RUSH: Now, last night, I have to tell you, I was deeply touched and blown away. Some of you might remember during the second term of George W. Bush, he had a White House ceremony for Pope Benedict.
And, at that ceremony, the United States Army Chorus and Band did a rousing rendition of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and it just blew me away. I was deeply touched by it. I found a way to get a copy of it and I started listening to it over and over and over again, recognizing every element of the performance. I was so moved by it, I actually called the White House and begged somebody to just put President Bush on the phone for just 30 seconds so that I could thank him for what had happened.
Because it was a White House ceremony where once again God — with no fear and without any unabashed nervousness — had been reintroduced to the White House and to the country. God was on full display. The Battle Hymn of the Republic with Pope Benedict, and I just felt compelled to thank President Bush. I’d sent Karl Rove an email quickly while this was all going on, and said, “Could you do what you could to help?” He said, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen. We’re on a tight schedule today.”
Well, it happened. President Bush came on for 30 seconds that ended up to be a couple of minutes, and I thanked him profusely for that ceremony. It remains one of the most incredible things that I have seen, and it was largely focused around the performance by the Army Chorus of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. So last night… (interruption) Yeah, we’ve got that. Before the program ends, I’ll play that performance that happened. Do you have the date on that by any chance? Does the computer entry have the date that that happened? Not that it matters.
It’d just be an interesting point. But it was in Bush’s second term. Anyway, last night I’m watching the inaugural events that are taking place at the Lincoln Memorial, and Toby Keith is performing, a couple of the other groups are performing. And the Trump family is there. And there’s a huge crowd, huge, huge crowd. Trump addressed the crowd at one point and made mention of the fact that such an event had not really happened on inauguration eve and had been so well attended.
And then I heard the public address announcer announce the United States Army Band and the chorus doing Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I said, “Whoa!” I said, “This is… This is… It’s…” I don’t know what it was, but it had deep meaning, and here came the performance, and it was practically identical to the performance at the White House for Pope Benedict. It had the same orchestration, the same arrangement. I know members of the Army band and chorus change constantly, but it sounded the same, and the fireworks were going off.
The Trump family had ascended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and they were standing at the top while this song was being sung and performed, and the fireworks display was just never ending. It was one of the most over the top fireworks displays I’ve seen. It went on. I’m sure there have been others like it, Fourth of July in Washington, but it just went on and on and on, and it was intense, and it was loud, and it was never ending, accompanying The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The historical of The Battle Hymn of the Republic dates back to the Civil War, and when the song was first played for President Lincoln, he loved it so much that he demanded that whoever was performing it at the time — it was written by a woman. He demanded that it be played again. And I’ve always had a certain spot in my heart for that song. I have listened to that song be played while watching video of American military aircraft scrambling and taking off from Hawaii and from Air Force Bases in California.
And I was thinking, “What are the odds that the same song and the same performance would be played here at a Trump inaugural party or ceremony the night before the inauguration?” I was just… I don’t know. It was deep, deep meaning to me. And then the realization that we were looking at and listening to an event where God was again front and center. With no excuses made, and with no apologies and with no attempts to say anything to the people who might be offended. It was just there. It was front and center, and the same thing today.
God was present, acknowledged, from beginning to end of the Trump inauguration today. And it’s something we haven’t seen in a while. And I think there is a much more substantive and deep meaning to what’s happening here, and it hit me last night when I was watching the inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, Battle Hymn of the Republic, and some of the speeches and words that were said last night. There’s a reclamation of the country taking place, is I guess the best way to describe how they say affecting me.
And by reclamation of the country, I mean that the people who honor the time-honored institutions and traditions of this country from its founding are reclaiming this country from efforts made by others to eliminate those institutions and traditions or to water them down, and to transform this country away from what it was intended to be from its founding forward. I think that’s what these last eight years have been. I noticed that Dr. Krauthammer has a column at National Review — it might be his Washington Post column — that runs today.
Dr. Krauthammer, Charles Krauthammer in his piece today acknowledges that now Obama has clearly illustrated that he is a radical. Krauthammer cites the pardon or the commutation of the sentence of Chelsey Manning and a couple of other events that says Obama claimed to have a bucket list but actually it was not a bucket list, it was another kind of list — a word that Sundays like “bucket” but without a B in it. I was reading Dr. Krauthammer’s piece, and I said, “I’m glad that he is acknowledging today that Obama was indeed a radical. But it’s not new.
