TRUMP:  We have to create that strength, and sometimes we have to reduce bureaucracy.  It just gets in our way.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Getting a lot of applause here, announcing military reforms and upgrades.  It’s a really good speech.

TRUMP:  Early in my term I will also be requesting that all NATO nations promptly pay their bills, which many are not now doing.

AUDIENCE: (applause and cheers)

RUSH:  His tie matches the American flag background.

TRUMP:  Only five NATO countries, including the United States, are currently meeting their minimum requirement to spend 2% of GDP on defense.

RUSH:  His hair is not orange today.

TRUMP:  They understand it. They know they have to do it. They can afford to do it.  They have no respect for our leadership.  They have no respect for our country.  They will do it.  They’ll be happy to do it.  They will be happy to do it.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  They’ll be happy to do it.  It’s a very well received speech, I have to tell you.

TRUMP:  Additionally, I will be respectfully asking countries, such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, to pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  I’m not hearing Trump cough, either.  No coughs so far, not a one during this speech.

TRUMP:  And they’ll fully understand.  They’re economic behemoths.  They’re tremendously successful countries, but we’re subsidizing them for billions and billions of dollars.  I think they’ll fully understand.  Finally, we will have at our disposal additional revenues from unleashing American energy.  The Institute for Energy Research cites a short run figure of as much as $36 billion annually from increased energy production, tremendous amounts of money.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  It’s a very substantive speech on reforming and rebuilding the military, folks.

TRUMP:  Tremendous numbers of jobs and tremendous amounts of money. And, your electric bills will go down, is something else about it.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Well, I’d be careful about that.  That never happens.

TRUMP:  Using these new funds, I will ask my secretary of defense to propose a new defense budget to meet the following longtime goals.

RUSH:  Here we go.

TRUMP:  We will build an active army of around 540,000, as the Army’s chief of staff has said he needs desperately and really must have to protect our country.  We now —

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  He hasn’t even cleared his throat yet, much less coughed. Nothing like that at all.

TRUMP: We now have only 31 brigade combat teams or 490,000 troops. And only one-third of combat teams are considered combat-ready.  That’s not good for our country.  I actually don’t even like saying it because plenty of countries are watching us right now, but we’ll get it shaped up very quickly.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  It’s a teleprompter speech, very reserved, very substantive, serious.

TRUMP:  We will build a Marine Corps based on 36 battalions, which the Heritage Foundation notes is the minimum needed to deal with major contingencies.  Right now we only have 23.

RUSH:  Not good.

TRUMP:  We will build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines, as recommended by the bipartisan National Defense Panel.  We right now only have 276 ships, and it’s not enough.  And we will build an Air Force of at least 1,200 fighter aircraft, which the Heritage Foundation again has shown to be needed to execute current missions.  We now have 1,113.  Not enough.  We will also seek to develop a state-of-the-art missile defense system.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Oh, you hear that applause for that?  Star Wars!

TRUMP:  Under Obama-Clinton, our ballistic missile defense capability has been degraded at the very moment in the United States history and its allies we are facing the strongest, most heightened missile threat that we have ever, ever had.  You look at Iran, you look at North Korea, you look at terrorists, we don’t even know where to look.  We don’t know where to look.  But believe me, you can look all over, so we are going to do that.  We need a form of shield.  We want to protect our country.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  We had 600 ships, a 600 ship Navy under Reagan.  We’re down to 200 now.

TRUMP:  As these potential adversaries grow their missile programs, U.S. military facilities in Asia and the Middle East, as well as our allies, are increasingly in range with the United States homeland, and we are really absolutely and potentially being threatened.  And within two years, we will absolutely have a real threat.  They’ll be able to reach us so easily the way it’s going right now.

We propose to rebuild the key tools of missile defense starting with Navy cruisers that are the foundation of our missile defense capabilities in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.  The Obama-Clinton administration tried repeatedly to remove our cruisers from service, then refused to modernize these very old, aging, aging ships.  They’re old.  They’re tired.

