RUSH: Yes, greetings, my friends, and welcome. It’s great to have you here as we are at the beginning of the end of another busy broadcast week. I just saw out there — I think it was on Fox. Somebody was discussing how Hillary is going to bring in Elizabeth Warren as her designated Trump attacker. You want to talk about being off the reservation? That is it. …

This program… I gotta be honest. It’s getting harder and harder and harder to do here, folks. I don’t… I’m not joking. I’m not trying to be lighthearted and make a joke, be funny or any of that. It’s just getting tougher and tougher. I don’t think… What are we, in our 28th year, 27th, whatever it is? I’m sitting here, trying to recall if I can remember a time where there has ever been such panic. I’m drawing a blank. I do not recall a time where there’s been this degree of it, and I’m gonna share examples with you today so that you know what I’m talking about.

The degree of panic out there, I have not seen — on our side, I mean — in all the years that I have been doing this program. Now, everybody knows that Paul Ryan is keeping arm’s-length from Trump. He’s saying, “No, no, no. I can’t do it right now. I cannot. I cannot endorse Trump. I have to wait and see what’s gonna happen,” da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da. You know, it’s interesting to me. It’s amazing, interesting, what have you, to see all of these self-identifying Republicans and conservatives speaking out against the Trump revolution.

And that’s fine.

Don’t misunderstand me here.

Please listen to what I say. I’m gonna be as precise about this as I can. It is the degree of panic and anger and, “All is lost,” and, “It’s all been for nothing” sentiment. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I don’t know how to deal with it, because I’m not there. I’m not that. I never am that, and I never have been that, and I don’t want to be that. So I don’t know how to deal with it. And I don’t want to fake it and act like I’m down in the dumps, depressed, and all is lost just to relate to you, if you are, ’cause that’s… I can’t do it. I look at all of the self-identifying Republicans and conservatives speaking out against Trump.

As I say, that’s fine. But some of the people speaking out, I don’t remember anywhere near this kind of panic or fear or anger over Obama, Obamacare, or the Supreme Court’s judgments in Obamacare. I mean, if people wanted to get angry and panicked and say, “All is lost,” I would think the last 7-1/2 years would have sufficed. But I’m telling you, the vitriol that is going on — the anger, whatever you want to call it in the conservative movement/Republican Party… The long knives are out. The daggers are out. Everybody’s throwing them. Everybody’s trying to win the contest of who can write the most red-flag piece.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama continues to fundamentally transform this country, fundamentally ignore the Constitution. There have been some people upset about it and there have been some people speaking out, but the Republican Party hasn’t. The Republican Party never said a word! They knew they… This is the thing. They wouldn’t say a word in criticism of Obama that they meant. It was all lip service. The anger, the panic, the call to action — whatever it is — I haven’t seen it aimed at Democrats like I’m seeing it now because Trump has theoretically won the Republican nomination.

So many of the same people who said they would never back Trump because if he didn’t get his way he might run third-party… You remember that? So many of the people — it way back last July and last August — who said that they would never back Trump because if he didn’t get his way, he might run third-party, are now saying, “The only solution we have is to go third party.” There’s all kinds of arguments about what that means. “How do we do it? Do we do third party symbolically or do we actually come up with somebody third party that can win?”

Let me tell you how a third-party candidate can win, and you tell me whether you want to sign on to this. The only way a third-party candidate can win… The timing alone to get signatures (sigh) and everything to get the third-party candidate on the ballot in all 50 states? Some deadlines (chuckles) are next week for this! But let’s say they’ve got some leverage. If you really want a third-party candidate to win, you are gonna have to see to it that neither Hillary nor Trump get 270 electoral votes, and the thing gets thrown to the House of Representatives, and they get to choose who the president is.

And it could be anybody.

That’s the only way a third party goes. How do you think that’s gonna play out? Who do you think the Republican House of Representatives leadership will pick if they had a chance? If the election’s deadlocked, nobody gets to 270, the Constitution says it goes to the House. Folks, the low-information crowd in our country, you let that happen and can you imagine what they’re gonna think? You talk about “rigged” situations? It won’t be, but we’ll have to deal with that. Then who would the House come up with? Who would they select?

