RUSH: Donald Trump says that the Democrats are getting very strange. You see what Trump tweeted last night? “Democrats are getting very strange. They now want to change the voting age to 16. They want to abolish the Electoral College and increase significantly the number of Supreme Court justices. Actually, you’ve got to win at the ballot box.”

Now, I know Trump is being facetious. But the Democrats do want to lower the voting age, and they do want to get rid of the Electoral College in order to win at the ballot box. Mitt Romney would have beaten Obama in 2012 if we only counted the votes of people over 30. Everyone younger has been completely indoctrinated by the schools or, as Pelosi says, they’ve been captured.

Let me run through the list of things here that the Democrats want to do. And all the while they are running around talking about how Trump is assaulting the norms in our country, that Trump is assaulting our cultural norms, Trump is assaulting our political norms, that Trump is blowing up everything. It’s the exact opposite. It is the left today that is assaulting American norms, if you will.

Court packing? Abolishing the Electoral College? Abortion after birth? Open borders, anybody wanting to come into the country gets in? The government totally taking over health care, Medicare for all. You think that’s not assaulting norms? Everything the Democrats want requires trampling on the Constitution.

I’m gonna tell you something else. This business of getting rid of the Electoral College in order to make every vote count, what a silly and stupid claim. Let me present a picture for you. Once there is no Electoral College, if they were to ever succeed in eliminating it, and they want to do all this without going through the amendment process to change the Constitution. They just want to decree it!

This is modern-day liberalism. They decree climate change is real and that’s it, there is no debate. They decree that eating meat must be stopped. There’s no debate. You must stop eating meat. Whatever cockamamie, crazy thing they want, they are demanding it, including changes to the Constitution. No debate, no argument, and you don’t get a say.

But let’s paint a little picture here. I don’t know that people, with the state of American education today, I doubt that very many young people have the slightest idea the purpose of the Electoral College. They don’t understand the concept of representation in the House of Representatives versus each state getting two senators, regardless of size. They don’t understand any of this because they’ve not been taught this. But it is fundamental to understanding how a constitutional representative republic works.

But let’s play the little game. Let’s say there is no Electoral College. If there’s no Electoral College and the only thing that matters is the popular vote, guess where presidential candidates are not going to campaign? Red state flyover states. Those states will never see presidential candidates come to town. Presidential candidates will go to New York, they will go to California, they’ll go to Illinois, they’ll go to Texas, maybe Florida and Ohio, and outside of that, they won’t go anywhere because it won’t matter.

Is that what you want? You want all of these red states, flyover states that do not have separately and individually large Electoral College votes, you want them wiped out, only the popular vote counts, guess where the candidates are gonna be? The Left Coast and the Right Coast and Texas. That’s all they’re gonna do. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Boston, Massachusetts, that’s the only place. And those people are gonna be the ones that then will elect the president of the United States.

This is exactly what the Founding Fathers intended to prevent! The Electoral College is the equivalent of equal representation. Let’s go back and look at 2016. We are told — and we’ll just accept this for the sake of the discussion — we’re told that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes. But she lost the presidency by a significant number of Electoral College votes. Her margin of victory of three million popular votes was a combination of New York and California.

Trump did not even campaign in California. Trump didn’t think there was any reason to. There was no reason to waste money in California, no reason to waste time. He spent a little time in New York, since he lives there, but he didn’t go because it’s lost. The Democrats own it. They gonna get all the electoral votes there so he didn’t go.

If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency on the basis of the popular vote, I dare say that the people that would have elected her would have been in California and New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts, Connecticut, and so forth up and down the East Coast. Well, forget the mid-eastern seaboard, mid-Atlantic states, gotta include on Florida. That’s exactly the opposite of what the Founding Fathers intended.

Now, these people that want to ban the Electoral College, whether they know this explicitly or instinctively, they still understand what they’re talking about. They want to eliminate your say-so in the presidential race. They can’t win. This has been my point all along. They can’t win without gaming the system, in their own minds, they’re admitting it. They don’t think they can win without gaming the system.

