Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
The views expressed by the host on this program documented to be almost always right 99.8% of the time.
Greetings to you, music lovers, drill seekers, and conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Great to have you here for the next three hours of broadcast excellence hosted by me, your guiding light, Rush Limbaugh, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, the telephone number, always 800 282-2882, the email address, L Rushmore at EIBNet.com.
Did I not say yesterday everything is going to change, and I predicted the change was going to be dramatic.
And it was going to take place simply because we have reality down to deal with.
We have actual votes that have been cast.
We have candidates who have finished in specific places in a certain order, and all of that that took place yesterday and the day before doesn't count for anything now.
It was all theory, it was all speculative, it was all poll-driven, much of it wrong.
It's astounding to me how dramatic and what a huge difference the entire landscape assumes and how it is presented.
Look at how dramatically things change as we go from a narrative of theory and what turned out to be bad polling to the shocking and dramatic reality of reality.
We have hard votes cast, we have real winners, we have presumed losers and presumed second-tier winners.
We have all sorts of narratives dead, all sorts of themes dead, all previous prognostications, many of them now taken under advisement and being recast.
Pretty much everything we were told to expect last night on the Republican side didn't happen.
The polling data had Donald Trump winning in the vast majority of polls by anywhere four points to six, depending.
And Rubio was barely, barely gonna remain viable, finishing a distant third, Ted Cruz and Trump were going to be battling it out.
We had all kinds of theories to explain why that was going to happen.
And of course you have to throw it all out now.
One of the reasons, folks, that that I don't join the narratives pre-voting is because I don't know what's gonna happen.
All I know is and what I sense is that potentially momentous things are at play, and they really are.
But I don't know, I didn't know before yesterday how things were going to turn out.
Uh I didn't have a particular feel for it.
And this is why I never try to endeavor to explain with ontological certitude what I think is going to happen in wide open contests like this.
For example, the Republican Party, and let me give you a little bit of news that I just was made aware of prior to the show beginning.
It's a news story from the Hill.com.
Now think of what just happened last night.
Let's put this in context.
evangelicals, social issues people, the very people the Republican Party wishes they could ditch, The very people Republican moderates and rhinos and establishment Republicans are embarrassed of evangelicals, God-fearing people, pro-lifers, pro-constant old-fashioned cultural, sensible behavior modes.
Those people were the margin of victory in a Republican primary, well, caucus, in the first state of the campaign season.
Now you would think that upon seeing this, that the Republican Party might think it worthwhile to conduct an outreach to this group of people.
But they will not, because they have been doing their best to distance themselves from these people and to de-emphasize their importance and their role in the Republican Party.
And yet they are the reason Ted Cruz was victorious last night.
Now there are many reasons why Trump did not win.
We're going to get into all of those as the program unfolds.
But look at this news story.
It's from the Hill.com.
And rather than read this, let me tell you what it is.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republicans in the Senate, has said he doesn't think it will make any sense to oppose any part of the Obama agenda this entire year, because to do so might threaten the Republican presidential campaign.
So Mitch McConnell has just signaled to Barack Obama he's got a free road.
He's got an open road and a clear road, whatever he wants to do.
The Republicans in the Senate are not going to lift a finger to stop him because Mitch McConnell thinks that that kind of opposition and that kind of criticism might harm the Republican presidential campaign, whoever ends up being the nominee.
Meanwhile, that very Republican presidential campaign, if it has the slightest chance of winning, is going to be taking direct aim at Barack Obama and his party and Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or whoever, The very nature of the campaign is going to be, and you watch, it has to be this if the Republicans are going to win.
If the Republicans do not run against Obama, if they don't run against the last seven years, if they do not run against Hillary Clinton, if they don't promise they're going to stop this stuff and reverse it, they're not going to win anyway.
So the Republican nominee, most likely, is going to be running a campaign anti-Hillary Clinton, illustrating all the errors, the mistakes, the horrible things that have happened in this country the last seven years.
