Rush on Trump

Over the last decade a lot of the conservative radio personalities have, for me, fallen by the wayside. Hannity may have his heart in the right place but he comes across as a blowhard who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Glenn Beck, aka Glenn #Cuck, well – he’s a crying whiner, despite what good he’s done in the past.

But Rush? Ah – and oh boy. OK, I don’t listen to his show but have in the past, as well as read some of his books in the 90’s. He’s a flawed man, but he gets it. He has his facts right, even if he tends to get meta, or even metaphorical, in translating them (with a tendency to quote the NYT and other media outlets in full context). He’s often been insightful on where problems actually lie, and while he’s rallied round the republican flag holding his nose, and defending Romney and McCain from unwarranted attacks, he’s also been on the front lines of conservatives taking them to task.

When it comes to character flaws and bombastic style, he actually reminds me a bit of Trump.

And he “gets” Trump. He stands nearly alone among the commentariat for that alone.

From a recent transcript, regarding Peter Thiel:

THIEL:  I don’t agree with everything Donald Trump has said and done, and I don’t think the millions of other people voting for him do either.  Nobody thinks his comments about women were acceptable, but I don’t think the voters pull the lever in order to endorse a candidate’s flaws.  It’s not a lack of judgment that leads Americans to vote for Trump.  We’re voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed.  This judgment has been hard to accept for some of the country’s most fortunate, socially prominent people.  It’s certainly been hard to accept for Silicon Valley, where many people have learned to keep quiet if they dissent from the coastal bubble.

RUSH:  Now, folks, this is right on the money.  This explains every Trump supporter.  You know, the media and a lot of nose-out-of-joint Republicans and even a lot of nose-out-of-joint conservatives are wandering around trying to figure out why this reprobate, why this coarse, this braggart, this bombastic, this rough-around-the-edges, why this guy with no character, why do so many people support him?

And Thiel nails it here, and it’s true for everybody supporting Trump.  They’re not endorsing Trump because of his flaws.  His flaws don’t matter right now because people have judged the current leadership of the country to have failed and failed big, and they show no signs of even realizing they’ve failed.  The people opposing Trump both in the Republican and Democrat Party do not sense a crisis.

How many times have we discussed this?  They do not sense a country off the rails, because to them it isn’t.  They do not have to live with any of the conditions their policies create.  They’re not worried about the unemployment rate; it’ll never affect them.  They’re an worried about open borders, immigration.  It doesn’t affect them.  Their kids are not gonna be around the people that commit crimes, who have crossed the border illegally, they’re not gonna be confronted by it.  They live in protected enclaves, in large part.

I’ve got one quibble in an otherwise excellent speech from Mr Thiel: “Nobody thinks his comments about women were acceptable”

In what context? Would I make the comments Trump has had in a family discussion around the dinner table? No.

But is what Trump said untrue? No. And as a result, they may be crude to bring up in some contexts, but they are anything but unacceptable.