The fact that Obama has been a radical and a leftist is something that has been obvious since Obama was inaugurated to me and I’m sure many of you. So you couple the events of last night and some of the ceremonial aspects of the inauguration today that surrounded Trump’s actual inaugural address, and there’s no question there’s a reclamation going on. I think this is one of the things the left knows, and it has them totally disoriented and discombobulated, and they’re wandering in the desert.
They haven’t the slightest idea of what to do, because this is the antitheses of where they thought they were. They thought that after eight years of Obama, which would lead into more eight years of Hillary, that they were going to finally close the deal and complete the transformation of this country and take it away from the power structure that created and founded this country, and turn it over to the people they think have been the victims of the founding of this country. And that’s something you and I — and I will deign to speak for you — have a hard time relating to.
To think that the founding of this country has led to victims of it. Now, for the purposes of this discussion I will omit slavery. Nobody wants to defend that. But even our founders knew it could not be sustained and left steps and procedures in the Constitution for eliminating it, which we did! Slavery is a thing of the past. The American left wants to behave as though it’s something still omnipresent and dominant. And it isn’t. Aside from that, the idea that this country was founded by the government picking winners and picking losers, and therefore there have been victims of this country from the days of the founding?
This has been the guiding principle, the inspiring, motivating principle the Obama administration and the American left for the last eight years and even prior to that before Obama was elected. And what’s happening with the Donald Trump campaign, the Donald Trump election, the Trump inaugural is what I think is a reclamation project, without ever saying it. Trump’s language has this reclamation project described as “Make America Great Again,” and we’re gonna bring back American jobs. We’re gonna protect our border.
We’re going to protect American manufacturing, bring American business home. We’re not gonna waste our money overseas on foreign entanglements where our interests are not threatened or involved in them. But you add it all up, and it is a shot. It is a shot across the bow to establishment Washington who, for the longest time, has believed this country has a debt to pay to the world, many debts to pay because of our egregious behavior as a superpower. And Trump today put up his hand and said (summarized), “Whoa” and “Stop. It is not the case.
“We don’t have anything to apologize for except to the American people who’ve been left behind by this vast establishment move to globalism led by incompetent politicians who can’t be trusted,” and they were all sitting there as he said this! They were all standing right behind him, as he blamed them for the malaise that exists in the country today. We didn’t get too many camera shots of those people standing behind him, but when we did, you could see blank faces, an occasional grimace, an occasional shaking of the head.
When we got camera shots of the Congress sitting in the seats closest to the stage area, there was no movement. There is perfunctory applause but, I mean, this was incredible. The fearless repetition of the high points of the Trump campaign were front and center in the Trump inaugural address, and it was breathtaking. I had no expectation of the speech. I didn’t have any idea what it was gonna be. I know that many pundits in the establishment, many Drive-By analysts expected — because they still don’t know what they’re dealing with.
They expected that Trump would become one of them today, they expected that the campaign and the transition have all been Trump acknowledging the people who elected him. But starting today Trump was going to be, quote/unquote, “presidential.” And that means Trump was going to become of Washington, and he was going to deliver an inaugural address that they could lump in with JFKs and one of Reagan’s and maybe a couple or three others. And you can’t do that. The closest we can get to the inaugural address today is Ronaldus Magnus back in 1981.
Now, I mentioned earlier that if you think what Trump said today hasn’t been said before in terms of a freshly sworn in president taking out after the political establishment, honing in on the deficiencies and the problems of the country — if you think, “Wow, that — that… I’ve never heard that before!” well, then I would direct you to Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural. I have a rather lengthy excerpt. I’m not gonna read the whole thing, but let me just share with you a couple things that Reagan said in 1981.
He said, “The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, it penalizes thrift, it crushes the struggling young and fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the dreams of our people.” Reagan was continuing with his campaign theme, running against the malaise of the Jimmy Carter economy and the Jimmy Carter presidency, and his inaugural address continued the theme.
“Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity. But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.” And then there’s this:
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable and with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.”
Well, that was Reagan in 1981 in his first inaugural, and you can’t get more pointed in criticizing the establishment than to say that government’s not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. So what Trump did today is not unprecedented. But he did it, of course, in his unique manner and left no doubt that in his mind and his administration, this is America first, America second, and America third, and that is going to be the governing philosophy going forward. And he was fearless and unabashed.
And I’m still sitting here somewhat taken aback that he said all of this while everybody in his mind who is responsible for the problems was sitting right behind him. Now, I have a sound bite I want you to play. This one struck me. And I think it illustrates a… It’s great. It does illustrate the profound difference between ourselves and the American left and the Democrat Party. By the way, Obama is now on helicopter that when the president’s on it, it’s Marine One. He’s no longer the president, so it’s under another designation.