That will be the thrust of the Republican nominees' campaign for the White House in this year.
And over in the Senate, the Senate majority leader is saying he's not going to do that very thing because it might upset voters who would be inclined to vote Republican.
But if the Senate starts trying to stop Obama, then those voters might get mad at the Republicans and vote for Hillary.
It is the most insane thing I think I could have encountered today.
And I'm wondering if whoever the establishment prefers in this, everybody says it's Rubio.
And I have I'm going to tell you something, folks.
I've I'm I'm going to lone wolf on this.
But I have I I know everybody's assuming that Marco Rubio is the chosen establishment candidate, and they're doing so on the basis that Rubio has experienced with a gang of eight and amnesty and so forth, but Marco Rubio, I really like.
I like Ted Cruz.
There are any number of people in this campaign, two or three people, if they win, I'd be happy.
But it doesn't matter because the establishment does have their candidate.
And it looks like it is going to be Rubio, and as such, uh Rubio is going to end up becoming an enemy of several Republican or many perhaps potential Republican voters.
And he's I just remember the days that Marco Rubio was in the state of Florida, local politics, state politics, and then going national, and he was considered perhaps one of the greatest potential heirs to Ronald Reagan, and now he's being derided as a sellout member of the establishment.
I thought his acceptance speech last year is not acceptance, his speech last night.
He was the first to get out there.
He hustled to get out there as such it made him look like the winner.
He had uh energy.
Why that was a great speech that Rubio gave last night.
It was energetic.
Not choosing signs on anything here, folks.
Nothing's changed in that regard.
Simple observations I share with you as the program unfolds.
I just find it stunning.
I wonder if whoever the establishment can't, if Rubio had won, I wonder if McConnell would be saying what he said.
Probably would.
But you need to wake me up here.
I mean, this this makes no sense whatsoever.
The very nature of the campaign is going to be exposing everything wrong that has been done by Barack Obama and will continue to be done by Hillary Clinton.
Every aspect of our campaign is going to be focused on that and how we can reverse the direction, make this country better, improve people's lot in life via the economy, repealing Obamacare, you name it, and over in the Senate, we've just got an announcement.
They're not going to do that because they're afraid opposing Obama, the same old, same old, will upset independents or whoever.
And it might have a negative impact on the Republican presidential candidate.
Just stunning.
The argument is that the Republicans can't oppose Obama in the Senate during an election year because it might hurt them at the polls in November.
I mean, it's just inexplicable.
Back to Iowa.
So here we have the evangelicals.
The GOP would secretly like to get rid of and not be held prisoner by, if you will, it's the old social issues argument.
They are the margin of victory.
They are the reason Ted Cruz wins last night with a record Republican turnout.
It's not a record turnout in Iowa.
It is a record Republican turnout.
Remember, we spoke about this yesterday, too, with that Des Moines register poll, which was predicting various things because of a huge turnout.
And people were saying the Des Moines register poll was invalid and wrong because it was it was factoring in too large a turnout.
It turned out to be right on the money in terms of forecasting turnout.
13 polls, ladies and gentlemen, had Donald Trump winning by four points.
Thirteen different polls had Trump winning by four.
In the real clear politics rolling average, Ted Cruz outperformed what real clear politics polling averages said he would get by five points.
Marco Rubio outperformed his Real Clear Politics average by six points.
There was an exit poll question that was focused on quite a lot last night on television during the returns and the coverage, the aftermath of...
The exit question shares my values.
Trump five percent.
Now again, it's exit polling data, and we have evidence that many people play games and maybe even lie.
In fact, I'll give you an example.
They had entrance polls last night for the Iowa caucus.
And the first wave of entrance polls came in around 6, 6.30.
I was watching Fox News.
And Fox News, I forget who it was, looking at the entrance polls, said in the entrance polls indicated Trump was going to win.
It was a continuation of all the polling data in 13 polls that Trump was going to win.
And they were five.
The entrance polls said the same thing, and the and the people on Fox said, well, it looks like Trump's got this thing in the bag now.
