RUSH: Well, that was one heck of a Christmas break. And I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back here. I’ve had to revise my opinion of Twitter. Yes, I have. I’ll explain it in a minute.
So what happened? The president kills a well-known terrorist who is responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, including uniformed military personnel, and the left melts down. The left has a breakdown. If anybody is puzzled by this, all you have to do is go back to when Trump came down the escalator on June 15th of 2016 and announced his slogan Make America Great Again. Remember how controversial that was?
Make America Great Again, what’s controversial about that? What in the world is controversial about America first? But it is to the American left. And therein lies the explanation for all this. Of course, I’m gonna break it down into many, many details for you.
Great to be back, folks. Happy to have you with us. The telephone number, 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
As I watch this display, as I watch the left melt down over the death of a genuine enemy of the people of this country and side with an enemy nation over their own country and president, I wonder how many Americans, independents, what have you, who are on the fence see this and are shocked and surprised by it. I do because you never know the depth that the mainstream media succeeds in achieving in terms of persuading people.
You might find this hard to believe, folks, but I have found over the course of my stellar, big broadcast career, I’ve said things about — just take your pick. I’ve said something and I’ve pounded it for 10, 15 years. And people have heard it for 10, 15 years. And they hear it from somebody else. “My God, Rush must be right.”
In other words, everybody needs verification, or a lot of people need verification. Well, one of the missions of this program since its inception has been the attempt and the objective to inform everybody ideologically who the left is, who liberals are, what liberalism is, how it becomes indistinguishable from socialism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, I mean, it’s unmistakable who these people are, and they are the ones making it well known.
Nobody has to tell anybody what the American left is or what the modern-day Democrat Party is because they are out there informing everybody. You see where Iran has announced it will no longer abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Obama? Kind of like Bill Clinton announcing he’s no longer gonna abide by his marriage vows. I mean, big deal. Anybody shocked, Iran — they never have abided by the — in fact, they may have because the terms of the deal freed them to go ahead and develop nuclear weapons, nuclear power and all of this.
Look. Let me take a stab. I’m late to this issue. The story’s been around since late last week. Let me take a stab at explaining this. Oh, and, by the way, folks, I need to tell you, I have some kind of — it’s a weird thing. I never had this before. A little respiratory cold. I don’t have a stuffed nose or throat or any of that. It’s kind of like asthma. I had asthma when I was a kid, shortness of breath. So if I speak a little slower, that’s why. Don’t be distracted by it. I’ll try to not make it distracting.
Why is the left being so blatant in their support for an enemy nation? Why is the left, why is the Democrat Party going out of its way to tell everybody that they actually prefer the mullahs in Iran and this dead terrorist, Qassem Soleimani. By the way, this guy — and I have the inside track on how they did it, which I will share with you — I mean, the military operation, I have the inside track on how this was done. It is amazing, and as ironic as it sounds, we may have to really, really praise the intelligence community for pulling this off.
Now, why is the left beside themselves? I think — and there are many reasons for this, by the way, and all of them I’ve discussed before, and in terms of what may be guiding this in a specific sense, I think as much as the case is the modern-day Democrats, it’s about protecting the legacy of the Obama administration and Obama himself and the Obama foreign policy.
To many conservatives and many Republicans, Reagan is the president of all time, the president of presidents and no matter what kind of assaults or attacks on him they’re going to be answered and defended. And I think to the left — you know, it used to be Clinton — I actually now think it’s Obama — that must be protected above all things, must be shielded against all attempts. It was the Obama administration that ran the coup on Trump, and it went all the way to the Oval Office. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind.
Pelosi, by the way, still hasn’t sent the articles of impeachment over. Josh Hawley, senator from Missouri, says he’s gonna offer a resolution to just dismiss the charges because she won’t send the articles over, and nobody knows when she’s gonna send ’em over. She’s trying to, again, persuade people to reopen the case in the Senate for more witnesses. But I think she may be waiting for Durham.
She may be waiting for the Durham report, even if that’s six months from now, and use the articles being sent to the Senate to blunt whatever bad news might be coming down the pike for the Democrats. Durham could be one thing predictable, could be something we don’t know about. But let me explain this Obama business as a way of explaining how the left is imploding on this. You know, it has been fashionable…
Actually, it’s not been fashionable to call them anti-American. But there’s a reason I asked the question, “What in the world is so controversial about Make America Great Again?” Do you realize that phrase sent them into apoplexy? Make America Great Again or America First sends them into a nosedive, into a tizzy. What in the world…? To normal, decent, common citizen Americans, what in the world is controversial about that: Make America Great Again?
