RUSH: Now, the government shutdown and the way it ended on Friday, I think there might be some confusion back on Friday over the weekend about how the shutdown would be ended. You know, Trumps goes out there and says (paraphrasing), “We’re gonna end this, gonna reopen the government for three weeks. During the three weeks we’re gonna negotiate with the Democrats about a wall, a fence, border security, and if I don’t get what I want, then I might do national –” by the way, Marco Rubio I think was on Meet the Press over the weekend.

Rubio said, “No, no, no, no, we don’t want to do a national emergency for a wall. That’s a precedent that we don’t want to set.” So there is already opposition to the president in his own party. You could get mad at Trump all you want, you can get mad, but why wasn’t this done when the Republicans had the House for two years and the Senate for two, why wasn’t it done? And you could even ask Trump. Why didn’t you push for it?

Why didn’t you — like when Obama, they had the Democrats and the House and the Senate for two years and they got Obamacare barely, and then the Republicans win the House back from Obama and his first midterms and then Obama starts taking up a bunch of things he knows he’s gonna lose because the Republicans won the House, and all the Democrats are saying, “Why didn’t you do this” whatever it was “when you had both houses?”

You can say the same thing about Trump and the Republicans. Why wait ’til the Democrats take back the House to make the big push on the wall? And you know there’s an answer to this that some people would give. The answer would be because no Republican really wants the wall. They didn’t push for the wall when they could have done it, they wait to push for it to satisfy campaign promises when they know it won’t pass, when the Democrats are there, so they can get a twofer. No wall but make it look like they really want one, but they just can’t overcome that witch, Pelosi. And so now Pelosi becomes the focus of obstacles and evil and all of that.

But the Republicans could have done this any time starting in 2017. You could throw Trump in there too. He could have worked as hard on the Republicans to do this, but he had other things he wanted to do. He wanted repeal and replace Obamacare, he wanted trade deals, but he had an agenda that he was working on. The wall was one of his big promises, and I think he knew that there wasn’t a whole lot of support for the wall on the Republican side. He wanted to take things up that he thought he could get passed.

And then the Democrats win the House and Trump voters start making noise about the wall and, hey, this opportunity’s slipping away, so all the Republicans get in gear when they know that the Democrats control the House and it isn’t gonna happen! I mean, on paper it isn’t gonna happen. So the Republicans get to run around, “We tried. We really tried. We’re working hard. We went along with the government shutdown for 35 days” or whatever it was. But they don’t get the wall.

And you and I know that there are a lot of Republicans that don’t want the wall because their donors don’t. And the Democrats don’t want a wall for all the obvious reasons and maybe some reasons we don’t know. I mean, who is the money behind the Democrats on this? We know the Republican money is the Chamber of Commerce, so-called Big Business that wants all that cheap labor, the opportunity for it, but who’s the money behind the Democrats and their stance on this? That would be interesting to know. I mean, there’s gotta be moneyed interests who want an endless parade.

And, by the way, I’m not saying that the Democrats do not have their own independent reason for wanting this. They want their perpetual underclass that will constantly be dependent and therefore voting for them. But there are other people that want this flow of people for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. Unless you want to make everything a political issue. But who are the moneyed interests?

I mean, the Democrats are not wavering. There’s not a single one of them. Some wavered on the shutdown, like eight or 10 members of Congress in the House, Democrats. But for the most part, who’s the money behind them? And I’ll bet you it’s people that we don’t know yet. It’s more than just your average Democrat climate change donor. There’s probably people behind the Democrats money-wise that my guess is we’d be stunned if we learned who it was.

Anyway, the way it happened, way the shutdown ended, somebody asked if Congress would have to vote on a continuing resolution bill. For the record, back on Friday the continuing resolution measure, without any wall funding — this is the same one that Trump refused to sign about a month ago, that continuing resolution without any wall funding was passed in both houses, House and Senate by unanimous voice votes. Nobody went on the record. Trump Signed it later on Friday.

And so Reuters puts out this celebratory news story: “U.S. Congress Votes to End Government Shutdown; No Trump Border Wall Money.” And then TheHill.com has a story: “Trump Doubtful Over Border Deal, Says Another Shutdown ‘Certainly An Option.’”

