RUSH: Let me do the Rick Wilson business. I mentioned to you just before the break that Rick Wilson was moved to write an extensive column on The Daily Beast, a left-wing website. I think this is the site that was started by Tina Brown back when Tina Brown was somebody. Haven’t heard from Tina Brown in many, many moons now. It’s her site. I don’t know who owns it now. I did. I just can’t remember. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a radical leftist site.
The headline is: “Donald Trump Takes Out Paul Ryan, and ‘It’s Going to Be a Civil War’ — Everything Trump touches dies, and the speaker’s legacy is no exception.
“The news that Paul Ryan is retiring from Congress was received by grim-faced members of the GOP caucus finally realizing what they’ve done, and what’s coming. Ryan pulled the ripcord Wednesday after a 19-year career in Congress, declaring he would leave Washington at the end of his current term to spend more time with his existential angst over what he let Donald Trump do to our country.”
By the way, as an aside here, you should know that the long knives are out for Ryan and trying to get him to leave by July or August. They think, “Look, pal, you have no use to us. If you’re gonna cut-and-run, get out now and let us get on with finding our new speaker.” That is what they want. People that want to be speaker want Ryan out of the way now. They don’t want to wait ’til after the midterms for this. They want their new speaker in place for fundraising before the midterms and all that.
“The happy talk about holding the House is over. The spin for the press, the rubes, and the donor class just came to a shrieking halt. Nancy Pelosi is in her crone cavern, cackling with glee, knowing that the Democrats are now in play in almost 80 congressional seats. The general of the House Republican army just announced he’s leaving the field just as the tide of political war looks most grim.”
By the way, Pelosi’s got her own physical problem. She can’t keep her face still. She’s spasming out and repeating words. There’s another story about it that’s surfaced in the Drive-Bys.
“Ryan and his caucus hoped to run on the tax cut, the economy, and infrastructure. All of these messages now will be swept aside. Ryan owns his share of the blame; too often, he behaved as if he was some –” (laughing) This is Rick Wilson, noted Republican consultant, writing in the radical left Daily Beast. Ready for this?
Too often Paul Ryan “behaved as if he was some deferential junior VP at a Trump resort and not the leader of the House of Representatives in a co-equal branch of government. The idea, popular among the House leadership, that a diet of ass-kissing and deference would make Trump into a normal president who didn’t need the political equivalent of Depends was always a strategic mistake.”
Want to hear that paragraph again? And that’s… The best ones are still yet to come. (laughing) “[T]oo often, [Paul Ryan] behaved as if he was some deferential junior VP at a Trump resort and not the leader of the House of Representatives in a co-equal branch of government. The idea, popular among the House leadership, that a diet of ass-kissing and deference would make Trump into a normal president who didn’t need the political equivalent of Depends,” ’cause he’s always urinating on himself “was always a strategic mistake.
“Ryan is now paying the price. The rest of his caucus will pay in the fall. The election season will now feature a Republican leadership fight with all the reality-TV tropes we’ve come to expect in this vulgar, stupid age, as it inevitably devolves into a shabby bidding war over who will be more amenable and obedient to Donald Trump. The purity tests from Fox News, the screeching teenagers in the Donnie Trump Tiger Beat Breitbart Fan Club…” (laughing)
“Ryan’s unfulfilled agenda, including entitlement reform, is now a dead letter, along with the hopes so many in the conservative movement had” in Ryan. The Kochs and dozens of other free-market folks were invested in Paul Ryan’s future. Those investments were squandered like Granny’s Social Security check at the Trump Taj Mahal.” (laughing) Good writing is good writing. (laughing) Sorry. I’ll go through this again here. I will maintain my composure. “Those investments” in Paul Ryan “were squandered like Granny’s Social Security check at the Trump Taj Mahal” in Atlantic City.
“Regardless of who succeeds Ryan, the agenda of limited-government conservatism based on fiscal probity, personal responsibility, free trade, and limited government is as dead as Donald Trump’s marriage. A top Ryan aide texted me this morning,” writes Mr. Wilson, “‘It’s going to be a civil war. No one knows how bad this will get. Kevin [McCarthy] is such a [stupid] moron he’s going to get rolled by Pelosi every day.'” (interruption) What? You agree with…? (laughing) Snerdley’s saying can’t argue with that.
