RUSH: We haven’t talked about Senator McCain today. I have a Senator McCain Stack of Stuff here, but I haven’t yet gotten to it. So I’m gonna take a phone call as a transition into our McCain Stack of Stuff, and that’s Pittsburgh. Joyce is in Pittsburgh. It’s great to have you, Joyce. Thank you for calling.

CALLER: Thank you for having a me, Rush. I was not personally a fan of Senator McCain’s. I’m sorry for his passing. I’m sorry for his family and the loss that they’re feeling, but, you know, he’s never been anything but rude and belligerent to Trump, to President Trump, to the Trump voters. I mean, he thought we were all idiots.

RUSH: Now, wait. Wait just a second. I don’t mean to put you on the spot.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Could you give me an example of what you’re talking about? With that kind of characteristic you’re describing, there has to be something that McCain did or said that you remember that made you think that.

CALLER: Well, I remember what he thought of all of us Trump voters. I mean, I’m thinking it wasn’t quite the word deplorable that was used by Hillary, but it was just as condescending. And I also feel that he really threw all of his voters under the bus just to prove and hurt President Trump with voting down Obamacare.

RUSH: Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He assured people in Arizona that he would vote to rescind it. That’s right. That’s true.

CALLER: And he continued to just be rude and belligerent up to the point of even his postmortem comments, total unnecessary, but yet —

RUSH: Well, you know, interesting you bring that up. You’re talking about McCain’s farewell to the nation as read by Rick Davis of Davis Manafort.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Here’s John McCain living the life that he led, which was a pretty full life, and in living that life he received numerous honors and accolades. And when it comes time to write his farewell address, it’s aimed at, without naming anybody, one guy! It’s aimed at Donald Trump! But why is Trump even on McCain’s mind at a time he’s writing a farewell to the American people?

CALLER: No idea. You’d think he’d be thinking about his family and his legacy and —

RUSH: Well, they got mentioned. What I mean is that, you know, I can think of some nemeses that I’ve had over the course of my life. I’ll be damned if I ever get the ego so big that I write a farewell to the nation, I’m not gonna spend time on people that I didn’t have any respect for.

CALLER: Totally agree. I think it just lowered his standing. He was trying to make a postmortem that he was a wonderful person. He served his country, he certainly did that. But his legacy in the Senate and in the House and how he treated his constituents, I think he was, on that respect, I think he was a bit of a fraud.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: I really do.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: I’m loyal to my president, and being from western Pennsylvania, could not support him enough. And I’m sorry I ever supported, you know, Mr. McCain when he ran for president.

RUSH: You are?

CALLER: Yes, sir, I am. I’m not sorry for supporting Sarah Palin. But I am sorry I supported Mr. McCain.

RUSH: Now, I have to say, you’re not by any stretch the only person that I have heard make such comments. My email is filled.

CALLER: And the number of checks my husband and I wrote to the McCain campaign, I regret that. And to me he showed his true colors the day he walked up and did thumbs down that hurt nine people — not in Arizona, but the country.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Let me run something by you, though.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: We’re all human, right? Some might disagree with that, but we’re all human, in the general sense. So you’re Senator McCain and you’re out there minding your own business, you’re in advanced years and all of a sudden this orange headed guy walks down an escalator in New York and runs for president, says what he says, and you’re McCain, and you’ve got this reputation here for probity and seriousness and respect and all that kind of stuff. And then shortly after the orange headed guy walks down the escalator, somebody asks him about McCain, and the orange headed guy says, “I don’t have any respect for people in the military that get captured. I don’t think they’re heroes,” what do you expect McCain’s reaction to that to be?

CALLER: I do not by no means agree with what the president said about that. However, he is still the president, and to quote Mr. Obama —

RUSH: But he didn’t say that as president. He said that as a candidate.

CALLER: As a candidate, that’s correct. And Mr. McCain did not support him as such. However, he was elected and beat 16 other people.

RUSH: No, no. I’m just saying, forget all that. You’re John McCain. Let me add something. You’re John McCain, and you have believed your press clippings your whole life object okay?

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: You’re a hero, you’re a great guy, you’re a great American, you’re a great patriot. This is what you think of yourself, this is what others think of you, you’ve adopted it, you believe it. You have a healthy love for yourself. You’re John McCain, and then here comes this buffoon who’s a reality TV show star with orange hair telling the world that he has no respect for military people that get captured when you, John McCain, owe that part of your life as one of the foundational building blocks of your whole reputation.

Aside from whatever happened to Trump later on in the campaign, becoming president, beating 16 other guys, can you understand how that would make McCain livid? Can you understand how that might make somebody wanting to get into payback for the rest of his life against the guy who said something like that?

CALLER: I can see being upset, but I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve ever felt, that just words alone, that I wanted to get even with anybody for the rest of my life, especially when I was sick.

RUSH: Well, obviously it affected McCain, because he had promised the people of Arizona that he would vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, and he came back from Arizona, he was not well. He made a big effort to get back.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: And made a big show about being the last vote with the very public big smile on his face thumbs down, and that, I’m sure, was get-even-with-Trump time.

CALLER: Oh, yeah. It was really get-even-with-Trump time. And the shame of it was, the rest of the people and the rest of the country suffered because of that. And that, to me, lowered his standing in my world and a lot of other people’s worlds, too. He wasn’t there to just prove something to himself. He was there to represent the constituency of Arizona that put him in office how many times. And I expected more of somebody than that. That wanted to be my president, that I supported, that’s where you start putting the people and the country ahead of yourself when you take that oath of office.