It wouldn’t have to be Trump. By definition, it wouldn’t have to be Trump. It can be their third-party guy if they’re happy with one, if they actually nominated one or chose one that could actually win. The point is it’s a long shot. But here’s Paul Ryan, who’s the highest elected Republican in the land, speaker of the House, saying he may not support the party nominee, which again, fine with me. (sight) There’s… (chuckles) I’ve run out of energy to get so agitated over everything that’s in the news. I just don’t have the capacity anymore. There’s too much of it out there.

I’m gonna go at this a different way.

I’ll just tell you this. From what I gather — we’ve got sound bites coming up — there’s little tiff going on here that Ryan wants Trump to move more in his direction before he can sign off and endorse. And Trump’s out there saying he doesn’t like the Ryan agenda and that “I won and you’re gonna have to come to me.” I think if somebody prevails on Trump… Do I really want to say this? Let me ask myself, “Do I really want to is this?” See, I’ve got these dilemmas. I’m starting to ask myself what’s safe to say and what isn’t anymore — I mean, and keep you here, not have you run for the tall grass. Let me reserve that. I’m gonna hold that in reserve. We’ll do some other things, too, and I’ll get back to this, this Ryan-Trump tiff, ’cause I think there’s a right thing for Trump to do here and a wrong thing.

If he wants to win, there’s a right thing and a wrong thing to do.

I just don’t know how many of you want to hear it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s over, folks. I have it right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers — countless columns, blog posts. It’s over already. Even before Trump is the official nominee, it’s over. I’m overwhelmed with it. I doubt that a lot of people read as much as I do. It’s my job. It’s my passion, by the way. It’s show prep. So I encounter a lot of it, and the sheer volume is… I’ve never seen it like this before. Let me just give you some examples here — and, again, I’m not harping on anyone, and I want everybody to understand: I’m not doing any of this to rip into anybody or be critical of anybody.

I’m not trying to pick fights with anybody. I’m just telling you what I found when I was doing show prep — and in no particular order, by the way. This is strictly me imparting information, pure and simple. American Spectator, two days ago, “The Conservative Catastrophe Ahead,” by Paul Kengor. Maybe I just do this without even telling you who wrote these. That might be the best way to do this, ’cause my point is not really having you know who these people are for the purposes of taking action on it. That’s not what I’m trying to do.

Anyway, “Americans in 2016 resolved their next president not on November 8, the official date-to-come of the election, but on May 3 in the state of Indiana. It is Hillary Rodham Clinton. With Donald Trump winning Indiana, and Ted Cruz thereby suspending his campaign, the seal has been broken. For conservatives, Armageddon is fully upon us: a Hillary Clinton presidency, once seemingly impossible when a half-dozen to a dozen attractive Republicans could have defeated her, is a fait accompli courtesy of Trump and his supporters. An unwaveringly devoted sect of followers have pushed a crass, vulgar, uninformed, unstable TV celebrity/casino-mogul/cult-of-personality figure through the Republican primary process, a man unequivocally unsuited in temperament, character, grace, and knowledge for the presidency of the United States.

“Marco Rubio put it best when he described Donald Trump as a charlatan and con man who must not be allowed to hijack the conservative movement and the party of Lincoln and Reagan. Well, fear not a permanent hijacking, because Trump’s leadership of the GOP will last only until November, after which he will slink back to New York, and Hillary Clinton will slide into the White House. [Trump] can’t win because the vast majority of Americans (outside the tight sect of Trumpists) are repulsed by the man. A friend of mine emailed me yesterday.

“He is a lifelong Democrat who, like many Democrats I know, was planning on voting Republican in this election because he despises Hillary Clinton. He liked Cruz and Rubio. He would’ve supported almost any of the original 17 Republican candidates, except Trump. Now, he is so appalled at Republicans that he can hardly contain his anger. His email contains some very strong language. At the risk of offending some of you, I include it only because it’s symptomatic of what I’m hearing from Democrats: ‘I am stunned that supposedly educated people fool themselves into thinking this guy has any intention of implementing any of the bulls–t that he spews out.