The answer is very simple. There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party that don’t think America ever has been great, do not think America can be great (because of our founding), don’t believe America deserves to be great and, in fact, thinks America’s guilty — and they have now become the mainstream media of the Democrat Party. Madeleine Albright. Madeleine Albright is teaching at Georgetown University.
One of the things that she teaches students is that the United States is nothing but an accident of timing and events, that there’s nothing special about the United States, that there certainly is nothing exceptional about the United States, that it was just an accident. It just happened, a confluence of events. People fleeing the dictatorship of the king in Great Britain, any number of other things. Forces beyond anybody’s control brought these events together and a nation was created, but it’s just an accident.
And, therefore, there’s nothing really unique about it. There’s nothing special about it. There’s nothing noteworthy about it. Now, Madeleine Albright… You might also remember that when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union imploded, that Madeleine Albright was very alarmed that that left the United States as the only superpower in the world — and that was not good. Because, you see, the concept of America as the good guys does not exist in today’s Democrat Party and the worldwide left.
Do not doubt me on this. There is no concept of America as the good guys. That’s why Make America Great Again is so offensive to them. America is not the good guys. America needs to be cut down in size. America needs to be limited. America needs to be guarded against. So Madeleine Albright’s out there teaching young skulls full of mush there’s nothing special about America — it’s just a coincidence, just an accident — and that the United States as a singular superpower is a destabilizing element in the world.
Okay, that brings us forward. She was secretary of state, among other things, for Bill Clinton. She has views which are common in the modern-day left, and they are common in the American government. They’re common in the American establishment. That view, that America alone as a superpower is destabilizing is a view widely held in the civil service throughout the State Department. It’s not an obscure view. It’s not a minority view. It took me a long time to learn this, long time to believe it, long time to understand it, long time to accept it.
It’s a tough thing to accept. You grow up in your own country, you take civics, you go to school when you’re a young kid. You’re taught about the founding of the country. You’re aware of how unique and exceptional America is. Then you discover that people in your own government don’t buy it, don’t believe it, don’t think it — in fact, think just the exact opposite? It’s a tough thing to believe. A lot of people don’t want to believe it.
A lot of people don’t want to accept that in our own government, there are people who do not believe in the goodness of the United States, the concept of America as the good guys. But you’re looking at it! In every bit of this opposition to what Trump has done, you’re seeing it. If you don’t want to believe me, do not deny what you’re seeing, do not deny what you’re reading. They hate that Trump did this for a host of reasons. They hate that Trump succeeded at it, in a political sense. They hate that Trump has done damage to the Obama foreign policy.
Now, the reason I mention Madeleine Albright was because Obama was of the same view. Do you know what Obama’s policy in Iran was? Aside from giving them nukes. But what was the motivation for it? Obama had the same view of the Middle East that he and Madeleine Albright and all the rest of them have of the United States. The Middle East was destabilized when only Israel was an economic and military power. One of the reasons the Obama — and there are many.
One of the reasons the Obama administration entered into the Iran deal, one of the reasons that they engaged Iran, one of the reasons that Obama dropped off $150 billion in cash on the tarmac in Tehran — and don’t think that some of it didn’t get to Qassem Soleimani. A lot of it did. They knew who the guy was! The Obama people knew who the guy was. They were making deals with this guy. They knew exactly who he was. Obama believed that empowering Iran would stabilize the Middle East, provide a counterbalance to Israel.
Because once again, the Israelis are not seen as the good guys, even though they are a United States ally. And, by the way, there many reasons why people like Obama, Susan Rice and Madeleine Albright and all the rest would not see Israel as the good guys. There are religious reasons. They are geopolitical reasons, strategic reasons, racial reasons. I mean, there’s all kinds of reasons for it. But regardless, Israel is the problem in the Middle East. The United States is the problem in the world at large.
So policies must be developed and implemented to blunt the bad-guy nature of the United States and the bad-guy nature of Israel. And so there’s Obama and his administration funneling money to the mullahs, enabling them to modernize, going through the motions of sanctions which were not really sanctions. It wasn’t until Trump came along that all of that changed and the American left looks at Donald Trump as many things.
But one of the things they see is an assault on Obama, an assault on Obama’s foreign policy, an effort and an attempt to unravel and unwind it — and they’re right. Trump is unwinding it, unraveling a horrible Middle Eastern policy from the Obama administration. I foretold this! I have a sound bite I want to play for you from the summer of 2018.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to the audio sound bites. I’ve got just enough time to squeeze this in. Audio sound bite number 17, July 23, 2018. I told everybody way back then how Trump’s Iran policy was going to be different.
