RUSH: Here is Forrest in Upper Michigan. Forrest, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush. How are you doing?
RUSH: Very well.
CALLER: Hey, just a comment on the caller that said that Americans don’t really want to go to war. Well, let’s give him this: He’s correct. We don’t want to go to war. You’d be pretty hard-pressed to find an American that would tell you, “Hey, let’s go to war,” no more than you’d find an American that said, “Hey, I want to have a root canal.” (chuckles) You know, we know when we have to do things, and we’re dealing with leaders of countries that openly, not a couple of times, but for years have sworn to take down America as well as Israel. How many times do we get attacked before we push back and draw the line in the sand and prevent what’s happening already to Israel be struck time after time? You know, when we got struck at Pearl Harbor, when we jumped into the European front, we didn’t want to do it, but we knew we had to —
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: — and —
RUSH: Ah, ah, ah! (chuckles) Some of us didn’t want to do it, but some did.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Or it wouldn’t have happened. Look, you’re exactly right. We get attacked, and we have to respond. No question about. Except in World War II, the Germans didn’t attack us. The Japanese did. (impression) “What business did we have getting involved in Europe? Japanese, that’s enough. They attack us at Pearl Harbor, fine. We gotta hit back.” What the caller you’re referencing was talking about is, for lack of better description, the Buchanan wing of the Trump coalition — and I use this not to be critical of anybody, but just to signify something.
There is a segment… We don’t know how big. There’s a segment of the Trump voter base, and Buchanan is perhaps the leader of this, that believes one of Trump’s primary messages in the 2016 campaign was we were through dropping troops and ammo everywhere in the world there’s a skirmish, that it’s none of our business. (summarized) “Ninety-nine percent of it’s none of our business. We got no business getting involved, it’s been a mistake, and it’s leading to the weakening of the United States.
“It’s dispersing too many of our resources, leaving us vulnerable for real problems that might crop up.” The Buchanan wing, whatever size it is, thinks that that is the primary reason Trump got elected: To stop the neocons. The neocons were the warmongers — supposedly warmongering conservative Republicans (who now make up many of the Never Trumpers, by the way) who wanted us involved everywhere we would be. We were gonna wipe out everything we could for whatever reason.
I’m simplifying this. But Buchanan is out there with his latest column warning Trump (summarized), “Do not do this. You’re gonna lose your base. It’s gonna be called Trump’s War instead of Bush’s War, and if you don’t want to have what happened to Bush in Iraq to happen to you, then don’t mess around with this Iranian business.” That’s the Buchanan wing of the Trump base, and that’s the advice, and this guy was calling to react to that. I gathered from his comment that he agreed with it, that Trump has no business…
(summarized) “If the Iranians hit a Japanese ship or a ship that’s flying a Japanese flag, then let the Japanese deal with it! It’s none of our business. Why do we have to deal it?” Now, I don’t know what percentage of the Trump base is made up of that kind of thinking. (chuckles) I happen to think that the number one, the top ingredient of the Trump base is the build-the-wall coalition, the “stop-the-illegal immigration coalition, the shore-up-the-borders-and-end-this coalition. But I don’t deny there’s many in the Trump base that also do not want the U.S. to continue this practice of…
Well, a great illustration would be something we’ve talked about earlier. So Osama Bin Laden gathers his henchmen, and 9/11 happens — and in the Buchanan world, the right response would be to find bin Laden and take him out. But don’t go to Afghanistan and get bogged down there for 20 years, which is what we did. And then Obama came along, and he pledged to get us out of all these plays during his campaign ’cause Obama didn’t want to be there.
But when Obama was elected somebody got hold of him and told him how the Washington establishment works, and he said, “Look, dude, it’s gonna really be beneficial to you to keep these wars goin’, man. You’re gonna get donations. You’re gonna get… The whole military-industrial complex that everybody thinks is Republican is gonna love you. You’re gonna have opportunities for crony capitalism and socialism like you can’t believe.”
So Obama’s sending troops everywhere, in direct contravention of what his promises were during the campaign. So this brings us to Trump. Now, this incident involves an attack on a United States drone. That’s ours. It’s not a drone that’s got the Japanese flag on the tail. It’s us. So this is an attack on the United States. Are we to say, “You know what? Nah. We can’t respond. It’s too small. It’s not worth responding.” I don’t think that’s the attitude of Trump.
