RUSH: The left, the media, actually one and the same, are literally in hysterics over the rollback of the Obama Clean Power Plan and rollback of Obama regulations that were implemented from the Environmental Protection Agency, that supposedly rolling them back is gonna destroy the planet now and it’s gonna lead to human extinction.

Now, never mind, folks, the thing that nobody’s telling you about this, the main thing that Trump rolled back is something the Supreme Court had already ruled to be unconstitutional. Obama was just denying it. He was defying them. Now, normally the Supreme Court’s worshiped by the left, but of course that’s subjective and the left ignored this Supreme Court ruling. In 2016 the Supreme Court blocked Obama’s Clean Power Plan after more than 20 states complained that it exceeded federal law.

So what Obama implemented has already been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but Obama defied it and never removed those regulations. Now, Obama is a typical leftist and used the EPA to impose these regulations. This kind of thing is what Trump is tearing down. This is what “draining the swamp” means, is cutting the budget at the EPA, getting rid of people in there who are just gonna issue these kinds of regulations, outside the law, that are going to require people to lose freedom, lose a little liberty, behave in a certain way, all to advance a global initiative based on a hoax, which is called climate change.

Now, the psychology of this is one of the many aspects of it that fascinates me. If you believe the left on climate change, what you have to believe is that the existence of humanity and that the progress that humanity makes in improving standards of living, extending the life span of the average human being, increasing the wealth and growing economic opportunity, all of that is said to be the cause of global warming.

Now, who is it that’s opposed to that kind of thing? Who’s opposed to individuals getting wealthier? Who is opposed to expanding liberty and freedom? Who is opposed to government not having this kind of power? Why in the world would you want to stand in the way of human progress? If you look in Africa, the left loves to tell you how they love Africa. That Africa is one of their favorite places because there’s so much poverty there and so many of the people who live there are black, and it’s just a shame, and it’s an example of worldwide racism and discrimination.

So there are charities after charities after charities dealing with improving life in Africa. And yet whenever an African nation discovers oil, whenever an African nation discovers natural resources that will help it become independent and become richer by having resources they can develop and sell, guess who goes in there and shuts ’em down?

American environmentalist wackos claiming, “No. You have got to stay in this mud-hut lifestyle of yours because if you leave this and if you use the oil you’ve just found or the natural gas, then you are going to be contributing to climate change.” The left, the worldwide left enforces poverty on people, in the name of saving the planet.

But isn’t it odd that the very thing all human beings from the beginning of time have sought to do, improve their lives, improve their standard of living for themselves and their children, to acquire wealth, become financially independent, financially capable, to educate their kids, to live longer, to invent things to make life more productive and easier and so forth, those are the things that are said to be destroying the planet.

How can that be possible? But yet that is who they are, that’s what they believe, and they guilt people into believing that their pursuit of wealth and pursuit of freedom and their pursuit of an improved expanded lifestyle has contributed to the destruction of the planet. They offer them a chance to redeem themselves by admitting the blame, accepting increased taxes, driving little peanut cars that nobody wants. You know, doing all of these things, keep the thermostat at 78 in the summertime and 62 in the winter, all of these things, eat this weird stuff, whatever you do, to make you think that saving the planet is designed to reverse capitalism, reverse progress.

So Trump, during the campaign, said he was gonna do just what he’s done. He’s gonna get rid of these penalizing regulations, he’s going to open the coal industry back up. Joe Manchin, Democrat Senator, West Virginia, is praising Trump day in and day out, saying Donald Trump is the only president who has ever thanked miners for what they do. And Donald Trump is trying to revitalize and bring back the coal industry, which Barack Obama admitted in the 2008 campaign he wanted to shut down.

I know there’s a factor that so many leftists are huge donors and they also believe in it, but they benefit financially from all this climate change stuff. They find a way to benefit from these rampant environmental regulations because these regulations freeze everybody out, limit competition and so forth, actually create monopolies in wind and solar and it’s hideous.

So Trump has announced and signed an executive order that stripped the EPA’s ability to continue with Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And the media went nuts! Lester Holt, NBC Nightly News: “After suffering defeat in Congress in his promise to replace Obamacare, President Trump returned back to the executive order route today to deliver another major campaign vow. It’s a jobs move that, like the health care gamut, entails shredding another major piece of the Obama legacy.”

The stories are numerous today. From The Politico: “Ex-Obama Team Distressed as Trump Guts Climate Regs.” By the way, I have to admit that I was wrong about something. And I can do that. It doesn’t happen very much, so it’s not something I have to do a lot. But I predicted that when Trump did exactly these kinds of things, that Obama would call the media and be on TV ripping Trump and the Republicans to shreds. That has not happened.

Obama himself has not the called the media and gone on TV, yet. I still think it’s gonna happen at some point about something. But so far it’s Obama’s surrogates that are carrying the spears on this. “Hundreds of people in the Obama administration spent years building the climate change regulations that the president hoped would mark a lasting turning point in the nation’s response to global warming. But it took only a couple of months for President Donald Trump to start wiping them out.”

You might be saying, “Well, how can this happen?” Because these are just regulations; they’re not laws. And this exposes one of the times primary tactics of the left: Use regulations from the Department of Education, regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, regulations from Health and Human Services, regulations from Fish and Wildlife, whatever. And what they do is tell you what you can’t do. They are express incursions on freedom.

