Why won't you answer the guy's question about Fox?
He didn't ask me anything about Fox.
That call ended before he got there.
I got to address this, I think.
Anyway, greetings.
Welcome back, folks.
It is great to have you here.
It is so great to be back at it here behind a golden EIB microphone.
Rushland Bought, America's real anchorman, to have my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Should there be any leftists that courageously call.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Email address, LRushmo at EIBnet.us.
You know this Fox News stuff and the personnel changes going on over there.
I almost feel like sessions needing to recuse myself.
I just this just, I look at my, I look at that and I say, okay, what could I possibly, what is there to gain by getting, because I do know a slew of people there.
I know people that used to work there.
I have inside knowledge of what goes on in some areas there.
And to opine on that, I just, it was very, very tough.
This is, I'll tell you what, folks, it's one of the reasons why I have not made an effort to get to know personally all these people in Washington or anywhere else that I might end up talking about.
Because once you get to know them, it does change.
That's one of the problems with all the incestuousness inside the Beltway anyway.
They all know each other, media and otherwise.
And believe me, it makes it more difficult, not just to be critical, but to be honest.
Because there's always fallout.
Personal fallout is different when it's professional fallout.
I'm like everybody else.
I have opinions on things that are going on, not just there, but anywhere else in the media.
And it's just, no, I'm not afraid.
That's not, what makes you think I'm afraid?
It's not afraid of anything.
It is afraid is not, it's not the word.
It's just, I don't know.
I'll think about it.
The best I can come up with is that I'm so close to it, I think I need to recuse myself.
Well, I did, I like Carlson.
I thought Tucker's show was one of the hottest things Fox had done in a while because of the way Tucker, I mean, Tucker does everything everybody else does at Fox.
They take on the leftism, but the way he does it, genuinely unique.
Not done anywhere else, the way he does it.
I saw fit to mention that.
But that's not deriving anybody else.
I mean, it's not ripping anybody else.
You know, Megan's decision to leave and go to NBC.
Of course, I've got professional thoughts on that.
But, you know, these are things I should tell her if she were to ask, which she didn't.
And not that she should or would.
Look, it'll all come out in the wash in time, all these things.
I'm not, yes, it is.
I don't even want to say what I was going to say.
I just, just trust me on this, folks, that you can call here and say whatever you want, and it isn't a problem.
Good, bad, whatever, indifferent.
I understand that Fox produces a range of emotions, largely because of what people think it is, what people thought it was when it started.
But they won't let go of this.
What do you think of Tucker at 9 o'clock?
Good for Tucker.
Congratulations.
Congratulations.
I hope it works.
I really do.
I have a wait-and-see attitude about a lot of media shifts and changes and so forth.
What I think at Greta at PMS, and I think it's actually a good move for PMS and a good move for her.
And I think if she can inspire PMS, well, no, wait a minute.
If she can inspire MSNBC, I don't want her to spread PMS.
If she could inspire him to make some changes over there, That would improve them, then she could, I think, that's a good move for her and for them.
She's a hard worker.
I haven't run into anybody that works any harder than Greta Van Susteren does.
I can attest to it.
She's the biggest pest I've ever run into.
She's relentless.
And that's to her credit.
As I say, folks, all this stuff's going to come out in the wash.
Just be patient.
It's all going to find its own level.
And I don't know what that even means.
Here's Snerdley, Mr. Stir the Pot in there asking me, what do I think of O'Reilly doing stories three or four days?
Is that what the guy's point was?
Well, I didn't understand him to say that.
No thoughts on it.
You know, look, folks, I do not talk about competition.
I come from the old school where they don't exist, where you don't mention them.
And so that hasn't changed.
That's a formative belief from my way.
I mean, I've been doing this since I was 16, and I'm 66.
Is that right?
Can that possibly be right?
It is.
66 this week.
Holy smokes.
Anyway, my belief was there is no competition.
You don't mention them.
Of course, I think I may be the only person that still subscribes to that philosophy today.
I don't care what they are, radio, TV, they don't exist in my mind.
