RUSH: I mentioned something yesterday that I think is a golden opportunity for the country, and that is Trump’s cabinet selections. And particularly the people he has chosen who are from the epitome, the heights of success in the business world and in other areas of personal achievement. Because I believe people like that should be the role models — among the role models — that people in this country have. And I believe these people should… It’s okay for them to be aspirational. It’s okay for people to want to be like them, and the left wants no part of it. They don’t want anybody to be like the CEO of Exxon.
Are you kidding? Or the CEO of a pharmaceutical company or the CEO of a big box retailer. That’s a crime. If you look at the Democrat Party enemies list, it’s CEOs and it’s corporations and it’s like Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Retail, Big Whatever. They despise them all. And if you look at Obama’s cabinet we have people who have never done anything. They’re a bunch of thinkers, a bunch of theoreticians that have sat around either at their think tanks or at the faculty lounge at their university and they’ve stroked their goatees as they sit there with their patched jackets sipping whatever is in their cup.
And they’re ruminating with each other about how everything would be better if brilliant people like them were running things. And now Obama’s come along and brilliant people like them are running things, and we’re in a giant mess when it comes to health care, when it comes to the economy, when it comes to foreign policy, people that have not… They don’t have anybody in Obama’s cabinet that’s ever had a job in the private sector! Now Geithner’s gone. I think he once worked for a couple of days at American Express, or wherever it was.
But for the most part, Obama’s cabinet hasn’t had anybody that could hearken to any kind of real-world achievement, and Trump’s people are doers. And the point about the Trump people… You know, the way the left looks at government, it is you want government and you want to be in government because you want the power that government provides you to change people’s lives. You want the power to lord it over people! You want the power to tell people what they can and can’t do with a mud puddle in their backyard.
You want the power to tell people how big or small the water tank on their toilet should be. You want the power to tell people what kind of car they should and should not drive. That’s why the left aspires to power. They want to use the power to control other people. And their belief is that people are flawed. Their belief is that the average, ordinary American is somebody that you should hold in contempt ’cause they didn’t graduate from an Ivy League school, they’re not very bright, and left to their own devices they’ll make everything worse.
I mean, they definitely look down their noses at everybody, and they want, they aspire to government positions giving them power to correct and fix mistakes that ordinary people make every day in the living of their lives. And I think it’s a crock. The people that Trump has chosen — Rex Tillerson at ExxonMobil, Wilbur Ross — these are in many ways self-made success stories. They do not need anything government provides. They do not need any more power than they have.
They do not need any more wealth, meaning they don’t need to leverage their government job for personal gain, which is what happens in the ebb and flow of things normally in Washington and in politics. You go to Washington and you don’t make much money as a cabinet secretary or as a congressman or senator, but you get to know big moneyed people, and they set you up at a lobbyist position when you leave office or do this or that. That’s how you leverage your success in the private sector is after you’ve gotten to know people in the course of doing your government job.
Trump’s bringing in people who are powerful and successful independently from government, don’t need it, and in fact are making great sacrifices to do it. Precisely because they don’t need it, they don’t need anything that comes with these jobs. They don’t need the power. Look, they’re all gonna have to divest themselves. People talk about Jared Kushner, who’s Trump’s son-in-law, and he’s going to be one of Trump’s advisers. He’s gonna be not in a position that requires congressional approval.
So people are already starting to criticize Jared Kushner and accuse Trump of nepotism and that this is unfair and it’s not right and that these people are gonna be parlaying these positions into further power. Jared Kushner is gonna have to divest himself of everything he’s built. He owns the New York Observer. He’s gotta get rid of it. He owns New York real estate. Gotta get rid of it. So do a lot of these other people.
They have to totally separate themselves from their lives where they have been profoundly successful in order for ethics and other things to be unquestioned. I don’t want to portray this as a hardship, but it’s clearly not anything any of them need. In contrast to the kind of people that Obama will put in there, they not only need it, they want it because of the power that it affords.
My point is that there’s something to learn from Rex Tillerson. There’s something to learn from Wilbur Ross. There’s something to learn from all of these people that Trump’s putting in there because they have done it. They have tackled projects in their lives, professionally and personally, and they’ve overcome them and they’ve become the pinnacle of success at whatever endeavor they’ve engaged in, and to me, that is worth learning from. It’s why I call it aspirational. But the knee-jerk reaction of everybody in Washington, from the media to the Democrats to the establishment is to distrust guys like this, precisely because they are wealthy. We need to distrust them because they already have power, and what else do they want?
