RUSH: It’s amazing — and look, I’ve said this I don’t know how many times. But it is amazing, because we’ve had now a year and a half of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, and there’s not even an effort to understand him. There is no effort made whatsoever to understand him. These people started out thinking Trump is whatever they think he is, and it’s only gotten worse. And this is a hallmark of rigidly stupid people, people that are not even open to what may actually be true or real, who simply have created a narrative and an agenda — and by God, that’s gonna be what it is no matter what we have to do.

Apparently, something happened just now at the cabinet meeting. The cabinet meeting in the White House. As always, cameras are allowed in before the meeting starts. And Trump answers some questions, and somebody asked him, “Do you think the Russians are still meddling? Do you think the Russians are still meddling?” It’s never ending. It’s like a like bunch of babies in Romper Room. “Mr. President? Dad? Are the Russians still meddling? Are the Russians gonna take my Milk Duds away? Are they gonna take away from me the right…? Are they gonna kill us?” Blah, blah, blah.

Trump says, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I don’t think they are.” (laughs) The lid has blown again. How many times, ladies and gentlemen, have you heard Donald Trump say that he would never preannounce any strategy that he has regarding military action or foreign policy regarding another country? How many times has Donald Trump chastised Obama and others for announcing specific dates and agenda plans for, say, taking out ISIS or running an operation somewhere in the Middle East?

How many times has he been critical of doing that? We’re back to the old saw that these people take Trump literally and refuse to understand that there may be an overall strategy for Trump. Trying to say, “Ah, the Russians aren’t doing anything,” maybe he’s got some idea of dealing with them by pretending that he doesn’t think they’re any kind of a threat. Who knows! But instead, look what the assumption is. The assumption, the ongoing, the default reaction to Donald Trump is what? That he’s dumb, that he’s stupid, that he’s an idiot.

No matter what he does, no matter what he says, no matter how much he achieves. We’re looking at a 4% GDP for the second quarter. We’re waiting on the numbers to come in. I’ve got other evidence of agenda success for the Trump administration. All of it’s ignored. “Trump’s an idiot. Trump’s stupid. Trump’s a dunce. Trump is unsophisticated.” It’s the product of closed minds. Trump has written about his theories and philosophy negotiation. It’s called The Art of the Deal. I don’t think they’ve even bothered to read it. They certainly don’t attempt to apply it.

And in the process, who is it that looks dumb, stupid, closed-minded, rigid? It’s all of his critics. Here’s another story just cleared. It’s from TheHill.com. It’s by Liz Peek. It’s an opinion piece. Headline: “Trump Is Winning the Trade War because China Has More to Lose.” Now, this is another sorry: Psst! Don’t tell anybody. Keep this close to the vest because once they figure this out, they’re gonna get even angrier. “Don’t look now, but there are numerous signs that President Trump is winning the trade war with [the ChiComs]. …

“While the battle over tariffs and protecting intellectual property may eventually damage the United States’ economy, there are signs that China is already paying a price for its refusal to bend to Trump’s demands. What does that tell you? Investors think China has more to lose than the U.S. They are correct. … Another indication that Beijing is feeling the heat is that officials appear to be softening their bold ‘Made in China 2025’ campaign. The Financial Times reported, ‘A propaganda directive leaked in late June ordered Chinese media no longer to refer to the term.’ …

“Meanwhile, growth in China is cooling. In the second quarter, the economy grew at 6.7%, the slowest [ChiCom economic growth] rate since 2016. … By contrast, in the U.S., economic growth remains on the upswing,” maybe heading to 4% GDP. “The recent rise in retail sales, up 6.6 percent in June compared to last year, fuels continued optimism…” So another dirty little secret here is that Trump may be prevailing in this so-called trade war with China.

Where everybody thought Trump was once again being stupid and dumb and actually inflicting economic pain on the very people that voted for him. Now, how smart would that be to do? How smart would it be for Trump to adopt policies that in the end are gonna economically harm the people that voted for him? When he has openly said how many times that the exact opposite is his agenda: To create wealth, to make America great again, to make the world and U.S. a fair trading place or playing field.

To think that Donald Trump would purposely damage and harm the people that voted for him, with his base! Yet that’s what he’s doing, according to these brilliant media analysts. Here’s Mollie Hemingway. Grab audio sound bite No. 9. She’s at The Federalist. This is last night, Special Report with Bret Baier. She is also echoing this idea that Trump is really being hard on Putin, really being difficult with Russia. He’s taking significant action with Russia while the rest of the media is obsessed with words and press conferences and placating this or that group of people.

