RUSH: Elliott in Wilmette, Illinois. Elliott, glad you called. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hey. Thanks for taking my call, Rush, and thanks for getting us through the election. I wanted to make a point, I think we need a reminder of how George Bush made the mistake in trying to help things along the rough 2000 election, made the mistake of leaving people in some of the positions in the administration in order to be nice to the Democrats. He didn’t realize that when Democrats lose the election, they still never, ever give up. They don’t go away. And that’s the good thing for Trump to be tough on that and to get what he needs when he wants it.
RUSH: I’ll tell you, everything I’m seeing is that you don’t have to worry about that. I mean, they’re pretty much saying — Pence is in charge of the transition. Mike Pence is out saying that he’s been briefing members of the Republican caucus in the House and Senate to get ready because a massive, sweeping series of proposals, a massive agenda is coming. I don’t think this presidency is gonna be ceremonial. I think when they said they were gonna drain the swamp, they meant it. I think that they’re gonna hit the ground running.
But he had run a company that had to do a deal with Trump, and he described what the actual negotiations were like, and he said he was stunned. On the first day of negotiations there were no, “Hi’s,” “How are you doing? Do want a croissant?” It was roll up the sleeves and get right down to it. Give me the specifics. Tell me what you want. What are your demands? Give me your facts and figures — and it was done and over with in record time. There were no pleasantries. There were no delays.
It was just dead serious from the moment the negotiations began, and people that have been involved with Trump throughout his business life all tell pretty much the same story. It’s not that he’s not a nice guy. It’s just that you’re meeting for a specific reason. He doesn’t meet to meet, he doesn’t meet to meet people, he doesn’t meet to have conversations. If there is a meeting about a negotiation for some deal, you get in there, get it, and go out. You get the best you can, you don’t apologize, and you move on to the next one.
That’s who Trump is. It’s how he operates. It’s how he’s gonna try to operate as president. He believes he can. He thinks the insider way of basically doing nothing while you talk about how much you’re doing is bogus. It is clear to me what they’re openly admitting to with this massive, sweeping agenda. They’re using terms like “drain the swamp” at places like the Department of Justice and the EPA. But Elliott here is right. You know, the acrimony in a country after the 2000 election was really, really deep. There was anger, distrust, and division.
It was all about the Florida recount. And because of the Florida recount, George W. Bush got a late, late start in his own transition. He got a late start. We didn’t have an attorney general for a couple of months. I think it was attorney general. We didn’t have one for a couple of months after he was inaugurated. It was some cabinet position. There were many that were not filled. But because of the acrimony and because of the magnanimity of the Bushes, old Elliott here is right. George W. Bush purposely left a bunch of Clinton appointees in all cabinet areas: The Department of Justice, the EPA, Health and Human Services, whatever.
He left ’em in place as a sign of goodwill. It was his means and method of healing the country and showing goodwill and his desire to work with the vanquished. And it didn’t work. it didn’t make them any less hateful. It never does! So I wouldn’t worry that that’s what Trump is engaging in. I think people are gonna… It’s gonna be a long time because people aren’t gonna want to believe this at first. Trump is not of politics. Trump doesn’t live where it takes two years to get a piece of legislation done. You do this in three or four days. I think people are gonna be shocked to see how Trump attempts to move things along here.
He’s very serious about this.
I have no doubt that things are just beginning.
Winning the election is not where this ends.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Last night on the Fox Business Network, a program called After the Bell, cohost David Asman spoke with Trump transition team domestic policy adviser Ken Blackwell about reports of disarray in the Trump transition. And to set things up, Asman introduced and played a clip of me from yesterday’s program talking about this.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The Trump transition team is not imploding, folks. It is getting set to kick (beep). What the media is trying to tell you, apparently there was some movement. Trump decided to get rid of some people, the Chris Christie team, apparently…
RUSH: Right. This was the national security team, and the reason why is that Christie was recruiting lobbyists. Christie was recruiting people from the establishment. Those are the people and he knows, and Trump said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” and Trump got rid of them and the media said, “Whoa, there’s discord! Christie got canned,” and people said, “No, no, it’s not because of the lobbyists. It was Bridgegate.” If it was Bridgegate, he wouldn’t have been put in there in the first place. It’s not a factor. By the way, I’ve never been bleeped before like that. All I said was “kick ass.” Right? Fox News is making me sound like a profane Neanderthal. I’m just kidding. They didn’t. That was not their intent. Here’s what Blackwell said in response…
BLACKWELL: President-Elect Trump himself and Vice-President-Elect Pence are focused on this transition process, and so they have been integrating folks who — very talented people, who — were with him on the campaign trail, who they kept focus on winning the election, which they did big time. And now we’re blending the two operations. We’re shaking out in a definitive way into a lean, mean machine that will deliver a platform from which the president and vice president can launch their agenda starting day one in the administration.
RUSH: Right. It’s exactly what I said. He’s confirming it. Yesterday I also mentioned that we had seen Ted Cruz going up the elevator at Trump Tower and I had heard he was up there for five hours and spent a full hour with Donald Trump himself. And I speculated, I’d heard some people say that it might have something to do with Trump thinking of putting Cruz on the Supreme Court, or Trump putting Cruz over at the Department of Justice as attorney general. I said, “That would be cool. Ted Cruz as attorney general would be cool.”
Kellyanne Conway shot that down, said it’s not gonna happen. “In a few brief remarks to reporters at Trump Tower in New York City on Wednesday, Kellyanne Conway said the president-elect will make a Supreme Court pick from the list of 21 candidates he identified during his campaign. ‘You’ve seen the list of 21,’ she told reporters. ‘The list has not changed. President-elect Trump has committed to choosing his Supreme Court justices, particularly the vacancy created by the untimely death of Justice Scalia, he’s committed to choosing from that list of 21,'” and Ted Cruz isn’t on it.
