I was all prepared to roll right into the audio soundbites, Bill Gates, Jim Brown, James Baker.
And now Janet Yellen has raised interest rates.
So I can't ignore that.
I have to talk about it because we come here to meet and surpass audience expectations.
So you're going to hear out there, wow, the Fed's raising interest rates for the first time.
And geez, how long?
What does that mean?
And you're going to think there's one place to go, and that's right here.
So it just happened.
And so I will tell you what I think it means with you.
Let me reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks after the program is over and I actually have a chance to study this.
And also, Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve have not yet had their meeting to explain this and take questions from the quote-unquote financial press.
So we don't know why she is going to say they've raised rates.
She could have a bunch of negative reasons for doing it, but I don't think so.
I think what's happening right now, folks, is the Obama reclamation project, hiding what's happening in Syria to protect Obama, blaming the Russians for Hillary's loss.
Because remember, if anybody's really responsible for this besides Hillary, it's Obama.
I mean, let's be honest here.
It was Barack Obama who went out on the campaign trail and told everybody he spoke to that his agenda was on the line, that you had to vote for Hillary if you wanted to continue the Obama agenda, and that Obama's legacy was tied exclusively to his agenda continuing under Hillary.
So if you want to vote for more of me, the only way you can do it is vote for her.
And that's what he said.
He put his legacy, put his agenda on the ballot, and it was repudiated.
It was blown to Sam Hill.
It was obliterated.
It is one of the most, when you get right down to it, if Obama wasn't a narcissist and had even the slightest ability to be honest with himself, it's one of the most embarrassing moments of his presidency, was personally told to take a hike.
No, it's not me saying this.
He put his agenda on the ballot.
That was the reason to vote for Hillary.
He's so how to describe this.
He believes all the hype about himself in the media.
He really thinks that Americans are personally invested in him and his life and his future.
And that the American people are personally desirous that Obama go down in history as being great.
That's why he would say what he said on the campaign trail.
I mean, those are the kind of things I think a public figure must always maintain perspective and always keep in mind that you're nowhere near as big as you think you are, particularly if you're on the left and the media is out there hyping you every day.
With the media's job respect at 6%, I've seen people in my business.
I mean, it's an endless parade of people who come along and think they are God's gift, end up being the biggest thing ever.
And they start acting like it and they brought down to earth real fast.
And it's a hard crash when they realize they're relying to themselves, that there aren't that many people who really care.
This is what happened to Obama.
He puts his agenda out there.
He begs people to vote for Hillary in order to keep his agenda alive.
Well, look what happened.
So this blame the Russians is as much to protect Obama as it is explain Hillary's loss, as far as the media is concerned.
And do not doubt me on that.
They love Obama.
Obama's the only guy worth caring about the last 35 years.
Historic, historical, you name it.
All of this is about protecting Obama.
So here comes Janet yelling, raising interest rates, as Obama's on his way out.
Since we are in the midst of the Obama reclamation project, why would she be doing this?
And he makes you a prediction that she will do it because she says the economy is roaring.
The economy's growing.
We've finally got it going.
And we've got to put a little bit of a break on it.
It's good news, she'll say.
This is going to help unemployment.
Main Street's going to love this.
Wall Street's going to love this.
We've got economic growth.
We're putting interest rates on.
The interest rates will be portrayed as a brilliant, great maneuver this time, as opposed to the last time she slapped him on about a year ago, first part of this year, which was a disaster when she last time raised interest rates.
This is going to be portrayed as an outgrowth of the Obama economic recovery.
And if I'm right, well, I know I am.
I just, holy smokes, when I started this hour, the Dow was at 19,500.
It's at 19,936.
I know I'm right.
The Dow is going to be at 9, it's going to be at 20,000 by the end of the day because Wall Street and everybody is going to assume that this is a move made in acknowledgement of the massive Obama recovery and economic growth.
You mark my words.
Is it a bad thing?
No, I think it's a little early to start talking about putting brakes on the economy, if you ask me.
But this is what these people do.
