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Open Line Friday.
By the way, you know this is a good reminder.
If you want to talk something besides this debate and the campaign, feel free.
That's what Open Line Friday is about.
You don't have to talk about this stuff.
If you're worn out, you want to break from it.
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Again, a reminder, a couple of endorsements in a national review with a big endorsement of Ted Cruz.
And Phyllis Schlafley and Ed Martin of the Eagle Forum have endorsed Trump.
They will do so in St. Louis.
In about, I guess an hour or an hour and a half, Trump is due there for a rally.
So he must have finished up with Carson.
Um Carson endorsement happened uh last night made official this morning.
They did a one-hour press conference, hijack cable news again, making the debate old news.
That's not accidental that these people have that that that sensitivity.
I mean, they they know very well the media is going to stop everything to cover them.
So this endorsement with uh with Carson probably been playing for a while.
If nothing else, it's an insurance policy against a bad debate performance.
You do a bad debate reforms, okay, go out.
Big news, Carson, who you've insulted is gonna do a 180 endorse you.
That'll that'll start a brand new news cycle, leave the debate out of it, becomes brand new news, debate becomes old news.
This is not accidental.
Uh there are, you know, Trump himself or somebody up there.
I mean, they're playing the media like a stratovarius.
They just are.
And you know, folks, can I tell you something else?
For all of you people trying to understand that, do not discount that.
These people that are fed up with NAFTA and trade and trade deals and unfairness.
The Trump supporter, they're sick and tired of losing to the media, too.
They are fed up with getting skunked.
Their guys, their party getting skunked, be they conservatives or Republicans.
They're embarrassed and they're tired of the media, just without very much effort, being able to destroy things they believe in, destroy people they believe in.
Here comes Trump playing the media like a stratovarius.
Don't discount that as a factor.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm just explaining.
Can I not explain something without being accused of something?
All I'm doing is explaining.
What else?
Uh.
Oh, we have audio of Ashley Banfield.
You know, this stuns me.
On so many levels.
Can I share a little story with you?
I watch a show on TV called American Crime.
I've got to be very careful how I say this here.
Because it's a very specific point that I want to make.
This is the second season of that show.
The show portrays the seedy underbelly of life in middle and lower middle class America.
The first season was in uh supposedly took place.
They film it in Austin, Texas, but it it uh first season took place in um, I guess Modesto, California.
That's where it was supposedly said.
This season just concluded this week.
Uh Was set in a small town in Indiana, not far from Indianapolis.
And it's there's nothing heartwarming.
There's nothing rewarding when you finish their ten episodes, and you just thank God that you weren't in it.
And then you wonder, all right, how much of America does this kind of stuff go on?
And you say to yourself, maybe a too frightening much.
Anyway, this season, I'm not gonna do any spoiler alerts.
If some of you are DVRing this and you haven't gotten the end of it.
This season involves a couple of schools, a private school and a public school in a Midwestern town, and the private school administrators, a bunch of uppity elites, and the public school is populated by minorities and run by minorities, but the minorities are at war with each other, primarily the Hispanics and the African Americans.
Hispanic principal.
The basketball team at the private school is the focus.
It's the reason the school's on the map, the basketball team, basketball coach, stars of the show, stars of the town.
But they have a party.
And at the party, it turns out, one of the primary basketball stars happens to be, what do you think?
Gay.
And then they have a party one night early on in the program, and what do you think happens at the party?
No, the gay guy uh gets involved in a relationship with a non-basketball player who is sort of a wallflower pushover type, and he claims to his mom that he was raped by the gay basketball player.
And that starts basically everything in the show descends from that.
And without talking to what happened in the 10 episodes, the point that I wanted to make, and it involves this Ashley Banfield story, and I hope I pull this off.
I know it's a television show, and I know it's scripted, but I wonder if the people writing these TV shows really don't have a grounding like I had growing up, in terms of motivation, inspiration.
There's so much doom and gloom that in these shows, there's no escaping it.
You can't get out of it, and nobody knows how to advise people to escape the doom and gloom.
And I wonder, is that because they really don't know how to advise people, or that they never were, their parents didn't know how to help them deal with adversity, or is it just the story and they do know, and I can't, I can't decide which.
