RUSH: It was fascinating. When the media first started reporting on it, they gave it great huzzahs. I mean, they gave it great coverage. They were very positive about it. And then it’s almost like somebody: “Wait, wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, we can’t do this.” And the coverage turned immediately negative. I’m talking about the tariff deal with Mexico that Trump announced on Friday.
You ought to go be back — I have ’em here, the original news stories, some of the greatest coverage Trump’s ever gotten. Well, maybe not some of the greatest, but at least it was right on, it was accurate and so forth and then you could just see a switch get flipped, and everybody in the Drive-By Media begin lying about it.
When New York Times comes out, “There’s nothing new about this. This deal was done months ago, and Trump just chose to announce it now. But there’s nothing new here.” And that is a full-fledged crock! There’s never been anything like this done with Mexico and the way Mexico’s reacting and what they’re saying about it is proof of that.
Anyway, folks, I’m here, I’m on the case. We got Snerdley back. Snerdley spent a couple days up on 42nd Street trying to arrange funding for a new Mac Pro. Anyway, great to have you here. Telephone number’s 800 — (laughing) — 282-2882 if you want to be on the program. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
I mean, people were complaining about, “Why did he announce this on Friday? You never do a major announcement on Friday. It gets buried or it gives the media the weekend to recast it, to reshape it and so forth.” And maybe there’s something to that, I don’t know. But he announced it on Twitter late Friday afternoon.
We had a deal with Mexico. And it is something that has never been tried in our lifetimes. The United States — and I mentioned this once after having read this in a Pat Buchanan column. Prior to the income tax being instituted in 1913, the United States government fully funded itself via tariffs. So tariffs have a rich history in our country. They were the primary funding mechanism for government operations. And that was when the government did not have as its job taking care of everybody.
Do you know that they’re handing out EBT cards with a thousand bucks to illegals as they cross the border in New Mexico now? Wait ’til you hear some of this stuff coming up. But I want to show you here — let’s see, I think this is Friday. I don’t have a date on this, but I think it’s one of the first news stories from CNN.
“United States Got Almost Everything it Wanted with Mexico Trade Deal — CNN anchor Victor Blackwell admitted Saturday morning on ‘New Day’ that the United States got ‘almost everything it wanted’ in the U.S.-Mexico trade deal that was announced Friday.
“The ‘New Day’ coverage began with CNN White House correspondent Sarah Westwood –” this the weekend crew, obviously, “–describing the White House’s intention to ‘frame this as a victory for President Trump,’ who reversed his original plans to impose a tariff on Mexican imports in response to the country’s concessions, particularly ‘stepped-up immigration –”
On Friday, the Mexicans were already acting. They’d already shut their southern border.
We knew this was coming. We told you about this. They shut their southern border and they started arresting people that were arriving, driving, managing the caravans. We also learned the caravan funding is coming from sources within the United States because this is a politically led and crafted invasion that is taking place by American leftists.
And then “Trump Deal with Mexico Likely Ends Catch-and-Release, Defunds Cartels.” Reuters: “U.S.-Mexico Migration Deal Boosts USMCA Approval Drive — Mexico Official.” So the original coverage on this was exactly true. It was something that was unique, it hasn’t happened before, and it was good for the United States.
Now, what’s the big deal with this? Because it’s still the Trump administration that did it. Even if the New York Times wants to lie about the timing, they can’t claim that Obama did this. By Michael Shear and Maggie Haberman. “The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months.”
So what? Well, they’re trying to say Trump is lying. “He’s trying to say he did this and he’s doing this right after his Europe trip. He’s trying to say his tariff threat worked, when in fact this has already been done.”
They can try this as long as they can or as hard as they want, and they’re gonna convince some people, we have to acknowledge this, but the fact of the matter is that Trump’s tariff threat is the only thing that made this happen, and you can look at the timeline of events and establish this on your own.
The New York Times is literally engaged in fake news, and Trump, you know, he normally hits back at ’em and does so in a feisty manner. He was really ticked off over this. He was really ticked off over this one and at MSNBC, goes after them and Comcast, which is the parent company of NBC. Brian Roberts, a Philadelphia leftist and Hillary donor, runs Comcast and now NBC.
So I guess some people think if we would have waited, if Trump would have waited, say, until this morning to announce this, the beginning of the day on Monday or late last night or something leading into the day today, that the New York Times would have had less — they would have still done it. The New York Times still had this story ready to go. It didn’t matter. They were gonna do this.
