(Lee Greenwood “God Bless the USA” song)
(Crowd chanting: “We love you”)
RUSH: And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plain. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. Mr. President, it is a distinct honor and privilege to have you with us. I want you to do something for me, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: G’head.
RUSH: I want you to imagine you have just landed in a gleaming majestic Air Force One to the largest Radio Rally in history. Instead of thousands cheering as you walk up to the stage, there are millions and millions of patriots out there right now anxiously awaiting to hear from you. No doubt they’re waving Trump flags, wearing their bright red MAGA hats proudly. This, Sir, is a MEGA MAGA rally. And we are all thrilled to be with you today. We are so glad you’re doing better, and welcome to the EIB Network.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I want to thank you, Rush. You’re a fantastic man, a friend of mine, but before I really even knew you as a friend you were like a supporter and I said, “I know that guy, he’s got a big audience,” but I never even knew the importance of what you do and what you say, and now I do very well. And it keeps us all in the game. And we just got great polls out of — you probably heard — out of Arizona. We’re getting them out of Nevada. You know, the real polls, not the fake polls. We’re getting them out of North Carolina, looking really good. I think Pennsylvania’s looking good, Florida’s looking great. It’s all a big, phony deal they have going, Rush. And we’re gonna win this. I think it’s gonna be a bigger win than we had four years ago.
RUSH: That would be great. Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: — great polls.
RUSH: I have to tell you, from the moment that your appearance was announced, we’ve never had a response like this, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Wow.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate it. And, you know, when you suggested this, I immediately jumped on it ’cause your audience is the biggest. I mean, it’s just incredible. And we have some great friends in Sean Hannity and so many others, you know, Mark and so many people are so great to us. But we have so many people that are so untruthful. And the biggest thing, the one thing I haven’t figured out is why.
If we say we’re gonna create a strong military and protect, we’re gonna create a strong economy like we’ve never had an economy prior to the plague, and now we’re building it up again stronger than before. Watch, it’s gonna be stronger than before. We’re almost at record stock market. Nobody can believe that. We’re rounding the turn on the pandemic and I’ll have something to say about that because I’m telling you, we have a cure, more than just a therapeutic. We have a cure.
But so many things that we’ve done. And, you know, no matter what you do, they try and find fault. And not only fault, vicious. They’re vicious people. And you say, why wouldn’t they want to have good education, a good military, a strong economy, safety, security? Why would they want to live like they live in Portland where they just allow these agitators and anarchists to run the streets, why would they want that?
That’s the only thing I haven’t figured out, why would they. And why would these big companies like Comcast, I call it Concast, it’s Comcast but I call it Concast ’cause it’s a con job, that’s NBC mostly. But if you look at CNN, which is so pathetic, why would they do that? Why would they want to have a country that’s in turmoil? ‘Cause they create it, the fake news is the worst thing we have going. You know, the lamestream, I call it the lamestream media, but you’d think that they’d want to see great education, great country, great security, strong military —
RUSH: They don’t want to see you responsible for it. They don’t want —
THE PRESIDENT: It’s a crazy thing, Rush. It’s one thing — I’ve never quite figured it out, you know, and they become less wealthy, you know, to a large extent they become less wealthy and they’re willing to give up their wealth in order to see the country go to hell. Someday when you figure that out, you’re gonna let me know.
RUSH: I’ll tell you today. I know exactly what this is. But before that, we’ve got a lot of questions for you from members of the audience.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay.
RUSH: Before we dive into those, I need to ask you something that I’ve not had a chance to ask you prior. Before 2015 when you came down the escalator and announced you’re a candidate you had a storybook life.
RUSH: You had an absolutely fabulous life. You had a life that anybody would aspire to. You were very successful, you were happy, you were a media darling. They loved you back then! Why did you decide to run for president and put up with the day-in-and-day-out maligning that you get? Because you did not have to do this.
THE PRESIDENT: I’ll tell you, it’s such a great question — and I’d do it again, even though it’s far worse. I never thought I’d be involved with the Russia hoax or a Ukraine hoax or be impeached because I made a phone call congratulating somebody that I never met or, you know, spoke to on becoming the president of Ukraine and all of a sudden you get impeached and was a perfect phone call.
You know, a letter that we actually… Fortunately, we had it transcribed because they made up the phone call. They said it was totally different. Fortunately — or maybe I look at the talking to you right now in this capacity, at least. Fortunately we had it transcribed. It was transcribed the exact call. If we didn’t, they would have… You know what Schiff said. He said it before Congress.
He repeated my call. It had no bearing on what I said. It was a perfect phone call, and I got impeached over it. I never knew it would be so unpleasant. But nobody has done more in the last 3-1/2 years as president in the first 3-1/2 years that I have. Nobody. I mean, if you look at rebuilding the military and the economy and the best employment numbers we’ve ever had, and we’ve cut regulations to a point that’s so incredible; nobody’s ever seen.
If you look at Veterans Choice in the VA accountability… You know, we had people in the VA that beat up our veterans — and beat ’em up badly. You know, they’re infirm, they’re not well, they’re not feeling well, and you had these animals in there that would beat ’em up. We couldn’t do anything about ’em. Now, with accountability, you have to account — and we fire ’em and worse. We get rid of ’em.
And our vets have a 91% approval rating, the highest we’ve ever had in the VA. You don’t hear those bad stories about the VA anymore like you used to, and now they get immediate doctor attention if they have to wait on line. But that’s so many different things right to try where they can try medicines and I can sort of give you an example of that with the COVID.
Because I was in not great shape and we have a medicine that held me, that fixed me. It’s a great medicine, and had I not gotten it, Rush, it would have been in line for another year, probably, before they brought it out. Great company — two great companies, actually, make it — you know, make very similar things. But they both work equally well. And we’re gonna send it…
We’re already sending it starting the process. Hundreds of thousands of vials are being sent to the hospitals all over the country. People are gonna get immediately better like I did. I mean, I feel better now than I did two weeks ago. It’s crazy. And I recovered immediately, almost immediately. I might not have recovered at all from COVID.
To me, it’s the biggest story. But the press doesn’t even want to report that. They talk about the vaccines. And the vaccines are very important, Rush. But this is more important because we can go in the hospitals and clean out the hospitals literally with people that… The vaccines are very important. It’s a different stage.
RUSH: Well, yeah, this is the antibodies that you speak of.
THE PRESIDENT: This is the antibody. This is the antibody, and Regeneron. It’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. And I had a meeting with doctors today. You know, it’s always… The good thing about when our president, 11 doctors show up, and they’re all the head of Johns Hopkins and this and that. They’re great people. But Walter Reed is an incredible place. These 11 guys came in today.
They showed me stats. It’s amazing. I don’t know I would have… I don’t know that… You know, I was not in the greatest of shape. A day later I was fine, maybe perfect, but I was fine. But a couple of days later… Now I’m free. I’m… You know, I feel perfect. I have no… I’m not taking anything. You know, I’m off any regimen that they gave me, but it was primarily this one drug.
And we’re sending that and the Eli Lilly version of it, which is very similar. We’re sending that to all of our hospitals. We’re gonna get people better. We gotta get it there fast. That’s why I’m doing an emergency use authorization. I gotta get ’em to approve it really fast.
I gave them my numbers to put in with the other numbers that they already have, which are very good, excellent, and it’s… You know, it’s the most amazing thing — and it’s not Remdesivir. Maybe that helps a little bit. But Remdesivir is not the same thing. This is stuff that is so good. It just wiped out the virus. It wiped it out —
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you —
RUSH: — it was scary when we heard that you’ve tested positive given your demographics.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: You were right there in the number one target area for people that have trouble with this. And it’s so… You sound great!
THE PRESIDENT: I feel great.
RUSH: I’ve been reading that you got a hacking cough and that your voice is hoarse —
THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no.
RUSH: — and you sound perfectly normal to me.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, there’s always that little, lingering thing for a couple of days. But, no, I have a… My voice is now perfect. I mean, for a couple of days, you know it’s called the lingering thing. If you have hay fever, if you have something be you have that, too, a little bit. But, no, this is the most amazing thing that’s happened, and I was asking the doctors today — 11 guys, great people, the heads of the biggest hospitals.
It’s amazing. I guess the president has a lot of power, but everybody shows up. “What do you do?” “I’m the head of Johns Hopkins,” or (chuckles), “I’m the head of…” It’s always like that, but they’re very brilliant people, and I said, “How bad was I?” They said, “You could have been very bad. You were going into a very bad phase.” So it wasn’t like it was just gonna be like with the kids where they get it and they get sniffles and they’re better two days later, right?
This looks like it was gonna be a big deal — and you know what that means, right? That means bad, ’cause I’ve lost five people, at least five people that were friends of mine. One in particular, like, an incredible guy who went in there, went into the hospital; he was dead within three days. And I’m just saying that we have something that will cure this now. And a cure. And without us, without the Trump administration, this would never have happened.
We poured money into these cures, and we poured money into the vaccines. And the vaccines are coming along great, Rush. I mean, the vaccines, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer, they’re all coming along great. They’re a little bit political. They’re afraid it’s gonna go too fast and I’ll get credit for it before the election.
RUSH: Well, that’s another thing I wanted to mention. You know, Mr. President, you have been forced because of media coverage to tout your own successes.
THE PRESIDENT: True.
RUSH: You have been forced to tell them, like you just did in the past five minutes here, and it rubs some people the wrong way. They think that you’re bragging.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: They think that you’re insecure —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. (chuckles)
RUSH: — that you need to constantly… Would you explain to people how you find it necessary to tout your successes rather than have somebody in the White House or a PR-type operation do it for you? Why do you find it necessary to do yourself?
RUSH: Three! Three now.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay.
RUSH: Some guy from Italy has nominated you.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, that’s good. It won’t be written about. When Obama got it, it was the biggest story. I remember very well. He didn’t even know why he got it. Got it —
RUSH: He got his on the come.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: He got his on the come; he hadn’t even done anything yet.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. He didn’t know why. He can’t explain why he got it, but I can — and one is Middle East peace without any blood, okay? And, by the way, countries are lining up. The other is if you look at Kosovo and Serbia, they’ve been killing each other forever and I got them to be peaceful and, you know, good stuff. And then I just heard about the third. Nobody even…
That wasn’t even on the news, okay? You know, I joke about it in speeches sometimes. I’ll joke about it. I say I tell my wife, “Let’s watch tonight. It’ll be wonderful tonight,” and they don’t even cover it. They don’t cover any good stuff with me. Anything that’s good they don’t cover. Anything that’s okay or bad… I mean, bad, they make it sound like, you know, like let’s do the electric chair thing.
But it is the most dishonest. The media are the most dishonest people I’ve ever met, and that’s why I go back to the original. I just don’t know why. I mean, they can’t hate somebody so much, but they do. They do it to Republican conservatives. You’ve had it before I came along, but never… I don’t think never to this extent. You know, they say that Newt Gingrich… They said that the one that got worse than me was Abraham Lincoln. I said, “I disagree.”