We will start by modernizing our cruisers to provide the ballistic missile defense capability our nation needs.  This will cost around $220 million per modernization as we seek to modernize a significant portion of these 22 ships.  It will also mean jobs for our country.  Okay?  Jobs for our country.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Donald Trump in Philadelphia, just a little bit of this.  I just want to give you a flavor for it.

TRUMP:  And that is one of the benefits. It’s called “jobs for our country” which we desperately need.  As we expand our Navy toward the goal of 350 ships, we will also procure additional modern destroyers that are designed to handle the missile defense mission in the coming years.  Accomplishing this missile rebuild and our military retooling will be a 50-state effort.  Every state in the union will be able to take part in rebuilding our military and developing technologies of tomorrow.  In other words, the workers and the jobs will take place throughout the United States.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Well, hey, it’s a reality.  Might as well go ahead and promote it.

TRUMP:  In addition, we will improve the Department of Defense’s cyber capabilities.  A new threat, a new problem, very expensive, and we’re not doing very well with cyber.  Hillary Clinton has taught us —

RUSH: (laughing)

TRUMP: — really how vulnerable we are in cyber hacking.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  I love it.  Victory!

TRUMP:  That’s probably the only thing that we’ve learned from Hillary Clinton.

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

RUSH: (chuckles) Well, there’s obviously much more. Coughing spasms and how to deal with it.

TRUMP:  Which is why one of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.

RUSH: Great facial expressions.

TRUMP:  Hillary Clinton put her emails on a secret server nobody knew about except for the man that was given the Fifth.

AUDIENCE: (chuckling)

TRUMP: Remember?

AUDIENCE: (chuckling)

TRUMP: Whatever happened to him?  Where is he?  What happened to him?  Where did he go?

AUDIENCE: (chuckling)

TRUMP:  He pled the Fifth.  Never… That’s the end of him.

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

TRUMP: (pause) Ay yi yi.

AUDIENCE: (wild applause and whistling)

RUSH:  The crowd is eating it up.  Just a little more, folks.  Just a little more.

TRUMP:  She put her emails on a secret server to cover up her pay-for-play scandals in the State Department.  Nothing threatens the integrity of our democracy more than when government officials put their public office up for sale.  We will also…

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: We will also make it a priority to develop defensive and offensive cyber capabilities at our U.S. Cyber Command and recruit the best and brightest Americans.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: One of my first directives, after taking office, will be asking the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all relevant federal departments to conduct a thorough review of United States cyber defenses and identify all vulnerabilities — and we have to do that immediately — including to our power grid, our communications system, and all vital infrastructure.

RUSH:  Folks, this is a perfect lead-in to what I have first on the program’s agenda today, and it’s crucially important.

TRUMP:  I will then ask for a plan to immediately protect those vulnerabilities and then fix them.  At the same time…

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: At the same time, we will invest heavily in offensive cyber capabilities to disrupt our enemies, including terrorists who rely heavily on internet communications.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  So Trump’s establishing his bona fides on military preparedness here.

TRUMP:  ISIS is using the internet to recruit.  ISIS is using the internet to intercept and do all sorts of things to our country.  We have to be many steps ahead of them, and we will be.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  No histrionics, just the facts, ma’am.

TRUMP:  These new investments in cyber security and the modernization of our military will spur substantial new job creation in the private sector and help create the jobs and technologies of tomorrow.  It’s what we have to do.  America must be the world’s dominant technological powerhouse of the twenty-first century, and young Americans — including in our inner cities — should get these new jobs!

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: Through training, through education, it will happen.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  It’s actually a great idea.  That is.

TRUMP:  We must also ensure that we have the best medical care, education, and support for our military service members and their families, both when they serve and when they return to civilian life.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: Our veterans are not being treated well.  Our veterans, in many cases, are being treated worse than illegal immigrants, people that come into our country illegally. Our veterans are not being treated well.  And, by the way, Hillary Clinton has been doing this for 35 years.  Now she says she can do it?  She doesn’t have a clue.

RUSH:  I’m glad he’s making that point.  That’s my point: What’s she got to show for her 30 years around town?  Right on!

