RUSH: Let’s go audio sound bite route because I have teased a couple times that we’ve got Doris Kearns Goodwin and others just continuing to pull their hair out trying to figure out how Hillary lost to Trump.  As the days go by, they just can’t figure it out.  And they’re not chalking it up to things like fake news, bamboozling people.  One of the problems they’re having is they cannot and are not honest with themselves about who they are.  That’s their biggest problem.  The left’s biggest problem is they lie even to themselves. 

But let’s listen.  It was last night on CNN.com’s The Axe Files, this is David Axelrod’s podcast.  I know what you’re saying, what are we doing wasting time listening to a podcast?  Well, our show prep knows no bounds, folks.  We go wherever the show prep is.  Doris Kearns Goodwin was on with Axelrod, and he asked her this.  He said, “There was a bit of a deficit that Hillary Clinton had.  She’s not a great storyteller.  Now, I know she’s a good storyteller, but she’s not a good public storyteller.  And she was tethered too often to her teleprompter rather than sharing some of the stories of people she’d met along the way. It probably would have been a more effective bay to go.  What do you think about that, Doris?”

GOODWIN:  In a certain sense, because she was telling a more complicated story about America and all the various things she wanted us to do, it didn’t have the simplicity of a story that Donald Trump’s did.  Donald Trump told a story.  Whether true or not, that people felt was real, you know, that he was gonna make America great again.  And that kind of story somehow reached out to a certain part of America.  And even if Hillary’s plans and her programs might have touched those people more deeply, the connection emotionally between her and those people seemed to have been lost.

RUSH:  There wasn’t a connection.  You mind if I translate this?  Thank you.  In the first place, the question is flawed.  He starts out telling the truth, Hillary is not a good storyteller. Then he contradicts himself, oh, she’s a good storyteller, but not in public. 

You know, folks, let me share a little anecdote with you here.  I have over the years, long ago, nothing recent, say early nineties, I was approached by people within the Clinton orb trying to — not convert me, but trying to get me to see the Clintons in a different light.  And one of the things that I kept hearing, the thing they told me over and over, is what a fun person Hillary is.  They even told me she loves those drinks with umbrellas in ’em, and when you get a couple of those in her she’s the funniest person you’ve ever been around, she’s so great. 

And I’d get stories like this left and right. Not so much about Bill because we knew everything.  And I thought, this is strange because there’s no way anybody is gonna picture Hillary Clinton with umbrella drinks being the life of a party, but that’s what they were hell-bent on trying to get me to see and understand.  So all these people that know Hillary testify to what a warm and wonderful and funny, oh, my God, she’s the life of the party girl, but there’s no evidence of it because when she gets in public, she’s tethered to the prompter and gets all stiff and things.  She’s got this great connection with people and so — I don’t know what Doris Kearns Goodwin’s talking about here.  I think this is gibberish. 

(imitating Goodwin) “Well, in a certain sense because Hillary was telling a more complicated story about America and all the various things she wanted us to do, it didn’t have the simplicity of a story that Trump’s did.  Trump told a story that people felt was real, true or not, that he was gonna make America great again.”  That’s all people needed because Hillary Clinton was not about making America great again.  Everybody knew that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, you name it, they look at America and they see one grievance after another. 

They look at America and they see everything about it they don’t like.  They look at America and they hold America up to ridicule.  They look at America and they think Europe’s better.  They look at America and they see all the deficiencies and all the deficiency and all the problems with America tend to be rooted in one group of people:  Republicans.  White, the Christian Republicans.  That’s who the Democrat Party looks out, they see America, and they see nothing but grievance after grievance, injustice an injustice, and people are tired of it. 

People don’t want to hear their country portrayed that way, they don’t think of their country that way, they don’t want their country to be that way, they don’t think their country needs to be corrected from things like that because the corrections that the Democrats implement just make a bigger mess of things.  Don’t know who can use what bathroom, we’re gonna redefine what marriage is, we’re gonna make sure that — look at the Somali guy at Ohio State.  That’s a classic example. 

There’s no way that shooter should have ever been admitted into this country, but Barack Obama made it happen sight unseen simply because he was supposedly disadvantaged and made so by America.  So he’s this war-torn refugee from Somalia, and we had to let these refugees in, and we have opened the door to people who hate this country and we have granted them free admittance, and then we subsidize them while they’re here.  And people know from the beginning that it’s unwise to do so. 

These people do not like this country.  They are arriving here with grievances, and the Democrat Party cements those grievances. And then we got something like we had at Ohio State or we get San Bernardino, California, or we get Fort Hood and every time one of those things happens we get lied to by the Democrats, “It’s workplace violence. It is anti-Muslim sentiment from conservative media people,” or whatever. 