Who would lie in an entrance poll?
Wish I could remember who said it.
Who would lie?
And interest makes no reason why anybody would lie.
Well, obviously the entrance polls were not right, and the 13 polls pre-election were not right either.
Exit poll question shares my values.
Trump at 5%.
Cruz, 38% shares my values.
Rubio 21% shares my values.
What is that a reference to, do you think?
What is shares my values?
Wait.
No, it's not religious voters.
This is what everybody wants you to think.
Shares my values.
This is a question of conservatism.
This is asking people, does this candidate share my values?
This is an ideological question.
In my estimation, I think this indicates that 5% of the voters that went in there last night in caucus think Trump shares their values as a conservative.
38% think that of uh Cruz at 21% think that of Rubio.
Now, if you add Cruz and Rubio, if you add their totals, you get 51% of the vote.
Now, I do not know the degree of sophistication to which the caucus goers last night consider who's the establishment candidate and who's the outsider or whatever.
But if you combine Rubio and Cruz and if you just take them individually without attaching them to anything, you've got two conservative guys here.
Rubio and Cruz are two conservative guys.
That's 51% of the vote.
Trump 24% of the vote.
If you want to, you can add Ben Carson, who's demonstratably conservative, and you're up to 60% of the vote in the Hawkeye Cock Eye was for conservatives.
It works every time it's tried, is my point.
Conservatism wins every time it's tried.
When somebody tries to fake it, real conservatives are gonna spot it, and it isn't gonna fly.
Not gonna work.
I saw another observation.
You look at Cruz, you look at Rubio, you look at Carson.
You have two Hispanics and an African American getting 60% of the caucus votes.
Over on the Democrat side, two bedraggled, worn-out old white people were the choice.
And we sit here, we continue to have to listen to all this garbage that the Republican Party is where you find a lack of diversity and closed-minded bigotry and all of that rot gut that has no basis in truth whatsoever.
Some of the theories last night is to explain Trump's defeat.
Well, he blew Iowans off by not going to the debate.
I don't think that's what it is, folks.
I don't think the debate, not going debate, had anything to do with it.
I don't think Iowan sit around, you know, he dissed us.
We wanted to hear what he had to say, and he refused to come tell us.
They knew who Donald Trump was.
Donald Trump's been on the media all over the place.
It wasn't that.
That's not what it was.
Remind you of a couple things.
The New York values business, here comes Cruz and describing Trump New York values.
The media all thought that Trump's answer in a previous debate just destroyed Cruz in that question.
I said on this program the next day, wrong, folks, you're dead wrong if with the conservative base in Iowa that I know that we're talking about Cruz ended up winning that.
Not Trump.
Trump won it in the Northeast.
He won it in the drive-by media.
He won it in the Northeast conservative media.
He won it among people live in New York, Boston, Washington, but he did not win that exchange in that debate in Iowa.
And how about I think another mistake that Mr. Trump made, and we mentioned it when it happened.
Oops.
I just saw the clock.
I will not lose my place.
I have to take a commercial break.
This is not done on purpose, folks.
I did.
And we find ourselves now in the midst of the Republican primary season.
It's officially begun.
There are hard results now.
And much of what you were told yesterday, the day before, the day before that didn't happen, did it?
And because it didn't happen, now the media's out taking what did happen last night and they're back at it, making predictions of what it means going forward.
And one of the things that I'm hearing is that Donald Trump is finished.
Oh, yeah.
You want to hear how that thinking goes?
Trump was supposed to win.
That's all he does.
He talks about winning, winning, winning, winning, winning.
He never loses.
He never loses.
Everybody's going to get tired of winning.
It's going to happen so much.
He comes in and loses.
The blooms off the rose.
The people of New Hampshire are going to say, we don't want to attach ourselves to a guy number two.
I don't care.
He's up 21, 24 points in New Hampshire.
He's going to have a bunch of people abandon him.
It's over for Donald Trump.
That's in the New York media.
