RUSH: Dave in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Hi, Dave. Great to have you. Thank you for letting us call you back.

CALLER: Absolutely. Thank you, Rush. Merry Christmas from a Rush 24/7 subscriber.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: It was 25 years ago this week I saw a billboard with your name on it when I was living in Durham, North Carolina, and I tuned in for the first time, and I’ve been a listener ever since, and I thank you for all that you do. You kept reassuring us for the last eight years that it’s not time to panic, and I can’t tell you what a gift that’s been.

RUSH: Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m also gratified to learn that billboards work.

CALLER: (chuckling) It did in this case. Absolutely. I had a question. I remember back in the nineties when the economy turned around during Clinton’s presidency, you pointed out to us that it was not because of his policies, but it was a lasting impact of the policies of Ronaldus Magnus.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: The reason I’m asking about this right now is last week, while Obama continues his, “Hey, don’t forget about me tour,” he was at a mayor’s conference in Chicago, and he took credit for the current economic growth that we’re experiencing right now.

RUSH: Of course he did.

CALLER: I’m having some debates with liberal friends of mine who are saying, “Well, if Reagan got credit for Clinton’s economy, why shouldn’t Obama get credit for Trump’s economy?”

RUSH: That’s an excellent question. I’m gonna arm you here with the answers.

CALLER: Awesome.

RUSH: Let’s first revisit a little history. The Reagan economic boom actually began before Reagan left office. There were two recessions that Reagan had. One, he inherited, and the second was the recession of ’81 and ’82 shortly after he was inaugurated. Then the phased-in tax cuts began to work. By the time Reagan left office, this economy was roaring and the deficit was coming down. Interesting rates were coming down and employment was going up. And then George H. W. Bush is elected, and that economy continued.

And then shortly before 1992, sometime in 1990 or ’91, there was a little recessionary dip, and it coincided with the Democrat presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. He and Algore formed the phrase, “Worst economy in the last 50 years,” and it wasn’t. It was a six-month recessionary dip. The reasons for it are inexplicable. The economy’s too big and too complicated to explain what happened for six months. But Clinton and the media successfully sold “worst economy in the last 50 years.” It got Bush defeated. There were other factors too.

Then Clinton comes in. All during his campaign, he’s promising a middle-class tax cut, and then three months after he’s inaugurated, he says he’s never worked harder, but he just can’t do it. There just isn’t a way. Bush had not told him how bad the economy was. So they manufactured it and people fell for it. I can remember being so damn frustrated here. People fell for the idea it was “the worst economy in the last 50 years” ’cause the media was pumping it day in and day out, and it wasn’t.

So the momentary recessionary thing went away, and the foundation of the Reagan economic boom never went away because Clinton didn’t raise taxes. He did limit the deductibility of corporate CEO pay at a million dollars, but the Reagan economy foundation was so strong that it survived whatever liberal Democrat policy of Clinton, and just kept roaring. So the Clinton economy would not have happened, it would not have continued had it not been for the foundation of Reagan.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: Now, let’s move forward to Obama. Your friends say, “We’ve got a roaring economy now, and you wouldn’t let Clinton take credit for it, it was Reagan, but now you want Trump to get credit for it and not Obama.”

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Here’s what you tell ’em. Remind them all during the eight years of Obama how we were told a declining economy was the new normal —

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: — that America had had an unreal period of economic growth and that it was somewhat artificial and America was now stabilizing. There had been things that were really not justified and what we were dealing with now was Obama telling us to manage the decline. Obama told us the days of massive GDP were over. In fact, during eight years of Obama we never had a gross domestic product in any quarter anywhere near 3%.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: We had massive tax increases. We had Obamacare. We had the federal government literally steal one-sixth of the U.S. economy by taking health care under its wing. That took one-sixth of the economy out of the economy and put it in control of the government, which doesn’t know how to make money, which is not supposed to. It just redistributes it. So Obama didn’t even sell a great economy when he was in office!

CALLER: Right. (chuckles)

RUSH: That wasn’t his mission. His mission was to try to condition people that the best days were behind us, that there was a new normal, that America had to pay a price for its economic superpower status of the past, that it was unjustified, that we had become an economic superpower by stealing resources from other nations. We were told that we didn’t deserve our superpower military status because we were imposing our way of life on other nations.

Obama did his best to condition people not to expect massive economic growth ever again because what they will lived through was not really justified, because it had been built on the backs of slaves. It had been built on the backs of the poor. It had been built on the backs of foreign countries. And now things were stabilizing. Obama literally did not sell a massive, growing economy. He tried to promote jobs by having the government do seminars in the White House.

