RUSH: “President Trump to CNBC: China Is Going to Make a Deal Because ‘They’re Going to Have To.'” Let’s go back and finish with Trump. Audio sound bite number 5 as he gets into this here. He’s still talking to Joe Kernen, and this time the conversation moved to what’s next with a trade deal with China to try to even out the imbalance there. Here’s what Trump said…
Without the power of tariffs by the richest, most successful country… You know, we picked up trillions of dollars in worth since I’ve been elected. China has lost many, many trillions of dollars. They’re way behind. They were gonna catch us. Had a Democrat gotten in — namely the one we’re talking about — China would have caught us by the end of her term. They’re nowhere close. They’ll never catch us. Not with what I’m doing. They’ll never catch us.
RUSH: So the same show, CNN Squawk Box, Joe Kernen said to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president… His name is Myron Brilliant. Did you know that? The name of the executive VP of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is Myron Brilliant, and Joe Kernen said, “In the end, if the deal with Mexico became better than the deal we had, then didn’t the president’s tariff threat work, Mr. Brilliant?”
BRILLIANT: The weaponization of tariffs, the increase of threats on our economy, on our farmers, our manufacturers, our consumers, is gonna hurt our country. It also creates uncertainty, Joe, with our trading partners, both in Europe and Japan where we want to get deals and frankly it complicates – (crosstalk)
KERNEN: We need —
BRILLIANT: — to try to get something better with China. (crosstalk) Tariffs are not the way we want to go. We do need to force the hand of China and we need to address unfair practices.
KERNEN: How?
BRILLIANT: What’s the ultimate goal here? We want to get the USMCA passed, the new NAFTA, right? We want to get that through the Congress. Threatening Mexico is not a way to get this through the U.S. Congress.
The weaponization of tariffs, the increase of threats on our economy? This guy has no idea that all of this is for the benefit of the United States. He doesn’t even see it in that context. This is the executive VP of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, by the way, is a spearhead donor for open borders and amnesty legislation.
But this guy, Myron Brilliant, doesn’t even see that all of this is for the benefit of the United States. He literally may not see it. And if he does see that it ultimately is for the benefit of the United States, note that he opposed to it. The United States cannot win in these deals because that he will destabilize the world order. The United States has to take it on the chin, we have to let these little countries know that we’re not gonna run roughshod over them or some such thing.
He has no concept that we’re the good guys and that the United States doing well means that everybody dealing with us does well. He has no concept of this. And this guy is typical of the kind of people we have at the State Department and other bureaucracies that negotiate and deal with internationals trade and other aspects of foreign relations.
The weaponization of tariffs? So the United States staking out a negotiating position for its own benefit is considered weaponization? The increase of threats on our economy? What threat on our economy? “Well, Mr. Limbaugh, the threat that if the Mexicans didn’t agree.” It was the Mexicans that were gonna be hurt if they didn’t agree.
And all this is doing is making Mexico follow existing protocols and meet current obligations that we have allowed them to go lax on because we have not pressed our case because that’s not right. “It creates uncertainty, Joe, with our trading partners.” Yeah, it upsets the applecart where we’ve also been taking it on the chin, creates uncertainty. Yeah, they’re scared we might be coming after them now to level the playing field.
But this guy acts like the United States is all of a sudden this gigantic boot that’s walking all over the earth and plundering everything to get what we want. That’s the establishment of the Old World order. That was the portrayal of the United States marching all over the world, subjugating, subordinating, demanding, intimidating, bullying, weaponizing.
And we can’t afford to be seen as doing that so if we have to take it on chin at NATO we will. If we have to take it on the chin at NAFTA, we will. If we have to take it on the chin doing trade deals we will because we have the resources to take it on the chin and make the other people realize that we don’t dislike them. And then they go off on all these other tangents of irrelevancy.
And now it’s in the process of trying to be stopped, and look at all the opposition to it, from Americans, from the Chamber of Commerce, for crying out loud! The media and the New York Times: The United States cannot stand up for itself. The United States cannot act like a superpower. The United States cannot afford to intimidate. It cannot afford to bully.
