RUSH: Jim in Tuttle, Oklahoma, glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. It’s great to talk to you. I’ve been listening since 1989. I heard you when I was on Interstate 29 in Nebraska. I heard you talk in a monologue one time about it takes experience for whatever you do. You can go to school, but you still gotta have experience. Trump’s never been in politics. He’s up against everybody there. He won against 20 people altogether. How do you steal an election in a field that he didn’t know anything about, he has no experience? How did he take an election from people that have been there all their lives?

RUSH: It’s a good question. In other words, how did this guy who has no experience doing this run rings around seasoned and highly trained professionals who’ve been doing it their whole life?

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: Well, that’s one of the reasons they’re so damn ticked off. They’re asking the same thing.

CALLER: (laughing) Exactly.

RUSH: But then again, wait a minute, now. I can turn this around, Jim. You quote me as saying you’ve got to have experience, and you’re right, I said that. I said whether you have education or not, you have to have experience. Meaning, you want to get hired, you want to advance, you want to do something well, you’ve got to accrue experience doing it!

Well, Trump didn’t have any political experience in governing. He had experience in corporate CEO, guy at the top ordering everybody around and they had to do what he demanded they do when he demanded it. But he doesn’t have any experience at this. Do you think that’s hurting him? If he had more political experience, meaning experience in the way that world operates, do you think he’d be doing it differently?

CALLER: No. Everybody — Ross Perot said it, a businessman. They’ve been saying it forever, but he’s the only one that ever busted through the wall, busted through the political wall. He did it without their money.

RUSH: No, no. I understand. Let me be specific. Trump is the only guy that tweets what he actually thinks about media and other politicians. No other politician’s ever done this because, in politics, you don’t do that publicly. All I’m asking is, if Trump had any experience in the — look, I have said it a number of times. Politics is, like any other business, its own business. And there are rules that you have to follow in order to succeed in that business. And even some of them apply to Trump.

When he ran for president, he still had to get the delegates, he still had to go to the places the delegates were. There are enough elements of succeeding in politics that he had to do and do well, even though he had not done them before. Okay. So now he wins, now he’s in the White House. There is supposedly an established and approved way of getting your judges confirmed or of getting legislation passed. Trump has no experience whatsoever at any of that, and yet here he is doing it.

And, in fact, he’s having more success at getting things done that career politicians who thought the way to do it was to cross the aisle, extend the fickle finger of friendship, to show that we could cooperate and work with the other side, that we could work with each other. Trump tried that, quickly realized there was no future in it, and he’s been ramming his things through the best way he knows how. He’s been changing staff, doesn’t care what anybody thinks.

My only question is, if Trump had had any kind of political experience, would he be doing anything differently? Would he not be doing all the tweeting? Just asking. Don’t infer from what I’m saying any opinion. Would he not be tweeting? Would he not be using nicknames? See, I think I know the answer to this, but I’m just throwing it up.

I don’t think he’d be any different. I think the great thing about Donald Trump is he is who he is. He’s not afraid to be who he is. He’s not intimidated by being who he is. Because, you know what? Donald Trump loves himself. Donald Trump very much loves himself. And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. (interruption) The Official Program Observer has asked me if I think Trump is a quick study in politics. Is he a better politician today than the day he was immaculated, inaugurated, a better politician than he was a month into it, six months into it.

He would probably tell you he is. It’s an interesting question. If you asked him, I’m sure he would tell you that he is. I’m not close enough to him to know how he’s changed. I really can’t answer that. I’m like most people; I have the public vision of Trump to react to. I do know that, in his first few months, he tried it their way. He let McConnell and Ryan write legislation on Obama. He did it. He tried to unify people on his side of the aisle that didn’t like him and were mad that he won. He tried it their way and after a while realized that wasn’t gonna get anything done because people weren’t really interested in helping him.

So I don’t think he would be that much different because I don’t think he’s got a problem with who he is. People who don’t like themselves — and, you know, most of the people that don’t like themselves, you know why it is? Because they think other people don’t like ’em or disapprove of them or have a problem. Most people are such prisoners to what other people think of them that it’s impossible for them to actually be who they are, because they’re so self-consciously worried about what other people are thinking or how other people are reacting.

I am convinced Trump is unburdened by that. He couldn’t care less what Jake Tapper or any of these clowns at CNN think of him. It’s obvious he couldn’t care less. And it’s obvious he’s not trying to cultivate their respect because it wouldn’t mean anything to him. I think Trump is unique in the Republican Party in that he quickly understood who the political enemies are and is willing to treat them that way and deal with them accordingly. That’s why we love him. That’s why he’s unique to us.