Let’s go to audio sound bite number 6. One of the reasons I didn’t lead with this today, I gotta be honest with you. The Drive-Bys have been listening with eager anticipation to how I would open this program. The Drive-Bys are salivating. They probably have bets. They’re probably making wagers out there on if I will abandon Trump or not, if I will be mad at Trump or not, and when I will do it.

So I purposely waited to even bring this up until the second half hour of the program, and this is why. We have a montage from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and this morning of a bunch of media people claiming that I caused the shutdown and now Trump has to worry about losing me.

EAMON JAVERS: (noise) The president has been very concerned about the right wing of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh in particular.

NOAH ROTHMAN: …like Rush Limbaugh are not abandoning the president over this.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: He (crosstalk) listens to Rush Limbaugh!

BRIAN STELTER: …Rush Limbaugh on the radio, saying give him time.

JOHN HARWOOD: (noise) He does have to worry about what happens on his right wing. Rush Limbaugh…

ELI STOKOLS: …a nervous reaction to some of the complaints that they heard from the right flank from people like Rush Limbaugh.

CHRIS WHIPPLE: …take his orders from Rush Limbaugh.

ASAWIN SUEBSAENG: He has the backing of people like Rush Limbaugh.

DAVE JACOBSON: … placate Rush Limbaugh.

MATT LEWIS: …keeping Rush Limbaugh on board.

JULIA MANCHESTER: President Trump really feels very beholden to the Rush Limbaughs.

BRIAN GARDNER: …the Rush Limbaughs of the world.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: … Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Look at the incalculable damage that those two have done.

KIRSTEN POWERS: I don’t know why he thinks that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have more power than he does.

RUSH: It’s just… (laughing) I go back and forth on whether or not these people actually believe this or whether they are just mouthing political bromides here. That last voice was Kirsten Powers. Now, Kirsten Powers once wrote a book, and the publishers asked if we would interview her for her book. It was about free speech and how the left needs to tone down in some sense. It wasn’t a total hit piece on the left, but it was reasoned middle ground here from a leftist commentator. So we interviewed her. I was very nice to her; she was surprised.

I talked to her about 45 minutes to an hour and then a bunch of email messages after that, and here it’s as though she has never talked to me. It’s as though she has no idea who I am. “I don’t know why he thinks that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have more power than he does.” Does she really think that? I will guarantee you that Donald Trump doesn’t think anybody has more power than he does. This is just… It’s absurd! And then for Scarborough, who can’t even tell people the truth about why he’s doing his show from Florida now. (interruption)

You didn’t know that? Oh, now the… Scarborough’s doing his show from his home in Jupiter and making people think that he and Mika are in Washington. So the New York Post caught up to ’em and said, “Why are you doing your show in Florida? Why are you fooling people? Why don’t you tell people you’re in Florida?” Joe says, “Well, we wanted to come to Florida to be closer to our families.” Families? Family here? Scarborough’s family in Connecticut. They were from Florida some point.

They’re down here to escape taxes, but they won’t admit it! I don’t blame ’em for that, but at least when I did it I told everybody why I came down here, among many other reasons. But for some reason they won’t, and now he says, “If Rush Limbaugh…” Look at the “incalculable damage” that Coulter and I have done? Anyway, so you see, they’re waiting and they’re hoping that I’m gonna just come out today and sock it to Trump and rip into Trump and say, “Trump, I’ve had it.”

Not yet, folks. Not yet, by a long shot.

Why would I come out against the president who allows me to make national policy?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, sir. One more sound bite here before we get started on the phones. This is Pencil Neck, Adam “Bug-eyed” Schiff. He was on Stephanopoulos’ show yesterday, ABC’s This Week. The question: “Are you prepared to support any funding of a wall as part of a broader immigration compromise with the president?”

SCHIFF: We agreed on conference reports that would set up the funding for border security. The only thing that got in the way was the president was frightened off by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. And while we will negotiate among us each other and with the White House, we’re not about to negotiate with these conservative pundits. One of our top priorities is passing a bill to make that kind of shutdown impossible in the future.

