RUSH: A bunch of new polls out today. NBC/Wall Street Journal shows Ben Carson nationally ahead of everybody. Nobody can figure it out. Some people are saying, “Hey, hey, Carson’s the only Republican that didn’t whine and moan about the debate moderators on CNBC, and look what happened, his poll numbers skyrocket.” We’ve got a Reuters poll that shows Trump is over everybody nationally and gaining ground. It’s the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that has Carson way up. In the Monmouth poll, the media going nuts over the fact that Marco Rubio tripled his support. As we told you yesterday, he went up from four points to 13 points.
Trump is still at 26 in that poll. Trump today had another one of these press conferences that was reminiscent of the day he announced. It was a tour de force. We have some of the audio sound bites. I’m sure — ahem, ahem — that Cookie is continuing to roll off audio from this today, because he just launches into Jeb Bush, really launches into Rubio. He was much kinder to Carson (imitating Trump), “I just don’t think Ben’s up to it, you know. I just don’t see Ben negotiating with the tough people out there. He’s a great guy, I just don’t think that Ben’s really up for this.” He was almost sympathetic, but really, really just tore into Rubio.
And Trump went back to the issue that put him on the map, and that’s immigration, and that’s the area that he really hit Rubio on. That’s a smart thing for Trump to do is to continue to highlight immigration, because that’s why he’s on the map. But this thing is — well, it is not going on still, but it went on for 45 minutes or an hour. It had 80,000 people watching it on Facebook. I mean, doing what they do to expand that audience. Trump’s got new book out that was ostensibly the excuse for the press conference. He started complaining about the picture they used on the cover of his own book. He said they chose the worst picture they could find. It’s his book!
He said he doesn’t mind moderators. He loves debating. He thinks some of the other candidates ought to drop out now, they don’t have a prayer, they’re just gumming up the works. He had the press eating from the palm of his hand. When he liked a question (imitating Trump), “Hey, Sarah from CNN, that’s a great question. You know, I love getting great questions like that, Sarah. CNN, you hear that? That’s how you ask questions, media. That’s a great question.” I don’t remember what the question was. It doesn’t matter.
Then Howard Kurtz (imitating Trump), “Howard Kurtz, my favorite media guy, Fox News Howard Kurtz, what do you got for me, Howard?” That’s when CNN cut out, when Trump started promoting Fox. Anyway, we’ve got some of that and we will accumulate even more. So that kind of sets the table. Diet Coke will kill you. The EPA is targeting air-conditioning. Global warming will destroy sex drive because who wants to sweat during sex. That’s gonna cause fewer people to be born, which means economies are gonna drag, and air-conditioning is gonna become an aphrodisiac except the EPA is targeting it for destruction. All that’s just in two stories.
And have you heard what Obama is doing? I raise my hand. I raise my hand again and — oh, by the way, Trump launched into Obama today, too, something that the other Republicans don’t have much gumption to do. He really bore into Obama on interest rates and the Federal Reserve and Janet Yellen. (imitating Trump) “Interest rates need to go up. This is absolutely crazy. The only people benefiting here are people on Wall Street. Interest rates needs to go up. Janet Yellen won’t raise interest rates because Obama doesn’t want her, too, because Obama wants to keep playing golf and not have the country blow up while he’s on the golf course. He wants the country to blow up and go into misery after he leaves office so the next president gets the blame for everything”. So he’s telling Yellen to keep interest rates flat, not raise them, delaying the economic implosion that’s headed our way for when he’s already out of office and on the golf course when it happens, it doesn’t matter.
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RUSH: Trump did this press conference today and it just scorched Facebook. The last report I had, there were a hundred thousand people on Facebook watching it. Watching it on Facebook, not watching it on network TV. They were watching it on their devices, on their computers, on Facebook, and they were commenting to all their friends on Facebook what they were doing, and it was a geometric proportion expansion of people watching and commenting on this thing.
It is my contention that Trump has done much more to garner support with these types of appearances than anything that’s happened in a debate, leading with his original announcement. Back in June when he announced and went after the issue of illegal immigration, I think he’s continued to feed off that, and as long as he keeps going back to that and doesn’t waver on it and doesn’t weaken or soften, I don’t see his support going anywhere, not from people who are with him because of that issue. And he hit that again hard today. But he did almost an hour today.