RUSH: (laughs)
THE PRESIDENT: They say, “Abraham Lincoln was decimated by the press.”
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: I said, “Maybe he was, but it couldn’t be worse.” If I do something good, they make it look bad. If I do something okay, they make it look like horrible, horrible. The reason I talk — I say it. You might as well talk about it yourself because nobody else will. If I give it to our very good people, Kayleigh and, you know, we have a lot of good people at the White House.
RUSH: Well, there were reasons for it.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s just incredible.
RUSH: Let me tell you one of the reasons —
THE PRESIDENT: They are sick. You know, it’s crazy. But g’head.
RUSH: Well, they are. In a way, they are. I think they have been poisoned to an extent — I mean this, folks, poisoned — by their own hatred. This is not the original reason, but we’re into four years now that they have tried everything they know to get rid of you —
THE PRESIDENT: yeah.
RUSH: — and not a single thing, not a single weapon has worked. These people, if they want to, Mr. President — and Newt’s an example. They’re able to take out… Sarah Palin is another. They’re able to take out any Republican they choose.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: It took them seven years to finally ruin George W. Bush and his reputation, the war in Iraq.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: But they did it. They got his approval numbers down to the thirties.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: You, in Zogby today, are still at 51. They haven’t landed a dent, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: No.
RUSH: They have not taken you off of your agenda. They’ve not. They’ve maybe distracted you for now and then but they haven’t stopped you. They can’t believe it. They’re throwing everything — and so they are doubling down on doing whatever they can to try to get rid of you just to prove that they can, and it’s frustrating as heck that they haven’t been able to. It’s an amazing thing. And I’m like you.
I watch this coverage and I ask myself, “How many of the American people realize — without being told — how basically dishonest and unfair this all is?” and you hope that a majority of Americans see it for what it is and react accordingly. But I tell you, it’s that and the fact that you’re an outsider. They never thought you were gonna win. They didn’t even think you wanted to win.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: They thought you were engaged in a PR stunt in the first place.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, which is false.
THE PRESIDENT: Mmm-hmm. Yes.
RUSH: Who in the world could find a problem with that?
THE PRESIDENT: (chuckling)
RUSH: These sick people have found a way, Make America Great Again is reason to destroy you? It doesn’t make any sense.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Rush, remember how big the wall was. Everything with the wall, the wall, the wall, and it got bigger and bigger because they figured there was no way to get it financed because it’s a massive… You know, it’s thousands of… The whole thing, it’s a massive project. One of the biggest… It’s actually one of the biggest projects, government projects ever. Anyway, so we’re building the wall.
We’re up to 380 miles of wall, had a huge impact. Nobody gets through this wall. This wall is everything the Border Patrol wanted. I built it exactly… I didn’t even agree with them on certain parts of it, but I think they were right. They had to have see-through, they had to have this, they had to have that, it’s lined up with all sorts of wires and everything you can imagine. It is the best, okay?
It’s the best, and it’s had an impact that you wouldn’t believe. And nobody thought I was gonna get it done. Now it’s almost completed. It will be completed toward the end of the year, very soon, and it will be about 535 miles. We may even extend it beyond that. But, you know, you have a lot of natural barriers — rivers and mountains and other things that really do a pretty good job. (chuckles)
But we’re gonna have it finished very soon. You don’t even hear about it anymore. And you don’t hear about how great the border numbers are. You know, people today… I ended catch-and-release, which was not easy, because I had to go through the Democrats. But I had to… You know, used to catch somebody they’d release them into our country, and they’d come back four years later but nobody would ever come back for a court case.
It was the craziest thing. You’d catch somebody, even a murderer, and then you’d release them into our country, and then you’d say, “You have to be back here in 2-1/2 years to go to trial,” and nobody would come back. Only the very dumbest would come back, okay? And that was about 1%.
RUSH: (laughing)
THE PRESIDENT: No, that was about 1%, and it was crazy. Catch-and-release. You know, there were many programs like that. We got rid of most of ’em, and it’s not easy to get rid of them. You know, you had to go through all sorts of hoops, but I got rid of catch-and-release. We have a very good border now. Now only people that come in legally are coming in. You know, we have a… Well, the wall made a tremendous difference. But you notice you never hear about the wall anymore?
RUSH: Well, not only that —
THE PRESIDENT: Never talk about it.
RUSH: — there have been two debates, Sir, and in both debates, your first and the vice presidential debate, there have been two areas that have never been explored, not one question asked about. One’s gun control, the Second Amendment. The other’s immigration.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: And those are two strong areas of yours where the American people are with you by a massive majority support number. So they’re not even being brought up.
Our immigration now, because it wasn’t just — it was the wall, but we had to cut a lot of these crazy things out. I mean, you have chain migration where somebody comes in illegally, and we have a killer who killed eight people on the West Side Highway, ran over eight people, you know, a terrorist, jihadist, came in through the southern border, and through chain migration, the chain, he brings in his mother, his father, his grandmother, his aunts, his brothers, his uncles, he brings in all these people, and I say, “Wait a minute.” What we’ve done is incredible on immigration. Think of it. You have killers that come in and because of chain migration they’re allowed to bring other people —
RUSH: Right. That’s why they’re not asking you about this.
THE PRESIDENT: They don’t want to talk to me about it. So many things like sanctuary cities, you know, the people in California hate sanctuary cities. I don’t know where it gets its political stamina, the people in California, they see me all the time — I think we’ll do well in California. In theory you don’t win California because everybody likes to vote three times if you want to know the truth.
RUSH: We’re gonna get into that later in the program.
THE PRESIDENT: The whole thing is crazy, but the people want to vote, they vote numerous times, numerous times, and it’s disgraceful. But the people in California, they don’t like sanctuary cities. What are you doing with sanctuary cities? You’re protecting criminals. Who wants that? And I’ve had so many people — liberal friends of mine from California, “We’d love to get rid of sanctuary cities.” Well, as you know, Kate’s Law, remember Kate’s Law?
RUSH: Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: We tried like hell to get it passed but, you know, we left the filibuster, okay? We should have gotten rid of the filibuster only because I said Schumer’s gonna do — I told Mitch, I said, Mitch, I get along great with Mitch, we had the greatest success in history on judges, we had up to 300 judges and two Supreme Court judges and now three. Hopefully that will go quickly. I think she’s gonna go very quickly, so three Supreme Court justices. But in the first term, that’s never happened before.
But I said the problem is, Mitch, as soon as the Democrats do get in — you know, at some point I guess they get in, they will blow up the filibuster. They’ll go nuclear, as you know, and that will be the end of the filibuster and they’ll approve stuff left and — you know, left and right, 50%, they’ll go left and right. And that’s the problem I had with it. It’s not that they’re not right, they did it the right way. Harry Reid, we got lucky because Harry Reid thought that Hillary was gonna win and he knocked out the filibuster for the judges. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have 300 judges, I’d have two judges.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: — but you don’t have a record and you’re having so much success out there. You can tell every rally, every appearance, every press encounter you have is just loads of fun. Now you got three and a half years in, almost four.
You’ve got a record that just infuriates the Democrats and the media, which are one and the same. And is it as much fun for you now? Is it, the whole idea of campaigning? Because now the frustration… I can hear the frustration. You have a great record.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: Your sense of achievement and accomplishment is incredible, and you have to be the one to tout it, and it’s gotta be frustrating for you.
THE PRESIDENT: So, it’s such an interesting question because I have done more… You know, we have a list of things that we’ve done. Just go down the list. Even Space Force. That’s a big deal! You know, first in 75 years, right? A new branch of the United States military. That by itself is an achievement that you could just do that, and you’ve had a successful thing. Space Force. Think of it.
You know, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. We have Space Force, and that’s a big deal. It’s gonna be important, especially as the future goes, maybe the most important. But so many things I’ve done, and you don’t… It’s incredible. People… You have to sell it yourself because they don’t want to talk about it. You don’t hear anything about Space Force.
You know how big a deal that is? You don’t hear about any of this stuff. They don’t want to talk about it. But I’ll tell you the amazing thing, the one thing I really have learned. The people of our country are smarter than the people that cover them, because they get it. How can I be in a position where I’m leading in a lot of states…?
I mean, don’t believe these fake polls. These fake polls, I don’t know if you ever look at them. I don’t think they have to put it down. I think there’s a legal reason. They put down where they interviewed 18% more Democrats than Republicans; Trump is losing by five. Do you understand what I mean?
RUSH: Absolutely. I see all of them.
THE PRESIDENT: I still don’t know why. I think there’s a legal reason because they always say who they interviewed. But when you look down at what they call the tabs, one of them said 18% more Democrats. Another one said 14% more. Well, let’s assume the Democrats are gonna vote for Sleepy Joe — which is ridiculous, ’cause Joe shouldn’t be a candidate. Joe’s in no condition to be a candidate.
RUSH: Well, you know —
THE PRESIDENT: We can say it nicely or we can say it badly. The 25th Amendment that Crazy Nancy is… She’s crazy. She’s a nut job. But this 25th Amendment, I think it’s in so they can get Kamala in to replace Joe.
THE PRESIDENT: That was the first thing I thought of — and, by the way, the Republicans have been very good to me. One thing the Republicans have to do, though, they have to get tougher. We have some great ones you know that. Jim Jordan, and Meadows has been great. A lot of them have been great. But the Republicans have to get tougher.
The tells me they play a much dirtier game. They don’t… You know, like impeaching on a phone call. I’ll never forget. “Sir, did you call the president of Ukraine?” “Yeah, I did.” “Why? Just to congratulate him.” I had five guys begging me to call him to congratulate him! I never met him before. You know, what do I care?
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: So, they said, “Did you call the president?” “Yes.” “What did you say?” I said, “I don’t know, couple of months ago. I called him to congratulate him ’cause he became president of Ukraine. Why, what’s…?” “Sir, they want to impeach you for that call.” I said, “Impeach me for the call? Impeach me for something…? (laughing) But they can’t impeach me. What did I do, say ‘congratulations’?” It’s unbelievable. You know, by the way, when they found out, they believed the Schiff version of the call when he made it up standing in front of Congress, okay?
RUSH: I saw that.
THE PRESIDENT: Schiff is a real crook. He made it up. You know, I said eight times “quid pro quo.” Think of what eight times is. That would mean eight times you’ve asked for something illegal on a call, right? Think of what that means. The person on the other side of the call — if you did it once, maybe, twice, maybe. If you did it eight times they’d think you’re certifiably insane, right?
So, Schiff made up the call and I said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with the call. We actually took the call ’cause we had the transcript, fortunately. If we didn’t have a transcript, I don’t know. It would have been my word against a lot of these crooked people. But if we… I actually sent it to the Department of Justice to some division, and they called up.
