RUSH: Chantilly, Virginia. This is Bill. Great to have you, Bill. How are you doing, sir?
CALLER: I’m doing fine. How are you doing, Mr. Rush?
RUSH: I’m doing okay. Doin’ fine and dandy here. Goin’ into a three-day Presidents’ weekend.
CALLER: That’s good. My point… My call is that the president didn’t need to sign that spending bill today. He could have not signed it, declared the emergency, and we, as his base of supporters, would have supported him 100% on it. But by signing it with all this negativity that’s in it, all the basic giveaways that he’s doing, he’s damaged his base. I mean, there’s just no getting around it. People are upset that he signed this into law basically giving open borders. No wall’s gonna be built. He’s turned his back on us — and, quite frankly, I have lost faith in his ability to do his job.
CALLER: Yes, sir, I have. I mean —
RUSH: He’s —
(crosstalk)
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I’m not trying to stir things up. I’ve just got a question. I can’t find a news story yet that says he signed this. Everybody’s thinking he has, and he came out and said he was going declare a national emergency. But I can’t find where he’s actually signed this yet. Now, I’m not trying to do anything here. I may have missed it or it just… It may have happened and it’s considered such a formality that it doesn’t warrant a news story because the declaration of national emergency’s a far greater thing. I don’t know. But I haven’t seen any evidence —
CALLER: I’m at work so I didn’t even know whether… I was going by what was being reported on the radio that he had signed it. So if he hasn’t signed it, well, more power to him. But —
RUSH: Well, I don’t know that. The reporting was that he was gonna sign it and declare a national emergency at the same time. But he hasn’t actually said he signed it. He said he’s declared the national emergency. Look, I shouldn’t have mentioned that ’cause I’m not trying to cause trouble. I’m not trying to get everybody’s hopes up here on this. I’m just sharing that haven’t seen it yet, and if it happens… It’s tougher for me to keep track of things while the program’s underway — and it may have happened, and I just have missed it. But, really, you’re beginning to lose faith. I got that from what you said.
CALLER: Well, based on what I’m seeing reported as what’s in this bill, declaring an emergency to get the wall built when the localities down there can tell him, “No, we don’t want the wall,” and he’s powerless to build a wall? I mean, basically to me it’s pointless to declare an emergency on our border if you can’t do anything down there to change it. You’re allowing open immigration, what you quoted earlier about building welcoming centers —
RUSH: Yeah. That’s outrageous.
CALLER: — and escorting them across the border.
RUSH: I know that. Yep. Well, I’m sorry to hear that you are wavering, losing faith. I’m not gonna sit here and try to talk you off the ledge. I have more respect for your independence and your decision-making than that. (sigh) About all I could say… I mean, when the Democrats win the House, what does anybody think is gonna happen? Look, I don’t want to relive the past because you can’t change it. But all during that campaign last year, I grew so sick and tired of hearing from everybody, “The Democrats are gonna win the House ’cause it’s automatic.
“This is what happens. The out-of-power party always picks up seats in the first midterm elections after a new president’s been elected.” It just seemed to me that there wasn’t a whole lot of effort on the Republican side to stop this. We had all these damn Republican resignations. That meant a lot of incumbent seats in the House were automatically in play, given how automatically reelected incumbents are. So all these Republicans are quitting, and I’m asking, “Why?”
And they said, “Well, because they’ve been term-limited out of their chairmanships.”
“Oh! So since they’re just gonna go back to being average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill members, that’s beneath them, and they’re gonna leave?”
“Well, they want to go earn some money — and, you know, they don’t think Trump’s this or that.”
So we basically had a party… How many Republicans retired? Was it over 50 or 40 or something? We practically gave the House to them, and Trump’s out there doing all these rallies trying to prevent a disaster — and holding the House was crucial to Trump’s agenda going forward. It just… As I say, there’s no going back now. I mean, you can’t change it. It ticked me off!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Michael in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I’m glad you waited. How are you doing, sir?
CALLER: Hey, I’m doing great, Rush. Looks like it’s dittos on the mega 30-year dittos from the previous caller.
RUSH: Thank you, sir!
CALLER: You bet. Hey, as a longtime student of the Limbaugh Institute, I know what you meant when you said about Obama, “I hope he fails,” and I know that that was his policies that you spoke of. In particular, we’re dealing right now with an economic policy of Obama’s that has reared its ugly head nine years later. It’s called the rain tax here in Pennsylvania. This is a tax as a result of a federal mandate which is an executive order signed by Obama, which put into play taxing rain on our homes, businesses, schools, churches, farms, et cetera, and it’s come to effect here in this year, and —
RUSH: Well, now, wait a minute. Explain how this works. You get taxed every time it rains?