Anyway, the the gay player ends up being ostracized.
Nobody on the team knows he's gay, by the way.
It gets discovered after this party happens, and his brother ends up hating him, his mother and father are embarrassed of him.
You can imagine that storyline.
I think much of what's happening in American uh entertainment today is that many uh angry militant homosexuals take it over to writers, the writing and production, and many storylines are come from that anger over what they perceive as decades of mistreatment, and here, here, see what you think it is, and they just stuff storylines down people's throats.
Anyway, another story.
That's that's not related to what I'm gonna say here.
The gay player obviously has a falling out with everybody on the team.
He has a falling out with his brother.
Everybody's embarrassed of him.
Everybody's shocked, nobody wants to have a thing to do with him.
His life is crumbling before your very eyes.
And his parents are worthless.
They're divorced.
His mom is portrayed as somebody who's so embarrassed she only cares about what people think of her.
She is ill-equipped to help her son deal with what's happening to him.
But so's the father.
The father's unemployed, Is unemployable, apparently.
And in the scene that I'm really made me think about this in the finale, I guess it was well, I watched it yesterday.
Last night, late.
The son's obviously looking anywhere he can for some reassurance that his life's not over.
He's only 17.
And he's of the impression that because all that's happened and everybody knows it.
And by the way, it would be important to point out that everybody in this show has been hacked.
So all their private emails have been in the news and on TV.
So everybody's dirty little secrets get revealed in this little town.
And the headmistress, the uppity elitist played by Felicity Huffman, she gets canned.
The basketball coach gets canned.
The basketball coach's wife had drugs in her house that her daughter was stealing and then selling, and she sold the drugs to a kid that shot the gay basketball, another gay basketball, another basketball player who's not gay.
It's sordid, folks.
It's it's it's just depraved.
But the point is, stick with me on this.
I'm trying my best.
When this gay basketball player who in his almost life is over, there's no future, and he's 17 or 18, whatever it is, he wants to walk leave home.
His dad's done have a job, his mother doesn't want to do with the family, and she has nothing.
They've got nothing.
His brother hates him, is embarrassed of him.
And now he's gonna get dragged into court because it turns out that he ends up being part of a cabal that beat up the gay guy that got raped at the party.
So he's talking to his dad, and he's obviously seeking some sort of encouragement that that this is not going to define his life.
That he can put it past him.
And his father's clueless.
Son, things don't stay the same.
They can change.
And at that moment, I'm not kidding, at that moment, you know, we've all been in situations when we were teenagers or whatever that we were embarrassed, and when you're a teenager, you think everything that goes bad is never gonna get fixed, that you're tarden feather for life with it.
And I had all kinds of people growing up who were able to encourage me and give me perspective and to inspire me and motivate me, and there wasn't one in ten episodes.
There wasn't, I don't recall it, might have been some that were fleeting.
I don't remember one instance of any of these kids, high school kids whose lives are just totally you wouldn't wish it on anybody.
I don't remember one instance of any of them being encouraged by adults.
And I I got to thinking, is that where we are?
Is that where our culture has evolved?
Are today's parents, were they not?
Also inspired by their parents.
Do they not know, or is it just the way the story's written?
And I'll never know, unless I call the writer and ask him what's going on here, which you know I don't do that, but it nevertheless it made me think.
And the reason I'm bringing it up is I can't believe this Ashley Banfield story.
I will I can't believe this.
Let's play the soundbite.
This happened yesterday on CNN's legal view.
Uh Ashley Banfield, she also hosts a show at noon on CNN or maybe 11 a.m.
She's talking to the actor Michael Kelly, who plays the murderering chief of staff to the president on House of Cards.
And by the way, he gets away with it.
Name is Michael Kelly, plays Doug Stamper.
During the interview, she told Doug Kelly, who also hates Trump, loves Hillary, of how the Trump campaign is destroying her family.
Listen.
I just had a parent-teacher conference yesterday, and my fifth grader's teacher said my son is calling some other kids loser.
And we have our TV on at home all the time.
I have tried to say these are not the kinds of words you're like to use, but it is tough.
It is hard to do.
Are you kidding me?