Their first objective, they claim, is to guard against inflation.
And so if the economy is growing and people are being hired, that's going to produce ingredients for inflation.
So we need to ratchet up the interest rates, just put a little bit of brakes on the economy.
And I don't think the economy needs any breaks.
I think if it's starting to grow, then get out of the way.
Let it happen.
But do not, folks, I say this a lot, but I mean it.
Do not doubt me.
They are trying to reclaim what is an embarrassing Obama eight years, as evidenced by this election.
Okay, now to the audio soundbites.
Bill Gates, the second day in a row that he's praised Obama.
I should tell you, I couldn't find one reference in any of my tech blogs to Bill Gates praising Obama yesterday.
When Gates came out, remember we played the soundbite where he compared Trump, and I said Obama, Gates compared Trump to JFK.
I said, holy smokes, this is going to be my tech blogs are going to have panic.
They hate Trump.
They despise Trump.
And they think Gates is a god.
He's a God nerd.
And so with Gates praising Trump, they're not going to know what to do.
There wasn't one story I saw in it.
Now stop and think of that.
If Gates had come out and trashed Trump, that's all I would have seen.
Gates is back.
He was on the, let's see, this is at Trump Tower.
Yesterday he was on a cable network.
This is at Trump Tower.
Speaking with reporters after he spoke with Trump.
We had a good conversation about innovation, how it can help in health, education, impact of foreign aid and energy, and a wide-ranging conversation about the power of innovation.
Yesterday afternoon, now he didn't get escorted down personally like Kanye did or Mayoshi-san.
But Gates was still singing Trump's praises after the meeting.
So there's two different occasions now where Gates has been really, really high on Trump.
Some of you might say, wait a minute, Rush, that's not good.
This guy is over there thinks mosquito nets are the big deal.
Gates is one of these people predisposed to hating Trump.
Trump is meeting today with Tim Cook at Apple, Cheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Eric Schmidt at Alphabet, i.e.
Google.
Cisco guys here.
And I think Larry Ellison from Oracle is there.
Did you hear what IBM did before?
And Jenny Romney at IBM, the CEO, is in the meeting.
Hear what she did yesterday.
She announced that IBM is going to hire 25,000 new employees the day before the meeting with Trump.
Make America great, folks.
Make America great again.
IBM hiring 25,000 new employees over the years, 6,000 to start.
Oh, I had to make a comment.
Trump's stim, I caught hell.
I caught hell when I was analyzing Trump's stimulus the other day and didn't condemn it.
I caught a lot of grief because as a conservative, I should oppose all stimulus spending.
And I didn't condemn it.
I was explaining how it might differ from Obama's and how it might be accepted where Obama's wasn't.
But may I make an observation?
Some of the people who are trashing me, you know, Washington types, they weren't really trashing.
It's not that they were there, but they were trying to call into question my, shall we say, what purity?
Remember all of those Obama budget increases?
Every time Obama wanted a budget deal, a new reconciliation bill, did any of the Republicans stand and try to stop it?
There wasn't any pushback on Obama's budgets, were there?
Not much.
And in this past year, Mitch McConnell announced that there wasn't going to be any opposition to Obama at all.
So the people mad at me for not condemning Trump's trillion-dollar stimulus, which he says it's a stimulus over 10 years, by the way, and it's going to be paid for with getting money from other government agencies.
And there's plenty of that, by the way.
There's plenty of waste, fraud, wherever, all over this budget to go get a trillion dollars over 10 years without allocating new.
But my point is, there's all kinds of Republicans who went along with every new dollar Obama spent, and some even gave him more money than he asked for in one of his budgets.
And they did it to prove to the big government voter that they had a heart.
Remember that, Mr. Sterdley?
Remember all the so I, all these people condemning me for not condemning Trump's stimulus, the same people that happily applauded the increases in spending that Obama authorized that the Republicans did not stand in the way of.
Just a little hypocrisy.
Now to Jim Brown, Jim Brown this morning, he was on, it's actually yesterday, CNN newsroom, he was talking to the anchorette, Brooke Baldwin, who said, you have fought on behalf of a lot of the working class and middle class for your lifetime, Mr. Brown.
