RUSH: We go to Donald Trump here in Columbia, South Carolina. Last night he was the guest at a town hall campaign event hosted by Senator Tim Scott. And during the Q&A, Tim Scott said, “There’s so many people who have the same question on the issue of immigration. Securing the borders without any question is one of your top priorities we’ve heard you talk about. I’ve also asked you to go into depth, how you would secure the border. What are a couple things you’d do to secure the port border, and what do you think about our legal immigration?”
TRUMP: When I announced three months ago that was running, I made statements, and everyone thought it was wonderful, but then about a week later Rush Limbaugh said, “Nobody has ever received so much incoming.” I had never heard the word. Incoming means the press. And I brought up illegal immigration. It turned out I was right.
RUSH: Right. So he didn’t answer the question there except to use my name, which, let’s face it folks, it works magic, it just does. (laughing) Anyway, that’s become a stock, almost a regular appearance. And the reason is it did happen. He makes that announcement, and everybody just jumped. In a 18-hour period, I don’t recall as much many media salvos and attacks. I mean, it was wall-to-wall over things he’d said about the rapists and purse snatchers and muggers that were emigrating — or not emigrating but invading the country. Tim Scott said, “The Iran deal is terrible. How do you intend to help protect Israel under a Regime that’s moving very quickly towards a nuclear bomb?”
TRUMP: Who would you rather have negotiating, Trump or those clowns that are negotiating right now? Then I get these lightweights like Rubio, he gets up and he said, “Well, Donald Trump didn’t talk about foreign policy. I don’t want to tell too much. Romney should have won the last election. Something happened to him, he choked, something happened, like a golfer on the 18th hole, he can’t sink the putt, ah, ah, ah.
RUSH: We still didn’t get the answer. He just said, “Who would you rather have negotiating, Trump or these clowns that are negotiating right now, okay? We get these lightweights like Rubio, he gets up and says, ‘Well, Trump doesn’t talk about foreign policy.'” Donald Trump said, (imitating Trump) “I’m not gonna give away my secrets here. I’m not gonna tell you or anybody else how I plan to talk to these people. Why telegraph that? Just don’t doubt me. I’m gonna go in there and it’s gonna be great. I’m gonna make deals with these people like they’ve never had deals made before, people are gonna run rings around them.” And he’s relying on people to have faith in his ability and confidence in his ability to get that done.
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RUSH: Finally Charleston, South Carolina, North Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina, African-American Chamber of Commerce annual conference, Donald Trump spoke and had this to say, among other things about Mrs. Clinton.
TRUMP: Hillary, who’s become very shrill — you know the word shrill? She’s become shrill. She was saying what I said about Obama, and yet in 2008, she was the original birther. She’s the one that started that whole thing. Hillary is a birther. By the way, don’t switch your votes to Hillary, please.
You’ve got the Drive-Bys wishing Trump would fade away. You’ve got the Republican establishment Drive-Bys not understanding why Trump hasn’t faded away yet. I mean, they’re really frustrated. They see Trump, he’s not fading, he’s holding steady in most of the polls, up a point or two, they don’t understand it, and they are afraid of it, and they oppose it, and they’re afraid it means the end of the Republican Party.
Folks, they really, you have to understand, Jeb was the guy. Jeb is the guy. I mean, I don’t want to speak past tense. Jeb is the guy. Jeb is the guy that was gonna get all the money. Jeb is the guy that was gonna return the Republicans to the White House. Jeb was the mainstream Republican hero. He was the guy that was gonna unite everybody and win this without needing the base. They had so much invested in Jeb. They have so much invested in Jeb. And the largest investment in Jeb was that they found a way for him to win the nomination without having to pander to or need any of the support from the base. And the strategy involved money.