They said to my people, “Uhhh, okay. So, what are we looking for here?” (laughing) In other words, you know, these are guys that look at drug deals and murders and they going, like, “Okay. Explain to us, what are we supposed to…?” In other words, having read the call, what the hell is wrong with this thing, right? They impeached me. So, you have to be… They’re meaner and they are… But they’re bad policy. Open borders, sanctuary cities, high taxes —
RUSH: Let me try to simplify this. You know, one of the things I’ve tried to do, learn to do over the course of the years is make the complex understandable. I think this election, Sir, is really simple to explain, particularly people who are the undecided, and I don’t know how many of those there are. I, frankly, don’t know how you can’t be decided by now.
THE PRESIDENT: (chuckles) Right.
RUSH: But this election really boils down to two propositions. One is it’s between a man, you, who believes America is good and decent and great, against people —
THE PRESIDENT: Right. It has great potential.
RUSH: — against people who are behind Joe Biden who think America isn’t good. They think America is unjust and immoral from the days of our founding, and they are trying to undermine and transform this country as founded. And that’s why you are undermined. And that’s why your successes are hidden. That’s why your successes are distorted and lied about. It’s no more complicated than that.
You’re gonna have so much disruption in your life that you can’t possibly imagine — and don’t doubt me. They’re not gonna be honest with you about this. But that’s really what this is about. You are good. You believe America is good. You believe America is great. You want to keep it that way, and you want to solidify it, and you want America’s greatness to be enshrined and empowered for decades beyond you.
THE PRESIDENT: And America has great potential too. Because any shortcomings we can solve those shortcomings, but they’re gonna make ’em much shorter. I mean, America has tremendous potential. When you look at what we’ve done with energy, and they want to take that advantage away and give it to these other countries that are gonna always have energy. When you look at the environment, it’s very important — I love the environment. I want clean air, I want clean water —
RUSH: You shouldn’t even have to say that. You shouldn’t have to say it. Everybody wants clean water. The fact that they’re out there claiming you want dirty water and dirty —
THE PRESIDENT: It’s unbelievable.
RUSH: You shouldn’t have to say you like clean water. That’s outrageous.
THE PRESIDENT: Like the forest fires in California. If we had forest management, you wouldn’t have any forest fires. You know, in Europe you go there, they have forest nations. They call them Austria, different places. They don’t have the woods burning down and their trees are more explosive than ours, meaning explosive from potential fire. They have trees. And they have — you know, they maintain their forests. And they put cuts in between so if they have a fire, it doesn’t burn down a half a million acres. They do it properly.
Our people don’t do that. And then we talk about, you know, they want our air clean, but they don’t talk about China, Russia, India, these other countries where the pollution is massive going up. So we have a clean spot on a massive planet. We have a clean spot, which is a small percentage of the planet, a very small percentage of the planet. And then China’s spewing crap and Russia and all of these other — India. And did you ever see what they dump into the ocean that floats into California?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s unbelievable.
RUSH: He’s exactly right, folks.
THE PRESIDENT: And we end up cleaning it up and then they say, well, you know, the environment, the environment. I could tell you hundreds of stories. You know, a lot of what you and I talk about is really based on common sense. You know, people say, “Are you a conservative?” I say, “No, I’m common sense.”
RUSH: It’s based on common sense and love. Love for country and people.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, that’s true. That’s very true.
RUSH: Now, I gotta get to some questions. I’ll tell you something, Sir. When we went through the questions — literally I’m telling you, I’ve never had a response like you generated —
THE PRESIDENT: It’s great.
RUSH: — when your appearance —
THE PRESIDENT: It’s great.
RUSH: — was announced. It’s the most amazing thing, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: I think you’re gonna see that come November 3rd and a little before that because our people don’t want to send in these fake ballots that are being fraudulently made all over the place —
RUSH: We’re gonna get into that, but probably one of the most mentioned topics in the questions was health care. People are scared. Let me give you a sample question. “Dear President Trump.” This is a woman in Massachusetts named Kathy. “I’m glad that you and the first lady are recovering from COVID. So happy you are our president. Thank you for all you do to defend us. My question’s about health care and pre-existing conditions —
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: “– are very important to me and a lot of Americans. I believe you said pre-existing conditions will be covered in your health care plan. But please —
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: “– could you explain this a little more? Because there are a lot of —
THE PRESIDENT: I will.
RUSH: “– people saying that you’re not gonna cover pre-existing conditions and you need to get your message out since the Democrats are trying to malign you on this. And we need to know, pre-existing conditions are a big deal. Does your plan cover them?”
I know some very bad people. Nobody that I know would say a thing like that. They put it in ads, they make it like I said it. I never said it, just the opposite. I’ve taken care of the military better than anybody. They do the same thing with health care. They will make up a statement that’s so bad. Now, pre-existing conditions I’m totally for, but I’m against Obamacare because Obamacare is too expensive. I already got rid of the individual mandate, which was the worst part of Obamacare. That’s where you had to pay a fortune for the privilege of not paying for bad health insurance. You understand that, right?
RUSH: Yes, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: So I got rid of it, and I got rid of it through the law, I got rid of it in our tax decrease, we got the biggest tax decrease in the history of our country. We would have never been able to build up the economy if we didn’t get that. But one of the things I got in there, I got rid of the individual mandate. And what I want to do is — and we’re fighting to terminate — it’s sort of I have terminated Obamacare, ’cause once you get rid of the individual mandate it’s no longer Obamacare.
But I had a choice to make, Rush. It was a big choice. Do I maintain Obamacare, the remnants of Obamacare after the mandate, do I maintain it well, or do I run it badly? I could have done it either way. I have very good people over there. Alex Azar and Seema, the whole group. I said, you know what? We gotta run it as well as it can be run. I have no choice. I could have run it badly and made everybody angry, but I didn’t do that. I ran it really well. Knowing that it’s run really well it’s still no good. You know, it’s still not good. It’s much better than when they ran it. They couldn’t even do — remember they spent $50 million — $5 billion on the server if you remember, they couldn’t get the server right.
RUSH: I do remember. But there’s still this confusion about pre-existing conditions out there.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah.
RUSH: It’s a frustrating thing ’cause it’s not even the correct title for what the plan is it, but that’s what people —
THE PRESIDENT: That’s correct.
RUSH: — think and —
THE PRESIDENT: That’s correct.
RUSH: — so that’s how you have to deal with it.
THE PRESIDENT: What they do is they love to say that I’m gonna get rid of pre-existing conditions. No. I want to terminate Obamacare and then come up with a great — and we have it — come up with a great health care plan that’s much less expensive and does include people with pre-existing conditions. That’s what I want to do. Now, they’ll also say about Social Security —
RUSH: But you need a Republican Senate for that. And you need a Republican House for that.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. In order to do that — well, what will happen is if we win, the Democrats will do something to help get health care. I mean, they’re gonna come along because they have no choice. They’re gonna come along. They have no choice.
I will say one thing. You know, we talk about unity ’cause I’d like to see the country come together. It’s not as easy as people think. But just prior to the plague coming in from China, when the plague came in from China, we had the lowest unemployment we ever had, we had the greatest employment, we were up to 160 million people employment, we never were even close. Everybody had a job —
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right.
RUSH: — since records have been kept.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right, Rush. So we had the best numbers ever. We had the highest stock market, although I tell you, we’re inches away right now for people’s 401(k)s if they held on to their stocks, they’re very wealthy right now. And our economy is doing really amazing considering that we’re in this pandemic thing sent to us by China. But if you look at what we’ve done — and people were calling me, Rush, in terms of bringing our country together, that I really had never heard from before. In other words, they were not interested. And they were saying like, let’s start getting together. It was coming together. Success was bringing our country together.
And then we got hit by the China plague. But success, Rush, even you might be surprised to hear that. People that you would have said “no way” were calling and saying, “Can we get together?” And it was coming together, because success — and I’ve always said, success will bring us together. Our military is strong. When I took over we had no ammunition. We had a case where a general, a certain general, highly overrated general told me, “We have no ammunition.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “No president should ever be told that again.” Now we have so much ammunition —
RUSH: I heard you say that. I was, frankly, surprised that we were low on ammo? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before.
THE PRESIDENT: He said, “Sir, we have no ammunition.” Okay? And I said, “Keep that very quiet.” And then we started building up and now we have new rockets, new missiles. We have stuff the likes of which nobody — Russia dreams of the stuff that we have. China dreams of the stuff that we have, Rush, and we can’t talk about it or we shouldn’t talk about it. We have things that — and I hope to God we never have to use it. Our nuclear is all tippy-top now. You don’t want to even say it. You know, we have no choice but to say it. We were so far behind. If you look I call ’em Obiden. Obama and Biden, what they did to our military was — it just was horrible.
RUSH: And economy. I mean, they were telling everybody that we need to adapt our expectations to a new era of decline.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. No manufacturing.
RUSH: America’s best days are behind us. I mean, it was outrageous. You know, GDP, one and a half percent max every year?
THE PRESIDENT: Right. Right. No. But it was coming together, Rush. And I’m telling you — and you would be a skeptic maybe almost more than —
RUSH: No, I know it was coming together. I am a skeptic.
THE PRESIDENT: — people were coming together for the first time — for the first time —
RUSH: I am a skeptic on this, believe me, more than you know.
THE PRESIDENT: (laughing) I think so. That’s true.
RUSH: I got another question for you.
THE PRESIDENT: G’head.
RUSH: “Mr. President…” This is Mary in Missouri. This is our second most mentioned topic that people want to hear you address.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah?
RUSH: “Mr. President, it drives me crazy that the Democrats can call all of us out here racist and sexist just because we don’t need with them. It’s the easiest thing in the world to call somebody racist because nobody wants to be racist or anti anything — and we aren’t racist.
“Why do Democrats get away with it, Sir, and how do Republicans say ‘enough is enough’? We are tired of being called evil racists, when all we want is for all Americans to be free — ”
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: So, I’ve watched this for a long time. I’ve had it. I’ve probably been a victim of it — you and I and a couple of others — more than anybody, and we’re just the opposite. When they give up, when we’re beating ’em, they have nothing else to fall back on but the word “racist.” And it’s always… That means that when you’re winning and you’re just knocking the hell out of them, they have nothing else to say; they call you a racist.
And this has been going on for decades. I don’t know that you’re gonna stop it, but people are wise to it and people are rolling their eyes now. They’re rolling their eyes. It is just an incredible thing. The way they use the race word, the racist word is just actually disgusting. I was asked by Chris Wallace — who’s third-rate. I was asked by him… He was protecting Biden the other night. It was pathetic. I couldn’t even ask him, “Why did you get $3.5 million from the mayor of — the mayor’s wife of Moscow?”
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: Why did you say a billion dollars, unless you get rid of the prosecutor, and then you give him the billion dollars? And Chris Wallace was — and he was choking like a dog. He wasn’t able to answer, and Chris Wallace would go in and save him the whole time. That whole thing was disgraceful.
RUSH: You know what we’re gonna do today?
THE PRESIDENT: What?
