RUSH: We happily welcome to the program Senior Presidential Adviser Kellyanne Conway. It’s been a long time since you’ve been here. It’s great to have you back, Madam.
CONWAY: It’s wonderful to be with you, Rush. I just left the president. He hosted a lunch for the anchors ahead of the State of the Union tonight, and he’s really excited about addressing the nation.
RUSH: Yeah. I knew he was gonna do that. You can tell by which anchors who work at night are doing reports at 11 o’clock in the morning from the White House. You know that there’s some kind of luncheon. This is a tradition. One of the things I was gonna ask you, I’m looking everywhere, Kellyanne. Right here I’ve got the Daily Caller, AP, UPI, CNN. “Trump to Talk of Unity.” “President Will Promote Bipartisanship.” Why put all this stuff out in advance? Why let people have some kind of heads up on what’s coming instead of just hitting them with it?
CONWAY: Well, most of the substance is still hidden from view. The president will address it tonight. Rush, he’s gonna talk about rebuilding America. The infrastructure that Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker, says she wants to work with the president on. We’ll see. He’s going to talk about the booming economy, and it is the Trump economy. Over seven million jobs created, wages are up, unemployment is down, small business formation is going well. People are just… They’re back to work. We’re a country that works.
So he will be touting a lot of his accomplishments that don’t get out there in the mainstream media day by day. They shroud all those facts and figures, and this is the president’s opportunity to speak one on one to each American in their living room, on their screen, however they’re looking at the address. So I think the calls for bipartisanship on some of the big issues, like drug pricing, infrastructure — obviously, he’s done criminal justice reform. But, I think remarkably, last October he signed into law the largest single piece of drug legislation in our nation’s history.
Every single Democrat voted for that because every single Democrat goes back home and sees people being affected by the heroin, the fentanyl, the opioids, the meth, the marijuana, and the like. So he is gonna absolutely make his case for securing the southern border. He will not be backing down on his call for a wall or a steel-flat barrier. They can call it what they want, he says. But that’s the centerpiece of this. Yes, immigration judges, Border Patrol, money for technology and drones.
But the centerpiece of it — the nonnegotiable centerpiece — is a physical barrier that you can’t crawl under, climb over, drive through, or walk around. He’s going to talk about a safe and legal immigration system. We’ve gotta stop the flow of drugs and crime. I sat in a briefing with the president last Friday where we heard about all the human trafficking, the sex trafficking. People who say this is a manufactured crisis are turning a blind eye to what is literally happening at the border, and it’s coming into our communities. He’s a president who believes his first and solemn duty is to keep us all safe, and that border security on our southern border is national security for all of us.
RUSH: So let’s talk about the politics of all this. Obviously, it’s a great agenda and it’s much of what he campaigned on and particularly securing the border. But we’re already… The Democrats are lining up for 2020. There’s not a’one of them that wants to compromise on something that really matters to him, that’s a signature issue to him. They’re not gonna give him this. So what is the expectation in proposing all of this, when you know that Schumer and Pelosi want no part of Trump succeeding?
CONWAY: Look, I think the far-left socialists in the Democratic Party get all the airtime and all the adulation these days. And then you’ve got the 2020 field who’s probably going to go so left and fall off that ideological cliff. But what about the 31 Democrats, Rush, who represent districts that Donald Trump won in 2016? Twenty-two of them are freshmen. They go home and they get an earful about manufacturing jobs, construction, trade, renegotiating the imbalanced and nonreciprocal trade deals with China, Mexico, and Canada. They get an earful about working together and securing our southern border.
So I think, let’s not confuse — ’cause the mainstream media wants us all to confuse — all the people who get the light and the adulation and the airtime with rank-and-file Democrats across this country. But you raise an excellent point that nobody really talks about. The modern Democratic Party right now is still investigating the 2016 election and focused on the 2020 election. My boss, the president of the United States, is focused on 2019 (chuckles) and what he can do to help this country.
