RUSH: Here’s Linda again in Daytona Beach, Florida. It’s great that you waited, and I appreciate the patience. Hi.
CALLER: Of course I would wait for you, Rush, and I plan on listening to you for another 20-plus years.
RUSH: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I get the importance of that.
CALLER: Wow. I’m getting to the point where I wouldn’t blame the president for saying “the heck with it.” He and his family have been going through hell for a largely ungrateful country, and the Democrats continue to say the president isn’t above the law, but it seems like the Democrats can commit crimes with impunity and get away with it.
RUSH: Yeah, the Democrats do seem to be above the law.
CALLER: Nobody’s trying to stop them. The Republicans are like feckless. I’m devastated for our country and for our president. What can we do to fix it besides vote for him again? I’m like on the verge of tears for my country.
RUSH: Yeah, I am too. You know, you said something here about the president and his family, they don’t need this. And almost an hour ago, 45 minutes ago I got a call that normally would have been an Open Line Friday kind of call, but the guy asked me — stick with me here, Linda. Don’t go away. The call’s not over. The guy said, “You know, Rush –” and he’s talking about my cancer diagnosis, maybe some other things.
He said, “You’ve been doing this for over 30 years. You don’t need to do this. Why are you still in this fight? You don’t have to be. There’s all kinds of things you could be doing. And why are you still doing it, you know, when you don’t have to?” And you said the same thing about Trump. And it is, I think, one of the most important points that can be made. He didn’t need any of this, ever. He had a great life. Any of us would have loved to have been Donald Trump.
CALLER: You’re patriots.
RUSH: Prior to 2016. I mean, here’s the guy that was on top of his world, and he had his family involved in his business, and he was a well-known and popular television personality with the TV show The Apprentice, and he runs for president because he really thinks the country’s on the way to being destroyed. He’s got his slogan Make America Great Again. And you’re right, there hasn’t been, outside of his base, there hasn’t been one significant show of appreciation for what he has put up with in any of the last four years.
If there’s anybody who is the epitome of “he didn’t need to do this,” it’s Donald Trump. This is not making him wealthier. It has not made him more popular. I mean, he has been subjected to things that most human beings cannot even imagine. The media anal exam is never ending with Donald Trump. They are personally, literally trying to destroy him and his family and his children, his kids. And yet he continues to plug away. He continues to get up every day and do it.
I don’t think there’s been anybody else — I don’t know enough to know this for sure. I don’t know that there’s any other Republican who could put up with what Trump gets for even a week. I think you’d have people begging to give up, sue for peace, stop it, stop it, I’ll agree with you, whatever. I don’t think there’s anybody who could be doing it. I don’t think there’s enough appreciation for Trump as it is, even among people who are supporting him.
CALLER: There isn’t. It’s sad. And you’re a patriot and Donald Trump’s a patriot, and that’s what makes me so sad is that there are people who truly love this country, including myself and my family, and it’s devastating.
RUSH: It is. And he’s going it alone. He doesn’t even have a sizable percentage of the Republican Party behind him for whatever crazy reasons. You got these Never Trump Republicans out there. Folks, do you realize some of these Never Trump Republicans, who you probably have donated to in the past, you’ve donated to their magazines before they went bust, these Never Trump guys that did the cruises after every election to tell you how they were going to maintain conservatism as the prominence of the Republican Party. These guys, these Never Trumpers are now purposely trying to secure the defeat of all Republicans in the Senate.
They don’t want just Trump to lose. These people are now hoping that the Republicans lose everything in November, the White House and the Senate and the House. They believe that the only way to reconstitute the Republican Party as a relevant, meaningful political organization is to have it wiped out as it currently exists and start from scratch, obviously with them at the helm.
Now, you tell me what kind of sense it makes that these clowns think that they are the rightful heirs to a Republican Party they now seek to destroy? It’s Looney Tunes. But that’s what they’re advocating. That the Republicans lose everything, that the Republican Party basically get wiped out, starting with Trump and then the Senate. Thank you very much, Linda.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: On the business of Trump and the Republicans, I need to make a distinction here, folks. Trump might not have a whole bunch of elected Republicans behind him, which, believe me, it’s been something that’s frustrated me since Inauguration Day 2017. But his support from rank-and-file Republican voters is still higher than any president on record.
Trump has the full-fledged support of over 90% of registered Republican voters. He doesn’t have, likewise, similar support from elected Republicans, say, in the House or in the Senate. The only president that had higher percentage of support was George W. Bush for a few weeks after 9/11. But that leveled off.