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: The Drive-Bys are now obsessed for the moment with Trump and his all-caps tweets to President Rouhani of Iran who is continuing to shout, “Death to America!” here and “Death to America!” there, and Trump’s had it. You know, Trump is not like other presidents who say, “Well, you know, that’s just Iran and that’s part of what we have to do being a superpower. And, you know, to show Iran we don’t intend ’em any harm, here’s $150 billion direct from the Obama administration,” along with a stupid deal to help them ratchet up their nuclear program.
Trump looks at this and is appalled by it, as anybody with any common sense would be. The only people not appalled by it are people working inside the Beltway in Washington who think this is somehow new diplomacy or maybe standard-practice diplomacy. But it’s part and parcel of being a superpower…
I mean, that kind of inane thinking is what guides America inside the Beltway. And so letting Iran run amok, letting Iran continue to be the state sponsor of terrorism, undermine Middle East peace, however they wish to — and become the No. 1 Middle Eastern ally of Russia — Donald Trump says, “No. You’re gonna start threatening us?” Trump caps-tweets back, ‘You keep doing this and you’re gonna suffer consequences the likes of which you have never even contemplated.’ Of course, they need the vapors inside the Beltway.
END ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: So what do we glean from this? This is July 2018. It’s January 2020 right now. It’s a year and a half ago. Trump has simply followed through with what he told the Iranians he was gonna do. This guy, Qassem Soleimani, hits the Saudi oil fields. Trump bides his time. He’s a man of his word. They don’t know how yet to react to that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I love it, all these leftist hand wringers out there, the think tank liberal scholars wringing their hands, saying, “Oh, I wish somebody had spent more time warning the president about the day after, and the day after the day after, because the president is reacting here very, very recklessly and I don’t think he had any idea of what the blowback would be” These people… Folks, if we ever end up with these people having absolute control and power over this country, they are gonna give it away.
They’re gonna give it away under the premise that America deserves to be chopped down hugely in size. I mean, it’s not hard to understand this at all. The concept that America is the good guys, they just don’t believe it. And that attitude and that view has been taught to way too many people now starting at the earliest ages, the earliest levels of formal education — and it stinks. It is pathetic. I also have a challenge here. We don’t…
Three hours goes back very quickly, and I’ve got an audio sound bite roster here of 40 sound bites, and the first 15 are about me. Now, you know I don’t like to make this program about me, but many of these sound bites were about me during the break — and, of course, I came in for lots and lots of criticism, improperly and unfairly influencing the president with “secret lunch meetings” that were not secret.
I was maligned and impugned by Chuck Todd, a blithering political idiot on NBC News, and then we have all of the news that’s been made in addition to stuff dealing with me. So it’s gonna be a challenge to get it all in. We also have — exactly two hours from now — the president himself will be here, President Trump at 2:33 Eastern Time this afternoon, barring something happening between now and then that would require him to have to cancel because his attention’s needed elsewhere.
So that is all coming up. Grab some of these sound bites. I want… Let’s see. Let’s do Petraeus. 18, 19, and 20 just to give a flavor to the things I mentioned in the opening two monologues. Here’s David Petraeus yesterday on Face the Nation talking about the death of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian Quds Force commander. Here’s what he said…
PETRAEUS: It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the attack that takes out Qassem Soleimani, and the number two militia leader in Iraq as well, who also never dared to set foot in Iraq during the surge after we missed him and he escaped. So this is bigger than bin Laden. It’s bigger than Baghdadi.
RUSH: “…bigger than bin Laden… bigger than Baghdadi.” Now, isn’t it interesting that when we went out and we got bin Laden, there was no liberal hand-wringing from the left and from all of their think tank scholars (sniveling), “Gee, I wish somebody had told President Obama about the day after, and the day after the day after. I’m so worried about the destabilizing effects of taking out bin Laden.” None of that. There was no concern whatsoever.
There was nothing but praise, and we got the pictures of Hillary Clinton and Obama sitting in The Situation Room in their official military jackets watching the operation take place. And we were told how brilliant they are and how brave they are, how courageous they are. How they stuck to it! They finally tracked down bin Laden and bin Laden was now histoire, room temperature. Now, this happens and, of course, it’s predictable.
You want all this talk about politics ending at the water’s edge? Politics ending at the water’s edge? Joe Lieberman has a piece in the Wall Street Journal reminding Democrats (paraphrased), “What the hell are you doing? You’re siding with enemies of this country,” and there’s nothing new about that. This is why I’m grateful Twitter exists… today. There’s nothing new about today’s left and the Democrat Party siding with America’s enemies, particularly with Donald Trump.
But they did it when Bush was in the White House as well. You remember when Bush was running the War on Terror and the Iraqi war, they were out talking about the “atrocities” being committed by the American Marines — Abu Ghraib and Haditha — and it was horrible. These people just couldn’t wait to savage the United States and the United States military, and they are so misreading this situation. Biden’s out making an abject fool of himself.
