RUSH: I just checked a little bit of the Trump foreign policy speech. Let me tell you what this is, by the way. A lot of people say, “Who’s this speech to? What foreign policy group? I mean, it’s in a hotel. What’s the group?” Brilliant questions if you’re asking those questions. This speech has been put together by Trump supporters, and a special guest list of foreign policy people in Washington were invited to come hear it. There is no de facto organization that Trump’s addressing.

They might have given themselves a name, but it’s in a hotel ballroom. It’s at the Mayflower Hotel, I believe. And this has been designed by Trump and his campaign to… It’s a teleprompter speech that he wrote. Actually other people wrote it. He didn’t like it, he rewrote a lot of it, and it’s… The part that I heard, he said something very different about Israel than he has said in debates. In debates, he has said that he would not start out in any negotiation in a biased or balanced direction toward Israel because the Palestinians or others in negotiations would not consider him fair.

He made no bones in the little section that I had a chance to hear. He just made no bones about his support for Israel and its role as our lone ally and the lone democracy in the Middle East. We are rolling on this speech. Cookie’s rolling up there in our massive audio sound bite control room, and we’ll have excerpts of this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. But this is an event today that’s essentially designed… This is not a criticism, folks. This not criticism, okay?

It is designed to look like a regularly given foreign policy address that happens every year before some august group of Striped-Pants Crowd people. In fact, this is an invitation event sponsored by Trump and his supporters to add weight — foreign policy weight — to his campaign. Now, I don’t know who’s there. I don’t know who’s invited. There are some people from Afghanistan I saw. I saw former ambassadors and so forth.

I mean, they’re heavyweight people in the foreign policy community. But, for example, this is not at the Trilateral Commission. It’s not over the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s not at a think tank where these things normally occur. It’s in a hotel ballroom, and Trump is standing in front of four American flags.

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RUSH: Well, of course it’s a different Trump. What do you mean, “Is it a different Trump doing the speech?” Of course it’s different. He’s reading a teleprompter. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. Trump is trying to show different sides to different people, or else his advisors have decided it’s time to demonstrate some credentials and some weight here on foreign policy, to go a little bit further than, “We’re doing dumb trade deals, and the Chinese and Mexicans.”

You’ll hear it. We’ll have some sound bites coming up pretty soon. You’ll be able to judge for yourself and you’re be able to hear the difference in this speech that Trump is giving right now and his usual campaign rally speech, which is an off-the-cuff extraneous improvisational hour/ hour and a half every time he goes out at a rally.

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RUSH: The group that Trump spoke to today has a name. It’s called the National Interest. But let me tell you what KT McFarland said. She is a former foreign policy official I think in the George W. Bush administration. She said that choosing the National Interest to sponsor the speech is significant because it shows a break with the Bush neocons and a move back to the Nixon-Kissinger-Reagan theme.

Now, she’s a foreign policy person and would know what that stuff means. But basically this was not a speech to a bunch of neocons. But, again, don’t misunderstand. It’s a manufactured event. This is not an event that happens every year at this time at a location. This was put together for the specific purpose of writing a speech for Trump to deliver on foreign policy that would be read off a teleprompter. And, in fact, on social media there’s nothing that he said that anybody really has a problem with, but they’re mocking his delivery because it was so different than the normal Trump improv presentation.

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RUSH: Okay. Trump spoke at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington today at the Center for the National Interest. We’re just gonna start with the sound bites here. They are, for the most part, in order. It was a teleprompter speech, unlike Trump’s normal appearances, and it was designed to get him on record in substantive, weighty ways on American foreign policy and his ideas.

TRUMP: I’d like to talk today about how to develop a new foreign policy direction for our country, one that replaces randomness with purpose, ideology with strategy, and chaos with peace. It’s time to shake the rust off America’s foreign policy. My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security above all else. Has to be first. Has to be. That will be the foundation of every single decision that I will make. America —

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: Thank you. “America first” will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.

RUSH: Okay, so how do you hear that? I mean, that’s clearly a serious, modulated, different kind of presentation. He’s reading it from the prompter. Do you think he’s reading it well? Some people don’t do well with a prompter. (interruption) Oh, no, no, no, that’s not good. That’s not good. You say, “It sounds like Washington blah, blah”? So you don’t think this sounded like real Trump, huh? Oh. But what about the substance of it? (interruption) All right, okay. Here’s the next bite. This one is on how he’s gonna fix our decimated military.

TRUMP: We’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own. Ending the theft of American jobs will give us resources we need to rebuild hour military, which has to happen, and regain our financial independence and strength. Our allies are not paying their fair share, and I’ve been talking about this recently a lot. Our allies must contribute toward their financial, political, and human costs.

RUSH: Okay. Let’s go back to the beginning here. “We’re rebuilding other countries while weakening our own. Ending the theft of American jobs will give us resources we need to rebuild our military, which has to happen.” Just asking: How many of you, in following Mr. Trump, have heard him say ending the theft…? In these words: “Ending the theft of American jobs will give us resources we need to have rebuild our military”? You haven’t heard the line. You’ve heard him you’ve heard him utter the principle.

