RUSH: Nathan in Lynchburg, Virginia. Great to have you first today on Open Line Friday. How are you?
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing today?
RUSH: Fine and dandy, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Hey, I’m gonna get straight to the point. I have a theory about why Trump went to the New York Times. He’s a master manipulator of the media, as we know. He’s had plenty of experience living in New York and dealing with them as a businessman. This is why Trump people love Donald Trump. I’ve heard a lot of Trump supporters getting nervous, getting scared, shaking in their boots.
Let me tell you the reason why he did it. A good leader will confront his opponent head on. Not only that, he’ll confront them and he’ll smile and he’ll laugh and he’ll act like everything is fine. He did this on purpose for two points: One, to let the media know that he’s still in control of them. Number two, to let the Republicans know that if you are trying to run from the media ’cause you’re afraid of what they might report about you and you won’t do your job and if you recuse yourself from something that he hired you to do, then he’s gonna bring that up to the media. You’re not going to escape. This is why Trump supporters voted for him, ’cause he’s a strong leader, and he doesn’t care.
RUSH: Wait a minute. I’m confused because you said Trump supporters love this but then you said a lot of them are nervous and kind of confused at why he would talk to the New York Times.
CALLER: The die-hard Trump supporters absolutely love Trump for doing this.
RUSH: Okay.
CALLER: The ones who are iffy jiffy about him who aren’t really, you know, Rush listeners and don’t really know the conservative values, the ones that are just sort of floating around out there — and I recently heard there was a poll out that some of the Trump supporters were losing faith. That’s garbage. That’s a lie.
RUSH: That’s a survey they could write every year about every presidential candidate that wins. It was one of out of every eight voters regrets their vote. They could do that every president. Doesn’t matter. And the sample on that was kind of skewed. It was a bogus story. They want to create that thought process in people’s minds.
CALLER: Trump did this on purpose, and we love him all the more for it. We didn’t —
RUSH: I know he did it on purpose. I don’t think they captured him and took him to the dungeons there at the —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — New York Times building.
CALLER: I do believe that he’s gonna get rid of Jeff Sessions within the next 30 days or so. I think it’s gonna be the start of his onslaught of “you’re fired” sort of thing again. He needs to do more of it again anyways, and Trump supporters will support hum throughout all of these firings. He needs to drain the swamp and I think he’s gonna start doing it again.
RUSH: What do you think of the resignation of Sean Spicer?
CALLER: I think that’s a good thing in a way.
RUSH: Why?
CALLER: In many ways I don’t think it’s a good thing.
RUSH: Why is it a good thing, do you think?
CALLER: Because Trump is ever evolving, and so is the agenda with this whole war that’s going on between the left and the right. And Spicer was just getting old. He was just getting old. I didn’t have good ideas anymore and some of his ideas just didn’t come to fruition —
RUSH: He’s not supposed to have ideas. He’s supposed to be able to portray the president’s ideas and explain them to the starving and carnivorous press corps.
CALLER: Right. I understand that. But he’s just not being the best representative right now for Trump. I think Trump should get rid of them every three months, get a new one.
RUSH: Okay. Why do you think Spicer was not the best representative for Trump right now? I’m only asking because you’re obviously a Trumpist and you’re hard-core so I’m assuming you have opinions about that. You don’t have to answer these if you don’t have answers, but I thought I’d try and give you a shot.
CALLER: I’ll be honest with you, Rush, I haven’t really thought about the Spicer incident yet. I heard about this, and I was just like, huh, that’s interesting. I haven’t really delved into it too much, so maybe I’ll just not have an opinion about that right now.
RUSH: Okay. I understand that.
CALLER: Why don’t you tell me why. There you go.
RUSH: I was just gonna say, as host, I can’t use that excuse. I have to come up with something, as host. “Ooh, I didn’t know about it. I’ll think about it.” I sometimes use the excuse if something happens with 30 minutes left in the show. I’ll tell you what I think. Off the top of my head, instinctive, first reaction, Scaramucci is not an insider. Scaramucci does not come from the GOP. Spicer did. This is not accusatory. I’m simply being descriptive. Spicer came from the inside, GOP spokesman PR, GOP, RNC, what have you.