I think Trump voters would fully understand if there were a proportionate response for something like this, but not sending troops by the tens of thousands to Iran to conquer the country and occupy it. But I don’t think Trump wants to do that. We played the sound bite where Trump is holding out the possibility that this whole thing was a mistake; some idiot pushed the wrong button in some Iranian military installation and our drone ends up being knocked out of the sky.
He gave them every opportunity to back off of this and stop sounding like they were acting in an offensive, purposeful way, and it calmed the stock market. It calmed a lot of things. So, yeah, if you get hit, you have to retaliate in some way, shape, manner, or form. They’re meeting this afternoon in the White House Situation Room with a bunch of congressional committee chairmen, chairwomen, to have them briefed and all this explained.
I just think… To sum this up, I think the vast majority of Trump voters, if Trump were to take some kind of proportionate response here, would not hold it against him. He went in and did what he did in Syria and got out. Well, I mentioned this earlier. At the top of the program, I mentioned that there have been people — and they’re advising Trump. There have been people itching to take Iran off the map since the Jimmy Carter days, folks. And they’re still there, they’re still in Washington. There’s a bunch of military people who are itching.
They want to take any excuse whatsoever to wipe those people out, to be done with Iran. Some of them are four-stars. Some of them are retired. Some of them are think tank specialists and analysts, and some of them have access to Trump, and they’re out there advising him. And then they’re going on TV and they’re advocating the policy. They’re not saying that they’ve told the president. (impression) “I’ve just told the president that…” But they are advising him. He’s getting all kinds of advice about this.
The Iranians have been chipping away at us since they took our embassy people hostage back in 1979. Of course, people have forgotten that Jimmy Carter. What a sad period! What a sad… Jimmy Carter. In the midst of all it is, Jimmy Carter, you know, is showing up on TV wearing a cardigan because the White House thermostat in the wintertime is turned down so low because there’s an energy crisis. He’s trying to set an example. (summarized) “We all need to be uncomfortably cold together as a national sacrifice.”
Carter went on, in the middle of his presidency, to describe the general sense of malaise that existed in the country. We had to create the Misery Index as a quantitative way of understanding how bad it was. Then this hostage crisis came, and it totally occupied Carter. It paralyzed every aspect of his presidency. He mounted a rescue effort, and it blew up in the desert. The helicopters that were supposed to fly in there and rescue the hostages got grounded by sand in the engines.
Jimmy Carter, sadly, became a laughingstock because the bombed-out, failed rescue effort became symbolic of his entire presidency. Then the 1980 presidential campaign comes along, and our hostages are still being held — and this was the reason for the birth of the television show Nightline. Nightline started as (impression) “Day 2: America Held Hostage. Day 5: America Held Hostage. Ted Koppel hosting. Day 20: America Held Hostage.” Finally, they just created a show called Nightline and made Ted Koppel the host.
It went on for hundreds of days. We get to the 1980 presidential campaign. I’m sure some of you starting to remember this. Ronald Reagan, during the campaign, let it be known that when he became president, this hostage crisis was ending the next day. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. So the election is held, and Reagan wins, and the Iranians release the hostages. Jimmy Carter’s in the White House still looking at the pictures of those helicopters grounded in the sand, saying, “How did this happen?”
(interruption) Well, it was around… (interruption) It was close to Inauguration Day. It was a big, big ceremony and so forth. So the Democrats couldn’t handle this. Democracy couldn’t stand it! Jimmy Carter’s stewed about it. He’s devoted a year and a half of his presidency to getting ’em back, and all Reagan had to do was promise the Iranians that they were coming back if he was elected president. Day after the election, the Iranians started making noises, “Okay. Okay. Okay. What — what — what… We’re gonna get ’em back to you.”
So then the Democrats said, “We can’t let this stand. So the Democrats came up with a theory later on in 1991 that George H. W. Bush sat in the backseat of an SR-71 in a secret flight to Paris to meet with Iranians to beg them not to release the hostages during the 1980 campaign, that we would do right by Iran and make a secret deal: “If you hold the hostages until after Reagan is elected, we will be forever…” A professor at Columbia University, Gary Sick, wrote the book! It was totally made up! There was no flight to France on an SR-71.