TRUMP:  Our debt to our men and women in uniform is eternal, always will be.  To all of those who have served this nation, I say so strongly that I will never, ever let you down.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  Okay.  Let’s take this moment to bump out of this.  I just wanted… It’s Donald Trump in Philadelphia, and he’s delivering a very substantive speech on military preparedness, the status of the current military. He detailed the deterioration of the U.S. military in the past eight years and explained how he’s going to rebuild it and why we need to, and it’s a very tough audience. It’s an expressly military audience, and they are of course listening for any sign that he’s not really genuine here.

And he’s, I think, knocking this out of the park as far as that audience is concerned.  In fact, anybody else who hears this is probably gonna be dutifully impressed with Trump’s comportment, his presentation, his knowledge of this, and his temperament here.  It’s all a great package and looks good. The hair is not orange today. It’s dishwater blond. He’s got a red-and-white striped tie matching the American flags behind him. Great optics. So we will see.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned to you that I have the sound bites from Trump today, and it’s true this piece says that Trump’s bombast and his manner of speaking… How is it described here? His “vulgarity,” as it is, is a gift on the Never Trumpers because it allows them to point at that and say, “See? This guy’s not serious! This guy’s not presidential. We can’t support this guy! Who do you think you are? This guy’s just an unsophisticated boob.  He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.”

So Trump gave a speech today on national security and military affairs to a military-themed audience in Philadelphia, and there was no vulgarity in it. There was no bombast. There wasn’t any of the usual Trump braggadocio.  It was a teleprompter speech, but it was serious, studious, and it represented a solid understanding of issues and of the status quo.  Now, we JIPped some of it. We joined it in progress when the program opened, but there were some things that Trump said before the program began, have sound bites of that and then his big finish.  So let’s just get to it.  Here’s the first of the four sound bites I want you to hear.

TRUMP:  Today, I’m here to talk to you about three crucial words that should be at the center always of our foreign policy: peace through strength.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: We want to achieve a stable, peaceful world with less conflict and more common ground.  I am proposing a new foreign policy focused on advancing America’s core national interests — so important — promoting regional stability, and producing and easing the tensions within our very troubled world.

RUSH:  Now, remember, the piece from which I have been quoting today makes a point of saying that Trump is the only Republican candidate in the last seven cycles to understand all three legs of the foreign policy stool — the three crucial elements of our foreign policy, what they need to be — and they are trade, war, and immigration.  And there have been candidates who’ve been right on trade but wrong on the other two, right on war but wrong on the other two, right on immigration but not interested in the other two.  It is this writer’s belief that Trump is the first one to come along, despite what a big buffoon everybody says he is. He is the only guy that’s put his finger on the problems and the comprises and the areas that need to be addressed in order to owe direct the route which our country is traveling.

Here’s what Trump says he’s going to do regarding ISIS…

TRUMP:  Immediately after taking office, I will ask my generals to present to me a plan within 30 days to defeat and destroy ISIS.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: This will require military warfare but also cyber warfare, financial warfare, and ideological warfare as I laid out on my speech on radical Islamic terrorism several weeks ago.  Instead of an apology tour — which you saw President Obama give over and over again — I will proudly promote our system of government and our way of life as the best in the world, just like we did in our campaign against communism during the Cold War.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  I told Cookie to leave the applause in rather than edit it out just to give you a flavor for it.  What Trump is essentially saying here is what has always been the case: America is the solution to the problems of the world. But to Obama and Hillary and many on the left, America’s the problem. America and its superpower status is the problem in the world.  I had an opportunity… I’ve told you this before.  It was in August of 2008, and I was invited by President George W. Bush to visit the White House for a couple of hours and have dinner, and we went to the…

It was the Map Room, in fact.  It was where… No, sorry.  Treaty Room.  I was going to say it’s the Map Room where they found the Rose Law Firm billing records.  It was the Treaty Room.  And we’re having we’re cigars, and I’m having an adult beverage.  And the president takes me on a world tour, status of the world, various regions.  And he described for me the conversations he’d had with world leaders.  And when he got to China, he…

I forget the Chinese premier’s name at the time, but it sounded funny when the president said it. I think it was Wu or Tu or Su or some such thing.  But he was telling me the story. “Su, what’s your biggest problem? Tu, what’s your biggest problem?”  The biggest problem the Chinese premier said he had was creating 25 million jobs every year in the country, out in the rural areas. His cities were overpopulated, couldn’t handle it. But he needed to create all these jobs and keep them from getting into the cities.