It’s sick. These are the kind of people that not too long ago were held up as the role models for other people to aspire to. They were used, people like this, as examples of what you could do if you applied yourself to it. Today they’re derided, they’re ripped, they’re criticized, they’re questioned, they’re turned into suspects. And it’s unfortunate. And so when I saw these two sound bites by Rudy today in the sound bite roster, I was pleased.
Rudy was on Fox & Friends this morning. He’s talking with Brian Kilmeade about Trump’s cabinet nominees, and the question from Kilmeade, “They’re saying that Donald Trump is pushing this too quickly, these confirmation hearings, that some of these people are going in front of committees where there’s dual responsibility, where you have to run the judiciary committee, and that means you’re gonna miss the hearing for Rex Tillerson.”
Now, the question doesn’t specifically deal with my point. What Kilmeade’s saying that Trump’s ramrodding these guys through here, and some of these congressmen that are gonna be asking these confirmation hearing questions can’t be in two places at one time, so should Trump slow it down. Here’s out Rudy answered this.
GIULIANI: This is about as high level a cabinet as I’ve seen, I don’t know, since Ronald Reagan. I mean, we’ve got some of the most important business leaders in America, some of the most accomplished political figures in America, and some of the best generals that we’ve had in our army. I can’t think of a cabinet quite as good as this — and my Reagan alumni won’t like this — maybe even a little better than Reagan.
RUSH: Well, that’s, you know, a matter for debate, but general theory here, the premise that he’s got I totally support. These are good people. We always hear about the best and brightest, these are among the best, and they have to be among the smartest. I cringe when I hear these people are not qualified ’cause they’re too successful or they’re successful in the oil business. Yeah, it ought to mean something. Success in the oil business is very hard to pull off.
We’ve been learning from the wrong people for way too long. The wrong people have been held up to us as role models for way too long. These are the kind of people — I don’t know everything about their lives, I don’t know everything personal. But their public achievements here and their life stories and how they got there and how they accomplished, those stories are worth knowing and emulating.
We’ve had way too many years of kids being told they’re special for just existing, you know, participation trophies, not knowing how the hell to cope with real life when it presents itself. A story in the Stack about that. UK Telegraph: Half of young people have so many emotional problems they can’t focus at school and study. Anyway, more details. One more Rudy sound bite just to close this out.
GIULIANI: What’s wrong if these people are successful? I mean, come on. How about we try successful people. We had eight years of you know what. Let’s try some successful people. Who is gonna know better how to run a massive, gigantic enterprise like the defense department or the State Department or any of these departments, but someone who has run large enterprises. People who do that in the private sector get paid a lot of money for it.
RUSH: Right, except the left has poisoned people’s minds on what the private sector is. They poison people’s minds on what success stories in the private sector are, and it’s time that was brought to a screeching halt.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a note from a friend that makes a really, really good point. It’s not just that the left — and, you know, I sometimes I wonder, “Should I just say “Democrat Party”? Would that be a better way to convey who I’m talking about?” More people think of Democrats than leftists. I don’t know. But leftists, Democrats, liberals, whatever. It’s not only have they succeeded in poisoning the minds of people about success in the so-called private sector… In fact, you might recall that I, at one time, even toyed with the idea not using the term “private sector” anymore because it sounds exclusionary.
It sounds exclusionary based on what my friend’s point here is, how the left has converted the view people have of the public sector, i.e. government. It’s not just that they have poisoned people’s minds about success and virtue in the private sector or outside of government. There’s another part of the equation. And what they have done is dramatically change people’s understanding of government. Now, in a representative republic like ours… We are not a democracy. Dianne Feinstein was talking about “democracy” to Sessions in the confirmation hearings, and I know for some people it’s a fine point.
But when you drill down, the fact that we’re a representative republic and not a democracy is a fundamentally important point. And in a representative republic, public service was never intended to be a career. Go back and read the Founding Fathers. Read the Federalist Papers. Public service used to be what people went to do for a short period of time because the government is supposed to be us — “of, by, and for the people.” Sometimes people even went reluctantly. They felt like they had to go into government for a short time to fix something or else to commit to public service.
But it was temporary.
It was reluctant in many the cases and it was temporary, for a short period of time. But that’s no longer the case. The left has turned government into a profession that you now train for! And at Harvard they’ve even got a school called the Kennedy School of Government, where they train people. This is what the Ivy League has actually become. The Ivy League has become the training ground for future people who are going to make government their careers, be it the State Department, be it somewhere in the bureaucracy.