That's on much of televised media.
It's not over for Donald Trump any more than it was over for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio going into yesterday.
But yet that's what you're going to hear.
The blooms off the rose.
Trump has been exposed as a fraud.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The polls showing Trump at 21.
Obviously, they say, no, we can't believe those.
The polls had him winning Iowa.
They weren't true.
People are not being honest with the pollsters.
They hate Trump so much they can't wait for him to lose and be humiliated and tossed out, so they're making it look like that's what last night means, and nobody knows that.
I don't think Trump skipping the debate had a thing to do with what happened last night.
This is a Republican primary.
It's Iowa.
Conservatives win in Iowa.
It is going to be a conservative who gets the nominationist party, or else the Democrats are going to win.
If this party once again nominates another squish squash moderate, it's over.
We haven't nominated a genuine conservative for the White House for the presidency in the Republican Party in years.
And this time we're going to do it.
And Donald Trump, I don't know if you forgot one thing that we remembers is that he went out and again trying to criticize Cruz.
Cruz here, the front runner.
Cruz is not the enemy.
Hillary Clinton is the enemy.
Ted Cruz is not a nasty guy.
Ted Cruz is not a Canadian.
Ted Cruz is none of that.
He's not mean spirit.
Ted Cruz doesn't want anybody to die in the streets.
Nobody's going to believe that.
Especially when you offer that criticism, sounding as though it could come from Bernie Sanders.
In a Republican primary, you do not win if you're going to sound like a liberal Democrat criticizing Ted Cruz.
And it wasn't just health care.
How many of you remember?
I pointed this out when it happened.
Mr. Trump pointing out that you can't do anything if you can't make deals, can't cooperate.
True.
Part of his criticism of Cruz hated, nobody likes him.
Trump said, I can do deals with Harry Reid.
I'm Pelosi.
I know these people, I like these people.
Schumer, I can do deals.
No, no, no, no.
We don't want to do any more deals with these people.
We want to beat those people.
There are many things that harm Mr. Trump, but not showing up the debate's not one of them.
And we are back in the initial stages of analysis.
And what happened last night?
That's right.
I can't make the point enough.
The difference in attitude people have, attitude, thoughts, feelings, what it today versus yesterday at this time.
A world apart.
What happened yesterday, this time of day, what everybody was thinking was going to happen, what everybody thought it meant, looking forward to November, all blown up by what happened last night.
Yesterday, this time of day was nothing but speculation, forecasting, prediction, a bunch of people trying to make it sound like they knew what was going to happen.
Last night reality interceded, blew all of that up, and now the cycle is repeating again.
Now we've got a hard result in Iowa, and here come the experts telling us what it all means and what down the road for New Hampshire and South Carolina into Nevada and in the Super Tuesday primaries of the SEC primary on March 1st.
The whole process starting all over again.
Like, yeah, Trump's finished.
This is it.
This is proving that Trump was never really as popular as he was.
It's all been a bunch of hype and free media, but everybody's down to earth now.
And this means, and then the second storyline is the real winner is Rubio.
Oh, yeah, because Rubio, he did what was most unexpected.
And that is finishing a strong third, only a percentage point behind Cruz.
Look, in terms of delegates, we're talking an equal spread of delegates.
Trump got five.
Cruz got five.
Would Rubio get four?
I mean, you look at the delegate count, the delegates are where convention winners are decided and so forth.
Yeah, the horse race aspect, this is important, it is.
But that's the aspect of this that people can't let go of.
You had a bunch of people in the media hoping that Trump was a phony.
Hoping that Trump was all hype, hoping that this was just a bunch of BS, that he's gonna implode, people said, starting back in June when he announced he's gonna implode, he's gonna win.
He never did implode, and they're thinking last night was the implosion.
They're hoping.
Their fingers are crossed that last night was the implosion.
When Trump announced on June 16th and said what he said about McCain and the Mexicans, Here came the incoming media criticism.
It was concentrated, it was nuclear, and it was incessant and never stopped, and it's starting up all over again.