Now they need to game the Constitution. The same way with representation versus the House and the Senate. In the House, members are elected every two years, and they represent districts in the states, and it’s directly related to population. So California and New York have larger congressional delegations in the House, but each state only has two senators, so every state is represented equally in the Senate to counter whatever out of balance occurs by direct representation in the House.

The Founding Fathers wanted to make it very hard for government to function. They built gridlock into the system like you can’t believe because they didn’t trust what they knew would be the amassing and collection of massive political power in the nation’s capital, in Washington. They never wanted to take power away from the people who live in the country because it is a country of, by, and for the people.

And so they built a system with checks and balances and everything else to really make it tough to pass new laws. Why do you think the administrative state has sprung up? Because it is tough to get legislation passed in Congress. And the longer and longer we go, we discover that Congress doesn’t even want to tackle controversial issues because they don’t want go on record voting pro or con because then that becomes a hindrance to their reelection campaign.

So they form blue ribbon committees, for example, to determine which Air Force Bases are gonna be closed during downsizing or this or that. So that when it comes time, say a couple bases close in California, the local congressman can say, “Hey, hey, hey, I had nothing to do with it. I worked really hard to save the base, but that blue ribbon panel, they’re the ones that did it. Don’t look at me.” Same thing with the administrative state.

All these laws, all these regulations that come from unelected people way deep in the administrative state because it got really hard for the left — well, anybody — to really move an agenda forward in the House and the Senate and to get a presidential signature. It was designed to be really hard. It was designed by the founders for government not to have an easy time wielding power over people and growing and getting bigger.

And as the country evolved it became harder and harder for legislation to happen, ideologues and agenda-driven members of Congress and the Senate expressed all this frustration. So here comes the deep state and all these presidential cabinet level departments.

And how many of them did Nixon create? Nixon gave us OSHA, Nixon gave us the EPA, all in an attempt to buy the love of liberals — and it didn’t work. So we build all these bureaucracies. They become part of the administrative state. They start issuing regulations left and right. They’ve been doing this for the last 50 years. We have no recourse. We don’t even know when it happens. We don’t even know when stuff is being debated. It isn’t being debated. It’s being decreed. This is not how it was designed to happen.

And the left is simply trying to streamline exactly what they’ve done on the administrative state by getting rid of the Constitution, as often as they can, in the electoral process and in the governing process. That’s what this is all about. They want to be able to decree things. They don’t want to have to compete. They don’t want to have to win. They don’t want to have to debate. They want to be able to command. So all of these things that they are talking about. Packing the court? (Snort!)

Yeah, let Trump come out in favor of it and start nominating a bunch of Neil Gorsuches and see how they feel about it. Abolishing the Electoral College? I’m telling you, folks, stop and think about that one. This talk about the popular vote should elect the president? Yeah, if every state had the equal number of people in it. But it doesn’t. If the Democrats and Republicans were equally represented in every state then, yeah, you could talk about it.

But that’s never gonna be the case. And I’m just telling you: If you get rid of the Electoral College, there isn’t a presidential campaign that’s gonna spend any time outside of the Left Coast and the East Coast whatsoever. People in New York, Boston, New Jersey, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley are gonna elect every president if you get rid of the Electoral College.

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RUSH: Now, all of this that I just explained to you was hashed out at what’s called the Great Compromise, and it was part of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and the Great Compromise is what resulted in the structure of the House and the Senate and eventually the Electoral College, and it was all based on some representation being based on population, while others wanted it equal.

So it was decided that each state would get two senators — meaning that in that body, no state had any more power than any other, regardless of the population. It transferred to the Electoral College. Wyoming has only three electoral votes, for example. But that is a far more powerful number. Three, as part of the whole Electoral College, is a much greater number than is the population of Wyoming compared to the population of the country.

