RUSH: There’s an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll that’s out as well. This is not to be confused with the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. This is the NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll. And in this poll… (interruption) Now, wait a minute here. (interruption) Wait, wait, wait just a second. Let me… (interruption) Sometimes things are more confusing than I need to be and I am on the verge of exploding here. I’ve been surrounded by incompetence the last 24 hours and I’m having trouble dealing with it.

Let me… (interruption) Okay. It is an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll that was released… Is this Tuesday? Yeah, it’s Tuesday. Feels like a Friday already. So in this poll, Trump is down only by five to Mrs. Clinton. It’s funny, you know, how the gap is closing now that Trump is the presumptive nominee. And all these people on the left — well, everywhere in the establishment, too, on the Republican side — are scratching their heads. There’s degrees of disbelief or panic at every stage.

“The fact that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party scares voters more than it surprises them, according to an NBC Neww/SurveyMonkey poll released Tuesday. Forty-seven percent of respondents said their reaction to Trump becoming the presumptive nominee was fear. Just 26% said they were hopeful, while another 21% said they were angry and 16% were surprised. Thirty-five percent of respondents would be scared to see Hillary Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination…”

See, this is the thing. When you strip all this away, Trump is only five points behind Hillary in this. So how does this jibe anyway? Well, 47% of respondents said the reaction of Trump becoming nominee is fear; 35% of the respondents say the same thing about Hillary. So that’s a spread of 18 points. But what does that matter when Trump is only five points behind her when you strip all of this away? “Thirty-five percent of respondents would be scared to see Hillary Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination, while 29% would be hopeful, 22% would be angry and just 7% would be surprised.

“The former secretary of state tops Bernie Sanders in the national poll by 12 percentage points among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters…” So I don’t know. You look at all this stuff and you realize how much of it is used to shape public opinion rather than reflect it, and it’s mind-boggling. Fred Barnes, who is the partner of William Kristol at the Weekly Standard… Bill Kristol is out there, of course, desperately trying to maintain what he believes is his control over the Republican Party by attempting to find a third-party candidate that would do well enough to deny both Hillary and Trump 270 electoral votes, and thus flow the election to the House of Representatives.

Fred Barnes at the Weekly Standard is a partner there. They’re partnered up over there with Kristol, and Barnes has a piece out today called, “He’ll Do It His Way.” His basic thrust is: “If you’re expecting Donald Trump to change now that he’s the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, forget it. Trump says he can act presidential any time he wants to. But that time rarely comes. There’s a reason for this. Trump equates being presidential with being boring. And boring isn’t his style. Trump will give a few speeches on major issues with presidential-level trappings — teleprompters, prepared texts, invited audiences.

“He’s preparing one on the Supreme Court… Others are likely to focus on infrastructure and the scandals at the Veterans Administration. But that’s about it in the boring department. No effort is being drawn up to create a New Trump akin to the New Nixon a half-century ago. When Trump learned Paul Manafort, his convention chief and top adviser, had talked to Republican officials about a change in his style, he nixed the idea instantly,” and demoted Manafort and reelevated Corey Lewandowski over Manafort.

‘Cause Manafort was running around trying to assure everybody, “Don’t worry, this is all an act — and when we get it sewn up, you’re gonna see major transformations in Mr. Trump and you’re gonna see much more presidential behavior.” Trump heard that and blew a Trump gasket, and Manafort has been demoted (he may not look at it that way, but he has), and Corey Lewandowski has been re-elevated back to a position of prominence.

But he’s gonna do the formal stuff. Newt Gingrich says, yeah, look, there are gonna be some of these formal speeches. You have to. “The formal speeches, however, are quite traditional. They represent the ‘positive Trump,’ says Newt Gingrich, an unofficial adviser to the candidate. But it’s the ‘negative Trump’ that will get more attention. He is very good at ‘shrinking his opponents,’ Gingrich says.” This is a long way around this Fred Barnes trying to tell… I don’t know what his point is.

I think his point is, if you are afraid of Trump but hoping that this is an act and hoping he’s gonna become more substantive and hoping he’s gonna be become more presidential, forget it. He is who he is and he’s not gonna change. And I’d have to think Fred Barnes is not happy with that, being the partner of Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol is desperately trying to hold onto his control, in his mind, of the Republican Party.

AP. The ever hopeful, the ever hopeful AP: “A top adviser from Sen. Ted Cruz’s defunct presidential campaign wants supporters to push a conservative agenda, including limits on the bathrooms transgender people can use … at this summer’s Republican National Convention. Many Trump opponents see the Republican platform, the party’s statement of ideals and policy goals, as a place for a stand in Cleveland. The convention’s 2,472 delegates must approve the platform before formally anointing the presidential nominee.

“All — including those chosen to support Trump — can vote however they want on the platform. Many conservatives say they will use that vote to keep Trump from reshaping GOP dogma against abortion, for free trade and on other issues.” So the platform committee… The platform writing is where conservatives (according to the AP, now) are going to make a stand against Trump and try to hold onto the… I don’t know what. The identity of the Republican Party? My wild guess is that I don’t think Trump is going to give a rat’s rear end about the party platform.

