But I think there’s an overall larger concern, and that is that Colin Powell is primarily interested in maintaining good standing with the people that run the establishment inside-the-Beltway and New York. The Boston-New York-Washington corridor, the social status.  You’ll notice where all these leaks happen. They happen at parties in the Hamptons. All these comments are made while General Powell is socializing with the elites and the people in the upper stratosphere as they socialize, and that has been his objective from the moment he became prominent in public life.

In other words, he’s profoundly concerned with what people think of him.  A lot of people are, don’t misunderstand.  A lot of people are.  But General Powell does not have that normally said about him.  He is viewed in other ways.  I just think you have to understand that if you want to understand how and why General Powell says the things he says about the people he says it about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, the latest WikiLeaks document dump features emails of General Colin Powell and Secretary Colin Powell weighing in on aspects of Hillary Clinton.

The U.K. Daily Mail has a story, and it’s headlined:  “Hillary Clinton ‘HATES’ President Obama for Defeating Her in the 2008 Election,” according to Colin Powell’s leaked email. She “was so sick giving paid speech[,] she could barely walk up steps.” So, according to General Powell, Hillary Clinton is sick, she is tired, and she hates Obama because he beat her in 2008.  And I have no doubt about that.  I think it goes deeper than that.  You have to go back to 2008.

You have to relive that 2008 was supposed to be what’s happening this year.  There wasn’t supposed to be an Obama.  There wasn’t supposed to be anybody come along that could seriously compete.  It was hers.  She had been guaranteed.  She’d been promised. She’d been told, “Hey, 2008? It’s yours! That’s when we’re paying you back for everything you’ve done to help us,” with whatever she did, keeping her husband alive and all those things by not leaving him.  And then Obama surfaced.

And it was so clear, so obvious that a majority of Democrats wanted him and not her.  That had to be such a blow.  In her mind, she has single-handedly saved the Democrat Party by standing by her husband, and it’s more than that. She thinks she’s single-handedly saved the party ’cause she’s the smartest woman in the world and therefore in the party.  To be thrown overboard like that for a young — what did Biden say? — “clean and articulate black guy.”  Biden… That’s what he said, right?  So to be overthrown by a clean…

That really ticked off Al Sharpton.  He takes showers, too. To lose to “a clean and articulate black guy,” when it was hers? She felt betrayed.  She finally found out what some in the Democrat Party really think of her.  Then Obama came along and was 10 times as dazzling and exciting and thrilling and attractive as she has ever been.  This is an ego business, and I will guarantee you that that hurt and it ticked her off.

She probably experienced a gamut of emotions.  So I’m not surprised when I see Colin Powell writing how she hated Obama, but I think it’s for far more than just she lost to him.  It goes deeper than that.  I know then you’ll say, “But, Rush, I’ve heard this.  I’ve heard if from you. I’ve heard… Then why did she accept secretary of state?  And if Obama hates her and she hates Obama, then why did Obama go to the convention and say everything he said about her being more qualified than anybody ever has been?”

Well, that’s a different world those people live in, and the one thing that has to survive and triumph at all times is the ideology: Liberalism. The Democrat Party must always win no matter what.  They’re not like the Republicans that are willing to sell the party out on what they say is principle or whatever.  Democrats, ain’t no way they’re losing no matter what.  And if there’s bad blood between Hillary and Obama, they’re gonna deal with that behind the doors and we’ll never see it.  It’ll be dealt with, or a huge price will be extracted.

“Hillary, you want me go out there and say what everybody knows is not true, how good you are?  Let me tell you what it’s gonna cost you, Babe,” stuff like this that we’re never privy to.  And this is we’re talking about the Clintons. Who knows what they’ve got on people! I mean, these are the people the 500 FBI files.  This is different air they breathe, folks.  This is rarefied air when you get to that level of a group that is really so tiny as the quote/unquote “establishment,” and they are into self-preservation.

That’s why they’re all aligning, Republicans and Democrats together, to try to keep Trump out of there.  That’s the worst thing that could happen.  That’s why, if you’re wondering why you hear Republicans really embracing the idea of a Hillary win, that’s what it’s all about.  It’s about maintaining the club, about maintaining the establishment — this tiny but exclusive and very powerful group of people.  And they deal with each other in their own ways.

It’s in ways where they need to be reciprocal, pay people back, take people out. There are ways of doing that behind the scenes that don’t take place in public that we probably might not see.  But the bad blood, people are saying, “Colin Powell says she hates Obama, but that doesn’t jibe with the way they look and talk about each other.”  Ah, it could.  They could still harbor great dislike for each other and distrust — and don’t forget the Trump factor.

If any of the other Republican candidates had been nominated, then Obama might not have been so cautious in protecting Hillary.  If somebody from the Republican establishment’s gonna get elected, why, Obama’s gonna know that preserving the establishment will take place.  But with Trump he can’t roll the dice, and if he doesn’t want Hillary to win, Trump changes everything, ’cause the last thing they want is for Trump to win this.  Jeb would be okay.  Kasich would be okay.

