Did Trump Walk Back on "Bush Lied"?

RUSH: Now, remember when that happened in the Saturday night debate, a lot of people were shocked watching this. I immediately evolved a theory to explain it. Here you have the Republican front-runner -- and let's review. The Republican front-runner defended Planned Parenthood. "A great organization that does great things for women's health." It's almost a cliche!

The lion's share of their so-called "funding," their income, comes from performing abortion. They don't do mammograms, for example. The idea that Planned Parenthood is involved in women's health is largely a PR smokescreen to cover up the fact that they're an abortion factory. Well, Mr. Trump came out and said, "Planned Parenthood, they do great things," and that he didn't want to defund them because they do "great things for women's health." That's the Republican front-runner. I sat up when I heard this.

I said, "Whoa! Not even Romney said that. McCain hasn't even said that. What's this?" Then, as the debate went on, Mr. Trump accused Bush of lying about Iraq. They knew there weren't any WMD in there, and they still went to war anyway. "They knew," Trump said. "They knew." Trump said that he opposed the war in Iraq and that Bush was lying about that and lying about 9/11, that Bush didn't keep us safe, that the Twin Towers fell when Bush was in the White House. And he did that while assaulting Jeb, going after Jeb.

But, nevertheless, I said, "What is this? This is the first time I've heard any of this," and then it hit me. Well, it's an open primary, and in South Carolina, Democrats and independents can cross over and vote. I theorized what Trump was trying to get here was get some of those votes, because we had reports that Cruz was gaining ground. Internal polling data showed Cruz was two points behind. If that internal polling existed in the Bush campaign, Trump campaign knew it, too. So it was one of two things... Either Donald wanted to go get these additional voters one of two reasons.

Either to stave off what was happening with Cruz, or to just amass more and more votes to just hammer that final nail in the coffin and just be done with this and just win with a slam dunk. And then commentators on TV took me to task. They said, "No, Rush! Trump's not that diabolical, he speaks from the heart." I said, "There's nothing 'diabolical' about it. It's political strategy. All I'm saying is Trump is not surrounded by idiots. He's got some political pros in his organization and it could be well they strategized to do this."

Because it's not often that you hear the Republican front-runner anywhere defend Planned Parenthood and destroy a revered former Republican president. Bush is revered in South Carolina with 83% approval. You just don't hear that. So there had to be a reason. And then Trump yesterday -- or maybe two nights ago -- now when he's on MSNBC during that town hall, admitted he's going to get crossover votes. He was going to get Democrats and independents. I said, "A ha! My theory was right on the money! That's exactly what they were doing. That's why Trump said that."

Then there were a couple of additional things, such as Trump saying that he's going to rewrite the electoral map because of so many people -- so many crossovers in other states -- are gonna end up supporting him that Wisconsin is going to be in play, Pennsylvania is going to be in play, Michigan is going to be in play. And then last night, Donald Trump... Well, let me just read to you from the Wall Street Journal: "Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to try to walk back his claims that the administration of former President George W. Bush lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war.

"During a town hall-style event hosted by CNN, when the Republican front-runner was asked about the comments he made during last weekend's GOP debate, Mr. Trump said: 'I'm not talking about lying, I'm not talking about not lying. Nobody really knows why we went into Iraq.' He added. 'Bottom line: there were no weapons of mass destruction. ... Whether he lied or not, he went into Iraq,' Mr. Trump said. 'It was a horrible decision.'" And so the Wall Street Journal and others in the Drive-By Media are now trying to say that Trump is walking it back.

Now, if Trump is walking it back, there goes my theory. Why walk it back if you're trying to attract Democrat crossover votes tomorrow in the South Carolina primary? Maybe you think you've already done it and you've succeeded. You got your message out. You can make a show and play at walking it back here to maintain your Republican vote. I still could be right about this, is the bottom line. Now, they think they have caught Trump in another... I don't know what you'd call it. Flip-flop?

Because apparently Mr. Trump is saying (and you probably heard it) that he opposed the war in Iraq always forever, and people in the media said, "That's great, but we can't find any quotes. We can't find any evidence of you saying that." Trump said, "That's okay, you shouldn't. I wasn't in politics back then. I was in business. I'm a businessman back then. I wasn't being quoted for things I said as a businessman. Of course you wouldn't. But I just want to tell you: I opposed the Iraq war." But somebody found a tape of Trump on Howard Stern back in 2002.