So I think that in 2020, because they’re all trying to out-left each other in the primaries, they will have gone so far off the reservation — and it wasn’t just for Elizabeth Warren — so far out of the mainstream, that it will be almost impossible for their nominee to slap back toward the middle. Meanwhile, this president will have a record of accomplishments. I mean, look at who the modern Democratic Party is now and who their big leaders are. They’re calling for socialized medicine, 70% taxes on taxpayers, and they’re also now for infanticide.
Ralph Northam, the embattled governor of Virginia — who’s still there, by the way. Not to be confused with his lieutenant governor, who’s facing a sexual assault claim. That guy last week referred to the individual who would be delivered as a, quote, “infant.” So that means he’s for infanticide. It’s an infant. It is not a smudge on a sonogram, it’s not a pollywog, it is not uterine material, ladies and gentlemen. It is an infant — and this is what the modern Democratic Party is. Rush, you and I remember back when Barack Obama was a state senator in Illinois. I first came upon him as a state senator when he had voted “present” a couple of times and then was against the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. Do you remember Nurse Stanek?
RUSH: I totally do. Absolutely.
CONWAY: Let’s tell anybody under a certain age who Jill Stanek is and who Senator Barack Obama was. He was against the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act then, when kids were surviving abortions in Illinois were put in, basically, a utility closet. They were not given food or water or nutrition. They were not… They were not helped. So they were just left there to die. They had legislation to change that. Just last night, my goodness, almost 20 years later here we are with Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington.
RUSH: Right, and she said we already have laws to protect these babies —
CONWAY: It’s crazy!
RUSH: — when we don’t!
CONWAY: That’s right. And, by the way, for all the gobbledygook naming of our legislation here in Washington many times (chuckling), this one’s pretty straightforward. Ben Sasse’s legislation is, you know, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. If you survive an abortion — which automatically means you were past the point of viability and then some — then we have an obligation as a nation to keep you alive, to keep you safe. That is the most basic, decent thing we can do as Americans.
RUSH: Right.
CONWAY: All these people out there are worried about who’s eating an animal for dinner, and they have no regard for infants. That’s not just Ralph Northam. It is the modern Democratic Party. And his lieutenant governor, and remember, we were told by Senator Mazie Hirono during the Kavanaugh hearings, “Would men just shut up already? We always believe the woman. We always believe the woman.” So, let’s see what happens with the governor and lieutenant governor of Virginia. But the Democratic Party own them.
RUSH: We are speaking with Senior White House Adviser Kellyanne Conway. Now, let me ask you about what you just mentioned, Northam, and what can be described no other way than infanticide. Is the president going to call them out on this? This, to me, is a golden opportunity with the bully pulpit, with a massive audience, to inform the American people of elements of the Democrat Party agenda that the media doesn’t cover. They’re covering up the Northam aspect here by focusing on that yearbook photo. They don’t want to go anywhere near the infanticide aspect of that.
CONWAY: No, that didn’t seem to bother them at all earlier last week. In fact, they glossed right over that. They gave very little negative attention to the earlier legislation in New York which was heralded by Planned Parenthood and Andrew Cuomo as governor, very similar legislation where basically in New York it’s abortion, anyone, anytime, anywhere. That’s now the law. And, if you look at the Democratic Party platform, you look at their abortion plank in their party platform, it’s really not that different.
They will resist any and all regulations or restrictions on a, quote, woman’s right to decide her reproductive freedoms. That is fundamentally different than a quote, infant in Ralph Northam, a pediatrician’s words, Rush, that’s fundamentally different than a, quote, infant being born and then you’re gonna keep the infant, quote, comfortable and let the mother decide, confer with the doctor? This is not America. That’s not human rights. So will the president mention it? Yes. I predict that he will.
