RUSH: Folks, this is classic. I have to tell you, this whole Trump-Ted Cruz thing is classic. And I’m gonna tell you how it’s classic.
For those of you who have any remaining doubts or maybe have never even considered this, Donald Trump has a performer’s sensitivity, a performer’s ego. It is in his blood. He instinctively is a performer, and he gets it. What he did with this yesterday… I mean, everybody’s talking about it. Whether they approve of it or whether they don’t, they’re all talking about it. Which may be Trump’s objective. I don’t know. But the fact of the matter is somebody blurted something out in his audience that he would love to say himself but doesn’t dare. And so he thought really quickly…
“Oh, do I dare? Did I just call somebody call Ted Cruz…?” And he immediately jumps into gear and does exactly… My friends, I must confess: I’ve done it on this program before. It’s the way you do this, in fact. When you want to say something — a word, a phrase — but you don’t dare own it, you find somebody else who said it and then say, “Sorry, folks! I’m sorry! I didn’t say it. Somebody else did. And if you want to be fully informed, I’m sorry, I have to tell you.” The way it works out with Trump, he’s out there blathering on, and some woman in the audience calls Ted Cruz “the word.” Cookie called me today.
Cookie sent me a note: “Do you want me to bleep the word or do you want me to leave it in?” I didn’t even hear it, folks. I was indisposed last night in the midst of a (sigh) minor, minor emergency/crisis. Nothing to do… No, no. I was occupied for six hours. I didn’t know any… (interruption) No, it wasn’t the battery life. (chuckling) It wasn’t the battery life issue. I was collecting data for engineers, but it was not the battery. It was a totally different thing. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I didn’t know any of this has happened ’til I got here today.
Cookie sends me this e-mail: “Do you want me to bleep what Trump said?” So I said, “Did he use it as…? Was he calling Cruz a coward, or was he using it in the physiological sense?” She said, “No, no. He’s calling him a coward.” So I said, “Don’t bleep it. Don’t bleep it.” So then she sends the transcripts, and I said, “Whoa,” and I looked at it. I knew immediately what had happened. This woman is in the audience called Cruz a name, and Trump desperately wants that out there. He wants whoever didn’t hear it to hear it. He can’t dare… He might have planted it. Who knows?
But the point is, he couldn’t say is but he wanted it said.
So how do you do it?
Only a performer’s instinct, only a performer’s ego could cause somebody to react this quickly, this smoothly, and make all this happen the way it did. You might think it’s horrible, you might want to condemn it, you might think it’s representative of the rot and decay of our culture. I wouldn’t disagree with you on that, but I’m simply talking about, “How do I make this happen? Who else could get away with this?” Meanwhile, the political class are wringing their hands. “My God, I can’t believe our politics has been so soiled! I can’t believe it.” Like these guys never even think of the word? They’re sitting there in the faculty lounge and the word never comes up? BS.
These guys may not be saying the word, but they’re out there chasing it all over campus, and everybody knows it.
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RUSH: Now we have Trump out there. Look at this. You got Trump out there. A woman in his audience calls Ted Cruz a “pussy,” and everybody has an absolute cow. By the way, this is how you do it.
“I didn’t say it, folks. Don’t be mad at me. I’m just informing you what went on out there. There’s no way I can talk about it. ‘PC whip,’ maybe, but it doesn’t quite get there.” But in the meantime, look at all of the outrage. Look at the feigned outrage. Look at, “Oh, my God, what’s happening to our politics? Oh, Lord, this is so coarse. Ooh!” Meanwhile, in the White House we had Bill Clinton having sex with interns under the desk, in the study, with who knows whoever. He’s accused of rape, and the libs said, “Hey, it’s between him and his wife.”
“Hey, none of our business.”
“Hey, it didn’t affect the way he governed, the way he did his job.”
“Hey, it’s sex. It’s none of your business.”
I’m telling you, that’s what happened the feminazi movement. They corrupted themselves way back in the nineties. That’s why they are a joke today. And they’re always going to be a joke. Do you realize the number of people, leftists and liberals who — whether they know it or not — have actually corrupted themselves and done great damage by defending Clinton and Hillary back in those days? And it’s all coming back to bite ’em now. So there’s all this selective outrage. But let’s go to the audio sound bites. This is what all happened.