RUSH: (Snort!) So now you’re gonna make a shutdown impossible. I have never negotiated with any of these people. I don’t know any of these people. I’ve never said a word to these people! This is so absurd. This is all part of their ongoing effort to defame and to impugn. They want the brain-dead people that watch the Drive-By Media to actually think that I am behind this shutdown.

It’s a way of making sure that no additional people ever start listening here, and it’s a way to keep this fevered-pitch hatred for conservatives up at a high level. They are engendering hatred here for me and others who have nothing to do with any of this. I’m not whining, folks. I’m just telling you what’s going on. People that do not understand the degree that hatred for us propels the leftist agenda are going to forever be shocked and dismayed as that agenda marches on.

Quickly to the phones. Orlando. This is Ed. Great to have you, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. Rush, I want to check your opinion on something. I’m one of the millions who supported Trump, still support Trump. During the shutdown, all of these polls supposedly said all these people who were deserting Trump… I’m assuming they were a lot of his supporters. I voted for Trump like I’m sure millions did for basically three things: build the wall, put in the judges that’ll follow the Constitution, and taxes. Of course, there’s some other things. The point I’m trying to make is, who are these people who supposedly have gone off the reservation because of the shutdown and no longer support him? Who’s gonna build that wall, Rush? Who’s gonna appoint these judges? He’s our best hope to get this done.

RUSH: I get you. I think what you’re seeing in those media reports is hope and prayers and… Well, they don’t pray. They’re hoping that Trump’s base is gonna abandon him, and they’re assuming that it’s happening because that’s what would happen on their side. If one of them, one of their leaders had a hard-and-fast agenda item and they betrayed their voters on it, then those people would go berserk. So they think it’s gonna happen here.

Most Trump voters think like you: There’s nowhere else to go here, and the larger enemy is the left, not Trump. The larger enemy is the opposition to America, the opposition to the American founding, the opposition to us — and Trump is it. If you bail on Trump, then you’ve got literally nobody stopping this forward march by the left. So I think it’s largely… It’s imagined. They might read some conservative media people claiming they’re leaving Trump or some fringe tweeters and assume that that means Trump voters at large.

You know the dirty little secret? Trump’s approval numbers among Hispanics is 50%. During the shutdown, it went up 19 points. You know what Nancy Pelosi’s are? This is the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. You know what her favorable-unfavorable numbers are? Nancy Pelosi: 28% favorable, 47% unfavorable. Nancy Pelosi, who’s being treated as practically the queen of the country. You’re being lied to so often in the media, folks, it’s hard to keep track of all of it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Nancy Pelosi, by the way, has explained her shutdown strategy. And just to remind you, NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Pelosi’s approval number at 27 or 28%, her disapproval at 48%, I think. And yet if you watch the Drive-By Media, you would think that the nation loves Pelosi. And if you look at the Drive-By polls, you would see 48% of the people have lost faith in leadership, they’ve lost faith in the current direction of the country.

Now, depending on who they’re talking about, I could understand people thinking that. But the one thing the media doesn’t know as they continue to blame me for the shutdown and throw my name out there with all these stories about it, and as they write stories on how you, the Trump voters of America, are abandoning him, it is abundantly clear they still to this day do not understand Trump, and they do not understand the people that voted for him or why. They haven’t the foggiest idea, or these stories that they’re writing about people abandoning Trump would cease.

About that, let me make an observation. Let’s kind of do a timeline revision of this whole wall business. Let’s take the first two years of Trump’s term, when the Republicans had the House and Republicans had the Senate. Do you recall — and I could be wrong about this — do you recall a clamor daily, anywhere, on Twitter, on Facebook, anywhere from Trump voters, “Where’s the wall? Where’s the wall? Where’s the wall?” You don’t, really. Just an observation.

I mean, nobody was hell-bent largely because they trusted Trump on what building the wall meant. They trusted that Trump remained committed to securing the border and not granting amnesty to everybody here already. Whether there was any talk of the wall or not, which is why people were patient. Trump voters were patient.