Speak to those people in this country who feel like they're not being listened to or being represented.
I've been out there for many, many years in the ghettos across this country.
I fell in love with him because he really talks about helping African-American black people, and that's why I'm here.
You fell in love with Donald Trump today.
When he goes through what he went through to become the president, he got my admiration because no one gave him a chance.
They called him names.
People that called him names when he won, he reached back and brought them along with him.
He held no grudges.
The reception I got today from him, I'll always remember that because he listened to us and he knows that we can bring something to him to help the people of this country.
And I heard Trump talking about this last night in Wisconsin.
He said, yeah, Jim Brown came by.
Ray Lewis came in.
We're going to use everybody who wants to be involved.
They want to help out.
We're going to use them.
We're going to welcome them here.
There's nothing exclusionary about my cabinet, about my administration.
If somebody wants to help make it all work, we're going to welcome them in here.
We're going to work so hard for you.
You're not going to really, we're going to work so hard.
He started repeating the line that there's going to be so much winning that you're going to be calling the White House asking to take a break on it for a while.
There's going to be so much winning going.
You say, Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, let's stop the winning like just for a month or so.
We can catch our breath.
There's enough winning.
He said, I'll never stop.
We're going to win.
We're going to win.
We're going to work so hard for you.
And he started talking about his cabinet guys and what he was going to have them do and how they're the best at what they do.
And they're going to be the best at what they're doing now.
And we're going to work so hard.
If anybody wants to help, they're going to be welcomed in.
And you're going to be calling, you're going to call Paul Ryan.
You're going to say, Mr. Ryan, please get Mr. Trump to stop winning.
I can't take any more winning.
And Paul Ryan's going to call me and I'm going to say, never stop, never stop.
We're going to win, win, win.
That's what we do.
He also said of Paul Ryan, you know, Paul Ryan is like a fine wine.
It just gets better and better and better the more you get to know it and the more it ages.
Trump doesn't drink was my first reaction when he used the fine wine.
He doesn't.
He doesn't drink.
He never has.
He does not smoke.
And so did you hear Brooke Baldwin?
You fell in love with Donald Trump today.
He listened to what I had to say.
Look at what he had to go through.
You know, that's a good point.
Look at what Trump had to go.
Look at all of that.
Hillary Clinton could not have survived if she had been up against that.
As they're demonstrating, Democrats can't survive in any kind of adversity.
Look at what they're crying and whining like a bunch of stuck pigs over the mean Russians.
So last night on Anderson Cooper 99 on CNN, Anderson Cooper said there are a lot of Clinton supporters who are obviously upset about the result of the election.
They're depressed about it.
But you're willing to give Trump a chance.
You're willing to try to work with him.
We have free elections.
Everybody can vote.
We fall for that.
We brag about that.
And we know we're going to have a winner.
We're going to have a loser.
If we respect the winner and approach that person, have access to that person, and that person will look at what we're presenting.
That's not too bad.
I could have sat back and said, well, Hillary didn't win.
I'm just going to sit on my butt and complain.
But see, the one thing about this country, if you get off your butt and you apply yourself, you can be successful.
But if you want to be delivered, you talk about the wrong country.
Well, in more ways than one there, if you want to be delivered, he's the Stephanopoulos.
Aborton, Noah Boyson, Noah Boyson.
14-year-old Stephanopoulos' daughter.
And one more Jim Brown bite.
This is also Anderson Cooper 99.
Look, this is interesting stuff.
Cooper says the people that Trump is going to have with him in the cabinet are predominantly white, predominantly male.
Are you bothered by that at all, Mr. Brown?
A lot of the black people in my community might think I'm a sellout by saying this.
The three greatest people in my life as a young person were white.
I'm not a person that really deal in color.
I recognize the inequities that certain cultures have to go through.
I understand the history of slavery.
I know all those things.
But I'm not a victim.
I can vote.
I can participate.
I can invest my money.
I can invest my time.