It’s in Manchester during a campaign event. And I’ll just say… It’s the way I always do this. If the usage of this word in this context is something you’d rather not hear, and if your young children are listening and you don’t think they’ve heard the word… I guarantee you, they have. But you may not want them to. I’ll give you five seconds to turn the radio volume down. Don’t turn it off. Don’t tune to another station. That would ruin your day. Just turn the volume down; leave it down for a couple minutes.
I hope to be through with this in about a couple-three minutes, and then come back, and that way you’ve been warned. If you hang in, and what follows offends you, then the problem is yours. You can’t complain to me because I gave you ample time to extricate yourself from this. So here comes the countdown. Five … four … three … two … one. Okay, theoretically the only people listening are those who will not be offended by what comes next. Donald Trump, Manchester in New Hampshire at a campaign event speaking about Ted Cruz, interrupted by a woman in the audience.
TRUMP: They asked Ted Cruz — serious question — “Well, what do you think of waterboarding? Is it okay.” And honestly, I thought he’d say, “Absolutely,” and he didn’t. Well, it’s… You know, he was concerned about the answer, because some people —
WOMAN: He’s a pussy!
TRUMP: She just said a terrible thing. You know what she said? Shout it out ’cause I don’t want —
WOMAN: Pussy.
TRUMP: Okay, you’re not allowed to say — and I never expect to hear that from you again. She said… I never expect to hear that from you again. She said, “He’s a pussy.” That’s terrible. Terrible.
RUSH: I’m just telling you, whether you like this or not, this is how you do it. This is how. Trump was presented a golden opportunity. A woman in the crowd shouts the word, and he would love to say it. He doesn’t dare say it, but he’s got the cover. He condemns her for saying it, condemns her, “How dare you? You can’t say that in a setting like this. Don’t ever do say it,” and she shouts it. “I told you, never say it.” Other people say, “I can’t hear it. What’d she say?” “She’s saying…” and then he uses the word. He gets it out.
But it’s always in the mouth of this other woman — always in her voice, not his — and then he properly condemns it. The whole time he’s getting the message across. Do you think…? Is there anybody else in this campaign, if the same circumstance happened, that they would handle it this way? I don’t think there’s a one. I really don’t think there’s a one, including Democrats in this. With Clinton, if this had happened, Clinton would’ve bolted from the stage and he’d be down there trying to meet the woman shouting the word.
Clinton would have abandoned the stage, abandoned the event, and gone down and put his arm around this woman and asked her what she meant. But I don’t know anybody else who would try to turn this around the way Trump did. And it’s just… I don’t know what else you call it, performer’s instinct or what. He clearly has it, whether you think that’s a disqualifier or a serious presidential candidate or not. The next bite…
This is Fox & Friends this morning, because there was an appropriate bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz about all of this. There were people outraged, and, “How dare our politics be soiled like this? How dare he!” Of course, these aristocratic, erudite, establishment libs, both in the media and out, academia and all these places are wringing their hands over how horrible. The same people that defended Bill Clinton and to this day defend Bill Clinton.
The same people sitting around the faculty lounge talking and thinking about this all day long. They may not say the word but they’re out there all over campus chasing it, doing everything they can. Students, it doesn’t matter. But here they are condemning Trump. So Trump’s on Fox & Friends today. Steve Doocy said, “You were at an event last night, and somebody in the crowd had colorful language out there about Ted Cruz.”
TRUMP: I have to tell you, the woman shouted. I said, “Okay, I’m gonna…” It was like a retweet. I would never say a word like that. The audience went crazy, standing ovation. Five thousand people went nuts. They loved it. You know, we’re having fun. That’s what I mean, about being politically correct. Every once in a while, you can have a little fun, don’t you think?
RUSH: (impression) “It was just a retweet. Who doesn’t like those? Who doesn’t know what a retweet is? I didn’t say it! Come on. Lighten up. This is just political correctness.” Over on CBS, they were not happy. We have here a discussion by former Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, who they’ve brought back from the mothballs, I guess, for this campaign. And they’ve got Gayle King (who interviewed the Obamas a couple of hours before the Super Bowl kicked off on CBS), and Norah O’Donnell, and they’re talking about this outrage that happened with Trump in New Hampshire.
