CALLER:  Hi.  Hi, Rush.  I’m calling actually regarding the speech, the Donald Trump acceptance speech he did last night.

RUSH:  Yeah?

CALLER:  And after listening to that speech, my question to you is: Why doesn’t Donald Trump want my vote?  I’m a Ted Cruz supporter, and I’m a constitutional conservative.  I felt no love from Donald Trump last night.  He mentioned everybody under the sun — evangelical, LGBT, blue-collar, coal workers, students, student loans, Bernie Sanders and his supporters.  The group that he did not mention is people like me, Ted Cruz supporters, constitutional conservatives.

RUSH:  Well, now —

CALLER:  What does that mean?  Well, all I wanted to hear was small government, Constitution, Bill of Rights, individual liberty and freedom, small business.  I heard none of it.

RUSH:  No, I —

CALLER:  And my question — I’m sorry, but my question to you is, if he had shown some respect to Ted Cruz and his supporters, you know, I think support for Donald Trump would have been overwhelming.  But I heard him say repeatedly that he doesn’t care about Ted Cruz and his support.  And the question is: Why not?  The other day you had a caller, a guy, and he said, “I think we can win without them.  They’re welcome to join us, but I think we can win without them.”  But my question to you is: Why do it that way?  Why not swell your ranks and overwhelm the opposition in November?

RUSH:  I think he thinks he is.  He’s not an ideological conservative.  I have mentioned this a bunch of times.  He doesn’t —

CALLER:  I know. I’m sorry for interrupting, but —

RUSH:  He’s not an ideological liberal, either.  He’s not an ideological person.  He doesn’t look at it that way. He couldn’t talk about the Constitution last night, other than talking about Supreme Court justices.  He didn’t mention it. He didn’t talk about, “We, as Republicans…”  I was making notes.  You’re getting me a little bit ahead of myself.  I haven’t gotten to the speech itself.  I’m still trying to bury the Democrats because they’re the enemy here.

But I’m telling you: The first half of this speech, I was starting to get a little concerned, ’cause it was “I, I, I, I, I, I,” and, “I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna.”  I said, “Hey, what about us out here?  What about marshalling the support of American people? What about mobilizing us?  We’re the ones that are gonna have to do it!  Where’s the ‘we’?  Where’s the ‘we’?”  All of this “I, I, I,” I heard some guy who is gonna go in and grab every lever of government he can find and fix whatever he thinks is wrong, and his supporters want him to do that.

But then later in the speech he got to the “we.”  He got there eventually.  He got to the “we are gonna do this” and he got to the idea that the American people are responsible for what happens to them and what they do and so forth and his job’s keeping government out of the way and fix the things that are impediments and impeding people.  And you’re right: He didn’t talk about limited government, small government, ’cause he doesn’t believe in that. Obviously.

CALLER:  My point is this: I think that if he had shown a little more humility and a little less hubris —

RUSH:  To who?

CALLER:  I’m sorry?

RUSH:  You’re still —

CALLER:  To me.

RUSH:  Ted Cruz? You still got…? Did you see his remarks this morning?

CALLER:  No.

RUSH:  Oh-ho-ho! (laughing)  Ho-ho! (laughing) You think you’re mad now?

CALLER: (nervous chuckle)

RUSH: Oh-ho-ho.  Oh, my God! He had a little press conference today; he doubled down on Ted Cruz.  He said (paraphrased), “You know, I like Lyin’ Ted, but I don’t even want… If he endorsed me, I wouldn’t even accept it now.”  He said, “By the way, what the hell did I do wrong?  The National Enquirer, it had a picture, and there’s Ted’s dad with Lee Harvey Oswald!  What am I supposed to do?  The Enquirer, they brought the goods on [disgraced Democrat senator John] Edwards. They should deserve a Pulitzer. I just told you what was there. They’re incredible.”  You’re not gonna like it.

CALLER:  Okay.  Well, uh, then, I guess this election is over for me.