So my point is that Ben Carson could be doing a lot of things outside the debates that could be legitimately garnering support. By the same token, there’s some candidates that look absolutely horrible in these debates, and they’re not losing ground. Of course, they don’t have much ground to lose going in. But they are flat lining. I think there’s a lot of overemphasis on these debates, and one of the reasons for that is they’re entertaining, or can be. They hold out the potential to be entertaining. And people think that major ground can be made by virtue of a debate performance, and we have seen somebody blow it. That we know can happen. Like when Gerald Ford slipped up and tried to tell us that the Soviet Union was not communist. Or that Poland was not in the Soviet sphere of things.
They tried to take Reagan out in the first debate in 1984, tried to claim that he had already lost it. They failed in that effort. But I’ve seen people in debates ruin their chances negatively. But it’s arguable that one or two debate performances can launch you. It’s happened. But it takes more than that, and just to repeat, what Trump did today among people who saw it, if he’s down, if these polls are right and he’s down in Iowa, down nationally, it’s stuff like what he did today that’s gonna launch him back and get him back to number one, not a debate performance.
In the first place, there aren’t enough of them. There just aren’t enough of these debates. And you look at the allotted speaking time on these debates, even the person that ends up speaking more than anybody else is about eight minutes, eight or nine minutes. Unless you are really schooled in brevity and the soul of wit and being able to get in, get it, and get out in a sentence or two, there’s nothing you can really do to shock or overwhelmingly impress somebody in that limited amount of time, particularly when you consider the… well, not the bias, but the minds that are already made up on the part of the audience.
When people turn these debates on half their minds are made up. Most people are not watching these debates undecided. They will tell you they are because they think that’s good citizenship, but they’ve got their minds made up, and they’re watching these debates just like they watch a football game. They want their team to win. When their team’s not doing well, they panic. So you’ll see what I’m talking about here in just a minute. But before we get to that.
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RUSH: Donald Trump and his press conference today on the first floor of the building that he built, and it’s the building where he lives, and it’s the building where his office is. He’s got a new book out, and the presser today was ostensibly to sell the book. But it ended up being a wide-ranging press conference with all kinds of reporters from all kinds of different media there. And we have six sound bites of this to give you the flavor. And again, I just want to assert my humble opinion that it is things like this that do more for Trump than any debate performance can do.
I mean, in terms of helping. His announcement was just like this, and it was that appearance where he stated his position on illegal immigration and described the kind of people that Mexico and Central American countries are sending here, and it’s that appearance that launched him. It’s that appearance that’s kept him at number one. It’s that issue. And I believe that doing more things like that that are televised — press conference-type things, not personal appearances or campaign appearances, but press conferences where the media is there asking questions, ’cause he has them in the palm of his hand. And he clearly enjoys it.
So let’s go to the audio sound bites, and here we go. The first question. The name of his book is Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, and he talked about Rubio at the beginning.
TRUMP: He is a disaster with his credit cards. I’m in Florida all the time. And for years I’ve been hearing that his credit cards are a disaster. I would think when you take a look at it you’re gonna find that. But his credit card debt and his problems with credit cards… He has a very bad record of finances. If you look at what happened with his houses, with his… You know, he certainly lives above his means, there’s no question about that.
RUSH: When’s the last time you ever heard anybody go after anybody like that? That’s the way the Democrats go after Romney! “He’s not paying his taxes! You look at that. He’s not paying his taxes. But here’s Rubio apparently got a credit card debt problem.” And he was also, he was really pounding Rubio… We’ve got these bites, too. He was on Good Morning America today and a couple other shows. And it is apparent that the Trump campaign believes that the establishment’s setting Rubio up to step in to Jeb’s position if Jeb doesn’t make it. The next bite, we have a question here. It was during a Q&A and he said this about Obama’s leadership.