There was no secret meeting with the Iranians. But when Gary Sick’s book came out, the then-Speaker of the House, the Democrat from Washington, Tom Foley, said, “Well, these charges are so serious, we need to do an investigation.” They had an investigation in the House of Representatives whether or not George Bush had flown to Paris to have secret meetings with the Iranians on keeping the Americans hostage until after the election! The media picks it up and they created that story out of nothing, and it survived!
They gave Gary Sick all this media time. He’s all over media selling his book. It’s 1,000% made up! But the Democrats had to do something (and the media) to explain, “How the hell could this guy Reagan get ’em back just by being elected when Jimmy Carter devoted a year and a half to getting ’em back and became nothing but a laughingstock in the process?” So the point is, a show of strength and commitment got the hostages back.
We didn’t fire a shot. But that all… (sigh) You know: Hello, Ayatollah Khomeini. So Jimmy Carter kicks the Shah of Iran out. That gives us the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Ayatollah “Hominy,” as Pierre Salinger pronounced it. Anyway, I could talk about this for the rest of the program because it’s so instructive. The point is, it all ended with Reagan’s election. But, ever since, there have been people itching to take Iran out once and for all, and they’re still around — some of them — advising Trump to do it on the basis of this drone attack.
Related Links
- RushLimbaugh.com: What’s Really Going on with Iran? - 06.20.19
- https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/06/20/tom-cotton-joe-biden-obama-super-charged-iran-terror-support/
What’s Really Going on with Iran?
RUSH: So I got an interesting email. “Mr. Limbaugh, what do you think or who do you think is really stirring up this business with Iran?” It’s a good question, ’cause you know who’s buddy-buddy with Iran and who has been over there attempting to undermine Trump administration on policy with Iran is none other than John Kerry — the haughty John Kerry, who served in Vietnam.
I think that his daughter married some Revolutionary Guard assassin or something, some such thing. His daughter married somebody from over there. The foreign minister’s third cousin, I don’t know what, but there’s some family tie now. And of course, the Iran deal in the Obama administration was one of their great things, they believe, and Trump has come in and has summarily ripped it apart and backed out of it, which has cost the Iranians 150 (what was it?) billion dollars or million dollars, whatever we dropped on the tarmac there.
So they’re ticked as they can be over sanctions and Trump’s relegating them to this secondary status, and the fact that John Kerry (you can put Obama in this sentence or not) has been actively advising the Iranians on how to deal with Trump… (interruption) Well, no, they shoot down the drone. You know, this drone… Do you know how much this drone cost? This drone’s a $100 million drone. That drone cost more than EIB One! That drone — and there’s nobody on this drone.
It has a wingspan, by the way, that’s as big as a 737, and the thing is masterful. It looks like a whale, a humpback whale up there. It can fly 24 hours at something like 100,000 feet without being refueled. How do you shoot it down? But they claim that they’ve done it. But it might be a fake video that the Iranians put together to show that this thing was supposedly over their airspace. I’m just saying. I don’t know anything.
This is just intelligence guided by experience. We know that John Kerry has been attempting to undermine — let’s say “advise” the Iranians on how to deal with — Trump. We know that the Obama administration’s got to be livid over what happened to the Iran deal, because look what they were doing. They were running out telling everybody that the Iran deal was gonna prevent the Iranians getting nuclear weapons. It was one of the greatest signature achievements of the Obama Regime.
It turned out that the Iranian deal was gonna permit them to ramp up their nuclear technological capability to being able to nuclear weaponize missiles and so forth at some point down the road, and that has now been pulled back. And I guarantee you, you do anything to humiliate the Obama administration or start unraveling, unraveling, unwinding some of their policies and they’re not gonna be happy. So until I hear otherwise, I’m not gonna rule out this as a possibility. I’m not alleging it, either.
I’m just answering a question that I got.
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RUSH: By the way, I’m told that John Kerry’s daughter’s not married to some Iranian Revolutionary Guard assassin. It’s a myth. I guess I fell for that. I take it back! I didn’t mean it if it’s not true. Notice I’m correcting it right away, the moment I find out about it. I thought it was true. I had not heard it debunked. I’m being told it’s been debunked.
