You don't know why here I thought I was the one off the grid for the last 18 hours, and you don't know why I was asking the question.
You can't be serious.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
The reason I was asking a question about why does Obama care so much about this transgender school business, bathrooms and all that.
By the way, Open Line Friday, it means you don't have to talk about something that I care about.
It can be anything.
It's the one day of the week that we do that.
800-282-2882.
Now, this is why.
Here's the story.
This is from the New York Times.
White House, this happened yesterday.
I caught up with this last night when I got back into the country.
White House to issue sweeping decree on screw restroom access.
I saw that.
So what the Sam Hill?
I think I actually went, oh my God, White House to issue sweeping decree on school restroom access?
This is above and beyond whatever the federal government's trying to do, well, Charlotte is trying to do in North Carolina.
And let me give you a pool quote from this story.
Schools want to do right by all of their students and have looked to us to provide clarity on steps they can take to ensure that every student is comfortable at their school, is in an environment free of discrimination, and has an opportunity to thrive.
No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college camp.
Are you kidding me?
No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college.
In what world do these people live?
How in the world, I don't care if you're talking about gay, straight, black, white.
How in the name of hell can you guarantee that somebody, that nobody will ever feel unwelcome?
I have felt unwelcome everywhere I've been in life.
Everybody else has too.
I mean, not everywhere, but if it happens, you show up someplace, you feel unwelcome.
Unwelcome is not the word.
But not everybody greets everybody with open arms.
Hey, great to see you.
Hey, great.
The world doesn't work this way.
Well, let me read to you the rest of the sentence.
No student should ever have to go through the experience of feeling unwelcome at school or on a college campus if you are liberal, gay, or transgender.
See, that's what they mean.
I mean, that's not in the sentence.
I'm adding my own word.
That's what they mean.
I mean, forget about being comfortable at school if you're straight, if you're conservative, if you're Christian.
If you're made to feel uncomfortable, mission accomplished.
That's what this is really all about.
We want to make some of you uncomfortable because you've been so mean since the country was founded.
You've been so discriminatory.
You've been so arrogant.
You've been so condescending.
Well, we're going to reverse comfort you.
And if all these people have felt uncomfortable and unwelcome, well, now we're going to transfer that to you and how does it feel?
That's what this is all about.
I tell you, I can't, sometimes even I, El Rushbo, have trouble following these people because one day we're told that women are at risk of their lives every day on every college campus from rape.
And then the next day, they don't see any potential danger whatsoever in allowing this kind of bathroom confusion.
And if you, the only way that you can properly understand this is to know it's not about bathrooms.
It's not about trans that's just the vehicle.
That's just the instrument to get people to capitulate and to stop opposing them.
And then they flower and attach all this to civil rights.
And then they go further and try to attach it to civil rights legislation like Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, when neither Title VII or Title IX make the slightest reference to transgendered anywhere.
Administration to issue a decree today to every public screw district in the U.S., educators to be told to let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity.
Ruling will not have force of law, but non-compliant districts could face penalties.
What the hell is that?
Ruling will not have the force of law, but we're still going to threaten you anyway if you don't comply.
The letter to school districts that will go out today describes what they should do to ensure that none of their students are discriminated against, signed by officials of the Department of Justice and Education, does not have the force of law, but it contains an implicit threat.
Scruels that do not abide by the regime's interpretation of the law could face lawsuits or a loss of federal aid, and that is the universal threat.
Do what we want in any area of your school, curriculum, bathrooms, and if you don't, we're going to take the money away from it.
And they can't get by without federal money because once the federal money started coming in, they began to budget for it each and every year, and it's spent years in the future.
Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, Dan Forrest, released the following statement in response to Obama's bathroom policy directive.
Quote, North Carolina will not stand by and let our locker rooms and has screw showers be used for social experimentation at the expense of the privacy and the protection of our young boys and girls.
I don't think it's appropriate for teenage boys and girls to share the same bathroom.
I don't think, how many, how many people, let me ask you a question to you conservatives out there.
How many of you have run into fellow conservatives?
Will you let this go?
This is not a hill to die on.