I would say Trump and Cruz were the two that no matter what, would never be allowed to happen.  The Democrats will bury whatever hatchets they have for each other to stop either Trump or Cruz.  But any of the others… (interruption) Ah, Rubio? I don’t know.  There might have been a third.  The bottom line is Trump winning the nomination changed everything.  It almost forces Obama and the Clintons to get along, whereas in other circumstances there might have been a little less comity.

So it just makes these emails from Colin Powell all the more interesting, ’cause I don’t doubt them at all.  She’s sick, she’s tired, and she hates Obama. She hates Obama’s economy. She hates half of Trump’s supporters. She hates transparency.  But she loves throwing Colin Powell under the bus.  “A wealthy private equity investor told former Secretary of State Colin Powell that Hillary Clinton ‘HATES’ President Obama in newly leaked emails between the two men that were leaked by D.C. Leaks and obtained by The Intercept.

“Jeffrey Leeds wrote to Powell in one email which was posted on Twitter by Lee Fang that all Clinton wants is to win the upcoming election, and that she might not win in the end. He then went on to say: ‘It’s the one prize she wants. She has everything else. And she HATES the President (“that man” as the Clintons call him)…'” Apparently, the Clintons don’t even refer to Obama by name.  They call him “that man.”  She hates the president…

This is from emails now.  “She hates the president. That man who kicked her butt in 2008.  She can’t believe it.  She can’t accept it.”  In another March 2015 email exchange between the two men, they talk about Clinton’s health with this guy Jeffrey Leeds stating that Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse informed him that she could barely climb the podium steps when the two gave a speech at the same event.  Leeds also wrote to Powell about other problems he believed Clinton would be facing in the upcoming election.  “No one likes her.  The criminal thing ain’t over,” Jeffrey Leeds wrote on Powell.  “No one likes her.  The criminal thing ain’t over.  I don’t think the president would weep if she found herself in real legal trouble.  She will pummel his legacy if she gets a chance, and he knows it.”

Folks, I’m here to tell you none of this surprises me.  Everything you’re seeing in public, Obama and Hillary apparently lovey-dovey, mutual respect, that’s bogus.  That’s the kind of thing they have to do.  This behind-the-scenes stuff, I guarantee you it’s real.  And I think Obama would be concerned about any new president and his legacy.  But look, all Obama has to do is listen to what Hillary’s saying on the campaign trail.  Nobody can miss this.  I’m surprised that — if I were in the Trump campaign, I’d be making a much bigger deal of this.  Hillary Clinton’s whole campaign is rooted largely in how these last eight years need to be vastly improved upon.

Hillary Clinton is indicting the eight years of the Obama administration by virtue of the way she’s campaigning.  Don’t believe Obama doesn’t know it.  So you’re asking me, “Well, then, Rush, why’d Obama go out and campaign for her in Philadelphia yesterday?”  He wasn’t campaigning for her, I hate to tell you.  Obama was getting back in the light.  Look, he’s lame duck now.  He’s not the focus.  Obama is not the focus.  Hillary and Trump are the focus.  They’re the future.  Obama, lame duck, soon to be lame duck.  He went out there, he mentioned himself 137 times in a campaign appearance ostensibly for Hillary Clinton.

Now, the public impression is, “Oh, he loves stepping in for her.  He absolutely loves helping her out.  She can’t go, she can’t get out of bed, she can’t leave Chappaqua because of pneumonia, he’s happy to go help.”  But he’s doing it for him.  He is doing that, all of these things, for him, to buttress his legacy.  He knows that she’s out — you listen to what she’s saying, she’s indicting the last Obama years, eight years, particularly the economy.

So everything is not hunky-dory and sweetness and light.  However, these people on the left have the ability to unify when it comes to beating us.  That is their number one objective.  That’s how they maintain their position, their leadership in the establishment.  That’s how they maintain the establishment in control of the country.  They have no problem unifying to defeat us.  We do not have that talent.  We don’t have that.  That’s not part of the Republican or conservative existence, and it’s on display right here.  We will not unify to defeat them.  They will.  For a campaign, for a few months, they will set aside every beef and disagreement they’ve got and unify against us as the enemy.  We don’t have that capacity for some inexplicable reason.

Even now we have people on our side trying to make their bones trying to say, “I’m above it all. I have no problem voting for Hillary Clinton.”  You won’t find a single Democrat, elected or former, who will go public and say he’s voting Trump.  Never.  They do not do that to themselves.  We do all the time.  But underneath all that, there isn’t all this sweetness and light and love.  Not that it matters because they will unify to beat us, because they consider us the number one threat to their way of life, to their power base and their secure hold over it.

We are engaged in intramural, internecine fighting.  They aren’t.  Not during campaigns.  Not during elections.  They unified around McGovern.  They unified around Mondale.  They unified around Jimmy Carter.  They do not sell each other out when it comes to defeating us.  Now, when it’s just them, look what they did to Crazy Bernie.  When it’s just them, they’ll take each other out, but they’ll come together when it comes to beating us.

So that’s why when you see these Powell emails and you see all this, “He really doesn’t like her, she doesn’t like him, and she doesn’t like Obama.”  Yeah.  Don’t doubt that it’s true.  But they have the ability to set it aside when we are involved, and we are involved as opponents in this election.