Okay. So now, Obama leaves and during the presidential campaign of 2016, we have a candidate, Donald Trump, who is devoted to getting the American economy back on track. He calls it “Make America Great Again.” MAGA. There are hats that people wear. They make fun of the hats because Trump wears them, but he made a point of bringing back manufacturing jobs. Obama said, “Those jobs are never coming back.” Obama went to the Carrier company in Indiana, Dave, and he told workers there that the jobs that had been lost were never coming back.

Well, 80,000 of them are back. Eighty thousand manufacturing jobs in 10 months of Trump. In the first 10 months of this year, a record number of manufacturing jobs have been created and brought back to the United States. Many companies have said they’re not gonna move manufacturing process overseas which was happening at a regular clip with Obama. I mean, I could go on. We have employment here at an all-time low. Hispanic unemployment is at an all-time low.

Check it out during Obama. Obama had eight years to do whatever magic he said he could with the economy. It continued to lay flat. It continued to stagnate. And Obama said, this is it. And in fact there were even people saying, “You know, the idea that your kids are gonna have it better than you did? That has to end sometime.” Obama was all about lowering people’s expectations, because he knew that what his plans were would result in that.

\When you grow the government and you grow the government by taking money away from people, when you grow the government, you can’t have a growing economy. The government grows but not the economy. And when the government redistributes then the government’s choosing winners and losers, not the market. And that was Obama. Because he didn’t trust the market.

Obama and people like him don’t trust you or me to do the right things with our money, with our businesses. They need to regulate it, they need to control it, because you won’t hire the right people. You won’t bake a cake for the right wedding, you won’t do anything unless they make you do it, because you are contemptible.

All of that’s gone, out the window, and in 10 months the economic statistics — look at the stock market! Look at the employment situation for minorities, nonminorities. Look at the GDP. We’ve already had two quarters of 3% economic growth. Obama never had one! But, you know, this idea that it’s Obama’s economy, there’s a reason Trump called Don Lemon stupid.

On his show on CNN Tuesday night and Wednesday night, Don Lemon said that Trump should be thanking Obama for handing him a really good economy. He said on Tuesday he doesn’t think people are stupid and realize that Trump is riding the momentum of an economy Obama created. On Wednesday night Don Lemon used the thank-you line and said he wonders if Trump would be crying if he was given the economy that Obama inherited when he took the presidency.

So Obama inherited a mess, just like Clinton did, standard Democrat project, they inherit a bad economy, their predators lied to them about how bad it is. That sets the stage for a bad, weak economy ’cause Democrats preside over those kinds of economies. Here comes Don Lemon. So this is a coordinated push that your friends are falling for, probably purposefully. You’re probably not gonna be able to talk ’em out of this no matter how much logic I have shared with you that you repeat.

But there’s no way, there is no measure in which the Obama economy outperforms Trump’s. There is no measure that says Trump’s economy is simply an outgrowth of Obama’s. Trump has had to institute a whole bunch changes, change the focus, change the overall outlook of America’s role in the world in order to make these economic circumstances happen.

There’s a difference between conservatism and liberalism. There’s a huge difference between freedom and socialism. There’s a big difference in freedom and government control and regulation. Eight years of Obama versus 10 months of Donald Trump. The contrast is simple. You can’t miss it unless you want to. Unless you’re so poisoned and blinded by partisanship.

Remember, Obama never had 3% growth. Obama took so much money out of the economy as government took over this or that like health care, lied to you in the process about it. Obama tried to condition everybody that America’s best days are behind us, the new normal now because America had been unfair in the past, America had become an economic superpower by stealing and by appropriating resources and things that were not ours. We had militarily oppressed people and tried to impose our way of life on them, which is freedom. And Obama was here to correct America and make it right in the eyes of the world. Which is to downsize it and to strip it of superpower status. And that’s exactly what Obama did. Tell your friends to get a brain.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There’s a couple other things about this. What has the left been doing this past year? Among many other things. They have been whining and moaning about Trump undoing everything Obama did, right? (crying) “You can’t do that!” They’re just literally complaining about everything Trump is undoing, everything Obama did. And then they come along and claim that after ripping to shreds everything Obama did, this economic boom is because of what Obama did?

How can that work? How can you rip to shreds everything Obama did and then Obama claim the economy is his? But that’s what the left is saying. “Yes, this economy is because of the brilliance and leadership of Barack Obama.” Wait, you said Trump ripped everything apart? “He did, yes, but Obama was so good and so powerful and so brilliant and so strong that he was able to survive everything Trump has done to tear it apart.” Oh. Okay. Dunderheads.