RUSH: Tom in St. Cloud, Minnesota.  Glad that you called, sir.  Great to have you on the program.  How are you?

CALLER:  Great, Rush.  Every day we let you into the house to help homeschool our three children and we just think you’re the best at what you do.

RUSH:  I appreciate it that.  Thank you very much.

CALLER:  Look, we’re going plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roll bonkers that Trump keeps going off topic.  Look, we have 1.3 GDP growth.  My health insurance for my family, Rush, costs almost as much as the mortgage.  And I saw a poll out that Hillary, from the LA Times, that Hillary was only leading in polls one day in July.  Why doesn’t he just bury her and keep on topic?  It’s driving us crazy.  I have friends who think that he doesn’t really want to win, that he’s really not serious about it because what does he care if he doesn’t win?  He goes back to Trump Tower and his ivory palace and he’s doing okay while we’re suffering.

RUSH:  I don’t want to assume.  Are you a Trump supporter?

CALLER:  Die-hard.

RUSH:  Die-hard Trump supporter.  Okay.  So you are frustrated that he doesn’t seem to be able to stay on message and is able to be distracted.  Now, I’ve also had people over the course of, not just recently, but through this entire campaign — I mean, these conspiracy people are out there left and right. “You know Trump really doesn’t want to win.”  In fact, you want to hear the craziest conspiracy, maybe not even a conspiracy theory. The craziest theory?

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  No, I just saw the clock.  I don’t have enough time.  I’ll get to that later.  I want to deal with you.  I think what people are misinterpreting about Trump, your people that say, “Gosh, I don’t even think the guy wants to win.”  Have you heard the criticism that Trump makes everything about him, that Trump is only about him?  This is a common refrain the Democrats use. In fact, Elizabeth Warren: He doesn’t care about you, he only cares about himself.  That’s not true. 

That’s not true.  But Trump does, I think, believe that he is the only person that can defend himself against any of these assaults.  And that’s why he does seem to take these things personally and seek to refute them.  This has been his modus operandi before he got into politics.  If you attacked him, he went after you, whether it seemed to make sense or not. 

I don’t know if it’s a strategy or if it’s a personality trait or what have you.  But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you or it doesn’t mean that he’s only in this for himself.  But he does take a lot of things personally.  That’s not wise.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, let me give you another theory that’s rolling around out there, because — and look, think of this what you will, ladies and gentlemen, but I’m getting email, and I’ve talked to people over the weekend since this whole thing blew up with Khizr Khan. I got people who think, “You guys are missing this.  This is not that bad for Trump.  It’s not bad at all.”

I said, “What?  Well, how do you figure that?”  And they said because this is a street fight.  Trump is a street fighter.  Rush, you ought to be the first guy to recognize this.  You’ve told everybody how outside the box this guy is, and everybody is looking at this like a traditional political faux pas, like it’s a giant stepping in the biggest bag of manure that’s ever been out there in front of anybody. And instead what this is is Trump being who he has always been and he’s not gonna take it from anybody.

These people on the stage were trying to hurt Trump, the way he sees it, and he’s not putting up with it, he’s not letting ’em get away with it.  And that’s what’s happening, and believe you me, Rush, there are a lot of people, and you’re never gonna hear ’em in the media, who are eating this up and wishing this is the kind of thing Republicans candidates had done for a long time.

Now, I don’t pretend to know how widely held a view like that is.  I don’t doubt that some people do hold it.  I don’t doubt that some people do think that this is not nearly as bad, because it’s the media and the Democrats in conjunction who are building this up and making it out to be what it is.  The media is defining our moral outrage for us. The media is defining what we should be righteously indignant about. The media is telling us what reprobates we are if we’re not outraged by it, and, as such, this is how they collate, if you will, public opinion and then move it and shift it in the direction they want it to go. 

But some people are not playing.  Some people don’t care, they’re immune to it, and they see it for whatever it is.  Okay, now, even if that describes you, I would still maintain that it’s perfectly fine if Trump wants to conduct this campaign as a street fight, and I recognize that that’s totally outside the bounds of normalcy that everybody’s accustomed to, but I still don’t think those two people are the target.  I still don’t think there’s a huge payoff for making them the target. 