Here’s what she said…

HEMINGWAY: I don’t quite know what people want. Like, he actually is pretty tough on Russia. In the last couple of years we’ve seen an increase in the military budget. We’ve seen an increase in the intelligence budget. We’re doing NATO exercises in the Baltics. We provided lethal aid to Ukraine and Georgia. We’re developing low-yield nuclear weapons. He implemented sanctions that were even stronger than were required by congressional mandate. So if you care about actual actions, I think there’s a lot to be happy about in terms of the tough posture toward Russia. People are obsessed about words and they should maybe focus on the actions as well.

RUSH: Well, they can’t focus on the actions because there Trump looks good. Trump is achieving many things, and he’s really being hard toward Putin and hard toward Russia. The sanctions that she mentioned? She’s right. They are much more severe than what were even called for. But because of a press conference where Trump said this or that — and again, we don’t know what Trump’s strategy on some of these things are. We get this cacophony, “He’s gotta backtrack! He’s gotta admit. He’s gotta admit that they meddled. He’s got to!

“He can do that without indicting himself. He can do that without them pressing collusion.” He cannot. Mueller may have given up on this collusion in this indictment that came down Friday — still not sure about that — but I can tell you this: The Drive-Bys have not given up on it. They’ve not given up on proving collusion. And, man, would they love Trump to say anything that acknowledged that it might have happened. They’d be off to the raises with it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Salina, Kansas. Steve, great to have you with us, sir. How are you doing?

CALLER: Dittos, Rush. Gosh, I’ve wanted to say that for a long time.

RUSH: Well, thank you.

CALLER: Hey, I got an idea here. They hate Trump. You’re absolutely right. They’re discombobulated with their visceral hatred of him, everything, and I think this and I’m going, “Wow. How can you hate someone so much? There’s got to be something behind it.” And I think it’s fear. They fear Donald Trump. They don’t understand him. They thought they did. They thought he was this dunce that they could just get rid of, and he blew by them.

They thought he’d never get elected. He blew by everybody else, he got elected. They thought they could take him out. They keep throwing things at him hoping it’ll stick, and nothing does. And it’s totally, totally discombobulated them, all the way from the Democrats up there at the top all the way down through the mainstream media into everybody. And they’re showing it now. It’s embarrassing, it’s irritating, and it’s annoying.

RUSH: Well, you have a good point. Yesterday on the program I decided to take a different tack with all of this hysteria and answer the question, what explains this? It’s certainly not that Trump appeared to sell out our intel people to Putin. That wouldn’t do it. These people don’t have any particular affinity for the intel people except for now, they are sources, but these people, for the most part, have hated intelligence people. They’ve hated clandestine services. They’ve despised ’em. That’s been the history of the media relationship with intelligence people.

By the way, if I wanted to, I could go to Google and I could produce a list five pages long of intel community failures since 2011. But we’re being told the intelligence community is above and beyond reproach and they never make mistakes and they are untouchable, you can’t talk about ’em. When did that start, by the way?

Your question, this hatred is so unnatural they need an outlet to express it every day. They need to let everybody know just how much they hate Trump. So your question why — and I’ve heard a lot of people say that they think it’s fear. And it may be. You know, I’m not a trained shrink or psychiatrist. I do have a fairly decent adeptness at analyzing the psychological reactions that people have, particularly people on the left. There may be some fear, but I think, if it is fear, it’s other things too.

For example, it’s not just enough to say that Trump is hated because he’s an outsider. I think it’s multilayered. You look at the Access Hollywood video. There is not a politician in the Republican Party who could survive that, not a one. Donald Trump did, and it didn’t even hurt him.

Now, that could engender fear. That could make them, “My gosh. There’s nothing we can do that’s gonna hurt there. There’s nothing we can do to get rid of the guy.” But I think it’s multifaceted. It is that he’s an outsider. It is that he calls them out each and every day like no other Republican ever has, by the way. And he nails them each and every day. He tweets about them each and every.

These people, you have to understand, in their world, you don’t criticize them. They have constitutional immunity and protection. You don’t criticize them. They are journalists. You don’t investigate them the way they investigate. You don’t do this, you don’t criticize ’em, you don’t make fun of ’em, you don’t laugh at ’em, you don’t show them disrespect.

But it’s even more than that. It may be so deep and far gone as to be inexplicable. I mean, it may be so multifaceted, this degree of hate. Well, by inexplicable, I don’t think that I could probably cover all the reasons. I think another reason they hate him is he’s ripping the Obama agenda to shreds and leaving it stranded by the roadside. You don’t understand. They love Obama. Oh, my God, folks. This is the biggest insult in the world, that he doesn’t have the practiced reverence and devotion to Obama and the Obama years.

But I think it’s a class thing too. I think they think Donald Trump is a low-class individual that they just would never deign to enjoy being around. But it’s also — never forget this — it’s also agenda and policy related. It’s multifaceted. But the point, they’re not gonna be mollified or bought off in any way, shape, manner, or form. They have to be defeated each and every day like Trump’s been doing.