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RUSH: Somebody asked President Trump, “So, we gonna hit Iran?” and the president said, “Stand by. You’ll soon find out.” Now, that’s got everybody now on edge, and I just want to tell you, folks, there are a lot of people — and I don’t know how close they are to Trump. There are a lot of people… Not just the old famous stand by neocons, but there are a lot of people in Washington — I guess they would be closer to neocons than not — that they’re fed up, like, that we never responded to the Khobar Towers.
We never responded to when Reagan was president, the bombing of the barracks and the 251 dead Marines, that we just don’t respond to this stuff and it’s about time that we do. My point is, I’m sure there is a lot of pressure in the form of advice being given to President Trump: “You can’t let them get away with it! You can’t let them shoot down one of our drones whether it’s in their airspace or not,” even though we’re claiming that it was in international airspace and therefore Iran has committed a violation.
I’m just telling you that there are gonna be a lot of people urging President Trump do this. On the other side of that, you have people who think Trump was elected in part to stay out of this accuse stuff, to stop going to war in the Middle East, to stop sending all these troops and all these battle plans and everything over there. Pat Buchanan had a column this week essentially warning Trump, “You do this and you’re putting a lot of things at risk here. This is one of the things. You don’t want anything to be called Trump’s war. You just don’t want this.”
That was Buchanan. I don’t know if Trump reads Buchanan, but with something like this, there’s been a lot of pent up anger — and some of it justified — at the lack of United States response to attacks on our soldiers over the decades, attacks that have gone unresponded to and have been people pushing, as you well know, for serious action against Iran (just on general principles) for quite a while. So it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
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RUSH: Okay. Again just to make sure there’s no confusion about it, I admitted that I erred. Kerry’s daughter is not married to an Iranian anything, Revolutionary Guard, assassin, or whoever. I corrected that back 10 minutes ago, and I’m getting emailed, (impression) “You you you you’re not right, that’s not right, she’s not…” So I’m correcting it again. John Kerry’s daughter is not married to an Iranian anything of the sort. It has been debunked. Now, here’s Lindsey Graham, ladies and gentlemen, on Capitol Hill just today, after a classified Senate briefing on Iran, shooting down of the drone. Here’s what Senator Graham had to say.
GRAHAM: I talked to the president this morning, I’m gonna meet him this afternoon.
REPORTER: — Iran made a big mistake, sir —
GRAHAM: They made a big mistake shooting our drone down.
REPORTER: Is that provocative in and of itself to tweet that —
GRAHAM: No. What’s provocative is to shoot the drone down. What’s provocative is to blow up a Japanese oil tanker with a Japanese prime minister in your office trying to start negotiations with the United States. What’s provocative is having your proxy shoot into Saudi Arabia. Trump’s not the problem. So here’s the way this is headed. If there’s a war with Iran, they lose. I’m confident it would be very devastating to the region. It will not be pretty. Don’t want to go there. But what more do you expect the president to do?
RUSH: So again here’s the media trying to make it look like Trump’s unstable, unnecessarily provoking the mullahs. And it’s the other way around. You know, Lindsey Graham is one of the few Republican senators that you can count on to back up President Trump and be supportive. And he’s absolutely right about all this. What’s provocative is to shoot the drone down. What’s provocative is to blow up a Japanese oil tanker, while the Japanese prime minister’s in your office trying to start negotiations with the U.S. So here’s the way this is headed. If there’s a war with Iran, they lose. “I’m confident it would be very devastating to the region,” he says. What the Iranians have going… In a way it’s somewhat similar to how it was with Saddam back in the early nineties, even the pre-weapons of mass destruction days.
Saddam loved creating the image and having the reputation that he was the biggest anti-American threat in the Middle East, that Saddam Hussein was who the Americans were worried about, Saddam Hussein was who the Americans cared about. And when all these stories of weapons of mass destruction came up, Saddam Hussein didn’t debunk them. He tried to prepare reports that made it look like he had them but that he was hiding them. He just come out of an eight-year war with Iran when the weapons of mass destruction thing came up. Well, actually when the first Gulf War came up, they were spent, and we sent them back to Baghdad inside less than two days.