They’re pawns.  They’re not running for office.  You know, Mr. Khan, they’ve lost a child, they lost a son in war.  There’s no way you’re ever going to gin up negative opinion about them.  You know, it’s a risk to even parse what Mr. Khan said.  He said a lot of things that are not true in that speech.  He’s waving his Constitution around.  In that speech he’s implying that Trump wants to take your liberty away.  He’s saying Trump wants to deny your freedom.  He wants you to believe that there is no religious test, that it’s unconstitutional to limit immigration to the country. 

It’s not at all.  We have a religious test.  I realize for some of you that may be a shock.  “Why, that’s religious profiling, Mr. Limbaugh.”  We do it all the time.  Let me give you the number one most frequently used case.  Such as now, we have a series of wars in the Middle East.  We got a big one raging in Syria, civil war, there are a lot of refugees from Syria.  They’re fanning out all over Europe.  Some of them are trying to come here.  And Obama and Hillary are welcoming them with open arms. 

Now, in the past, people have applied for political asylum in this country, tens of thousands, and they do it every day.  You know what one of the questions is?  What’s your religion?  Ho-ho, yes, it is.  Until now.  Up to now, I don’t know if it’s the case now with Obama, but up to now, that was in the top five questions.  You know why?  It was the only way to determine if the applicant, if the refugee seeking asylum was actually fleeing someplace where there was religious persecution going on.  The only way. 

You had to ask them their religion.  You had to get details from them, what was happening to them, because of their religion.  It was part of whether or not they were granted status.  We do it all the time.  Mr. Khan tried to imply that Trump wants to ban all Muslims.  It’s unconstitutional to do that, and that Trump wants to take your liberty and freedom away because he doesn’t know what the Constitution is.  And I’m here to tell you, Hillary Clinton’s the only one who openly said she wants to limit your freedom.  She went after the First Amendment, that’s Citizens United reference. She went after the Second Amendment I can’t tell you how many times, and even if she didn’t, you know what she wants to do with the Second Amendment.  She wants to take your gun away from you. 

I don’t care what she says, every Democrat running for office wants your gun.  And then she took a hit at the Tenth Amendment by trying to limit states’ liberty and freedom and various things.  The woman is a clear and present danger and thus should remain the target every day.  Just like the Washington Post story today that Hillary’s making Trump the target.  Hillary has decided, because of this Khan business, that the most productive thing she can do is continue to hammer at Trump and his unfitness, his unsuitability, his lack of qualifications, his ill temperament, whatever, ill-tempered temperament.  Well, I think the reason she’s doing that is ’cause she doesn’t have a whole lot of reason to vote for her.  I mean, vote for her for the children, talk about an old clich�. Vote for her because she cares, vote for her. 

She doesn’t have a record, folks.  She can’t run on her record.  Nobody’s happy with this economy.  She can’t run on her foreign policy record.  It was a disaster.  Everybody knows it.  If she brings it up, Trump will nuke it and whoever his donors are in the PACs running ads.  She’s got one choice.  And that’s to run against Trump.  It’s nothing new and I think she been doing it for weeks now. 

But Trump’s gotta stop running against the Khans and anybody else they trot forward to insult him.  But his nature, the guy is a New York street fighter, and he’s gonna go after you.  He’s not gonna turn the other cheek or look the other way.  And it is felt that he can be distracted because of this. 

Here’s Jim in Fairfax, Virginia.  I’m glad you waited, sir.  Great to have you on the program.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  How you doing?

RUSH:  Very well.

CALLER:  The reason I called, I’m gonna set it out there, I’m a formally pro-Trump, then a Never Trump, and now I’m reluctantly kind of drifting to the Never Hillary camp.  And I think Trump’s biggest problem is, in the beginning I liked him because he was against government, not particularly any one person.  And I think his personal attacks started to get more and more part of this campaign, and it kind of pushed me away from him.  Everybody loves their congressman but they hate Congress.  He’s gotta run against these all talk, no action politicians who take in trillions of dollars but still can’t fix the VA.  I think those kinds of messages sing to me and to moderates and Democrats who may or may not like Hillary, but definitely don’t like the government for whatever reason.

