My Analysis of the President’s Address on Restoring American Greatness

RUSH: This would be a great time to go back to Trump’s speech on Monday that I have been promising to play excerpts of all week. It was the speech Trump gave on Monday afternoon outlining his national security strategy. What this speech really was: a restatement of what the United States of America is. What this speech really was: a restatement and a repurposing for what the United States will again become.

THE PRESIDENT: Our leaders engaged in nation building abroad while they failed to build up and replenish our nation at home. They undercut and short-changed our men and women in uniform with inadequate resources, unstable funding, and unclear missions. They failed to insist that our often very wealthy allies pay their fair share for defense.

They neglected a nuclear menace in North Korea, made a disastrously weak and incomprehensibly bad deal with Iran, and allowed terrorists such as ISIS to gain control of vast parts of territory all across the Middle East. They put American energy under lock and key. They surrendered our sovereignty to foreign bureaucrats in far-away and distant capitals. And over the profound objections of the American people, our politicians left our borders wide open.

RUSH: Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Everything there demonstrably true, irrefutably true, an indictment of the past and, by the way, a recasting of why he was elected.

THE PRESIDENT: Our leaders drifted from American principles. They lost sight of America’s destiny, and they lost their belief in American greatness. As a result, our citizens lost something as well. The people lost confidence in their government and eventually even lost confidence in their future.

RUSH: Every bit of that’s true. This country has been possessed, it has been obsessed with a fatalism and a defeatism, and our leaders have told us that that’s the new norm. America in decline, both as a superpower and as an economic power. Yeah, those days are behind us. It’s now time to pay the piper. The United States was an illegitimate superpower. The United States was an unjust and immoral economic superpower because we acquired our resources in ill-gotten ways. This was the Obama administration message.

THE PRESIDENT: Optimism has surged, confidence has returned. With this new confidence, we are also bringing back clarity to our thinking. We are reasserting these fundamental truths. A nation without borders is not a nation. (applause) A nation that does not protect prosperity at home cannot protect its interests abroad. A nation that is not prepared to win a war is a nation not capable of preventing a war. A nation that is not proud of its history cannot be confident in its future. And a nation that is not certain of its values cannot summon the will to defend them.

RUSH: You will not find anywhere, in conservative intellectual circles or anywhere else, you will not find a better indictment of the eight years of the Obama administration and many previous years. You have to include Hillary Clinton and her husband in this, too, because they are the same mind-set. Optimism has surged. Confidence has returned. Not in New York and not in Washington and not in the media capitals of this country, but everywhere else confidence is surging!

“A nation without borders is not a nation.” Bingo.

And boy, this is such a big one: “A nation not proud of its history cannot be confident in its future.” That is the Clinton administration, the Obama administration which spent a total of 16 years apologizing in one way or another for America. We would not stand up to human rights abuses in China because members of both administrations said we got no room to talk. We abuse people here. We deny lesbians and gays civil rights. We deny African-Americans civil rights. We got no rights to tell the ChiComs what to do. So we gladly, happily gave away our moral authority on a bunch of trumped-up, phony beliefs.

THE PRESIDENT: In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign. What we have built here in America is precious and unique. We must love and defend it. As long as we are proud and very proud of who we are, how we got here, and what we are fighting for to preserve, we will not fail.

RUSH: Oh, man, that’s so —

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