RUSH: Tony, Ocean Pines, Maryland. I’m glad you called, sir. How you doing?
CALLER: How you doing, Rush? Good to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I just wanted to say something about the Republicans in general, but basically this thing that Mitch McConnell did by blocking Trump’s ability to make recess appointments when he went on vacation.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: It just proves that the Republicans don’t know what kind of a gift they’ve got from him getting elected and they’re well on their way to fumbling it away — and, if that happens, they’re done. I don’t think that they’ll ever come back.
RUSH: I think there is some truth to that. Why do you think…? Surely, you have an opinion on it. It wasn’t just McConnell. Why did the Republicans at large pass it? The House did this. They made sure somebody was there — somebody for a minute once every three days — and they did this to stop their own president making recess appointments. Why? What do you think is behind this?
CALLER: Because they don’t know what they’re up against, obviously. You would think after 20 years the Democrats are playing football and the Republicans are playing croquet. They don’t know what they’re up against. They don’t want to beat ’em; they want to destroy ’em, and they’re doing a good job.
RUSH: Wait a minute.
CALLER: They get help from a lot of Republicans.
RUSH: What? Who’s the “they”? Who? They want to…? You talk the Democrats —
CALLER: Establishment Republicans that are more concerned about themselves, more concerned about getting elected, reelected, more concerned about their own personal positions than they are worried about what’s happening to the country.
RUSH: Well, yeah. But that would be true in any scenario for any event. This is unique, but this is —
CALLER: Let me give you an example.
RUSH: No, I want to know the “why.” I know the example. Why you think the Republicans are trying to stop their own president from implementing his agenda. That’s what’s going on. Why do you think that?
CALLER: Because they probably ultimately dislike him, they dislike his character, they dislike his personality.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: They probably think that ,in spite of everything, that there’s a good chance that the Democrats may win in the House, or that they’re gonna get Mueller to do their work for ’em and damage him so badly that the Democrats will gain advantage in the Congress — or maybe even impeach. You know, if they get enough people in the House, they sure as hell gonna try and impeach him. There’s no question about that.
RUSH: So you’re saying that the Republicans want to sabotage Trump and they want him to lose?
CALLER: Yeah, some of them. I mean, not all of them. There are some good guys in there.
RUSH: Name one.
CALLER: But way, way too few.
RUSH: Name one of the good guys.
CALLER: I think that Cruz is good. I think that Lee is good. I think that Tom Cotton is good.
RUSH: How about Louie Gohmert in the House?
CALLER: Rush, listen —
RUSH: Why, you can’t hear me.
CALLER: — if the situation was reversed and Harry Reid needed one vote in the Senate to pass Obama’s health care —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and one of his chairmen came up to cast the vote that would either make it or break it, without telling Obama, without telling Harry Reid, he comes up and he votes against the party, what do you think would happen to that guy?
RUSH: Oh, I don’t know. He’d be walking on his knees the rest of his life after having been thrown out of the party. There’s an entity of Washington — (interruption) of course I know there’s an answer to the question. (interruption) I don’t believe that, I don’t believe it. Mr. Snerdley has just taken a stab at answering my question. The House did this too. And they’re not worried in the House about — I mean, here’s the theory.
The reason that the Republicans in the Senate took steps to prevent Trump from making recess appointments is because they were genuinely afraid he was going to fire Jeff Sessions, and they didn’t want to him to fire Jeff Sessions. Look, that sounds good, and it makes a perfectly fine public excuse, but the answer goes much deeper than that. And that doesn’t explain why the House did the same thing. The House is not worried about him firing Sessions. I mean, I’m sure there are some Republicans who are worried.
Look, isn’t the Senate working on a foolish piece of legislation saying that Trump can’t fire Mueller? They can’t do that. That’s unconstitutional. They cannot do that. But the Republicans are participating in that too. Folks, I’m sorry. I can’t avoid redundancy here. And redundancy serves a purpose, occasionally. But at other times it can cause members of an audience, “Heard that, move on.” But I’m telling you, this is the swamp circling the wagons.
They are trying to paralyze President Trump to inaction. They’re taking every step that is available to them to prevent Trump from putting his agenda in place, putting his stamp on things, however you want to phrase it. This is an effort to stop Donald Trump. There is no party loyalty here. The Republicans, in this case, are loyal to the establishment and whoever it is they’re afraid of more than you. They’re not afraid of voters in all this. I mean, they clearly are not worried what impact this might all have on their reelection chances.
There are other things or other people that they are afraid of more than they are of their own voters in their states and districts. But, yeah, the Sessions thing, “Yeah, they did that to make sure Trump can’t fire Jeff Sessions.” Trump was never gonna fire Jeff Sessions. Do you really think he was gonna fire him? He was never gonna fire Jeff Sessions. None of that made any sense. I told you, everything Trump does that looks crazy like this, there’s a reason for it.
When you look at something Trump’s doing, “This doesn’t make any sense.” Yeah, but it does somewhere, or they wouldn’t be doing it. There was a reason for all that, but I just refuse to believe that it was rooted in the fact that Trump is essentially a 10-year-old getting mad at his friends in the sandbox not playing with him. I just refuse to see the guy that way.