The reason Obama did it this way is because he would have never had legislation passed in either the House or Senate. He might have gotten Senate, he might got Democrats in the Senate, but there would have never been a piece of legislation on his desk he could sign which would do what these regs did. Same thing with the FCC. The FCC’s unwinding what Obama tried to do with net neutrality, unwinding what Obama tried to do to penalize the telecom industry and the telecom companies and so forth.

The left is seething over all this. But, look, you live by the pen, you die by the pen. If you believe in something and you can’t have it made law, if you don’t have the power or the votes to actually have things implemented by statute and you have to then go the executive order route, then you have to know it’s gonna be just as easy for an opponent to come in and wipe ’em. And that is exactly what’s happening. And Trump said during the campaign he was going to do it.

How many of you, when Trump met with the New York Times editorial board, and the reporting was that Trump seemed open to the Times editorial board’s entreaties on climate change and global warming, and it was I, El Rushbo, who tried to walk you back from the ledge by saying Trump knows what to say to who and when. By the end of the meeting, the New York Times actually thought they had a chance at changing Trump’s mind on this.

But since Trump left that meeting and has become president, it’s bye-bye this clean power thing, the clean power rule, bye-bye Paris accords, because Trump recognizes what this is. It’s nothing more than punitive actions on American business. And Trump does not think American business is evil. He does not think small business, large business is evil. He realizes that’s where economic growth comes from via employment, productivity, invention, ingenuity, and innovation. All the things the Democrats claim is destroying the world, Trump is revitalizing them.

If you take the time to look, there are lots of things to be happy about. If you take the time to look, there are a lot of promises Donald Trump is keeping. If you take the time to look, there are a lot of achievements that Donald Trump has already notched in his belt. But if your happiness depends on the media heralding these things and praising Trump and reporting it, that isn’t gonna happen.

All these things are being buried. You have to go out there and dig ’em out, or you listen to me tell you after we’ve dug them out. Because the media-Democrat complex is all about destroying Trump. And they’re not gonna stop.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: John Podesta in the Washington Post: “Trump Is On A Rampage To Endanger The Planet. Now It’s Up To Us To Save It.” John Podesta, who probably did more business with Russia than Donald Trump has done, had as much involvement with Russia along with many, many other Democrats. But of course you’re not gonna hear about that because the Democrats and their relationship with Russia is not the focus.

You’re never gonna hear that the Democrats were in bed with the Soviet Union all during the Cold War. You’re never gonna hear that this is the first time in our lives that the Democrat Party’s been opposed to Russia. This is the first time in my lifetime the Democrat Party’s ever had a problem with Russia. Any other time in American history, at least the Cold War forward, we are going to have evidence of the Democrat Party sidling up to the Soviet Union and holding out hope that the grand Soviet experiment would one day work.

No, you’re not gonna be told any of that. Now Trump’s on a rampage to endanger the planet. Here’s another thing with this. This goes to the point of education, the lack of critical thinking, the lack of things being taught anywhere anymore. Just look at this headline. And, by the way, the headline is accurate to what’s in the actual story or the column here that Podesta has written.

“Trump Is On A Rampage To Endanger The Planet.” Now, I know that I’ve gone through this before. But does anybody ever stop to think about what that really means? I know, not you. Stop and think, when you hear that Republicans want to endanger the planet. Not Republican ignorance will cause the planet harm. No, no. Republicans “want” to. Not just want to; Trump is on a rampage to do it.

Now, what’s in it for Donald Trump, what’s in it for George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, pick any Republican you want, what’s in it for them to endanger the planet? Do they have a secret planet to go to after they destroy this one, leaving all the liberals and Democrats to die?

Do the Republicans already have a secret way off? Have they already colonized an asteroid up there and they haven’t told Stephen Hawking about it, they haven’t told Buffett about it, they haven’t told Bill Gates about it. Do Republicans already have a way to get to Mars or an asteroid to save themselves after they destroy earth? I mean, what the heck?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s these regulations that Trump is removing. It’s any pronouncement of environmental policy that opposes the left is met with, “Oh. They’re destroying the planet. They’re destroying the climate. They’re killing the polar bears.” Why? What is it in it for anybody? I mean, just simple logic should be enough to refute this argument and make it laughable.

But you see, my friends, therein lies the true danger, because the American left buys it. Young skulls full of mush from kindergarten, day care on up now to higher education, they’ve bought it, it’s been drilled into their heads, and they are scared to death that the planet is not going to be able to support life in another, what, 30 years. They really, some of them, really believe this. And they believe that the Republican Party’s trying to make that happen.

How did the Democrats succeed in making so many millions of people stupid? How did they do it? It’s certainly not by appealing to their better angels. It’s not by appealing to optimistic futures. It’s not by trying to inspire and lift people up. It is in fact just the exact opposite. And you can see the evidence of their success issue to issue to issue, the things that these people on the left literally believe and then allow themselves to get scared to death.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And look at this here in the New York Times, the lead editorial: “President Trump Risks The Planet.” So you got Podesta in the Washington Post, “Trump Is On A Rampage To Endanger The Planet.” Look, the Democrats talk this way because it works. And that’s the scary thing. It works. It works in such a way, people just accept it now. This is just the language of the left, just deal with it. You don’t object to it. You don’t highlight it. You don’t laugh at it or make fun of it. You just accept it and then debate them on the premise that we’re trying to destroy the planet, ravage the planet, risk the planet.