See what’s going on here? This is a specific audience. Foreign policy, I mean, it is its own establishment, if you will, folks, and they think very highly of themselves. They are very, very impressed with themselves. And people involved in Trump’s campaign know full well that he’s gonna have to go up and speak to him in ways that mollify them, satisfy them, or what have you. And that’s what this is. Here’s the next bite. He actually kind of let Hillary have it on her foreign policy. Let’s hear how that actually sounded in the teleprompter version…

TRUMP: The legacy of the Obama-Clinton interventions will be weakness, confusion, and disarray. A mess. We’ve made the Middle East more unstable and chaotic than ever before. We left Christians subject to intense persecution and even genocide.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: We have done nothing to help the Christians. Nothing! And we should always be ashamed for that, for that lack of action. Our actions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have helped unleash ISIS.

RUSH: All right. Now, that… He says that stuff, and you don’t hear a lot of other people saying those kinds of things to official foreign policy establishment types. The official foreign policy establishment, they’re kind of perfect guys like Fareed Zakaria GPS. That’s one of their heavyweights. Those the kind of guys Trump here is trying to connect with. We have time to squeeze one more in. This is how he claims, says that he’s going to beat Islamic terrorism and… Well, he mentions what he’s gonna do with Muslim immigration here.

TRUMP: The struggle against radical Islam also takes place in our homeland. We must stop importing extremism through senseless immigration policies. We have no idea where these people are coming from. There’s no documentation, there’s no paperwork, there’s nothing. We have to be smart. We have to be vigilant. A pause for reassessment will help us to prevent the next San Bernardino — or, frankly, much worse. All you have to do is look at the World Trade Center and September 11th.

RUSH: Okay. So, Snerdley, what kind of marks you give here for presentation? “Sounds like typical Washington blah, blah,” to you, right? (interruption) You’re not dazzled. Well, I’m gonna tell you something here. To actually say this to the foreign policy establishment whoever shows up to hear, to say this and to back up his pause on Muslim immigration into the country? He didn’t modify that, he didn’t he didn’t change it. He said it, and that’s probably surprised a lot of people.

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RUSH: Where did we leave off here? This is Trump’s prescription in his foreign policy speech today for destroying ISIS.

TRUMP: Then there’s ISIS. I have a simple message for them. Their days are numbered. I won’t tell them where and I won’t tell them how. We must — (applause) — we must, as a nation, be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops, we tell them. We’re sending something else, we have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now. But they’re going to be gone. ISIS will be gone if I’m elected president, and they’ll be gone quickly.

RUSH: I can imagine these foreign policy guys sitting there, “They’ll be gone? How is that going to happen? How are they going to be gone? What does it mean that they going to be gone? When they’re gone, what happens to their institutions? Are they gone, too?” This is how they react to this kind of stuff.

I’m gonna make a prediction. You’re gonna have reactions to this from across the spectrum. And, by the way, you Trumpists, I want you to be on the lookout. There are gonna be people that are gonna call this incoherent. They’re gonna call it simplistic. They’re gonna call it unstructured. This is campaign season and people are gonna unload on this who oppose Trump in the campaign. Just be prepared. Here he begins now the summation of everything.

TRUMP: I will view, as president, the world through the clear lens of American interests. I will be America’s greatest defender and most loyal champion. We will not apologize for becoming successful again, but will instead embrace the unique heritage that makes us who we are. The world is most peaceful and most prosperous when America is strongest. America will continue and continue forever to play the role of peacemaker. We will always help save lives, and indeed humanity itself, but to play that role, we must make America strong again.

RUSH: Right on, right, right. Here’s the final bit. There’s one more thing, though.

TRUMP: We must make America respected again.

RUSH: Right on.

TRUMP: And we must make America truly wealthy again, and we must, we have to, and we will make America great again. And if we do that, perhaps this century can be the most peaceful and prosperous the world has ever, ever known.

RUSH: (Muttering) The buzz and the applause, yes, American greatness, fascinating concept. And then they’re off to port and cigars to discuss the whole thing. Now, one point that he made that we didn’t go to on the sound bites — and Cookie, don’t run around trying to get it. I can explain it. He pretty much announced the equivalent of my foreign policy excrement list.

For the longest time I’ve had a very simple foreign aid policy. You say great things about us, we’ll help you out. You genuinely support us, you openly promote us, you openly respect us, you openly thank us, you openly work in mutual self-interest, and we will be your best friend. But if you do anything other than that, if you sabotage us, if you criticize us purposefully, you get on the excrement list and you could be on that list for years.

It could take years and years and years of good behavior for you to get off that list if I was in charge of it. And he didn’t put it in those words, of course, but he pretty much said that that’s how he’s going to look at some of this foreign aid allied status and so forth. So you’ll have your reactions to this, of course, yourself, and it’ll be filled and discussed ad nauseam on cable TV the rest of today and tonight.