RUSH: I found the YouTube last night, and I’m gonna play this for you and I’m curious to know how Trump supporters react to this. Because this is gonna be in an ad, too. This may end up being an ad. It may be chopped up and edited into an ad, but it’s gonna be an ad. It’s Trump from 2012. This is just, what, four years ago. He’s on the Fox News Channel, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, 2012, March. She said, “Looking at the administration, how do you think the vice president has done, Biden? Being vice president is not a job very visible. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, I’m curious, what do you think about Biden, what do you think of Hillary Clinton?”
TRUMP: Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman. I mean, I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. And I’ve known her and her husband for years and I really like ’em both a lot and I think she really works hard and I think she, again, she’s given an agenda that’s not all of her, but I think she really works hard, and I think she does a good job. And I like her.
VAN SUSTEREN: She says she’s out at the end of this term. Do you think we’re gonna see her again running for office?
TRUMP: I think so. I think, you know, assuming she’s healthy, which I hope she will be, I think she probably runs after the next four years, I would imagine.
VAN SUSTEREN: You support her?
TRUMP: I don’t want to get into this because I’ll get myself into trouble —
VAN SUSTEREN: That’s why I asked you, to see what kind of trouble.
TRUMP: I just like her. I like her, and I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, and it was very well received. And he’s a — he’s a really good guy, and she’s a really good person and woman.
RUSH: That’s Donald Trump on Greta Van Susteren four years ago. You know they’re gonna make that into an ad. You know that the whole thing, or portions of it, are gonna be made into an ad. And, you know, Slick was down there at Mar-a-Lago and he was making a speech. And I guarantee you that’s not all he was getting for payment for the speech at Mar-a-Lago. He was having a great, great time there, there’s no question about it. But I wonder what he got paid for his speech at Mar-a-Lago. Trump didn’t pay him. Obviously some group rented the place for an outing, and they had Slick come down and say some words. But four years ago.
So what’s your reaction there? (laughing) Yeah. (interruption) This is fabulous. You know what? You’ve been talking to Scottie Nell Hughes. That’s exactly what Scottie Nell would say. Okay, the official Trump reaction to this is, are you ready? Will we finally now admit how brilliant Trump is? Can we all finally admit that he’s been setting these people up for years? He’s been out there praising the Clintons. He’s been fooling them. He’s been making the Clintons think he loves them, he supports them, he’s in their camp, he’s got them tamed, they’re not even thinking about Trump, even looking about Trump, and Trump is just icing them.
Trump is gonna come out of the blue one day and just squash these people. What a brilliant, brilliant move to keep them off guard and set them up.
So that will be the official response to this. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. Okay. That’s an interesting spin. Of course Trump was gonna — he knew four years ago he was gonna run. He knew she’s gonna be running the opposition. He knew, he’s setting ’em up. This is brilliant. This shows how far ahead of the game Trump is. He’s so far out in front of everybody we can’t even keep up. What a brilliant bit of trickery here. That’s gonna be what it is. You’re not at all concerned about this? Nah, they’re not, folks. The Trumpists are not concerned.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is great. This is exactly what I was expecting. Okay, here is… I checked the email during the break. One defense of the sound bite, the Trump appearance in Greta where he praises Hillary to the hilt. One reaction is, “You know, this would make a great ad debunking how Trump is attacking Hillary because she’s a woman. This can just get rid of all of these attacks that Trump’s out there hitting her ’cause she’s a woman, that Trump hates her or whatever.
“That sound bite… Actually, Rush, when you hear that sound bite, it actually made me think Trump is more serious than I actually thought when he comments on Hillary.” Another emailer said, “Hey, Rush, you know, I used to like George W. Bush. So I can fully believe that Trump used to like Hillary. It makes perfect sense he’d be mad at Hillary after Benghazi. You think Trump would have said that about Hillary before Benghazi, Rush? He didn’t, did he? He didn’t, Rush. Did he?”
So I knew it. And I also know that the #NeverTrump-ers are gonna be livid, ’cause this is the kind of stuff the #NeverTrump-ers think that they’re gonna be able to use and get rid of Trump, and it isn’t gonna work, because they don’t understand even now the depth of the bond that exists. I keep talking about this, and they don’t get it, ’cause you know what? They don’t have one. All of these people — I don’t care, name the names. From the Bill Kristols to the George Wills, they don’t understand this bond that Trump has.