And I think the Iranians are in much the same situation. Trump has told them that the Iranian nuke deal’s not gonna happen. Sanctions have been placed back on them. They really are in dire circumstances economically. And so what’s left for them is to go the Saddam route, to huff and puff and to make themselves look like they are impenetrably powerful and they’re people that you don’t want to mess with, state sponsors of terrorism, and so forth. But it’s not yet clear that they’ve actually succeeded in creating a nuclear weapon.
So this is why what Senator Graham said is so important, because you got these… Back in the days when Saddam was huffing and puffing, you had people…I remember before the Gulf War, the first one that we won in two days, I’ll never forget this. ABC News’ Sam Donaldson doing a story on all the body bags that were being crash manufactured to handle the number of deaths of American soldiers because we just couldn’t compete with Saddam’s army. They were people of the desert and of the sands, and our troops would be so outmatched. Our troops wouldn’t have a chance. It would be the biggest mistake in the world for George H. W. Bush to commit the United States to military action in the Middle East against Iraq because we wouldn’t stand a chance.
And these reports were everywhere. And they’re happening again now. That Trump is somehow incapable and incompetent, that the Iranians are far more committed than we are. That’s always part of these stories too. It was the same thing with Iraq back in the early nineties. The Drive-By Media would say the Iraqis, (impression) “They know desert warfare. They just came out of eight years with Iran. They’re loaded for bear.” And within six hours the Iranians [sic] were waving the white flag of surrender and begging to join the American side. They could not have been more wrong.
All I’m saying is be suspicious as you always are now when the media gets reporting these things and makes it look like that Iran is the big power and the United States is outclassed and outmatched, and we don’t have any idea how to defeat these people, blah, blah, blah. Just keep it all in perspective.
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RUSH: We’ll start in Dallas. Johnny, great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I had a quick comment on this talk of war with Iran. Historically, there have been measured responses. Specifically, I’m talking about April 18th, 1988, after a U.S. warship backed over a mine in the Persian Gulf. Within 48 hours, there was a measured strike targeting Iranian frigates and platforms, and it was significant. It was a major exchange, devastated their military, and within a couple of months the war between Iran and Iraq ended.
RUSH: So you’re saying that, what?
CALLER: I’m saying that everybody talks about “war with Iran,” but it would likely be measured responses against small boats or launching stations — and it would be over within 48 hours.
RUSH: Now, that’s a good point. We talked about this earlier. If there is a response… For example, the drone. If we respond to the drone being shot down, the likelihood is we would not bomb the mullahs’ mosque or their tent, residence, whatever, that we would go after the place that the missile that took down the drone was launched from. It would hit that air base or wherever it was. If the Iranians do something on the open seas and inflict damage or try to take out one of our ships, we would not (again) hit the mullahs’ tent or their mosque.
We would, instead, go find a port where that launched from, came from, and take it out. And this is what, I’m sure, Johnny here is referring to as a measured response. (interruption) Well, I know they’re saying they’re gonna come right back if we dare do that. That’s part of it. That’s why when you get into this you better be resolved, better be resolved to finish it. You better be resolved to commit to it if you’re gonna actually do one of these things. If the objective is to, you know, play a game of bluff, and hitting back at them will make them stop?
The Iranians don’t have anything to gain by stopping. The Iranians… I cannot overemphasize how much the canceling of Obama’s Iran deal damaged them in untold ways economically. Not just militarily. The re-imposition of sanctions has brought them to a screeching halt. All of their modernization plans, revitalization plans — like the national airline, buying new aircraft — all this stuff has been very, very slowed down.
And everybody involved in it, including Kerry and Obama, are livid that Trump unwound that, as well as are the Iranians. So the Iranians’ big play here is to huff and puff and to act unafraid and unintimidated. They’ve got a reputation they’ve got to uphold. They’re the state sponsor of worldwide terrorism, for crying out loud! That doesn’t mix well with cowering or fading away. So we’ll see.
