condos and high-rises on his beaches. Well, if that’s the case, he finally chose somebody who knows how to build some. Obama couldn’t build any high-rises and didn’t want to. That’s hilarious, by the way, that as an aside.

So any excuse to exempt Obama from the ranks of the unachieved and incompetent, any length whatsoever to denigrate the achievement of Donald Trump. But it cannot be denied, this achievement simply cannot be denied. We have never been here before. And with the North Koreans we have never been presented with this opportunity before. The idea that Donald Trump is going to be the one who gets snookered, they’re gonna continue to run with that, but it’s asinine.

Trump will not be snookered. Trump holds the cards. We all do, the rest of the world does, as long as sanctions remain on Little Rocket Man; and they do. Did you see that Trump showed Little Rocket Man his limo, The Beast? Little Rocket Man wanted to see The Beast. Little Rocket Man has his own car. It’s a Mercedes S600 that has been outfitted with security measures that cost up to $2 million. There’s also in that Mercedes S600 a portable toilet.

Apparently Little Rocket Man takes a portable toilet with him. The toilet is not built into the car; do not misunderstand. It’s probably in the trunk, and when Little Rocket Man has to do his business he uses it because he doesn’t want the stools of the Dear Leader examined by hostile forces. He took the portable toilet to the five-star hotel suite in Singapore.

Anyway, he wanted to see The Beast. So Trump tells the Secret Service guy to open the door, and Little Rocket Man peers in. It’s got the American flag all over it, and it was classic. I think another thing that the media is going to downplay, they’re not even gonna realize it’s a factor. Kim Jong-un is a different age than his father, grandfather, obviously.

And you know my theory about every once in a while generations come along that just refuse to accept the ways of life of their parents and grandparents. And I think Little Rocket Man — I don’t think he likes leading a squalid, poverty-stricken country. I think he wants a better life for himself. I think he’s tempted by these things, where his father and grandfather never were. Trump knows this and is using it.

I mean, that video, they prepared a video that they showed Little Rocket Man on an iPad, what his country could be with international investment. Folks, this was classic. Wait ’til the media figures this out. I’m amazed they haven’t gotten onto this yet. Trump is showing Little Rocket Man (paraphrasing), “See that beach? When you launched your missiles at us, I didn’t see the missile. You know what I saw? I saw your glorious beach, and I looked at that beach, you got a beach every bit as good as Palm Beach. Let me show what you could do with that beach.”

Here comes the video with condos, high-rises, speedboats. Little Rocket Man is looking at this thing, dazzled at it. Now, wait ’til the media figures out that Trump wants to do a deal to build Trump International high-rise in North Korea, whatever they’re going to say.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Nobody knows where this is going. All we know is we’ve never been here before. We’ve been told that we’ve been here before, but we haven’t. We’ve had previous agreements. Obama and Clinton made agreements, but those agreements all involved giving North Korea money, like Obama gave Iran money. We haven’t given ’em anything. And Trump himself is saying, there’s a long way to go here. We don’t know where it’s gonna go. And if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But we’ve taken the first step here.

Now, in light of that, do we all agree here that it would be in the best interests of the world for North Korea to not be a nuclear nation? Okay, fine. I mean, a lot of Americans probably couldn’t care less about North Korea and don’t think that their missiles could ever hit us. It’s never gonna be a reality. But other people have to.

The thing is this. If we can all agree that North Korea becoming a civilized nation and one of the practicing economic nations of the world and eliminating its nuclear capabilities is a good thing, then why, why is the opposition to Trump doing everything it can to be nothing but as negative as they can be? Of course, the question answers itself. I’m asking the question specifically to illustrate exactly what we are up against. These are the people that hope to be running the country down the road, and it is frightening if that ever happens again.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It wasn’t that long ago, ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats and the Drive-By Media were saying that Donald Trump was too fiery, that Donald Trump was too bullish, he was too bearish, he was too like bull in a china shop, he was too unpredictable, he was too uncouth, too stupid. Donald Trump was pushing us into war with all of his ill-advised, undiplomatic comments about our enemies around the world. He was provoking them. He was going to cause a war.