Come on, it's bathrooms.
Nothing goes on in there.
People get in there, get out of there, squiggly.
They can don't make this.
You know, the social issues crowd, the people who hate social issues like abortion, scared to death.
Let this go.
Don't make a big deal out of it.
And this is how the left wins all this time.
The left are responsible for all the turmoil and the social issues of politics because they're the ones constantly trying to corrupt it.
And if people stand up and try to stop it, they are said to be the problem, for example, in the Republican Party social issues driving people away.
So what are we supposed to do?
Just stand down and let all this stuff sweep over every aspect of our culture.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Forrest says, I don't think it's appropriate for male coaches and male teachers to have access to girls' locker rooms and showers while the girls are naked and exposed.
I feel confident, he writes, a vast majority of North Carolina parents feel the same.
The president needs a reminder that the United States Constitution grants education decision authority to the states and localities, not to the president of the United States.
Opening all showers and all restrooms to all sexes at all times, as the president is suggesting with his directive, is not a reasonable solution, but rather an invitation for violations of privacy and personal safety.
Solution to what?
When did the problem pop up?
What is the problem?
When did this become a problem anyway?
Is it a manufactured problem?
a real problem is all kinds of if their feelings of discomfort and unwelcomeness in bathrooms all over america all of a sudden when when when when When did this pop up?
Well, that's the president's kids are never going to deal with this.
I was just asked, you know, by a smart Alec, is the President's kids that his daughter's going to have to shower with the football team?
You know as well as I do that that's never going to happen and it would never be permitted.
And the only time there's going to be a transgender bathroom in the White House is during a gay rights ceremony.
You know as well as I do that that's not of course he wouldn't.
North Carolina, back to Lieutenant Governor Forrest here in North Carolina, North Carolina Public Schools in receipt of President's letter are reminded there is a binding state law on the books governing bathroom policy.
And the president's non-binding directive is merely his attempt to push his version of a social policy on our state with no constitutional authority to do so.
It should be rejected as a matter of principle and policy.
Amen.
I happen to agree with that 100%.
But still, when people on our side, come on, let it go.
This is not a hill to die.
I'm hearing that phrase.
This is not the hill to die on.
Don't.
Okay, fine.
I know you don't want to object to any of this.
I know people get all nervous.
But when did this become a major issue?
When did all kinds of discrimination and unwelcomeness, when did this manifest itself?
When did all of this all of a sudden reach its tipping point?
They've been in the shadows, right?
Okay, I'm going to take a break.
We're going to come back and we'll get into the political campaign now.
And there are a bunch of people unhappy today.
Well, there are always people unhappy.
I mean, let's face it, a lot of miserable people out there.
But I mean specifically and for a reason.
People unhappy, maybe even miserable, that Paul Ryan and Donald Trump seemed to get along yesterday.
Back after this.
Welcome back, El Rushmo, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
It's great to have you here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
And your phone calls are coming straight up.
So Trump and Ryan have a meeting, Trump and the Republican leadership, and it didn't appear to be any fireworks.
And some people not happy.
Some people not happy that the Republican establishment, as epitomized by those who met with Trump, has capitulated to him.
Many were hoping for a tempest.
Many were hoping for fireworks.
Many were hoping for a reason for the establishment to abandon Trump and join this third party effort out there.
Last night on CNN tonight, Don Lemon spoke with Bill Crystal, the weekly standard, and said, this meeting, it's about dealmaking, right?
So who's got more leverage here?
The Republican establishment turns out to be really as weak and as lame as Donald Trump said it was.
I mean, here they are basically capitulating to Donald Trump.
There's no evidence that Donald Trump is compromising on anything.
It's Donald Trump's Republican Party, which is why some of us are going to have to leave it, at least at the presidential level, temporarily.
I would have liked Paul Ryan to say, you know what?
I'm Speaker of the House.
I'm going to keep a Republican House.
Here are my principles and commitments.
I don't know that I can, in good conscience, support Donald Trump, and I will just stay out of the presidential race.
That didn't happen.
And that's what the establishment, well, some wanted the establishment to do.