Are you are you kidding me?
That you can't.
Your kids going to school and calling people loser, and there's nothing you can do about it.
It's Trump's fault.
You hear Kelly and they're going, Whoa.
I'm sorry.
I I cannot relate to this.
Turn the TV off or sit the kid down.
It's like I've lost my kid.
He's at school.
He's calling everybody a loser.
Donald Trump's hijacked.
How do you let that happen?
Wait till this kid watches House of Cards.
If he thinks the Trump campaign, go everybody losers.
Wait till this guy starts watching House of Cards, which his mom has starred, by the way, in an episode, one of the first seasons.
And this is why, okay, here's Ashley Banfield, and I know I'm gonna catch hell.
This is not an attack.
I'm asking a question related to societal evolution.
No, I'm no no.
When I was growing up, if I saw something on TV that promoted bad behavior and I took it to school, and if the teacher would have I'd hear my dad would do my parents that wouldn't put up with it.
They would not blame the TV, they would blame me.
They would tell me what's right and wrong.
They wouldn't throw their hands up in despair and accuse some TV show of hijacking their house.
They would they would they would do whatever they do to they would take me aside, they would tell me why it's bad to call somebody a loser.
And if it was a Democrat that was emulating, they'd rip on the Democrat.
Which is what she should do here.
But I'm sorry, I don't understand.
And here she is getting sympathy.
Oh, yeah, Ashley, it's really bad.
Wow.
Your kids going to school and calling other kids losers.
Yeah, this Trump is a bad guy.
Sorry, folks.
So it's making me wonder about parenthood these days.
What's actually going on in these middle class homes?
Do parents think they got no control?
Do parents think they have no influence?
Do they not know how?
Any behavior they their kids get into that they disapprove of, it's somebody else's fault, and that means they can't fix it.
And by the way, maybe she did take her son aside and tell him he's wrong.
That's not part of the story, so I don't know.
She might have done that.
But it's still, I can't I can't even imagine myself coming on this program and telling the same story without trying to make a joke about it.
But not wringing my hands together seriously as though Trump's responsible for my kid turning out bad.
Unbelievable.
Look, I have a question for Ashley Banfield.
She's just distraught.
She gets called to school by a teacher because her fifth grade son is calling people loser.
And that's horrible for America.
I wonder if Ashley Banfield's son had been in fifth grade during the Clinton administration.
And if her fifth grade son came home talking about Lewinsky's and BJs and so forth, I wonder if she would be wringing her hands over Bill Clinton.
I wonder if there's any concern in the Banfield home that Hillary Clinton who needs to Banfield and Michael Kellyador under indictment for dealing haphazardly with classified data and national secrets.
This is why you've got to be kidding me.
You really want sympathy.
I've lost control of my house.
My son is calling people loser.
That's what Trump is doing to my house in every home in America.
And we...
Sorry.
I just...
Here's Carolyn.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Go back to the phones we do.
Hi, Carolyn.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hi, Russ.
I'm so thrilled to talk to you.
Thank you.
Um I um I just have to say hi to my dad Jim in heaven, because he was a big fan of yours, and he would be thrilled that I'm talking to you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you very much.
What I wanted to say is that I really take offense to Ted Cruz calling Trump supporters uninformed.
Um I run a small business.
It happens to be a private medical practice, which uh we're we're like a dinosaur these days.
But uh, Carolyn, Carolyn, uh I I need I need to ask you if you can hold on here one more.
I misjudged, I looked at the clock wrong.
I thought I had a minute that I don't have, but we're gonna end here in a minute.
But I I need to ask you a question here, and then we're gonna talk about it when we get back.
You you sound like a smart lady.
Do you really think that Cruz was insulting you?
I do.
I I do.
I think that it shows that he is not in touch with the real world.
He's very smart, he went to Harvard, he wants to stop.
All right, all right.
Hold that thought, hold a thought.
Cruz went to Harvard, hold that thought, and we will be back.
Okay, we're back with uh we're back with Carolyn in uh in Harrisburg.
I Carolyn uh look, I know you're for Trump.
I I I'm perfectly fine that with the fact that you're for Trump, but you can't you can't.
