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Dissecting the Democrats’ Caravan Strategy

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 19,2018

RUSH: The New York Post just published headline: “Migrant Caravan Heading for U.S. Turns Around in Mexico.” Have you seen this anywhere else? I haven’t. It’s not on Drudge yet. I report this to you with a little bit of caution.

“The caravan of Honduran migrants have turned around today, a day after reaching the Mexico/Guatemala border, according to a report…” This is the New York Post, it’s an AP story. “Some 4,000 migrants fled their lives of poverty and violence in the Central American country with the hopes to make it…” They were bought and paid for. Nothing about this is organic! Trump is right to ask who is paying for this. Who is buying the food?

Who is buying the water and distributing it? Who is paying for the gasoline for the vehicles being used? Where are these people taking care of hygienic requirements? For those of you in Rio Linda, where are they pooping? Have you seen…? They got any porta-potties trailing along in the caravan? All of this stuff has to be accounted for. You’re going to bring 4,000 people. They’ve gotta eat, gotta drink. They gotta have some shelter at some point. Who is behind this? And we’re gonna find out. We’re gonna find out.

The thing about this, I’m trying to… I openly speculated about this yesterday. Somebody on the Democrat side wants this to happen. I’m trying to figure out how this caravan… Let’s say they get to the border and storm the border and just run across it. How do they think that helps the Democrats? Unless it’s just the pictures of chaos they think are going to redound negatively on Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Springfield, Illinois, Todd. Thank you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, how are you today, sir?

RUSH: Good. Really good.

CALLER: Do you remember when you used to take cell phones up front because they cost so much to use?

RUSH: When I used to take cell phones up front? What do you mean?

CALLER: You would put them at the top of the line because it cost so much —

RUSH: Oh, that’s right! The 800 number didn’t apply to cell phones. Cell phone callers had to pay money to be on hold. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do remember that. Way, way, back. Is that how far back you go?

CALLER: I’ve been way back before that even. But, hey, I’ve got a theory about this caravan. The last two years there’s only one thing that the Democrats have won on, and that’s the wall. And as a Trump supporter, every time the issue of the wall comes up, I get aggravated that it’s something that they’ve won on and Trump has caved on. And I think that they’ve done this at this time just to put an exclamation point on and to emphasize that Trump is not the winner that he says he is.

RUSH: You know, that’s an interesting thought. The idea to flood the border to demonstrate that Trump does not have the wall, can’t get the wall, maybe isn’t going to get the wall. So maybe people should abandon Trump. Do you think that would work?

CALLER: Well, it’s not going to work on me, but let me tell ya, as a Trump supporter, that is the big thing that aggravates me. Every time he signs one of these things to keep the government going that’s got nothing in it, it burns me up every single time.

RUSH: So, so are you a little concerned that Trump is not really trying hard enough for the wall?

CALLER: No. I mean, I’ve got political theories as to why it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe, you know, Trump… I trust in Trump. I think he knows what he’s doing. It could be that he wants to do this next year right before the election to get everybody energized. I don’t know. All I can say is he is a smarter man than I am.

RUSH: Maybe, but I… Your theory is really quite insightful, but it requires… For the Democrats to pull it off, a lot of Trump voters would have to believe he’s not trying, not trying hard enough. For the Democrats to capitalize on flooding the zone with 4,000 people that get into the country just to demonstrate that Trump hasn’t built the wall, that Trump really can’t stop these people, that Trump, therefore, is ineffective. Those people in order to abandon Trump would then have to conclude he’s not really trying very hard.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: I don’t think they would abandon him this soon yet over —

CALLER: I agree. I know I’m not, and I don’t think most of them will. But my question is, what else do they got?

RUSH: Well, they’ve got mob behavior, lunatic insane rage.

CALLER: Right. But I mean on Trump. They’ve got nothing they can put up that Trump hasn’t done that he’s promised. And that’s the —

RUSH: Well, that’s exactly right.

CALLER: Open wound right there. That’s the sore in the Trump supporters that we haven’t got the wall. It’s not even… You know, they even aren’t digging the foundation yet. It hasn’t started. So, it really aggravates me personally that this is something that they keep these continuing resolutions, and these things to keep the —

RUSH: Oh, hey, I’m with ya. You’re talking about all of the spending bills. New budget deals. We’ve had continuing resolutions. Democrats can’t stop anything in the House. They can in the Senate. Here’s what Trump’s up against. And I want… Before you go, Todd, I want to get your thoughts on it. Trump is still up against the fact that leaders in both parties do not want that wall. It’s not just the Democrats that are opposing Trump on this. There are a lot of Republicans that don’t want that wall because of Republican donors. But Trump is still pretty much fighting the establishment, the swamp on that.

CALLER: Mhm. They didn’t want tax cuts either.

RUSH: No, they didn’t.

CALLER: And there’s a lot of other things they didn’t want that he’s come through and he’s twisted them into doing what he wants.

RUSH: Well, many of the… I think many of the Republicans have bought the idea that Trump was going to be a goner before now. They are so convinced the media will get rid of whoever the media targets. I think… Certainly the first six to eight months of 2017, Trump’s first year, I think the Republicans didn’t do anything to help him because they didn’t think he was going to survive. That’s one of the reasons that the Obamacare repeal and replace didn’t go anywhere.

