RUSH: We are honored to welcome back to our program the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence. Welcome back, sir. Great to have you here with us today.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Great to be back. Great to be here on Open Line Friday. You know, I’m a longtime listener, Rush, and it’s a great to join you from the White House.
RUSH: I saw you on TV the other night. You were on with Sean Hannity, and I thought you were fantastic in your ability to define Kamala Harris and do it factually and reasonably, because, Mr. Vice President — to my expert and practiced political analyst eye — it appears they’re gonna try to convert here into something that she’s not, some pragmatist or centrist moderate, in order attract suburbanites and women.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: (chuckles)
RUSH: How are you going to reposition her? Are you gonna let that stand and deal with her in different ways? How are you going to deal with her, ’cause they’re gonna do everything they can to keep Biden in the basement. They don’t want him coming out. She’s going to be the voice, if you will, the face of the campaign for the foreseeable future. That’s gonna be on you.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I was in Iowa yesterday and said then what I said the other night on television, Rush, which is I think the selection of California liberal Senator Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate simply confirms everything President Trump and I have been saying about Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. I mean, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left.
And their agenda is higher taxes, socialized medicine, open borders, abortion on demand, and cutting or defunding — or, as Kamala Harris said not long ago, “reimagining” — police. And we’re just gonna lay that out, compare that to President Trump’s agenda and record of the last 3-1/2 years of rebuilding our military, cutting taxes, fighting for free and fair trade, rolling back regulation, appointing conservatives to our courts at every level, building more than 250 miles of border wall, standing for the right to life for our religious liberties.
And as I did yesterday in a barn surrounded by law enforcement officers in Iowa, we’re gonna continue to stand without apology for the men and women of law enforcement at every level.
RUSH: When she was introduced, she had one of the biggest whoppers that I’ve heard in politics, and that’s saying something. She started blaming the president — and by extension, you — for destroying some magically great economic expansion started by Obama. I mean, it’s proof that she’ll say whatever they put on the teleprompter for her to say.
See, those are the kind of things that, if I were you, I would be blowing a gasket. You have to keep your cool about it. But that’s just an out-and-out, over-the-top lie, and you wonder when you hear this. Are the American people going to figure this out on their own, or are we gonna have to educate them about this?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the American people… The American people know the facts. You know, in many ways sometimes I listen to — I listen to liberals like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and I’m reminded of what Groucho Marx said, which is, you know, “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” (chuckling) The American people saw under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, we had the slowest recovery over those eight years in any period of time since the Great Depression.
In fact, the reality is because of the foundation of President Trump and our administration poured in our first three years — of less taxes, less regulation, more American energy, free and fair trade — we’ve actually seen this economy in the last three months add more Americans back to work, add more jobs to this economy — in three months — than Joe Biden and Barack Obama saw created over their entire eight-year period of time.
RUSH: That’s incredible.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The American people see what this president has done. It’s a pathway toward economic recovery. That’s why I said in Iowa yesterday, you know, we’re gonna continue to work every day to make sure that we have the testing, that we have the personal protective equipment, that we’re developing the medicines, that we’re driving relentlessly toward a vaccine, to that day when we put this coronavirus in the past.
But as we open up America, work to open up America’s schools, the other thing we have to do before the end of this year to make sure that we bring this economy all the way back and then some, is reelect President Donald Trump for four more years. Because you look at their agenda, the agenda of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I mean, it’s amazing to think that as the American people are standing back up…
More than nine million Americans have gone back to work since the coronavirus pandemic struck our country from China. They’re actually planning to raise taxes by $4 trillion. They want to impose a $2 trillion version of the Green New Deal on the American economy. Add to that all the rest of their Big Government agenda. It just… It makes it very, very clear: To bring this economy back, we gotta make sure to reelect President Donald Trump.
RUSH: Mr. Vice President, I want to ask you a question here that is gonna try to capitalize on your vast lifetime experience in retail politics. I agree with everything you just said, and as far as many informed people are concerned, there’s no contest between who has the better economic agenda, who’s got the better economic record, who’s got the better economic performance.
But you’ve run for election and reelection countless times. And you are well aware of the things that determine how people vote. And right now, people are nervous. They’re very frightened over the status of the virus, of the economy. Are we going to back to school? College football isn’t gonna play. The NFL and sports is not what it is.
How do you campaign in circumstances like this in which people might be saying to themselves, “We just want to change things up. This is just not going well right now. No matter who’s in charge, no matter how much we like them, we just need to change things up because this is just too unpredictable and…” How do you fight that, the actual conditions and circumstances on the ground at the time of your campaign?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, you know, my second favorite president is Abraham Lincoln. I’ve got a portrait of him here in my office —
RUSH: I’ve seen it.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: — dating back to the days of his administration. Abraham Lincoln said it well. He said, “Give the people the facts, and the republic will be safe.” The facts are that because of what this president did when he suspended all travel from China and stood up the White House coronavirus task force — and a week later, when we get the coding for the coronavirus, we began a relentless drive toward developing a vaccine.
