RUSH: “White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says President Donald Trump is willing to give Democrats ‘a chance’ to stand up for a border wall. But he warns that Trump will get the wall ‘one way or another.’ ‘It’s better … to get it through legislation. That’s the right way to do it, but at the end of the day, the president is going to secure the border one way or another,’ Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday.”

He was adamant that this was gonna happen one way or the other. I know they don’t want to pull the trigger on the national emergency, folks. I know they don’t want to do it, and there’s a political reason why. Once they pull the trigger on the national emergency, this thing is brought to a screeching halt. I mean, you’re gonna have the left run off to court. You’re gonna get a judge to issue a stay of execution stopping this thing in its tracks.

That will begin a court fight and a court battle. I suggested to ’em… I said, “You know what you guys ought to do if you’re gonna do this? Have your own lawyer beat the left to court! Find a friendly circuit, go in there, and find a judge to pronounce it okay despite what the left does. Just be first with it and see what happens.” But it’s more than that. The politics of this… When he declares a national emergency, you know what the news becomes then?

Bye-bye, any discussion of the wall and of border security, the whole thing. The media’s focus, the narrative every day is going to be on Trump the dictator, Trump the totalitarian, Trump acting outside the Constitution and so forth — and I know that Trump… When Mulvaney says they want to do this through legislation, the reason for that is they’d love to find the illusive bipartisan support for this so that the nation could be seen expressing a unified opinion about it.

Pelosi is never gonna let that happen. Pelosi isn’t going to let the House, anybody in the House have anything to do with Trump winning anything. Pure and simple. So whatever tricks Mulvaney and crowd have up their sleeve, it’s gonna have to be something oriented around a way of defeating Pelosi. We’ll see what they’ve got. In the meantime, back to the phones. We have… It’s either Delia or Delia. I’m not sure how you pronounce it. She’s 13 years old. How do you pronounce your name?

CALLER: It’s Delia.

RUSH: Delia. And you’re from Strongsville, Ohio, right?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you called. 13 years old. Great to have you in the audience, Delia. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Of course. So I wanted to ask you if you think that government shutdowns are necessary. Now, we had this debate in the eighth grade, I think, two weeks ago, and I was on the side that said it is necessary. Our side had three people, and it’s a class of 18. So I was defending my point of view. And I think it’s necessary because President Trump ran on border security, he became president on border security, and he’s finally trying to build a wall. And that’s how he was gonna use the government shutdown, to try to get a budget for the wall. And my classmates didn’t agree with me. But I ended up winning the debate for my team.

RUSH: Well, what do you think…? I know you’ve got the issue there that you like, building the wall and Trump’s support for it. But what do you think, in general — and did your class debate just the concept of the government shutting down, be it for this or for any other reason? Did your teacher lead a discussion about it? Did your group discuss that at all, just in and of itself?

CALLER: Well, the other side of the debate that said it was unnecessary kept bringing up the fact that 800,000 federal employees aren’t getting their paychecks, and they never really debated, but said government shutdowns in general are unnecessary. But I made the point that border security is essential for our country, and even though there are negatives that come out of that, there are still one big positive that could possibly overshadow everything else.

RUSH: So you were on the side with three supporters. You were up against 15 people who opposed you. The reason I asked you about just the government shutdown in general is because what I hear you saying is that you basically were supportive of the shutdown as a tool to accomplish something you think is very important: Securing the border.

CALLER: Yes. Correct.

RUSH: But yet look at what you say that your opponents argued: “Oh, we can’t shut down the government! That’s 800,000 people without paychecks,” and so forth. So to them, it had nothing to do with your border issue. It had to do with the fact that people were suffering because they weren’t being paid, and that’s why the government need to reopen. As a lifelong conservative, Delia, I think that our people have become — and it’s been a slow process.

But our people have become conditioned to think that life in America isn’t livable or isn’t normal unless the government is open and operating and running every day. I think more people ought to realize that the less government they would have to deal with, the better off everybody would be. And so a government shutdown, to me, is an opportunity to illustrate this. And look at what happened.

We had a government shutdown — and for the first three weeks, everything was fine, and the media got in gear and started focusing on the negatives, which people react to. And then what really caused this shutdown to end? What do you think? There’s no wrong answer. Just asking. What do you think was the straw that broke the camel’s back here that forced the president to have to end it?

