RUSH: Here is Dennis in St. Louis. Dennis, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Thank you very much. I’m doing great.

RUSH: Good, good, good, good, good.

CALLER: It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: You bet, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: And I gotta admit, I got hooked on you watching your TV show in grade school. So it’s a big honor to be able to talk to you.

RUSH: I’m really grateful that you have been around that long. That goes back to ’92, ‘3, ‘4, it’s a long time. I’m very appreciative that you hung in.

CALLER: Absolutely. Thank you. So there are two things I want to talk about. One, I’m not thrilled with Trump and the missile attack in Syria. And second, I wanted your thoughts on the Galaxy S8. So first, with Trump, I’m not thrilled with the missile attack. Now, in the first hour you reassured me. You know, I love Reagan’s concept of peace through strength, and I think the missile attack does demonstrate that. But I still have two concerns. One, can we really trust that that chemical attack was Assad?

Maybe he just didn’t bomb a chemical plant that Al-Nusra or somebody else had, the rebels? Because the info seemed to come from that white helmet organization. I don’t know that they’re too credible. And my second concern, your previous caller talked about a Hillary connection, and I may know what that connection is. I know recently Dina Powell was kind of promoted to Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and she’s got very close ties to Valerie Jarrett, and her husband as well, Richard Powell works for, is it…?

RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Dina Powell is not married.

CALLER: Oh, I thought she was.

RUSH: No, she’s not. She may be divorced, but she’s not married.

CALLER: Okay. Well, I know she has very close connections to Valerie Jarrett, and just the fact that she’s advising Trump really concerns me. And the fact that we saw Trump act so quickly after this, after everything he said in the campaign, just really concerned me.

RUSH: Well, let me throw something back at you in that regard.

CALLER: Definitely.

RUSH: Last night I’m watching Jack Keane, the retired Army general that is the specialist commentator and all this stuff for Fox. He read these two tweets that Trump had posted during the campaign begging, urging Obama not to get involved. Don’t do anything. You got nothing to gain here. It’s a hellhole. There’s nothing to win. We’re $19 trillion in debt. You know, the two tweets that Trump issued warning Obama it’d be a waste of time, “Do not get America involved again over there! Don’t do it,” and he was asked about this.

His answer was that’s so long ago. He said the difference is now that Trump was just a commentator like I am here. All he was doing is uttering an opinion. But now he’s president. Everything changes when you become president. Everything. The things that you’ve said during the campaign on military strategy and policy, it automatically changes when you become a commander-in-chief. And his opinion was that this represented… Now, granted he’s a military guy, and granted he loves this action. He loves this move.

He loves the execution of it… it was brilliant, and so he’s gonna be supportive to Trump. But he said that this was a great example of Trump learning and understanding what’s important and reestablishing the position of strength in the world on the part of the United States. Mr. Keane, General Keane last night kept making the point that the last eight years we have been reduced to nothing, a paper tiger.

We were in the process of having our superpower status stripped away from us. It was embarrassing, it was dangerous because the world is only as safe as the United States can keep it, he said, something along those lines. That’s not an exact quote; it’s a paraphrase. So he basically said, “Disregard what Trump said during the campaign, disregard those tweets because it doesn’t matter. When you become president — and you learn much more than you ever know as just an opinion leader on the sidelines — it changes everything.” Does that have any impact on you?

CALLER: Not me personally. I kind of get that but still he really campaigned off the idea, “Make America Great Again.” That’s why I think the missile strike, I’m fine with that. Like I said, I do have those concerns. But if he goes beyond that, you know, really I wanted to see his focus on America and making America great. Now yeah, I agree, he needs to demonstrate strength for America throughout the world, and I think this does accomplish that. But in the back of my mind I’m still wondering, who’s advising him on this? ‘Cause General Flynn had questioned the previous chemical attack back in 2013, and since —

RUSH: Why do you presume anybody’s advising him? Why is this not something he wanted to do on his own?

CALLER: Because it seemed like it happened so quickly after Dina Powell got put into her position of national security adviser. Just happened a few days ago, then all of a sudden this. And then I kind of fall back to Trump’s previous statements, where it seemed like this wouldn’t be the first action he’d do right away.

RUSH: Now, wait. I stand to be corrected on this if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Dina Powell is NSA.

CALLER: Correct. Right.

RUSH: Dina Powell is an aide to Gary Cohn. They’re both liberal Democrats from Goldman Sachs. She did work in the Bush administration, but she’s on the economic side. Gary Cohn’s an economic advisor. They’re not NSC. You might be confusing her with somebody else.

CALLER: No, I don’t believe so. I’m pretty certain that she’s advising him.

RUSH: Okay. Well, my impression of Trump, just having been around him — and I’m not one of his advisers, and I’m not there, but… (sigh) Well, I don’t think Trump needs to be told what he thinks about this. I don’t think Trump needs a lot of advisers. I don’t think Trump’s sitting up there not knowing what he thinks, not knowing what he thinks is best. I don’t think that as these things come and go, he runs around, “What do you think I should do?” I think what happens is he makes up his mind he wants to do something and then asks people how’s the best way to make it happen. He goes and talks to the military.

