President Trump’s Latrobe Rally for the Ages
Sep 4, 2020
RUSH: Did any of you see the Trump rally last night? This Trump rally last night was maybe one of the best ever.
It was certainly in the top five. And it hearkened back to 2016. And I’m watching the rally last night — and Brian, put up that photo.
I want to show you what a peaceful assembly looks like. I want to show you what a peaceful crowd looks like. That is the crowd at Latrobe, Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, Latrobe, Pennsylvania. We’re showing this up on the Dittocam.
That’s the crowd eagerly anticipating the president’s arrival. You don’t see anything there but good, old-fashioned, decent Americans politely waiting on their president. That is what a peaceful crowd looks like. Not what you see happening in Portland or Seattle or Minneapolis or Kenosha or anyplace else.
I’m telling you, this rally last night — you know, Kathryn and I were watching this thing, and we’re saying, “Something had to happen.†I’ve not seen Trump this up, he was flawless. His energy level did not change from the moment he hit the stage. There wasn’t one, “uh, uh, you know.†He didn’t lose his train of thought. He shifted from prompter to ad-lib seamlessly. He was so on his game. I’m saying to myself, they had to get some good news. The internal polling data must really be through the roof. ‘Cause I’m telling you, folks, this was a Trump rally we haven’t seen this year.
We haven’t seen the attitude we had from Trump last night. We haven’t seen the good mood. We haven’t seen any aspect of it. And this is not to put down or to be critical of any of the Trump rallies prior to last night’s. This was just how good it was. There wasn’t a moment in this rally where anybody watching it could have been bored. It was compelling from beginning to end. It was hilariously funny. It was on point. The man had an instant recall, facts, things that have been embedded in his memory for years were able to be recalled and appeared to be effortless. And it was a joy to watch that last night.
And again, one of the reasons why, for me, is because there had to be, in my mind, you know, having experience at this, things happen and they give you a good mood before you go out. And I was saying, something had to happen. And it wasn’t this stupid story in The Atlantic about Trump calling buried military heroes losers. I was thinking there had to be some really good news about the economy, there had to be some real good news about internal polling data, because he was just on a magnificent roll. And we’ve got audio sound bites of that, and we will have examples so you can hear it for yourself if you didn’t see the rally.
The rally, Fox carried a little bit of it, some of it, most of it. They bumped out of it about an hour in. You had to go to C-SPAN if you wanted to watch the whole thing, the rest of it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Folks, I have to tell you, this rally last night, it is a shame that the rally is not more of a story today. It was the finest rally all year. And it may be in the top five Trump rallies ever. Now, I’ll have to admit I didn’t see every Trump rally in 2016, but I saw enough of them to know he was gonna win the election.
Now, I’m somebody, I study speech. I study delivery. I study everything about public speaking. I study confidence. I study the assuredness level. I study every aspect of it. And I am telling you that what President Trump did last night in Pennsylvania was among the best he has ever done. If you didn’t see it, it is worth you going to YouTube to try to find it.
Now, I don’t want to keep talking about it because if I do, I’m gonna build up expectations to a level where they can’t possibly be met. You know, that happened to me with the movie The Exorcist. I was one of the last to see that movie. And in the process, I had had so many people tell me about it, how scary it was, how revolutionary scary it was, stuff that had never been done in a horror movie before. I had people tell me they got so scared, they almost had to walk out. Adults.
So I when I finally saw this thing, I went in there practically ready to run out. And when it was over I said to myself, what the hell was the big deal? Okay, so we had a dummy here with a head doing a 180 vomiting pea soup. Big deal. My expectations could not have been met. And I don’t want to do the same thing to you with this rally last night. But I am here to tell you, it was one for the ages. He weaved in and out from serious to funny. Do you know how difficult this is? It’s what happens on this program.
This program, if I may go a little inside baseball, we combine two and sometimes three elements. And to do this you have to have credibility in all the elements. So we combine the serious discussion of serious issues with irreverent, satirical and parody humor. We do that with credibility. And we do it by switching on a dime. Now, let’s say Johnny Carson during the Tonight Show, if he ever came out and spent 20 minutes getting dead serious with you about what he thought of politics or culture at the moment, you’d be uncomfortable and you’d be saying that’s not why I watch The Tonight Show. You’d be nervous.
If Ted Koppel, on the other hand, during the Nightline days had decided to open his show with a 15-minute joke monologue, you would have said, “That’s not why I’m here. Koppel’s not a comedian.†Well, Trump does both. Trump can go from president of the United States talking about everything that’s deadly serious to cracking jokes inside of one sentence, and he brings the audience along and does it with credibility on both sides. Does it without skipping a beat.
He goes on and off the teleprompter seamlessly. Do you know how hard just the prompter by itself is? It is very hard to use a teleprompter and make it look like you’re not reading it. Because people get dependent on it. When the words are right in front of you and they’re flowing by, you are a prisoner to them. And if something happens to the prompter, if it freezes or if it goes dead, you’re stuck. “Oh, no, oh, no, the prompter.†And your mind isn’t working because your mind isn’t thinking. Your mind is focused on reading.
Trump would not be thrown off if his prompter stopped working because he stops in the middle of it. The hardest working guy at a Trump rally is the prompter operator. He’s gotta recognize when Trump’s back on prompter. He’s gotta stick with Trump as long as he reads the prompter. Then when Trump decides to go off of it, he’s gotta stop the prompter at that point.
You could not miss the energetic optimism through the this thing last night. I looked over at Kathryn, I said, “Something has happened. They’ve got some great news. There is a reason his mood and his attitude is what it is tonight.†And I thought maybe they got some great internal polling data that just came out. Maybe it was this economic news that was reported today. But something was responsible for it. There wasn’t one “uh.†There wasn’t a “ya know.†There wasn’t the intellectual pause. “Uh, I, perhaps maybe.†None of that.
The audience was at rapt attention for every word. Now, he gets mocked, Trump does, for being a moronic, unpresidential boob. Let me just tell you. As a highly trained, instinctively talented communications expert, you can’t do what Donald Trump does at these rallies or impromptu get-togethers in the White House or the Oval Office, you can’t do what he does without a vast and superior intelligence and awareness of the topics and circumstances.
You can’t do what he does without having an empathetic awareness of your surroundings. You can’t do what he does without being aware of how the audience is receiving what you’re doing. Are you boring them? Have they tuned you out? Are they paying rapt attention? You’ve got to be able to factor all of that while you’re doing what you’re doing. You have to a vast memory. If you’re gonna go out there and speak for 90 minutes, you better have instant recall.
Remember when I said earlier this week that I think that the Democrats are trying to foment a race war in this country by reacting to the Republican convention in the way they did with nothing but pure hate? I think they’re trying to goad Trump into responding with hate so that they can then say, “See this guy? He’s a pure hater� I think this is what this story in The Atlantic is all about.
I think they’re trying to provoke. I think they’re trying to goad Trump. This fake news, this Atlantic piece is just the ultimate attempt by the Democrats in the media to provoke him, to get him to respond out of character, off character, with sheer anger and hatred. So far he’s resisted. He’s been entirely disciplined on this ever since the Republican convention ended.