We’re never told the truth about why people kill Americans.  We’re told that Americans kill Americans ’cause certain Americans practically deserve it ’cause they’re discriminating and they’re prejudicial and all that, and the American people are fed up about it.  And Hillary Clinton did not indicate in one way that she was opposed to it.  She was a promoter of this kind of thing.  Hillary Clinton’s look and view of America, nobody believed it when she talked about the great things in it because she didn’t have any agenda that would have made America better.  The Democrat Party agenda is rooted in punishing America for the grievances the left thinks we are guilty of. 

And they’ve got a list of grievances that date back to the founding, including the founding, the founding itself was unjust and immoral and racist and bigoted.  And so Hillary’s view of America is of a country that’s guilty and needs to be fixed and corrected and punished.  Obama, ditto.  Joe Biden, ditto.  All of these people, same view of America.  That is what has become the mainstream of the Democrat Party. 

There weren’t stories in this campaign.  Trump’s “make America great” wasn’t a story, it was a philosophy.  It was patriotism.  It was a recognition that we have to take action to save this country, to preserve it as founded, otherwise our opponents, the Democrats, are gonna continue in their effort to transform it, rooted in punishment.  And most Americans just don’t find their country guilty.  And the Democrats do.  We’re guilty of racism, we’re guilty of bigotry, we’re guilty of sexism, we’re guilty of homophobia, we’re guilty of Citizens United, I mean, the list is endless. 

And Ms. Kearns Goodwin, the real problem you and other Democrats have is that I have just articulated what you really believe but you don’t dare say it or you wouldn’t win diddly-squat.  So you have to tell stories about your love of America, this or that, but you don’t pull it off because it’s not sincere.  And then when you get around to the things about America you do love, it doesn’t make sense to a vast majority of the American people.  But it’s really no more complicated than you see America as guilty of a series of sins, whereas most Americans think, ah, we’re not perfect.  But we are not guilty. 

This is the greatest country on earth, and there’s a reason why every Somali refugee wants to come here, a reason why every illegal immigrant here wants to come here, there’s a reason why everybody on earth wants to come here.  But the way the Democrats talk about this country you wonder why anybody would want to come.  And that contradiction dooms them.  They’ve been losing elections in droves since 2010. 

The Democrat Party agenda, including the president of United States, has been repudiated, it has been demolished, it has been decimated over the last number of years since 2010.  It’s right in front of us to see.  Okay, here’s the next Axelrod question.  He said, “Well, okay, talk about adversity and the impact of adversity.  FDR lived a charmed life until he didn’t and was afflicted with polio.  Lincoln’s life was filled with tragedy and loss and depression.” See how these people see things?  “Teddy Roosevelt suffered incredible lost.  How did those losses shape them as leaders?”

GOODWIN:  What stunned me in a way when Donald Trump said that he had the very, very best temperament of anybody who’d ever run for the president because he always won, that he had a winning temperament, history would record just the opposite.  I mean, Franklin Roosevelt’s polio, Lincoln having had that real sense of sorrow.  I think when you come through adversity and you’re able to see yourself backward, “and if I got through that, I can get through this.”

AXELROD:  He did communicate to people this sense that “I’m a winner and I can make you a winner, too,” and now I guess the test comes.

RUSH:  What’s wrong with that?  What’s wrong with winning?  What’s wrong with being optimistic?  What’s wrong with being positive?  Notice the left:  Everything is the struggle.  Not struggle.  It’s struggle.  You gotta be down for the struggle.  And everything’s a struggle, everything in America’s a struggle.  Oh, my God, Lincoln, FDR, these people in many ways lived very productive, optimistic, charmed lives.  Yeah, the Civil War was no fun but it took a certain kind of attitude and temperament to get through it. 

But to listen to these people, life is an excrement sandwich and some days you get mayonnaise and some days mustard and some days nothing.  But it’s never good.  It’s always a struggle.  And you had all these people that go through the struggle, they’re the people that need — And to hell about that.  Because everybody has adversity; everybody has to overcome some adversity.  Some do; some don’t.  But to make that a defining, rather than triumph?  The struggle and the looking back and the remembrance of all the pain and the struggle.  It’s not what people want to do.  It’s not what human characteristics are naturally inclined for.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I’m still thinking of Doris Kearns Goodwin and all this adversity and the struggle.  Like, if I called Doris Kearns. Let’s say I’m in Boston. That’s where she lives. “Hey, Doris, you want to have a drink tonight? I’m in town.” “I can’t. I’m suffering, thinking about FDR and polio, and I can’t make it tonight.” I mean, what adversity has Obama ever faced?  Seriously.  You know what he said he faced?  He went to this private high school in Hawaii, and he didn’t make the basketball team. 

And you know why he said he didn’t make the basketball team? (interruption) You’ve forgotten this? (snorts) All right.  Barack Obama said that he wasn’t allowed to play on his private high school basketball team in Hawaii because he played black-style basketball.  What is black-style basketball?  You empty the clip on your opponents?  What is it?  I’m just funning with you here, but really, what is black-style basketball?  You watch.  “Limbaugh: Empty the Clip!” Headline tomorrow.