And that's what I'm doing.
I'm not working for anybody.
I'm not making any money doing what I'm doing.
I'm doing it because someone did it for me.
Three most important people, three greatest people of my life as a young person were white.
I am not a victim.
And the Democrats sneer when they hear things like that.
Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Look, there's an alternative suggestion of what Yellen's doing.
And I might explore it in the next half hour.
I want to get back to the phones here.
I feel myself getting behind again.
Joanne in Wilbraham, Massachusetts.
Great to have you.
How are you doing?
I'm delighted, Russia.
First time caller and thrilled to speak with you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
I have a question that has really been bothering me.
I wonder if you could explain why Obama's relationship with Castro was applauded by the liberals, and yet they are so up in arms about Trump's relationship with Putin.
Well, it is that they and Castro are communist and neocommunists, communist and liberal, and Trump is not.
No matter what Putin is, Trump is not.
The real question is, I don't think the Trump-Putin thing is even, the real question, what is the source of the admiration they have for Castro?
He was a mass murderer.
He kept political prisoners in dungeons.
His people, the people of Cuba, many of them couldn't, they died trying to leave.
Most live in abject poverty.
And yet they feel this connection, this admiration.
What explains the liberal admiration and adulation for people like Fidel Castro?
And it wasn't just Castro.
They felt the same way about Hugo Chavez, but not quite as strong.
Castro was.
I mean, he captivated him.
And I think they envied his power.
And I think they fear Trump's power.
There's really no more complicated than that.
Okay.
Now, what kind of iPhone do you want?
Seven or seven plus?
I know you want one.
Seven plus would be great.
Thank you.
Who is your carrier?
Cricket.
Cricket?
Yeah.
Cricket, okay.
AT ⁇ T company.
Okay.
So I'm going to send you a GSM phone, which works with T-Mobile and AT ⁇ T.
And I'm pretty sure it'll work with cricket.
What color do you want?
You said you wanted a plus?
Yes, please.
What color?
Rose gold.
Rose gold.
Oh, perfect.
Perfect.
So, hang on so Mr. Snurdling can get your address.
You take it to Cricket.
You tell them it's an unlocked GSM phone.
They'll see it on the back.
That the phone was a gift.
And we'll give you a subscription to Limbaugh Letter and the website.
Hang on.
This is one of the most intense, jam-packed Decembers that I can ever.
You know, I was actually sitting here earlier thinking it would be pointless.
You know, I usually take the week after Christmas between New Year's off.
And sometimes even the week after that, I think, this might be a mistake this year.
I mean, who knows?
Kind of stuff.
Trump's not stopping for anything.
I'm thinking here, I'm going to be sipping adult beverages on a beach somewhere.
Something's going to happen to the news.
And I'm saying, damn it, I ought not be here, you know, and make tracks back.
Well, yeah, I'm fully aware of that.
The problem is if I do come back, it screws everything up because everybody is also on vacation.
Well, not everybody, but many of the support staff will also be away.
So if I decided I want to come back, it's a major, got to find other people that are away to and bring them back.
A huge responsibility on my part.
Anyway, James Baker.
James Baker is, in the eyes of many, you would agree, Mr. Snerdley, Mr. Establishment.
I mean, he may be not quite, I mean, there is no Republican equivalent of David Gergen in terms of defining conventional wisdom.
James Baker, he was in the Reagan administration, the Bush administration.
He's a consultant for 60.
He ran the recount for George W. Bush in Florida in 2000.
He is connected.
He was on CBS this morning.
He knows Tillerson.
Everybody in Texas who's anybody knows Tillerson.
And Tillerson knows anybody who's anybody in Texas.
And Baker lives in Texas.
Baker lives in Houston.
And they were talking about Tillerson being chosen Secretary of State.
Charlie Rose.
And James Baker, by the way, is a Republican that no media guy hates.
They envy, they admire, they all want to be James Baker.
So Charlie Rose would be talking to you, James Baker, here with lots of respect.
He said, are you worried, Mr. Baker, about the closeness that Tillerson has with Putin?
