RUSH: Most of you can’t see it because the Drive-By Media is covering it up. Most of you can’t see it because the Drive-By Media is trying to hide it from you. Most of you can’t see it because many in the Drive-By Media don’t see it. And what’s happening out there is that Donald Trump is steamrollering the Democrat Party.

Donald Trump — it’s taken four days. It’s taken four days, but everybody’s now catching up to my theory four days ago that all of these tweets about these whack jobs are purposeful, and the intent behind them was to identify the Democrat Party with these four people as the face.

It has been a masterful project. It will never be categorized that. It will never be credited as that, particularly with both parties inside the beltway because this said to be so outside the norms of presidential behavior. You don’t give your opponents openings like this.

And it all still derives from the fact that all of these professional, lifetime career political people in media out and still do not understand what motivates, what propels Donald Trump, how he thinks strategically, how he acts, even though he’s the most transparent and open president in our lifetimes.

Just to illustrate my point, we have CBS This Morning, after Gayle King — and we’re gonna get to this, Gayle King, Oprah Juniorette interviews the four whack jobs — by the way, that term has been coined by Louisiana Senator John Kennedy to describe these — whatever you want to call them, the Ocasio-Cortez Squad, he’s calling them whack jobs. Gayle King interviewed them today to try to normalize them, and they went off the rails ’cause they can’t help it. It’s who they are.

And after that interview on CBS This Morning, the cohost in there went to Major Garrett, who is the chief Washington correspondent, said, “The president seems intent on making them as well-known as possible.” They’re starting to get it now. Everybody the last three days is thinking Trump has really stepped in it now. I said, “No, no, no, we are reliving that day Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015. The reaction is identical. Shock, dismay, disbelief, this guy’s toast, this guy’s history, he can’t possibly survive the week.”

You know the drill. What in fact he was doing was telling the American people who these four are ’cause the media isn’t gonna do it. He’s insulting them and drawing them out, making them respond. Then they start attacking Pelosi. Pelosi and Biden are racists, according to them. Trump is a racist. Everybody’s a racist. All you have to do to be one is disagree with them.

So Trump succeeds in creating the face of the Democrat Party in the image of these four women, these four freshmen. And they’re starting to get it at CBS. The question to Major Garrett: “The president seems intent to making them as well-known as possible. Could this be –” there’s panic here, by the way, with this question. Could this be, oh, my God. We’re just figuring this out. “Could this be a 2020 strategy?”

GARRETT: Yes. Read his tweets. This is not a person, on politics, who acts subtly or with nuance.

MASON: Yeah.

GARRETT: Read his tweets.

MASON: This is a very calculated move.

GARRETT: He has said they are now the face and the soul of the Democratic Party. Part of what he set in motion this weekend, he hoped, would be to force Democrats to circle the wagons around these four and say, “You see the Democratic Party is either socialist, radical,” the newest implication, “communist,” all these things built to do one thing for 2020. What’s that? Fill the vacuum left by Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was a very easy target for all Republicans to instantly, almost inflexibly…

MASON: Right.

GARRETT: …rally around. Who is that or what is that foil? The president’s trying to create that now.

RUSH: All right. Now, that’s arguable whether he’s trying to recreate Hillary Clinton in the image — I don’t think he has to recreate Hillary. These people can stand on their own. But the point is that they are now starting to figure it out. In four days, the pattern is the same. Trump does something so outside the norms they can’t believe it, they conclude, this is it, he’s finally stepped in it, he’s gotta apologize this time. If he doesn’t apologize this time, it’s over, he’s toast.

Trump doubles down. They double down in their demand for apology and their mock shock and outrage. Trump triples down, then day four and they start to get it. Have you noticed, ladies and gentlemen, a lack of polling about this? Do you know that if there were negative polls on this, we would have heard about ’em starting Monday night, and they would have been the lead item all day yesterday carrying into today.

Trump’s “go home” tweets. Where’s the polling data on ’em? You notice there isn’t any. I wonder why that is, folks? Could it be because the Drive-By Media isn’t getting the results they want? No matter how they phrase the questions, no matter how they stack the sample, no matter how they try to lead their subjects to water, they’re not getting the results they want. In fact, there is a poll however. (gasping) Yes indeed, folks, I have it right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.

It is a Reuters/Ipsos poll. “Support for U.S. President Donald Trump increased,” it went up, “among Republicans after he lashed out on Twitter over the weekend in a racially charged attack on four minority Democrat congresswomen.” He did not racially attack anybody. He didn’t even mention their names. They are the ones that are charging everybody with racism. They call Biden a racist because of his work with segregationist senators.

They call Pelosi a racist. Pelosi should have been censured from the House, not yesterday but last week! Because according to these whack jobs, she’s a racist! She “doesn’t respect women of color” like them! The House should have taken action to censure her last week! They even gave her a pass yesterday. You know, Pelosi was censured… (chuckles) Well, not censured but she was called out for calling the president a racist. House rules say she can’t do that.