Now, the donors had no problems giving money to Jeb, but they want to see something higher than six or seven percent. And, if they don’t see six or seven percent when the debates come, they want to see some sign that it might improve. So they’re getting nervous. And they’re all frustrated, ’cause the bottom line of all of the people that I’m talking about, the Drive-Bys and the Republican establishment, they do not think that Trump is going to be there at the end of all this.
I don’t know if they think he’s going to lose or if they think he’s going to withdraw or if they think he’s going to be humiliated out. That’s probably what they would prefer. But I think, in their long-term view of things, to them we’re still in preseason. That’s why they’re so upset. They’re losing meaningful games in what should be a meaningless preseason, these first debates. I mean, their guy around whom every strategy they’ve built for the future is not where was he supposed to be here. And the money’s getting nervous. And Trump was supposed to be long gone. And, remember, they don’t think Trump’s gonna be there anyway, so now they’re really getting worried that Trump is doing irreparable damage, and he’s not gonna be pick up the pieces. He’s gonna make this mess, and then they’re not gonna be able to fix it and win, because the party image, brand, reputation, is gonna be so damaged by the time Trump goes that there’s nobody left in the field who can put it back together.
That is my read on this. Nobody’s told me that. That’s just my read on it. And, believe me, the key ingredient of that strategy is, I believe, they don’t think Trump is in this to win. They don’t think he’s in this for real. They don’t think he wants it. They don’t think he’s gonna be around for the duration. That’s why they’re really ticked off about this. ‘Cause they think he’s treating this as a toy, you know, the next playground to have some fun in.
So they’re not taking him that seriously, but he’s lasted a lot longer than they thought, but they still think he’s gonna be gone, but the damage he’s doing they think is unfixable. And you look at all the candidates on the Republican Side, you look at the candidates you would describe as the establishment candidates, they’re all in the bottom tier, and it’s all these newcomers and no-chancers — by that, I mean, the establishment look at the ’em, ha-ha, fat chance, Carson, Fiorina, Trump, no way, no way. I mean, those guys don’t even have a chance, and here they are leading the roost and gaining ground, and their preferred candidate and candidates are losing ground.
I mean, it is panic time. They don’t see that the Republican Party might be in the process of being overtaken or modernized or transformed. They look at it as being destroyed. And they don’t think they have any role in it. They don’t think they’re doing any of the damage. The damage is being done by all these outsider rookies who don’t understand anything about how the game is played. Trump, Carson, maybe Carly, but at the end of the day Carly is one of them. At the end of the day Carly is an establishment Republican, at the end of the process. No question about that.
So the frustration in the Drive-Bys, the frustration on the Republican side, the frustration in the Republican conservative media is almost at explosive levels. They don’t know what to do. They are scared to death that this whole process is destroying their power base. Which takes to us Fox News and the Megyn Kelly show last night. And first off here is Megyn telling us why Trump is a sexist. She has as her guests here Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, and it starts with Megyn opening comments.
KELLY: Trump comes out and sort of sets up a straw man, that people say he’s a sexist because he says Carly had difficulties in her business career. That’s not true. People said he was sexist because he made fun of her face. “You listen to her pitter-patter for more than five minutes, and she gives you a headache.” Those are known as sort of code words for “this woman drives me nuts” because of, you know, we’ve heard these things before.
RUSH: Okay. So Megyn offers her opinion here that Trump is a sexist, and that’s why. Now, you can’t blame her for having animus for Trump. I mean, that relationship makes sense to us. We understand why Trump’s mad. We understand why she would be mad. That makes all the sense in the world. The things that she cites here that Trump said, “He made fun of her face, and then he said you listen to her pitter-patter for more than five minutes, gives you a headache,” all of that is stereotypical humor rooted in caveman days, and any modern woman is gonna hate that. They’re not gonna find any of it funny.