Stern said to Trump, "Are you in favor of invading Iraq?" and Trump said, "Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly." Which is an excellent point, by the way. If... do you heard what happened in Gulf War One? We won that war in 2-1/2 days. That was the Arnold Schwarzenegger -- I'm sorry, the Norman Schwarzkopf victory. You remember what happened with that? We had the Iraqi Army on the run. They were in full retreat. The Republican Guard and the "elite" troops, they were on their way back to Baghdad.

Schwarzkopf wanted to wipe them out. He just wanted to end it. Go all the way back to Baghdad, get Saddam, and be done with Iraq. Colin Powell said, "No. No, no, Mr. President, Mr. Bush. Don't do it! You will look like you are using excessive force, unnecessary force. The war is over.

The war is won and besides," said General Powell, "Look, the UN mandate authorizing the use of force does not include getting Saddam. It just says get Iraq out of Kuwait and recapture the oil wells for Kuwait that Saddam took," and eventually set on fire.

The United Nations resolution that George H.W. Bush put together did not include regime change in Iraq, did not include taking Saddam out. But Schwarzkopf said, a la Patton, "What the hell are we stopping for? Let's just keep going! Rroot the guy out and let's be done with this forever." Colin Powell said, 'Nope, nope. The optics won't look good." And they weren't. The optics were the Iraqi Army were on the run, surrendering every day on TV, weaving white flags. They were shoeless, they were shirtless and they were on the road back to Baghdad and Colin Powell said, "You can't continue this!

"You have to just end this and let them get back home," and that's what we did. And Saddam survived to once again start threatening and bellowing about weapons of mass destruction and gave us reason to go back in. Ancient history. But nevertheless, Trump is right when he says, "I wish the first time it was done correctly." What he means by that is that we'd just kept going and taken Saddam out. But the point is that in 2002 he did say he was for invading Iraq. So there's... I don't know if it's a flip-flop, but people found evidence contrary to what he's been saying.

And you have a contract or handshake that you have looked at ahead of time and that guarantees you a profit at the end of the job. That’s called ‘self interest’.

America has the kind of “free trade” that has us hundreds of billions in the RED each year. That’s called ignorance.

If you used that kind of “free trade” you’d be living on food stamps and Obama phones.

There is no guaranteed profit. It's why it's called free enterprise.

People can and do fail at business, It's called creative destruction. It's what makes our system great. Did you know that small construction businesses fail at a clip of almost 90%? Likewise in other sectors.

I remember when the Japanese were killing us with their crony capitalism in the auto industry back in the eighties. Reagan said we would win in the end, because our freedom was a better system.

I remember the argument. Well, Reagan was right. Our system won. Ford and the others forged a dramatic comeback and did well until they put themselves on the government dole.

This is a very complex issue, but genuine freedom is not the problem. What I call free enterprise is not BS.

I do not believe you enter a deal in which you’ve crunched the numbers and you come out BEHIND at the end of the deal.

I don’t buy that.

I think that your self-interest has crunched the numbers and you come out ahead at the end of the deal.

Of course you don't try to lose money, but you'd be surprised that it's not as easy as it looks. You'd be surprised how hard you have to work to not go under. I read this quote from George Gobel once and he said it best: It took me thirty years to become an overnight success!

I've had many employees that left, thinking it was easy to do what I was doing. To a man they admitted later how wrong they were to think that.

I said you donâ€™t enter a deal in which the numbers youâ€™ve crunched say that you lose.

Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest we think about what each other is saying.

I just want you to consider that free trade should be something to aspire to, that it's done every day when we go to a store, or hire someone to do something for us, or even go to work.

Just think about it for a while, I'm just saying it's NOT a BS concept, and as CEW said, free trade does not mean we have open borders.

I understand what you are saying, and I'll let it sink in.

Deal?

The Bush administration lied in terms of misrepresentation because there was no certainty about the WMD's still being there.

Maybe you missed the last half of the sentence. Don't see much wrong with it except maybe it doesn't go far enough. Bush's own Treasury Secretary has said that Bush's first order of business in 2001 as the new President was to invade Iraq and get Saddam and he told his staff to go get a good reason to do it.

There is very little we can do about the currency manipulation. Nor should we worry about it. In the long run, a strong dollar relatively helps - even as it might hurt a certain segment in the short run.