And apparently, you can hear Crystal.
He's not happy.
He was obviously expecting something else.
He was expecting the establishment to tell Trump to go shove it.
And a lot of people, frankly, were expecting Trump to tell Ryan to go shove it.
Let me ask you a question, folks.
Seriously now.
In your opinion, who does run the Republican Party?
Is it the party's presidential nominee, or is it somebody in Congress, either the Speaker of the House or the Senate leader of the that's right?
It is always the presidential nominee once that person has been identified.
And with Trump, it's Not official, obviously.
And that's what they were hoping would happen at the meeting, it somehow that the establishment, as represented by Paul Ryan, would tell Trump to go pound sand, and he doesn't run the party.
We do.
But it's true to say Donald Trump just won the votes of gazillions and millions of Republican voters nationwide.
And there's not a single member of the House of Representatives that has been voted on by anybody but his congressional district, which is not even statewide.
But it is tradition.
For those of you that are involved in this to this extent for the first time in your lives, because it's the first time it's been interesting to you, tradition is that the nominee runs the party, that it is the nominee's party, that the nominee provides the energy and the policy of the party.
The nominee runs the convention if the nominee is chosen before the convention takes place.
It's always been this way.
The nominee runs the platform.
Now, the platform has no lasting importance.
So a lot of compromise is made in the platform writing because once the convention's over, the platform is forgotten.
So for example, if Trump wants to extend the fickle finger of friendship to people that opposed him, put them on the committee there, it's going to do a platform and it'll let them write whatever they want to write.
And then when the convention's over, you rip it up.
Now, the people who lost make the platform a big deal if they're given positions of power to write the platform and they'll continue to talk about it.
But the party platform has there's nothing in it binding on the nominee.
It's just a theoretically, it's a statement of principle.
And it could be something important.
I mean, people took it seriously.
It could be where a party actually spells out what it is about.
It could be something very useful.
But traditionally, it's been a waste area where you deal with the people who you defeated and you extend olive branches to them.
But the nominee runs the party.
But here's Bill Crystal thinking that Ryan, who's Trump?
He's an outsider.
He's not one of us.
And he thinks that Ryan should have told Trump to go pound sand.
Hey, look, we're the Republican Party, not you.
And it didn't happen.
And as you heard, Bill Crystal is now thinking of having to leave the Republican Party, at least the presidential level.
Don Lemon, ever on the case where you can't get anything past Don Lemon, black holes notwithstanding, you can't get anything past him.
Don Lemon, so perceptive, he then said to Crystal, are you suggesting a third candidate bill?
I think there will be an independent candidate.
I think a Republican of integrity and honor whom people like me will feel comfortable voting for.
I hope that person can beat both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Is it unusual?
Is it a long shot?
I think this is such an exceptional year.
It would be worth trying.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but for example, hasn't the deadline to be a third party or third candidate, say in Texas, hasn't that deadline passed?
Well, Texas has a lot of electoral votes.
Now, the objective here of these guys that want this mythical third-party candidate, it's a pipe dream that a third-party candidate could win.
But what they hope is that the third-party candidate could come in and win enough electoral votes to ensure that neither Hillary nor Trump get 270, which would then throw the election to House of Representatives.
And the House would then select either the third party candidate or Trump or Hillary to be president.
And Crystal thinking that he would be running the House at that time, be able to tell Ryan and the boys what to do and get his third party candidate elected president.
That's the pipe dream.
That's what they're thinking.
But these two soundbites actually illustrate quite a lot, demonstrate much of what I tried to explain all last fall, all during this campaign, who the establishment is, why it's more important to maintain the establishment than even win the White House or beat Mrs. Clinton.
Because without the establishment thriving and without the nominee coming from the establishment, therefore keeping the establishment paramount and at the top of the food chain, the people in the establishment find they're no longer at the top of the food chain and they're not top of the food chain.
maybe end up being nothing.
And we go back to the phones to Pittsburgh.
This is Rob.
It's great to have you with us on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Raj, great to speak to you.
Yeah, I'm a 29-year-old from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I voted for Ted Cruz in the primary recently.