Fake news doesn’t have any boundaries, folks. Do you know any boundaries that are on lies? If you’re gonna lie, you’re gonna lie. Timing doesn’t matter. The New York Times, nobody in the Drive-Bys is gonna allow Trump the appearance of or any real success whatsoever, particularly now as we’re heading into the 2020 campaign and election and the Democrat and the media’s desperate desire to elect a Democrat here.
We’re not gonna let Trump win anything. We’re not gonna even convey that Trump won anything. We’re not going to allow the image. We’re not gonna allow the photos. We’re not gonna allow the impressions that Trump has won anything.
Any Trump achievement is gonna be miscast and misstated as a Trump lie, which is about all that they have left. The New York Times led the way claiming — and they had no evidence for this, they offered no evidence, anonymous, unnamed sources, administration people from days, months gone by that the agreement had nothing new in it.
And, as usual, the New York Times cites anonymous — I think they’re made-up sources — to back up their fantasy. And never mind that the named Mexican government officials say the agreement’s unprecedented. That’s why I say, you look at the timeline, look what the Mexicans are saying, it’s unprecedented, it’s never been done before. It couldn’t have been months old.
But even if it was — I mean, just for the sake of argument, even if it is months old, it’s still something that worked, it’s still something that makes sense, it’s still something Trump said he was gonna do, and it’s still effective! “Well, Rush, but why does Trump have to lie?”
He’s not lying! The New York Times is lying! The rest of the media is lying! What’s it gonna take to convince people? Two years of four to five times every day lying about Trump colluding with Russia! Once you cross that threshold, it’s like J.R. Ewing said. “Once you get past the integrity problem, life is easy,” or something like that. Once you learn to lie easily, then there’s no holding you back. The New York Times, they don’t view themselves to have been punished in any way or set back by these lies, other than the glaring reality each and every day that Donald Trump is still president.
And let me tell you, that so bothers them, you can’t believe!
And then the New York Times decides to recast everything, and then the rest of the media falls in line.
TARA PALMERI: Democrats questioning if anything in the deal is actually new.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It is unclear what those new measures are.
ALEX MARQUARDT: The deal with Mexico is maybe not so new.
KRISTEN WELKER: What’s new? Democrats are accusing the president of solving a crisis that he manufactured.
JULIA MANCHESTER: This appears to be a bit of an expansion on something that was agreed on before with Mexican officials.
PATRICK GASPARD: He’s falsely hyping a deal that was struck some months ago.
NEERA TANDEN: He took a bad deal, a deal that really does not have any new enforcement.
KATE SNOW: But how much in that agreement is really new?
JOY REID: There was no new deal!
ANNE GEARAN: … it’s old, that these are things that had already been agreed to.
ALEX WITT: The agreement consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Basically, Mexico just gave them what they already agreed to.
The first I knew of it having any success was actually last Friday when the Mexicans moved to shore up their border and sent 6,000 troops to their southern border — and this is before Trump announces it. But if all of this is simply Trump taking advantage of something that’s already happened and recasting it, well, where was the original reporting on this? Where was the original story if it’s months old? Do you remember seeing it, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) It didn’t exist because it’s fake news! There was no agreement months ago. Do you think the Drive-By Media is just gonna ignore that?
If Trump had signed a deal with Mexico months ago to succeed in getting Mexico to limit immigration, where were Mexico’s actions in the past months? Why did Mexico only start acting on Friday? (Or maybe it was Thursday.) Here’s Trump on CNBC Squawk Box this morning. He called into the show. Joe Kernen is the show. He said, “We heard you levied some criticism at the New York Times for saying this deal with Mexico was all in the works and that nothing happened from the tariffs and this had all been done before that. Can you go into exactly what else was part of that deal that you haven’t really outlined yet?”
THE PRESIDENT: We purposely said we wouldn’t mention it for a little while because it has to be brought by their legislative body. It’s gotta be taken to a vote. So we didn’t bring it up. Most people that know answer, Joe, and it’s another very powerful tool in addition to the very powerful tools we got. We had none of these tools, or virtually none, or they were just being talked about. They’ve been talked about for 20 years with Mexico. The New York Times wrote a story like I already made the deal. It’s nonsense.
We talked about it for months and months and months, and they wouldn’t get there, and we just said, “Hey, look, if you don’t get there, we’re just gonna have to charge you hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes,” and we would have been just fine. I spoke with the president of Mexico — I get along with him very well — and we made this deal. But this is something the U.S. has been trying to get for over 20 years with Mexico. They’ve never been able to do it. As soon as I put tariffs on the table, it was done. It took two days.
