RUSH: Kat in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, hi.

CALLER: Hi, I’m honored you took my call. I’m a first-time caller but I’ve been a listener for 20 years. And you are in my prayers. But I’m calling today because I have a liberal best friend who says the great Trump economy was actually put in place by Obama. And I don’t seem to have anything to say back to her that seems to make any sense other than what he’s done for regulation, what he’s done for the black unemployment, all of our unemployment. Can you help me?

RUSH: Yeah, but it isn’t gonna matter.

CALLER: (laughing) Okay.

RUSH: It’s not gonna convince your friend.

CALLER: Yeah. Okay.

RUSH: But the Obama years — you need to tell your friend, ask your friend, what was Obama known for in his economic policy? His economic policy was, America is in a new era, a New Era of decline. America’s best days, Obama said, are behind us, and most of those days we may not have deserved because America is an unfair, predator nation. So Obama said the jobs in the Midwest that have been lost. They’re not coming back. Trump said he’s gonna bring ’em back. Obama went out there and said, “What’s he gonna do, wave a magic wand?”

Obama said the jobs are not coming back. Obama said that you need to get used to the new norm, and that is America in decline. You can tell your buddy that the GDP under Obama was never up over 1.8%. You can say that Obama raised taxes with Obamacare and some other things that destroyed personal disposable income levels. You can point out to your buddy that under the Obama economy there were more people not working than ever before. The labor force participation rate was at an all-time low.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: In three years under Trump, massive tax decrease, people went back to work, wages were spiraling upward. African-American unemployment hit an all-time record low. Asian-American and Hispanic-American unemployment, ditto. I mean, there’s simply no comparison. The Obama economy was not even an economy of growth.

CALLER: I wonder (unintelligible) stimulus bill at the end before he left office —

RUSH: Uh —

CALLER: Something that happened before he left office.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Is your friend trying to claim that Obama did something with the stimulus that Trump benefited from after he took office and that’s why the economy grew?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, no.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: That’s a bunch of horse hockey. The result of the Trump economy is the result of policy initiatives, policy differences. The passing of legislation — the tax cut’s the big thing. But there were all kinds of — Trump has done more to deregulate the American economy than previous presidents did in five or six presidencies, single-handedly, has just ordered regulations to be ripped apart and torn apart, and they were.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: But, look, what is your biggest problem in convincing your friend here?

CALLER: Just that somehow he keeps thinking that he did some stimulus bill at the end that as soon as he walked out of office and Trump walked in, that Trump benefited from it so the economy was already on its way up.

RUSH: What was this stimulus, and how much was it?

CALLER: Yeah. That I don’t know. Sorry. You’re right. I don’t know.

RUSH: Well, where was it passed into law by Congress? How much was it?

CALLER: Yes. I don’t — yeah.

RUSH: You know, you can tell your buddy that the Obama stimulus that was passed into law in his first three months, that 80% of it went to unions. There wasn’t a single bridge built, there wasn’t a single road built, there wasn’t a single school that was repaired. None of the stuff that Obama promised to do with that stimulus package actually happened. It went to keep people employed. ‘Cause people were losing their jobs left and right after Obama became president.

And he wanted to keep the union people employed so that they would continue to be able to pay dues, a portion of which end up back in the Democrat Party. There isn’t a sane person in the world who believes the Obama economy was something to write home about. In fact, it was one of the primary reasons that Trump won. The economy was a mess, the state of the military was a mess.

This expansion that Trump is the author of, it’s the most amazing recovery of an economy in three months, and you can tell your buddy that there isn’t a government stimulus plan alive that could have done it. There’s no stimulus plan that could have possibly created the level of unemployment to happen during the first three years of Trump, particularly in the minority communities.

There’s no amount of stimulus that could have led to the rising wages that were happening. That’s what’s so damned unfortunate about this virus. In two months it was wiped out, along with your Obama stimulus, which there wasn’t one. What could she possibly be thinking of here? Obama didn’t leave us with anything but an illegal investigation of Trump. If they want to call that a stimulus, you know, let ’em try.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, you people, you want to praise Obama, let me give you the facts about something. We, during the Obama administration, were totally dependent on foreign oil. Obama tried to get rid of fracking. Obama trying to get rid of all of the ways that America has now become energy independent. We now are a seller nation when it comes to oil and natural gas.

And you know why? Because Trump lifted the Obama restrictions on fracking. He lifted the Obama restrictions on the creation of new natural gas. We opened up the pipelines. We turned this country back into a nation built on fossil fuels. Obama had one of the worst economies in 50 years. Look at the blue states today that are run by Democrats. There’s not a one of them that’s prosperous. They lead the economic downturn in this shutdown now. There’s blue state jobs depression.

And the states that are doing the best economically are Republican. The states that are doing the absolute worst in terms of the economy are Hawaii, Michigan, California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington. Those states are at the top of the list with the worst economies right now because they’re still shut down. And they use Democrat economic policies.

But, see, people are just wedded, you know, they’re wedded to Obama for whatever reason. So if their supporters put out. “Well, yeah, Trump had a great economy because of what Obama left him.” And guess who’s responsible for that lie? The Obama people have put that news out there for the past year and a half. When the Trump economy was booming and soaring, the Obama people just couldn’t sit there and let that happen, so they had to claim credit for it. And a bunch of brain-dead Obama supporters just lapped it up. It’s a waste of time talking to ’em.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, if Obama had this gigantic, big, massive stimulus idea, why not do it on day one and benefit from it instead of waiting for himself to be on the way out the door? None of that makes any sense, which is typical of the left and the Obama administration to begin with.