Now, I mentioned something yesterday that I think is a golden opportunity for the country, and that is Trump's cabinet selections, and particularly the people he has chosen who are from the epitome, the heights of success in the business world and in other areas of personal achievement, because I believe people like that should be the role models among the role models that people in this country have.
And I believe these people should, it's okay for them to be aspirational.
It's okay for people to want to be like them.
And the left wants no part.
They don't want anybody to be like the CEO of Exxon.
Are you kidding?
Or the CEO of a pharmaceutical company or the CEO of a big box retailer.
That's a crime.
If you look at the Democrat Party enemies list, it's CEOs and it's corporations and it's like big oil, big pharma, big retail, big wood.
They despise them all.
And if you look at Obama's cabinet, we have people who have never done anything.
They're a bunch of thinkers, a bunch of theoreticians that have sat around either at their think tanks or at the faculty lounge at their university, and they've stroked their goatees as they sit there with their patched jackets, sipping whatever is in their cup, and they're ruminating with each other about how everything would be better if brilliant people like them were running things.
And now Obama's come along and brilliant people like them are running things and we're in a giant mess.
When it comes to health care, when it comes to the economy, when it comes to foreign policy, people that have not, we don't have anybody in the Obama cabinet that's ever had a job in the private sector.
Now that Geithner's gone, he once worked for a couple of days at American Express or wherever it was.
But for the most part, Obama's cabinet hasn't had anybody that could hearken to any kind of real-world achievement.
And Trump's people are doers.
And the point about the Trump people, you know, the way the left looks at government, it is you want government and you want to be in government because you want the power that government provides you to change people's lives.
You want the power to lord it over people.
You want the power to tell people what they can and can't do with a mud puddle in their backyard.
You want the power to tell people how big or small the water tank on their toilet should be.
You want the power to tell people what kind of car they should and should not drive.
That's why the left aspires to power.
They want to use the power to control other people.
And their belief is that people are flawed.
Their belief is that the average ordinary American is somebody that you should hold in contempt because they didn't graduate from an Ivy League school.
They're not very bright and left to their own devices, they'll make everything worse.
I mean, they definitely look down their noses at everybody, and they want, they aspire to government positions, giving them power to correct and fix the mistakes that ordinary people make every day in the living of their lives.
And I think it's a crock.
The people that Trump have chosen, as Trowe's chosen, Rex Tillerson at ExxonMobil, Wilbur Ross, these are in many ways self-made success stories.
They do not need anything government provides them.
They do not need any more power than they have.
They do not need any more wealth, meaning they don't need to leverage their government job for personal gain, which is what happens in the ebb and flow of things normally in Washington and in politics.
You go to Washington, you don't make much money as a cabinet secretary or as a congressman or senator, but you get to know big money people and they set you up at a lobbyist position when you leave office or do this or that.
That's how you leverage your success in the private sector is after you've gotten to know people in the course of doing your government job.
Trump's bringing in people who are powerful and successful independently from government, don't need it, and in fact are making great sacrifices to do it.
They precisely they don't need it.
They don't need anything that comes with these jobs.
They don't need the power.
Look at the, they're all going to have to divest themselves.
People talk about Jared Kushner, who's Trump's son-in-law, and he's going to be one of Trump's advisors.
He's going to be not in a position that requires congressional approval.
So people are already starting to criticize Jared Kushner and accuse Trump of nepotism and that this is unfair and it's not right.
And these people are going to be parlaying these positions and defer to power.
Jared Kushner is going to have to divest himself of everything he's built.
He owns the New York Observer.
He's got to get rid of it.
He owns New York Realists.
Got to get rid of it.
So do a lot of these other people.
They have to totally separate themselves from their lives where they have been profoundly successful in order for ethics and other things to be unquestioned.
So it's a, I don't want to portray this as a hardship, but it's clearly not anything any of them need.
In contrast to the kind of people that Obama will put in there, not only need it, they want it because of the power that it affords.
My point is that there's something to learn from Rex Tillerson.
There's something to learn from Wilbur Ross.
There's something to learn from all of these people that Trump's putting in there because they have done it.
They have tackled projects in their lives, professionally and personally, and they've overcome them and they've become the pinnacle of success at whatever endeavor they've engaged in.
