RUSH: There’s another (what shall we say?) narrative that has developed in Washington, D.C., and it’s about repealing and replacing Obamacare. Do you know what that narrative is? The narrative is that Donald Trump is being tricked by these rascally Republicans in the House led by Paul Ryan, that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing, that Trump’s an outsider. “He’s gotten to Washington; he finds himself overwhelmed. He’s got all these aides who’ve never worked in Washington and they’re flying blind and they don’t know how it works.
“And Paul Ryan is taking him down the sinkhole with this Obamacare legislation, and it’s the Republicans that are outsmarting Trump. It’s the Republicans that are getting everything they want and they’re turning health care into a Waterloo for Trump.” And do you realize how many times we’ve had that narrative since the campaign? How stupid, how uninformed, how inexperienced, how too much of outsider status he has? “Trump really doesn’t understand how these things work, he really doesn’t understand how these things happen.” And now we’re witnessing it again.
By that, I mean, every bit of analysis is oriented toward how this isn’t gonna work, how it’s gonna blow up in Trump’s face. And now the meme, the narrative has shifted since everybody, quote/unquote, “knows” that it’s going to fail, how now can we blame it on the Democrats? And this is so typically Washington. “It can’t work, it won’t work, it’s impossible, it’s too big, it’s too small, it’s too complicated, we don’t have the votes, we don’t have the money,” whatever, “and so now we have to somehow find a way that when it all blows up, the Democrats get the blame.”
Even my old, former buddy Byron York has a piece today about how it looks like… I don’t have the headline in front of me. I’m paraphrasing this from my memory. But it is about how the House Republicans are leading Trump around like he’s on a leash (and he doesn’t know where he’s going) and really, totally running the show and flummoxing Trump and confusing Trump all because they know the deep, dark crannies of the avenues and highways of legislation and Trump doesn’t. He’s just this bull in the china shop. He goes in there, does what he does, and leaves and claims victory, and they say, “That won’t work in Washington.
“He can’t just claim victory. You’ve gotta actually have victory.” I’m watching this… And there are all kinds of Trump supporters, too, who are writing op-eds warning Trump how the Republicans are tricking him. As though Trump can’t figure it out, as though Bannon can’t figure out what’s happening, as though Kellyanne Conway is… All these people say, “Donald! President Trump! Be careful! They’re tricking you! Ryan’s screwing you! Ryan’s… (stammering) President Trump, wake up,” as though Trump doesn’t know what’s going on.
I know. I’m amused, entertained, surprised to a certain extent.
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RUSH: Just to restate this, I’m seeing all kinds of media from Trump supporters, by the way. And folks, I don’t want anybody to misunderstand. I’m not being critical. I’m just sharing with you what I observe here, and I’m reacting to it.
It’s like your team in the Super Bowl losing. Before the game starts you’re scared to death it’s gonna happen, you’re gonna really be disappointed, you’re gonna really be let down and you can’t do anything about it for a full year. And it’s the same thing here with a politician like Trump. “Oh, my God, I hope he doesn’t get tricked!” And to believe that you have to believe that all of a sudden Trump has gone stupid, and yet people are willing to accept that that’s possible.
But there are all kinds of warnings out there. “President Trump, you’re being tricked. President Trump, you’re being snookered. President Trump, don’t tie yourself to the Republicans. President Trump, they’re taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know how Washington works and they’re trying to tell you that theirs is the only way to get –”
My only point is my confidence in Trump is not shaken. My view is that Trump is triumphing time after time after time, like last night on this tax return business. How many of you people, let me just ask you, whenever you heard, if you did last night, if you heard about or saw Rachel Maddow’s tweet, “We’ve got Trump’s tax return,” how many of you people had your heart sink?
How many of you went, “Aw, excrement”? How many of you went “Aw, John F-ing Kerry”? How many of you went immediately fatalistic? It’s the way it happens. It’s perfectly understandable. And yet look at how it ended up. Trump has the trophy again. Trump gets the hardware. These people, it blew up in their face.
And in the process, many of the allegations that they have been putting out there during the campaign transition up to now, Trump’s lying, he’s not wealthy, he’s a fake millionaire, fake billionaire, Trump’s lying, he’s in bed with the Russians. Everything they said has been disproven. Trump does make a lot of money. He pays more taxes than anybody else does, percentage-wise. It all blew up. And that’s the Trump track record. Not that he’s having rings run around him. So I would just be a little patient and confident.
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RUSH: Mario in Madison, Connecticut. Welcome, sir. Are you snowed in, or did you miss it?