Because the Republicans just bought into the notion that most of the country actually hated Trump despite the fact that he had been elected. And it’s been a slow reversal and a slow realization on the part of the Republicans that Trump is the guy and that Trump is immensely popular, particularly on the Republican side. Well, we’ll see if this story on the caravan turning around… Pompeo is there. Pompeo left Saudi Arabia after having met with King Salman and Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince.

He then flew to Mexico, and they have to know that Trump is not going to put up with this. And I think that was the message Pompeo took. So we got one report from AP that the caravan has turned around. Now, if that’s true, whoever is paying for this is going to have to keep paying for those people to go wherever they go next. Are they going to go back to Honduras? Are they going to back to Guatemala? Are they going to go to holding places in wait to try to do the caravan all over or are they gonna try to sneak them in in smaller groups rather than as part of this gigantic mob? Only time will tell. Thanks again, Todd.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The New York Post reported about 20 minutes ago, the caravan was turning around. That was an AP story. An update on this. The caravan is turning around at one checkpoint, but it’s not going home. It is “regrouping.” (chuckles) The caravan is regrouping, which means that whoever is organizing this is calling a time-out and re-strategizing. The plan is still to come to the United States and to get here before the midterm elections.

Now, I mentioned to you that the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, went down to Mexico. From Saudi Arabia, ae went to Mexico. And now, here is the administration line. Pompeo is saying, “Congress needs to change the laws so that this doesn’t happen. Congress needs to pass laws to make sure this doesn’t…” Well, what that means is the Trump administration is turning this back to Congress. They are dumpin’ it back in Congress’ lap and saying, “This is your problem.

“We’ve got laws here that should keep this from happening, but if they are not, you need to come up with something else to stop this.” So Trump is essentially saying Pompeo for Trump is saying, “Look, we cannot take unilateral executive action on this. We’ve already got laws preventing these people from getting into the country. But what’s happening prior to that, Congress needs to do something.”

I don’t know whether this is a strategery or not, but if it is, it means that here we are with a little over two weeks from the midterms, and the Trump administration is throwing this off of their plate and back on Congress’ plate so that whatever happens, they think they will have protected themselves from. Now, go back to the strategery that a caller called here earlier with and said that the idea of this caravan is to demonstrate that Trump has not kept the promise on the wall.

It is to demonstrate to Trump voters that despite all the talk, he hasn’t done a thing to stop illegal immigration — and I think that’s a pretty good theory. Then you add in the chaos that will happen. Throw in the possibility that if they do get to the border and do cross that they would be separated, and that’s one — of all the issues I went through in the last hour that came and went and didn’t have any glue or have any legs, that one did.

I’ll never forget. I was out in California. I got so frustrated. I was playing golf with a friend of mine. He’s one of us, and it was during the time the Drive-Bys and the Democrats were making all this noise about how Trump was separating families. (sobbing) “Children from their mothers and dads!” This guy, who is up to speed on this stuff, says, “Rush, those pictures look bad.” “C’mon, you know the pictures are made up.”

“The pictures look bad. It looks really bad.” “You don’t… You’re not really falling for this!” “Rush, the pictures look bad. We have to do something. The pictures look bad. Oh, my gosh.” The guy was smart enough to know that he was falling for a media trick, but the pictures looked bad. What he was telling me was: “I can’t defend this. I have people complain to me about Trump separating families. I can’t defend it. The pictures, Rush, the pictures.”

That is the one thing that has had legs.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Lloyd in Mauston, Wisconsin. It’s your turn. Hi.

CALLER: How are you doing, young man?

RUSH: (chuckles) Just fine, thank you.

CALLER: (chuckles) Anyway, young man, I was listening to a guy named Donald Trump. He was in Iowa discussing how he has done over $3 billion of the wall. So they have been breaking on the wall. You had a caller earlier that did not know that.

RUSH: Well, yeah, but there’s not a brick that’s been laid that’s stopping anybody from crossing is the point. His point was that the Democrats may be trying to illustrate that Trump hasn’t gotten it done, isn’t gonna get it done, maybe doesn’t really care about getting it done. Remember, these people are focused on trying to demonstrate that Trump is a phony, he’s not who he says he is, and they want to distance Trump’s voters from him. That’s all the caller’s theory was.

CALLER: Well, I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s done too much in too little time.

RUSH: No, I don’t either. I don’t either. But it was his theory as to what the purpose of this caravan is. I know that there have been in little incremental appropriations aimed at building the wall, but his point was, how many continuing resolutions have we had, independent budget deals have we had, and then there’s not — and we have control of the House and control of the Senate — any money in the wall for it … yet. Not serious money, and certainly not serious construction. Therefore his theory was that the Democrats are trying to demonstrate that it’s never going to happen, and Trump doesn’t even care that isn’t going to happen. And what better way to illustrate it than 4,000 people storming the border and not being stopped?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Maggie Haberman New York Times thinks that Trump is behind the caravan from Honduras, that Trump is the guy making all this happening. Ha! Ha! Ha! Don’t you love it?


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