RUSH: We’re gonna give you a chance to actually respond to Joe Biden because, you’re right. The moderators of these debates are never asking Biden to explain himself.
THE PRESIDENT: No.
RUSH: “What did you mean by that, Sir?” They’re not asking you to explain Biden. They’re asking you to explain you. So I have some Joe Biden sound bites here that are anywhere from 13 to 17 seconds —
THE PRESIDENT: All right.
RUSH: — that no moderator will ever ask you to respond to and, as such, the American people don’t know that he has said these things.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
RUSH: Let’s try one.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, go. Go.
RUSH: Is from December 30th, 2019, and he’s in Derry, New Hampshire, telling coal miners to forget coal mining and learn how to code.
BIDEN: Anybody that could do down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure in hell could learn how to program as well. Give me a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it’s terrible, and you can look at so many other things. Look at fracking. He went for a whole year saying, “No way there will be fracking. Mark my words. There will not be fracking,” and so did Kamala. You know, Kamala. She’s another great one, and they talk about fracking —
RUSH: She should have listened to Willie Brown. Willie Brown told her not to accept this job and she did it anyway. She shouldn’t have.
THE PRESIDENT: I thought she was so… Mike beat her so bad the other night. But she’s just not good at what she did. Hey, don’t forget, she started out… She went down in the polls. That’s usually not the person you want to pick for vice president. But, anyway, the both of them, they talk about fracking like it was the greatest sin on earth; then they get the nomination, and now they’re talking about they want to do fracking.
But, you know, I find in politics, always follow their first words, because that’s where they’re going. They have no choice. They agreed with Bernie Sanders and all the people on the manifesto. And if you read that manifesto, that manifesto is further left than Bernie Sanders. Much further left than Bernie Sanders. You know, usually you think they take ’em right. Bernie took ’em left.
He took ’em left of where he was. But if you look at the fracking, the coal… You could say the coal. Remember Hillary, three weeks before she went to West Virginia, she was knocking the hell out of coal, and then she forgot she had to go to West Virginia. (chuckles) So she goes to West Virginia and she sat at the table with the miners, and it was just the end of her when she knocked the coal.
RUSH: Well, you know what? I think it would be…
THE PRESIDENT: What they do with coal now — with clean coal — is amazing. We have more than anybody. What they do with clean coal is amazing. We have more energy than anybody, and these other countries who want to take it away with the Paris Accord and all of this. They want to take away our wealth. They want to take away our jobs, our companies. It is disgraceful.
RUSH: You know, explain fracking to people, Sir, because it’s a term that’s thrown out there and I know what it is. I can explain it. A lot of people can but a lot of people don’t know what it is and why it’s so outrageous that they will not commit, and they will not get their story straight, on whether or not they’re gonna ban it. What is it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, basically it’s getting energy out of the ground really efficiently and getting every drop of it, and it’s created wealth for our country like you wouldn’t believe. And it’s really been over the last small number of years that that’s really become… You know, you used to see these massive oil wells and, you know —
RUSH: You can basically go in and drill sideways in the shale.
We’re bigger than Russia, bigger than Saudi Arabia, and to a level that nobody can believe — and I saved the industry. Six, seven months ago when our oil dropped because of the pandemic, I got Russia and Saudi Arabia together — you know, it’s good to get along with countries, not necessarily a bad thing, Rush; you understand that — and they cut 10 million barrels a day.
It is actually more than that, but they cut, and we saved the oil. We saved 10 million jobs in this country, and yet everybody has cheap gasoline. Look at the gasoline at $2 a gallon. Nobody thought that would be possible. That’s better than a tax cut. So, you know, if you want to know the truth… You know, when gas used to go up to five, six dollars and people would say, “Oh, our country,” and people would…
They couldn’t buy cars. They didn’t do anything. We have very inexpensive gasoline, and yet it’s high enough that we have our energy jobs. We have millions and millions of energy jobs in Texas and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. So, Biden goes in. Do you notice they never talk about fracking? So, he said no fracking, and he’s in Pennsylvania —
RUSH: They’re gonna ban it!
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, and they want —
RUSH: Just like they’re gonna stack the court. They will not confirm it. You know what you ought to tell Amy Coney Barrett? That she’s not gonna answer any questions about how she’ll rule until after she’s confirmed.
THE PRESIDENT: No. I know. It’s incredible what he said yesterday. I couldn’t believe it, and that’s such a big thing. Think of it. He’s in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania’s a big, big fracking thing. It’s a million jobs. It’s tremendous energy. They have low-energy cars —
RUSH: And they won’t admit what they’re gonna do.
THE PRESIDENT: He said just the opposite. He said, “There will be no fracking,” and then once he gets to Pennsylvania, he said, “No, there will be fracking.” I couldn’t get away with that. Nobody could get away with that! But they let him. They don’t even ask him a question about fracking. I mean, they don’t say to him, “Well, wait a minute. You said you won’t frack and now you’re saying you’re gonna frack,” because if Pennsylvania believed that, they couldn’t vote for him because he’d put Pennsylvania out of business, along with Ohio and other places.
RUSH: Exactly. Let’s go to another Biden sound bite. This is from May of this year. He was on radio program called The Breakfast Club with my old buddy Charlamagne tha God, and he said to Biden, “You gotta come back and see us. It’s a long way ’til November. We got more questions for you.”
RUSH: And there you go. “If you got a problem figuring out whether you for me or Trump, you ain’t black.” He just insulted free-minded, open-minded African-Americans — and never gets called on it! You try that.
THE PRESIDENT: No, he doesn’t get called. I will say this, though. The black community gets it. They don’t dig him. They don’t like him. They don’t like him, and I’m getting numbers. You know, we’re at 20%, 22%, which, not that I’m proud of that, ’cause it should be 100%. But, you know, if you look at what I’ve done for criminal justice reform.
Obama couldn’t get criminal justice reform done. I did prison reform. The small colleges and universities, historically black, what I’ve done. I got them funded. They were coming back every year, hat in hand every year begging for money, and I got ’em taken care of for a 10-year period — all funded, fully funded. What I’ve done is…
And then with Tim Scott, we did the opportunity zones which is the greatest — I mean, the most incredible — thing for the black community, the African-American community, with jobs and everything else. No. I’ve done more — and I say it. And, you know, at first people said, “Oh, it’s too much to say.” I said, “I’ve done more for the black community than anybody since Abraham Lincoln,” and it’s true. Nobody’s done what I’ve done.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: But, you know, they don’t like Biden. They don’t like Biden. He did the super predator stuff, you know, he was the super predator king.
RUSH: Here, listen to this one. Now, this is August 14, 2012.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: This is eight years ago. He’s vice president. It’s a campaign event. He’s talking about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan here.
BIDEN: He’s gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules. Unchain Wall Street! They’re gonna put y’all back in chains!
RUSH: “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains!” It’s a black audience. “They’re gonna put you all back in chains.” Eight years ago.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: But he’s a different guy there. You know, you could hear by the way he talks. He’s out of it. He’s out of it. Now, we can’t have a president that’s out of it because I meet with Xi and I meet with Putin. I meet with all of them.
RUSH: He wasn’t out of it there. He knew exactly what he was saying there. That’s your point.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. He’s a different guy. He’s out of it. He’s in a daze. I look at the things he says. I look at what he says. I look at how he says it. He’s in a daze — and it’s not because he’s 78 or whatever he is. ‘Cause I know guys that are 92. Bernie Marcus from Home Depot, he’s a hundred percent sharp. But Joe is… There’s something wrong. We can’t have that.
RUSH: Well, but —
THE PRESIDENT: We can’t have that.
RUSH: He made it through the debate. He made it through 90 minutes of that debate without betraying any of the mental, umm, limitations, shall we say.
THE PRESIDENT: I agree, but he was not able to answer the Russia thing, and he was choking and he was not able to answer the billion-dollar prosecutor thing.
RUSH: Well, you did kind of bail him out, by the way. He started to fade and you kept talking at him. I think he was —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: Now, Mr. President, something you tweeted about. This… When I saw this, this blew my mind. It literally blew my mind. This is a Gallup poll. It found that 56% of the American people say they are better off today, even during the pandemic —
THE PRESIDENT: (chuckles) I know.
RUSH: — than they were four years ago. That’s stunning to me. That’s the highest number on record.
THE PRESIDENT: I know. Highest number ever recorded that they’re better off today than they were at any time before — during a pandemic — and that’s what I’ve built. We’ve built this, and the only reason we’re doing well is because the foundation was so strong, Rush. The foundation.
If we didn’t have a strong foundation, you’d be 1929 — and if he got in, you’ll be 1929, because he’s gonna raise everybody’s taxes. They don’t talk about that, either. He’s gonna raise everybody’s taxes, and you know what else they never talk about? Something that I think is a very important thing: The Second Amendment. They don’t say he’s gonna take away your guns.
RUSH: Nope.
THE PRESIDENT: They never talk about it.
RUSH: It never comes up in a debate. That and immigration, those two subjects never come up.
THE PRESIDENT: Yep.
RUSH: They haven’t come up at either of the debates yet.
RUSH: You are there, and they’re not.
THE PRESIDENT: So, it’s pretty amazing, and it’s because the people get it. The people of this country are really smart, and they do get it, and they can do everything they can — and, again, the only thing is, I don’t know why they do it, but they do it. They’re very dishonest and evil in many ways.
RUSH: These people —
THE PRESIDENT: But the people of the country get it.
RUSH: They do. But they also… They love you. Mr. President, seriously, now: They know that you are the only person standing in the way of the left’s efforts to undermine America —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: — and turn it into something it was… They’re scared to death, scared to death of what’s gonna happen if you lose. They’re scared to death of what’s gonna happen if somehow these people can harm you. They want you to have a deep understanding of how much you mean to them, how important you are to them in preserving the American way of life. It is more important because it’s at risk.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: The American way of life is at risk — and you, Sir, are the only man standing in the way of people destroying that.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: This is what millions and millions and millions of Americans think. It’s got to be a big burden on you, but —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m glad you said it, because if I say it — and you said before something. “Why do you say it yourself?” Because I have to, and because nobody else will say it. You know, I tell that to people, “You might as well say it yourself because nobody else is going to say it.” I don’t like saying it. I wish other people would say it, and I love that you can say it.
But the truth is, I am a wall. (chuckles) Just like the wall we’re building, I’m a wall in between this incredible thing that has such potential. We have something with such potential, you have no idea. Even you might not understand. The level of potential of this country is incredible. The people are incredible. The resources. You know, we have wealthy land. We’re on top of land.
They want to take it away from us. They want to take our wealth away. They want to take our jobs away, our factories away. They want us to be in the same position… You know, we’re born on very, very energy… You look at the energy we have, more than anybody in the world. You look. They want to take all of these advantages that we have over other countries and throw ’em away.