Universities — particularly in the Ivy League — now specifically train people for these careers. And it is a way, if you parlay it correctly, to make huge money and to have a lot of power. You don’t get the money as a result of government paying you. It is what your time in government then affords you in terms of opportunity. So while they have poisoned the minds of people about the real world, the economy, the private sector, they’ve turned government into a profession that you literally train for and you get experience in by being an incumbent for 20, 30, 40 years. How many…?
You look at these guys doing these hearings of Sessions today. Some of these people have been in the Senate as long as I’ve been doing this show. I look at ’em and I think I’m watching Jurassic Park today. When I look at Pat “Leaky” Leahy — and I don’t want to mention some of the women; that would not be… But, for crying out loud, folks. It is. These people have been there their entire lives, and they earn $175,000 a year, and yet none of them live on that. It’s become a career, and government is now touted as the home of virtue and good works and where the best and the brightest go.
If you’re not in government, you’re not part of the best and brightest. So what we have now here is this whole sick premise that modern society has become too complex for all of us to govern ourselves. “It’s just too complex! It’s too complicated.” You and I, as plebes, are simply ill-equipped and unequipped to run our lives. We can’t do it without them. We need them writing laws! We need them writing restrictions. We need to them writing regulations. We would make a mess of our own plumbing if they didn’t limit the amount of water in our showers and in our toilets.
We would make a mess of our backyards if the EPA weren’t coming in and ruling that it was a wetland. We wouldn’t know the right car to drive. We wouldn’t be eating the right things. We go to the sending our kids to the right schools. We wouldn’t be learning the right things. We wouldn’t know how to spend our money right if it weren’t for them! And, as such, they’ve created this notion that people in government are parents, are fathers and mothers and Santa Claus and the elves and all this.
And you and I are forever considered children who need to be taken care of because we are not capable of it ourselves. A second aspect of this sick premise is that highly successful people like those that Trump has nominated for his cabinet, they’re not really qualified, because they haven’t served in government yet. “Tillerson? You mean you’re gonna have a guy as secretary of state who’s done nothing but run an oil company? Are you kidding me!” That’s the way they look at it. “Are you kidding me?
“You’re gonna have a guy who’s done nothing but operate on the brains of infants at Housing and Urban Development? Are you kidding me? You’re gonna have a guy that’s never worked in government in charge of that? Are you kidding me? You’re gonna have a guy who’s done nothing but run successful businesses over at the Department of Commerce who knows nothing about the National Weather Service?” which 80% of the Commerce Department, by the way, is weather.
Did you know that? Eighty percent of the Commerce Department’s National Weather Service. And, by the way, that’s where, in addition to EPA, that’s where global warming percolates in government. The point is that they poison everybody’s minds about people going into government because in these cases they haven’t ever served in government, therefore they’re not qualified. They don’t know what they’re doing, and we’ve had an absolute role reversal from the way this country was founded.
Not just a role reversal. We’ve had an inversion whereas this country was founded with limits on government, with the power vested in people, the faith vested in people, the belief that people live their lives best according to their own impulses and desires, that’s been turned upside down. And now the belief is that average, ordinary Americans are incompetent to do much more than get out of bed every day, and government needs to be at every step along the way most every day in order to make sure we don’t screw up. And it’s worked in far too many cases.
How many people do you know who literally, literally depend on whatever government does for their living, for their livelihood or whatever? The people that look to government as a father or mother, as a parent, as a provider, never intended this way. This is why I believe people like those that Trump has chosen to be in his cabinet, these are exactly the kind of people that we need, and the exact kind of people that need to be the examples and not the kind of people that Obama finds from the faculty lounge and wherever else who haven’t done anything but think they’re better at running your life than you are.
That’s their claim to fame. And they’ve gone to the Kennedy School or they’ve gone to Brown or they’ve gone to wherever, Penn, wherever it is, they know better how to live your life, ’cause you don’t. And that premise is what guides much of liberalism today. They try to tell us, for example, “Rex Tillerson? Are you kidding? Give me Joe Biden any day.” Really? Even Joe Biden knows that that’s a dangerous comparison.
Joe Biden’s never done anything other than be wrong on every big issue for 40 years. His experience is in government. So it’s unchallengeable. Joe Biden is brilliant, he’s great ’cause he’s done nothing but be in government, and that is the paramount qualification. That’s wrong and needs to change. We’ve had way too many people who’ve not accomplished anything, who have been hoisted up on great pedestals as role models and examples, and all they do is look down at us from these pedestals with contempt. And I don’t mean meanness. They just look down on us as incompetents.
Bill Clinton even said one day (imitating Clinton), “Well, of course, the reason I don’t want to lower your taxes is ’cause I don’t think you spend your money the right way. I just don’t think you will.” He told an audience this.