And I used to think of myself as a never-Trumper, but I am currently going to vote for Donald Trump in the general election.
I have really been struggling because I have a lot of friends who are Cruz supporters and have even lost friends because of this, actually.
And I just have been arguing with them and discussing this with them, and they are really, really strictly never Trump.
I don't understand it.
They don't seem to be aware about the SCOTIS picket.
I don't want Hillary getting the Supreme Court pick.
I don't want her having another four years of Obama.
Obama's on senioritis mode right now, doing whatever he can.
Tell me something before you.
How have you lost friends in this?
I've lost friends because they think I've abandoned them and their values and am a traitor to them.
I went to these rallies with them.
You mean the cruise rally?
Yeah, the cruise rallies, cruise rallies all the time.
And they think I'm a traitor.
They don't think I'm a true conservative anymore.
I learned that I'm never Hillary.
I cannot let her get office.
I just can't, especially being a rush baby.
You'll see, that's me too.
Well, yeah.
Thank goodness.
My parents love me.
I love my parents.
I know they're listening, and they raised me listening to you.
I'm never Hillary.
And I'm very, very nervous, especially with Obama getting all this stuff passed.
I mean, like I said.
Look, you haven't seen anything.
I try to tell people all last year, this last year of Obama, he's unchecked.
The Republicans have promised that there's nothing they're going to do to stop him.
They're not going to use power to purse.
Take an impeachment, way off the table.
This is just, you waited a little, the last four months of this year.
You wait to see what Obama does.
And I'll tell you something.
If the Republicans win in November, you're going to see December like you can't believe.
There are going to be things done that will potentially create all kinds of bigger messes for whoever the Republican president Trump to inherit.
But look, back to your original premise here of losing friends.
You've got some cruise people that just can't find their way to Trump no matter what, and they're angry at you.
You understand, I mean, you, because you were for Cruz.
To understand where a lot of people are in this, you have to go back to before Trump entered the race.
Ted Cruz, to a lot of people, has been the single greatest conservative opportunity since Ronald Reagan.
There's nobody that's come as close.
Now, Cruz is not Reagan in some key areas, not policy, but nevertheless.
And they were all pretty confident that with the field as it was with 17 people and the conservatives were very much aware the establishment was not going to succeed with Jeb Bush.
I mean, we instinctively knew this.
There was no momentum for the establishment, no matter how much money they raised.
Cruz was going to be in Trump coming in.
The frustration that conservatives have felt ever since Clinton and ever since the Republicans blew the opportunity in the House.
There's been a series of moves where the Republicans have won and have not tried to advance any sort of conservative agenda.
It's been maddening.
It's been frustrating.
And all of this has had practical meaning.
We're losing the country and we're losing it fast.
And we are falling farther and farther away from our founding principles.
And Cruz was not only going to be the break on that, but he was going to reverse it.
And Cruz was going to be the instrument by which we reassert and establish what we believe that's going to provide the energy that would actually save the country and start creating economic growth and prosperity and renew the concepts of liberty and freedom.
And we're so invested in this and so intent, so desperate for it, so desirous of it, and so filled with optimistic belief.
And then Trump comes along and blows everything up.
And It's like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that's now gone.
And it's just, as far as they're considered, it's sad.
It causes people to be angry, depressed, even in certain ways, because the fear they have is that Trump is not conservative, that he is nowhere near conservative, that he's got everybody fooled in that regard, that he's really no different than Hillary when you get down to brass tax, the practical application of conservative issues.
That the fact that he's not a conservative, no matter what else he is or isn't, the fact that he isn't a conservative is all they need to know.
So I understand the feeling that many of them have.
They feel like there's no anchor now.
And I can feel that I sympathize with them too because I feel like, yes, you're right.
Donald Trump came in.
Our guy was supposed to be that outsider.
He's the real outsider.
Donald Trump comes in and he's viewed as that outsider that we viewed as an outsider all along.
But the real threat is Hillary Clinton.
And the thing that's alarming for me is that they're willing.
They want four years as Hillary Clinton.
My friends want four years of that because they think that will hit the reset button in four years.