What is happening now is that liberal Democrat states, realizing the futility of eliminating the Electoral College, are now coming along and wanting to alter their election law by saying that the popular votes in their state would guarantee all the electoral votes in their state, and that the electoral votes in their state would reflect the popular vote nationwide. Colorado has joined this effort. It’s “the first swing state to join a group pledging to elect presidents based on who wins the national popular vote.” So the left is attempting to undermine the Constitution in so many ways, and yet they accuse Trump of assaulting our national norms.

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RUSH: Fairfield County, Connecticut. Cory, I’m glad you called, sir. Hi.

CALLER: I’m a big fan. I just wanted to get your thoughts on a couple quick points about the Electoral College ’cause I feel like it’s really important and especially a lot of younger people find the Democrat argument, you know, really attractive ’cause it sounds like it makes sense, you know, if you don’t really think about it too much. The first point I just wanted to emphasize is that, and you mentioned this about the big states, but it wouldn’t just be the big states. It would be the big city interests. And they’re largely, you know, homogeneous across the country that would be, you know, determining the fate of the country. So like even though you might have some conservatives on Long Island or parts of upstate New York, New York City would be where the candidate would just, you know, campaign for the entire election season and whatnot.

RUSH: Well, of course the cities as the urban areas and the population centers, that’s actually true. If you wanted to say that campaigning would even get more precise, they wouldn’t spend time, say, in any of the Central Valley or the San Joaquin Valley, California. They’d stay on the coast. They’d go to Seattle, they’d go up and down Portland, they’d hit San Francisco, Silicon Valley, go to Los Angeles. But I think some of the ad buys would be statewide, particularly in New York and California. But no question that the big cities would be the focus. This is where many of the left’s voters live. In many cases it’s the left’s voters who are on welfare or who receive some kind of assistance from government.

But your reference to how attractive it is is another good point. You take young skulls full of mush, particularly young Millennials, I mean, there are keywords in their lives that if you use them in the right context, you own them, like “sustainability.” Having any kind of policy that is sustainable, you own ’em. “Fairness” is another one. “Equality” is another one. So when you talk about electing a president, “What do you mean the president that got the most votes didn’t win? That isn’t fair! That didn’t happen in the student body election! I don’t understand. It’s unfair.”

They end up thinking the Electoral College is how the system is rigged. And so they’ll easily be persuaded into getting rid of what’s rigging the election. Folks, it all goes back to education and how pathetic about American history and America in general the Constitution public education has been in two generations.

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RUSH: There’s something out there called an income inequality strike, people on strike over income inequality, and Crazy Bernie has joined the strike. There’s another strike. I can’t remember what it is. Some people striking over the fact their stomachs are bigger than other people. I don’t know. Can’t remember what it is. But the left is doing all kinds of strikes.

But I gotta get back to the phones. I haven’t gotten to the phones in easily a half hour. That’s not good. Here is Sean in Delphi, Indiana. That’s one of my all-time favorite towns, by the way, Delphi, Indiana. Great to have you, Sean.

CALLER: It’s worth the wait, Rush. It’s an honor to be on the show.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate that.

CALLER: I wanted your thoughts on whether or not the crazy rhetoric and the policies coming out from the left might not serve to boost support for Trump by bringing the Never Trumpers out to vote for Trump in 2020, even if they have to hold their nose.

RUSH: Nope. Nope. Ain’t gonna happen.

CALLER: No? What about when they were afraid of Hillary?

RUSH: They voted for Hillary! They proudly said they voted for Hillary! Bill Kristol and his bunch voted for her!

CALLER: Well, I meant more of the American people and not people in the Senate, but I talk to a lot of people who —

RUSH: Now, wait a minute. When you say Never — a Never Trumper to me is a conservative intellectual writer. You don’t mean those people. Who do you mean?

CALLER: I think more the regular people who say they would never vote for Trump —

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: — out of fear for what’s coming —

RUSH: Okay. Yes. In that case I do believe that it’s happening every day. I think as the left continues with this craziness of the Green New Deal and banning cow farting and just go down the list, banning the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court. I think there are people that you can’t even envision that are out there making up their minds to vote for Trump every day just to avoid the insanity of what they’re hearing coming out of the Democrat Party.