RUSH:  No, it’s not.  No, it’s not.  No, it’s not.  Believing what you believe, you cannot do anything that would make it easier for Hillary Clinton to win.  Trust me, please.  You can’t. (sigh) You can’t.

CALLER:  I had long conversations with my husband, and we are talking about this, and, honestly, I know, it’s easy to have integrity and say, “I will not vote.”  I live in California.  California doesn’t matter, okay? In presidential elections, I do not matter.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: So it’s easy for me to say, “Well, I’m not gonna vote.”

RUSH:  Well, you just did.  You just did.  I don’t want you to do that, though.  I want you to think you matter, because you do.  You’re an American citizen. You affect who knows however many lives you don’t even know about.  You matter.  Doing the right thing matters, even if nobody else in your view is.

Back in just a second.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, look, Trump did not have any language last night for conservatives per se.  He didn’t say “I believe in limited government.  I believe in constitutional government.”  He didn’t do any of that.  But he’s got Mike Pence on the ticket as his vice president, who is one of those guys.  Mike Pence is as thoroughbred conservative as you can get.  And Trump loves him, it turns out.  Trump has actually developed a good relationship with Pence.  And I think if Trump happens to win, the vice president in this administration’s gonna have a lot more day-to-day involvement with things than most vice presidents do.  Just my guess.

He talked about our beloved Justice Scalia who will be replaced with a justice of like mind and judicial temperament.  So he may not use the language of movement conservatives.  He may not know who Edmund Burke is and Russell Kirk.  Therefore he may not be steeped in the intellectual classical ways of conservatism.  But he certainly is not a leftist liberal Democrat by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, look, none of this he said last night should surprise anybody.  Again, folks, I know you can’t remember everything I say, and it’s a good thing I have a handle on that or I’d go nuts getting disappointed over all the time I’m wasting. (interruption) Well, I mean, why say it if nobody’s gonna remember it is my point. I know, you gotta keep saying it over and over again.  I don’t expect you to be able to recall, when Trump gives his speech, I don’t expect you to be able to say, “You know, Rush warned us.  He said last September…”  I don’t.

But I do want to take the time here to remind you of something.  And that is this.  I warned everybody that Donald Trump does believe in using government.  You can’t avoid this.  And one of the dangers — I chronicled this, too, and I shared with you the people that have this fear — one of the dangers that people have in supporting Trump is as a result of what Obama’s done.

Obama has used the government and has pretended the Constitution isn’t there in order to enact his agenda, and his supporters have eaten it up and they’ve loved it and they haven’t cared.  They haven’t cared the Constitution gets stepped on.  They haven’t cared the guy disrespects it.  They only care about their agenda being done, implemented; and if Obama has to do whatever it takes, fine and dandy.  The danger is that Obama’s opponents are gonna feel comfortable authorizing the same kind of extra constitutional power and behavior to fix all of this.

Illustration:  Obama does not have the power to ignore the immigration law and the courts have said this.  He does not have the power to implement executive orders allowing uncontrolled immigration from illegals across the border.  He doesn’t have the power to do it.  Yet he’s doing it because nobody’s stopping him, other than one judge.

Well, by the same token, Donald Trump doesn’t have the power to come in and write an executive order and erase whatever it is the Democrats have implemented by way of legislation.  Just because we don’t like it means we can’t come in and use almighty executive power and erase it and fix it that way.  For example, we cannot legally, constitutionally come in and pass a presidential executive order that does away with Obamacare.  And yet people would be perfectly happy if that happened, even though that is a great example of the vast overreach of executive power, as defined by, permitted by Constitution.  Just can’t do it.

Obamacare was passed by the House of Representatives. It was passed by the Senate and signed by the president.  Appealing this, getting rid of it has to come from Congress.  I don’t care who the president is, he can’t go in there and wave a magic wand and sign a document that says Obamacare dies as of tomorrow morning at 6am.  But one of the fears people had, and these were anti-Trumpers on the Republican side, one of the fears they had was that because Obama has made such a mess of everything and it’s such a crisis, that it’s so disastrous that people would unwittingly support the same kind of extra constitutional behavior in a Republican president to get rid of this stuff, which would not be good, either, particularly if you happened to be a constitutionalist.