Because of this president’s leadership we saw the manufacture and the distribution of hundreds of millions of medical supplies. No American who’s ever required a ventilator has been denied a ventilator. We now are distributing Remdesivir; we’re developing convalescent plasma. There are hundreds of new medicines that are going through the FDA process, and I believe — and I just finished a White House coronavirus task force meeting.
I believe that we may well have a vaccine for the coronavirus for the American people before the end of this year. I think presenting all of those facts to the American people — making sure that we continue to advance the policies that are seeing our country open up again, that we continue to support efforts by governors to get kids back to school again…
It’s those results, it’s the facts, it’s the record I believe that will not just… It will not just win the day in this election, but I believe it will continue to build the confidence of the American people that we’re opening up again. We’re opening up our schools again. We’re doing everything in our power with this whole-of-America response. And the day will come someday — I pray soon — that we put the coronavirus in the past.
RUSH: Yeah. I think the job that you all are doing is yeoman. It is — if you actually succeed in securing a vaccine, heck, even if it were in the first quarter of next year, that’s record, that’s record fast, that’s record speed. We’ve never had a vaccine for something so complicated and complex as this virus that rapidly. If you’re able to pull that off, that’s gonna be just amazing.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Rush, when I — and you’re very kind to say “the job that you are doing.” And I give full credit to this president for his strong leadership from the first days that we heard about the coronavirus. I mean, remember Joe Biden criticized President Trump’s decision to suspend all travel from China literally the day that he did it and then repeatedly criticized it over a period of months. It would be months later that he would even concede the fact that what the president had done was right.
No president in American history had ever suspended travel from another country, let alone from the second largest country and economy in the world. But President Trump did it because he always puts the interests of America first, always puts the health of America first. But I will tell you as the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, when the president did that, Rush, it bought us an invaluable amount of time to stand up the American response. We were able to reinvent testing. Now more than 70 million tests have been performed all across the country. That’s, I think, more than six times more than any other country in the world.
RUSH: It’s astounding.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We saw companies across the country, like GE Healthcare, and Ford, and General Motors, repurpose entire manufacturing lines to build ventilators. We saw companies repurpose their factories to create masks and gloves and face shields. You know, there’s only one way to describe this response. Add to that the medicines, add to that to your point, Rush, vaccines usually take years and years and years —
RUSH: Yeah.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: — to develop, and then they take longer than that to manufacture. Under this president, we’re in Phase Three clinical trials with multiple promising coronavirus vaccines. And that’s all happened in just a little more than half a year. And most remarkably at the president’s direction, we’re already manufacturing the vaccines so that as soon as one of these is determined to be completely safe and effective, we will have tens of millions of doses of this vaccine to distribute to the American people on Day One.
I sum it all up, Rush, as just saying, as the other side, as most of your major cable television networks focus on any negative fact that they can ever find out there, that I couldn’t be more proud of the way not only this president has led, but the way the American people have responded. Only in America could we have met this moment the way we have met it. And we’re gonna continue to work 24/7 until the day comes we put this coronavirus in the past, a testament to the president. But, Rush, as you know and your millions of listeners across America —
RUSH: Millions and millions and millions, yes, they’re all out there.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Millions and millions, I’m telling you, Rush, I hope everyone in the sound of my voice sees this as a national accomplishment. It’s what we’ve done together. We grieve for the loss of the more than 160,000 Americans who’ve lost their lives. We pray for them and for their families. We’re gonna continue to work our hearts out to save lives and protect the vulnerable.
But from the outset of this I’m absolutely convinced that because of this president’s leadership, because of governors we worked with around the country, our incredible health care workers, first responders, and the cooperation of the American people, I believe that we have saved lives across this country and we have responded to this coronavirus pandemic in a way that’s made a fundamental difference in the life of this nation.
RUSH: Mr. Vice President, I know you gotta go. I just need to say one thing. Your entire appearance here, and I don’t mean to be presumptuous here at all, but your entire appearance has been exactly what is needed. You have had facts. You’ve got the facts on your side. You have recited the facts in an understandable, persuadable way.
You own the good news in everything that’s happened. You own the good news on the economy. You own the good news on dealing with the unrest in the streets of America, on the pandemic. And you’ve got the facts on your side. There’s nobody better at reciting them as you just did in this appearance. It’s awe-inspiring and confidence inspiring. And I’m glad to have had you here to hear it today.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Rush. I’m very humbled by that and so grateful. I know the president is as well, for the support and the prayers of your millions and millions and millions —
RUSH: And millions and millions —
THE VICE PRESIDENT: — and God bless you.
RUSH: We have a lot of prayers for you, sir, and everybody in the administration. Thank you again for making time for us. We always appreciate it.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: Vice President Mike Pence.
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