RUSH: Yeah. That’s exactly right, and they just can’t stand that. They just can’t stand it. They can’t stand Trump succeeding. They can’t stand Trump predicting what’s gonna happen and it then happens. They can’t stand conservatism at all appearing to be effective and working. They have to discredit it; they have to destroy it each and every time they perceive it to be happening. I saw a story when I was reading my tech blogs today. I’m always looking for illustrations and examples of the Drive-By Media and how they slam conservatism.
“Yeah! Yeah! There’s no conservative bias. It’s just that they’re pro-credible bias. The bias is toward credibility. They’re not anti-conservative!” That’s how they mask it and shade it, and this is a bit of what the New York Times is trying to do here. Although this isn’t about conservatism, think of Trump has conservatism, and you’ve got the same modus operandi here. They simply cannot allow Trump to appear to be successful. They cannot allow the image. They cannot allow the reality.
So they have to recast it and restate it. And, believe me, it’s nothing to them anymore to lie. Go back and read Jim Rutenberg shortly after Trump was elected on the front page of the New York Times, where they admitted that they had to throw the old tenets of journalism out in covering this guy. (summarized) “Journalists have to get rid of journalism and now have to become activists. It’s only way to deal with this guy, the only way to stop him. Traditional journalism won’t do it.” There’s no mystery what’s happening here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The French News Agency today is following the New York Times’ lead and reporting that this deal with Mexico was done months ago, and Trump is just faking that it had to do with the tariffs. It says here, “For many, [it] was vintage Trump behavior: trigger a crisis and let it simmer for a while, then declare it resolved and take credit.”
Declare a crisis? How did Trump “trigger” the crisis at the border? Trump declares a crisis? You mean there wasn’t a crisis at the border until Trump’s triggered something? How does Trump trigger a crisis on the border? What’s clear is that he alone is trying to do something to stop it, along with the president of Mexico. In fact, you know what? It could be said, folks, that Mexico, with the president there, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador… Do you people like it when I use my Mexican accent to pronounce these names or not? Does it irritate you or not? (interruption)
Okay, well, I’ll stick with it. (interruption) Well, I took Spanish for two years in high school. So it qualifies me. Lopez Obrador — Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador — has done more to stop illegal immigration in the United States than any person currently elected in Congress. You heard Trump saying in that sound bite, “We’ve been trying to get something like this done for 20 years.” Twenty years encompasses which presidents? That would be Slick Willie, George W. Bush, and Barack Hussein O. But Trump is the first guy to get it done, and these guys want to argue about when Trump got it done?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, Reuters. I’m not through with the Drive-By Media recasting and reshaping Trump’s Mexico deal now. Instead of taking the New York Times route and claiming that Trump didn’t get anything new in his deal with Mexico, this is a story about the former head of the World Trade Organization during the Obama years claiming that Trump violated international law and held Mexico hostage (chuckling) with his threat of tariffs.
So this is the Reuters angle: “The migration deal imposed on Mexico this week by U.S. President Donald Trump…” (repeats) “The migration deal imposed on Mexico this week by U.S. President Donald Trump under the threat of punitive tariffs was a victory for ‘hostage-taking’ over international rules, a former head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Saturday.” His name is Pascal Lamy. “My reaction is it seems that hostage-taking works. That’s my reaction. If there’s a rule of law, it’s because people believe it’s better than the law of the jungle.
“And many people don’t like the law of the jungle because some are strong, some are weak, and they don’t want the strong to always step on the weak.” Where was this guy when Mexico threatened last week to release another quarter million illegals into the U.S. if Trump raised the tariffs? Where was he when the ChiComs were threatening to withhold raw earth materials from the United States — and before us, Japan? “The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the remarks by Lamy, who has criticized the American president’s use of tariffs in the past.”
“It will be revealed in the not too distant future and will need a vote by Mexico’s legislative body We do not anticipate a problem with the vote but, if for any reason the approval is not forthcoming, tariffs will be reinstated.” That was from 5:30 this morning. So Trump is warning the Mexicans that if their legislative body does not endorse this, that he’s gonna slap tariffs on ’em. So here comes Trump threatening to do it again, and the media is outraged, because this kind of confounds their story that tariffs had nothing to do with this, that the deal was actually agreed to months ago.