If you know that Cruz is smart, you you you have to know he was trying something.
Let me explain this to you.
Now you're feeling feel free to Cruz desperately wants to win the nomination.
He is close to Trump, but he's still distant.
He's a hundred delegates behind.
And and there's uh it it looks it looks dicey.
Now these these guys know that that it it's it's impossible to win here by criticizing Trump.
That just doesn't work.
Uh it drives supporters to Trump.
They've they've learned that.
That's why there was kid gloves last night in the in the debate.
And Cruz is walking back what he said.
He knows it didn't come out the way he intended it, because the context in which Trump said it, it was after Nevada, and and Trump was reacting to the fact that he won every demographic group.
He won from every income, he won every gender, he won every uh age group, he he won every race, ethnicity, he won different education levels.
He he he won the group of people that do not have a even a high school diploma, and he said afterwards, I love the uneducated.
And Trump was being complimentary.
He was he was he was expressing gratitude.
This is where I think people miss him.
He was expressing gratitude for all those who support him.
He was not putting them down.
Right.
I don't know that Cruz knew that context.
And I think all he heard Trump say was, I I love the uneducated, and he's might be afraid that Trump is trying to fool those people and pull the wool over their eyes and he was trying to warn them.
The best I can come up with, but I don't think you can't really believe that Ted Cruz thinks you're an idiot.
I I you know what I don't think he thinks I'm an idiot, but I think he has no idea of the world that I live in.
And um, you know, uh and and it was not this debate, it was the last debate when um when uh Ted Cruz uh said uh said that he stuck up for the fight against Obamacare.
And and Donald Trump responded that, yeah, well, you know, you gave a speech.
What good did that do?
And he's absolutely right.
You need somebody that is going to do what they need to do to uh get conservative laws passed and get rid of these regulations.
You stood up made a speech in the Senate.
Ted Cruz was trying to alert the American people that it was a bad thing.
He was trying to convince other senators to vote again.
That's how you do it when you're in the minority and you are opposed to something that's about what you have.
But he did more than make speeches.
He was fighting them in their votes and the you know at the various committee hearings and so forth.
There weren't many on Obamacare, frankly.
But again, Rush, in the real world, you have to find a way to to work with people, not that you cave in.
You win, but by just fighting people and having everybody dislike you, it it's not the way to get what you want.
And I feel that Trump has an understanding for that.
And I think his understanding of the regulatory jungle we're all living in, and uh in you know, I guess.
I'm not I'm not gonna try to talk you out of it.
I'm not, and that's not what I'm doing now.
I I would only ask you when you you you said at the beginning of the call that Ted Cruz does not understand your life.
Right.
Meaning he doesn't understand what you go through daily economically, the other pressures that you face as a small business.
My husband is a physician.
We have a small private medical practice.
And it's impossible to survive with the regulatory framework of medicine.
It costs more to process a Medicaid, the Medicare claim than you get from Medicare.
So we dropped Medicare.
Carolyn.
Understand I'm not trying to change your mind, but I I do I have you're forcing my hand here.
This is why he opposes Obamacare.
It is why he wants to rip it apart and start over.
He knows precisely what's being done to people like you because of everything Obama and the Democrats are doing.
Now, that's I had just one more question I want to ask you.
Do you watch the debate last night?
I did not.
Oh, well then I can't ask you the question.
I just feel I missed it because I'm really kind of tired of them.
Yeah.
So is Trump.
Trump said, I thought these things were over with.
Uh and he said, No, we do how many?
Why do we do any more of these?
It's over with, right?
And Les, let me ask you.
Do you think if Ted Cruz were to win, do you think he would be able to fix Obamacare?
Uh I think if Ted Cruz were to win, we would get the most focused, organized, smartest effort at unraveling it we could get.
I think I think that uh there's there's no question in my mind that he means what he says.
You're your your question is one of competence.
You're asking, does he know how to do it?
You think Trump is because he's got so many successes in business.
And because of the people he knows that he's gonna be able to go in there and just rip it apart and start over and put it back together.
Somehow you don't think you don't think I think he's gonna talk to the right people.
People who understand health care.
And I just think that he's a better, I think he is a proven leader, and what we need is leadership right now.