I think there’s a lot of them too. I think there are more people that are raising eyebrows and really alarmed at what they’re hearing from the Democrats than we will ever be told. The media’s never gonna report on the left this way. There will never be a story, you will never see the story: “Democrats Driven to Trump by Biden.” “Democrats Driven to Trump by Kamala Harris.” “Democrats Driven to Trump by Mayor Pete.” “Democrats Driven to Trump by Tulsi Gabbard.” “Democrats Driven to Trump by Crazy Bernie.” You’ll never see those stories. “Democrats Driven to Trump by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”

You will never see any of those stories because the Drive-By Media doesn’t want to even know about those stories. The Drive-By Media is doing everything they can to ignore the economy, which for the longest time has been the singular issue to indicate whether or not an incumbent president will be reelected.

Why do you think they’re focusing so much on this George Conway, Kellyanne Conway stuff, folks? ‘Cause they’re trying to make George Conway look normal and Kellyanne Conway and Trump look like the oddballs. But who looks like the absolute bad guy in this story? George Conway! To average, ordinary people, George Conway looks like a gigantic creep. Who in the world could do this to his wife publicly?

This is what people are saying. Now, the Never Trumpers are applauding George Conway ’cause he is one of them. But most normal people are looking at this, and it doesn’t compute. None of it computes. Kellyanne did an interview, I think with Politico, that just published today. And she was quite open about this.

And she said that President Trump has been so supportive of her that he has purposely avoided staying out of this so as not to bring any more attention to her. And he has told her that, look, if you need to leave and go and be with your babies and raise your kids, go ahead and do so, you have my full blessing, but I would prefer you stay. And she has stayed.

She is out with a piece today that praises Trump to the end of the world for his support in this and for the way he has dealt with it and chosen to avoid certain aspects of it. And then if you just examine Conway, this is behavior that not very many people can imagine themselves engaging in. His behavior, undermining the mother of his children publicly.

I’m sure there are some people cheering him on because there’s all kinds of people. But I’m talking about the base population of normal Americans looks at this, and it’s not George Conway that is perceived as the guy being wronged or the guy being mistreated or the guy being unfairly characterized. It’s the other way around.

It is George Conway people don’t understand. It’s George Conway shrinking every day in public opinion by virtue of this. But the media, of course, is making George Conway look like the star. The media is making George Conway look brave. The media is saying George Conway must have really serious problems with President Trump if he’s willing to risk his marriage to this degree.

So the media is portraying Conway as a star, as a brave patriot even willing to risk everything he loves to save this nation from the evil clutches of Donald Trump. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s not one out of 30 people in the normal population of this country that look at this situation that way.

So, once again, they are out of touch, they will never do stories on how popular Trump is becoming because of the left. You’ll never see those stories. And, in fact, they may not even think it’s happening, so they’ll never even try to find out if it is, much less report on it if it were.

Here is Mike in St. Charles, Illinois. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing? Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I have a question going back to your earlier topic on the Electoral College and the popular vote. And I can’t seem to find an answer on it, and I’m hoping you’d help me out. If it means nothing, why do we count the popular vote at the federal level for the presidency?

RUSH: Because it doesn’t mean nothing.

CALLER: Then what does it mean? Why do we do it? I know we’ve been doing it since the beginning, and there’s been a handful of times where it’s had results like in 2016, but it means nothing in the presidency. So I’m just curious —

RUSH: You couldn’t get to the Electoral College vote without the popular vote.

CALLER: No. I get that, that it’s used towards that, but why is it then used as a crutch or as fodder for the loser or for the person who didn’t win to use that against us, against the person that did win the popular vote?

RUSH: I’m not sure I understand the question. How is it used against somebody? What do you mean?

CALLER: Well, just in arguments. You know, like they’re trying to argue the case now that we should eliminate the Electoral College and just go with the popular vote.

