Quick Hits Page

RUSH:  Hey, Mr. Snerdley, does it bother you that Trump said that NATO is obsolete? (interruption) It doesn’t bother me, either.  I mean, this is what… Trump said that during the campaign.  This is nothing unusual or out of the ordinary.  Trump said things just like… Trump is amazingly consistent.  I think this is one of the things that’s really bothering people.  In their world, Trump is so off the wall that they told themselves, “Ah, he doesn’t really mean this stuff” that he’s saying during the campaign.  “No way.  He doesn’t really mean this.  If he ever gets elected, he’s gonna get sensible.”

And NATO and the IMF and the World Bank and all of these left-wing… Do not doubt me. All of these organizations have an taken care of by the left.  NATO originally might have had a great purpose militarily, national security, but all of these outfits have been taken over by European leftists.  NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is just us.  You know, we fund it. We are the defense budget and the military for many European nations, and Trump is thinking, “Why does this still exist?”

This is an example of these outdated things that nobody gets rid of because it’s just the way they are. But if you do a genuine analysis usefulness of these things, it’s not useful any more. It doesn’t serve any real purpose anymore. Plus, we’re getting screwed in the process, which is something that Trump said about NATO throughout the campaign.  The fact that he’s being consistent and the fact that they’re slowly coming to realize, “This guy meant what he said.,” means their world has been rocked.

The entire establishment — the world elite establishment — their world has been under upside-down about this election and by Brexit, if I might add, and they’re just beside themselves on how to act and they’re just scared to death that they don’t have the votes in this country to stop Trump.  This is fascinating to watch.  Just from the flat-out objective observer perch, it is just fascinating to watch this.

All of this is a gigantic teachable moment, the things that people have the opportunity to learn about so many of these institutions that are not helpful to us, that provide launching pads and homes for the worldwide left to mount their campaigns one after another which always have to one degree or another America in the crosshairs.  And what we have in Trump is just a real guy. He’s just a real guy who himself has been observing all these things and can’t believe that their usefulness has come and gone.

And yet they’re still there, and they get even more money, and he can’t believe the amount of money wasted by the United States propping up all of these things.  The reason it happens is this is how we tell ourselves, “We’re superpower.” This is how we tell ourselves, “We are a world power,” that our fingerprints on all of these different worldwide organizations. Which is fine. I’m all in favor of the U.S. being a superpower. But some of these things are actually being used against us like the World Trade Organization, the International Criminal Court.

All these things have come basically from one department of the United Nations or another, and every one of these things is designed to fleece the United States either of money or power.  There’s just no question about it.  And you’ve heard people say, “We can’t change that.”  Why?  “Well, it’s always been this way.”  Well, here’s somebody that’s coming along and doesn’t think that that’s relevant.  Just ’cause it’s been doesn’t mean has to stay.  Just because we’ve been doing it — even if it’s bad and mistake filled — doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.  But to these people we do, because it’s their livelihood.

It’s their identity. It’s their way of life, standard of living, any number of things.

Hey, if the Russians did hack… I just play a little game here.  Let’s accept the premise.  If the Russians did hack, say, the Democrat National Committee computers, and if the Russians did leak the stuff, how did NATO help stop it?  Of what use was NATO in protecting the United States?  NATO was to protect Europe from Russia, was it not?  NATO was to protect Western European democracies from the giant footprint of Soviet communism, ad that’s why Gorbachev and his buddies always wanted to get in.

And it’s why the American left was always eager to let the Russians and the Soviets in.  And Reagan constantly said, “No, you’re foolish. We’re not letting ’em in NATO or anything else like that.”  But the left in this country was pushing for the Soviets and now the Russians to be… Well, I don’t know about Putin now.  But what difference would it have made? How did NATO stop whatever it is the left thinks Putin did to screw ’em?  Not one thing!  If NATO’s there to stop Russia and to stop the Soviets… It may not be the best example, but at least it is one.