And I don't think we have four years, especially after what's going to go on until no.
Well, see, you're right.
There's always going to be an America, but we are in the midst of a promised transformation.
This isn't stealth anymore.
This is not the Democrats sneaking this stuff by.
They're doing it right in front of our faces, and our party hasn't lifted a finger to stop it.
That also adds to the frustration.
Now, Jeff Sessions, who has endorsed Trump and is unquestionably conservative, Senator from Alabama, has written a brief piece today.
It's an op-ed explaining why.
And it might be worth your while to find that and share it with these guys because Jeff Sessions might hold some credibility with them.
I don't know, but he might.
But he's Sessions is primarily about the border and immigration and the maintenance of what we've all come to know and love and appreciate as the dominant American culture.
And there's no question it's under assault.
And it's under attack.
And Sessions, as far as he's concerned, that's issue number one.
And there isn't anybody else but Trump.
Trump, in fact, is the preferred candidate for that very reason, as far as Sessions is concerned, being at the most important issue.
And there's no way Hillary Clinton or any Democrat is acceptable in that area or any other, as far as I'm concerned.
And you agree with that.
And these guys at some point probably will too.
I'm hoping they do.
Because the objective of this has to be finally, once and for all, to stop the Democrats.
It just has to be.
They're the most destructive force working their will on this country each and every day.
And there hasn't been a serious effort to stop these people in seven and a half years.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And we need to stop the Democrats because if they get four more years, especially with the Supreme Court pick coming up, I don't know what's going to happen when it will be five, four thousand.
Yes, you do.
It's not just one.
It's not just one.
God's waiting room is the Supreme Court building.
It's not just one opening.
There's a whole bunch of them that are approaching the age, if you will, where they clearly have many fewer years ahead of them than behind them.
And in the next four years, there could be two or three more.
And you let a liberal Democrat president.
A liberal Supreme Court is not a court.
It's a rubber stamp.
The four liberals on the Supreme Court now are not judges.
They're not justices.
They are left-wing rubber stamps.
No matter what the issue is, the left-wing liberal interpretation of it, whether it's constitutional or not, will be how they vote.
It's a rubber stamp.
There isn't even any learned, considered legal thought or analysis going on among those four.
And you get one more of them, Sayonara.
And don't forget, the court has become where every political issue is decided once and for all.
Never intended to be that, by the way, but yet that's what it has become.
So that's a crucial aspect of this, too.
I'll tell you something else that bothers some never-Trumpers.
And it's not so much Trump.
I mean, he's a factor for some of them, but some of the Never Trump crowd, the cruise people, just can't stand some of Trump's supporters.
Just the trolls that are out there on Twitter, and they think they're brain dead.
A lot of cruise supporters think, my God, if this is the sum total of the IQ supporting Trump, we are screwed.
It's mean-spirited, it's vicious.
These Twitter trolls, I don't care what they're trolling.
It's a live sewer out there.
Whether they're Trumpists tweeting or whether they're stop rush or whoever they are, they're just the dregs.
It's just a bunch of human debris out there.
And so the anti-cruise people that are out there trolling just literally rub the pro-Cruz people raw and make it seem like, oh, my God, not only is Trump winning, but the people supporting him have a combined IQ of three.
So I understand all this.
Where it's going to end up, I wish I could tell you.
I have my best guesses, but that's all they are.
But my problem is, and it's a problem.
A lot of people, you know, you say you've lost friends.
I haven't lost any friends over any of this.
But I bet if I applied myself, I could.
But I haven't lost any friends.
But the biggest challenge I get is my optimism.
That makes other people think I don't get it when I'm not wringing my hands and as worried as they are.
And if I do not echo the one of the most popular refrains in the Never Trump crowd is that it's over.
Trump is going to get crushed.
It's going to be the biggest landslide.
Oh, my God.
We're in the wilderness for 30 more years.
I shared with you some of this apocalyptic reasoning last Friday on this program.
And I don't have the capacity for that.
I mean, personally, I can't live being that obsessed with doom and gloom and apocalyptic thinking and so forth.