I think nobody remembers what the platform is anyway, once the thing is over. And I’ll tell you. Nobody… The platform does not bind any Republican. The platform is a PR move where the party can establish what it stands for and publish it and put it out. But no candidate, no nominee is ever bound by it. And it is an insignificant part of any convention, which is why I think a big deal is being made of conservatives, whoever they are here.

They’re discussed as Cruz supporters, circling the wagons and doing their best to keep the party defined as whatever Trump isn’t. But Trump’s gonna look at it, my guess is, and say, “Platform, shmatform! I don’t care what it says. Let ’em have it. Let ’em do whatever they want at the platform. Get it to say whatever they want. It’s not gonna affect me. I’m gonna run around and do what I do and I’m gonna be who am, and I’m gonna propose what I propose, and I’m support what I support, whatever the platform says.”

‘Cause Trump’s the guy out there saying, “We don’t need unity Republican Party. We don’t need it. I don’t have to be bound by it.” Trump is basically sniffing and rejecting every playbook tradition, or pretty much every one. All these canards about party unity? I’m sure he’d love it if the party would come together, but it’s not going to he’s not gonna allow it to affect what he does if the party doesn’t. But there clearly, folks… I don’t think the right, the correct analysis of what Paul Ryan is doing has happened yet.

Maybe it has. I haven’t been able to check everything. But Paul Ryan immediately saying he’s not yet prepared to endorse Trump? This is battle lines being drawn over who runs the Republican Party. And I’m telling you, Paul Ryan represents the establishment, is what this is. This refusal to endorse Trump is the establishment continuing to say, “I don’t care who our nominee is. We run this party. I don’t care who the nominee is.”

This party’s gonna be ours, whatever happens to this nominee, win or lose, we still run the establishment, we still run this party, we still determine what’s what about this party. The conventional wisdom is that at some point Ryan’s gonna have to endorse Trump, if for no other reason, if he wins there’s gonna have to be some show of — well, if not unity, some mutual understanding.

I’m not sure that any conventional wisdom is applicable anymore. I think so much of what’s happening here is so unexpected and unprecedented that there are not a lot of people that know what to do with it. Everybody has their formulaic ways of applying whatever event happens day to day in politics and plugging it into previous occurrences and thus analyzing it that way, but it’s largely uncharted water here, uncharted territory where everybody is headed.

You know, Pat Buchanan had this column just excoriating Ryan. Who the hell does he think he is? Does he not realize he just had his hat handed to him? What in the name of Sam Hill is going on? The nominee, Donald Trump, got more votes than any Republican ever, and Ryan is saying, “No, I don’t think so.” It’s not up to Trump to move to Ryan. It’s up to Ryan to move to Trump, and if Ryan doesn’t, then bye-bye Ryan. That’s Buchanan’s column. (laughing)

Folks, they’re applauding my analysis interpretation of the Buchanan column on the other side of the glass here. Okay. Well, anyway the battle lines are drawn, and it stands to reason the establishment types are just not going to let the will of the people break up their club. They’re just not gonna let that happen. They’re gonna do everything they can to hold on to this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Buchanan’s piece was titled, “Who Promoted Private Ryan?” And the subhead is: “Pat Buchanan on speaker: Losers don’t make demands, they make pleas.” They make requests. You know I said the other day in this program — Snerdley, you frowned at me — I said it’s not up on to the winner to move to the loser. The loser has to get to the program and move to the winner. You looked at me like, whoa. What do you mean it was shocking when I said that? It’s just the way of the world.

We shellacked the Japanese in World War II. Did they tell us the way things are gonna be at the signing ceremony? No, we told them what they were gonna have to do. We did the same thing with the Germans after World War II. It’s always the winners. That’s the reason that you get into conflict. The winner determines the rules and it’s up to the loser to accede. That’s part of surrendering and it’s part of losing. Now, you can go into exile if you want, but you don’t start making demands.

See, that’s kind of what’s wrong with America today. The losers are making demands. The oddballs, the kooks are the ones making the demands and the winners, you know, are turning tail and running. The winners are going, “Okay, okay, just don’t say mean things about us. Leave our kids alone.” So the losers are running the show and the losers are the left. I mean, they’re a definite minority in this country, but they’re winning everything by virtue of the actual winners and majority giving up and surrendering and caving.

Frankly, I’m worn out with it. This bathroom business in North Carolina, it’s a classic illustration of it. Less than one-tenth of 1% of the population, and we’re being told the Civil Rights Act of 1964 addressed it? It’s even gotten so absurd that some of the supporters of this bathroom garbage are trying to tell us that it’s in our founding documents, that transgenders were being thought of and were being considered during the construction of the Bill of Rights. It’s absurd. All of this is frankly absurd. But when you have a majority not willing to stand up for itself, you have to expect what’s happening to happen.

I can give you countless examples of it, of parents not doing a damn thing about it when teachers are perverting and destroying history lessons in their schools ’cause they’re afraid of what bad grades will come, what recriminations will come if they complain. The left has been winning with this stuff for a long, long time ’cause nobody wants to stand up to it. And when people do stand up to it, they are made to pay, and other people see what happens to people that stand up and say, “I don’t want that happening to me.”

So they slink along, trying to be unnoticed, and the steady erosion by virtue of perversion is happening to our culture, and it’s not just here. It’s happening in Europe, it’s happening all over where there is Western civilization, it’s under assault.