RUSH: Yesterday — and this, ladies and gentlemen? The people that watch CNN or read the New York Times do not know about this. But they’re gonna hear it because we have the audio sound bites coming up. Yesterday President Trump met with the nation’s leading technological CEOs, such as the CEO of Microsoft, the chairman and CEO of Alphabet, Eric Schmidt. He’s not the CEO anymore, but he’s the chairman. He’s the head honcho in emeritus, in perpetuity. Tim Cook from Apple.
There were a number of them there, and it was just like the cabinet meeting that Trump had last week. Trump had his first full cabinet meeting where every cabinet meeting had been confirmed and showed up, and if you recall, they went around the table. Every cabinet member introduced himself or herself to all the others, explained what they’ve been doing, and every one of them took time to tell each other how excited they were to be in the cabinet.
They said how pleased they were and honored they were to be working for and with President Trump, and the Drive-Bys are in conniption fits claiming that Trump obviously ordered them to do this. “These people don’t really think this! Trump’s a buffoon. Trump’s a pig. Trump had to obviously demand these people do it or else,” and we learned that that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t staged. It wasn’t written. And had it been staged, it would have leaked before it happened. But it didn’t.
He said, “We don’t know what we’re doing here in government. You do.” He said, “There’s nobody like you. We’re wasting money. We don’t have the right systems here in terms of our computer networks to administer what we do. We asked them for assistance in downsizing it and making it more efficient.” They told him what they think his agenda ought to include. They sang his praises. CNN and the New York Times don’t dare report this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Remember the Trump cabinet meeting, all these cabinet members running around praising Trump, what an honor it was to work there, detailing what they were doing, the success they were having, how enthusiastic they were for it? And the media accused them all of being forced to say it by Trump. Because, you see, in the inside-the-Beltway world, nobody thinks that of Trump. Nobody normal.
Nobody thinks it’s honor to be in the Trump administration, and nobody thinks Trump knows what he’s talking about, and nobody can possibly imagine actually praising the brute. Who in the hell would do that? So Trump had to tell ’em. They were under orders. (This was the story.) Trust obviously had cajoled and threatened these people to praise him or else. The best evidence that that wasn’t the case is that it didn’t leak beforehand.
If Trump had done that or if somebody in Trump’s administration had called the cabinet and said, “You will praise Trump and you will say how much you like him and you will talk about how much you admire him and you will say you can’t wait to do the job,” that would have leaked. But it didn’t. Well, yesterday some of the most powerful leaders in Silicon Valley and the American high-tech world came to town to meet with Trump. He loves them.
He said, “You know, you people are unique. There’s nobody in America like you. We don’t have anybody that can do what you do.” And he asked them for their help in modernizing the United States computer systems. He gave examples that they spend $86 billion a year, and they have horrible encryption. This is not NSA-FBI stuff. This is all the intergovernmental agencies, the cabinet-level posts. He said (paraphrased), “We’re so far behind.
“We’ve got bloated agencies. We waste all this money. We don’t have anywhere near bang for the buck,” and he wants their assistance, and I just want you to listen to these people after the meeting describe Trump. These are leftists. Many of these are hard-core opponents to Trump. The people that work for them, these are people at Microsoft, Apple, Google. Most of the people that work there think they should hate Trump, think Trump is bad for Silicon Valley.
Tech blog journalists hate Trump, and they were ripping these CEOs across the board for going. Instead of thinking, “Man, Trump’s taking time out to meet with these guys? How can these guys turn it around so Trump could be…?” They didn’t see it that way. They were totally embarrassed and they turned on these CEOs for even daring to show up with Trump. So let’s listen to them speak. We’ll start out here with Satya Nadella, who is the CEO of Microsoft. Here’s what he said…
NADELLA: Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks for the opportunity today to spend the time, both learn and contribute to what is one of the most important dialogues, which is about modernizing our government with the latest technology.
RUSH: Jeff Bezos, Amazon-Whole Foods…
BEZOS: I applaud the formation of the Innovation Council, and I thank Jared for doing that. Using commercial technologies wherever possible — I think you guys are already headed that way. But to leverage those will save taxpayers a lot of money.
RUSH: By the way, did you hear how Bezos ended up buying Whole Foods? He had his Echo in the room, and he said, “Alexa, get me something from Whole Foods,” and Alexa replied, “Buying Whole Foods,” and that’s how it happened. (interruption) You didn’t hear that story? Anyway, so Bezos is supposedly an archenemy of Trump’s and vice versa. Let’s keep going. This is the CEO of Akamai, Tom Leighton. Let me tell you what Akamai does. If you download music or TV shows or movies from, say, iTunes, you’re doing it over Akamai’s pipes.
Well, maybe not their pipes, but Akamai… We have used them here at the EIB Network. When you have massive hits on your server, massive numbers of people needing to download your data, Akamai is one of the companies that do this.