KING: What about that slur, Bob, last night that he repeated from the crowd?
O’DONNELL: His use of profanity!
KING: Yeeeeeeah.
SCHIEFFER: You know (snickers), what’s the word? “A little disappointing?”
KING: (snorts)
SCHIEFFER: Americans want someone that they can be proud of in the Oval Office. I thought Trump had to be taken seriously from the beginning. What I missed is that when he would say things like John McCain is a loser and that kind of thing, I thought, “That’s the end of it.” And then when he had the thing with Megyn Kelly, I thought, “Well, that’s the end of it.”
KING: Mmm-hmm!
SCHIEFFER: I think, in a way, some of his supporters are just so mad, so frustrated, and upset with the way things are going, sometimes they don’t hear what he says. They’re just glad he’s out there saying it.
RUSH: Right, right. So what did Bob say, we need someone they can be proud of in the Oval Office. Like Bill Clinton. It always is gonna come back to Bill Clinton, you people on the left. It’s always gonna come back there. You can talk about somebody saying a word. But let’s not forget, you want to get all exercised, this is so denigrating to the office, and yet what Clinton did? You celebrated it. It’s not as though you tried to sweep if under the rug, you celebrate it. You try to throw that in our faces every chance you get. You throw that Clinton and the Lewinsky and all the other babes in our face, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, he got away with it, and you stuffed shirts got all offended, you dryballs got all offended, but Clinton got away with it, we love him, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.
They ran around and they made it like the biggest fun success story. Clinton’s selling access to the Lincoln Bedroom with who and for how much, who knows, selling coffee in the White House, all this fundraising with Chinese agents and so forth. Then the bimbos coming around led by Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Willey, you name it, Paula Jones, drag a dollar bill through the trailer park, that’s the kind of trash you get, that’s what they’re all saying, and now they’re gonna get exercised about Donald Trump and some woman in his audience calling somebody a coward, which is what the usage of the word here means.
Yeah, you know, it’s a little disappointing. Americans want someone they can be proud of in the Oval Office. It’s always gonna come back to Clintons. You people on the left are never, ever gonna understand. You undermine your own credibility and your own morality every time you start ripping into other people for their so-called moral failings. You didn’t answer the bell when the “champeen” of moral failings was in the White House back in the nineties.
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RUSH: Just a couple more sound bites on this thing.
I’ll tell you what it shows, folks. It’s an age-old theory of mine about all this. This word that the audience member shouted at Trump and that Trump just hated that it was mentioned. He was so offended by it that he had to tell everyone what was said so that they would understand why he was offended, so he repeated the word. Here we are now, Mark Halperin on the Today show today being asked by Savannah Guthrie, “Trump repeated a vulgar term used by a supporter at a rally last night. Are you shocked about that, Mark?”
HALPERIN: Any other candidate who did that on the eve of the election the staff would say, “We could lose the primary over this.”
GUTHRIE: Yeah.
HALPERIN: Trump and his team loved it. The crowd loved it. This symbolizes the entire Trump campaign: different and not politically correct.
RUSH: I have a question. There was a character in the movie Goldfinger that nobody had a problem pronouncing. There is a nickname for cats that people have no problem pronouncing. And that would be, as Sean Connery famously said it, “Pussy Galore.” And then you have your little pussy cat running around, if you have one in your house, and nobody says a word. Then somebody comes along and uses the word as a synonym for coward and everybody’s having a cow here.
Here’s Katrina Pierson. This is CNN’s New Day today, Alisyn Camerota. She’s the Trump campaign national spokesperson. Camerota says, “Isn’t there a difference between political correctness and vulgarity?
PIERSON: It’s free speech, and this is the live free or die state. Mr. Trump is exercising his free speech. It was in fun with the audience. You heard the whole stadium roared and started chanting.
RUSH: They did? I missed that. It just proves, folks, it just proves, it’s undefeated. Undefeated. It will never be defeated, no matter what any guy does, no matter what any guy has ever done, undefeated.