And to me, that is worth learning from.
That's why I call it aspirational.
But the knee-jerk reaction of everybody in Washington, from the media to the Democrats to the establishment, is to distrust guys like this precisely because they are wealthy.
We need to distrust them because they already have power.
And what else do they want?
It's sick.
These are the kind of people that not too long ago were held up as the role models for other people to aspire to.
They were used, people like this, as examples of what you could do if you applied yourself to it.
And so when I saw these two soundbites by Rudy today in the soundbite roster, I was pleased.
Rudy was on Fox and Friends this morning.
He's talking with Brian Kilmead about Trump's cabinet nominees.
And the question from Killmead, they're saying that Donald Trump is pushing this too quickly, that these confirmation hearings, that some of these people are going in front of committees where there's dual responsibility, where you have to run the Judiciary Committee, and that means you're going to miss the hearing for Rex Tillerson.
Now, the question doesn't specifically deal with my point.
What Killmead's saying is that Trump's ramrodding these guys through here, and some of these congressmen are going to be asking these confirmation hearing questions can't be in two places at one time, so should Trump ought to slow it down.
Here's how Rudy answered this.
This is about as high-level a cabinet as I've seen, I don't know, since Ronald Reagan.
I mean, we've got some of the most important business leaders in America, some of the most accomplished political figures in America, and some of the best generals that we've had in our Army.
I can't think of a cabinet quite as good as this, and my Reagan alumni like this, maybe even a little better than Reagan.
Well, that's a matter for debate.
But, I mean, the general theory here, the premise that he's got, I totally support.
These are good people.
We always hear about the best and brightest.
These are among the best, and they have to be among the smartest.
And I just, I cringe when I hear these people are not qualified because they're too successful or they're successful in the oil business.
Yeah, it ought to mean something.
Success in the oil business is very hard to pull off.
We've been learning from the wrong people for way too long.
The wrong people have been held up to us as role models for way too long.
These are the kind of people.
And I don't know everything about their lives.
I don't know everything personal, but their public achievements here and their life stories and how they got there and how they accomplished what they have.
Those stories are worth knowing and emulating.
We've had way too many years of kids being told they're special for just existing, you know, participation trophies, not knowing how the hell to cope with real life when it presents itself.
There's a story in the stack about that.
UK Telegraph.
Half of young people have so many emotional problems they can't focus at school and study.
Anyway, more details.
And one more Rudy soundbite just to close this out.
What's wrong if these people are successful?
I mean, come on.
How about we try successful people?
We had eight years of, you know what, let's try some successful people.
Who is going to know better how to run a massive, gigantic enterprise like the Defense Department or the State Department or any of these departments, but someone who has run large enterprises.
People who do that in the private sector get paid a lot of money for it.
Right, except for the left has poisoned people's minds on what the private sector is.
They've poisoned people's minds on what people in the success stories in the private sector are.
And it's time it was brought to a screeching halt.
And now we zoom quickly back to the phones.
This is Claire in somewhere in New Mexico.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Russ.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
I have, well, you said something early in the program that was beautifully phrased about drilling down into the souls of Democrats.
And I believe that they are so convinced that they are good, they never even question that.
It never even occurs to them to question that they are good.
And so anything that opposes them is by definition not good.
Well, yet, not only that, I mean, the fact that the liberals are the good people, we're the good.
I've characterized them as such many times over the many years.
We are good people.
We are better people.
We care.
We have compassion.
We're tolerant, all that stuff.
Not only is that an apt description, but the feeling is so deep that they believe it empowers them to engage in any behavior because people who are not them are evil.
And therefore, defeating evil is so important that there are no rules limiting what you do.
So, yeah, that's clearly an aspect of their existence, who they think they are.
I have so stated my own self many times.
I'll try, my friends, a man, a legend, a way of life.
And I got a note from a friend that makes a really, really good point.
It's not just that the left, and sometimes, should I just say Democrat Party?
Would that be a better way to convey who I'm talking about?
I mean, more people think of Democrats than leftists.
I don't know.
But leftists, Democrats, liberals, whatever.