Trump is going to deal with a new round of incoming, all aimed at convincing people he has never been real.
It's all been phony and hype and spin.
Trump does not have a conventional political operation, and what we've learned, this is spin.
This is why I'm sharing with you what we've heard from the experts.
What we learned last night is that retail politics is still retail politics.
Trump hasn't overthrown anything.
Trump hasn't up-ended anything.
Trump hasn't changed anything.
You still win in Iowa by going door to door, going to as many districts, as many counties, whatever as you can, shaking hands, kissing babies.
You have to go in, you have to debate, you have to meet the people.
Trump didn't do that, he didn't win.
And the establishment types are breathing a huge sigh of relief because everybody that sports them in the drive-by media, even some in conservative media, are now happily and with a huge sigh of relief saying, Oh, thank God, Donald Trump's not real.
Donald Trump isn't changing anything.
Oh, thank God, we still own the process.
We're still in control of the process.
That's what they think.
And in their glee, they're forgetting to examine what really happened in Iowa last night.
You see, they hate Ted Cruz more than they hate Trump.
They despise Ted Cruz.
And they're going to despise Cruz even more once they wake up from their stupor of drunkenness here, their happiness of what they think has happened to Trump, which hasn't yet.
Evangelicals, the margin of victory, the group in the Republican Party, the Republican established would love to be able to get rid of is the reason the candidate they really hate won.
So now they're saying, well, you know, Iowa's its own place.
And when we get into New Hampshire, there aren't any evangelicals, not nearly as many.
We got more libertarians in New Hampshire.
States perfectly set up for who are they saying Bush.
Yes, Jeb and Christie, and maybe even Rand Paul.
Yes, this is the brilliant analysis that everybody watches television is getting today.
And it's bad news for Cruz is finished.
He didn't have a prayer, nowhere possible he's going to win.
And Trump, well, yeah, he's leading big, but man, it wasn't real in Iowa, and it probably isn't real in New York.
The establishment's out there going nuts, folks, thinking that they have made a giant recovery here.
But in the end of the day, what we have we have Rubio.
We have Ted Cruz.
And I'm going to throw, I'm going to throw Ben Carson in there because this is crucial point.
We have two genuine disciples of Ronald Reagan in the top three places in Iowa.
We have a very strong outsider in Donald Trump who is showing the way in determining or in illustrating how to oppose the establishment and what not to be afraid of.
And then we've got Ben Carson.
And I would have to say Ben Carson is a disciple of Ronald Reagan.
When I listen to Ben Carson talk, I hear Reaganisms.
I know I hear them when I listen to Cruz, and Cruz openly admits he's a Reaganite.
Ditto with Marco Rubio.
So three of the top four finishers last night are Reagan disciples with a party that is urging its establishment is urging that we get rid of the Reagan fetish.
That we finally realize the era of Reagan is over.
It isn't.
It's the salvation.
We have tried it the establishment's way, I don't know how many years.
Starting back in Bill Clinton's era, we have tried it with the Northeastern Moderates.
I mean, we even we didn't nominate a nice guy Mitrod, we nominate a guy who was the architect of Obamacare on the premise that we're gonna repeal Obamacare.
That's one of those things Saturday Night Live makes jokes about.
Sixty percent of the Republican vote in Iowa last night went for two Hispanics and an African American.
One hundred percent of the Democrat vote went for a couple of tired old decrepit white people.
And I have to tell you, whether she knows it or not, it's over for Hillary Clinton.
I don't know if that means she doesn't get the nomination or if she does and doesn't win the general.
This woman last night on her stage was just a sight to behold.
Parroting Bernie Sanders, calling herself the latest big new progressive, talking about the same things Bernie's talking about because last night in Iowa was the shock and the scare of her life.
It's 2008 all over again.
This is not supposed to happen, Mrs. Clinton saying.
I don't know if you've seen this in the television coverage of Mrs. Clinton's speech last night.