And, you know, we have such incredible potential, and they want to… I am a wall between the potential of this country to be better than ever before, and a country that will become a Third World country, a Venezuela. You know, I used to say we could be Venezuela. I used to say it halfheartedly. It’s true. It will be just a massive version. If you look at Venezuela, it’s a massive version of Venezuela. Venezuela was… You remember Venezuela 20 years ago?
RUSH: I do.
THE PRESIDENT: You got a lot of wealthy friends.
RUSH: Most people don’t know what Venezuela is —
RUSH: Because she couldn’t win on her own, Sir. They had to do this to get her. You nailed it earlier when you said Pelosi’s 25th Amendment gambit —
THE PRESIDENT: Perfect.
RUSH: — is actually a trial run at getting rid of Biden. That’s what they want.
THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely.
RUSH: They want her in the Oval Office, because she’s gonna be the vessel for the —
THE PRESIDENT: Perfect.
RUSH: — AOCs and the Bernie Sanders agenda and the far left. She couldn’t… She got out of the Democrat primaries before a single vote was cast!
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right.
RUSH: That’s how badly she was doing.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. She was so bad, she left before Iowa — and look at Iowa, by the way! You remember the Iowa…? Nobody even knows to this day who won Iowa, right? They went with this scheme that now they want to multiply times a thousand on the voting stuff, and wait ’til you see. I’m sure that you’ll have a question about that. But wait ’til you see how bad the ballot thing…
You know, all over the country thousands of ballots are being thrown away and defrauded and cut up — and when they talk about other countries coming in? It’s a lot easier for them to print illegal ballots — I guess you’d say counterfeit ballots — than some of the other things that you talk about. But this whole… It’s one scary thing when they send out millions and millions of ballots.
And you say, “Who’s sending ’em? Where are they sending them? Who’s bringing them? Who’s reporting them? Who’s signing them?” I mean, millions and millions of ballots. It’s a disgrace, and look at all of the bad things that have happened over the last year with the ballots. Look at Carolyn Maloney’s race in New York, a small race where so many ballots have been defrauded.
RUSH: The examples are all over the country. In fact, I’ve got a couple. I have a couple I want to run by you. But may I ask you to do a favor for me?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
RUSH: I want to take a 45- or 60-second break with you while I share something with you, and then you can react to it. But it’s gonna take me about a minute to go through it.
THE PRESIDENT: I’d love to.
RUSH: It’s a fascinating piece. It’s a piece in the Federalist from October 19th. Is that right?
THE PRESIDENT: Okay.
THE PRESIDENT: Wow.
RUSH: “I don’t care about the tone of his tweets nor if his opponents think he’s rude. I’ve seen that he is a patriot who genuinely loves the United States of America and its people,” and then he lists… You can’t do this. We’ve been talking about it. But I’m gonna do this. He lists your first term accomplishments and how impressive they are.
“Building the strongest U.S. economy in my lifetime,” he writes, “through historic business and personal tax cuts, resulting in millions of jobs created and record-low unemployment. [He cut] federal government regulations that had a stranglehold on American business innovators and entrepreneurs.” He confronted the ChiCom’s “trade abuses and negotiating fair trade deals with Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Japan.”
He eliminated “the Obamacare individual mandate.” He rebuilt “our military through investments in our defense capabilities as well as securing the largest military pay raise in a decade.” He nominated and confirmed “more solid conservative circuit court judges than any other first-term administration.
“Nominating and fighting for the confirmation of two originalists, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court and then nominating Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” And finally: “Moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem…”
Your first term record is truly outstanding, and it’s still being made. Your record is still being written. You are still president. You are still implementing your agenda, despite this opposition — and I wanted to share this with you, ’cause this guy did not vote for you four years ago, and now he can’t wait to.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m gonna get that one. I’m gonna have to put that one up pretty soon. But look, I’m honored by it, and with time, more and more people see the things we have done. I’ve put out lists, and they’re pages and pages long. We’ve done a job, and I’m very honored about it and am very proud of it. We’ve helped a lot of people. We’ve helped a lot of people. You know, on the pandemic I was telling you about this medicine. I’m so proud of it.
People don’t want to write about it, but that’s okay. But this is better than the vaccine, and it’s going out literally as we speak. We have the U.S. military logistics; they’re bringing it out. This is such a big thing, but we have done such a good job on the pandemic, we get zero credit. You know, we fed these governors whose shelves were empty — and our shelves were empty, too.
I say, “Our cupboard was bare,” and we filled it up with all sorts of stuff and we send it all over the United States and New York. We built them convention centers that they should have used. We sent ships that they should have used instead of putting old people with other people that were sick — and a lot of problems were caused, as you know. But we had… We did such a job. We did such a great job and made some governors look great.
And, by the way, they all say… When we have our phone calls, we’ll have 50 governors, they’re all saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Rarely do we have anybody speak up, and when we do, we take care of ’em — and then they’ll go and speak to press and they’ll say, “Well, the president was okay.”
You know what we’ve done for them with the ventilators? The ventilators were an impossible situation. We now build more ventilators by five times than anybody else in the world. We’re supplying them to the world, and they’re very complicated and expensive, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But we’ve done a great job. But this is a groundbreaker.
RUSH: That’s another thing: This massive remobilization of America.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, it was amazing.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: One of the biggest — I guess the biggest, they say — since the Second World War. But you know what? This is the biggest of all. If the Regeneron and the Lilly-comparable drug turns out, this is a cure. This is a therapeutic, call it what you want. I can tell you it’s a cure, and I’m talking to you today because of it, you know, ’cause I think I could have been a bad.
I could have been a bad victim. I fit certain categories (chuckling) that aren’t so great, okay? And you better be careful, too, okay? But you won’t… I’m telling you, this is a total game-changer. It’s so good. And nobody else would have had it. You know, FDA is approving things in one week that used to take three years. And that’s only because I’m bugging them like crazy.
You know, I go… I drive ’em crazy, I guess, but that’s okay. But FDA, Food and Drug Administration, is approving things that, Rush, would have taken years and I’m getting them in a matter of weeks and months, and they’re great things. But this is the greatest of them all if this works out, and I’m very sure it’s going to.
THE PRESIDENT: When was this announced, Rush?
RUSH: I think I’ve got the story here in the Stack.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s terrible.
RUSH: I thought it was fairly recently.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s terrible.
RUSH: Well, it is, because these are people… This is the biggest political scandal in the history of this country.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
RUSH: Certainly our lifetimes.
THE PRESIDENT: If that’s the case, I’m very disappointed. I think it’s a terrible thing, and I’ll say it to his face.
RUSH: Here it is: “Barr Tells Republicans Durham Report Will Not Be Ready by Election.” It came out today.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s a disgrace. I think it’s a disgrace. It’s an embarrassment.
RUSH: Well, I don’t have the words to express my anger. I mean, I’m not saying I’m surprised. I’m angry.
THE PRESIDENT: I’ve had to go through it… I’ve had to go through it twice now with elections and they have… See, this is what I mean with the Republicans. They don’t play the tough game. They don’t play the tough game. If this were the other side, you would have had 25 people in jail for the rest of their lives with what we found. That’s a disgrace.
RUSH: Oh, if you tried something like this against any of them? Heck yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, are you kidding me? You would have been 20… Look at me! I had to beat off the phony Mueller report. I had to beat off all this stuff. I had to beat off impeachment. I had to beat off Congress, everything else. They then send it to New York, which is all political. They send it into New York, the same stuff into New York. I have to beat that off. You know, they got New York all over. They don’t stop. This is a disgrace. If that just came out — and, you know, I purposely tried to stay away from it, because they all say it would be better if I’m not involved. But that’s what happens. When I don’t —
RUSH: Well, have you declassified everything about this yet?
RUSH: I don’t know how these people are still on cable TV lying through their teeth about all of this.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: Still getting paid to carry forth the lie.
THE PRESIDENT: If that’s the case — you have to understand I’m hearing this for the first time. And I said it’s impossible. So it’s okay for me to have to go through investigations during an election, but for them we don’t want to upset the applecart.
RUSH: It wasn’t an investigation. It was a hunt!
THE PRESIDENT: The Republicans don’t play the same game.
RUSH: You didn’t do anything. There was never any evidence. It was not an investigation. It was a hunt. You were being hunted. They were trying to plant and create evidence that would be believed and they failed.
THE PRESIDENT: We caught them cold, and we have people that don’t know how to do anything about it. It’s horrible. If that’s the case, I have to check that. I find it hard to believe. Because, you know what? I went through two elections. You don’t think that affected ’18? I wasn’t running in ’18, but the whole Russia witch hunt affected the ’18 outcome of the election. We lost some congressional seats. People don’t say we picked up two Senate seats, but we lost something in ’18, you know, we lost something.
We lost some seats that we probably could have held on to. We went through the same thing, and it was all phony stuff. Nobody said let’s hold it back ’til after the election. But the Republicans don’t play the same game. They don’t play the same game. I’d be very surprised and I’d be very disappointed. I’ll probably be disappointed because this stuff should have come out a year ago anyway.
RUSH: Did you expect it to?
THE PRESIDENT: They had everything they needed a year ago.
RUSH: Did you expect it to come out by now?
THE PRESIDENT: I thought it should have come out two years ago, I mean, frankly, as far as I was concerned. Look, if they hold it because of the election, I’ve gone through two elections now.
RUSH: Well, that’s what he says. They’re holding it —
THE PRESIDENT: They started investigating me before I even won the election.
RUSH: It says here —
RUSH: No, it was frustrating. For the first six months of your first term half the Republicans in the House thought it was true and that’s why they didn’t help you move your agenda. But it says right here — this is Axios, by the way, is the news source. And they say that Barr is communicating that his investigator, Durham, is taking his investigation very seriously and is focused on winning prosecutions which I’d guess we expect not scoring points in the media.
THE PRESIDENT: Let’s let everybody get elected to office and then let’s worry about it. First of all, if we don’t win this election that whole thing’s gonna end, okay? And you just remember that. That’s another thing I’m fighting for because these people have to be brought to justice, but they should have been brought to justice before the election. But if we don’t win this election, if we don’t win, that whole thing is gonna be dismissed.
RUSH: That’s another thing. People want to know what they can do, Sir. You would not believe the numbers of people who are asking what can they do, besides vote. And voting is big. I mean, I tell people that ask me this that’s the first thing, just make sure you vote, show up and vote on Election Day. But vote. It’s not insignificant. What else can people do? Because they want to help you.
THE PRESIDENT: Just keep up the anger, keep up the genius, because they’re genius, they get it better than these guys that are looking at stuff. I’m telling you, they get it better. The American public gets this better than the so-called people that are looking — you know, when I look at the Times and the look at the Washington Post, fake papers, both of them, and they get Pulitzer Prizes for the Russia investigation, but they were all wrong. There was no collusion. So they get Pulitzer Prizes —
RUSH: There wasn’t a true word in any of those stories.
I haven’t seen her, I haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half. You know, you take one picture with somebody, it ends up being like the best friends for the rest of your life, you know, take a picture at the Oval Office with a photographer, with a reporter. And then they write as though you can’t live without ’em. I don’t even speak to these people.