Now, Apple is building out their own system in their own data centers. So eventually, you’ll be downloading straight from Apple. They may have already gone there; I’m not sure. But Akamai, they’re huge in their field, and their CEO is Tom Leighton, and here’s what he said…
LEIGHTON: We protect government websites from attackers — the majority of the government websites — including WhiteHouse.gov.
THE PRESIDENT: The DNC could have used you.
LEIGHTON: Well… (laughing)
CROWD: (laughing)
LEIGHTON: It’s an important job, and as you can imagine, there’s a lot of folks out there trying to do bad things, and we’re delighted to help.
RUSH: Now, this is all genuine. You know, these people could have turned down the request. They could have said, “We’re not meeting with you, Trump! You’re a brute. You’re a pig. We’re not meeting with you! You already demonstrated you don’t know what we’re doing. You’re wanting to ban Muslims! You know, you’re wanting to build a wall. We don’t agree with you.”
They all showed up; they listened to what Trump had to say. And, by the way, do you realize what a big come-on this is? Here’s Trump admitting the United States… You people out there, you big leftists? You think the government’s the best place for things to happen? It’s the worst! It’s the worst place to manage an economy. It’s the worst place to manage tech.
It’s the worst. They don’t have anybody in there qualified. All qualified people are out in the private sector doing it. All the government does is have a bunch of people administering it. You know, a bunch of people like, well, Obama, who doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’s doing, but has the knack of sounding like he knows everything.
So Trump invites these guys in and says, “Look, we need to modernize everything about our tech circumstance here at the United States government.” He’s asking for their help and for their input. And in turn they’re asking for things from him, like Cook, the CEO of Apple. Tim Cook said (paraphrasing), “You know, what we think ought to become part of the American education system is that every elementary school student ought to be able to take an introductory course into writing code for software programs, apps, operating systems, ’cause it’s the future, and the earlier you get started learning it, like anything else, the better.”
And Trump said, “I’ll think about it. It’s a great idea.” Now, naturally Apple has something called Swift Playgrounds which is designed specifically to allow people that don’t know what they’re doing to get into coding. But it’s becoming a cooperative effort here. I just find it striking that all these guys sang Trump’s praises, appreciated being there. Up in the case Zachary Bookman. He is the CEO of American Technology Council.
BOOKMAN: I’m really excited and honored to be a part of today’s conversation, and I applaud the work that Jared and so many others here are leading. It’s clear to me that a lot of the thinking being applied is exactly what’s been needed for a long time.
THE PRESIDENT: I think that’s right. Thank you very much.
RUSH: He’s actually the CEO of OpenGov. Up next, Ginni Rometty. She’s the CEO of IBM.
ROMETTY: I’ve had the pleasure of being in a number of, and the honor of being in a number of these sessions. And I think it’s worth pointing out the efforts around workforce development around cyber security, around modernization. While they’re difficult, in this short time there has been progress already made. And so I would really say on behalf of both Ivanka and Jared and Chris and Reed, I can already see, and actions have been taken, I actually can see the change happening already.
RUSH: So obviously there are things already percolating here in this arena that nobody knows about, Drive-Bys are not reporting it, but here’s the IBM CEO applauding the efforts that are underway and expressing appreciation for attention that this entire area is getting. Here’s Eric Schmidt. He was the former CEO — CEO’s now Larry Page. I guess he’s the chairman emeritus. He’s the grand pooh-bah for as long as he wants to be.
SCHMIDT: Mr. President, thanks to Jared and Ivanka for sort of driving this so hard. I’m absolutely convinced that during your administration there’s going to be a huge explosion and new opportunities because of the platforms that are being built in our industry. It’s going to happen soon during your leadership.
THIEL: Very honored to be here today. I think that the tech industry’s an industry that is doing well in America and we need to sort of make it do even better. I think your administration’s off to a terrific start in doing these things.
RUSH: And Tim Cook from Apple.
COOK: The U.S. should have the most modern government in the world, and today it doesn’t. And it’s great to see the effort that Jared is putting in.
RUSH: Right. So there you have it. It’s not supposed to happen this way, just like the cabinet praising the efforts, happy to be there, looking forward to the future. The media, the Democrats, and other leftists in Silicon Valley are scratching their heads.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CALLER: Yes, sir. Thank you for getting to my call. I read a lot of the tech news on my iPhone, and yesterday I stumbled across an article from Mashable that I found really confusing yet interesting, “Tim Cook’s Barf Face at Trump’s Big Tech Meeting Says it All.”
RUSH: I have seen the Mashable story, but there is a photo from a previous session where Cook doesn’t look happy to be there, and I wonder if it’s that picture. We’ll have to see. But we’ll do more of this tomorrow. I gotta run, but I just wanted to get you in there, Aaron.
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