CALLER: Well, I think we kind of got through it, Rush, and we’re still breathing, thank God. And I want to thank you for your perspective for the last 30 years defending conservatism.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
RUSH: You can’t. Well, you can’t replace socialism with socialism and improve it, that’s for sure. Look, just had another defector, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the congresswoman from down in south Florida has announced she’s not gonna vote for the affordable — whatever, the Ryan bill here in the House because it leaves — this is part of the pain in the early stage. It leaves too many of her poor and sick constituents out with no coverage and no insurance. She can’t support it. So, in other words, you have a Republican member of Congress saying this bill, that supposedly repeal and replace, is worse than Obamacare as far as my constituents are concerned. Stop and think of that.
CALLER: I think what they’re doing is they’re framing the parameter of the conversation before it even gets to the president’s desk. I think a far better plan would be to eliminate Obamacare completely and to give employers an extra tax incentive to hire new employees. And this way the new employees will come off the welfare rolls and at the same time, you know, it’ll make employers treat their employees as investments. ‘Cause not only will they produce for the company but they’ll also be able to provide the company with an additional tax incentive to hire new workers and open new factories.
RUSH: Right. Let me ask you this. Did you vote for Trump?
CALLER: Did I? Yes.
RUSH: Okay. Do you think as you read the news, watch the news, listen to the news, do you think Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing here? Do you think Republicans are running rings around him here and because he’s not of Washington, he doesn’t yet see what’s happening, how they’re bamboozling him?
CALLER: Well, I’m kind of banking on the fact that Donald Trump has signed the front of more checks than anybody that’s been in Congress or in the Senate, and I’m kind of hoping that that discipline is gonna take over and he’s gonna see this from, you know, from the point of view of the engine of the economy, which is business, small business, big business, and not as a, you know, centralized bureaucratic enterprise.
RUSH: Right. Let me throw a theory out there. And I, as the famous Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes said repeatedly, “I know nuthink, nuthink at all!” I really don’t. Okay, so we can have the strategy here that the way to do this is to make sure it passes the house, but you load it up with so much the Democrats object to it and send it to the Senate where they kill it, and that way the Democrats get blamed for it, not the Republicans.
And Trump says, “Maybe you can’t, but I can, and I’m not gonna let you saddle your defeat around my neck.” Folks, I have no idea. I can’t just that easily accept that Donald Trump, who ran rings around all these people for a year-and-a-half and got elected has all of a sudden becoming the biggest neophyte in town. I’m just having trouble accepting that. Now, they want to believe that’s true, because they want to believe that what they do is so specialized and so unique, you can’t come in and do this if you haven’t ever done it before. Kind of like you can’t be elected president if you haven’t been elected before. And that kind of got nuked, didn’t it?
So time will tell on all this. But if you trust Trump, if that’s been your state of mind since the campaign, if you trust Trump, then it’s not time to abandon him. He doesn’t deserve being abandoned. He’s still, I think, wise to invest in. He’s going out to address some automobile executives today. He is going to remove Obama’s global warming emission rules for cars in a speech that’s starting in just a few minutes.
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RUSH: Here’s Mike in Canyon Country, California. Mike’s been on hold for quite a while, and I very much appreciate that. How are you doing?
CALLER: I’m doing good, sir. Good afternoon to you. It’s a great honor to get through and talk to you. Mega, mega dittos. I’ve been listening for 28 years.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, el mucho.
CALLER: The point that I just want to get to, let’s not overlook the fact that Donald Trump didn’t get to where he is in life by accident. I’m saying that he’s 20 steps ahead of everybody. And when I watch the news at night I’ll go back from Fox News and I’ll look over at NBC, and it’s quite entertaining, actually. And if you just step back and look at the big picture, I think in due time he will fulfill the promises that he can fulfill. He’s not God, but I think he’s a hell of an individual, and I’m not worried anymore. And thank you very much for keeping me sane through the Clinton and Obama crisis.
But it’s very interesting how easy it has been to establish a running narrative that’s probably been running for two weeks, and maybe a little longer, but it’s intensified in the last three to four days, that Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to the inner workings of Washington and making laws and legislation. He’s being misled by people who do not have his best interests at heart, and he doesn’t know it. And so we need to warn President Trump how the Republicans and others in Congress are out to sabotage him.
And I think he’s very much aware, ’cause I think Trump thinks everybody’s out to sabotage him in one way or another. But even if that’s a bit extreme of a statement, “everybody,” you’re right in the sense that he hasn’t gotten where he is by being tricked and fooled. And I guess those times where he has been, he’s learned from it, it’s never happened again. But where are the stories of “I make Trump look like a rank amateur”? Where are those stories? “I made Trump the look like the fool he is.” Have you seen any of those stories? I haven’t, either. So, Mike, I appreciate the call.
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