China’s weak currency has tanked their economy, their markets are down 80%, their malls and apartments are empty. We can’t do a damned thing about it, nor should we. We are doing much better than China now, even as we have massive problems. And again, our President is NOT the President of China, nor can he do much about the China central bank.

Dang man, who let the dogs out? CW, I forgot that you’re on my no-reply list as an attack dog who doesn’t listen and has no answers.

Have to call the kennel to round you back up.

Bye.

You said you refused to read the post in which it appeared, so I invite you to pay for the wall Mexico.

I didn't refuse, I just know that when a premise is total bullshit, nothing that follows matters. And what are you babbling about on the wall? I'm in favor of a wall or whatever it takes to secure the border. You're in la la land - your new abode - if you believe the Mexico will pay for it stuff.

Trump has some good points on the trade issue, I think he will change the direction of the economy back towards the free market.

Really? You mean like slamming big oil and big pharma and big health as the culprits of Obama Care? As in wanting a mandate? As in punishing Ford or Carrier instead of incentivizing them to stay? As in the fact he's never uttered the phrase "limited government" in his entire life? As in favoring ethanol? As in calling the lawyers every time he doesn't get his way?

Outside of strip clubs and casinos and rent controlled apartments and golf developments, all of which were done with skid greasing of politicians, where the heck do you get this great free market stuff? It's not consistent with his history.

I guess you don’t see a difference between “they lied” (later he said “the government lied”) and “Bush lied.” There’s a difference. There is certainly an inference as there was in real life, but Bush may never have actually publicly stated there were WMD’s.

You kind of miss the point here really IMO. Bush’s own Treasury Secretary has said that one of the the first thing on Bush’s agenda as the new President in 2001 was to invade Iraq and get Saddam and Bush charged his staff to go get a good reason to do it. Bush went into the presidency having already made up his mind to invade Iraq regardless. Why is not certain why, but possibly because Bush was pissed about reports that Saddam had tried to take his dad out a few years before in Kuwait.

You are a true member of your purist cult, CEW. A true priest of the UPC COA. The religious text on ethanol is well known in the Unrealist Purist Conservatism Church of America.

Take ethanol, for instance.

First, production of fuel is a national security issue.
Second, I'm betting you don't know how it's processed and used and the real costs.

Third, I'll bet you don't know how farmers are benefited.

Big Talk don't mean doodly squat, kimosabe.

I have not read Art of the Deal yet, have you?

My understanding of Trump is bound up in what I have been told is one of his principles, which lets him go places in the end and get to a deal that is good for him.

It's how he moves the Overton window and why he's been so successful in this campaign.

If you understand he's playing a long term game here, you will understand some of his apparently off the wall statements better.

Examples:

1. His moving the Overton window on illegals.
2. His moving of the Overton window on muzzies.
3. His taking away of the Bush past as an issue (understand I believe he went waaaay to far with this and hated most of what he did, but he took a future issue off the table).
4. His taking away the war on women crap. He did that brilliantly.
5. His putting the Clinton's on notice about #waronwomen, and beginning the death spiral of the Hildabeast. Brilliant.

Yes, he's got problems, yes some things will bite us in the butt, but that's a given with any candidate, including Cruz.

Ethanol is fuel. Use it right and it adds to the supply of homegrown energy. And any cost analysis that doesn’t take into account that fact that it doesn’t “disappear” once it’s been fermented, but that only the sugars have been largely used up would also take a barrel of oil and pretend it’s wise to throw away what remains when the amount of gasoline has been refined that can be refined.

All it takes for engines to be fine with it is the correct plastics.

I wouldn't mind it if they gave us an alternative of ethanol free at the pump.

Right now, that's rarely a choice.

See. Free enterprise, not gubmint mandate.

Okay, okay....I just had to slip it in......:-)

if there were anymore sugar in that coating, it would melt in a rain storm.

Art of the Deal is about cronyism.

Doing the art of the deal doesn’t have a damned thing to do with being able to move the macro economy forward - which can ONLY be done by government getting the hell out of the way. When have you ever heard Trump say ANYTHING related to that even remotely?

Remember TARP, Stimulus, every single bail out - Trump was on board and saying they weren’t big enough!!!!!

I have destroyed your stupid theory, and for some reason, you think repeating it makes it less retarded than it is. It doesn’t. You cannot point to a single thing other than your man crush fantasy to back up your claim

Enjoy your TARP, your Stim, your bail outs of everybody - that’s your “lack of purity.”

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