I'm not worried about that, Charlie, because he was doing, in getting close to Vladimir Putin, he was doing what he should have done for the shareholders of ExxonMobil, and that is make good deals, good agreements with foreign powers.
Now he's going to be sitting in the Secretary of State's chair on the seventh floor of the State Department, and I guarantee you, he's going to have a different outlook.
He's going to be looking at formulating and implementing American foreign policy on the basis of the principles and values of this country and in the national interest of this country.
Baker, by the way, was Secretary of State.
He was Secretary of State for, I believe, Secretary of Treasury for Reagan.
Secretary of State.
He's done it all.
So you see, Tillerson, a great guy.
He's going to be able to take everything he's done in terms of doing deals at ExxonMobil.
He's going to now go to the 7th Florida State Department, the Secretary of State's office.
He's going to be doing deals there.
But the deals he's going to be doing are going to be for the United States.
So, fill-in co-host Alex Wagner, a female on CBS this morning, same show as Charlie Rose.
She then said, now you're a partner in a law firm that represents ExxonMobil and some of the Russian gas companies that do business with ExxonMobil.
So, Mr. Baker, do you have any experience working with Rex Tillerson?
Do you think that it all complicates your support?
In other words, she's saying, okay, look, you work with the guy.
Your law firm represents the guy.
How can we believe anything you say, Baker?
I've never done anything for the company in which Rex was directly involved.
I know him.
He's a friend of mine.
I hunt help with him.
And I have great confidence in his ability.
This story that somehow I was out there pushing Rex early on is not correct.
When the transition people for President-elect Trump call me, I gave him really high marks.
That call came in Monday, day before yesterday.
So some of the reporting that you've seen on that, that somehow I was pushing them because of my firm's representation of ExxonMobil, that's not true.
This is not true.
I don't know Rex that well.
I just go hunting elk with him.
Oh, now they're going to really hate Tillerson.
You know, he kills animals with a gun.
He goes hunting.
Okay, here's the red flag.
Ladies and gentlemen, same show, CBS this morning.
Charlie Rose takes back over from Alex Wagner, who interrupted him.
And Charlie says, some people looking at the future Trump administration believe there are too few people who have a strong view to protect the planet.
I'm going to have to figure out a way of dealing with this because this really tries my patience.
You realize Charlie Rose is actually asking James Baker, there's a lot of people at Trump's getting here who don't care about the planet.
Have you ever heard anything more absurd?
This whole idea that Republicans don't mind pollution, they don't mind dirty water, and that these CEOs love polluting the cities they live in.
They love polluting the air.
It's absurd here.
These assumptions are to make it.
And Trump doesn't have anybody that cares about the planet.
Good Lord.
We're just specks of dust on the planet anyway.
We have this idea that we can destroy the planet is just flat out silly.
But anyway, I interrupt myself again.
I'm sorry, folks.
I can't.
This stuff just really, really frosts me.
And I'm getting ahead of myself because that has nothing to do with the answer.
Let me start again.
Charlie Rose.
Some people looking at the Trump regime believe there are too few people who have a strong view to protect their planet and who have strong views about the dangers of global warming.
He said, not enough people in this cabinet care about global warming.
What do you say about that, Mr. Baker?
I do know this.
Rex Tillerson was one of the people, one of the corporate leaders in the United States who first came out and acknowledged the problem of climate change.
And so, but I can't answer for people who've been appointed to positions like EPA and so forth.
All right.
All right.
Now, by the way, Tillerson has done that.
Tillerson has spoken about climate change.
And he has said, I'm paraphrasing, we at ExxonMobil believe that there are instances of man-made incidences of climate change.
And we at ExxonMobil love the planet.
We want to preserve the planet.
And he's come out in favor of a carbon tax as the way of dealing with man-made climate change.
Now, I don't like that at all.
A carbon tax, for example, that was one of Bill Clinton's first attempted tax increases in 1993.
And it went down in flames as it should.
A carbon tax can bankrupt people.
Carbon is in everything.