But look at the bad reporting that they’ve done. Look how wrong they were about everything. They got Pulitzer Prizes for — the Pulitzer organization, frankly, is a disgrace. They gave Pulitzer Prizes to everybody that shouldn’t have gotten ’em.
RUSH: Yep.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, they were all wrong.
RUSH: Folks, let me just —
THE PRESIDENT: The people that should get the Pulitzer Prizes didn’t get ’em.
RUSH: I want to back the president up on this, folks. In this story that we’re talking about here, the Russian collusion, meddling story, do not doubt me, there wasn’t a word of truth in any of the stories that were published, oftentimes —
THE PRESIDENT: Nothing.
RUSH: — four times a day for the first year. There was no truth. When Robert Mueller was handed the file on the day he became the special counsel, it was empty. There was never any evidence. This was not an investigation. There was nothing to investigate. It was a hunt. It was an outrage. And to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize for printing not a single thing that is true is genuinely discrediting to Pulitzer. And you would think these people would care about that. But they don’t. All that matters is getting rid of you. That’s all that matters.
THE PRESIDENT: You would think they’d want to take back the prizes on the basis they made a mistake. You would think the committee would meet and say, “I’m sorry, but you got it wrong, we’re gonna have to remand, we’re gonna have to take back the prizes.” But, Rush, think of it. They were totally wrong, and they all got Pulitzer Prizes. And then they go into another story, it’s the same stuff. It’s so disgraceful when you look at what’s gone on. It’s so dishonest. And they knew it. And Mueller was a fraud. The whole thing was a fraud.
RUSH: A thug.
THE PRESIDENT: They were just thugs. Thugs. And I’ll tell you something. A friend of mine said, you must be – a friend of mine who is a very smart, very successful guy, lawyer — said you must be the most honest guy in the world. You’ve gone through three and a half years of investigations. They found nothing. And they’ve gone through my taxes. They’ve gone through everything. Hey, they spent $48 million, I think the last number I heard was 48 million, investigating me.
They’ve gone through my taxes, they’ve gone through everything you can imagine at a level that nobody can even believe. Nobody’s ever had to put up with, and no other president should have to put up with this. But then I hear that they’re not gonna do the thing before the election. Why? Because they’re afraid they’re gonna influence the election. Because that’s the way the Republicans are, they play so nice all the time.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: That would be very disappointing if Bill Barr actually made that statement, I would be very disappointed in him. I don’t know that he made that statement. But if he did do that I’d be very disappointed.
RUSH: Well, that’s a good point. I mean, it is the Drive-By Media. It’s Axios. And the story is that Barr it telling leading Republicans. It’s not that he’s made it public. It’s that he’s —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they’ve had plenty of time to do it. They’ve been looking at it for two years. The facts are on the table. All you have to do is take a look at Horowitz report on Mueller. Even the New York Times on Mueller, especially what they wrote about — what they read about this idiot, Comey, the world’s worst FBI director, but not only that, it’s very dishonest guy.
RUSH: Do you think the American people are not aware of this?
RUSH: But if they think they got away with it — well, I’m leading up to the American people should be, if they know what happened, so outraged, no way they would vote Democrat. This is outrageous. This is antithetical to everything this country stands for, what happened to you in —
THE PRESIDENT: They tried to a takedown of a very legitimately — in fact beyond, because I was fighting — little did I know when they started this investigation, which was long before the presidential — before the race. After I won, they tried to take me out. Before I won they tried to, you know, it was a fraud. It was the Russian witch hunt.
RUSH: They were trying to corrupt your transition.
THE PRESIDENT: Hey, Rush, you know, this better than anybody. And Putin I guarantee you says this to everybody. Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have. I got NATO to pay $410 billion more — —
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: — protect against Russia. I was the one that exposed Nord Stream, the pipeline going into Germany. I said, wait a minute. You’re paying Russia billions of dollars, and we’re supposed to protect you from Russia. What kind of a deal is this? I was the one that gave tank busters to Ukraine and Obama gave ’em pillows. Remember the pillows, probably from the pillow man on Fox. But Obama gave ’em pillows and sheets.
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: And I gave ’em tank busters. I gave them money. Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have. Nobody.
RUSH: Well, you know, Mr. President, I think something the American people need to know is that the Democrats and the media, which is, again, one and the same, have done more with four years of lies and misrepresentation, utter outright lies about you —
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: — supposedly stealing the election from Hillary with the Russians, they have done more, Sir, — this important — they have done more to corrupt the integrity and the honor of the presidential election system than Vladimir Putin could have ever hoped to. They have made people doubt. And they’re now talking about how this upcoming election, the Russians are in the process of stealing it too.
These people are so dishonorable and disreputable and they need to be held accountable for what they have done to the perception of honesty and integrity in our elections to the very serious effort they are making to transform this country into something it was never founded to be.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: But this business of trying to say that you stole the election, that you meddled with the Russians, they did! Hillary did. Hillary came up with this whole scheme —
THE PRESIDENT: Yep.
RUSH: — in order to protect her from her email scandal. This is something they did. And now they’re running around and they’re doing more damage to the integrity, the perceived honesty of our electoral system than anything Vladimir Putin could have ever hoped for.
THE PRESIDENT: She deleted 33,000 emails, she should be in jail for that. I don’t care if they’re very highly confidential emails, I don’t care what. She deleted — she got a question, she got a statement from Congress, a subpoena from Congress. Everybody, we want your emails, all of Hillary Clinton’s emails, 33,000 of them, she deleted them, she acid washed them and she broke her telephones with a hammer, okay? Broke ’em with a hammer.
And, by the way, speaking of that and speaking of Bill Barr, 31 people deleted their telephone messages from the Mueller report, okay? And they said they all made a mistake. Well, they made the same mistake? Chances are a billion to one that they would have made the same mistake, 31 phones were wiped clean on the Mueller report. I want to see those phones, right? And how do you allow — 31 phones, I think it was 19 people, 31 phones – you read about it just recently — they want the phones ’cause they want the information on the phones, because we caught them cheating. And they were all wiped clean or most of them were wiped clean. We have a couple, believe it or not. But they were wiped clean. They were deleted. Everything was deleted and cleansed. And you’re not allowed to do that. They broke the law. Nothing happens to these people.
RUSH: No.
RUSH: Absolutely. Sir, why do you think Vice President Biden agreed to go on with a town hall debate number two if you can prove you’re virus free on October 15th — and then he retracted the demand, now agrees with the commission to Zoom the debate, wants a virtual debate, and, if he doesn’t show up, are you gonna show up anyway? What are they trying to pull off here?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think the debates mean that much, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve done well with debates, I won — I guess I had 15, I think I won every single poll. I won the poll on this one with him, but I had to be rude because he was lying, he’d get up and just say a series of things that were all lies, and I’d say “false,” and they’d say I interrupted him. But, you know, if you look at the polls, most polls say I won it with him. But it was a very interesting thing. I’d rather let him speak because he’s gone, he’s mentally gone, and eventually he goes off track and he’ll start talking about the birds and the bees.
But I couldn’t do that because he was saying so many false things. He’d say about the soldiers, he’d say about Social Security, which I’ll protect and he won’t protect, by the way. He’s not gonna protect — he doesn’t know what it is. He’ll say about Social Security, he’ll say about — and if I didn’t say “wrong,” you know, et cetera, et cetera. But the one who protected him was Chris Wallace. And, by the way, Fox is a whole different ball game. You know, Fox is a much different thing than it was four years ago.
Somebody said what’s the biggest difference? I said the biggest difference is Fox. You take a look at Fox — we have our great ones, Sean and, you know, a number of them, but Fox is a whole different ball game. And, you know, Paul Ryan is on the board of Fox. I’m sure that has something to do with it, but Fox is a whole different ball game. Somebody said to me, what’s the biggest difference? I said the biggest difference is Fox is no longer the same. Big difference.
RUSH: Well, the obstacles that keep being placed in front of you are no doubt there. And I’ve told you this before. I talk about it on this program a lot. I’ve never seen anything like this before, the things you have to overcome and surmount each and every day would drive most people out of the business. “I don’t need this.”
THE PRESIDENT: I can talk to you and your audience —
RUSH: You didn’t need any of this, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Why I can talk to you, Rush, the great Rush — and you are the great one and I’m honored to know you — but I can talk to you, and I can spell out all of the dishonesty and everything else and millions of people are listening right now —
RUSH: They are.
THE PRESIDENT: — your all-time biggest audience.
RUSH: Millions and millions and millions, you would not believe how many millions.
RUSH: I know.
THE PRESIDENT: — have great guys, I mean, we have Jim Jordan and these guys, they’re so fantastic —
RUSH: They’re doing great jobs, there’s no question. But how do you deal with it, you have no choice, you have to deal — you say Fox is different than they were four years ago, but you still have to deal with it.
THE PRESIDENT: I deal with ’em. I deal with ’em. But they’ve gone a very different path. It’s a much different group. They have guys on there that are so bad, they have people, I call ’em the twins, Chris Hahn and —
RUSH: Well, they just hired a bunch of Democrats so they could be fair and balanced.
THE PRESIDENT: No, he works for Schumer. They’re Schumer people.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: How about when they hire Donna Brazile who gave Hillary the questions to the debate?
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah, I hear you.
THE PRESIDENT: Who got fired, by the way, Donna Brazile got fired from CNN and then Fox hires here. Got no credibility. It’s not like she’s great entertainment. It’s not even good entertainment.
RUSH: I know. This unfairness never ends. It never ends. It’s our way of life. It’s something we have to deal with, and it’s maddening —
THE PRESIDENT: When they do that, when they put somebody like a Donna Brazile in — not that she’s effective. She’s not effective —
RUSH: Yeah, but you are. That’s the difference. That’s the difference. You are. You think they’re driving you crazy? You have no idea what you’re doing to them. You’re driving them insane, Sir. They can’t touch you.
RUSH: Well, you are a TV expert. I mean, there’s no question. The Apprentice.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have to be. I have no choice because otherwise you couldn’t survive it. Sean is great. And Tucker is pretty good, you know, Tucker has his moments in all fairness, but Tucker is pretty good. And Laura’s been great and, you know, we have a lot of good stuff. But Fox is 50% of what they were — I would say less than 50, but 50% of what they were. That’s still better than nothing. At some point maybe they’ll go all of the way and that will be fine too. I’ll figure that out. I have to figure out —
RUSH: By the way, speaking of your effectiveness, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. But the NBA has decided, NBA commissioner, they’re gonna pull —
THE PRESIDENT: Yep.
RUSH: — their Black Lives Matter messaging next year. No longer gonna be on the uniforms, no longer gonna be on the basketball court, they’re no longer gonna — and I wonder why that is, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Because they’re ratings have died.
RUSH: Oh, I wouldn’t have known.