Right.
Okay.
Well, look, Carol, I appreciate the call.
Thank you.
Thank you much.
It doesn't fit the profile of the average Trump voter, I think many people think.
It's a medical family husband is a physician out there.
Here's the question I was gonna ask her.
I've asked it of Trump supporters already today.
It's about something that came up in the debate last night.
And the question, what did you think of Trump's answer on Tiananmen Square?
In fact, let me see, because we have a voluminous soundbite library today.
Let me see very quickly if Cookie gave me anything to do with this.
It may take me a while here.
If anybody else has the roster, go through it real quick and see if there's anything here on Trump answering the Tiananmen Square question, so I don't have to paraphrase it.
I'm not hearing from anybody, so I've got to keep looking here.
I don't think so.
I can't.
No.
Basically, the the answer that Trump gave to the question on Tiananmen Square versus the answer Casey gave were 180 degrees different.
And I asked a Trumpster this morning, what do you think of what Trump said about Tiananmen Square?
I was great.
Really?
I said, you think when Trump credited the ChICOMs for stopping what could have been a riot?
Yeah, man, that was great.
You're kidding me.
No, no.
Um you realize you're you're it was crediting the government for putting down a protest of citizens demanding freedom.
And the guy standing in front of the tank, the Chiccoms did a good job in not wiping the guy out and stopping a riot.
Yeah, man, I totally sick of these people.
I said, okay.
I just left it there.
Kasich's answer was I forget what it was, but it was, of course, the exact opposite from uh from that.
Let me take a brief time out for cookie, don't go get it.
I got more sound bites that I can squeeze in today.
Don't don't try to find it.
It's done with, over with.
We'll move on when we get back.
Don't go.
Yeah, look, I've got a Clinton stack here too.
This Catherine Herid at Fox News is reporting that this guy they gave immunity to that set up Hillary's server.
I I don't know who's talking to her.
She's she's got a source.
Catherine Heritage of Fox News has a source that is tight and deep.
She will not identify the source, obviously.
The source is speaking uh condition of anonymity because the source doesn't have permission to speak.
This source is telling her that the details he is revealing to the FBI are I mean devastating that this guy is a devastating witness, and everybody is wondering what this immunity to this guy means, whether or not it means there's a grand jury, and yes, it does.
It means it it it looks like and if you want, I can go through the legal ease here.
But but it it it looks like this is serious stuff, and the things that this guy knows.
Now, again, uh we have to trust that Catherine Heritage trusts her source.
Uh what whenever the Clintons are involved, the one thing I never forget is during Clinton's grand jury testimony, when he lied about Lewinsky and supposed, they told us that Clinton was so upset by a question that he practically lost his temper and his composure.
And so when it came time for the video of that testimony to be played, everybody was waiting for that blow-up, and there wasn't one.
We'd all been set up.
At most Clinton rolled his eyes over a question about cigar or something.
But there wasn't a blow up.
There was nothing like what had been telegraphed.
It was everybody knew, but in the moment it was over, we've been set up.
Because we've been hyping it for weeks.
Here comes the day.
Because everybody looking for Clinton to blow up over this thing.
Everybody's looking for this thing to explode on him to implode on him.
It never did.
And consequently, everybody's looking for the same thing to happen to Hillary his uh here in this instance, and it never has.
So I l I always take this stuff with, you know.
Arm's length.
Oh, I got emails.
During the break, I checked them.
My question that I mentioned, I've been asking Trumpists about Trump's answer on Tiananmen Square.
I kid you not, folks.
You know what the answer I got?
These emails.
Hey, Rush, not every candidate's perfect.
Let it go.
That's exactly what I mean, folks.
Not every candidate is uh here's Amanda in Dothan, Alabama.
It's great that you waited.
I appreciate it.
Hello.
Hi, Raj.
It's such an honor, and I'm gonna get right to the point.
I hope them I make the host look good.
Um I'm calling about Trump's comment that Islam hates America.
And the media and political insiders, they're all outraged.
They um they keep talking about how we need uh American Muslims and Muslims around the world to help defeat ISIS, and we need them on our side, and these comments just can't be good for it, can't be tolerated.