TRUMP: Our country has no spirit. Our country has no gravitas. Our country doesn’t feel good about itself. And the primary reason is we have no victories. As an example, this horrible deal that we signed with Iran where we’re giving $150 billion and we lose everything. We lose everything. It’s a laughingstock of a deal. We have no victories. We need some pomp and circumstance. We need spirit. We need a cheerleader. I thought… Seven years ago when Obama got elected the one thing I thought that he would be a great cheerleader for the country; he’s not. He’s been a great divider for the country. He’s been one of the great dividers of all time.
RUSH: You think that doesn’t resonate with people that hear that? Every word of that has people — if not for real, euphemistically — standing up and cheering. We don’t have any victories. Look, we just had the World Series. The Kansas City Royals just won the World Series for the first time in 30 years, and only the second time. Big parade in Kansas City today. You know what it means. Whenever you’re part of a team — and a lot of people never get to experience this. Most people will never know what it feels like.
They can only imagine. To be on a championship team — be it the Super Bowl, be it the World Series, be it the Stanley Cup, be it something in college or even high school — it’s so rare. But, boy, if you’re a fan of that team, you feel like you’re on it just the same, and you get just as big a thrill, maybe bigger than some of the players get. But it is a high. It is almost euphoric, this winning. And he’s right! We’re not winning anything. We’re taking it on the chin no matter where you look. We’re taking it on the chin on our own border.
We’re taking it on the chin against terrorism. We are losing our culture. We are losing institution after institution that made and defined this country’s greatness. All of these things are under constant attack. It’s not that they’re rotting away or withering away. We are losing contests for them! There are people inside and outside this country who detest America, who detest American culture, who detest the founding, and they are hell-bent to change it and reform if and transform it — and they’re winning! And people opposed to that having no to cheer for.
The Republican Party hasn’t given ’em anything to cheer for. The Republican Party has misled them and lied to them and fooled them. There is no apparent opposition to any of this. And here comes Trump. And not even some of the Republican presidential candidates will stand up to what’s happening. The farthest they’ll go is to admit, “There’s problems and we need to fix them and I’m the guy that can do it and I can make it better.” But nobody besides Trump is actually identifying them.
Well, Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is. More and more, people starting to think the dark horse out there that everybody actually does need to keep their eye on, because Ted Cruz would implement everything Donald Trump is talking about here, to one degree or another. But the facts that he’s right that we don’t have any winners. We’re not cheering anything. We’re being made to feel guilty for America, we’re being made to apologize for America, and it’s coming from the top. It is Obama who is leading the decline and seemingly happily.
It is Obama who says that he’s the guy to manage it. The Democrat Party is telling everybody, “This is a new reality here. This is the new normal, and you the better get used to it. The old days of American prominence? Those were artificial. We didn’t deserve those days! Those were phony. We didn’t really have that kind of prosperity. It was an illusion because we’d stolen all this from everybody around the world, and now the rest of the world wants back what we’ve stolen and by God, we’re gonna give it to ’em!
“And if Iran wants nuclear weapons, who are we to say they can’t? There’s no difference in us and them. I’m sure they think they’re exceptional too just like we do.” That’s what Obama will say in explaining the deal to Iran, and it’s what everybody talks about on the Democrat side when it comes illegal immigration. It’s almost as though the illegals and the immigrants have more weight about what this country does and what happens to this country than citizens do! I mean, this is one of the things that really, really gnaws at people.
When you look at the Democrat Party and the whole Republican political establishment bending over backwards not to anger the illegals — to cater to, to pander to the illegals. Meanwhile, the illegals are not the ones that get to say what happens in this country; citizens are! But the citizens are being ignored. It’s worse than that. The citizens are not being ignored per se; the citizens are being purposely told to shut up, that we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that we are the reason this is all happening, because we have participated in all these behaviors that equaled American guilt.
So when Trump stands up and says, “Our country has no spirit,” he’s exactly right. Look, we have little pizzerias and bakery shops and so forth. The media and the Democrat Party target them for destruction to close ’em down, to shut ’em down, and accuse them of homophobia, bigotry and all this kind of stuff. There’s nothing to cheer out there. And then Trump comes along and people end up cheering him as he details some of these problems. An unidentified reporter asked the question, “Do you think it’s time for some of the other Republican candidates to drop out of the race?”