There are a lot of young people on this list. You know, there are people 45 years of age on this list; there’s a lot of women. Can you…? Would you stop and think for a moment, the nomination of a conservative woman to be on the Supreme Court? Oh, would that not blow them out of the water on the left! So Cruz, according to Kellyanne Conway, is not in the running for Supreme Court justice, but — but — she didn’t say anything about attorney general. And that would be the real prize out there. Here’s Cruz. He was on Fox & Friends this morning. Steve Doocy said, “You say that you want to work with President-Elect Trump. You’re talking about in the capacity as a senator or in the capacity of somebody on his cabinet, or an executive-level job” in the regime?
RUSH: Boy, is that right, and Reince Priebus said the same thing on this program last Friday. There’s no excuses now. About the only excuse McConnell could offer — and I don’t mean to harp on McConnell. But it’s McConnell that was saying, “Well, you know, we don’t have the Senate. We can’t stop Obama. We’ve got the House, but we don’t have the Senate.” So we gave the Senate, and then, “Well, you know, you still got Obama over in the White House. We really can’t stop him.” Okay, so we’ve given you the White House.
About the only thing left they could say is, “Well, we don’t have 60 votes.” (laughing) I hope we don’t hear that. I really do. But Cruz is right, and Priebus. There’s no excuses now. And this was an agenda election. This was not a change election like they’re trying to make you believe. Liberalism and Big Government were sent packing; specific Obama policies were repudiated. He himself campaigned on them, put ’em on the ballot. So Ted Cruz is exactly right.
We have the White House now and the House and the Senate, and it’s time to use it, with the Republicans at the largest advantage they’ve been at since the 1920s. There are no excuses now, none whatsoever. So then Abby Huntsman, also on Fox & Friends, said to Cruz, “Senator, there’s been a lot of criticism from media saying that the transition’s in total chaos, that they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve not appointed single cabinet position yet. What was your sense of being behind closed doors there with President-Elect Trump? Is it in total disarray?
CRUZ: No, of course not. I thought that was complete silliness. Now, nobody should be surprised that there are media critics who are trying to throw rocks at the president-elect and at the transition team. They don’t want the president to succeed. What I saw from the president-elect on down to every person at the transition, was men and women working hard with an enormous task in front of them: A task of bringing together a new administration of hopefully talented, principled, effective leaders who will be loyal to the president and loyal to the agenda that he campaigned on that we promised the American people.
It’s largely ceremonial in many ways, and by that I mean there are protocols to follow. Let’s say you have a task. Let’s say you’re gonna have a commission on closing military bases, and you schedule your first meeting a month from now, and then after that meeting you’ll get together in two more months. That’s not how Trump is gonna do this. The meeting’s gonna happen next week and if there’s a further meeting needed, it will happen really soon. I think establishment types and political professionals, both in and outside the government — media, all kinds of people in Washington — had better get ready for the breakneck pace that Trump is going to try to bring to this.
Now, the establishment’s not gonna roll over, and there are gonna be plenty of Democrats with procedural moves, say, in the Senate trying to slow things down. But Trump is not gonna be the one slowing things down. You watch, folks. The reason Trump was elected is going to be on display, and people are gonna like it. That’s another thing. People are gonna like it. They are going to like the purposeful, intentional pursuit of these objectives because these objectives are gonna be sought for substantive reasons, not for public relations reasons, not for buzz. Trump is gonna want to get things done to get things done. He’s not going to want to just survive on appearing to want to get things done. It’s a big, big difference. Trump is going to plow through this bureaucracy like an establishment member would not.
Mark my words.
Keep an eye on it.
It could be really fun to watch.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Patrick in Las Vegas. You’re next, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing, man?
RUSH: I’m doing great, dude. How are you?
CALLER: I’m doing fantastic. Mega USA Navy Seabee can-do spirit dittos, Rush. And I do have a good cabinet position for Romney. I think dogcatcher would be a good one.
RUSH: (laughing) Dogcatcher in case your dog jumps off the roof of the station wagon when you’re on vacation.
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: What I wanted to say, with the candidacy of Trump and his whole thing, I think it’s a lot like what the founders originally envisioned, because, you know, it’s why I think they never really included term limits in the Constitution was because who would want to go through what Trump just went through, you know. And to not have to, you know, structure his entire life and everything that he does based on what somebody else is gonna think of him.
RUSH: You know, look, this is an interesting subject, the presidency, and what the founders envisioned. You know, you’re absolutely right in how they envisioned the House of Representatives. They envisioned citizens going there for two or three terms and then going back home and that it was going to be a revolving door. They never envisioned the House of Representatives as a career. But it’s become that because largely of the power you acquire, and for some members the wealth that you acquire or have the opportunity to acquire.
If you look at the presidential qualifications in the Constitution, it’s not much. It’s gotta be a citizen, and you have to be a certain age, and a couple other things but nothing in there about experience, nothing in there about background, nothing in there about achievements. You don’t have to have much of a resume to run for president at all. I think the founders were historians. They’re very, very aware of centralized command-and-control governments and how human nature just gravitated to that.
That’s why they built in the separation of powers and the stops, and that’s why they specifically limited the government, limited the power of government in the Constitution, not the people. You think a Trump candidacy is exactly what they had in mind. Meaning a nonprofessional politician, citizen. I think they’d be, as you do, probably thrilled by it, my guess, based on my understanding — the Federalist Papers spell out what they thought the qualifications were in terms of character. Anyway, it’s a good subject but I have to stop it here ’cause of time.
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