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RUSH: I can tell you two things that Trump is not gonna do as a result of the drone being shot down. The first thing he’s not gonna do is send Pompeo over there with a pallet of cash — $150 billion — to give to mullahs and ask them to stop it. The next thing he’s not gonna do, is he’s not gonna tell the Drive-Bys when or what he’s going to do, unlike the way Obama telegraphed such actions.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have a couple sound bites President Trump on Iran. Last I heard during the break was that The Situation Room’s gonna be busy today in the White House and that the administration has invited committee chairmen up (this would include Democrats, of course, from the House) for essentially a briefing. I don’t think their advice is going to… They may be asked what they think, but I think it would be pro forma. It’s primarily a briefing that is planned. That makes it pretty serious.
Here is the first of the two bites we have from the president…
THE PRESIDENT: Iran made a big mistake. This drone was in international waters, clearly. We have it all documented. It’s documented scientifically, not just words — and they made a very bad mistake.
REPORTER: (unintelligible)
THE PRESIDENT: You’ll find out.
REPORTER: Going to war —
THE PRESIDENT: You’ll find out. You’ll find out. Obviously… Obviously, you know, we’re not gonna be talking too much about it. You’re gonna find out. They made a very big mistake.
RUSH: And the next bite here, there’s a — he was talking to the — to reporters, unidentified reporter said, “Mr. President, you said Iran’s a different country. You — you still hold that opinion?”
THE PRESIDENT: I think probably Iran made a mistake. I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down. And fortunately that drone was unarmed. It was not… There was no man in it. It was over international waters, clearly over international waters. But we didn’t have a man or woman in the drone. We had nobody in the drone. Would have made a big difference, let me tell you. Would have made a big, big difference. But I have a feeling… I may be wrong and I may be right. But I’m right a lot. I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn’t have been doing what they did. I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth. I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.
RUSH: All right. That… Right there, that comment may have saved the markets today. That comment at the end of the sound bite here — “because I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn’t have been doing what they did” — calmed a lot of fears. That statement by the president made it possible that this was not a state sponsored act, that it was not a mini- or pre-declaration of any hostilities but rather a mistake by an overzealous incompetent somewhere in the Iranian military.
Because at the time this was all happening, the stock market was in a free-fall mode. It was down 200 points from the high at the time President Trump made these remarks, and the market is right now showing about plus 150. Charles Payne has even tweeted about this: “The big story right now it’s President Trump the supposed war hawk actually saved the rally…the market was in free fall mode down 200 points from high” because of the drone shoot-down, “when President Trump seemed to offer benefit that this was a mistake perhaps from an overzealous person” in Iran.
That comment… You would not believe how that comment calmed everybody down and settled a bunch of really frayed nerves. Now, this is not, this is not to say the president isn’t getting advice from people who have been longing to hit Iran for many, many years. He’s being advised to do it, I’m confident. I don’t know it for certain. But I know that those people are there and they’re part of the advice circle.
Now, that comment was really — and you know what? Whether it’s true or not, it was really a smart thing to say. It immediately calmed frayed nerves. It turned down the temperature. But it did not forestall us. It does not prevent us from taking action. It buys us some time, and it acknowledges that it may not be what it appears to be. But if we find out that it was not a mistake, that it was not some overzealous incompetent that did this, then we’re not foreclosed from taking action.
This was really, really smart, folks — and I think that Charles Payne’s exactly right, and I think a lot of credit is due. You can’t… Well, I am sure you can, actually. You can imagine the tension, ’cause this supposed coming war with Iran, which has been something on the burner for many, many, many moons. And here today, why, it looks like they have actually launched it. So saying this really, really lowered the temperature. It’s a good thing to say.
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RUSH: We go to Brookfield, Connecticut. This Duane. Great to have you, Duane. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was thinking about this Iranian deal with the ship getting hit with the bomb or the mine, whatever it was. I would say let the Japanese send a fleet of their own in, ’cause our president has made us energy free. We are now the net exporter of oil. I mean, this is kind of the deal that he wanted was to be independent of this.
RUSH: True. We’re a net exporter of oil and natural gas.
CALLER: Yeah! So, I mean, I would say let the Japanese send a fleet in, if they want to get some kind of retaliatory action on this. As far as the drone, I don’t know. You know how Mr. Trump is. You hit him; he’s gonna hit you harder.
RUSH: Yeah. I do know how Mr. Trump is. Ha-ha-ha. I don’t… Are you suggesting that because we are a net exporter of oil that we not screw it up by getting involved in this?