She did not declare victory, by the way, and they're still saying in some places it's too close to call.
How can that be?
How can it still be too close to call?
I mean, if it's still too close to call, it means they're playing games out there on the Democrat side.
And of course, you've heard about the fact that Hillary won six coin flips in a row.
You know what the odds that are?
1.7%.
It doesn't happen.
Anyway, television coverage of Mrs. Clinton's acceptance last night, and there's this guy that ends up being over her right shoulder as you're looking at the picture, and he's got two stickers on each cheek right below the each eye, and he's making weird, odd faces.
And it turns out this guy has become a hero of the internet today because people are replaying this and sending it, tweeting it, Facebooking it all over the place.
It's a comedy piece.
Some guy stands.
Hillary's stem winders serious and telling everybody she's going to do and do the Hillary screech.
The voice that reminds you of your first two ex-wives.
This guy's back there with these stickers on his face laughing and making faces, totally distracting everybody.
And then if you notice Bill Clinton behind her.
And that was what's the word.
I was going to say scary, but no, it was it was.
It was shocking.
The way Bill Clinton looked last night.
It's clearly not the 1990s.
And there aren't a bunch of bikini clan babes running around.
Well, there might still be that.
With Bill Clinton, you never know.
Anyway, I have to do just a little more here of uh analysis and heading into New Hampshire now as people start predicting, prognosticating, analyzing and so forth.
Actually, there's much more to go here.
I'm going to be bouncing off people on the phones and some of the audio sound bites that we have from candidates and media types.
Hopefully I get a new beta today to fix my battery life problem, but my fingers are not crossed on that.
But I'm I'm super, I'm I'm totally focused here, folks.
Don't sweat it.
The um the week ahead of New Hampshire, looking at the polls, trying to analyze what happened in Iowa poll-wise versus what's set in New Hampshire to happen versus what might happen.
It's fascinating to listen to people tear it all down and break it apart and try to analyze it and tell you what it means.
And there are a lot of people who think they have all the answers on this stuff, and I think a lot of them are all wet as I listen to them, not necessary to mention names.
But we'll get to the rest of this as the program continues and unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
So hang in there and be tough.
Your turn's coming up soon.
Mr. Snartley hadn't stand by on the phones.
I'm gonna go to the phones here sooner than I thought.
There's one other major, major major thing that happened last night, which uh nobody in the establishment is one of gonna gonna want to admit to, nor are they want to going to talk about it.
And that is bye-bye ethanol.
Cyanara ethanol.
You don't think so, Snergly?
Okay, well, you didn't yet an anomaly for one campaign, but look what happened.
You had the Governor.
You had the governor urging everybody in the state not to vote for Ted Cruz because Cruz wants to end the ethanol subsidy.
What happened?
Cruz wins.
Everybody else came out for the ethanol standard, including Trump, which that was another puzzling thing to me, given what Trump is trying to do positioning himself.
And look at what ended up happening.
I mean, this is huge.
This is this this is not people in Washington defeating ethanol.
This is Iowans in a record Republican turnout.
Choosing a guy who made a singular major point out of ending the ethanol subsidy.
In terms of conservative, you this is the kind of thing the establishment won't go anywhere near reducing government, cutting down subsidies, crony capitalism, whatever you want to call this, crony uh socialism.
Nobody would touch it.
Cruz was the only one that had the guts to touch it, and he wins.
It is huge, I think.
Because what it is is instructive.
It means you can go after these things and not only survive it and live another day, you can win.
You can win attacking big government socialism.
You can win attacking.
If you do it the right way.
If you do it in the way Cruz did, that explains how this is actually going to expand freedom and economic opportunity and lower prices.
Coupled with all this nonsense about global.
You see the latest poll on global warming, 91% of American people don't believe it.
It came out yesterday during the program, and I of course made an executive decision.
It wasn't really big enough news to interrupt what we were talking about yesterday.
91% latest poll.
Global warming, global swarming.