And that’s not at all what we’re doing. But the concept that we are the good guys and that when we do well, our trading partners also do well, how does that escape them? It escapes them because they’re very closed-minded and have no idea, really, of entrepreneurism, free markets, or any of that. They are all for controlled, command-and-controlled markets.
You see this stuff, you hear this kind of stuff and you realize how long we have been led by a bunch of utter fools! Many of them, like this guy, unelected to anything, just appointed. Many of them faceless bureaucracies and bureaucrats.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Before I forget it, here is Trump’s answer to Myron Brilliant. Now, again, Myron Brilliant is the executive VP of the Chamber of Commerce, and he’s the guy CNBC found to criticize Trump’s tariff deal with Mexico by calling it “the weaponization of tariffs,” the increase of threats on our economy — on our farmers, on our manufacturers, our consumers. It’s gonna hurt our country. The United States standing up for itself is bad for America!
And this is what people who participated in and now operate in this post-World War II order that was established… And it’s probably… It’s not the same as it was when it was established. It’s deteriorated. It’s been taken over by a bunch of pansy leftists who think that the United States exhibiting its power is a bad thing. The United States projecting its power is a destabilizing thing. It’s the best way of describing the way these people think. Projecting our power militarily, projecting our power economically, projecting our power politically, it’s bad. It’s destabilizing.
And especially since there’s not now a recognized, legitimate second superpower to keep us in check like the Soviet Union was. The complete lack understanding of the United States as the good guys, of the United States as what it was founded to be and what Reagan proclaimed it: “the shining city on a hill,” the beacon of hope, the beacon of freedom and liberty and all. These people, I guess, simply do not understand it or agree with it, never did. The United States is the problem. Our size, our wealth… It’s the problem.
(impression) “So we can’t brag and we can’t act in our self-interests and we can’t project our power because it’s just so unfair! It’s just unfair. You know what I mean? It’s unfair!” So Trump telling tiny, little, poor Mexico that they might be facing big tariffs if they don’t start enforcing their own immigration law? That, somehow, is bad news for us. That’s not good. That’s “weaponization of tariffs.” Anyway, this guy says what he says, and Trump called into the show. Joe Kernen says, “You got to see a part of the interview, Mr. President, of Mr. Brilliant, who was on from the Chamber of Commerce. What did you make of it? Or what were the points that you had a problem with that he was trying to make there?”
KERNAN: (laughing)
THE PRESIDENT: Look, without tariffs, we would be captive to every country, and we have been for many years. That’s why we have an $800 billion trading deficit for years. We lose a fortune with virtually every country. They take advantage of us in every way possible, and the U.S. Chamber is right there with them. And I assume — and I’m a member of the U.S. Chamber. Maybe I’ll have to rethink that, because when you look at it, the Chamber is probably more for the companies and the people that are members than they are for our country.
KERNAN: (interrupting)
THE PRESIDENT: He’s not protecting our country. He’s doing a very big disservice. And frankly, I’ve never had support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because they know where I stand on these things. I don’t need money. I don’t care how things are. The only thing I care about is our country, and he’s protecting all of those companies.
RUSH: Right. That’s a pretty good summation of who Myron Brilliant is (“not so brilliant”) and what Myron Brilliant is doing. These guys just confound me, actually. You know, we were all raised to… In our generation, we were raised to believe in the decency and the goodness of the United States. To be confronted, as we grew up, with the realization that the people running the country do not see it that way, see it as the problem? That was one of the toughest things for me to digest.
It was one of the toughest things for me to learn and to accept as I grew older. Now it’s been so drilled into my head, and I understand it now so instinctively, it’s just frustrating as it can be. And these people have had their way for so long. All it takes is one genuinely Make America Great Again guy, one pro-America guy. The idea that pro-America is somehow exclusionary? The idea that Make America Great Again means something bad for the world? How do you think this way?