Vito in Erlanger, Kentucky. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thank you very much for taking my call. I’ve gotta tell you I’m a former Democrat who became a Republican. I’ve been listening to you since the eighties. I am not and never was a Clinton supporter, but I also felt betrayed by the Bushes for not standing up for what he believed in and what he represented. What I want in the White House is class. I want a class act. I don’t want to hear vulgar talk. I don’t want to her anything that could be portrayed as vulgar talk. I don’t want to be degrading people. I want some more civility in my politics. I just can’t tolerate that kind of activity, and I really wish that Mr. Trump wouldn’t do that.
RUSH: You know, it’s indicative, is it not? I mean, look at the juxtaposition, the comparison — I made it yesterday — in the pregame ceremonies of the Super Bowl and the halftime show. The pregame ceremonies are America on parade, patriotism more than you’ve ever seen. It is celebratory. It is the epitome of decency and goodness. It’s the military. It’s the jets flying by, it’s the national anthem always sung with respect. You get to the halftime show and it’s epitomizing the cultural rot and decay.
You know what I found out about the halftime show today? I’ve got it in the Stack here very briefly. Apparently the 12-minute set performed by Coldplay and Chris Martin was a secret tribute to LGBT behavior and love. That you had to be in that community to get the tribute, otherwise you wouldn’t know what was going on. And Beyonce comes out with her Black Panther celebratory tune and so forth. Wherever you look, Vito, it seems like the culture is rotting away, and I’m sure you’ve always looked at politics, certainly the oval office and the White House that would remain unaffected by any of it, and you now see even that being affected, and it’s got you concerned, right?
CALLER: Very much so.
RUSH: So do you have anybody out there in this campaign you like that you think will resist this movement, this temptation, what have you?
CALLER: Well, the guy who seems to have the most experience with what my primary issue would be, which is the Supreme Court nominees, is Ted Cruz. But honestly I could be persuaded to support several of them because, for me right now, the Democratic Party is a Socialist Party, a socialist movement, and I’ve been working my whole life and paying my taxes my whole life in an honest and fair, decent way, and I really do not want to see us continue along the path that we’re on.
RUSH: I wholeheartedly agree. This cultural rot, would you say that it’s localized and concentrated in the pop culture? And if you would agree with that, well, who runs that? Who are the arbiters of taste today in our politics and in our pop culture? And I’ll give you a quick hint. It’s not the Republicans, gang, or the conservatives.
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RUSH: Here’s John in Cherry Valley, Illinois. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. I’ll be brief and I’ll get off the phone as quickly as I can. I don’t care about vulgar language. I didn’t even hear what he said, everything was bleeped out. Maybe 2,000 people heard what he said. I want the country to get better, I don’t care about language. Let’s get this thing straightened out as quickly as possible. It seems like the press is making a bigger deal out of vulgar language than Bill Clinton’s vulgar actions in the White House.
RUSH: Oh, no question about it. No question, no question, they want to condemn Trump for what he said and applaud Clinton for what he did.
CALLER: Yeah. Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m gonna say one more thing, second point. I’m tired of these politicians saying, “Go with experience, we got experience.” Yeah, we got experience for about two, three decades, we got $19 trillion in debt.
RUSH: Yeah, I hear you.
CALLER: And we get screwed over. So they have a lot of experience —
RUSH: Yeah —
CALLER: — screwing us over.
RUSH: Exactly right. Where’s all this experience getting us?
CALLER: Nowhere. Nowhere. So desperate times you gotta get someone that’s different. We gave Obama a chance. Let’s give this guy a chance. So I got two things to say. Go Trump, and we don’t need another Bush. Thank you, Rush —
RUSH: Hang on a minute. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, before you go, did you really not hear the word that the woman shouted at Trump?
CALLER: No, I didn’t hear nothing.
RUSH: You still don’t know what it is?
CALLER: I know it was supposed to be — no, I really didn’t, honest to God, I didn’t.
RUSH: You don’t know what the woman, even now, you do not know what the woman called Ted Cruz?
CALLER: No. And if she said something bad I don’t care. I don’t care.
RUSH: What am I to do here, folks?
CALLER: Everybody else in this country doesn’t use vulgar language once in a while.
RUSH: See, I find myself in the same dilemma that Trump had. I got a guy — I tell you, let’s just play the bite. You missed it, and you need to hear this.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You’re upset that they’re all going on and on and on about it. Here’s what it is. Listen.