THE PRESIDENT: I haven’t watched a basketball game — and I helped them get open — I haven’t watched a basketball game —
THE PRESIDENT: I tried to help the NFL and then Roger, nice guy, Goodell, in his basement wearing a very tight blue T-shirt, you know, and he’s not meant for it, nor am I, nor are you, it’s just one of those things, you know, at a certain age you put on a tie, right? But what happens is he brought it up again. I said to him, “I thought I taught you a lesson two years ago about standing for the flag.” Their ratings went down the tubes and now you look at everybody with their hands in the air and they’re kneeling and I just don’t have the same interest. And neither do a lot of other people, Rush.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: The NBA has become so political that nobody cares about it anymore.
RUSH: It’s not why people watch it.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t even know who’s playing in the finals. I don’t know anybody that’s watching the NBA. LeBron has been a spokesman — I don’t know him, I never met him. All I know is when he endorsed Hillary, I said, that’s the greatest endorsement I’ve ever seen because when he endorsed Hillary four years ago, she came up to his knee. I said, that is not the best-looking president I’ve ever seen.
RUSH: She came up to his knee. (chuckles)
THE PRESIDENT: I thought that was the greatest —
RUSH: You mean standing she came up to his knee?
THE PRESIDENT: They were standing, no, she was up to about his knee. Literally I’ve never seen — and I said, “That’s not good.” But LeBron is a spokesman for the Democratic Party, and a very nasty spokesman. Because, again —
RUSH: They are. They are angry.
So I look at it, and I look at the NBA, and I can’t watch it. And nobody’s watching it. And their ratings are down the tubes. And I’m telling you, I haven’t watched a basketball game in a long time. I have no interest in doing it. And, you know what? That’s a very sad commentary, ’cause I’d love to. But I just don’t have any interest in it anymore. Other things I do, I have great interest, but they’re hurting themselves very badly.
And now I understand — don’t forget, Black Lives Matter, what was Black Lives Matter? Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon. The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said that’s such a terrible term because it’s such a racist term. It’s a term that sows division between blacks and whites and everybody else. And it’s a very bad term, for blacks. But they were very angry. It’s a Marxist organization.
RUSH: That’s the key.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s “pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.” Who were they referring to? New York City policemen. Okay? And I said, wow. And if you would have told me that was gonna go mainstream. But it never did go mainstream.
RUSH: Well, I don’t know. Mr. President, that’s another thing. If you go back, 9/11, just 19 years ago, not that long ago — this, to me, is a really sobering thing to realize — not that long ago the police, the firemen, first responders were the heroes in our country. Go back after 9/11, athletes carrying the American flag on the field —
THE PRESIDENT: Absolute heroes.
RUSH: And now look what’s happened. In 15 to 19 years, look what the left has done.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: Now we want to defund the police. Now the police are murdering pigs and so forth, in 15 years. It’s a sign of how successful these people have been. They used to be heroes. Everybody wanted to be with the police.
THE PRESIDENT: Yep.
RUSH: Everybody wanted to join them. When George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, Rudy is wearing the NYPD cap. I mean, the cops were the toasts of the town. They went into the buildings trying to save people and to see what the Democrat Party has done to the police —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, well, it’s radical liberal Democrats. Look. New York — Rudy was a great mayor. Rudy was our greatest mayor by far. He did things that were incredible and brought back New York. But it was easier in a way because the police had total respect. There was crime and everything, but the police were the police. When they dumped water a year ago on the policeman’s head and he didn’t do anything about it, like turn around and slug the guy, when they did that, I don’t know if you remember New York’s finest, New York’s finest, these are great police. You know, I got endorsed by New York’s finest one month ago. And it’s the first time in the history of New York City that they’ve endorsed a presidential candidate.
THE PRESIDENT: Everybody.
RUSH: All over the country.
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think anybody — in fact I asked Biden at the debate, and of course Chris Wallace cut it off, didn’t think it was appropriate. I said name one police organization that endorsed you, Joe. Then I said, say law and order, Joe, just law and order. He wouldn’t do it.
RUSH: Yeah, why wouldn’t he do that? What’s so hard about law and order? Law and order, how hard is that?
THE PRESIDENT: He wouldn’t do it. Then I think he said law and order and safety. I said, no, no, no, just law and order, law and order means safety. You don’t have to add the word safety. You know, that’s their little net. Let me tell you, if he got in this country’s going to hell. This country’s gonna go to hell like you’ve never seen and you’ll end up in a depression the likes of which you haven’t seen since 1929.
RUSH: Okay, now people are asking, when you say that, why would they want this? Why would the Democrats want to take this country into a recession and have it be so bad economically? Why would they want to do that?
THE PRESIDENT: Your taxes are going up, your regulations — you know, I did the biggest tax cuts in history, bigger than Reagan’s tax cuts, I did something that was more important. I cut regulations. That you couldn’t build a highway in less than 10 years. It would take you 10 years to get approvals and some much longer than that. One was 21 years and they ended up not getting it. You couldn’t get anything done. And I cut regulations to a level that now you can get things done or not done in one year. In other words, it may get disapproved because it’s not safe or environmentally good or a lot of good reasons.
RUSH: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: But I cut regulations from 19 years to one year. I mean, you wouldn’t even believe it. People had to go through the same agency 14 different times —
RUSH: Right. Once again you have to be the one to tell the story.
THE PRESIDENT: I have to be the one, yeah. Nobody else seems to be able to tell it properly.
RUSH: By the way, what’s the stats of the stimulus package now, the COVID stimulus package?
THE PRESIDENT: So I’d like to see it happen because it wasn’t — look. A lot of people are being hurt because of China. It wasn’t these people’s fault. I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering. I’m going in the exact opposite now, okay? I mean, I’m telling you this, I’m telling you something I don’t tell anybody else ’cause maybe it helps or maybe it hurts negotiations.
I would like to see a bigger package. I’d like to see money going to people. It was not their fault that China sent in the plague. It wasn’t their fault. And China’s gonna pay a big price. You know, China was gonna catch us in 2019. If you look back 15, 20 years ago, everybody said by 2019 China will beat us. I was beating them so badly — you know, we were doubling up, we were doing great, until the plague came in. And we’re still beating them badly. We’ll still be. If you have a smart guy atop, you’ll always beat ’em. You know, they’re paying us billions and billions of dollars in tariffs. People don’t realize when I made the deal, they’re paying billions, I gave a lot of —
THE PRESIDENT: Billions of dollars. Well, they devalue their currency and they make it impossible to compete because they devalue their currency, you know, they’re currency manipulators, and devalue their currency, and therefore the dollar, they’re using dollars of a different value and it makes it very easy for them to compete, whereas we don’t do that. We don’t play games like that. Some people say we should. I don’t have a viewpoint. But they devalue their currency and do all sorts of things.
And what they do in the World Trade Organization, you know, we just won a case, seven and a half billion dollars, first time we’ve won a case in a long time. I said, look, I’m gonna get out of the World Trade Organization if we have to just like I got out of the World Health. So we were paying $500 million a year in World Health, China’s paying $39 million a year in World Health. They’re a bigger country. I said, “Why are they paying so much less?” You know, little stupid questions like that. Nobody could give me an answer, and yet they dominate the World Health, they dominate, World Health, okay? And World Health, when they did this horrible thing to us, World Health did nothing whatsoever to help us. We’re at $500 million here, so I terminated the deal.
RUSH: They’re in the tank, they’re in the tank for the ChiComs.
THE PRESIDENT: Totally in the tank.
RUSH: I gotta make an observation here, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: By the way, same thing about world trade. You know, in world trade China is considered a developing nation. If you’re a developing nation you get tremendous advantages in the World Trade Organization.
RUSH: Right, you get your hand in the back pocket of the United States Treasury is what you get.
THE PRESIDENT: A hundred percent. And I ended that. I said I’m not gonna accept that they’re a developing nation. I wouldn’t say China’s in love with me, by the way. China is dying. Here’s what will happen, just a couple of predictions. If I win we’ll have a great deal with Iran within one month. They’re dying to have me lose, but if I win —
RUSH: A great deal on what?
THE PRESIDENT: On no nuclear weapons.
RUSH: No nuclear weapons.
And they know if they do anything against us they’ll pay a thousand-fold problem. They’re gonna have a thousand-fold difference because they know now that we have things that we never had before. We have strength in weapons that we never had before. We never had it like we have it now and Iran knows that. They’ve been put on notice, if you f**k around with us, you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before and they understand that. But here’s the thing, they’re no longer rich and they’re not giving out hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas and all these other groups that caused all the problems. Now, nobody brings it up. When was the last time you saw an attack —
RUSH: I hear the frustration your voice. I need to make an observation here for the American people.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: We’ve now been chatting with the president for an hour and 42 minutes, ladies and gentlemen. We have not had a commercial break. I would thus have to say the president’s status with COVID-19 is pretty solid.
THE PRESIDENT: (laughing)
RUSH: The second thing that I would say is that not once during the hour and 42 minutes has the president been stumped, has he not known what he wanted to say. Sir, you give the media in this country more access than any president ever. That’s not even a contest. I think you’ve done something brilliant, too, when you have your little press gaggles out on your way to Marine One. The camera’s on you, not them. You look like you’re actually conducting an orchestra as you point to various members of the media when it’s their turn.
You’re conducting a symphony. And everybody hears them screaming their questions at you like a bunch of 6-year-olds, and you answer them. Every question you’re asked, you answer. You don’t take a pass on anything and you don’t run away from anything, you don’t hide from anything, and you’ll meet them wherever they happen to be, if you’re able to, you will. And I think people need to keep this in mind in terms of a chief executive who is accessible to the American people and wants the American people to know what he’s doing and what he’s thinking.
There’s no deception here. You have somebody — I don’t want to embarrass you here, but you have somebody who thinks this country is great. You have somebody that loves this country, perhaps in ways that many people in politics in the past don’t because their view of what America is is a nation among many in the world. President Trump believes in America first, and for this he’s hated, for this he’s criticized. America first. There’s nothing wrong with America first because America’s the good guys. We are the good guys in the world. We are the solution to the world’s problems.
His opponents think America’s racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic. Hell, we may as well still be a slave state as far as they’re concerned. It’s outrageous how they’ve poisoned the minds of our young people and got our young people hating their own country. Donald Trump has been a — your arrival on the scene has been providential I believe, Sir. I think you are the one person who has the ability to delay, stave off, stop the left from this inexorable march of theirs into changing this country into things the American people, that aren’t paying attention, have no idea what’s in store for them if they win.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Rush, I appreciate that very much. It’s an honor.
RUSH: I mean it from the bottom of my heart, Sir.
THE PRESIDENT: I know you do. And this is the most important election that we’ve ever had. And I used to say ’16. I don’t even get into that anymore. That’s over. This is the most important election this country has ever had on so many different fronts. There’s never been anything like it. We will go the way of failed nations all over Latin America, South America. We will go the way of failure like nobody’s ever seen and in a scale like nobody’s ever seen it. We’ve been taken advantage of by every nation in the world, including our friends. Our friends sometimes are worse than our enemies.