Scaramucci, he’s a Trumper. He’s from outside. He’s a battler. He’s a fighter. I think Trump has tried to work with the Republican Party by meeting them halfway within their universe and is discovering that it isn’t working. So I think he’s gonna go get friends of his from the outside as often and as many places as he can. That’s my instinctive, first reaction here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I had the polling data from Rasmussen today that 74% of adults rate life as good or excellent. Seventy-four percent are very happy. It’s the highest level of satisfaction ever recorded by Rasmussen. How many of you hear that and say, “What?” How does that jibe with what you see on the news every day? I just got a note from somebody who follows all this stuff religiously. He said, “I’m worn out. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I can’t imagine 3-1/2 years of this kind of media oppression against one person and his administration.
“I can’t imagine. Rush, tell me it has an end. Is it gonna go on like this for 3-1/2 years? If Trump wins reelection, is it gonna go on for 7-1/2 more years?” I would have to say yes, folks. I don’t see any slowing down of this. I don’t see the media wearing out. I don’t see them giving up. I don’t see them ever turning a corner and accepting that Trump won legitimately. I don’t think they will. Even if this Russia thing totally blows up in their face — which it damn well should and could — they’re just gonna find something else.
This is an earthquake. This is… (sigh) Folks, I don’t know. I’m looking for analogies to try to help people understand the media here. This is more than just opposition to Trump, and it’s more than just hatred of Trump, and it’s more than just panic and fear over having lost an election. This attention to Trump and this attempt to… They really want him to quit. The whole purpose of this is to frustrate Trump to the point of quitting, or isolating him. They will not be happy at simply paralyzing him. They want him out of the White House.
They’re not going to stop until they get it done — and if it doesn’t get done in eight years, they are going to continue to try this. They’re not gonna stop this. It’s… (sigh) I’m gonna have to think up some new analogies. I’ve worn all the ones that I’ve used out. I’ve repeated them so often, I think it probably is, “Yeah, yeah, Rush. We’ve heard it.” You know, you’ve heard the riff on the establishment — who they are, how exclusive it is, how exclusionary it is, how no outsider will ever be permitted in and no outsider will ever be permitted to succeed.
But it’s beyond even that. It’s irrational, which makes it very difficult to explain logically. It’s irrational in our realm. To them — to the Drive-Bys and the Democrats and the left — it’s entirely rational to behavior this way. To them, it’s entirely rational to spend every waking moment getting rid of Trump. Their problem is gonna be that they’re never gonna be able to talk Trump supporters out of supporting him. No matter how hard they try, they’re never gonna be able to do that — and that’s really what it would take, I think, for them to be successful.
They’re never gonna have any success doing that. What they don’t realize is that as this goes on with this intensity of hatred — sheer hatred for Trump — all they’re doing is shoring up Trump’s support from his real base, and it’s a significant number of Americans. It’s not a tiny number. He didn’t win the election because of straggler Republicans deciding to vote at the last minute not really for him, just knew they were against Hillary. I mean, the strength of his base ought to be obvious. I don’t know how many other presidents under this kind of an onslaught would have survived up ’til now.
Trump, while all this is going on, is continuing to implement his agenda where he can, and there are all kinds of success stories out there. The number of illegal immigrants that are coming into the country is down so sharply that the sanctuary city people are in a panic. The illegal immigration crowd is in a panic. The Democrat Party is in a panic over it, because that’s where they get the replenishing of their current underclass. They need a permanent underclass of people dependent on government.
Illegal immigration has been the pipeline for that. It’s way down. There are any number of other successes. Look at fracking, oil production. Food stamp use has fallen to its lowest level in seven years. “Participation in the food stamp program took a dive to the lowest level it has been in seven years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but Rex Tillerson is literally cleaning the swamp at the Department of State. He’s closing down entire bureaus in that place.