“Trump Still Hangs Tariff Threat Over Mexico Despite Deal.” The AP continues to promulgate the New York Times’ lie that there’s nothing new in the new agreement.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, the Drive-Bys are calling the Mexican government a bunch of liars ’cause the Mexican government is saying this is not an old deal. This is not a deal that was negotiated months ago that Trump just announced.
Friday night in Washington, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., Martha Barcena Coqui, held a press conference to talk about the Mexican agreement with the U.S. on immigration administration. Here’s a portion of her remarks.
COQUI: As a result of these discussions, the United States and Mexico commit to a Mexican enforcement surge. Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border. Mexico is also taking decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks.
RUSH: These are “unprecedented” steps. If they’re unprecedented, then they can’t have been agreed to before. Yet the Drive-By Media are not just calling Trump a liar, they’re calling the Mexican government a bunch of liars — and they like the Mexican government, as long as the Mexican government’s making it tough for Trump. But now the Mexican government signed on with Trump, and now they hate the Mexican government. “Unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration.” It’s a neat twist on the phrase, “irregular migration.” Calling out the National Guard? If the Mexicans had agreed to do this months ago, where was it? Well, it wasn’t.
Now, Fox News Sunday, Bret Baier filled in, and he had Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan on there. He said, “How much of this agreement with Mexico is new?”
MCALEENAN: All of it is new. I mean, we’ve heard commitments before from Mexico to do more on their southern border. The last time they deployed down there is about four or 500 officers. This is more than a tenfold commitment to increase their security in Chiapas. That’s where people are entering from Guatemala and southern Mexico.
RUSH: So Bret Baier said, “Your predecessor, Kirstjen Nielsen, testified these things were happening in the House Judiciary Committee, that there were talks about moving National Guard troops to the southern border with Guatemala, but you’re saying this is different than that?”
MCALEENAN: It is very different. The president put a charge on this whole dialogue with Mexico with the tariff threat, brought them to the table. The foreign minister from Mexico arrived within hours. He arrived the next day with real proposals on the table. This is the first time we’ve heard anything like this kind of number of law enforcement being deployed in Mexico to address migration, not just at their southern border, but also on the transportation routes to the northern border and in coordinated patrols in key areas along our southwest border.
RUSH: Look. This is just common sense. If something like this had been agreed to months ago, then where has been enforcement? Where were the announcements? And how did Trump get the Mexicans to lie with him? How’d Trump get the Mexicans to lie? “Well, he used a tariff threat, Mr. Limbaugh, that’s how he got the Mexicans to lie.”
No matter how you people come at this and try to claim that this is nothing new and that Trump is just trying to claim his tariffs worked — in my memory, I don’t recall a two, two and a half year stretch of time like this where so much anti-Americanism was the order of the day. And by anti-Americanism, I mean so much focus in the media that is disapproving and critical of good news for America. I’ve never lived through a two-year stretch like this.
The unemployment news is great, the economic news is great, and every bit of the news that is good, every indication America’s on the right track and going better is mischaracterized, lied about, and the truth is being masked and kept from people. I understand it politically, especially with the 2020 election just a year and a half away. “We cannot afford for any good news.” But this has been unprecedented in terms of two and a half — and it’s gonna end up being four solid years of suppressing all good news about America and misrepresenting it and miscasting it.
Speaking of Mexico, an unrelated story. How many of you people drink Jose Cuervo, Cuervo Gold tequila? There’s a little story here. Karen Beckman is now the top shareholder of the company that distributes the tequila. Thirty-five percent-stake. Her dad grew up in Tijuana selling margaritas by the gallon in 1873.
“Today, the family behind the world’s best-selling tequila includes a trio who are worth a combined $5.1 billion. Tequila heiress gets biggest cut of $5 billion Cuervo wealth.” Cuervo tequila has 35% of the U.S. market. And it’s a fascinating story.
I saw this story, and I realized I don’t know anything about Jose Cuervo. I didn’t even know if he’s a real guy. Turns out he was, all the way back to the 1700s. And it’s actually quite an American story, in terms of starting small, producing nothing and growing and expanding like crazy.
So if you get time, it’s a fascinating little doodad. It’s related to nothing politically here. It’s just a story about Mexico and how tequila is climbing rapidly in popularity and how it all got started.