CALLER: I just don’t know if the American people want to get involved in another altercation over there again. It just seems like it’s never ending. I think it was Japanese flagged. I would say let the Japanese handle this.
RUSH: Yeah. To me, this is a deeply interesting subject because all of these previous commitments that are still going on were made by people of the swamp who have vested interests in ongoing operations. There’s money to be made in war! There are careers waiting, after you have serviced the necessities of war, as somebody in government. Trump is a different animal. I’ve only got ten seconds here so I can’t elaborate here. Let me take a stab at it after our bottom-of-the-hour obscene profit time-out. Thanks for the call, gain. I know where you’re coming from, and a lot of Trump voters probably agree with you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, I’m gonna answer Duane’s question here in a second, but I want to go to the phones again before I do that. I got some other cross opinions. But I’m gonna tell you something, folks. Stop and think of this. If the Iranians did something, with his point, we are a net exporter of oil and natural gas; right? Now, people like Angela Merkel screw up and make these natural gas deals with Putin!
Defying her allies in NATO and the G20. And Trump called her out on it. We sell natural gas, we’ll sell it to a cheaper than you get it from Putin. She said she’d rather get it from the Russians. Okay, fine. Now, the Europeans get a lot of their oil, of course, from the Saudis and from the Middle East. If the Iranians were to do something that screwed up the free flow of oil at market prices in Europe, we can take care of ourselves. We’re not dependent on these people.
Our gasoline and oil prices fluctuate largely to some extent on the world markets, of course. But because we’re no longer dependent, we have more of an independence in relationship to the economics of oil and natural gas. So if the Iranians, by bumbling around doing whatever they’re doing, screw up the oil supply from the Middle East, our prices would go through the roof, our export prices.
As a net exporter, if there’s any interruption there, then the world, Europe, would have to turn to us, if the Iranians screw up this whole thing. ‘Cause it’s the Europeans and the Asians that still depend on the Middle East for the vast majority of their oil. Now, Trump’s comment… And I cannot emphasize this enough. I played those soundbites and it may be worth playing the second Trump sound bite again. Let me…. Isn’t this always the way it is.
I put it at I think is at the bottom of the Stack, and it isn’t there. You’ve got two Trump bites, 24, 25, or 25, 26. Play 26. (interruption) And how long is this bite, on your sheet? Okay. I want you… It’s 44 seconds. The last half of this bite is what you need to pay attention to.
THE PRESIDENT: I think probably Iran made a mistake. I would imagine it was a general or somebody that made a mistake in shooting that drone down. And fortunately that drone was unarmed. It was not… There was no man in it. It was over international waters, clearly over international waters, but we didn’t have a man or woman in the drone. We had nobody in the drone. It would have made a big difference, let me tell you, would have made a big, big difference. But I have a feeling —
RUSH: Here.
THE PRESIDENT: — I may be wrong, and I may be right, but I’m right a lot. I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody that shouldn’t have been doing what they did. I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth. I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.
RUSH: Whatever else, that does not sound like somebody who can’t wait to go to war. That does not sound like somebody who’s trigger happy. That does not sound like somebody who just wants to launch today and be done with it. This sounds like somebody who doesn’t want to do that. Those comments calmed a plummeting stock market.
Whether he believes this or not, the fact that he said it, it betrays this whole notion. Believe me, the Drive-Bys are out there trying to make it look like Trump is no different than Reagan. (impression) “He’s insane, trigger happy, we don’t want his finger on the nuclear, but, oh, my God. We’re all at risk. Trump could start a global…” They’re all out there doing that today.
But this is not the comment of somebody who wants to start a war. This is somebody who does not. This is somebody looking for every which way under the sun to avoid it. So you Trump supporters who think that Trump is gonna be a different guy and not the bet us involved in all these Middle Eastern and worldwide skirmishes, I think you can relax and rest easy about this. But I do want to develop one thought here. This is my first stab at it.
Everybody else, every previous president that has sent troops to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Iran, to wherever have all been swamp dwellers, folks. They’ve all been part of the so-called military-industrial complex. And we now know what that is, that Eisenhower was warning about. There are people who profit from war like they profit from anything.
And the more we’re at war, the more materiel is needed, the more money they make, the more property we blow up, well, here comes an international or American corporation with a contract to rebuild it! There’s money to be made on both sides of destruction. You make money with the production of weapons to destroy something and then somebody else comes in and makes money rebuilding what we destroy.