RUSH: Okay. Joyce, I appreciate your calling. You did not wither an ounce under my intense interrogation.

CALLER: I am a pretty tough old broad, Rush. But thank you —

RUSH: (laughing) Love it.

CALLER: — and I think you’ve been married 10 years. Is it 10 years this year or eight?

RUSH: I lost count after two. It’s been such bliss.

CALLER: You know what? I think it’s eight. I remember where I was when I heard you got married.

RUSH: It seems like yesterday.

CALLER: Well, happy eighth anniversary in June I think it was.

RUSH: Well, I thank you very much.

CALLER: Have a good day, ma’am.

RUSH: She mentioned McCain’s farewell. (interruption) What’s the question? The program observer here has a question. What is it? What disease? Oh, having seen the disease up close that McCain suffers with. Yes? Or are you asking have I seen it up close? Okay. We have seen it up close. Okay. So that’s the question or comment? What’s the question? (interruption) Hm-hm. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I was just gonna get there.

The Official Program Observer is asking the type of brain cancer Senator McCain had was destructive, it was advanced, and it was very fast acting. And the Official Program Observer is wondering if the advanced stage of that brain cancer was such that the farewell statement could actually have been written by somebody else. I think so, depends. We don’t know when he wrote it.

He could have written it a year ago. You’re assuming he wrote it the week before he died. Well, Trump’s been around for two or three years. I mean, you could have reference — look, let me read excerpts of this here. We have from a tear-soaked Washington Post, by the way: “John McCain Issues Subtle Rebuke of Trump in Farewell Letter Before His Death.”

Now, I have to tell you something. To me, this is kind of unreal, because we have here the guy who read the farewell letter is McCain’s campaign manager in 2000 and 2008, presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis, and he is a partner in Davis Manafort. He is Paul Manafort’s partner. And we learned because we did the work.

We went back to the news archives, we found a Washington Post story in 2008 detailing how Rick Davis brokered a meeting between Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch close to Putin, and McCain, just like a meeting was attempted to be brokered between Deripaska and Trump. Rick Davis of Davis Manafort, a lobbying firm, which still is up and running in the Washington area. Rick Davis sets up a meeting between the Russian oligarch close to Putin and John McCain.

Sometime after that, the FBI or somebody came along and warned Senator McCain to be very careful of Oleg Deripaska because he’s a Soviet agent, could be a really bad guy, ties to Putin. So they warned McCain, and McCain continued the relationship with the guy, and nobody thought a thing of it. Now, the guy surfaces in relationship to the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., and all of a sudden — and Trump never met with Oleg Deripaska, and yet today we’re trying to nail Trump and impeach him and put him in jail and destroy him and ruin him because he colluded with the guy when he never did! But McCain did after having been introduced to him by Manafort’s partner!

Is nobody else kind of mind-boggled by this but me? So it was Rick Davis who read McCain’s farewell letter and has been eulogizing McCain on various talk shows, and not a single media outlet has noted that Rick Davis is still to this day the senior partner in Davis Manafort lobbying firm, and nobody notes that Rick Davis arranged for the very same notorious oligarch and top Putin pal supposedly involved in colluding with Trump to meet with McCain, yet everybody knew it.

I talked to a friend who was in Washington about the time 2008 when all this was happening. Everybody knew it! Everybody knew it. And yet we’re being led to believe the Russians have never been this close to anybody in American politics ’til Donald Trump came along. This is such a hoax. It is such a snow job. It is such a frame job that has been run here and continues to be run on President Trump. Now, I’ve talked myself into the break here so we’ll get to excerpts of the farewell letter from Senator McCain to the nation when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  “Speaking of country’s best qualities,” in the farewell address read by Rick Davis of Davis Manafort, “McCain wrote that ‘we weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been,’ Davis [of Davis Manafort], holding back tears, said as he read McCain’s message in Phoenix.

“‘Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here,’ McCain wrote. ‘Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.'” Now, it is pointed out here that McCain “did not mention Trump by name but it appeared clear whom some of the remarks were aimed at,” the Drive-By Media says.  McCain again:

“We are 325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that, and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country, we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.” …

And: “In his final statement, McCain also offered his gratitude to the people of America, his constituents in Arizona, his family and ‘to America.’ ‘To be connected to America’s causes — liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people — brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures,’ McCain wrote.” Well, I don’t know that it is true anymore that we have so much more in common with each other than in disagreement.

That’s a lofty hope, it’s a lofty ideal.  But that’s where I think the big breakdown has occurred.  It’s a sweet sounding thing to say, and it would be great if it were true, but I think that’s the big change that has happened in this country, seemingly, although I know this isn’t the case, but seemingly overnight.  I don’t think that mutual objectives and similar visions for America and what our country is, I don’t think there’s much in common now between left and right on the subject of the country and its decency and goodness and its promise.

I think that actually is the great divide, and I don’t know how you bridge that, but hopefully it can’t be. McCain has said, by the way, his “ideal Senate successor would be a Hispanic woman, former staffer: Rick Davis of Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm in Washington, said. Senator McCain thought about who might succeed him prior to his death, and Rick Davis said “McCain likely would not want a white man to take his place in the U.S. Senate…

“‘He’s always been someone who’s encouraged participation in politics, especially in the Republican Party, with minorities and women,’ Rick Davis said during a news conference. ‘I think a Hispanic woman probably would’ve been his pick for a successor if he would’ve lived long enough.'” Who knew?  Who knew that identity politics had found its way into the Arizona Senate seat?  “John McCain likely wouldn’t want a white man to take his place in the U.S. Senate, his former campaign manager [Rick Davis] said Monday.”