Now, I don’t expect everybody to remember the number of times that I raised this, but I guarantee you’re gonna see people writing about it after Trump’s speech last night, because he clearly laid out that whatever is wrong, he is gonna fix it. (imitating Trump) “I’m gonna make sure that no country can take jobs out of America without consequence.”  I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way.  But a lot of people want him to be able to.  And the reason a lot of people want him to be able to is because the Democrats have gotten away with doing that kind of stuff that screwed everything up.  And so the fix is necessary, and it’s immediate, and it’s urgent.  So if that’s what it takes to fix this and stop this rot and get rid of this poison then by God do it.

But in our government, you don’t want one branch of government having that kind of power.  Believe me, no matter who it is, no matter who the president is, you don’t want them having that kind of power, because it’s only gonna grow.  Its use is only going to expand.  You name for me, who’s the last elected official you can think of who said, “You know what?  I don’t like the amount of power I have.  I’m giving some of it back to Congress.”  Or any CEO or titan.  Your Rotary Club chairman.  I don’t know.  When’s the last time you saw someone with power — maybe they resigned, but I mean actually give some of it away.  I’m not talking about delegating.

George Washington.  Yeah, that’s true, and George Washington refused the opportunity to be a king.  They offered George Washington king, total unilateral power, and it’s only because of the morality of George Washington that we have a representative republic today.  The morality of George Washington.  Had he accepted the kingship or the kingdom, we wouldn’t exist as we do today.  But Washington knew that’s not what they had engaged in all the Revolutionary Wars about.

So, folks, it’s tricky.  It’s tricky stuff.  I mean, some of the stuff the Democrats are doing is destructive, it’s immediate.  If it’s not fixed soon, the effects, like Obamacare, I mean, the tentacles of this abomination are even as we speak in the process of weaving themselves deeply and darkly throughout our culture and unwinding that mess and taking us back to ground zero where we can start anew and get it done right, some people think we gotta do that overnight.  “We don’t have years to fix this stuff, Rush.”  And I hear you if you’re shouting that at the radio.

So I understand where everybody’s coming from on this.  No matter what your position, I understand where you’re coming from.  If you hate Trump, I understand it.  If you love Trump, I understand it.  Hate Hillary, I understand it.  Love Hillary, don’t understand it, yet I do.  I understand everybody’s position on this stuff. Not that I agree with it, not that I accept it, but I understand it.  It’s my job, man, is understanding why people think the way they do and do what they do.  Only then can you actually succeed in persuading.

Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites from Trump.  He went out there, he had this barn burner of a speech, I mean the immediate reaction the speech was predictable.  “My God, he yelled the damn thing.  God, I couldn’t handle it, he was shouting it, Rush.  He was shouting the whole damn thing.  It was an endurance test, Rush.  I couldn’t breathe. I kept saying, ‘Tone it down, Donald.’ He kept shouting that thing, and he kept shouting it.”

And other people said it was intense and it was dark, it was passionate.  And I’ll tell you, anybody thought that Trump was gonna do a speech — well, he was who he is.  And you can deal with that however you will.  But I gotta tell you, I think he made direct appeals to groups of people last night that the Republican Party has been telling us for years they need if they’re gonna win.  And he went out and he made appeals to them.  And there are some people who are not happy about it.  The same people who’ve been telling me for years, “Rush, we can’t win with Republican votes alone, son.  We’re gonna have to go out and expand our base.”

I said, “What’s that mean?”

“Hispanics, Rush.  We gotta make sure we don’t turn them away here with our attitudes on immigration.”  But then you go after the LGBTQs and you go after the bathroom crowd, you go after the — and some people say, “Wait a minute.”  But that’s what they’ve said you have to do. We have to go beyond our base in order to win. It’s what Trump did.

I mean, he made direct appeals to Millennials. He made direct appeals to Bernie Sanders voters. He made direct appeals to African-Americans, inner city people, and he did it in the right way. He said, “Your party’s destroyed you. Your party’s let you down. Your party, people running your lives, have given you crumbling schools, crumbling neighborhoods, no economy and unemployment.”  He’s exactly right.