Carbon tax is an economy.
You put breaks on the economy, start taxing carbon.
The thing I don't know, because I don't know Rex Tillerson.
All I know is I like Tillerson and I like his name.
Tillerson's a perfect name.
Rex Tillerson, a great name for a CEO of an oil company.
But I don't know him.
I do know that ExxonMobil is hated and despised by climate change Looney Tunes, unhinged left-wing global warming fanatics.
And I also know that as CEO, it would be up to Rex Tillerson to keep them at bay and to make sure that when the climate change crowd starts out there trying to destroy things, that ExxonMobil is not on the hit list.
So, could well be that Rex Tillerson is saying these things because it's an insurance policy.
Got nothing to lose by saying it, except maybe to keep the, it's like a rich guy.
It's like Gates.
It's like Warren Buffett being for tax increases on the rich.
It'll keep the people with pitchforks away from their house.
Yeah, he's a good rich guy.
He thinks he's not paying enough in taxes.
So if Rex Tillerson says, yeah, we in corporate America, we're not doing enough to save the planet.
And keeps people at bay.
But he also might mean it.
It is at variance with what Trump believes.
By the way, Trump does not believe in a carbon tax or any of that, but he loves Tillerson from what I understand.
He didn't know Tillerson before they met.
Tillerson bowled him over.
I mean, really impressive because they both do deals.
So we'll have to see.
But this is a bit of a red flag for me.
Anything getting close to this is a red flag for me.
Yeah, well, you say that Tillerson is not going to be making decisions like carbon tax, but he's going to be meeting with the United Nations and other diplomats who do.
He's going to be doing diplomacy with a bunch of these newfangled wackos who think climate change is real and think the United States is a primary culprit and think the United States ought to pay for it.
I'm biding my time.
Trump just finished the meeting with the tech CEOs at Trump Tower.
And this is the sound bite we have from Donald Trump talking about how it went.
I'm here to help you folks do well.
And you're doing well right now.
And I'm very honored by the bounce.
They're all talking about the bounce.
So right now, everybody in this room has to like me at least a little bit, but we're going to try and have that bounce continue.
And perhaps even more importantly, we want you to keep going with the incredible innovation.
There's nobody like you in the world.
There's nobody like the people in this room.
And anything we can do to help this go along, and we're going to be there for you.
And you'll call my people, you'll call me.
It doesn't make any difference.
We have no formal chain of command around here.
I'm honored to have Gary, the president of Goldman Sachs, Lev Goldman Sachs, to do this.
And Wilbur, everybody knows Wilbur.
They never call on Wilbur or us on Wolfie.
They just say, oh, it's Wilbur.
So Trump, actually, I think Trump is, if there's any kind of an effort here to claim an economic recovery for Obama, Trump's in there trying to get it for himself.
He's labeling this economic recovery the bounce.
He's claiming it is his.
He wants it to continue.
And he told these tech guys, more importantly, we want you to keep going with the incredible innovation.
There's nobody like you in the world.
Can you imagine these guys?
Honest to God, these tech people are all, I mean, they are high-octane leftists.
They walk in there.
They're prepared to think that they're meeting with a neo-fascist who, if they say the wrong thing, might put them in a camp.
Can you imagine their reaction when they meet Donald Trump and find out face to face that all he wants is everybody to be great and he appreciates their innovation?
I don't know how many of them have their mind changed, but I guarantee you there's a lot of people in that room of these tech people who, I mean, they're hardcore leftists and many of them believe all this stuff.
They're social warriors, social justice warriors.
And they walk in there preparing to see some three-horned cyclops.
I guarantee you they have a different frame of mind.
They may not say so.
I guarantee they do.
And he wants them to be great, to be even greater.
Call anybody anytime, whatever we can do to help you.
We want anybody who can help.
We're going to work so hard for you.
He tells people, we're going to work so hard for you.
And I have a sense that he really means it literally.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Didn't leave too much on the table today.
Got the most of it.
The alternative explanation on the rate hike may be tomorrow, depending on what I learn here after the program ends.