What I’ve done with NATO, we were taking care of virtually a hundred percent of the military needs of Europe, guarding them from Russia at the same time they were taking advantage of us on trade, and in many ways they were worse than China. Europe was worse to us on trade than China was. And I changed so many things. But, you know, then they say, “Oh, in Germany they don’t like Trump as much as they like Obama.” Well, of course they shouldn’t like me, because Germany was taking advantage of us like few countries took advantage —
RUSH: What was Angela Merkel doing making a deal with Russia on that natural gas pipeline, you made that point at NATO, she should have been buying from us.
THE PRESIDENT: Nobody even knew about that pipeline until I brought it up. I said, “Why are you paying Russia billions of dollars and we’re protecting you, tell me what kind of a deal is this, we’re protecting you, but you’re giving Russia -”
RUSH: And what did she say?
THE PRESIDENT: She’s smiles because she’s a very smart one, she knows it, there’s no way she can answer the question. I say, “You don’t have to answer the question, Angela.” I like Angela. But you know she’s a player. I said, “Angela, don’t answer the question because I don’t want to embarrass you.” There’s no way she can answer the question because she gets away with it, that’s why. She’s a very smart, cunning person. But I caught ’em.
Hey, Rush, I got them to pay $130 billion going to $410 billion more each year against Russia. Now, I get along with Putin. I like Putin. Putin probably, possibly likes me but I guarantee you one thing he would have much rather seen Crooked Hillary and I guarantee he’d rather see Biden ’cause Biden is slow. Biden is not equipped to be president. He never was at his best. But he is not equipped now. It’s no longer prime time. And not because he’s 78. Because, frankly, at 78 as we said before, I know the sharpest people, they’re 85, they’re 80 — it’s not at age — now they’re all saying, “Oh, he’s 78.” It’s not because he’s 78. There’s something wrong with him, okay? And we can be nice about it. We can —
THE PRESIDENT: Nobody wants to say it. Nobody wants to say it. But his thoughts are bad — here’s a guy. You talk about access to the press. I’ve never seen this before and I’ve watched a lot and I don’t know how it gets away. You saw that NBC joke the other night, it’s like a child, like you’re asking a child questions. They don’t talk to me that way. When you you look at the questions that he gets and then he reads the answers off a computer. Now, that means that these supposedly legitimate, but they’re not legitimate — you know that better than I do — these news organizations are giving him questions, they’re putting them in a computer, he’s reading the answers off a computer.
I never heard of that before. I’ve never done that. Can you imagine? Give me the questions and I’m gonna give you an answer off a computer? He’s reading the answers off a computer a lot of times. And if he doesn’t do that he’s all mixed and befuddled. And Chris Wallace saved him three times the other night. I mean, he was getting ready to crack, and Chris Wallace, who was terrible, by the way, who I think really embarrassed himself and Fox the other night, but Chris Wallace saved him. But can you imagine, you’re getting the answers to questions and you’re getting the questions themselves, and you’re reading the answers —
RUSH: They were doing that for Hillary too. That’s how they rigged the game for the Democrats. Look, I got another Biden sound bite here for you.
THE PRESIDENT: One thing I’ll say, Hillary was much smarter. Hillary’s a much smarter person, you know, I mean, look, Hillary was smart.
RUSH: I don’t agree with that, but I mean I —
THE PRESIDENT: I understand, but Hillary was, you know, Hillary didn’t need to have answers read. You know, she could answer a question. Joe cannot answer a question. They ask him a question, a very simple question, and he’s reading it off the computer. He’s saying, “Move the computer, bring it closer.” He couldn’t see it, “Bring it closer.”
RUSH: Yeah, I know.
THE PRESIDENT: On a question that anybody could answer. I mean, it’s a very simple question. We can’t have this. We can be nice. And maybe I’ll lose ’cause they’ll say I’m not a nice person. I think I am a nice person. I help people. I like to help people. But we can’t have this as our president. We really can’t, Rush.
RUSH: Here’s another Biden sound bite for you to react to. This is June 7th… This is all the way back 2006. This is 14 years ago. Now, this will tell you who the guy is. This is before any of whatever the aging problems that have befallen Vice President Biden are. This is 2006, so 14 years ago, in Manchester, New Hampshire.
BIDEN: In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent — and I’m not joking!
RUSH: Now, you and I say that, and we are roasted and excoriated. He says that, “Oh, that’s just old Joe!”
THE PRESIDENT: You’re right. We would be. But still, that’s a much different man talking there than you see now.
RUSH: Well, that’s exactly right.
THE PRESIDENT: Much different man.
The Postal Service, “USPS is investigating,” and then we have another companion story: “Mail-in Ballots in Westmoreland County [Pennsylvania] Delayed, Voters Confused and Frustrated.” It’s 58,000 mail-in ballots in one county, Sir, in one state. Extrapolate that to the entire state —
THE PRESIDENT: Yep.
RUSH: — 58,000 mail-in ballots, or as the Democrats see it, mail in-fraud.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
RUSH: That’s another thing people want to know: What can be done about this?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, look. Absentee ballots where you send in for your ballot… You know, I have an absentee ballot in Florida. You send in and you have to request it, and they send it to you.
RUSH: You have to show ID to get one of those. You don’t for mail in.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s okay. It’s not easy, but it’s okay. You know, some people just can’t do it. But they send it and it’s called “absentee.” I call it a “solicited ballot.” I like that term better. You solicit and they send it and you fix it and you send it back. Okay. That’s one thing. But they’re sending out millions and millions of ballots. Are they sending them to all Democrats?
Who are they sending them to? Where are they going? You know, et cetera, et cetera. This is going to be the second biggest political scandal in history. The first biggest is the Russian crap that we’ve been going through for 3-1/2 years. That’s the biggest. To me, that’s the biggest scandal, biggest political scandal in history —
RUSH: It is.
THE PRESIDENT: — what we’ve been going through, and now they delay it? You’re telling me they delay it? That’s gonna be my first phone call, by the way.
RUSH: Delay the announcement of whatever’s found. Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s just a disgrace. If that’s a case, it’s a disgrace. I’ll say it to anybody who wants to say it. But the biggest scandal of all time; this will be the second biggest scandal. Every day, I’m seeing accounts of ballots that are thrown away. You saw the military ballots that were thrown away with my name on it the other day. Every day you see scandal about these millions of ballots that’s being sent out. It’s the single biggest risk in this election.
RUSH: If this kind of stuff were happening to me if I were a candidate, I’d have my people on this so fast.
THE PRESIDENT: We are. I have —
RUSH: What are you doing about it?
THE PRESIDENT: We have many lawyers, and we’ve actually been winning many cases. How about where they have the ballots counted and the ballots have to be in by November 3rd, Election Day, but they don’t have to be counted for two weeks later? Well, that means you’re never gonna know who won the election.
RUSH: Right.
We’re watching it very closely, and we’re winning a lot of cases, Rush. You don’t see it too much. We just won a big case in North Carolina. We just won a big case in Pennsylvania — I think we’re going to win. We’re winning a lot of cases. In Rhode Island, we won a big case, where the ballots have to be done in a certain way. But the best way is to get up…
Now, I tell you what. Our people, your people, my people, Republican people, they get out — and they’re all my people, as far as I’m concerned. Everyone’s my people. But Republicans tend to get out and vote, and that’s what they should do: Early voting, but at a machine. Early voting or voting on November 3rd.
And wait ’til you see the kind of love that’s gonna be expressed the day those polls open. The day those machines open, wait ’til you see. But the Democrats are sending in 80% of theirs by ballot. Now, one thing we’ve noticed from what I hear and from what I’m reading is a lot of the ballots, all they’re doing is taking from people that would have voted in the first place.
They’re not a lot of new voters. You know, we have many more registered voters. We picked up a lot of voters, the Republicans. I think you’re gonna see a very, very big explosion when those polls open up, Rush. But a large percentage — like 80% of the Republicans — want to vote. They want to actually go to a poll and vote.
RUSH: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: Whereas it’s almost the opposite, for whatever reason, with the Democrats. I think you’re gonna see a very big explosion of voting —
RUSH: Well, the Democrats need a little yellow bus showing up, picking ’em up, takin’ ’em to the polls. Get it there on their own, it’s been —
THE PRESIDENT: Right, right, and then they do the harvesting thing, which is terrible —
RUSH: (groans)
THE PRESIDENT — which is illegal, in many cases, even with the laws that are being passed, where they go around and they start picking up everybody’s votes, you know. We have a big enthusiasm gap. Our gap is so much more enthusiastic — you know, like 30-35 points. It’s a… There’s been a gap of that a lot of people between, let’s say, me and him, that there is. Look at the boat shows. I mean, thousands of boats in the oceans, in the lakes —
RUSH: Oh, and that’s another thing.
THE PRESIDENT: — and all over these tractor trucks.
RUSH: The poll that shows 56% of the American people think they’re better off now than they were four years ago even in the midst of this pandemic.
THE PRESIDENT: Right.
THE PRESIDENT: (chuckling) Thank you.
RUSH: It’s you! You are the one.
THE PRESIDENT: By a lot. I know.
RUSH: Absolutely by a lot. And that poll, that’s never been wrong, by the way, Sir. That question has never been wrong.
THE PRESIDENT: They say, “Who is your neighbor gonna vote for?”
RUSH: Yeah, exactly.
THE PRESIDENT: And they’re all saying “Trump.”
RUSH: “Who do you think your neighbor’s gonna vote for?” Exactly right.
THE PRESIDENT: They know their neighbors. No, because people don’t want to get involved. I mean, you know, even the signs. We have signs all over the place. We have signs in states. But they steal the signs. People steal the signs. They’re stealing. It’s a well-known thing. They’re stealing the signs. Our enthusiasm is far greater than it was four years ago — far greater — because they love the job we’re doing, and they know this pandemic was a horrible thing that happened to us.
It should have never been allowed to happen by China. China’s gonna pay a big price, and it’s one of those things, but it happened. And we’ve done a great job on it, we got no credit. I’ll tell you what. If this turns out to be right, that this medicine is going to make people better, that’s a game-changer like nobody’s ever seen before. And it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen, Rush.
RUSH: Mr. President, thank you. Two hours here.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s all right.
RUSH: I know you’ve got a jam-packed day left on your schedule.
THE PRESIDENT: That’s true. That’s true. But it’s an honor. It’s an honor to be with you for two hours. You have no idea. It’s a great honor.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
RUSH: It’s coming from inside our country as opposed to outside.
THE PRESIDENT: It is.
RUSH: Although that’s happening, too.
THE PRESIDENT: It is, largely, and you know what I say oftentimes when people say that? “I have no choice. I have to do it. I have no choice,” and that’s what I’m doing.
RUSH: Best of luck to you, Sir. Thank you very much.
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