It's not only have they succeeded in poisoning the minds of people about success in the so-called private sector.
In fact, you might recall that I at one time even toyed with the idea of not using the term private sector anymore because it sounds exclusionary.
It sounds exclusionary based on what my friend's point here is, how the left has converted the view people have of the public sector, i.e.
government.
It's not just that they have poisoned people's minds about success and virtue in the private sector or outside of government.
There's another part of the equation.
And what they have done is dramatically change people's understanding of government.
Now, in a representative republic like ours, we are not a democracy.
And Diane Feinstein, they're talking about democracy to sessions and the confirmation hearings.
And I know for some people it's a fine point.
But when you drill down, the fact that we are a representative republic and not a democracy is a fundamental, fundamentally important point.
And in a representative republic, public service was never intended to be a career.
Go back and read the Founding Fathers, read the Federalist Papers.
Public service used to be what people went to do for a short period of time because the government is supposed to be us of, by, and for the people.
Sometimes people even went reluctantly.
Felt like they had to go into government for a short time to fix something or else to commit to public service.
But it was temporary.
It was reluctant in many cases, and it was temporary for a short period of time.
But that's no longer the case.
The left has turned government into a profession that you now train for.
And at Harvard, they've even got a school called the Kennedy School of Government, where they train.
This is what the Ivy League has actually become.
The Ivy League has become the training ground for future people who are going to make government their careers.
Be it the State Department, be it somewhere in the bureaucracy.
Universities, particularly in the Ivy League, now specifically train people for these careers.
And it is a way, if you parlay it correctly, to make huge money and to have a lot of power.
You don't get the money as a result of government paying you.
It is what your time in government then affords you in terms of opportunity.
So while they have poisoned the minds of people about the real world, the economy, the private sector, they've turned government into a profession that you literally train for and you get experience in by being an incumbent for 20, 30, 40 years.
You look at these guys doing these hearings of sessions today.
Some of these people have been in the Senate as long as I've been doing this show.
I look at them, I'm thinking, I'm watching Jurassic Park today when I look at Pat Leakey Leahy.
And I don't want to mention some of the women.
That would not be, but for crying out loud, folks, it is.
These people have been there their entire lives and they earn $175,000 a year and yet none of them live on that.
And it's become a career and it is government is now touted as the home of virtue and good works and where the best and the brightest go.
And if you're not in government, you're not part of the best and brightest.
And so what we have now here is this whole sick premise that modern society has become too complex for all of us to govern ourselves.
It's just too complex.
It's too complicated.
You and I, as plebes, are simply ill-equipped and unequipped to run our lives.
We can't do it without them.
We need them writing laws.
We need them writing restrictions.
We need them writing regulations.
We would make a mess of our own plumbing if they didn't limit the amount of water in our showers and in our toilets.
We would make a mess of our backyards if the EPA weren't coming in and ruling that it was a wetland.
We wouldn't know the right car to drive.
We wouldn't be eating the right things.
We wouldn't be sending our kids to the right schools.
We wouldn't be learning the right things.
We wouldn't know how to spend our money right if it weren't for them.
And as such, they've created this notion that people in government are parents, our fathers, and mothers, and Santa Claus and the elves and all this.
And you and I are forever considered children who need to be taken care of because we are not capable of it ourselves.
And a second aspect of this sick premise is that highly successful people like those that Trump has nominated for his cabinet, they're not really qualified because they haven't served in government yet.
Tillerson, you mean you're going to have a guy, a secretary of state, who's done nothing but run an oil company?
Are you kidding me?
That's the way they look at it.
Are you kidding me?
You're going to have a guy who's done nothing but operate on the brains of infants at housing and urban.
Are you kidding me?
You're going to have a guy that's never worked in government in charge of that?
Are you kidding me?
You're going to have a guy who's done nothing but run successful businesses over at the Department of Commerce who doesn't know nothing about the National Weather Service, which 80% of the Commerce Department, by the way, is weather.
Did you know that?
80% of the Commerce Department's National Weather Service.
And by the way, that's where, in addition to EPA, that's where global warming percolates in governments.
The point is that they poison everybody's minds about people going into government because in these cases, they haven't ever served in government.