Obama and Michelle and the family are now on the way to Joint Base Andrews where they will be flown on one of the two Boeing 747-400s that is Air Force One when the president is board. It will not be Air Force One. Air Force One is a designation. If the president’s flying in a Piper Cub, it’s called Air Force One. So he’s going to be in the same plane that’s used to ferry presidents around, but it will be known by its tail number. He’s going to Palm Springs before he returns to Washington. He and Michelle are heading to Palm Springs.
And I am told she’s not crazy about it, so I don’t know how long they’re gonna be there. Obama clearly loves Palm Springs. There are a bunch of very wealthy Democrat donors and people that play golf, and there’s a lot of country clubs out there. So it’s made to order for somebody who’s just left the rigors of eight years of office and needs some downtime. But I’m told from a couple people that Michelle Obama doesn’t particularly like it much there. So I don’t know how long they will be there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s a pastor who told Donald Trump, “In the Bible, rain is a sign of God’s blessing, and it started to rain, Mr. Trump, when you came to the platform,” which it did.
You know, when Trump started speaking I’m watching, and all of a sudden uniformed people start running down the aisle behind him. I said, “What the heck’s going on here?” They were bringing umbrellas and little plastic…? Do you realize here these establishment types and they’re holding trash bags on their heads to protect themselves from the rain? Can you imagine what a come down there? I mean, the establishment, Gucci umbrellas and stuff, and here they got trash bags being passed out to shield themselves from the rain. I thought what a comedown.
And the Drive-By Media are upset that Trump did not mention Hillary Clinton in his inaugural address. TheHill.com: “President Donald Trump did not mention his former campaign opponent, Hillary Clinton, during his inaugural address Friday, despite her presence at the Capitol.” I don’t know. I saw a couple shots of the Clintons, and this is understandable. This is the last place they wanted to be. They looked like they were just not there. I mean, blank expressions on their face. This had to be so demoralizing for them. (interruption) Yeah, yeah, she did. You gotta say she had the class to show up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It was Franklin Graham who told Donald Trump, “Mr. President, rain is one of God’s blessings, and since it rained on you when you began to speak, you were blessed by God.” A record number of prayers, by the way. I knew it had to be. There were a record number of prayers at this inauguration.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned right after the inaugural address, talked about how I was blown away by, once again, that performance of the Battle Hymn of the Republic last night during the fireworks display at the Trump inaugural party at the Lincoln Memorial. I said, “You know, there’s something going on here.” I mean, of all the songs that could be chosen by the Trump team to play, of all the musical programming to be used to accompany firework display in an inaugural celebration prior to the actual inaugural at the Lincoln Memorial, Battle Hymn of the Republic.
It reminded me back in… Let’s see, I think it was the year 2008. It was April 6. It was George Bush’s last year in office. Pope Benedict was on an official visit to the White House, and was his birthday that week. So he had this big birthday party and big celebration for Pope Benedict, and they had the U.S. Army Chorus and Band performing Battle Hymn of the Republic. And I loved it. Folks, I almost broke down crying last night watching it again, the same Army Chorus with one of the most amazing fireworks displays I’ve ever seen.
It was the same arrangement, orchestration of the song. The Trump team, Trump family walking up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, getting to the top and standing there and looking out at everybody, while that fireworks display and the song was being sung. I thought, “What are the odds? What are the odds that something that so moved me eight years ago would happen again, especially now with the new president?” Last night was just the beginning of the celebration, devotion to God of this entire inaugural ceremony from last night through today.
So we went back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites. It’s TV audio. So this is not broadcast quality. We got this from TV. But I just wanted to share it with you again. (drum introduction) It sounded just like this last night. (The Battle Hymn of the Republic) The Battle Hymn dates back to the Civil War, the Lincoln presidency. (song continues)
CHORUS: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. / He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. / He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
RUSH: Getting goose bumps again here listening to it.
CHORUS: Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / His truth is marching on. / (trumpet solo) / I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps. / They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps. / I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. / His day is marching on. / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / His truth is marching on.
RUSH: The arrival ceremony for Pope Benedict at the White House April 16th of 2008. Okay, we have a little slowdown coming here, and then it’s gonna pick up, and it’s gonna crescendo, and you’re gonna get goose bumps. Turn this up out there to 800 decibels, folks! At least 800 decibels.
CHORUS: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea. / With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. / As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free! / While God is marching on. / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / His truth is marching on. / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! / His truth is marching on. / Amen! / Ameeeen!