Now today they’re saying Donald Trump is too weak. Because he canceled, temporarily, the war games, the military exercises near South Korea. So they say Kim Jong-un has won, the ChiComs have won, Trump has gone wobbly, Trump has gone weak. Six months ago they’re worried Trump was too strong. What is happening — and it’s happening in front of every American’s face — is that President Trump is making many former political leaders look unaccomplished. He is making them look ineffective.

He is causing many people to look back on previous leaders, presidents, members of the Washington elite, and he’s causing people to question just how good they really have been, just how accomplished they are, just how smart they really are. Donald Trump is making all of the experts and the pundits look bad. He’s making them all revel. He’s making them all traffic every day in inaccuracy. They are wrong and wrong and wrong.

I had to laugh. CNN, MSNBC, a number of the newspapers have gone out and done stories or had panel discussions featuring expert negotiators tell us what Trump has been doing with Little Rocket Man. Expert negotiators. Well, who? What have these expert negotiators negotiated? What makes them experts? What makes them experts is that they’re in the club, they’re in the establishment club. They’re experts; they’ve been hired by a think tank, they’re experts. They advise members of Congress on negotiation. They’re experts. What have they negotiated?

Who were the brilliant wizards that negotiated the Iran deal? What makes them experts? Nothing! They were fools! I’m not saying that Donald Trump isn’t above criticism. But there isn’t a single former Obama official who has the background to criticize anything Trump is doing. There’s not a single one of them who is anywhere near as achieved or accomplished as Donald Trump just in plain old general life.

These are people from academia. These are people from the faculty lounge. These are people from think tanks. They haven’t built anything. They haven’t conjured anything. They criticize everything. They analyze everything. They exercise their minds while sitting in the faculty lounge sitting on their asses. They don’t do anything. And yet we’re told when they’re on TV that they are the expert negotiators or that they are the expert economists, they are the expert political analysts.

And not a single one of them has gotten very much right in the last two years. They have been humiliated and embarrassed in their area of expertise almost every day, certainly weekly, ever since Trump became the Republican nominee. Their expertise lies in sending Obama down to Havana and holding hoisted hands with Raul Castro. That was the result of an expert negotiation.

Another expert negotiation resulted in pallets of American cash having been illegally converted from euros by foreign banks being flown to Tehran for delivery to the mullahs in exchange for American hostages. Expert negotiators in the Obama State Department made that deal happen. Those are the people presented to us by our media as experts.

And they have the audacity to sit there on TV and to say of Donald Trump that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he represents a clear and present danger because of his inexperience and his just unseemly personality. The guy is an ogre, he’s gauche, he embarrasses us, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And these people who haven’t accomplished a damn thing outside of academia, these people the farthest you can be from the backbone of America, dare to sit there. And it’s not just Trump. It’s you and me who don’t know what we’re doing. It’s you and me who are representative some kind of political extremism or radicalism.

The expertise, the expert negotiator in this whole thing is Donald Trump! Donald Trump is the expert negotiator, and the evidence is clear. It’s evident. They were surprised. They were shocked. They didn’t see this happening, even though in their own minds they should have known it was gonna happen because these events don’t happen if there isn’t going to be an agreement. The event is canceled rather than have a humiliation or an embarrassment by the failure to get a signed document, whatever it is, out of whatever deal, whatever negotiation is taking place.

They should have known something was gonna be signed. And yet they continue to be flat-footed, shocked, and surprised, and they tell us they are the experts. They may be experts at spying on us. They may be the experts at infiltrating the IRS to deny you tax-exempt status. They may be experts at flat lining the U.S. economy. They may be experts at destroying the American health care industry. That may be their wheelhouse of expertise. They couldn’t even negotiate a deal with Russia to “cut it out,” to stop meddling in our elections. The expert negotiator that we’ve all watched in action the last year and a half, whatever, is none other than Donald Trump.

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