Well, maybe they might understand it. They resent it or whatever, but I’m not sure that they grasp it from a standpoint of having personally experienced it. So we’ll see. There’s one other thing that the bite does not have that Trump also said to Greta Van Susteren, and I should have thrown this in. It’s not gonna make any difference, but I just want to be complete. She asked Trump about Hillary’s vote for the Iraq, because Trump has been consistently opposed to it. He was always opposed to that and he’s been critical of anybody who supported or voted for the Iraq war, and Hillary did.
Greta Van Susteren asked him about it, and he said, “Well, you have to remember, Greta, she was lied to. She was lied to by the Bush administration about that. It’s perfectly understandable why she would have voted yes. If they lied to me about it, I might have supported too.” See, you’ve gotta remember, she was lied to. She exonerated her four years ago on her vote for the Iraq war, that he’s now out ripping her to shreds on.
Today if you listen to Trump, he’s ripping her to shreds over her Iraq war vote. But four years ago he exonerated her ’cause “Bush lied to her about it,” or Colin Powell. He didn’t name whoever it was that “lied.” he just said, “The Bush administration lied to her about it.” Chris in Bermuda Dunes, California, near the… This is Palm Springs. It’s great out there. Great to have you on the program, Chris. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yeah, you bet.
CALLER: Hey, before I get to my comment, I’d like to say hi to my mom and dad, Ed and Joanne. They’re 89 and 94, and they watch you on the Dittocam every single day.
RUSH: Well. Well! Hello back. Thank you for that.
CALLER: Yes, absolutely. Big fans. And I get the newsletter when she’s done reading it.
RUSH: Well, you’re all-in, and I appreciate that. I really do.
CALLER: Yeah. You know, I don’t know if I would be called a Trumpist. I really like Ted Cruz. But I think the average person is so sick and tired of typical politicians. I think we view this great country as being driven off a cliff by politicians. And as bad as some of the things Trump says, I think the line should be instead of #NeverTrump, “Never Another Politician.” So we will take anybody besides another politician.
RUSH: Well, I know there lot of people like you out there that think politicians are the scourge, and Trump’s not one. In fact, that’s often used as an excuse for a Trump mistake. “Well, you know, he’s not a politician. He’s not politically correct,” and it’s excused. You said some of the questionable things that Trump says. Could you cite one for me? What are you talking about? What kind of things?
CALLER: All the things that he said. I mean, Lyin’ Ted. You know, whenever anybody tells me why not to vote for somebody else, instead of why to vote for him, they lose me. You know, he might have to work with Ted Cruz in the future, and then that’s out there. The things he said about Carly Fiorina, bleeding out of who knows where and, I mean, all this —
RUSH: No, that was about Megyn Kelly. Carly Fiorina was the horse face stuff.
CALLER: Right. Right. But that’s not presidential. But even then, you know, I think when people look at Trump they say two things. “He’s had to make a payroll. He’s been involved in competitive bid situations.” He understands what the rest of us in this world deal with. The average politician does not. And, secondly: “Who is ISIS more afraid of, Trump or Hillary?” I think those two things right there, they will put up with anything but another politician because I think this great country’s being driven off a cliff, and we have to step in and do something about it.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate the call, Chris. Thanks very much. And to your parents as well: 89 and 94, and daily Dittocam viewers. I appreciate that.
Duane in the Little League Baseball capital of the world, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, great to have you. You’re up next. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I’ll drive the point home from the last caller. People out here are mad, and they want somebody that’s gonna go in there and do and say anything they have to to look out for the common man in this country, because we have been just raked over the coals from top to bottom and side to side for so many years now; it’s just gotten to the boiling point.
RUSH: Wait, now, hang on. I understand that, but it doesn’t bother you at all that just four years ago it sound like Trump was all in for Hillary Clinton? Doesn’t that give you any pause at all? Do you not ask yourself, “What he’s telling us today, does he really think it?” or you don’t ask yourself that at all; it doesn’t matter?
CALLER: No, I do ask myself that question, but most people do not care, because, like I say, they want someone that’s gonna go in there and say whatever it takes. And it’s like people come at Trump —
RUSH: Okay. Look, I hear you. I really hear you. But the Republican candidates, isn’t this why they’re in trouble? During the campaign they went out and they told everybody what they wanted to hear. I mean, they loaded up for bear! They were gonna stop Obamacare, and then they got there and didn’t do diddly-squat.