What must you think of your own country, if you think America as a great nation is a problem? And I’m not gonna go down the road of saying all these people are communists, ’cause they’re not. That… You don’t have to be a communist to think this way. You can be just short of that. You can be a mind-numbed leftist. There’s no label answer to this. It’s the way these people have been trained. These people have been found and put in government, and it’s just frustrating as it can be.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Jill in Plymouth, Michigan. It’s great to have you with us. Hi.
CALLER: Absolutely mega dittos, Rush, from the Wolverine State.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve been watching you since your Phil Donahue interview.
RUSH: Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho. (laughing)
CALLER: I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this guy is just wonderful.” So just wanted to say that. Mega dittos.
RUSH: You know what Phil Donahue said to me before that show, before we taped that show? Actually, it was live. You know what he said to me? “Now, look, you gotta let me get a word in. It’s my show.”
CALLER: (laughing) That sounds about right.
RUSH: “Just remember, you gotta let me get a word in. This is my show. Don’t forget that.” That’s what he said to me, right before we went on and started the thing.
CALLER: Well, you were great, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you. I forgot… I don’t even remember what happened on that show. But I will accept, with great gratitude, your compliment. Thank you.
CALLER: Anyway, I want to ask you what happened to the Chamber of Commerce? It used to be conservative. It used to be for, like, the smaller stores and for tiny towns. I remember in the eighties and even in the nineties, it was much more conservative than it is now. What happened to the Chamber of Commerce, and how did these people win?
But the left went in and simply took it over via staffing and changed its ideology. Same thing with the Rockefeller foundation and any number of these other foundations. What happened to ’em? They get taken over by leftists. Leftists get involved in the organization, put in their time — run for office as vice president, president, board of directors, what have you — and they slowly and surely take it over. And the Chamber of Commerce now is sort of a collection agency for major donors that advance an agenda that is associated with, probably, the major corporate sector rather than the mom-and-pop sector that you are talking about.
And they have become more “citizens of the world” than they have become citizens of the United States. They’re part of this outfit that’s globalist in their outlook and so forth, and now the Chamber of Commerce… They’re still recognized as a Republican-favoring agency, but you have to go issue by issue if you really to want determine that. For example, on amnesty, they’re all for it. You can’t distinguish the Chamber of Commerce from the Democrat Party on that issue. Amnesty for illegal immigrants. The reason for it, ostensibly, that they will even cop to, is cheap labor.
Cheap labor is one of the primary objectives of businesses, according to these people, and labor is the single biggest cost of any business, and controlling labor costs and knowing what they’re going to be… This is why union contracts are for so long, is businesses want to be able to calculate the number one expense and what it’s gonna be years and years out so that they can put together the rest of the balance sheet, P&L and all that. They have to factor in their number one cost: Labor.
And like all businesses, they want to spend as little as they can on everything that’s mandated, including labor. Which kind of flies in the face of what Americans think a free wage or fair wage is: You’ve gotta pay people enough that they’ve got money to spend to buy the products a corporation or a number of them are making, otherwise it’s all pointless. But there are political inroads that have been made into the Chamber of Commerce, and they’re no longer what your impression of them has always been.
And they’re not alone.
They just operate it.
Meanwhile, what are conservatives doing? (Snort!) Conservatives, if you can find ’em, are having debates in magazines and websites on, “What is conservatism?” and they’re not trying to implement any of it. They’re just arguing about what it is and who is one and who isn’t one and what kinds of conservatives are here, what kind of conservatism is there. All this is being done so that they can exclude some people that they don’t want to be conservative. So one side of the aisle is in this so-called intellectual debate over what conservatism is, while the left is actually infiltrating institutions and organizations, and slowly trying to take them over and shape them into their own political image.
And the Chamber has had, in large part… Now, not everybody in the Chamber is gone. Don’t misunderstand. But all you have to know is the Chamber’s position on illegal immigration and amnesty to get an idea of how they have changed — and remember, they’re a collection agency. They’re huge donors. This is one of the reasons why so many Republicans are for amnesty, because the donors are.
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