RUSH: Ran across this story at PJ Media. “How to Talk Trump With Your Terrified Progressive Adult Children.” It’s sort of a how-to column written by a man named Mark Ellis, and it details what may be reality for many American families. You have mom and dad, plus they’re Baby Boomers, and they have kids who have become adults and they’re progressive snowflakes, and they’re literally quaking in their boots in fear over Trump, just like these little snowflakes in college campuses are, and they can’t function.

They’re so out of sorts, they don’t know what to do, and this guy’s run into the circumstance. So he wrote an advice column for parents who have adult children who are uber-progressives or leftists about how to talk to them, “How to Talk Trump With Your Terrified Progressive Adult Children.” Now I, of course, am not presented with this challenge. I have nephews and nieces, but they’re all fine. We have to worry about them. They’re fine. I don’t have adult kids who have become mind-numbed robot leftists. But I read this anyway, and it really is kid gloves. It’s really kid gloves.

I’m thinking, “Is this the way to do it?” And people say, “Yeah, you’ve gotta do it kid gloves. You’ve gotta be very gentle, and you’ve got to be very patient. You can’t just tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of. You can’t tell them they’re acting irrationally or silly or any of that.” And I think back to my dad. My dad… Some of you may have heard me say this. My friends in high school on a Friday night, instead of going out and trying to get illegal beer and stuff, would come over to my house and sit around and try to say anything to get my dad riled up on politics and just get him going.

And then we’d just sit there for hours listening to him warn us about what was gonna happen if we didn’t stop the communists, if we didn’t stop the Democrats. He would say, “You boys, you’re all gonna be slaves. You’re gonna be slaves of these people like Sander Vanocur who was a commie SOB media guy at NBC, Sander Vanocur. “He’s gonna be the first guy the communists come for. All these media people, they’re gonna be the first ones shot down. They think they’re gonna be the best friends of these Soviets? No way.”

He would get going on this stuff and these guys, my friends, would just sit back and listen to it. Now, I can’t imagine a Millennial today surviving it. They would be reduced to tears and running out of the house in the first five minutes, apparently. So this is the way we were taught. This is the way we were told the way of the world. This is the way we were warned and educated, and apparently you just can’t do it that way today with today’s Millennial adults or even older adult progressives if they are your children.

You know, I don’t sit around thinking about this problem much ’cause I don’t face it, but I’m fascinated by it. So hopefully today I’ll have a chance to get in some of the advice he gives, and I would love to get your reaction to it, too, at some point.

RUSH: I’m dedicating each day’s program to young Millennials. We know you’re frightened, we know you’re scared, but you need not be. Oh, that reminds me. I was gonna talk about — and I am — John Brennan, CIA, McCain sound bites. But I got a story here. Here it is. I want to get into this. I may not have a chance to get to it today, but I’m gonna try.

By the way, we have Bret Baier of Fox News coming up in a half hour. He has an extraordinary book about Dwight Eisenhower, Three Days in January. It’s a historical perspective on the Eisenhower presidency but focuses on the transition from Eisenhower to JFK and farewell address that Eisenhower made warning of the military-industrial complex and so forth. Baier’s book on this apparently has blown everybody away who has read it. So he’s coming on here to talk about it and how it relates to the transition here.

John Brennan is the CIA director. This is a CNN story, and the headline of the story is: “Polygraph Panic: CIA Director Fretted His Vote for Communist.” I said, “What? We have a CIA director who voted for a communist? When?” So I read the story. To fully appreciate… The purpose of this is to help you fully appreciate what’s going on with this nonsensical dossier on Donald Trump and the intelligence community attempting to undermine Trump and his presidency and the Democrats and McCain and others trying to obstruct Trump’s presidency before he’s even sworn in.

This story helps put a lot of these people in perspective. “At his first polygraph test to enter the CIA, the future director had a secret. John Brennan on Thursday…” This is from September 15th of last year, so this is six-month old story. “At his first polygraph test to enter the CIA, the future director had a secret. John Brennan on Thursday recalled being asked a standard question for a top security clearance at his early CIA lie detector test: Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the US?”

