RUSH: Robert in Chattanooga, Tennessee, next as we hit the phones, the EIB Network. Hi, Robert, thank you for calling.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: First-time caller. Retired Department of Defense public affairs specialist and journalist. I’ve got a question I think, you know, you haven’t tossed around yet.
RUSH: All right. Go ahead.
CALLER: Do you think that being president has made Donald Trump a better man?
RUSH: Define “better man” for me.
CALLER: Well, seriously, when you think about it, he is doing things — he’s thinking about this stuff. People take it that he is a little scattered, but I don’t see it. I see him really beginning to dial in his presidency. And he’s got a brand. He walked into that role with a brand that he is not going to hurt. So he’s gradually becoming this well-oiled machine.
RUSH: I’m imagining that, take your pick Drive-By Media journalist is listening to you, thinking you are off your rocker, because they think Trump is descending further into the gutter. They think Trump is losing his mind, that his administration is in full chaos and half his administration is about ready to resign. That Putin’s on the verge of taking over the United States without firing a shot, and there you are saying Trump is in a groove. Hang on, Robert. Don’t hang up.
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RUSH: All right. Here we have a little bit more time here with Robert. He’s in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I really wasn’t sure if you were being facetious or serious in the limited amount of time we had. Are you serious that you think Trump is becoming a better man, that his administration is running better and has more purpose?
CALLER: I wouldn’t say his administration is necessarily running better because he’s got a couple of hurdles that he has to deal with there. But, you know, as much as they throw at him, he does not flinch, and I think that is key to knowing what his character is like. Because, yeah, you can say he’s done this wrong or he’s done that wrong, but he doesn’t seem to let it bother him.
RUSH: You know, that is an interesting observation. I’ve made it myself, and I think the way to look at this — I’m glad you brought this up, too. Because I don’t think very many people — even those with experience in the public eye — could withstand for a week what Trump has put up with for years now. I think most would have caved to it by now. They would have sued for peace. They would have done anything they could to stop this onslaught of character assassination, lies, destruction. This Russia collusion investigation alone would drive most people nuts. I’m talking about in politics, in the public eye. They’d be whining, moaning and crying years ago about it. Trump just keeps going, as you say.
CALLER: I know. I would have packed my bags and run a long time ago if it were me, and I just think his constitution must be incredible. Either that or he’s just so brilliant that most people don’t even see it.
RUSH: You want to hear something truthful about Trump? This will confound you even more, because you would have to conclude, would you not…? Let me not lead you. Let me ask you: Do you think somebody under assault like Trump can only get through this and remain focused and have a smile on his face every day if he doesn’t care about the criticism, if he doesn’t care what people say about him?
CALLER: You’re exactly right. He’s powering through it, to be honest with you.
RUSH: Well, but the fact is, the Donald Trump I know craves being popular. The Donald Trump I knew before he ran for office, that’s what he wanted. That’s why he wanted to run The Apprentice, be on TV. He wanted to be in the gossip pages. He loved life. He wanted to be seen at the center of it, and whatever they said about him was fine — if he was a playboy, if he was this or that, a great businessman — but he wanted to be popular. He wanted to be liked. And he’s obviously not with a significant portion of the country. And he’s been able to subordinate that desire to keep plugging away. Why would a guy like this even run for president at age 70?
CALLER: Because he thrives in chaos.
RUSH: Well, that may be true, but that’s not why he ran for office.
CALLER: No, it’s not because he… Well, he’s like a lot of us. We sit back and we’re frustrated with the way the political system has worked in the past. We want to see it fixed. We want to see justice done correctly. It hasn’t been done, and he is the guy that’s jumped in there and echoed what everybody has been thinking but had no power to do.
RUSH: Part of that’s, I think, right on. I think as I look back on it and remember conversations I’ve had with him over the years, I think he’s been thinking about doing this for a long time. I mean, maybe as many as five, 10 years before he did it. Go back and look at Trump leading the movement on Obama wasn’t born in America, the fake birth certificate, and any number of things. And then he flirted with what Ross Perot’s party, the Reform Party back then and almost ran for office. So he’s been thinking about doing this for the longest time. But back ten years ago, 15 years ago — before there was Obama and before there was this active movement to transform America — it was just an old-fashioned mess.
