RUSH: Wes in Russellville, Arkansas. Great to have you, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Dittos. Oh, man, what an honor. I can’t believe I’m talking with you.
RUSH: Well, thank you very much. It’s great to have you here.
CALLER: Well, thank you. As a retired Air Force vet — and I have a son, me and my wife have a son who lost a leg in Afghanistan — let me say thank you for all the things that y’all have done so quietly and behind the scenes for veterans. I know. So, please, take my “thank you” for that. But you know, you’ve been known as the Congress-maker back in ’94 where you made the House of Representatives.
So what they did was the Fairness Doctrine and all those things that they did to you. They thought you would do what they normally see, and you’d just back off and back down. Well, no. You’re the person that when they try and take you down, you thrive. You do great things. You go way above and beyond those things. Well, they used that blueprint on all of our presidents since, and they would back down. Well, you made this president, Mr. Trump.
RUSH: Ehhh… (uncomfortable sigh)
CALLER: He does exactly like you do. He doesn’t back down. I don’t see this as being a blemish on his record. I think he’s gonna take it as a badge of honor. But had it not been for you and what you started in the late eighties and early nineties and through the aughts, they would have never — we would have never — had a president that would have stood up to these folks. Does that make sense?
RUSH: Yeah. I mean, it does, and I appreciate it very much. I don’t talk about specifically the things the left has done to try to damage me — some would say destroy me — because I’ve always thought it would sound like complaining, and I never complain. I don’t, ’cause I don’t know how to deal with other people who do complain, and I try not to whine about it.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I just don’t. But I can share some insights with you if you want. In the first place, Trump got himself elected. I appreciate your compliment there, but nobody voted for me. They voted for him. Don’t take that away from him. He’s the one who won.
CALLER: Oh, by all means.
RUSH: But you’re right about the attempts to undermine and destroy. That’s how I recognize them. That’s how I know how to withstand them. That’s how I’m confident they can be beaten. That’s why I get so frustrated with Republicans that cave to it, because it’s not necessary to cave to it. You can beat it back. Now, getting an audience on radio is different than getting votes. I understand that. Like, you can have a very large audience with 20 or 30% of them hating your guts. You can’t get elected being hated.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: But you can have a huge career being hated by 20 or 30% of the audience. In fact, we call that perfect polarization. There’s even a name for it in media. Not that I strive for it. But you said that Trump will wear this as a badge of honor. Let me tell you what I think — and I haven’t spoken to him yet about this, but here’s how I think this affected him. Donald Trump is as normal a human being as you will ever meet, and in that I mean he wants to be liked and he wants to be appreciated.
But if he’s not, it isn’t gonna stop him from doing what he thinks is best or needs to be done. Now, I’ll guarantee you this is a dichotomy for him, because no president wants to be impeached. Nobody wants that on the historical legacy or record. But psychologically, he is going to have to look at that as a sign of success. That’s not normal. It is not normal to take negative things that are said about you and transfer them internally to signs of success.
Nobody is raised that way. But in order to survive in this league or in this atmosphere, those are the kind of things you have to do. So I guarantee you, he’s not happy that he was impeached, and he’s not running around throwing parties for it. But at the same time, he understands exactly what it means. It’s happened because he’s so effective that they can’t stop him — and so it’s ultimately a positive. You’re right. But it’s not a badge of honor.
It’s not something he wishes would happen. It’s something he wishes didn’t happen. He wishes — because he loves the country — that everybody that doesn’t like him did. He wishes that everybody — and just like I do. I wish everybody understood exactly what I’m saying here. I wish everybody agreed with me, because all I want is for everybody to find their dream, to be successful, to at least access the opportunity that it is — the blessing that we all have — to live in this country.
I hate these people that try to depress people — dispirit them, tell them they have no chance, tell them they have no hope — and then blame people like me for it. It’s frustrating like I can’t describe for you. And then the efforts that they mount, like what they did to Kavanaugh. I’ve been through all of these things, multiple times. They are all a sign of effectiveness, and that’s how you have to learn to deal with ’em psychologically. It’s something the left does not have to do.
They don’t have to learn to deal with this kind of thing. They don’t. It’s not a level playing field in that regard. I mean, Democrat elected officials, they thrive and survive only on the fact that they’re universally adored and loved. They couldn’t deal with what Trump gets every day. There’s not… Look at Pelosi. One little question about, “Do you hate the president?” and she shuts it down and walks off the stage and starts admonishing them.
Meanwhile, Trump is accused of hating everybody every day. He’s accused of being a white supremacist. He’s accused of being a pig. He’s accused of being all these things that he’s not. And he knows he’s not, and his family knows he’s not, which is the strength. And everybody in the world who knows him knows he’s none of these things. An increasing number of the American people figure it out as time goes by that he’s none of these things.
But they’re still said, and they are said as a political weapon designed to diminish his effectiveness and hopefully make him want to give up and quit. That’s what they miscalculate about him. That’s not who he is. That will never happen, and he’ll do whatever he can to force all of this right back down their throats and make them pay a price for treating him this way, for doing this to him — and he’ll do it within the political arena.
He’ll do it as best he can. But I appreciate your assessment of me and the program. I’m thinking about what happened to Kavanaugh. What’s the best example I could give? Let me think. I’m up against a break here. Well, there are too many to single one out, plus I’ve gotta take the break.
Does one come to your mind off the top of your head where I was totally blasphemed and lied about and misrepresented? (interruption) Oh, okay. When I was a very minority member in an ownership group that wanted to buy the St. Louis Rams, the moment that leaked out, there were stories all over the media that were totally manufactured, such as, the big quote that circulated and found its way into every major newspaper in this country, it was headlined on ESPN that I had said slavery was a period of time where blacks were better off than they are today and it wasn’t that bad or some such, something I’d never said.
Media Matters had reported that I said it. Some guy wrote a book chock-full of lies, things that I had said. The media, not one of them called me to say, “Did you really say that?” They just ran with it. And that was just one of the misrepresentations and lies that they ran with. And it’s been a staple. These are the kind of things that you have to say — Trump same thing — you have to say to yourself, “These are happening because you represent a threat. They’re happening because you’re effective. They’re happening because you pose a danger to people, and they can’t find a way to get rid of you, so they’re doing this.”
And for me it was a very tough psychological transition, to learn to take that kind of hate as a sign of success, ’cause that’s not how I was raised. I mean, I don’t know anybody that’s raised that wants to be hated, and it’s not normal, it’s not natural, so you have to cross the psychological barrier in order to keep it from overtaking you and — not ruining you, but changing your personality so that you become what they say you are. You can’t let that happen. Gotta stay who you are.
And Trump — I’ve not seen anybody — I don’t think there is anybody, I’ve never seen anybody get this amount of incoming grief, the lies, the misrepresentations, the outright slander and libel. And I don’t know of anybody alive who could take it for as little as three or four days before asking and begging, “Stop. Stop. I’ll quit if you want. Just stop.”
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