So all during the first two years Trump is trying to repeal and replace Obamacare, he’s trying to de-nuke the Norks, he’s trying to rearrange trade deals with the ChiComs, he redoes NAFTA, much more fair terms for the United States. He totally revamps American manufacturing, puts more people back to work in this country than, as a percentage, have ever had jobs. He has improved working conditions and employment circumstances for women, for African-Americans and Hispanics, who are all experiencing the lowest unemployment rate ever. Trump pulled us out of the Paris Accords and refused to let the United States get taken again by United Nations world body under a bogus issue of climate change.

So the Trump voting public was largely pleased. They were largely satisfied. What they didn’t like was this never ending, incessant attempt to destroy Trump, this silent coup being run by Obama’s Department of Justice and intelligence community with Robert Mueller doing who knows what. They were livid as they learned the truth and the details about this effort to get rid of Trump and to overturn the election results.

And during all of this, Trump voters were largely satisfied with his performance, and he was keeping promises, and he was standing up to all of these people trying to take him out. He was engendering a lot of people very proud of him and they were willing to go to the mat to defend him no matter what. Then here comes the midterm elections and the Democrats win it. But Trump did everything he could to forestall. He went out and did all of those rallies.

He’s the hardest working guy in Washington on the Republican side of the aisle, either by reality or perception, depending. He’s doing all these rallies. And many of the people he went out and rallied for got elected in the Senate and beat incumbent Democrats like in Missouri. So Trump’s not taking any days off. He’s not sloughing off. He’s not phoning it in. He hasn’t given his supporters any reason to be unhappy with him.

He continues to tweet. He calls out the left and the media for their rancid behavior. He gives his supporters countless reasons to cheer every day, amidst their anger and rage at the left and at the media. Then, despite Trump’s efforts, single-handed efforts to win the House, the Democrats win it. And as the Democrats do every December, because we have these ongoing continuing resolutions, the government was about to run out of money. So we needed to sign a continuing resolution to keep the country running.

And then it was reported that the president wanted money for the wall in this and the Democrats told him to go pound sand, it wasn’t gonna happen. The word leaked that he was gonna sign that. But he wasn’t gonna sign it! But the word was, the news was that he was. That got everybody riled up. And now we live in a world where the media says that Trump was on the way to signing it until I spoke up and a bunch of other people spoke up and he changed his mind. He was never going to sign it.

That’s how the wall has become an issue, not because of Trump’s performance. You say, “Well, why didn’t they push it when the Republicans had two years unopposed?” There were other things. There were efforts made. The Republican Party, if truth be known, doesn’t want a wall. For the first nine months of Trump’s administration, the Republican Party thought he was gonna be sent packing! They believed all this Russian garbage!

I think if you look back on it, it’s stunning what Trump has pulled off here, what he’s put up with, what he’s triumphed over. And I don’t think he’s shown any sign of not believing any more in border security, and I don’t think his voters think he has betrayed them yet on this. Trump voters don’t look at him as the problem, they don’t look at him as the enemy, they don’t look at him as a traditional politician breaking promises. Just the exact opposite. But the Drive-Bys are just incapable of seeing Trump or you exactly as he and you are.

Let’s take a brief time-out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, I was gonna go back to the phones, but I’m gonna have to delay that ’til the next segment. I just got a sound bite here. Just moments ago on CNN the infobabe host, Brianna Keilar, was talking to the White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, a guy named Peter Nicholas, who apparently just recently interviewed President Trump. And so Brianna Keilar, the infobabe at CNN, said, “Ann Coulter called him a wimp. Lou Dobbs said the president got rolled on this wall business. How big of a problem does the president see losing those two supporters?”

NICHOLAS: Ann Coulter’s name came up in our interview. And he said, you know, he thinks that she’s just upset because he doesn’t return her calls. So he didn’t seem that worried about it. He mentioned Rush Limbaugh is still supportive. He mentioned Sean Hannity is still supportive. So he thinks that he still has conservatives in his corner.

RUSH: Well! There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the president told reporters everything’s cool. I’m still with him. The Drive-Bys are not gonna be — well, actually I think they will be happy. I think they’ll be able to, in their minds, massage and manipulate that.