“Trump has no ideology other than himself……I mean Je–s Chr–t Paul……what the f*** is happening!!!????'” (sic) This guy claims that that’s the tenor of emails he’s receiving. By the way, he says of the email’s author, “This friend is highly educated — graduate studies in military history from a great European university (University of Leeds). He was excited about voting Republican in 2016. Now, he thinks Republicans are at minimum stupid and at worst borderline fascists. He wants no part of a political party that would nominate Donald Trump for president.

“This is the perception/brand damage that Trump is creating for the GOP and conservative movement,” writes this guy at the American Spectator. It’s not me speaking. If you’re just joining me, I’m reading to you examples of the panic, anger, whatever you want to call it out there. “It will hurt the GOP for a long time. As for the conservative movement, the damage is less so because Trump is so obviously not a conservative, and thus cannot lead an ideological movement he does not understand.” Oh, yeah? Well, I got another piece here where it says Trump has hijacked the conservative movement!

And Trump is what people think conservatives are now — and you conservatives, it’s over for you. This guy’s happy about it. He works at Fox News. Oh, yeah, he’s very happy. “You guys, Trump’s hijacked the conservative movement! Because of all you blowhard conservatives on radio and TV, Trump’s come in. He studied you and he’s used what you didn’t have the guts to do and he’s taken over your movement.” That’s another example. I’m gonna get to the end of this American Spectator piece because with something like this, you ought say, “What the hell do we do? If it’s this bad, what do we do?”

Well, here’s what this article says. “Alas, where does the historic Donald Trump massacre of 2016 leave conservatives? It banishes us to an even longer period of exile in our own land, still further removed from the ideals of the American Founders. The year 2016 takes us another leap away from 1776. … Over the next four to eight years of a Hillary Clinton presidency, we have a lot of work to do, and we conservatives should brace ourselves to accept that most of our efforts will end in failure. A man named Donald Trump arrived on the scene and torched it all. His scorched-earth candidacy, fueled by his devout supporters, leaves us gasping among smoldering ruins, with liberalism dancing upon the ashes.”

So it’s all Trump’s fault and his supporters. So what do we do here? “It banishes us to an even longer period of exile in our own land…” Look, there are other pieces that don’t quite get this pointed or vitriolic but say the same thing, and they all have — at the end of them, they all have — almost a similar conclusion that we gotta roll up our sleeves, and we gotta keep working, and we gotta persuade these Trump voters. We gotta tell ’em that they’re wrong. We gotta get to these Trump voters and we’ve gotta tell ’em what conservatism is. We gotta get to these Trump supporters and we gotta define conservatism for ’em. We gotta convert them to conservatism. We gotta get to these Trump voters.

And I’m thinking…

No, I don’t know if you want to know what I’m thinking. I better even think about that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Back to a miniature review of things I have found — and, by the way, I’m being sent emails from people, too, describing how bad it’s going to be, that this landslide defeat is headed our way. There’s just nothing we can do about it. It’s gonna be worse than anything anybody imagined. I guess it’s good if you’re I’m trying to sell subscriptions to something. The Wall Street Journal guys told me that the best way to amp subscriptions is to sell panic. Go out there and write, “Market Crash Unless You Do This!” It will generate new subscriptions to whatever left and right. Maybe some of that’s going on here. I don’t know.

But here’s another one. This from… Again, no names. It’s not the point. National Review Online. Fourth. I’m just joining this one in progress. This is another, “This is how conservatives can move forward,” “What do we do now?” type thing. “Fourth, reject the cult of celebrity in favor of building enduring, meaningful conservative cultural institutions. If the current election cycle has revealed anything, it’s demonstrated that large chunks of the celebrity right — you know, the people who spent most of the last ten years or so calling out ‘RINOs’ and proclaiming themselves the true arbiters of American conservatism — have proven that they’re little more than populist audience-whores, following where the lowest common denominator leads.”

I wonder who he’s talking about.

Who are these conservative celebrities?