What’s the best timing? What’s the best way? How do we do it?

I think the timing with the ChiCom leader having been there with him, is classic Trump. It is purposeful, the timing of this. It sends all kinds of messages, to the Norks, to the ChiComs, to the Iranians. So it’s not just whatever happened in Syria. I do believe… I do believe that while Trump… “Make America Great Again” is not just domestically and economically. I think Trump is very concerned. Look at the money he wants to spend on the military. I mean, he wants to blow through the military. What for, if not to use it, or to use it as a deterrent, have it as a deterrent. I think Trump is very alarmed and distressed over what Obama has done to the United States military and the perception of our standing and strength in the world.

CALLER: I agree, and I think you are right. The missile strike does, you know, rebuild America’s image and demonstrate that we are a leader, that we do care about the world.

RUSH: Now, this might create more Syrian refugees.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: I can play devil’s advocate, by the way, all day long with you. I’m not purposely trying to disagree. You’re a smart guy. I’m enjoying drawing you out ’cause you’re obviously committed to your opinion here. But this could create more Syrian refugees. I mean, one of the reasons I think Obama had the policy he did was purposely to create this flood of refugees. He wanted them here! Have you seen the latest on what Trump is doing in terms of vetting and letting people into this country or not?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: He’s demanding they turn over their social media passwords, their log-in credentials so that they can be vetted that way. It actually is a program started under Obama that was not strictly adhered to. Trump is strictly adhering to it. But there’s a lot wrapped up into this. But the main point, you want to say that this is the result of some people you question being in his inner circle, like Dina Powell.

CALLER: I’m afraid of that, absolutely.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And I don’t know for sure, but I certainly hope you’re right, that no one is advising Trump, because from what I saw in the campaign, it seems like his gut decision is usually right. He’s lived a long life. He’s got a lot of experience, and I trust that.

RUSH: Okay, that’s a good example. Let me share a story with you. I met with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February. So he’d been in office about a month. It was for an hour. Went over there on a Saturday. They invite… Reince Priebus called and said, “The president wants to see you.” So I went over there, and it was about an hour, and we toured Mar-a-Lago, and it was funny. There was a big charity event at Mar-a-Lago that night, the Red Cross ball. It’s the biggest charity event of the season here. It’s the event where people spend $3 million to make $1 million. It’s just crazy.

But all of the early arrivals were showing up, and there were pockets of people all throughout Mar-a-Lago, including military people who were going to be guests that day. Every group of people we stopped, Trump points at me. “Greatest man in America, smartest man in America, most powerful man in America,” and these people look around. They can’t believe Trump is stopping and talking to them. They start applauding. You know, I kind of… I bow my head and try to, you know, refuse the compliment and so forth.

But then we got to where we were gonna go to talk, and I’m just telling you, you know, I’m asking him questions about things that are happening at that moment. There’s no indecision about anything, and he never once asked me what I thought. He never asked me once what he thought I ought to do. He never asked me what I think of this or that. My impression is this man is more self-informed and decisive than…

Well, look at it this way. He’s as decisive as anybody I’ve ever met. I just don’t see him running around asking various people in his inner circle, “What do you think I ought to do here?” I think he knows what he wants to do, and he seeks support for it or talks to people that oppose him and he may listen to them. But I don’t think he’s indecisive at all.

CALLER: Well, that’s good to know. Yeah, you’ve reassured me quite a bit. I appreciate it. Thank you.

RUSH: Well, it’s just my opinion. You know, I’m not an intimate of Donald Trump, but I have great instincts about people, and I have fairly good skill at sizing people up, and it’s not phony. There are easy spot phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ rollers. You can tell when somebody’s talking to you and not really hearing you. I’ve been around powerful people ask me what I think about things, and I can tell they’re not really listening.

They just asked, you know, to ask, try to score points that way. Trump listens. But you don’t get the impression that he’s listening from a position of indecisiveness, indecision or confusion. I’ve never met anybody with the energy this guy’s got, either. But that’s just… That’s a side note.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Look. I stand corrected. I must have been confusing Dina Powell with somebody else, because the caller was right. She is married to Richard Powell. He’s a PR executive in Washington. Her name is Dina Habib Powell, and she has indeed been promoted to the National Security Council. It happened on March the 17th. She used to be working with Gary Cohn — who’s the Goldman Sachs economics guy — and Ivanka. She was part of the Ivanka advisory team. But on March 17th, she was promoted to the National Security Council.

So I apologize to the previous caller.

And she is married. So I was wrong on all counts. I gotta figure out who I’m thinking of here, because I couldn’t have sworn! This is the woman whose name I’ve been trying to remember the past three days because I couldn’t and I had to look it up. It was Dina Powell, and everybody thought I was talking about Jamie Gorelick. I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about this babe. Anyway, caller was right. She’s at the NSC, and this caller think’s that’s the big change. That she’s, you know, tight with Hillary and so forth and advising and blah, blah, blah. Don’t worry, folks. We have lots of time to sort all this out.