But a lot of people relish it.
It inspires and motivates them.
It fires them up.
But if I can find myself in situations where I've had people, you don't really care, do you?
You don't really care.
I mean, for some reason, because how can you not be pessimistic about all this?
Well, my natural, believe me, I'm pessimistic about a lot of things.
I have my moments like everybody else does.
But overall, I and folks, look, let me be honest, I've been pessimistic or optimistic.
I've been optimistic, and many times what I've been optimistic about has not happened.
So I'm tempered by realism as well.
I'm a mayor of Rielville.
But I understand losing friends.
I can see how that could happen because it's very, very tense out there.
And it's especially in what?
See, by the same, there's some Trumpists out there who think the cruisers on Twitter are just smug and arrogant.
It works both ways.
There's nobody singularly guilty or innocent here.
Anyway, I'm just standing back and observing it, commenting on it, telling you what I think about it, which is what you should think about it.
Everything's fine.
We'll be back in just a minute.
Just call me an optimistic pessimist, folks.
Or a pessimistic optimist, if you will.
Our old buddy Pete Wayner has a piece today in which, what did he say, Mr. Snerdley?
He says that, oh, yeah, Trump supporters are wrong, not evil.
Is Pete admonishing some who are maybe being a bit extreme and describing Trump supporters as evil and trying to – Pete trying to – well, I think – well, Pete's trying to apply a little grace to the entire campaign.
So he's not defending Trump supporters.
He's – because he's not one, right?
He's not one.
The Bill Kristol soundbites, you can hear the disappointment.
Look, everything's upside down here, and there are a lot of people having a lot of trouble dealing with all of it personally, professionally, ideologically, politically, the whole ballgame.
And some people still haven't come to grips with what's happened and have just terrible, fatalistic attitudes about what the future holds.
And some people have to be able to do it.
Let's look at this.
Thank you.
And I do too, but I have no doubt all that's going to happen to Hillary Wincy.
That's it for me.
I don't have any question.
To me, there's no either or.
There is simply no way in my world you vote for a Democrat.
There is no way Hillary Clinton gets supported.
There is no way Elizabeth Warren is empowered.
There is no way anybody having anything to do with the Obama administration is continually empowered.
There is no way you want to talk apocalypse.
You want to talk fatalism and pessimism?
You surround me with that stuff and you've got it.
And my optimism is rooted in the belief that they can be stopped.
That I hope they can be stopped.
Anyway, enough of that.
Patrick in Sonora, California.
Glad you waited, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Megan Ditto is from my safe space in the mother mode.
Well, great to have you, sir.
I got to take you on the flashback machine real quick.
Two things.
One, you were a celebrity judge in 1987 in Chico, California, when Chico State got named party school.
I remember that.
I was.
I was the DJ who played the music for the girls.
Way back.
Way back, 1987.
Oh, those are some great days.
Another year before you went national.
I didn't, I'm sorry.
I didn't know you back then.
I didn't know.
I was a conservative, but I didn't listen to your show.
It was a missed opportunity for you.
A friend of mine was a huge fan.
You went over to JB, said he was the bartender there.
That's right.
That's right.
And you remember when, what was it, Chico was named the party school.
What was the absolute worst place in the world to live was Redding?
What was somewhere in the world?
Yuba City, Yubic City.
I mean, Chico, while you were in the world.
No, no, no.
It was Yuba City.
Yuba City was the worst place in the world to live shortly after Chico was named the party school.
And I went up and did my program live from Yuba City, and we started a refugee movement back down to Sacramento.
The other memory is, this is from your group, you are forgotten favorites.
I remember it had to be a Monday because I was driving back to Reve.
Wait, wait, wait.
Hang on.
I hate that.
I misread the clock.
I had one less minute than I thought here.
Don't go away out there.
Fastest three hours in meeting.
We've already got two of them in the can.
By the way, programming note, folks.
I waited until now to tell you so you wouldn't get disappointed and despondent.
I am going to be off Monday and Tuesday, a scheduled couple of days off.
And we'll have Mark Stein is going to be here on both days and be back next Wednesday.