And he had!

This was in a panel discussion about diversity in the intelligence community. Are you kidding me? What, do you want to kill the intelligence community by putting “diversity” as one of the top-ranked qualifications? Diversity? How about love of America as being the first qualification? “Do you love the United States of America? Do you think the United States of America is the problem in the world or the solution. If you’ve ever voted for a communist in my mind you should be automatically DQ’d. Diversity?

A panel discussion on diversity in the intelligence community? It’s a classic illustration of how liberalism destroys things. Diversity? Anyway, they ask him, “Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the U.S.?’ I froze,’ Brennan said during a panel discussion about diversity in the intelligence community…” By the way, do you know where this happened? At the Congressional Black Caucasian Foundation annual conference. So here’s the CIA director at the Congressional Black Caucasians’ annual…

What do you think goes on at this thing? It’s filled with hate for Donald Trump and for Republicans, and here’s Brennan, the CIA director, and he’s detailing for people how he froze at his first polygraph. “This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate.” Now, 1980 happens to be Ronald Reagan, and guys like Brennan hated Reagan. Guys like Brennan thought Reagan was the problem in the world.

He was gonna start a nuclear war because he was incompetent and hated the Russians, and the first thing he was gonna do after being sworn in was go find the nuke button to launch and just wipe out the Soviets and in effect wipe out the world. It’s what they thought. And now our CIA director admitted to having voted for a communist. He said, “I was neither Democrat nor Republican, but it was my way as I was going to college of signaling my unhappiness with the system and the need for change.”

Fine and dandy. You can be unhappy with the system all you want, but you don’t side with the enemy, for crying out loud. And in 1980, Soviet communism was enemy number one. So our current CIA director has these sympathies in his past, and here’s the guy sitting in judgment, passing judgment on Trump. Now, he’s claiming he didn’t leak this dossier. He didn’t have to leak it. All they had to do was leak that they had briefed Trump on it, and that gave the news organizations an open road the reporting the story, which is all they ever wanted.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” they said. “If — if — if — if the intelligence community briefed Trump on this, then that’s news! That’s news! What did they say?” And they reported what’s in the dossier, and that’s how this lying sack of garbage gets put in mainstream news coverage. And then McCain comes along (impression), “Yeah, yeah, I got that document. I read this and I said, ‘My gosh, it’s horrible!’ I put on my citizen hat and I did what would a good citizen do and I told the FBI. So that’s what I did. I called James Comey; I gave it to the FBI.”

Are you telling me, Senator McCain, that you couldn’t look at a piece of garbage like this and recognize it for what it is? You’ve been on the Intelligence Committee for how many years, you’ve been a Senator for how many years, you’re a prisoner of war like John Lews and got beat up, so you have a claim to fame here. And you couldn’t look at that document and realize that it was bogus?

And my supposition is that he could realize it was bogus but wanted to help try and sell it. Everybody’s known this dossier was bogus. That’s not the point. The point was, “Can we sell this? Can we put this dossier out there and make enough Americans think it’s true or even consider that it might be to harm Trump?”

RUSH: Here’s a story from the Washington Post: “Trump Could Cause ‘the Death of Think Tanks as We Know Them.'”  Josh Rogan, global opinions writer, Washington Post.  Now, this is a dicey area, but think tanks are worried about this. Conservative think tanks, liberal think tanks, they’re worried about Trump.  For the longest time, the think tanks have been telling their donors, “Hey, look, we’re your guardians. We’re the ones making sure what you believe becomes policy. We’re the ones with relationships and members of Congress.  We’re the ones that are on point on policy.  We’re the ones.”

Some of the media in both conservative and liberal spheres is the same, and Trump’s come along and blown that to smithereens, and that’s reason why there’s Never Trumpers out there in both areas left and right in the think tank sphere.  I need to put this story in the Stack for further detail tomorrow.