TRUMP: They asked Ted Cruz — serious question — “Well, what do you think of waterboarding? Is it okay.” And honestly, I thought he’d say, “Absolutely,” and he didn’t. Well, it’s… You know, he was concerned about the answer, because some people —
WOMAN: He’s a pussy!
TRUMP: She just said a terrible thing. You know what she said? Shout it out ’cause I don’t want —
WOMAN: Pussy.
TRUMP: Okay, you’re not allowed to say — and I never expect to hear that from you again. She said… I never expect to hear that from you again. She said, “He’s a pussy.” That’s terrible. Terrible.
RUSH: There you go. There you go, John. That was it.
CALLER: You’re kidding? Oh, you know, come on, Rush. I mean — (laughing).
RUSH: Not that big a deal?
CALLER: No. It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I thought it was a lot worse. I’m thinking of another P-word. Not that.
RUSH: Exactly right. Just called him a coward. The thing is, it’s not even true. The one thing Ted Cruz is not is that. There is no way Ted Cruz is a coward. It just isn’t the case. But you had the woman shouting it. Trump played this for all it’s worth. (interruption) What other P-word is he talking about? John, I got people asking me what you mean by the other P-word. What do you mean the other P-word?
CALLER: Well that’s one word I can’t say and I’m not gonna say it, okay, Rush. It’s not important. It didn’t happen. I really didn’t hear the word, so now that I really heard the word —
RUSH: See, this is how it works.
CALLER: This is stupid.
RUSH: “It’s not important.” You’re tempting everybody here, you’re toying everybody here on the other P-word. You got everybody dying to know what you mean, and you won’t say it.
CALLER: Well, I thought she called him something else. It’s what you can probably do with a pin when you —
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it.
CALLER: Okay, I’m not —
RUSH: You penis! That kind of thing, right?
CALLER: That little word.
RUSH: There you go. There’s all kinds of ways you can get the point across. That’s what we professional, highly trained broadcast specialists are capable of doing here and remaining legal and safe all at the same time.
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RUSH: It is an interesting juxtaposition. Here you have a presidential campaign and the old Live Free or Die State, New Hampshire, going on — the New Hampshire primary — and everybody is attempting to put forth a deeply serious, studied presidential image and character and countenance, temperament. And then over here you have Trump, who happens to be leading. And now what’s happening, you know, all the stories are coming out of the woodwork.
“Well, you remember when Newt’s mom called Hillary to Connie Chung?”
Have you forgotten that one?
That was the old B-word.
And there have been others. I mean, Barbara Bush, I think, once called Geraldine Ferraro something along the lines of the B-word. Nobody uses a C-word. That’s the one thing nobody uses. Because, once again, it’s undefeated. Nobody is gonna go there. The idea that this is something that doesn’t happen and is outrageous? It does represent a coarsening. I’ve been warning about this for, well, the whole time I’ve been doing this program. But we’ve been losing the battle here. That’s my point. Compare the pregame ceremonies to the Super Bowl halftime. Two completely different Americas portrayed and celebrated.
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RUSH: Joanna in Corpus Christi, Texas. Hi.
CALLER: It’s an honor to speak to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: So I want to start off by saying I am a very avid Trump supporter, and I think he may be the only one who’s gonna be able to get the job done ultimately. But I have a theory about his performance in the caucuses versus the primaries that I wanted to get your two cents on and see what your thoughts are about this.
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: I saw a bumper sticker as I was driving on the base, and it said, “Trump: Finally Somebody with Balls.” I’m —
RUSH: Well, here we go. We’re charted a course and we’re not deviating.
CALLER: Right, exactly. So I thought it was an awesome bumper sticker, but I thought to myself, “You know, it takes balls to put that bumper sticker on your car these days.” Because it’s been my experience, at least, that people who do support Trump don’t want to maybe admit it as much as they would if they were for another candidate. Because, you know, they don’t want to be lumped into or be considered racist or —
RUSH: Wait. Joanna, wait just a second. I don’t know about that, because Trump’s crowds are much larger than anybody else’s. There are people that have no problem demonstrating they’re for Trump by showing up through all kinds of inclement weather, going to his appearances. I don’t know that there’s that kind of reluctance, but your theory is that it manifested itself in Iowa.