TRUMP: Look, if a person’s been campaigning for four or five months and they’re at zero or one or two percent, they should get out. Walker did a good thing. I think the way Walker… He saw it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t gonna happen, and he just got out. Quickly. You know, he was favored, don’t forget. You know, that was before Trump was gonna happen. Right? But he was favored for a period of time. He was favored, Walker. Governor Walker. They thought he was gonna win. What happened is, he got out. I think the way he got out was great. I think he did a really smart thing for himself. And, frankly, other people should get out.
RUSH: And we have to get out. It’s time for an obscene profit break. We’ll do that and be right back.
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RUSH: Back to the Donald Trump press conference today to launch his new book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again. The whole thing was a Q&A, or the vast majority of it was. It was not like a Trump campaign appearance. It was similar. A Trump campaign appearance, he goes up, like the Rush to Excellence Tour, except he uses a podium and I didn’t, most of the time. But still, he’s up there, hour, hour and a half, maybe hour 45 minutes just doing stream of consciousness stand-up, and you never know where it’s gonna go.
This was like his announcement appearance, which was primarily questions. He did this opening statement and then questions from the media came. And that interplay which he clearly loves, and he spots when the press is trying to trip him up and he throws it right back in their face. I’m telling you, these are the kinds of appearances if the other candidates could do this, it would help them.
Now, a lot of them are gonna reject the concept here ’cause they think this is too entertainer-like. It’s not serious. It isn’t somber. It doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the times, flippancy and so forth is not what’s called for. But Trump is able to pull these things off. He’s able to combine, like on this program, seriousness and irreverence and humor at the same time all in one presentation with credibility all around. And people eat it up. And that’s why, you know, I’ve had people tell me that they thought Trump, in every one of these debates, has been disappointing, based on their expectations.
Expectations come from these kinds of appearances. They get to the debates, he’s one of 15 or 10 up there, gets eight minutes. There are flashes of this, but Trump’s a one-man show. And I’ve actually had people say, especially after that first debate, I can’t tell you the number of people, some supporters of Trump, some not, who thought that he was dead after that first debate. The way he answered the Megyn Kelly question, the way he dealt with it, they thought he was dead meat like everybody else did. And I had to tell ’em, nope, nope. He scores so many points in his announcement appearance, it’s gonna take a whole lot of debates like this to get anywhere near countering that. And that’s what I think this appearance was, too. And if a number of people end up seeing it, you’ll be able to tell, it will be reflected in polling. He went back to the issue in the next bite, immigration, that put him on the map.
TRUMP: We’re gonna bring back our country and we’re gonna have a wall, and Mexico’s going to pay for the wall. A lot of the European countries are going to build walls to stop the immigration. Well, walls work. All you have to do is ask Israel, walls work, if it’s properly constructed. Not the walls that these characters, these politicians that we have running our country who are a disgrace, all talk, no-action politicians, they build a wall this big, they drive cars right through it. Walls work. All you have to do is go and see Israel. They will tell you that walls work.
RUSH: There’s a wall in the White House, too, I think. It’s questionable whether it works all the time, but it’s there. I mentioned to you they really launched on Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve.
TRUMP: Janet Yellen is highly political, and she’s not raising rates for a very specific reason, because Obama told her not to, because he wants to be out playing golf in a year from now, and he wants to be doing other things, and he doesn’t want to see a big bubble burst during his administration. Janet Yellen should have raised the rates. She’s not doing it because the Obama administration and the president doesn’t want her to.
RUSH: It’s exactly right. That’s what he thinks. Obama doesn’t want the hell that we’re all headed for erupting while he is in office and at the golf course. And a reporter said, “Can Jeb Bush make a comeback, Mr. Trump, and can you do your impression of Jeb for us?”
TRUMP: My Jeb impression? Nah, I don’t want to do that. I don’t like showing a person sleeping at a podium. Tom is asking can Jeb make a comeback. I think it’s gonna be very hard. Very hard. Not about money. I just think — you know, I came up with the energy, and I just think we need tremendous energy, because we need a person that has tremendous personal energy to get us back on track. You can’t do that when you don’t have that. Jeb, he lacks the quality that you need.