The Drive-By Media… You won’t believe the stories on this! The Drive-By Media reported on the fact that it is against the rules in the House for any member to call the president a racist. The rule traces back to, as the Drive-By Media reports it, an original slave-owning founder. That’s how they’re reporting this. An original, slave-owning founder created the rule — and he was a Brit! A slave-owning founder who was also a Brit, created the rule. We’re talking about Thomas Jefferson.

These people are attacking Thomas Jefferson in the Drive-By Media! The author of the Declaration of Independence, for crying out loud! They’re attacking him now! You talk about brilliant maneuvering? The Democrat Party and their willing accomplices in the media are now attacking the founders of the country, and they are making plain what I’ve tried to get everybody to realize is happening: They are not trying to perfect or improve the country. They’re trying to rip it apart, tear it down, so they can rebuild it into this paradise that they dream about.

The Reuters/Ipsos “national survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Trump told the [whack jobs] they should ‘go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,’ showed his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by five percentage points to 72%, compared with a similar poll that ran last week.” Now, Reuters also adds that Trump’s support dropped 40 to 30% among the precious independents. They say that Trump’s support has dropped two points among Democrats since last week.

So what? So what? Trump’s not figuring on getting a whole lot of Democrat support here — and you want to start talking polling data of precious independents? Let’s not forget what they think of Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Precious independent swing voters give Omar 9% approval numbers, and Ocasio-Cortez 28%. But the bottom line here is, folks, that the strategy of the president’s is working. Here’s another media member that gets it.

This is Los Angeles Times’ John Healy, the deputy editorial page editor. Headline: “AOC and the Democrats Gave Trump the Fight He Was Looking For — President Trump is a gut-level politician who often seems to act on unfiltered impulse. But his string of recent tweets about the self-styled ‘Squad’ of liberal House Democrats feel calculated, not caffeinated. And, despite what a number of [Republican] pundits have argued, they were not politically stupid. Demeaning, offensive, nativist, unbecoming a president — yes [maybe] all that too.

“But Trump offends for a reason, and his motives for this latest fusillade of foulness are pretty obvious. In 2016, Trump could run against Washington and the elites who had failed to deliver for middle America. But now he is Washington, so he needs to find something else to run against. Granted, he talks up the economy incessantly, and there are plenty of Republicans who love him for the tax cuts and deregulation. There are many others on the right and in the middle, though, who wonder how much better we all would be doing with a more rational chief executive…

“So Trump wants to run against something scarier than he is, which is why he has been trying so hard for months to paint Democrats as radical socialists — or worse.” He hasn’t had to work hard at all, hasn’t had to try. All he’s had to do is point it out. He hasn’t created anything. These people are who they are. Trump has come along, and he has drawn them out. He has exacerbated ’em. He’s ticked ’em off. He’s made them shelve all of their masking and camouflage, and they’re now being open honest about who they are. It has not been hard.

“[H]e has been trying so hard for months to paint Democrats as radical socialists…” That misses the point. They are radical socialists! Trump hasn’t had to “paint” it. Trump just had to draw them out! Mr. Healy says, “That’s where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez et al come in. Trump wants the most liberal and controversial House members to become the face of the Democratic Party so he, the most disruptive and norm-violating president of modern times, will seem like the political equivalent of comfort food…” That’s not what Trump is doing!

These guys want you to believe that Trump’s sitting there in the White House being introspective. Trump does not… Do you know a lot of people who do nothing but think about themselves, and their place in the world, and what other people are thinking of them? That really isn’t Trump. Trump’s not sitting in the White House saying, “Boy, am I a whack job, and I’ve gotta find a way to make somebody look even wackier than I am.” That’s not who Donald Trump is.

Donald Trump’s not up in the Oval Office and he’s not up there with Melania and they’re not sitting up there talking about what an abnormal guy he is. He thinks he’s great! He thinks he’s the best ever! He’s not sitting there ripping himself a new one, being all introspective and pessimistic. He’s not got a psychological disorder where he can’t do anything but think about himself, at least in negative ways. So these people all think that because they realize Trump is an abnormal jerk, that he does.

And since Trump knows he’s an abnormal jerk, he’s gotta create even bigger abnormal jerks than he is! And so that’s what he’s doing. They’ve got the end result right, but they’ve got Trump’s motivation all wrong. Trump is not trying to make anybody appear weirder than he is! He’s trying to make these people show themselves as they are, and he is attempting to have everybody else realize that this is who they are. It’s not just these four. It’s the entire party.

It’s rather brilliant, and there’s not a single other Republican who could possibly do this who would even have the desire to strategically do it. You think John Kasich would ever try to engage in a program like this to illustrate to Democrats for who they really are, or Mitt Romney or McCain or any of the others? No. It’s about time this happened. It’s about time somebody took it to them. It’s about time the American people en masse got a taste and a picture of who these people are. But the idea that it’s happening because Trump knows he’s a whack job?

Trump knows he’s insane, Trump knows he’s a loose cannon, so he’s gotta find somebody who’s even insaner and a bigger loose cannon is just — as somebody said earlier this week — too clever by half. “So,” it says here, Trump “launched a sustained attack on the four Squad members knowing full well that Democrats would rally around them…” That sounds pretty smart to me. Some people might think that that was a big risk. Okay, you go after these whack jobs… Do you realize how Pelosi could have thwarted this?