CALLER: Yes, in a caucus it’s not anonymous. Whereas a primary, people who might not want to admit that they’re Trump supporters to their friends and colleagues might be more likely to vote for in an anonymous vote.
RUSH: So a variation on the Wilder Effect. Well, I have… The Wilder Effect is when you tell a pollster that you’re gonna vote for a black guy but you don’t.
CALLER: Oh.
RUSH: You’re afraid. You don’t want the pollster thinking you’re a racist so you’ll tell him you’re voting for the black candidate. But when it comes time to vote, you don’t. So the black candidate polls really well but then loses the election, and the liberals in the media are scratching their heads and they’ve concocted the Wilder Effect to explain it. He was of a black candidate for governor of Virginia.
He was polling crazily and lost, which it ticked ’em all off. But you might be right. There might be people who do not want to go to a caucus and have to defend Trump or speak up for him. Who knows? Well, I tell you what: Let me ask you this. I’ve got about 45 seconds. There’s a budding theory (I’ll play you the sound bite the next hour) that if Trump does not win New Hampshire by 15 points, that is equivalent to losing it. How do you see that?
CALLER: Well, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, but… (garbled cell) I think he’s gonna win the election; I think he’ll win the nomination.
RUSH: Well, okay.
CALLER: And I think he’s gonna be president.
RUSH: Are you military?
CALLER: I am.
RUSH: You are.
CALLER: I’m active duty Army.
RUSH: Okay. That’s fascinating. So… Well, look where we are here. I was gonna ask what she said means, but sadly I’m out of time here. But what do you people think of this theory? You’ll hear it. Frank Luntz is the guy bandying it about, that if Trump does not win by a minimum of 15, that he may as well consider it a disappointment.
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RUSH: Cynthia in Long Beach, California, really glad you waited. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. My original anger was blunted by all the lovely Trump supporters that called in, but I think that the conflation of the cultural rot from the original statement, the lead in to what happened at the Trump rally, from the one in there. And then with the Super Bowl and the whole cultural rot, remains the same. I know Snerdley will get angry with me by diverting, but it actually is included.
The Emerson poll is probably totally corrupt, and just like you said the Clinton fraud, let’s not forget the GOP fraud. We have with us Emerson owned by Aristotle Inc., which is a DC Silicon Valley, owned by Google and Murdoch of News Corp, so it’s probably corrupt. I just want to take you back to, of course Trump did not say that. He repeated it. And if he had not repeated the word, which I wouldn’t use, and I would never call out, and I have no idea if that person was a plant or if that person was just excited, or if that person has a foul mouth or maybe that’s not even a foul word, whatever —
RUSH: Well, of course it wasn’t Trump’s fault. Trump would never use a word like that.
CALLER: But what if he had not repeated it? First of all, the caller that called in and said that he didn’t even hear it, I’m assuming he was in the audience, this rally was for the voters. Unlike anybody else’s rally, these rallies are held and they’re live on television and everything else. If Trump hadn’t repeated it, it would of course be (unintelligible) on the 24-hour news cycle and on AM radio the next day without Trump having told the 5,000 people standing out there what just was said. And it would be used by Jeb Bush and everybody else under the sun, 24 hours of let’s get it together quick before the voting starts, to call the narrative that is of course being solidified even as I’m listening right here on hold for two hours, that Trump is somehow crass, he’s undignified.
In fact, what he’s done — and I do listen to every single rally and every single speech, much like I listen every single day to your show for 20 years. You taught me to do that. And what he’s doing is restoring dignity, the dignity that was lost the day that we said “Boxers or briefs?”
RUSH: Cynthia, let me jump in here a second and I want to let the audience know that might be confused, she thinks Trump is getting a bad rap. That’s what she’s saying. Am I right about that?
CALLER: I think that would be a — okay, sure.
RUSH: Well, is that not what you’re saying?
CALLER: Well, I think that the narrative is being steered from what he actually is trying to do, and —
RUSH: Well, now, Cynthia, it’s not every day that one candidate calls another candidate a pussy in a presidential campaign. You can’t expect that not to be made news of.