And then he went to the various other parts of the world and describe what other things were going on and he described some world leader, I forget who, who told him that the United States was causing all the problems in the world and this needed to stop. The president told me he said “No.” I told this guy, “America’s the solution, and the sooner you realize that the sooner the world’s gonna end up being a better place.”  So 2000 to 2008 probably is the last time we had leadership in Washington with any power which had the belief that America is the solution to problems in the world/ America always has been.  We’ve got some things wrong but our motivations and interests have always been aboveboard.

But the left can’t wait to condemn this country.  The left can’t wait to tell stories of how we have, I don’t know, just made messes of things, as their justification for chopping us down to size and for disqualifying us superpower status. We haven’t earned it. We’ve built our nation on the backs of slaves and other discrimination and so forth. We’ve gotta cut this country down to size and people here need to find out what it’s like what we’ve done to people around the world, and that’s not who we are.  And Trump is coming along saying those days are over; we are the solution, we are going, our system of government, we are gonna promote it, we are gonna promote our way of life around the world as the best in the world.

Now, normally that’s the kind of thing, even Colin Kaepernick should applaud that, but people don’t.  And that’s quite telling right there, but Trump wants to reinstitute that.  Speaking of Kaepernick, did you see what Obama said about Kaepernick?  I mean this was the biggest dodge I have ever seen.  This may have been the most vacuous or empty statement on anything, because Obama clearly wanted to agree with Kaepernick but couldn’t.

You can’t tell me otherwise.  He wanted to applaud Kaepernick.  But he knew he couldn’t do it.  We haven’t yet gotten to the point where the president can dishonor the country.  A quarterback for the 49ers can, but we can’t have the president do it yet.  Boy, did I sense that he wants to do it.  Here’s the next Trump bite.  This again, stuff that occurred before the program began.

TRUMP:  She’s trigger happy and very unstable.  Whether we like it or not, that’s what’s going on.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP:  She’s also reckless. So reckless, in fact, that she put her emails on an illegal server that our enemies could easily hack and probably have.  Then Clinton’s team used a technology called BleachBit, which is basically acid, and this is going to acid wash her emails.  Who would do this?  She claims she couldn’t recall important information on 39 separate and different occasions.  She can’t even remember whether she has trained in the use of classified information.  And she said she didn’t know the letter C means “confidential” or at least “classified.”  If she can’t remember such crucial events and information, honestly, she’s totally unfit to be our commander-in-chief, totally unfit.

AUDIENCE:  (applause.)

RUSH:  I told them not to edit the applause so you can hear it.

TRUMP:  But I have a feeling she did remember and she does know, and that also makes her unfit.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

RUSH:  So that was Trump unloading on Hillary.  Here’s the big finish.  This occurred during one of our commercial breaks in the first half hour of the program.

TRUMP:  Together, we will have one great American future.  Our potential is unlimited.  We will be one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.

AUDIENCE: (applause and cheers)

TRUMP:  And, by the way, we love our flag.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: America will be a prosperous, generous, and inclusive society.  We will discard the failed policies and division of the past and embrace true American change to rebuild our economy, rebuild our inner cities — they need help so desperately — and rebuild our country.  We will bring back our jobs, and we will not let our jobs go to other countries.

AUDIENCE: (applause)

TRUMP: We will make America strong again.  We will make America safe again.  And we will make America great again, greater than ever before.  Thank you very much, and God bless you.

RUSH:  That’s Donald Trump today in Philadelphia on a speech on military preparedness and national security.