You know what he said? Before this even happened, Biden goes into I guess it was western Pennsylvania, some coal mining region (which he admits, like Obama, that he’s gonna destroy all to save the planet). He says to these people (summarized), “Look, if you can go 30,000 feet down in a mine and bring back some of this ugly coal stuff, then, for crying out loud, you can learn to code, for God’s sake.” You notice Biden always ends statements with “for God’s sake,” God this, God that? “Oh, my God,” he says.
God figures in everything Biden says, either at the beginning or end of the sentence. Learn to code? That’s his solution to the miners? These guys, I’m telling you, have no idea. The Democrats have no idea the damage they’re doing to themselves in the very areas that Trump won in 2016. They are so insistent that Democrat voters adopt the same anti-American views that they hold as a way of getting elected president.
I don’t care what you say. We have not reached the point in America yet where a majority of the voters hates their country and wants to elect people who think and feel the same way. And yet that’s what the Democrats are doing. Why? Very simple. Because they think on the day they do win, they want that mandate. They want to be elected on the premise that America’s got problems, big problems.
America’s problems are America’s fault, America’s problems are because of America, and they want the mandate to be able to deal with country on this basis — and they’re creating a growing base of people filled with hate for any number of things including for their own country. We put together a montage of Democrats and the Drive-By Media siding with Iran over Trump from last Thursday and Friday.
MARIE HARF: This escalatory cycle right now is a direct result of President Trump.
BEN RHODES: …a very dangerous and escalatory moment.
CHRIS MURPHY: …very, very dangerous…
MAX ROSE: How dangerous of an escalation…?
JEFFREY SACHS: …escalation to war. It’s very dangerous. It makes no sense.
JAMES STAVRIDIS: …big escalation…
WESLEY CLARK: How do we get off the escalation ramp?
WENDY SHERMAN: There will be terrible, terrible reprisals.
FAREED ZAKARIA: …escalate against Iran. So, they started lashing out.
ANDREA MITCHELL: …a reckless act that could lead to dangerous reprisals.
MAX BOOT: This administration has a massive credibility gap because the president lies so much.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: This was the pride of Islam, and we have to avenge his death.
SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: All American citizens are now walking, prime targets.
MIKE MORRELL: There will be dead Americans — dead civilian Americans — as a result.
TULSI GABBARD: …this act of war without congressional authorization…
MARGARET BRENNAN: This is an act of war! That is why past presidents have stopped short of it.
RUSH: All right. Now, I’m not gonna give the names of the people there. Doesn’t matter. You can guess them yourselves. Have you noticed? Whenever the United States of America takes proactive action to defend itself or takes action to punish those who have committed atrocities against us, notice the reaction (sputtering), “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! This is escalation! Oh, my God. We’re all… We’re all in danger. Oh, my God. We…”
These are the appeasers. These are the people that will let atrocities continue. These are the people that will allow beheadings and terrorist acts to continue against Americans on the basis that reacting to it is somehow escalating things. Escalating? This guy blew up an oil depot in Saudi Arabia. Happens to be one of our allies. This guy has been responsible — I have a list of his atrocities that I’ll share with you as the program unfolds.
What I found interesting one of these voices here was Max Boot. Max Boot is part of the Never Trumper crowd that wants us in all these places conducting military operations. But just like the rest of the Never Trumpers here comes Trump doing what these people advocate, and they can’t even support that. They’ve got to sit here and talk about how Trump has a credibility gap because he lies so much.
But if you let these people run things, there will never be any serious defense of Americans or American interests because they believe to do so is to escalate. I’ll give you an example, I’ll give you an analogy. The first Gulf War with Saddam to liberate Kuwait. George H. W. Bush was the president. I will never forget Sam Donaldson on ABC News warning Americans that the end was near, that we had no business conducting a desert war because we were not qualified, we didn’t know how to win, how to conduct a desert war. Saddam, that’s his lair, that’s his natural habitat. Saddam was gonna wipe us out.
Sam Donaldson did a feature on the number of body bags that would be needed. The war was over in 18 hours with the vaunted desert rat army of Saddam Hussein surrendering and waving the white flag in a matter of six hours. And so these people haven’t changed. The U.S. is not able to win. All we’re doing is escalating. And the bad guys are far superior. And the bad guys are far smarter. And the bad guys are far more capable. And the bad guys are not gonna take this.
We have destroyed a fundamental war-making element of the Iranian government by taking this guy out. You’re not gonna see it anywhere in the news, but Iran has been leveled in a sense here strategically with the assuming of room temperature of Qassem Soleimani.
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