RUSH: Kathryn and I on Saturday night were watching the Trump rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when this happened.
THE PRESIDENT: This President Barack Hussein Obama, or as Rush Limbaugh, the great — How great is Rush? Do we love Rush? (:03 seconds cheers) As Rush Limbaugh would say, Barack Hussein Obama. Did you ever hear Rush? Barack Hussein Obama. Rush is great. He’s doing well too. He’s great. He’s a tough guy. We love Rush. We love you, Rush. He watches every one of these rallies. You know, he supported me when I came down with our great first lady, I came down the escalator, I made a speech — I didn’t even have a speechwriter. I had to wing it.
But Rush said, “I like that guy. I never heard that before. I never heard, ‘We’re gonna build the wall. We’re gonna secure the borders. We’re gonna make new trade deals that are, like, sane. We’re gonna do all the things. We’re gonna rebuild our military. We’re gonna have a strong country again.'” We did so many things. And Rush heard this. I didn’t know Rush. I mean, maybe I’d met him once, twice, for two seconds.
And he became an instant fan of Trump. And he was for a long time, before I even got to know him. And he’s been so important. You know, he’s the king, 39 million listeners. There’s nobody like him. Try sitting down for, what is it, three hours, and talking, just talking with everyone — 39 million people, often. Try sitting (audience member shouts) — we love Rush. I love Rush, too. But listen. Try sitting down with a radio show with millions and millions of people listening and talk for three hours without phone calls. You know, phone calls are easy. “Hey, what do you think of this? What do you –” just talk. Talk.
And everybody finds it fascinating. And it is fascinating. Wish I had time to listen more often. It’s a little tough as president. But everybody finds it fascinating. And we gave Rush, ’cause he’s such an important person and such — such an incredible job, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Congress. (:03 seconds cheers) And Kathryn, his wife, is great. What a couple. What a great — but Rush has been unbelievable. He’s so on our side. And he was from literally Day One, right from the beginning.”
RUSH: So, that’s two minutes, and that’s in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Saturday night. I had no idea that that was coming, and I don’t know what inspired it. I don’t know if it was on the prompter or if they just put my name on the prompter and that was the signal for him to go riffing on it, but thank you, Mr. President. That was great.
He said he went home, he got up to the residence of the White House and he walked in, “First Lady, First Lady, are you here? We gotta turn on the TV! First Lady, I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.” He referred to his wife as the First Lady. “And so First Lady came out, we turned on the TV, we watched the first story, and it didn’t talk about it, the second story… I said, ‘First Lady, we’re gonna get mentioned here. I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, First Lady.’ Third story comes, no mention.
“We finally we watch the whole newscast, not one time were we mentioned, 12 stories. We got to the end of it, 12 stories, ‘First Lady, it looks like we’re not gonna get mentioned.'” And I’m sitting here, I’m laughing myself silly because we know that he does not — oh, he may call her First Lady in person, in lighthearted banter like this. But, folks, it is a natural gift, a natural-born talent and skill that Donald Trump has, this ability to improv the way he does at these rallies to seamlessly shift and switch between the teleprompter and not, the off prompter or the improv or ad-lib, whatever you would want to call it, seamlessly.
And the teleprompter operator has to be up to speed on this too. The prompter operator has got to know when he gets back on text and has got to be paying, I mean, very close attention for when he abandons the prompter, has to get it where it’s next gonna be for when the president comes back to it. All of this happens, I’m sure, without rehearsals, and I’m sure it happens seamlessly. But it’s a rare talent. And you will recall, if you were here in 2015, 2016, when these rallies all started, it was these rallies in part that led me to believe that he was very capable, that he might win, he could win this thing. It wasn’t the sole basis by any stretch. But I was convinced early on.
Honestly, folks, they have missed Trump for six years. They still, at this moment in time, have no clue who Trump is, how Trump does it, how he’s going to do it again on November 3rd. They’ve got themselves convinced already that Biden is the winner, that Trump is the loser. They’re backing it up with polling data. But they’re going to be wrong again. And their arrogance and condescension is leading the way.