RUSH: That’s kind of mild, other than the, “No, I don’t like showing a person sleeping at a podium, so I don’t want to do my Jeb impression.” But he hit Rubio really hard on the morning shows today, and in this appearance, too. And Jeb as well.
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RUSH: Here’s Lee in Queens as we head back to the phones. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: I’m a Cruz supporter. You know, thinking ahead, I always think ahead, but it doesn’t always serve the purpose ’cause you should be in the present, but if Trump got the nomination, the enticing thing about him getting it would be the way he fights back. I mean, in politics the left are bullies, they play dirty and they never went against a guy like this enigma. How do you think they would go against a Trump? Nothing’s worked against him. He fights back, and I think the Democrat strategists fear this.
RUSH: You mean we’re pretending here Trump has the nomination and he —
CALLER: Yeah, going ahead, like how — the strategists against Trump, he fights back.
RUSH: Oh, well —
CALLER: The establishment never has. They cower. So they got a person that’s gonna fight back dirty and I don’t know how they’re gonna deal with that.
RUSH: Well, wait, how who would deal with it? We’re pretending he’s got the nomination.
CALLER: How the Hillary camp —
RUSH: Oh, okay. Very simple. Very, very, very simple. I was hoping that that’s what you were asking. I assumed that’s what you were asking, but I didn’t want to assume too much. I wanted to actually hear from you that’s what you’re asking. Okay. It’s very simple what they’ll say. Trump’s nuts. Trump’s crazy. Trump’s unqualified. Trump’s a loose cannon. Trump’s inexperienced. Trump’s vulgar. I mean, I can predict what they’re going to do. Trump’s mean. They’ll try it all. Racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobic. That’s all they have in their ammo and they’ll roll it all out.
Don’t forget now, these are the people that make things up. Harry Reid on the Senate floor, “I have a friend who told me that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid his taxes in ten years.” He goes on and on with a Senate floor speech about how unpatriotic it is and how near criminal it is and so forth. I mean, they just made it up out of whole cloth. Look, these are people to whom power is an entitlement. Whenever they are not elected president, something is drastically wrong. It is abnormal. They think it is theirs. They will go after him like the mainstream media. I wouldn’t be surprised even if they say he gets elected he’ll quit a year in when he gets tired of it, want to go back to the TV show, Celebrity Apprentice.
I mean, the left and the mainstream media, Democrat Party, they’re one and the same, so if you want to know how they’re gonna treat Trump, take a look at how they’re treating him now. They’ll say he changes position. They’ll say he used to love Hillary, now he hates her, he’s not really a Republican, they’ll try everything. He’s not really a conservative. They’ll try to do everything they can to make Republicans stay home and not vote for him. They’ll say the same things they’ve said about Reagan, that he’s not smart enough in this regard, that he shoots from the hip. They’ll say we don’t want Trump’s finger near the nuclear button. They’ll try it all. It’s an easy prediction to make. Thanks for the call.
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RUSH: I’ll tell you, one of the things that you need to think about if you’re gonna think ahead and you’re gonna imagine Trump as a nominee and how he’s gonna be treated, you better also factor how the Republican media is gonna deal with that. I mean, there’s an establishment Republican media, too, sometimes called conservative media. But I’m talking the inside-the-Beltway types. They’re not gonna be happy. The donors are not going to be happy, and they’re not gonna want Trump to win, and they’re not gonna want Ted Cruz to win if he gets nomination.
Some of these people would vastly prefer Hillary Clinton to Trump or Ted Cruz. Especially Cruz, ’cause Hillary will keep the gravy train rolling. She’ll keep the government expanding, she’ll keep spending, she’ll keep using Washington money — and K Street lobbyists and special interests will make out like bandits. Trump probably less so, but they still are not gonna be happy that they don’t have anybody in office with their hooks into, and that’s been gonna make them very mad, very, very mad. And that could lead to them doing very mean things to undermine them.
I mean, they didn’t like Reagan. The one thing that kept ’em at bay with Reagan was that 49 states in landslide proportions loved Ronald Reagan. They had to bite their lips and bite the bullet and deal with it.