It would have been real easy for Pelosi to throw these women overboard. It would have been really easy for Pelosi to say, “You know what? I’m the Speaker and they’re freshmen and they don’t speak for the caucus and they don’t speak for the Democrat Party. They haven’t done anything yet.” She could have done that and thwarted every attempt Trump is making here. But no. She decided that she had to try to mollify ’em. She decided that she had to sort of try to make them happy. So she goes to the well of the House.

She goes to the floor of the House and starts calling Trump a racist herself — and, believe me, this is not who Pelosi is. I mean, she might think it, but she knows it’s bogus. She knows that’s not true. You can come up with any kind of criticism you want of Trump you want, but that’s not valid. She’s doing that, she’s pandering to these whack jobs. That’s another brilliant move! Pelosi has been forced into pandering to these people to try to calm them down — and it isn’t gonna work, because they want her scalp.

They want her job.

They want her gone.

She’s as big a problem to them as Trump is.

There’s no way she can buy their love. There’s no way she can buy their support. These people, these four are off and running — and as far as they’re concerned, they are the face and the energy and the intellect of the Democrat Party. Nancy Pelosi may as well be Jurassic Park, may as well be a museum exhibit on the other side of the glass. You may stop and gaze a couple seconds as you walk to see the next dinosaur, but that’s about as much as she is. So she starts pandering to them, starts calling Trump a racist to try to get on their good side. This is classic, folks. It really is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to tell you about the woman that’s gonna primary Cortez. But here’s John Kennedy last night. He was on with Chatsworth Osborne Jr. on the Fox News Channel, and the question:

“The idea appears to be that if you call enough people racist, you can get elected president.” This is a reaction to Pelosi calling Trump a racist. Biden and all these other Democrat candidates are now chiming in, getting on board, calling Trump a racist. When Trump didn’t even… Stop and think of this. Trump didn’t even mention their names and yet they all four stood up and said, “It’s me he’s talking about!” He didn’t even mention their names much less their race and yet everybody knew who he was he was talking about.

So now the question is, “Is that how you win? If you’re a Democrat and you want to become president, you just call everybody a racist?”

KENNEDY: No. I don’t think President Trump is a racist. I don’t think his original tweet was racist. I’m not sure the president should exchange playground insults with them. You know, when you try to argue with a fool, that proves there are two. But the president decided to do so. The simple fact of the matter is that four congresswomen think that America was wicked in its origins; they think that America and its people are even more wicked now, that we are all racist and misogynistic and evil. They’re entitled to their opinion. They’re Americans. But I’m entitled to my opinion, and I just think they’re left-wing cranks, and they’re the reason that there are directions on a shampoo bottle. I think we should ignore them.

RUSH: “They are the reason [we have] directions on a shampoo bottle. I think we should ignore them.” John Kennedy, Republican, Louisiana.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Conrad in Hooker, Oklahoma. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Oh, thank you, Rush. It’s great to be on again. I’m a listener since ’88. Great to be with you.

RUSH: I appreciate that, Conrad, from Hooker.

CALLER: (chuckles) You know, these guys that called in yesterday are so wrong. I mean, we’ve already tried the “just any Republican” with Romney, with McCain. We don’t want that. The reason… They don’t even understand why Trump got elected. He just said in his tweets what I’ve been screaming for the last three elections: “If you don’t like the country, get the hell out.” I mean, we love America. We love hardworkin’ people. They just need to take off their vagina hats and stop marching.

RUSH: Well, actually, I think… You know, I know what you’re saying, and you’re right. The “love it or leave it,” “go home” bumper stickers have been around forever, proving again that it’s not racist. It’s just that people have been threatening to leave and we say, “Okay, go!” They never do! At any rate, I want to share with you a paragraph, because this idea that they don’t know what Trump is… There’s a part of them that does. Folks, they know what Trump is.

They know Trump is upsetting the norms that have been in play for decades. Trump’s threatening to overturn their world. Now, I have here… It’s interesting, you’re Conrad from Hooker. I have a Conrad Black piece here. He lives in Canada. I want to read a paragraph of his latest piece that addresses this. “Last week I wrote that the Democrats, who had been counting on the fatuity of treasonous Trump-Russia collusion, were now reduced to snobbery and myth-making, since they had no substantive arguments [against Trump] to make. That is true, but not the whole truth.

“Tens of millions of people in both parties loved the OBushinton declinism,” meaning, “[t]ens of millions of people … loved” the world order where America was in decline, “both the randomly militaristic version of George W. Bush and the feckless cult of national self-doubt of Obama. It worked for them, and since it was a bipartisan arrangement, they had no idea how vulnerable it was.” They were happy for America to be pickpocketed by lesser nations around the world because they erroneously believed this would keep us safe.

They were happy to be on the short end of trade deals because this made them feel less guilty about being a superpower. In his own words here, Conrad Black is echoing my description of the world order that the United States built in the postwar era after World War II that’s been in play and in existence since. Trump is threatening to blow it up, turn it upside down, obliterate it — and it has been the way of life for these people. It’s been the guaranteed future for their kids, for example. They know what Trump is, and they hate it.