RUSH: Well, the reason for that is poor education which does not explain to people how our presidential elections actually work and how the Electoral College works. Just because people don’t understand it doesn’t mean we should abolish it.

CALLER: Well, not abolish it, but just clarify — well, again you’re right. It’s education. It’s how these people are, or how the education system has dumbed down, you know —

RUSH: Look, I don’t want to give you short shrift. I want to really understand what you’re asking here. And what I hear you asking is why do we even do the popular vote if it doesn’t matter. Is that what your question —

CALLER: Well, I mean, I could see why we do it, but why do we have to make it such a big — or why does it have to be another tally in —

RUSH: 99% of the time the popular vote determines the presidential winner. In 2000 it didn’t and in 2016 it didn’t.

CALLER: Right. And I understand maybe one or two times prior to that. But since it really doesn’t matter, then in regards to —

RUSH: It does matter. It does matter! The Electoral College vote wouldn’t be what it is without the popular vote. The popular vote, by the way, is used in many other ways. It’s used for reapportionment, congressional districts, all kinds of things depend on the popular vote, besides the actual election of the president.

CALLER: Okay. I mean, yeah, I get that part of it —

RUSH: How many people vote in the district will determine how much that district might get in federal welfare benefits, for example!

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: All kinds of ways the popular vote matters.

CALLER: Right. Except in the actual election, final election of the president. Right?

RUSH: Your question is improperly framed. It’s not why does the popular vote not matter. The question is, why does the Electoral College determine the presidential winner.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: That is the question. And if you can’t answer that question, not you personally, but if people can’t answer that then they’re gonna say, “Well, do why we even have the vote, just have these electors vote and be done with it. Why don’t we lobby them and why don’t the president’s campaign against the electors.” Because the electors are pledged to vote the way it goes in their states.

CALLER: So then I guess the problem I’m having is that even though this happens very rarely —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — you know, why does it need to be the one issue that they latch on to when it doesn’t go their way?

RUSH: Because they latch on to anything that they think is denying them their privileged right to power. So if they popular vote is screwing them, we gotta get rid of the popular vote. If the Electoral College is screwing ’em, we gotta get rid of the Electoral College. If the Catholic Church is screwing ’em, we gotta get rid of the Catholic Church and put as many gay people as priests in there as we can. If babies are killing us, then we gotta abort ’em!

You know, whatever it is that’s causing them to lose is what they are going to demand that we get rid of. And they are demanding it. They don’t want to debate it. They don’t want to put it up for popular vote and proposals and have arguments back and forth about it and have popular will determine. They want what they want mandated, whether you like it or not.

Let me tell you something. They wouldn’t be making one move against the Electoral College if it hadn’t worked against ’em in 2016. This is gonna come back and bite ’em! Harry Reid declaring the nuclear option to get Obama’s judges confirmed is killing the Democrats in allowing Trump’s judges to get confirmed.

These are shortsighted, mean-spirited, angry little people who, when they lose, do not chalk it up to the fact that they might have miscalculated or misread the American public or did something wrong. It’s the system that’s screwing ’em. It’s the system. It’s America. So America needs to be changed. If the popular vote doesn’t elect ’em, get rid of it. If the Electoral College doesn’t elected ’em, get rid of the it.

That’s why you’ve gotta oppose these people. They will get rid of virtually everything that makes this country America because they really can’t survive in a representative republic. They are not the majority, and they don’t win. Well, they do sometimes, but they have other mechanisms to get what they want, like an activist judiciary or any number of things.

But your question is not, “Why do we even mess with it?” The question is, “Why do people not understand the Electoral College and how it works? Why do they not understand the difference between the way the Senate’s populated versus the House of Representatives?” The real question is how is it that so many Americans don’t know diddly-squat about the greatest country on earth?

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RUSH: By the way, for the popular vote caller? We do not do a national popular vote, folks. We do state popular votes, and then those are added, but there is no national popular vote tally. It’s state by state, and I needed to make that clear.