“Hiring by U.S. Businesses Hits Another Record.” This is what I meant a moment ago about the ongoing great news about the country. “Hirings increased to 5.9 million in April, the highest level since the Labor Department started keeping track. That came as total job openings exceeded workers classified as unemployed by 1.63 million.”
In other words, there are 1.63 million more jobs open than there are workers to fill them. And it might be one of the reasons why there was a supposed slowdown in hiring because we’re pretty much maxed out. “The total number of workers hired rose to a new high in April. … But despite this, the amount of available jobs still vastly outnumbers unemployed workers,” 5.9 million hirings in April.
So let’s review here, quickly. President announces a great tariff deal with Mexico. Mexico starts shoring up their southern border actually last Friday. Mexico has now done more to stop illegal immigration to the USA than any person currently elected in the United States Congress. And this all comes after a spectacular trip by Trump to Europe. It comes amidst continually good economic numbers.
And the other optic is the Democrat presidential candidates, what are they doing? They’re wearing rainbow products and they’re getting wasted in bars and they’re pandering like Biden’s little friendship chain. And they’re worried about fluctuations in polling data. The frontrunner was called out for plagiarizing his policy positions again, this time on climate change. So he takes a nosedive on taxpayer funded abortion.
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RUSH: We go back to the phones now to El Centro, California. This is Mike. I’m glad you waited, sir. You’re next. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Yesterday I was listening to the news here in El Centro, and it was a Mexican station, and the president came on. He was talking to a group of people, I guess an audience of people, and he said that they —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Which president?
CALLER: Manuel Obrador Moreno, the president —
RUSH: Obrador. Okay. So the Mexican president, okay.
And so he did not mention at all about the border, what the agreement was. He just said we just made an agreement with the United States, and if we hadn’t made it, he said, if we hadn’t made it, it would have been very, very, very, very bad for our economy.
RUSH: Well, this is just more evidence. Thank you out there, Mike, more evidence this thing was not in the bag, it hadn’t been done months ago. If the Mexican president, Manuel Obrador is going on TV and telling Mexican people that we just signed a great deal with United States to avoid tariffs, tariffs would have been very bad for Mexico.
This thing — I know, there are people that say, “But, Rush, Mexico is under the thumb of Donald Trump just like Russia. And so Trump told this Mexican president –” I don’t know how to deal with this kind of — I know that reaction’s gonna be out there on social media. But the common sense here is that since it’s led by the New York Times, this recasting of history, it’s just another bit of evidence here that the Mexican president is confirming that this is a tariff related agreement concession.
You see, if you come from the world of Myron Brilliant in the Chamber of Commerce, you can’t even call it a concession. We can’t say Mexican conceded. That’s unfair. It makes it look like we had our giant jackboot on their neck. We can’t say they conceded. Mexico agreed. Mexico didn’t concede.
See, we can’t even acknowledge when the United States wins something. Because that’s not fair. That looks bad. So we cannot say that Mexico conceded. But the Mexican president was essentially saying it himself.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Naugatuck, Connecticut. This is Patty. It’s great to have you on the program. Hello.
CALLER: Oh, thank you so very much for taking my call. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for what you do every day too, sir. You know, I wanted to say, you know, in view of some of the media’s distortion and also some of our legislators’ political gamesmanship, they seem to distort the meaning and the deeds of our president —
RUSH: (chuckles)
CALLER: — who acts in good faith and his meeting to the American people gets very much distorted and really doesn’t resemble the truth or what he said. And in regards to the border and the tariffs, I wonder if you might think it would be a very good idea for the president to come out and address the American people so that he is able to address the people. Tell ’em what his goals were to do, what he had planned to do — and that the inaction of the Congress and our legislators to close the border, to work with the president to close loopholes, and work on some kind of an immigration policy that could be a compromise — has led him to unilaterally put the tariffs on to leverage the position that he had to make the border safer for Americans. It’s a national security issue. It’s a financial issue. It’s a health issue, a crime issue —
RUSH: Well, he can do that. I’m sorry to interrupt you here. But if I’m gonna be able to react, I’ve gotta do it now ’cause I’m down to a very few seconds left. If he requests national TV time, it’s not automatic he’s gonna get it. If he says he’s gonna do a press conference, then he probably would get it, and he would have to do that in his opening statement because that will be the only way. They’ll never ask him any questions about it, they’re never gonna promote it. This is why he tweets. The reason he tweets is, in his mind, it’s the only way that he’s guaranteed to get his point of view and his reasoning and his take out there. I’ll have more, but we gotta take a quick time-out.
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