Like the old mother-in-law joke, the bad news-good news conundrum. You just bought a brand-new, whatever your favorite car, you just had it delivered, and the next thing you know it’s going over the cliff, but your mother-in-law is driving. That’s an old stereotypical joke, mother-in-law joke. Mother-in-laws are intrusive and they always disapprove, the stereotypical stuff. Those jokes do not play today. They don’t go over. So when you refer to a woman as a nattering nabob, you’re calling her a nag. And the number one rated female prime time news anchor is not gonna find it funny for another woman to be called a nag. So you can understand why those kind of things would irritate her. Now it’s time Rich Lowry, National Review, steps up to the plate to take his swings for the establishment club for the team following what Megyn just said.
LOWRY: I think part of what’s going on here is that last debate. Let’s be honest. Carly cut his balls off with the precision —
KELLY: What did you just say?
LOWRY: — of a surgeon, and he knows it, he knows it.
KELLY: You can’t say that.
LOWRY: He insulted and bullied his way to the top of the polls. No one was able to best him ever, except for this tough lady on that stage. And it must kill him. He must be —
KELLY: Wow.
LOWRY: — simmering about it to this night.
RUSH: All right, so you heard Megyn in there. I don’t know if you heard Megyn, “What did you just say? You can’t say that.” But he did. Yeah, I’ll be happy to play this one more time. It roused Wendy from her slumber in there. Here it is, Rich Lowry taking his swings for the team following Megyn Kelly’s comments about Trump be a sexist.
LOWRY: I think part of what’s going on here is that last debate. Let’s be honest. Carly cut his balls off with the precision —
KELLY: What did you just say?
LOWRY: — of a surgeon, and he knows it, he knows it.
KELLY: You can’t say that.
LOWRY: He insulted and bullied his way to the top of the polls. No one was able to best him ever, except for this tough lady on that stage. And it must kill him. He must be —
KELLY: Wow.
LOWRY: — simmering about it to this night.
RUSH: Okay, so Lowry was following Kelly saying that Trump uses sexist code words about women, and she’s out there, “What did you say? You can’t say that.” But they all loved it. They all loved it. Well, now, Trump has responded. I have to take a brief time-out, but we’ll share with you Trump’s response and some of the criticism that response is getting when we get back.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay. So Rich Lowry said to Megyn Kelly last night that Carly Fiorina surgically removed Trump’s package, and he’s very irritated about this, and he’s humiliated by it, he’s fighting back, and he’s been taken off his game by this woman, and he can’t stand it. So Trump was on CNN today with Alisyn Camerota, and she said, “Why are you in this spat with those people over at Fox? You say that Fox News hasn’t treated you fairly. How?”
TRUMP: They have pundits on the show. I mean, one of them made a total fool of himself last night. He totally lost it, looked like he was having a nervous breakdown on television, and he used words that were so unbelievable, maybe he’ll be fined or censured or thrown off. A guy named Rich Lowry, who I never even heard of, but he said something that I’ve never heard on television before. I was shocked. But he lost it. It was wonderful watching this guy lose it because, you know, he’s a bad guy.
RUSH: Right, he’s a bad guy, and so they knew what happened at CNN. They were just baiting Trump there. Trump went on to suggest the FCC should move in and fine Fox or fine Lowry, and a lot of people are saying, “You people supporting Trump, you need to wake up and listen to this now. This is not a conservative, doesn’t go crying to government when somebody insults him like this. You don’t go calling the FCC and demanding the FCC fine that guy or do this or that. .You people supporting Trump, you gotta understand this is not a conservative. Conservatives don’t go to government to get even with people like this.”
I think that’s ridiculous, but that’s what some people are trying, trying to talk Trump supporters out of supporting him by saying, “You guys think he’s conservative. Look, he’s going to the FCC fine Lowry and so forth? I mean, that’s neophyte kind of stuff. You Trump supporters ought to realize what you’re doing here.” I don’t think they get that it’s all just chatting there. It is funny, though, how this whole thing is causing people to make drastic changes in their own behavior that is making people sit up and take notice. It’s kind of fascinating. For those of us who are just observing this — he-he-he — and watching it go by, fascinating to see.
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