CALLER: Well, that’s a really complex answer and a question, because Pelosi and… Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were going around, and they were saying, “Oh, God bless Nancy. Nancy was the reason that the government shutdown ended. She carried the entire Democratic Party,” and it’s not true. It was the president deciding that, saying they’re gonna have to talk about this. Whether it’s you running the country, as the media’s saying — which you’re not — President Trump was the bigger person and decided that until February 15th, if they can’t resolved their issues with the border wall (garbled).

RUSH: Well, look, that points out something. You’re right. Democrats, as usual — and get used to this, Delia, as you continue to pay attention to the news as you get older. The Democrats are totally blameless in this, and yet you could intellectually make the case that they’re the ones that shut the government down. Because every one of these Democrats that wanted no part of a wall or even $5 billion from a wall, had as recently as six years ago and nine years ago authorized the wall, and they had authorized 10 times this amount of money to build the wall! Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi had all come out in favor of it. So Trump, in this go round, wants $5 billion to sign a continuing resolution to keep a $4 trillion government up and running.

And the Democrats said no to five billion dollars — it’s a rounding error in the budget. And they said “no” simply to prevent Trump having a victory, even if they agree with him on the wall, even if they were to agree with him in part on border security, they’re not going to let him have the win. They’re looking at 2020 and defeating him, of course, and this is where politics rears its head.

But the answer to the question — maybe I should leave it open so those of you on the phones can take a stab at answering it. What was the straw that broke the camel’s back that convinced the — and I’m not talking about maybe he had some staffers in there ill advising him, I don’t doubt that was going on. Folks, look. Let me mention this as a caveat. And, Delia, thank you so much for the call. You keep doing what you are doing. You’re awesome.

There’s no doubt in my mind that even within Trump’s staff, the White House, the West Wing, there are people advising him on things against his will. I don’t want to mention any names, but there are a lot of people who are looking at how all this affects them long after the Trump presidency. Their careers, their social status. There’s all kinds of interest in this beyond the issue.

You got all kinds of people advising Trump who don’t want to be part of any organization that shut down the government to build a wall, because they don’t want it on their resume, for example. And the president has to resist some of this, and I’m sure some of this advice comes from people he trusts. But there had to be something, one thing or two things that caused the administration or the president to finally pull the plug on this and to order the government open so that people could get paid. I just wonder what you think it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, when I asked the question, what was it? What was the straw that broke the camel’s back that caused the shutdown to end? Let me ask you some questions as I hint at you the answer. Have you noticed today, did you notice on Sunday, did you even notice on Saturday, there are no delays at the LaGuardia, there are no delays at JFK, there are no delays at Newark, there are no delays at Reagan National, there are no delays at LAX, there are no delays at Chicago O’Hare except maybe if everything’s frozen. No delays anywhere!

Have you noticed that the IRS has said it’s gonna take them, however, a year to rebound from this 30-day shutdown, and it may mean a longer delay in you getting your refund? And they said that before the shutdown. Yeah, they said, if this goes on it’s setting us back, and our time to recover from this is getting longer and longer. Now they’re saying it may take ’em a year. But at LaGuardia, Reagan National, JFK, Newark, why, everything’s on time. I mean, it’s normal.

Have you noticed that all of the soup lines for federal employees are shut down? I mean, free food’s free food. Why shut down the soup lines? Did you notice there were no stories of soup lines on Saturday, no stories of soup lines on Sunday, certainly no stories of soup lines today. We have had no stories of, “Even though the government has reopened, the president is remaining an obstacle here by refusing to sign…” Whatever they want to report the president not being cooperative with the federal government. You haven’t seen any of that, right?

Have you noticed that nobody needs a loan, no federal employee needs to call Wilbur Ross to borrow money? Have you noticed that all of the suffering, all of the misery, all of the disastrous results from 30 days of the government shutdown is gone? There are no lingering after effects of all of the suffering and all of the delays and all of the hunger. Those government checks sure must clear fast. He-he-he-he-he. Right?

The back pay of the missing check and then the second check. Why, they must have cleared on Saturday. You notice that the Coast Guard is back up patrolling the coast? Have you noticed how fast — except at the IRS, there seems to be a problem there. So, yes, yes, yes. That’s exactly what I am saying. A bunch of artificial, made-for-TV suffering and some legitimate, “I’m not going to work. I hate Trump.” Various employees gave the news media everything they needed.