CALLER: But did he?
RUSH: Well, he repeated what somebody his audience said. Technically, no, that’s your point, right?
CALLER: And if he had not —
RUSH: And he even admonished her for saying it and he made sure he showed his disapproval of her saying it by saying it again so that everybody could hear it.
CALLER: Because, had he not it, it was still — they would have left not knowing that. They would have heard whatever they wanted to hear, whatever —
RUSH: So Trump had to control the narrative by making sure everybody at the rally knew what was said instead of hearing about it later on TV, where Trump might have been unfairly blamed when he really had no complicity in this. Is that your —
CALLER: Sure. And really just blunts the whole issue. But my original call was because immediately you went from Katrina Pierson and a discussion of the First Amendment, to the cultural rot which is on full display in the disgusting halftime show. And what has been done purposefully by Barack Obama, which, if anybody takes the time to listen to everything that Trump says, is a message that “yes,” not only is it on purpose, but it’s with incompetence that Obama has not even been able to do his master’s bidding. He doesn’t edify Obama.
RUSH: Right. Okay. I’ve done my best here. Cynthia, I get it. I appreciate it. I just have to move on. There’s a lot of people waiting, and I think you made your point essentially that Trump had to control this by repeating the word lest his supporters, innocent souls they are, hear it portrayed as out of context the next day. End up getting mad at Trump when he hadn’t said anything. And over here you got Obama purposefully participating in the coarsening of our culture, and that Super Bowl rot and so forth. Why are we dumping all over Trump, is the point. So I got it. I do. That’s why patience, patience, folks, patience is a virtue. Reading the stitches on the fastball is all part of that. Cynthia, thank you el mucho.
This is Bob, Bob in Spokane, Washington. You’re next. Great to have you, sir.
CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush, blue star dittos to you. Thanks for what you do. Couple things real fast ’cause I know you’re short. I’m tired of being told that the second and third place candidates were the winners.
RUSH: (laughing) Yeah.
CALLER: There are many different meanings for a word in our language, and I was under the impression that that word that Trump repeated was short for pusillanimous. I looked it up on Merriam-Webster, and it says pusillanimous is lacking courage and resolution marked by contemptible timidity.
RUSH: Exactly right.
CALLER: Now, the kicker is in the examples of pusillanimous, it says pusillanimous politicians who vote according to whichever way the political wind is blowing.
RUSH: There you go.
CALLER: So I’d like to suggest it’s all tempest in a teapot and much ado about nothing and a false controversy, you know, contrived by the Drive-Bys. They might want to look into the word, and, yeah, it has multiple meanings but they’ve run with one of them and absolutely disregarded the rest, the others.
RUSH: No, no, I don’t think they’re disguising it. You’re saying pusillanimous, the way the Drive-Bys are spreading it is that Cruz was called a coward. That works. They hate Cruz. That’s the only reason this is getting a pass is because it was said about Ted Cruz. Well, it’s not the only reason. But at the same time none of you can be that outraged that the Drive-Bys are making a big deal of this. I know we have Clinton and Lewinsky and all of that, and we had tons of that, but I don’t know, I don’t know that I recall one candidate being called this word by another candidate in the course of a campaign.
And if you put it in the context of some of the other things that Trump has said himself and other things that have been repeated at Trump rallies, such as what he said about the Mexicans, what he said about McCain, much of it applauded. And it hasn’t hurt. I think the Drive-Bys are still looking to take Trump out. The Republican establishment is still looking to take Trump out.
I am here to tell you — and I don’t want you people to doubt me — there are people who still believe Trump’s gonna get out of this, no matter what happens in New Hampshire and no matter what happens in South Carolina. There are people who still — maybe it’s a triumph of hope over common sense, but they still believe he’s gonna quit, that he’s gonna grow tired of it, that it isn’t gonna provide thrills anymore, that’s it’s gonna hit him how expensive this is and he’s gonna start asking himself, is it worth the money?
So when something like this happens, the people who think that allow themselves to get even closer to that day where Trump just says, “You know, to heck with it.” Do not doubt me. If Trump is the nominee, there are going to be Republican establishment types hoping that he quits in October. It’s never gonna go away.