CALLER: That’s right.
RUSH: And now they’re in the doghouse because they lied to you.
CALLER: Yes. And even with Cruz. Cruz could have got further ahead if he would have been more like Trump, and he would come out and call these politicians right out on the table and just call them ugly names and just run them up one side and down the other.
RUSH: He did! On the floor of the Senate he went after ’em!
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have more response coming in from Trump supporters reacting to the 49-second sound bite I played in the previous hour. So I’m gonna play it again here in case some of you are just now tuning in, so you’ll be in context. I played a Trump sound bite from an interview Greta Van Susteren back in 2012 on the Fox News Channel in which he just speaks glowingly of Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton. I played it on purpose ’cause I wanted to gauge reaction to it. I wanted to see what Trump supporters would say about it, whether I could find any Trump supporter worried or shocked or surprised or betrayed.
I was looking, perhaps, for any and all of that — and so far: Zip, zero, nada. The reaction continues to come in, and it’s either explain-it-away type reaction or supportive. One person said, “I hope they make an ad out of that. I hope they do. That’s the single best thing that could happen to Trump in this campaign.” So here’s the bite. There’s one thing not in it. Greta Van Susteren asks Trump about Hillary Clinton’s vote in support of the Iraq war. Trump has, from the beginning of that whole thing, been opposed to it.
He claimed that he was originally opposed to it. There have been some people try to find evidence of that and haven’t been able to. Trump said, “Well, I was a businessman. They were quoting me every time I say something back then.” But he is consistent. For the longest time he’s been totally opposed to the Iraq war, thinks it was a dumb thing to do, stupid. And he was asked about Greta Van Susteren: “What do you think? She voted for it.” He said, “You know what? You gotta keep in mind that Hillary was lied to about weapons of mass destruction and all that rest of the reasons.
“She was lied to by the Bush administration.” So he doesn’t hold her vote against her four years ago. Today, he’s running against her like it’s the stupidest thing she’s done and it’s typical of stupid things that she does and will do and it’s a black mark against her. Now, if I really wanted to, I could remind you that everything the Bush administration said about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction was said almost word-for-word by Bill Clinton back in 1998 during the Lewinsky business when he was trying to distract everybody.
Remember he was launching missiles into aspirin factories in the Sudan, and launched a missile into a Baghdad office complex. Such that a Baghdad office complex is an office complex, but nevertheless. He launched a missile into a building on a Saturday night that killed a janitor, and that was it. But you go back. We’ve got the sound bites (they are in our archives) of every Democrat — Bill Clinton, every Democrat in the House and Senate — saying the exact same things about Hussein and weapons of mass destruction that George W. Bush said.
It’s uncanny. It really is uncanny. My point is, it doesn’t matter that Hillary was “lied to” about it. She believed it. She goes back obviously to the days when her husband was president, and they all thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction back then, in 1998! By the time 2002, 2003 came along, they had added to the stockpile. Everybody thought so. It’s only as a matter of convenience, once no WMD was found, that the Democrats get to pretend like they were all lied to to begin with. They get to pretend like they were all given the shaft.
They were all misled, and “Bush lied, people died.” They got tricked. They didn’t get tricked. They all thought the same thing on their own without Bush having to tell ’em a thing and they had previously authorized the use of force against Saddam Hussein back in 1998 on the same premises. This whole thing is a… It’s just a cluster screw, folks. It’s all smoke and mirrors. But the point is Greta Van Susteren asked Trump: “You know, you’re opposed to the Iraq war. She voted for it,” and he excused her, “Well, she was lied to, you gotta remember.”
Well, here’s the rest of it in 49 seconds.
TRUMP: Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman. I mean, I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years. I live in New York. She lives in New York. And I’ve known her and her husband for years and I really like ’em both a lot and I think she really works hard and I think she, again, she’s given an agenda that’s not all of her, but I think she really works hard, and I think she does a good job. And I like her.
VAN SUSTEREN: She says she’s out at the end of this term. Do you think we’re gonna see her again running for office?
TRUMP: I think so. I think, you know, assuming she’s healthy, which I hope she will be, I think she probably runs after the next four years, I would imagine.