Therefore, they're not qualified.
They don't know what they're doing.
And we've had an absolute role reversal from the way this country was founded.
Not just a role reversal.
We've had an inversion.
Whereas this country was founded with limits on government and with the power vested in people, the faith vested in people, the belief that people live their lives best according to their own impulses and desires.
That's been turned upside down.
And now the belief is that average ordinary Americans are incompetent to do much more than get out of bed every day.
And government needs to be at every step along the way in most every day in order to make sure we don't screw up.
And it's worked in far too many cases.
I can't.
How many people do you know who literally depend on whatever government does for their living, for their livelihood or whatever?
The people that look to government as a father or mother, as a parent, as a provider.
Never intended this way.
This is why I believe people like those that Trump has chosen to be in his cabinet, these are exactly the kind of people that we need.
And these are the exact kind of people that need to be the examples and not the kind of people that Obama finds from the faculty lounge and wherever else who haven't done anything but think they're better at running your life than you are.
That's their claim to fame.
And they've gone to the Kennedy School or they've gone to Brown or they've gone to wherever, Penn, wherever it is.
They know better how to live your life because you don't.
And that premise is what guides much of liberalism today.
They try to tell us, for example, Rex Tillerson, are you kidding?
Give me Joe Biden any day.
Really?
Even Joe Biden knows that that's a dangerous comparison.
Joe Biden's never done anything other than be wrong on every big issue for 40 years.
His experience is in government.
So it's unchallengeable.
Joe Biden is brilliant.
He's great because he's done nothing but be in government.
And that is the paramount qualification.
That's wrong and needs to change.
We've had way too many people who've not accomplished anything who have been hoisted up on great pedestals as role models and examples.
And all they do is look down at us from these pedestals with contempt.
And I don't mean meanness.
They just look down on us as incompetence.
Bill Clinton even said one day, well, of course, the reason I don't want to lower your taxes is because I don't think you spend your money the right way.
I just don't think you will.
He told an audience this.
Anyway, I have to take a brief timeout.
Now, this segment was going to feature my in-depth discussion of the Russian hackery.
So I'm going to have to put that off until tomorrow.
I'm going to get it in.
Don't worry, because we're also going to have analysis of Obama's swan song tonight.
We'll have that.
I can't wait for my prediction on that to come through.
True.
Come true.
I know exactly what it's going to be.
You never knew how good I could be because of the filters lying to you about me.
I am the best thing that ever happened to you, but you don't know it.
And it's not my fault.
So screw you.
I'm out.
Kodiak, Alaska.
Julie Him, glad you waited.
Great to have you on the show.
How are you doing?
Great.
Thank you.
Good morning, Rush.
I was going to comment on something.
I know that liberals and Democrats and people that supported Hillary, I believe are displaced and they're angry.
People I know are angry.
And I want to say that I think it's been framed by media outlets of all sorts that the words and the policies of the Trump administration are racist, bigoted, fascist, all of this.
That it's being framed that way.
And I think that people with platforms, such as actors, media commentaries, and stuff, are giving permission to these displaced, angry leftists to act out.
And I think that it's not, I think it's on purpose.
I think they want them to be demonstrators and stuff.
I agree with you.
It's leading to people being, you know, breaking the law and hurting each other.
And I think it's on purpose.
I think you're right.
But even if it isn't, it's irresponsible.
Yeah.
Because they're dealing with people who are fragilely balanced to begin with.
Because they believed a bunch of caca most of their lives.
And they're feeding, they always accuse us of doing this by the way.
We're the ones always inspiring this kind of aberrant behavior when it never happens.
It's always them.
No, that's a very, very good point, Edge.
I'm glad you called.
I have to go because I'm out of precious moments.
We'll be back.
Okay, so tonight, we got the farewell address of Barack Hussein-O.
And I promise I'm going to get you the salient information about the Russian hack and what it was and wasn't and is and isn't and all that.
It's evergreen.
It's timeless.
As long as we get the next couple days, it'll be fine.
Promise to make a serious effort that tomorrow.
Have a great rest of the day here, folks, and be back 21 hours.