“This week,” writes Mr. Wilson, “marked the final surrender of the GOP on the central economic issues of our time: the debt and entitlement reform. Did our talk ever truly match our walk when it came to the economy? Not as often as I’d like, and I’m sure Ryan feels the same. Still…” Now, get this next line. “Still, [Paul Ryan] was a fluent translator of Conservative to English…” (laughing) I would… (laughing)
I disagree with the premise here that he was “a fluent translator of Conservative to English,” but the very idea! Look at this. The fact that we’ve got apparently a high-ranking, powerful Republican consultant thinking conservatism needs translation, and that Ryan was a good one! Conservatism doesn’t need to be translated! People need to stop being embarrassed of it! All conservatism is is common sense in practically everything you do in your life, and it is rooted in the desire that everybody prosper. The idea that conservatism is some foreign language that needs to be translated?
You know why these guys think that. Because they really have bought into it, too, that conservatism is mean-spirited, that conservatism is dark, that it is punitive, that it is judgmental. So we need translators to assure Americans that conservatism does not intend them any harm. If Ryan was “a fluent translator of conservatism,” who else would you put in that list of people? That little sentence right there says more about the Republican establishment than anything else in Wilson’s piece, and there’s a lot more to it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
“The grunting, pig-ignorant Trumpentariat types” that means you “are doing their usual ranting street-preacher genius analysis of [Trump], declaring you’ve triggered duh libs [sic] and now Ryan will be replaced with a speaker who, as the Trump Constitution clearly states, will behave with properly knee-padded deference to President for Life Kim Jong Don. They see this as the greatest possible loss for the hated establishment, a draining of the swamp.” You Trump people who love Ryan going on, thinking it’s draining the swamp? You’re nothing more than a bunch of idiots paying “deference to President for Life Kim Jong Don.”
You are a bunch of, quote, “poor, dumb bastards.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Now, for Rick Wilson, a lot of people, “Rush, who is this guy?” Rick Wilson is, at this stage, Rick Wilson is — I would call him a backwater GOP operative and political consultant. His clients have mostly been moderate Republicans who haven’t won much. Some did back in the day. But the left media loves the guy. It’s in The Daily Beast, this piece I read, because he has an obsession with Trump.
He hates Trump, he despises him, which you can clearly, clearly detect the dripping hatred in this piece, excerpts of which I shared with you. See, what really grates on these guys, the Mike Murphys and the Rick Wilsons and all of the others, is that Trump won without them. Not only did Trump win, Trump won while they were working for other so-called real Republican, real mainstream candidates. And so did the GOP in the Senate and House.
These are the experts. These are inside-the-Beltway establishment experts. And they have been exposed here. And so their hatred for Trump, their animosity, is on the surface here. It’s visceral. And it isn’t Trump that has failed to deliver. In my famous comparison today, A-B, side-by-side, Trump’s doing his job, his agenda is being implemented. The people that make the country working are getting up every day, they’re going to work, they are making the country work, they’re living their lives.
Over here on the other side is the America presented by the Drive-By Media, and it’s nothing but the apocalypse every day. The end of this, the end of that, everything you hold dear is ending. Everything you hold dear is gonna get swept away in November. Everything that you like, everything you believe in, you are soon to be swept over and buried.
Over here you get up and you go about doing your work and so does Trump. He’s getting up every day going about doing his job. It’s the GOP Congress that has failed to deliver on the Trump agenda, not Trump. And while all that’s going on, the media has unloaded on Trump like no president in modern history. And Rick Wilson and these Republican consultants are part of the apparatus unloading on Trump each and every day. This piece that Wilson wrote today is hilarious, which is why I wanted to share it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Wilson may be the most vulgar and vile of the anti-Trumpers out there. If you read some of his Twitter threads, his tweets are outrageous. This man is… What I read today, the excerpt of his piece? It’s absolutely, positively civil compared to the usual, obscene, scatological rants the guy gets into on Twitter. (interruption) No, I’m not gonna share… (interruption) The scatological stuff? There’s no way. I don’t talk about what people do in the bathroom.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Jack in Gainesville, Florida. Jack, great to have you on the program. How are you doing, sir?
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for having me. Listen, I want to comment on the Rick Wilson piece. The Rick Wilsons and the Mike Murphys and these guys have been telling us for years that we needed to vote for Romney, vote for Bob Dole. They gave us Bill Frist. In 2006, W had the keys to the kingdom. Bill Frist, Denny Hastert, Tom DeLay. And they spent money and they gave it away through corruption. These guys — the Murphys and the Wilsons — are right about as often as global warming scientists. They’re just don’t win. They’re wrong. They misread the American people right up to Election Day. The reality is, Trump wasn’t my first choice second choice or third choice, but he’s like a figure skater, Rush. And the figure skaters judged on the technicalities.
RUSH: Yeah, but, you know what? Beyond all of that, Trump demonstrated you don’t need these people to win, and that’s why they hate him.
Related Links