VAN SUSTEREN: You support her?
TRUMP: I don’t want to get into this because I’ll get myself into trouble —
VAN SUSTEREN: That’s why I asked you, to see what kind of trouble.
TRUMP: I just like her. I like her, and I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, and it was very well received. And he’s a — he’s a really good guy, and she’s a really good person and woman.
RUSH: Okay, so I’m getting more response. I played that to see what Trump supporters would say. I wanted to gauge their reaction. I wanted to find out if any of them felt betrayed. I wanted to find out if any of them were worried. “Oh, my God, he loves the Clintons?” ‘Cause, you know, the Clintons… I mean, that’s the reason why everybody’s animated or should be that she’s got to be defeated. Here he is talking about how much he respects her loves her supports her. Same thing with Bill.
Another response I got: “I hope they make an ad out of that. I so hope they make an ad out of it. You know why, Rush? Because this shows that Trump is not your average Republican hatemonger. This shows that Trump is open-minded, and four years ago he did like Hillary, and Trump has often said, Rush, that he’s friends with everybody. He gets along with everybody. He’s gonna unite everybody.”
And then another response came in similar to the one I just shared with you, which is, “This is so good! I hope they make that into an ad because it shows that Trump’s opposition to Hillary is based on substance, not because she’s a woman, or not because she’s a Democrat. His opposition to her is real. That was four years ago, Rush. Anybody can change.” Another person said, “Hey, I used to like George W. Bush, too.” So the response is coming in, the ones I’m seeing in the email. I haven’t run across any.
I’m basically inviting people to be critical now, but there hasn’t been any. It’s all positive. One way or another, Trump supporters are finding a way to not be upset by that and actually turn that into a positive. There’s another preemptive Trump defense. It kind of goes like this. “Well, you know, you take any 12-second clip of Trump from years ago and you take it out of the larger context that we now have of the guy, and you can’t do that. That’s not fair. That’s not right. Doesn’t mean anything.
“There are 12-second clips of Trump’s from the eighties and nineties that show he’s exactly the same way that he is now, that show him very consistent. But you go out you take 12 seconds here, 15 seconds of anybody four years ago, take it out of context and who knows what you can do with it. You have to… See, this is what people have to do to defeat Trump. They have to go back four years and try to say he’s a hypocrite. And, Rush, it isn’t gonna work, ’cause we don’t care. Trump is not a politician. He’s not a…”
That’s the reaction I’m getting.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And back to the phones to Williamsburg in Brooklyn. They’re trying to make this into the new Upper West Side. Are you aware of that? A bunch of literary people are moving over there, a bunch of leftists that can’t afford Manhattan, Upper West Side, east side, downtown, uptown. A lot of musicians trying to turn Williamsburg into a satellite Upper West Side, we got a guy from there, Andy, great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, sir.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I am a Trumpster and I would like to defend Mr. Trump. As a businessman in New York, 58-year-old businessman, I can tell you New York, well, Hillary of course could be bought. Now, Trump owns an empire here in New York.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: If he wants to get ahead, he has to grease the politicians’ hands.
RUSH: That’s right.
CALLER: Cuomo, Hillary, they’re all connected at the hip.
RUSH: I understand. I understand.
CALLER: Walmart did not succeed here in New York too well. I gotta drive 60 miles to the nearest Walmart. But Walmart is a little bigger, they play a different game. Mr. Trump, of course, doesn’t necessarily like Hillary. He’s just saying that because you have to ply the —
RUSH: Well, I gotta tell you here, Andy, he has a point. Walmart, I mean, not just New York, Chicago, a bunch of metro areas told Walmart, “You don’t get anywhere near here.” It didn’t matter if it would help their constituents save money, because Walmart didn’t hire union people, so Walmart wasn’t gonna be permitted in. Walmart didn’t have bunch of lobbyists running around greasing the skids of local politicians so they had, you know, nearest one to Manhattan was 60 miles away or 60 minute drive, depending on how you look at it.
So here’s Andy saying, hey, look, Trump’s a big businessman, very successful, and Democrats run the show, she lives up there in Chappaqua, I mean, you’re not gonna get anywhere in New York by ripping into Democrats. So yet another, shall we say, defense of Trump and not gonna hold it against him for being praiseworthy of Mrs. Clinton. Andy, I appreciate the call.