Somebody name for me a conservative celebrity. (interruption) Oh, you think he might be talking about me? Oh, I hadn’t considered that. Oh. Oh. “[R]eject the cult of celebrity in favor of building enduring, meaningful conservative cultural institutions. If the current election cycle has revealed anything, it’s demonstrated that large chunks of the celebrity right — you know, the people who spent most of the last ten years or so calling out ‘RINOs’ and proclaiming themselves the true arbiters of American conservatism — have proven that they’re little more than populist audience-whores, following where the lowest common denominator leads.” (interruption)

You don’t think he’s talking about me? I don’t… (interruption) It doesn’t matter who he’s talking about. (interruption) No, that’s not even the point. You can call anybody out you want. My question is: Is this serious? This is the problem? This reads like jealousy, for crying out loud! What do you mean? It just boggles my mind. You know, you learn a lot about people in situations like this. You find out what really bothers them personally. Celebrity conservatives are the problem? Okay, I’m just… As I say, I’m just tossing it out. Now, there was somebody who reacted to it at National Review.

They said, “I agree with you about the need to reject the cult of celebrity. And maybe I am not understanding this paragraph correctly but I would warn against being afraid of calling out Republicans who are acting like Democrats and shaming those in Congress or outside of Congress who denounce them.” So somebody responding: Well, there were RINOs, for crying out loud, and we better not stop calling them that! (So there’s that.) Let’s see. I didn’t put these in any order. What’s next? Well, I got this Paul Ryan business, and I need to set that aside ’cause that’s its own subject.

Here’s Thomas Sowell, Dr. Thomas Sowell, “An Unmitigated Disaster. Donald Trump Will Be the Next Herbert Hoover — Republican party leaders may have worried that Donald Trump would not only lose the general election for the presidency, but would so poison the image of the party as to cause Republican candidates for Congress and for state and local offices to also lose.” Oh, that’s another thing! Yeah. Trump getting the nomination is guarantee that we’re gonna lose the House now. We’re gonna lose the Senate. We’re gonna be in the wilderness.

We gotta roll up our sleeves and we gotta start all over and we gotta start talking to Trump people. We gotta convince ’em that Trump’s a bad guy. We gotta convince ’em what “conservative” is. We gotta really start working on them. We gotta start persuading people. I read this, and I said, “What in the hell has been going on the last 25 years, then? What do you mean, “start over”? What has been going on for the last 25 years, if not the attempt to spread conservatism? And even if you want to make the argument that Trump has hijacked conservatism — which, again, is its own subset of a topic.

Some of this stuff just hits me. Like I say, I don’t have the capacity for this kind of doom. It’s just in my makeup. I don’t have the capacity for this kind of defeatism or negativism. Now, I’m allowing that some of this might be… As I said, you know, this stuff is written on blogs and websites, and they might be trying to amp up subscriptions. But I guarantee the reaction is, “He’s accusing us of being audience whores now! He’s accusing us of feeling the lowest common denominator! He’s accusing us of saying what we say only to get an audience.”

Well, no. No. But there are possibilities. I know that it happens with people that sell subscriptions to financial newsletters and stuff. Anyway, Dr. Sowell’s concern is in bringing up Herbert Hoover… You know, Herbert Hoover was the Republican when the Depression started, and because of that, all you had to do to defeat a Republican for 50 years after the Depression was to say he’s Herbert Hoover-like, that Herbert Hoover was one of the worst things that ever happened! Even though he was not a bad guy, he just happened to be the president when the Depression started.

Well, Trump’s gonna do the same thing. Since Trump has hijacked the Republican Party, since Trump has somehow found a way to get the lowest common denominator of the Republican primary elected to vote for him, it’s gonna be such a disaster. Hillary’s gonna win 55 states, maybe 57 states. She’s gonna win states that we haven’t even found yet. She gonna win it so big and so bad, Trump may not get but 10 votes, and that means when it’s all over, for 50 years the Republican Party is toast, because it’s always gonna be associated with Trump.

That’s the premise of the Dr. Sowell piece.

And people… I have been sent 10 copies of this today. “Yeah, Rush, you ought to read this! See? See? He’s right Rush! You need to read this.” Jeez. So I read it, and I’ve told you about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: “The political damage of Donald Trump to the Republican party is completely overshadowed by the damage he can do to the country and to the world with his unending reckless and irresponsible statements. Just this week, Trump blithely remarked that South Korea should be left to its own defenses.” Meanwhile, where was this kind…? Do I need to ask? You want to talk about Trump and South Korea, after we have an Iran nuke deal like we’ve got and we just found out — thanks to a New York Times profile — that the guy working for Obama who did it…? Wait ’til you hear this story. I swear, the proportion that we’re losing here is just.