RUSH: Here’s Terry in Naperville, Illinois, which is a great, great town. We own Naperville. We’ve been big in Naperville ever since we started there. It’s great to have you, Terry. Hi.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Listen, Rush, you had mentioned something earlier about how Donald Trump cut a commercial and that all the media has played that commercial for free, and that he’s a master manipulator of the media.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And that got me thinking kind of something that irritated me about your show over the last several weeks, and it’s that you utter the word Trump more than he does, and that’s no small feat. And I understand your audience gonna walk a line, half your audience are Trump supporters, half of them are somebody else, but I don’t understand why you give so much free airtime in the defense of a non-conservative. And you’ve said Trump is a non-conservative, so I understand defending him against the left-wing attacks, that makes sense to me. But every time some nobody throws an attack at Donald Trump you spend a good portion of your show, you know, knocking it down, and I just don’t understand that. There’s a real conservative in this race.
RUSH: Well, there’s more than one. Were you thinking of Ted Cruz?
CALLER: Well, you’ve said that Ted Cruz is the most bona fide conservative in this race.
RUSH: Who said?
CALLER: I think you said —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Who said that?
CALLER: You did.
RUSH: I did?
CALLER: You said that Ted Cruz is the most staunch conservative in this race.
RUSH: I thought I wasn’t extolling the virtues of Cruz enough?
CALLER: No. You said that one time. You said Donald Trump is — you haven’t is he’s fantastic, but you’ve defended him a thousand times for every one time you mentioned Cruz. And I understand this isn’t about you supporting Cruz. I don’t expect you to do that. You have to walk a line. I get that. I just don’t understand the constant — you know, I listen to the show three hours a day, 15 hours a week, and it’s Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump. Even when it really isn’t about Donald Trump, it’s Donald Trump. And when you go to a break you say “an obscene profit time-out,” and that’s because you know what the value of your airtime is worth and you’re giving this to a candidate who frankly needs it the least. I don’t get that.
RUSH: Well, A, I appreciate you listening as often as you do. I really do.
CALLER: I love your show.
RUSH: And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. My view of this is that I do here today what I’ve always done, and that is arrive here and take a look at the things and people I believe in being under attack and, when necessary, defend them. By the same token, you know, I have been open about what I think the value of Donald Trump in this campaign is from day one. And I think Ted Cruz is coming as close to anybody as emulating what Trump is demonstrating. Trump is demonstrating that every one of these things the Republicans have been frightened into silence over are unnecessary to be frightened of.
You don’t need to be frightened of the media. You don’t need to be frightened of political correctness. You don’t need to be frightened of being conservative. You don’t need to be frightened of anything. You can go out and say what you actually believe and you can get away with it and you can triumph. For seven years we’ve had to sit here and listen to the Republican Party stand mute, afraid to say anything for fear of what the media’s gonna say about ’em or what the president’s gonna say about ’em or what anybody else is gonna say about ’em. There hasn’t been any opposition whatsoever from the Republican Party leadership to what has been happening in this country seven years. Along comes somebody who is voicing opposition to it and promising to do something about it, and his name happens to be Trump. I can’t ignore it. I’m cheering what he’s doing. I’m cheering what Ted Cruz is doing.
This is nut-cracking time, as far as I’m concerned. Mrs. Clinton cannot win this election in November. The Democrat Party cannot win this election. If they do — well, I don’t even want to think about it. So this transcends ideology for me right now. I haven’t abandoned mine. I never will abandon mine. I am not gonna be fooled into voting or supporting somebody who is a closet liberal making himself look like something that he’s not. Do not worry about that. But I think at this stage, where we are, the Democrats have to lose, and the people supporting them have got to be stopped. These political wins that they’re having, victories that they’re having each and every day, the attack on the Constitution has gotta stop. Immigration, it’s got to stop.
There has to be a reimposition of common sense, application of existing law on so many things. The Constitution is being rendered irrelevant. It’s got to stop. And if it’s not stopped at this next opportunity to stop it, then it’s gonna be another four years to try to stop it. So the objective on this program has not changed. It’s exactly what it’s been since the first day of this program. And that’s to educate and inform people about liberalism and promote conservatism in the opposite way of doing things. And until somebody comes along and tells me that Donald Trump is actually a Democrat running a stealth campaign to actually get Hillary Clinton elected and can make me believe it — there’s no evidence of that, there’s no evidence that Trump is not what he is, and don’t forget, I know him.
He’s not an unknown quantity to me. I have spent a lot of time with Trump. And by this I mean I know a little bit about him, not that I’m afraid to be critical of him, but I know a little bit about him. And he’s not a Democrat. He is not a liberal. He may not even think in those terms, in terms of ideology. But whatever’s happening here, folks, has not changed focus at all. I’m the one constant the last 27 years in American politics, if you ask me.