RUSH: I’ve got audio sound bites of Donald Trump and Newt praising Putin’s op-ed to the heavens.
Trump is probably trying to buy property for a golf course, but Newt? You know, the Moscow Gentleman’s Club may be what Trump’s trying to arrange, but Newt is all dazzled because you would never have a Soviet leader quoting a pope. This is like Putin did in his op-ed. This is a major, major advancement. I swear, every day, folks, I don’t know about you, but there days… It’s not every day, but there are some days I just feel more and more distant from people that I think see the world the same way I do.
That op-ed, by the way, that Putin wrote yesterday and American exceptionalism, I made the point when I analyzed that, that Obama doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism. He thinks like Putin. He thinks it’s bragging. It’s unseemly. It’s arrogant and conceited. “We’re no better than anybody else and there’s no such thing. 
And, lo and behold, I found a tweet. A friend of mine sent me a tweet from Peter Beinart, who’s a well-known leftist.
He worked to use the New Republic, I believe. He’s out there, he’s on Sunday shows, he’s a guest on cable, and he tweeted the following: “At the end of his op-ed Putin said about American exceptionalism what many liberals feel but no American politician would say.” So Beinart is admitting the point that I made yesterday. The left agrees with Putin! There is no such thing as American exceptionalism.
I’m telling you, folks, that is a crucially important thing for people to know. I’m not gonna go through the whole definition of American exceptionalism again, but these people don’t even understand what it is, and because of their misconception, the American left is populated by people who really think that it’s wrong to think there’s anything special about the United States.
When you have a growing number of people who think that, it does not bode well, because this country is exceptional, and you heard all the reasons for it yesterday. It’s an exception to the rule of what life is like for most people on the planet. It’s an exception to that, and for these people to not even understand it and not recognize it and want to agree with a former KGB agent on the fact there’s nothing special about this country?
It’s no wonder what’s happening to this country is happening to it, with these people in charge. They don’t even think there’s anything worth preserving here, and that’s why they want to seek to transform it. They really do believe, “There’s nothing special here. In fact, it’s flawed. The founding of this country was unjust, and it was immoral and we’re gonna go fix it.” So what’s remarkable to me about this is not that a Russian leader, ex-communist leader is quoting the pope in all this.
It is that he writes an op-ed chastising Americans and our president for thinking there’s anything special about this country, and we have a rash of Americans running to agree with him! It’s not a good sign. Grab five, six, and seven. Here’s Trump, and this last night. He’s at On the Record with Greta. She said, “Last night there was an op-ed in New York Times by Putin and right before On the Record started the news broke. So I’m curious what you think. Do you think President Obama knew that this Putin op-ed was coming, or was this an end run on the president?”
TRUMP: I’ve read it a number of times. There are a lot of different ideas in there, a very well-written letter op-ed from the standpoint of Russia. It makes Putin look extremely diplomatic. It actually makes him sound very reasoned and very reasoning. And frankly, uhh, I don’t know that he wrote the letter. Certainly there were his ideas, but the way it was crafted was very, very interesting, and it really is talking down to the president. There’s no question about that.
RUSH: Okay, that’s true. That’s true. There’s no question. I even said the same thing in my own inimitable style, and it’s “inimitable” by virtue of the fact that Trump doesn’t sound like exactly like me when he said what I said. But that’s exactly right. It’s Putin talking down, Putin asserting the moral authority that the United States used to have. Here’s the next.
Van Susteren says, “Boehner said says he was insulted by some of the remarks in that op-ed. I assume it was the part where it talked about exceptionalism, that he was insulted by that. What I thought was extraordinary,” this is Greta talking to Trump,” is how Putin wanted to speak directly to the American people and bypass the president in addition to sort of the slaps that he made.”
TRUMP: It really makes him look like a great leader, frankly. And when he criticizes the president for using the term “American exceptionalism,” if you’re in Russia, you don’t want to hear that America is exceptional and if you’re in many other countries — whether it’s Germany or other places — you don’t want to hear about American exceptionalism because you think you’re exceptional. So I can see that being verily insulting to the world. Frankly, the way our country is being treated right now by Russia and Syria and lots of other places — and with all the mistakes we’ve made over the years like Iraq and so many others — it’s sort of a hard term to use.
RUSH: No, it’s not a hard term to use when you understand what it is! The thing is, the Russians do not think they’re exceptional. The Germans can’t possibly! Now, I’m not putting them down by any stretch, and I’m not building us up. You know, this term is so easily explained, and it’s so easily understood, and I guess it’s so easily misunderstood, with everybody thinking that it’s a term of braggadocio, and it isn’t. Here’s Newt on Crossfire last night and his comments on Putin’s op-ed in the New York Times.
GINGRICH: It was a remarkable post-Soviet document, because he cites the pope. I mean, can you imagine Brezhnev or Khrushchev or Lenin or Stalin…? I mean, you want to know who lost the Cold War? The communists lost the Cold War.
RUSH: Now, that’s not a comment on the American exceptionalism, but “a remarkable post-Soviet document”? So many people seem to be so willing to — I don’t know — award praise to people for whatever reason. I remember shortly after Obama was elected. He hadn’t yet been immaculated, but it was between the election and the immaculation, and Obama announced somebody in his national security apparatus, some guy he was gonna put in there.
Newt was all excited. “If you woulda told me that the election of a radical leftist Democrat like Barack Obama woulda resulted in da-da-da-da-da-da-da, I woulda told you you’re crazy,” and that one appointment gave Newt the impression that Obama was gonna be much, much, much better than any of us thought. He wasn’t gonna be anywhere near the radical that we all thought. It’s like when Eric Holder was nominated to be attorney general.
All these idiotic intellectual Republican legal people ran to the microphone. “Oh, what a great nomination! Eric Holder is one of the greatest guys that’s ever come down the pike! Why, this changes our opinion of what the Obama presidency’s gonna be.” It was a disaster. Again, it’s all because all of these people rendering judgment refuse to look at this through the prism of ideology. The idea that Eric Holder was a sign that Obama was not gonna be a radical leftist president?
How do you arrive at that? How do you get there? Okay, so just because Putin mentions the pope, and we’re supposed to conclude that Russia’s a much greater place today than it was then. Russia is our enemy. Russia is attempting to wrest control of the Middle East and ally with Iran. What is it that people don’t get or that’s so hard for ’em to get? I don’t understand. In many of these instances, I just don’t.