I will tell you that in this last week, since Northam said what he said on that radio show, Rush, I’ve heard the president as animated on very few issues as he has been about that because let’s review. It was Donald J. Trump improbably who’s now become the most pro-life president I believe in our nation’s history, certainly in my lifetime, and I’m an aging lady here, he improbably challenged Hillary Clinton in a way that most of the pro-life candidates I had worked for for decades refused to do.
He told her on October 19th, 2016, “No, no, no, you are the extremist on abortion. You would rip that baby out of its mother’s womb an hour before birth.” And I believe many people in this country did a collective, “Oooh.” And good, good for him for making people feel it and visualize it. Hillary Clinton had no defense, because unusually they can sit there all day long and use euphemisms like women’s health and women’s issues.
Women’s issues? I’m so sick and tired of the Democratic Party talking to all of us women from the waist down only. The waist up is where my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my brain, and my heart are, and this is a president who has called them out. He also is calling on Congress as he has many times, Rush, to put on his desk the Pain-Capable bill. So this is legislation that passed the House, that needs to pass the Senate and get to the president’s desk. This is basically where nonpartisan scientists and doctors say a fetus, an unborn child can feel pain and that we should not be allowing abortion past that point of pain.
RUSH: Kellyanne, one more question here in the dwindling moments, the declaration of a national emergency to build a wall if necessary. The word is there won’t be any reference to that tonight. Where’s the president on that conceptually?
CONWAY: I was just in an off-the-record lunch with the president and I can tell you that he talked about it again because he’s talked about it publicly practically every day that he’s been asked about it. The president has said he has the absolutely legal authority to declare a national emergency on the southern border if, as they’ve done for years if not decades, Congress again fails to do its job by passing legislation and putting it on his desk.
Rush, we have a couple of judges in a couple of courts basically in charge of the nation’s entire immigration policy right now because Congress refuses to do its job and act. The president did not use the national emergency declaration as his option of first, second, 12th resort. He’s tried to go through the leadership in the House and the Senate, both parties. He has the conferees doing their work. He’s gonna wait to see them complete their work, but he certainly has that as an option. As he said to Margaret Brennan at CBS in the Super Bowl interview, quote, he doesn’t take any options off the table.
He believes we have a humanitarian crisis at the southern border and that border security is national security. And, by the way, everything the Democrats had asked for, this is what’s such phony baloney. Everything they’ve asked for was in the president’s proposal. Yes, the wall, the barrier is the centerpiece of it, the $5.7 billion the House passed in late December. But so, too, are the new 75 immigration judges, the 2,750 Border Patrol agents additionally, the $800 million in humanitarian aid, the $805 million in more technology and other metrics to detect drugs that are flowing over our southern border as well.
There are so many things in there the Democrats asked for and the president even gave them a couple of years on TPS and DACA. We are yet to this moment, 17 days after that, to get a counterproposal. Harrumphing, crossing your arms and stomping your feet and saying “no,” as Speaker Pelosi has, is not a counterproposal. Saying one dollar very snarkily is not a counterproposal. It’s this president who wants a safe and legal immigration program that has that wall as a centerpiece but also includes these other measures.
And, listen, he’s not gonna give up until he gets it, and the American people are with him on the need for immigration reform. He ran on it. He won on it. And these people running in 2020 have no regard to do any kind of work in 2019. Elizabeth Warren just announced is gonna be in six states I think at the end of this week. When are they actually going to work? We need senators and House members to work at least a fraction as hard as the people they represent work. I don’t know anybody who they represent who calls themselves a full-time employee with all those benefits and, in the case of some of them, full security detail who only work like two and a half, three days a week. Let’s get them to work as hard as the people they represent work and then we’ll get this deal done. If not, the president said he’s got other options.
RUSH: Kellyanne Conway, thank you for your time. It’s always great to speak to you, and I’m glad you were able to squeeze this in here today.
CONWAY: Always, Rush. God bless you. Thank you.
RUSH: Have a great rest of the day. We’ll chat soon. It’s Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to the president.
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