He’s getting rid of all kinds of people, really paring it down. They’re trying to get the news out — the Clinton and the Obama embeds — and it’s continuing to happen. “President Donald Trump [yesterday] announced a $500 million investment that Corning Inc. is making with pharmaceutical giants Merck and Pfizer to manufacture a new kind of glass for injectable drug vials. At a White House event, Trump said the effort will create nearly 1,000 jobs at facilities in New York and New Jersey and at a soon-to-be-determined site in the southeastern United States.
“The deal could eventually result in a total investment of $4 billion and create around 4,000 jobs, Trump said, joined by the CEOs of Corning, Merck and Pfizer. The commitments were made as part of Trump’s ‘Made in America’ week…” The media is mocking this and laughing at it and making fun of it because they think Trump is focusing on this stuff because he’s got his head in the sand and is ignoring the reality of the trouble that he’s in — which, of course, he’s not.
He’s cleaning house or the beginning to do it. There are all kinds of stories that he’s gonna get really busy cleaning house. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned just moments ago, about a half hour ago. He’s gonna be replaced by Anthony Scaramucci. Let me expand on that a little bit, ’cause I think I was right. You know, I know Spicer, and there’s nothing… Do not interpret anything I say here as criticism.
These are just observations. Trump is an outsider. He brought in Reince Priebus as his chief of staff in, I think, a nod to the establishment and to the establishment of the Republican Party. Priebus had run the RNC the RNC. Price was Priebus’ spokesman at the RNC. So he brings Spicer in. There’s two nods to the Republican Party’s existence in the establishment. I think both appointments were Trump demonstrating a willingness to try and an effort to meld with the establishment in a show of good faith.
But I think Spicer, because of his insider stature/status — his lifetime experience of answering questions a certain way, doing things a certain way, behaving a certain way… That’s not who Trump is, not who Trump wants, and I think Trump’s gonna begin to populate some of these positions that are currently held by so-called Republican insiders with more and more people like Scaramucci, who is an outsider. And, believe me, Scaramucci and Spicer could not have two more different and disparate personalities and types.
Now, the director of the communications office does not necessarily do the briefings. It’s not necessarily Scaramucci doing the daily briefing at the White House. He might do some now and then, but I think this is an overall attitudinal shift. I think Trump is now going to begin bringing in people that he considers to be from the same realm that he is from. And if that means that they’re outsiders and not establishment, then all the better. And I think it’s an indication that he’s continuing to ramp up and battle up.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Drive-Bys are digging deep into the tweets of Anthony Scaramucci trying to get a head start on trashing him, and they found this one. Do with this what you want. This one alarms me; I have to tell you. Anthony Scaramucci on March 10th, 2016 (this is over a year ago): “You can take steps to combat climate change without crippling the economy. The fact that many people still believe climate change is a hoax is disheartening.” Disheartening was reading this.
March of 2016. “You can take steps to combat climate change without crippling the economy. The fact that many people still believe it’s a hoax is disheartening.” That’s during the campaign. Trump has not been elected yet. Here is Scaramucci. He’s answering questions today in the White House pressroom. There he says, “The president is phenomenal with the media. I love the president. He’s great with the media,” and he told the media, he says, “I want you in the media to see the president the way we who love him see him.”
SCARAMUCCI: I think there’s been at times a disconnect between the way we see the president and how much we love the president and the way some of you perhaps see the president. Um, I certainly see the American people probably see the president the way I do, but we want to get that message out there. I was in the Oval Office with him earlier today and we were talking about letting him be himself, let him express his full identity. I think he’s got some of the best political instincts in the world and perhaps in history. When you think about it, he started his political ascent two years and two months ago and he’s done a phenomenal job for the American people. And the people I grew up with? They so identify with the president and they love him and so we’re gonna get that message out.
RUSH: Right. I don’t have enough time to analyze this the way I want to. I’m gonna hold this for next week. (shuffling papers) That’s… (sigh) Yeah, I just better hold it. If I get started, I’m gonna run out of time for other things I want to do.