RUSH:  Let me go back to your timeline.  How did you say you started out, you were pro-Trump or Never Trump?

CALLER:  Pro-Trump.

RUSH:  You were pro-Trump then you went Never Trump?

CALLER:  Yeah, almost, I was dancing on Never Trump because he was really irritating me.

RUSH:  Tell me the truth if you can remember it.

CALLER:  Yes, sir.

RUSH:  Tell me the truth. What was it that made you pro-Trump out of the box? 

CALLER:  It was his pro-Americanism.  It was the, look, we’re tired of losing, we’re tired of these bad deals, we’re tired of an open border, we’re tired of these all-talk, do-nothing politicians.  I’m a very political person.  I’m more of a Cruz guy.  I read a lot of politics and watch a lot of news.  And in the beginning I wasn’t pro-Trump instantly, like the day he announced, but he kind of grew on me.

RUSH:  Okay.  At what point did he lose you or begin to lose you?

CALLER:  I think right about after South Carolina.  I mean, I think the wives thing really kind of pushed me away.  But it was happening before then.  It was just too many insults.  I don’t like the Lyin’ Ted and the little Marco.  I think those are just a bridge — I think he would do even —

RUSH:  Well, now, wait.  Those are practically from the get-go.

CALLER:  Agreed.

RUSH:  Lyin’ Ted, little Marco.  Those were probably from the get-go.

CALLER:  Not quite the get-go.  I mean, he didn’t have the confidence in the beginning, I think, to do that stuff and he just kept getting away with it and he kept doing it more and more.  And his stump speech —

RUSH:  Can I infer that you don’t like Crooked Hillary.

CALLER:  No, I’m all for Crooked Hillary.

RUSH:  So you don’t like how he hit your own party, okay.

CALLER:  I think Hillary’s terrible, but I don’t think he needs to say that.  If you’re anti-Hillary, you’re anti-Hillary.  There’s nothing he can say —

RUSH:  Okay, now you’re coming back, even despite the Khan business, you’re coming back?

CALLER:  I know it looks really bad.  My problem is I just can’t stand Hillary putting the Supreme Court justices in.  I think Trump has problems, but I’m comforted by Mike Pence. I’m comforted that he’ll put in more quality cabinet folks that will keep him —

RUSH:  That’s clearly important, and it’s a worthy campaign issue/reminder.  But look at all he’s not talking about.  He’s not talking about that.  Every second he worries about this Khan business, he’s an talking about that. He’s not talking about this dismal economic recovery — and by the way, I got some more assistance I want to offer here on this economic recovery business.  I think it’s been going on so long, I think the Democrats are fine with this. I actually believe the Democrats have found a comfort level with this economy. 

It keeps plenty of people in need. It prevents the middle class from growing, which is key to the Democrats holding on to their constituency.  In a perverted way, it is.  They need people dependent.  The worst thing that can happen to a Democrat is to see a voter become self-reliant.  That’s the worst thing. Middle-class people rising through the levels of middle class to upper middle class, become less depend.  That’s why the Democrats love immigration, illegal, because it keeps a current flow of a permanent underclass flooding the country, which they need. 

And I really believe they have found a comfort level with this economy.  They call it “the new norm.” They’re telling everybody to get used to it, that this is it; that the great, burgeoning economies of the past were kind of phony.  “You know, they were built on American excess! They were built on America stealing from here and stealing from there and mistreating people over there, and Obama’s apologized for all that now.” 

So it’s almost like… They don’t embrace this.  I mean, it’s not like they run around and ballyhoo this.  But I don’t think they believe in robust growth.  They don’t talk about it.  Hillary doesn’t talk about it.  They talk about how great this is!  It’s another way to hit them, criticize them, pound them, whatever.  Man, there are all kinds of vulnerabilities they have.  I mean, Hillary is loaded with them.  But their names are not Khan.