I’ve been waiting for a Republican to say that for I don’t know how long to properly characterize the Democrat Party for who they are and what they’ve done.  They’ve gotten a free ride with no blame for way too long because people are afraid to go there.  But Trump wasn’t.  He fired both barrels at ’em.  And he said (paraphrasing), “You LGBTQ people, we’re gonna protect from you those mad men, those Islamic extremists, we’re gonna protect you.”

People said, “What?”  Trump was acknowledging that the gay bar, 49 people that were gay, it was an attack by Islamic extremists on homosexuality.  Trump said (paraphrasing), “I’m not gonna let that happen.  We’re gonna go after them, we’re gonna find them, we’re gonna stop it.”

Trump made it plain he loves everybody except Ted Cruz.  Let’s go to the audio sound bites from this morning, starting at number 24.  This is a wide-ranging thing.  We just have three sound bites, but this morning was every bit as good in his own way as the speech last night.  Just kept coming, every time you thought it was over, another thought occurred to him and he’s off and running on it.  It was another extreme of consciousness thing.  Here’s the first sound bite.

TRUMP:  He took his speech — and you’re bound by that speech, just like you’re bound by the pledge.  You’re bound by the pledge.  So Ted Cruz took a speech that was done, was on the teleprompter, said hello; then made a statement that wasn’t on the speech and then went back to his speech.  See, to me, that’s dishonorable.  To me, not signing a pledge is dishonorable, okay?  It’s dishonorable.

RUSH:  Wait a minute.  So Trump is saying that Ted Cruz lied about the speech he submitted, that Cruz said something that was not submitted, that they didn’t vet?  Okay.  Here’s the next bite in sequence…

TRUMP:  I don’t want his endorsement.  If he gives it, I will not accept it, just so you understand.

CROWD: (applause)

TRUMP: If he gives it, I will not accept.  Won’t matter.  I didn’t start anything with the wife.  A PAC, which he’s very friendly with, released a cover story on my wife, which is a tremendously successful and elegant model, and she was on the cover of GQ magazine. I think it was GQ, right?  Now, GQ magazine is not exactly Penthouse. But she was on the cover of GQ magazine, an artsy picture. But, you know, she was a model! Really successful.  She didn’t need to marry me.  She was makin’ a lot of money, believe me.

CROWD: (laughter)

TRUMP: In fact, I had to work hard to get her to marry me.  It wasn’t that easy.  It’s true.  So they released this picture — which was, you know — to the people of the state of Utah. I love Utah! I love the people of Utah.  But that’s not where you want to necessarily send a risque picture.

RUSH:  By the way, that little bit of self-deprecation? That’s what I’m talking about.  Every appearance he puts something like that in. It may be fleeting, 10 seconds, but he puts the humility in. People that pay attention get it.  They know who he is and they’re perfectly cool with it.  Okay, so then they asked him (chuckling), “What about Cruz’s dad and Lee Harvey Oswald?  Come on, Donald.”

TRUMP:  All I did is point out the fact that on the cover of the National Enquirer there was a picture of him and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast.  Now, Ted never denied that it was his father.  Instead he said, “Donald Trump…” I had nothing to do with it.  This was a magazine that, frankly, in many respects should be very respected.  They got OJ, they got [disgraced Democrat senator John] Edwards, they got this.  I mean, if that was the New York Times, they would have gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting.

RUSH:  All right.  So do you know what just happened here?  This is alpha male versus I don’t know what, but the only reason Trump went here, the only reason he brought it up… He wasn’t really asked about.  He brought this up because Cruz went to the Texas delegation and let it be known that his pique (p-i-q-u-e) is over the way Trump talked about his wife and his father.  So what does Trump do?  Triples down.  He finds out where you’re vulnerable and comes right back at you with the sharp knife.  This is alpha male, gang.  This is the way… It isn’t beanbag.  This is not for sensitive leftists.