CALLER: Yes. They base it on the square footage of what they call “impermeable area,” which is your roof, your driveway, buildings that you have, parking lot, anything that they determine… By “they” I mean the EPA and DEP. Anything they determine that it doesn’t run off and soak into the ground. So they determine with the aerial photograph of your square footage, and then they tax you accordingly.
RUSH: What taxing authority does this? The county, the city? Where do you get this tax bill from?
CALLER: Well, right now in Northeastern Pennsylvania we got it from… It’s a local authority called the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority.
RUSH: Oh, yeah. Those guys!
CALLER: They’ve taken on this initiative.
RUSH: Okay. Those guys.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: I know who you’re talking about.
CALLER: Well, the EPA has pushed it down to the states. The states have pushed it down to local authorities. It’s a direct result of Executive Order 13508 signed by Obama in 2010, May of 2010. But the EPA pushed it down to the states, and the states pushed it down to local levels, and the local levels are implementing it.
RUSH: Well, it’s an example there of Obama executive overreach. Something like that would never pass Congress, but he did it anyway, which circles us back. I have to tell you, Fox News just reported a poll that they took, and this is what I was afraid of. Fox just reported that their poll found that 15% of Trump voters and 17% of Republican voters said they would like someone other than Trump to be the 2020 nominee. Now, I don’t know if it’s a flash poll today or if it’s just an ongoing president tracking poll or preference poll that they take.
The rule of law is crumbling as it’s not enforced. We have literally an invading army of people coming to this country who have no intentions of assimilating and becoming Americans. There is a never-ending supply of them. All of Central America and the Caribbean… It’s been calculated 42 million people who live in those regions say they would like to move to America. There’s not one disincentive to do so in this bill.
This bill that Trump was presented for signature — and he did sign it, by the way, just a few minutes ago. So he has signed the legislation in addition to the declaration of national emergency. You have the Washington establishment, which is in total opposition to President Trump on this. They have passed a budget and sent to him for signature that’s basically creates welcome committees and reception centers and offers money and food and medical care.
And it even works — and this was the Obama-era declaration. It works with the drug cartels in delivering “unaccompanied minors” who will then be held in these reception centers until, quote-unquote, “their parents” show up to get them. In the bill, there was also a cap on the number of beds at existing detention centers, meaning we cannot detain any more people than we are currently detaining or holding, particularly the criminal element. So what do we have here?
We have the entirety of the Washington establishment arrayed and aligned against one man and his supporters, and the battle lines couldn’t be more clear. On one side, we have people who don’t care about the rule of law, who don’t care about this army of people not becoming Americans, because they’re gonna use them for other purposes. Both parties. And over here we got Trump, who is offended by it, alarmed by it, thinks it’s wrong and it needs to stop.
So we have divided government. There is no way that President Trump’s ideas and policies can prevail on this issue in legislation. It’s not possible. I mean, not right now. It isn’t possible right now. It wouldn’t be possible if there was another government shutdown, because the people and the forces arrayed against Trump are trying to force him out of office — and whatever they have to do to do that is fine. If it means not enforcing the law, fine.
If it means providing expanded welfare services and engraved invitations for illegals to keep coming, they’ll do that. They essentially are. Trump, in my mind, has no choice here, when that’s what he’s up against. Not signing it, shutting down the government is not going to change the political landscape. Declaring a national emergency and getting the wall built however he can by finding money wherever he can, is his only option.
And he’s taking it. And he’s probably the only Republican any of us could vote for who would do even half of what he has done on this issue. But what choice does he have? You can’t do anything about the fact that the Democrats have the House and we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate. You can lament all day long, “Well, if Trump would have tried to pass it in the first two years…” Well, none of that happened! We gotta deal with what’s the case now.
Trump’s been up against opposition from both parties ever since he won the election. He’s really got no choice. And if he’s right, if people agree with him that what we face here is a national emergency, this is the only option available to him. And he sounds confident as he can be that he’s gonna succeed and get this done. In fact, if you want to bring the politics back into this — and I mentioned this Wednesday when I made my now absolutely 1,000% correct prediction.
I think now, as the wall is built or as areas of it are renovated and upgraded, we’re gonna have pictures of that — and, believe me, this issue hasn’t been lost. The American people… There’s not a majority of American people who want to send engraved invitations to illegals and say, “Come on in!” We don’t have a majority of Americans that want to expand reception centers for illegal immigrants. The politics of that, when you get to that, Trump’s still in the majority position. He just doesn’t have any support from elsewhere in the government. So this is the only option open to him. (sigh)
I don’t have to describe for you how serious this is.
We’re talking about the very structure of American society and culture.
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