RUSH: I got an email last night from somebody you would all know. I mean, without question, you would all know this woman. And it was just one line, “Thank God you are here to translate him for us.” Well, you know what that tells me. That tells me that there is a lot of investment in this program — and I accept it by the way. I’m honored by it. But I know how high the expectations are and I’m here to beat them each and every day.

I want to go back to something I mentioned in the first hour before getting back — or actually starting with the audio sound bites. The Drive-Bys are now obsessed for the moment with Trump and his all-caps tweets to President Rouhani of Iran who is continuing to shout “Death to America!” here and “Death to America!” there, and Trump’s had it. You know, Trump is not like other presidents who say, “Well, you know, that’s just Iran and that’s part of what we have to do being a superpower.

“And, you know, to show Iran we don’t intend ’em any harm, here’s $150 billion direct from the Obama administration,” along with a stupid deal to help them ratchet up their nuclear program. Trump looks at this and is appalled by it, as anybody with any common sense would be. The only people not appalled by it are people working inside the Beltway in Washington who think this is somehow new diplomacy or maybe standard-practice diplomacy. But it’s part and parcel of being a superpower, and we can’t laud it over people and…

We don’t laud over anybody! We just be who we are. There’s no shame in becoming a superpower, economically or militarily, especially when you are a force for good. Why be ashamed of that? But the left always has been. Phil Donahue. I remember him wringing his hands on his show many times over the accident of his birth. The accident of his birth. It was by pure accident that Phil became an American and not some poor, squalid Central American — and Phil never got over the guilt of the accident of his birth.

So Phil’s politics were to (sigh) give everything away from the United States to people in need around the world because it’s just not fair that not everybody could be born here. Never stopping to think why the United States is what it is and why other nations around the world aren’t. Never stopping to realize that it’s the difference between tyranny and freedom! (chuckles) It’s not complicated. The difference between tyranny and freedom and the relationship to upwardly mobile economic activity (snorts), it’s not a mystery. But to these people it is.

There’s nothing special about America; it’s just an accident that we’re so rich. It’s an accident or, as Richard Gephardt said, former congressman from Missouri, we were “the winners of life’s lottery.” And as Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren were famous for saying (impression), “You didn’t build that. You didn’t make that happen. We built the road that make it possible for you to build that. We built the road. Your customer to your store. We built the weather forecast that tells you whether people can come or not.”

I mean, that kind of inane thinking is what guides America inside the Beltway. And so letting Iran run amok, letting Iran continue to be the state sponsor of terrorism, undermine Middle East peace, however they wish to — and become the No. 1 Middle Eastern ally of Russia — Donald Trump says, “No. You gonna start threatening us,” Trump caps-tweets back, “You keep doing this and you’re gonna suffer consequences the likes of which you have never even contemplated.” Of course, they need the vapors inside the Beltway.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! First it was Putin. Trump’s gonna blow up Iran? Oh, my God, we’re not safe! Oh, my God. This guy’s dangerous,” and they panic. They don’t stop to realize what’s actually happening here. Iran good bet is Russia’s No. 1 client state at this point in time, not just in the Middle East but around the world. Pretty hard to reconcile Trump’s tweets with the claim that Trump is Putin’s puppet. Trump is aggressively challenging Russia’s puppet client state in the Middle East. How in the world is this acting as Putin’s puppet?

But that’s just one of the minor details the Drive-Bys never mention when it comes to Trump and Russia.