And it’s in everybody’s interests in the deep state or the Washington establishment for this operation to continue. It keeps the U.S. military at work, it keeps them highly trained, it keeps them doing their jobs, it continues to use weapons which then have to be manufactured. Ammo, ditto.
And then after all that, we got the good guys, rebuild what we tore down and so forth. I’m not being cynical about this. I’m telling you the way it works. And the American people have a sixth sense about it because for all the places we send topaz, none of this stuff never seems to end. When are we gonna declare victory and get out? We’re the United States of America. Why aren’t we declaring victory? We’re the United States of America. Why aren’t we winning?
Okay. So we go over there, we root out these terrorist centers in the caves in Afghanistan and then we get out of there. We took care of business… No, we don’t get out of there. We still have troops there, and Obama sent even more! Mr. Anti-military, Mr. Peace, sent even more. We were at war in more places in the world under Obama than people would ever believe.
So the American people know that once we get involved in these things, they never end. And yet we are the lone superpower in the world. Why aren’t they ending? So when somebody like Trump comes along and says, “We’re not gonna do this anymore, we’re not gonna go places and stay there forever. We’re not gonna be a policeman of the world.” People cheer, it’s exactly right. But I think, and I could be dead wrong, but I think a lot of people, not all, but a lot of people voted for Trump, still think he’s a different act, that if Trump makes a military decision that we’re gonna go somewhere and we’re gonna do it and get out of there, we’re gonna win, we’re gonna claim victory and get out. We’re not gonna establish a never-ending American outpost everywhere we go.
But our last caller, Duane said, (paraphrasing) “The Japanese were flying the flag on the Iranian… Let the Japanese come to. What has that got to do…?” Well, that’s a fascinating question. A, are the Japanese capable? Like, the Germans don’t have a military. They’re not permitted to have one. They may have one in secret nobody knows about, but they’re not permitted to have one.
The Japanese were forced to really ratchet back after World War II as well. But they’re also an ally of ours. And they were hit. And we’re there. And just to turn our backs and say, “Well, you guys, you know, you’re on your own.” That’s not cool.
There are responsibilities that come with being the world’s lone superpower. There are responsibilities that come with pledging mutual assistance to your allies, both economically, terms infrastructure, military and so forth. These are not cut-and-dried, easy questions. But despite all that, I think it’s obvious Trump is not just itching to go to war. It’s the exact opposite. Here is Dean in Chico, California. You’re next, sir. Great to have you with us. Hi.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: I’ve got a comment… I’d like you to comment on a theory I have. I think Obama coordinated with Iran and Russia to put a missile defense system in Iran to keep Israel from attacking Iran over the nuclear buildup and the Russians sent military aircraft to Syria to fight the conflicts there, keep Israel in check and after the systems installed, Russia flies home.
RUSH: The Russian flies… So you’re asking me —
CALLER: The Russian military aircraft leave Syria after the missile defense system is installed in Iran.
RUSH: Okay. So what you’re basically saying is that the Russians and the Syrians and the Iranians are aligned against Israel, and we’ve let them do it, and you want my reaction —
CALLER: I think that’s the reason Kerry went over with the plan, and I think $150 billion buys a missile defense system pretty easy.
RUSH: Well, look. I’m unprepared. This is the first I’ve heard of the theory, and I don’t want to go either way on it ’til I’ve had some time to think about it. I’m under a completely different impression of that 150 billion. For example, one of the things the Iranians were gonna do with it… And we know this is true… The Iranian national airline is barely flight worthy. They’re in worse shape than the Boeing 737 Max. And they were gonna take some of that money and buy a bunch of new airlines, and Boeing was going to be the prime seller. And Boeing was a huge donor to Obama.
And one of the reasons for some of that money was to enable the Iranians to pay American corporations money to upgrade Iranian infrastructure and in this case their national airline and the fleet of aircraft. I don’t doubt that the Russians are involved in trying to isolate Israel, the United States, and so forth. But Kerry’s the involvement and so forth, it’s an interesting sounding theory, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it; so I don’t want to endorse it one way or the other yet. I’m glad you called.
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