CALLER: Well, mark my words. In the long run, at the tail end of his presidency or in the next year or two, the country is going to begin to collectively love him because of what he is accomplishing, and they’re gonna… Whether they agree with him politically or not, they’re gonna have to say, “You know what? He’s doing the job and he’s doing it well.”
RUSH: All right, now, Robert, you keep… I have to ask you: Do you really believe what you just said?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: That after a while the country is going to collectively love him?
CALLER: They’re gonna have to admit it. They may eat a little crow in the process, but they’re gonna have to admit that.
RUSH: (sigh) Uh… Whew. That, I don’t see. I don’t see the American left ever getting to the point where they say, “You know what? We were wrong about this guy. He’s doing some great stuff. I hate him personally, the guy infuriates me, but I have to admit the guy keeps plugging away.” I think they’re so poisoned with hatred and they’re so partisan — and they don’t want what Trump is doing! One of the real dangers here is that we are a country that is not bound together by anything in common anymore.
There’s not a single thing that binds the left and the right together. It used to be we were all Americans. That was the unifying characteristic — and that was the thing that, in tough times, made us all realize we’re on the same team. We don’t have that anymore. There is no single thing that you can say binds the radical left of this country with the rest of it. They don’t like it, they are infuriated by it, and they’re hell-bent on transforming it or erasing it and rebuilding it, or what have you.
And their attitude of Trump, their opinion of Trump is visceral hatred. Don’t misunderstand. I think it’d be a great thing if such a thing were possible, and I think Trump believed that it is, or did at one point. I think he’d probably agree with your sentiment that in time something like that could happen. I don’t think it can. I think these people are gonna have to be constantly, every day focused on and defeated if they are to be stopped from ever becoming the majority. I don’t see them… Let’s put it this way. Do you think the deep state…? Forget deep state. Do you think the Washington establishment will ever just get tired and stand down?
CALLER: Probably not, but the challenge is this. Ask your audience this collectively. Was life so much better under Barack Obama as compared to now? I’m talking about the quality of life.
RUSH: No! No! But that’s not what it’s about to these people. It’s about who provides the quality of life, and it’s about how you define quality of life. To them, quality of life is a radical leftist in charge punishing everybody that they disagree with. That’s quality of life. Quality of life is not how much they earn, quality of life is not how much freedom they have, ’cause they’re miserable every day anyway. Quality of life for them does not include the way you and I define happiness. Their happiness is predicated on how much pain and suffering they can engender in us or put on us.
CALLER: Then those individuals ought to beware of what they wish for because if they get it, they may regret it.
RUSH: If that were the case, then they would have realized the folly of what they think years ago, ’cause it hasn’t worked anywhere. What they believe and what they want, what they espouse is guaranteed to fail. It has throughout human history. And what they want, what they say they want, inevitably and inexorably leads to dictatorship.
It leads to tyrants. And they are the ones that empower them. They are the ones that enable tyrants. They are hell-bent on you agreeing with them. And if you don’t, they are fully in favor of a massively powerful central government making you agree with them and forcing you to love them and their perversions and their oddities and their screwball beliefs.
They’re not interested in peaceful to existence. They want you snuffed out if you don’t agree. That’s why they support the concept of mean-spirited radical tyrants in dealing with people and things they don’t like. And so I don’t think that they are constitutional — I’m talking about their personal constitution, their makeup — I don’t think they are capable of liking or respecting not just Donald Trump, but me, of anybody on the right, anybody that disagrees with them. And I’m talking specifically here about radical leftists, average, ordinary Americans. I’m not talking about the establishment now.
I’m talking about the people that are the snowflakes on college campus and the people running sanctuary cities and the people trying to keep the border open and the people trying to blow up Christianity and the people trying to blow up every vestige, every tradition and institution that defines this country’s greatness, people trying to blow that up are the people I’m talking about. They’re never gonna realize they were wrong. They’re never gonna, “Oh, my gosh, did we misjudge this.” They’re never gonna, at all, ever.
Their minds are not open enough to even get close to occupying that kind of position. That’s why when you asked me do I think if Trump is becoming a better man, it depends on how you define it. But under your terms, the ability to stay focused on the agenda when everybody seemingly around him is trying to sabotage him and engineer his failure is something that, I don’t know anybody else who not only could put up with this and remain who they are, I don’t know anybody who’d want to. I really don’t. I appreciate the call, Robert.