And my comment is is that the Kurds over um in the Middle East and a pro-American Muslim all over the world and in America, they agree with Trump and they understand that he's not talking about them.
They agree there's a problem and an atmosphere of hate.
Okay, here we go again.
This is another one of it.
Uh let me ask you.
There uh Amanda, I'm assuming that you agree with Mr. Trump when he said that there's we have a big problem, that there is just there's too much hate on the part of too many Muslims, and it's widespread, and we better deal with it.
We better understand it.
And when he was asked about it last night, he did his old double down on it.
He didn't backtrack from do you agree with him?
I I totally agree, and I think that as usual, they're out of touch and they don't understand the the feelings of people.
And um, it's the same thing as Far as immigration goes, how they're all outraged on behalf of Mexicans and behalf of Mexican Americans on the fact that you can't say these things, we're gonna lose them in the general, you can't say these things about Mexicans.
We need them to win.
And yet Mexican Americans who are here and who follow the law and they came here legally, they agree with him.
He's not offending any of them.
They agree that there's a problem, and it's the same dynamic where they're they completely miss the point, and they're just you know, um they they misunderstand the people as usual.
I have to say, I have Amanda, thank you much.
I I have to agree with that for the most part.
Let's look at the modern three-legged stool of Trump campaign is anti-free trade, bad trade deals, NAFTA, what have you, globalization, bringing jobs home.
Most of the elites they don't get it.
They don't understand how can anybody oppose free trade?
They don't understand the opposition to it.
They don't understand the uh white working class blue-collar objection to it.
Uh they think, well, look, okay, so we're not leading the world in making sewing machines anymore, but nobody buys them.
So, you know, we're ahead of the game here.
Uh why is everybody worried about what happened to sewing machines?
Horse and buggy.
Yeah, we lost the horse and buggy industry when the automobile was invented, but so what?
By horse and buggy.
We're not gonna subsidize it to keep it around just for jobs.
There are now people seriously in the in the establishment, the elite quadrants in the elite sectors.
I read it last night.
They are petrified that Trump has is building a groundswell of people that want tariffs, that want penalties on foreign governments, that want to end free trade, whether it's NAFTA,
whether it's TPP, whether it's TPA, well, the uh uh global court where all these uh supposed violations are tried, they hate it all, and they're they're they're worried that uh this is gonna happen.
If Trump's elected, that we're gonna get rid of all these trade deals and reverse them, and it's gonna be an 80-year period in the darkness again.
Then you have this m this Islam thing that's that's another one they don't get.
I mean, uh Amanda here's is exactly right.
I w it didn't take but a week after 9-11, and the political correctness practically swallowed the country.
Don't criticize Islam.
We must find out what we did to make them mad.
And since 9-11, there have been Americans in large numbers and growing who don't understand this.
They kill 3,000 Americans.
Why don't our leaders see what's happening?
Then there's ISIS, then there's al-Qaeda, then there's these beheadings, then there's all this terrorism hijackings, and nothing seems to be done about it.
It's been festering, it's effervescing.
Trump focuses on it.
A whole bunch of people think finally somebody's talking common sense about it.
Stuff is uh not hard to understand.
And when it when it comes to what Trump said about Islam, he's he is right.
I gotta take a break.
But he is.
There's no question he's right.
They know it.
Here was the this is Tiananmen Square as it happened last night.
It's when Jake Tapper said, Mr. Trump.
Some of your Republican critics have expressed concern about comments you've made, praising authoritarian dictators.
You have said positive things about Putin as a leader, and you've said positive things about China's massacre of pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square.
You said, quote, when the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chicoms almost blew it.
And then they were vicious and they were horrible, but they put it down with strength.
It shows you the power of strength.
How do you respond, Mr. Trump?
Hey, that doesn't mean I was endorsing it.
I wouldn't endorsing it.
I said that's a strong, powerful government that put it down with strength.
And they kept down that riot.
It was a horrible thing.
It doesn't mean at all that I was endorsing.
He was simply admiring the strength or pointing out what a powerfully strong government can do.
Hey, this is why.
What's his face?
Sean Penn loves Castro.
It's why Sean Penn loved uh what's his face down in Venezuela?