Just a couple days after, three days after Al Gore's ten year were all dead clock expires, and we're still alive, and there's still no flooding, and sea levels are still where they're supposed to be.
Here's uh Joe in Orangeburg, New York as we uh we head to the phones.
Great to have you, sir.
Welcome.
Hey, Megadiddos Russ.
I'm uh really happy to be on your show.
I love your show.
I want to listen to you every single day.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I appreciate that.
That's a very nice suck-up.
I was calling because I I I never disagree with you, and I technically don't disagree with you, but I I think what you said earlier about why you think Trump may have lost was because of his you know indications where he you know he was showing signs where he was gonna make deals, you know, with uh Pelosi and and uh you know the liberal establishment.
Um I agree with that.
I I I do think that that affected him as far as you know his numbers last night.
But I think um as far as the debate, I I don't think it's because he didn't go to debate.
I think it's because of why he didn't go to the debate.
You know, the fact that he was afraid, I in most per se perceived minds I think out there are perceiving that he was afraid to go to the debate.
Or he was upset about it, afraid to face the fire.
Let me ask you in my mind personally, I think that's because that's that's what bothered me the most, actually.
Okay, Joe, are you a Trumpster or not?
No, no, no.
I am not.
I I'm a cruise supporter.
I'm I I'm definitely going for Cruz.
Okay, just wanted to get that.
I'm there's no wrong answer here.
I'm not I'm nothing accusatory.
So you you you you you think that not doing the debate did hurt uh Trump, but because people thought that it it looked like he was afraid of Megan Kelly?
I think that's the perception people have, and I the reason why I say that is because that's the thing that you heard most in the news.
You didn't hear about the other thing.
No, wait much.
Wait, you gotta tell me from who you're in Orangeburg, New York.
What where were you hearing people in Iowa say they thought that that made Trump look like he was afraid of Megan Kelly?
I I don't know.
I I just feel that if I was in Iowa and I saw him bitch on a debate because he was afraid of Megan Kelly and because he was afraid of some article that I wrote with you know Fox uh on Fox.
It would it would upset me.
It would it would definitely affect my decision if I was on the borderline with Susan East.
Let me give you an alternative theory.
You're anecdotally speaking.
You have your theory, and you think a lot of people agree with it, if you could ask them.
So let me run another theory by you.
Let's say that Trump and his people decided they're four points up in the polls, they're winning big, the big crowds, you know what was going on.
What if they said, you know what, there's nothing we can gain showing up here tonight, but if we don't, it's gonna make Cruz get the center podium, and Cruz is going to be the target.
Everybody there's gonna hit Cruz, not me.
Thereby I need to take Cruz out, so let's make Cruz the focal point.
The way to do that's for me not to show up.
Does that make any sense?
I'm just an alternative theory.
It does make sense, but I think it was a calculated mistake on his part by doing that because if he was there, people love you know the people who are Trump uh supporters love hearing him, love hearing him talk, live hearing him say what he has to say.
No, because he's outspoken and he's you know says things off the cuff a lot.
And I think people miss that and wanted to see that the last bit.
I mean, I'm just speaking from my own heart as far as like how I felt about it.
I mean, I I was uh like I said, I was gonna I'm voting for uh Cruz myself, but you should have been happy that he didn't show up.
Yeah, well, yeah, I I am I was.
I actually was.
You were wrong, I've been listening to his show and I've been saying to myself, I this is gonna hurt him.
I think it's really gonna hurt him.
I think it's gonna be the picture.
I'm out of time here.
I don't mean to be rude, but the clock is the clock.
Um so there it is.
Trump didn't show.
People thought it made him look like he was afraid.
Megan Kelly or anybody else who was gonna attack him that night and he just didn't want to be, and that's that's I don't think that's what it was, but feel free, folks.
We gotta two hours left here to discuss that and whatever else.
I don't know, I just have a tough time thinking Trump's afraid.
There are other plenty of other times in his campaign he could have bumped out of things because he was afraid.
If he was getting afraid, they're legitimate things to fear out there, I guess.