The Dealmaker in Chief

Tuesday - January 26, 2016

RUSH:  Let me share with you some analysis that will no doubt be misunderstood and distorted in many places in our media, but here we go.  As I'm listening to Trump talk about all this -- and not just today. It is fascinating, is it not, that Donald Trump has sort of reframed, or maybe even redefined, the purpose and the position of the presidency as something defined by negotiating deals?  He talks about this all the time. This is important. He's credibly presenting himself as a skilled dealmaker, as a skilled negotiator.  Therefore, he is positing here that the job of president, to him, is negotiating and dealmaking, foreign and domestic. 

Trade equals deals. Foreign policy equals deals such as Iran, the entire Middle East.  Domestic policy equals deals, i.e., making them with Democrats.  By all those deals... Here's the thing: Every time Trump talks about doing a deal -- with Mexico and the wall, you name it, with the ChiComs. Every time he talks about doing deals, he talks about winning them for his position, that nobody else is any good at this, that the people running our government now, elected officials now don't know how to do deals. 

They do the dumbest deals ever. 

But Trump is gonna do smart deals, because that's what his life is. 

He does deals for everything, and he runs rings around everybody. 

He wrote a book on how to do deals better than anybody else.  Even after telling everybody how to do deals, they still can't do 'em better than he does.  And he's defined all of this as pro-America, i.e., for the people. Making America great again.  The opposition, or the opposite reactions to Trump among Republicans and others depends on whether people trust or believe him or not.  Trump opposers don't believe it; Trump supporters do believe it.  He thinks he can make deals with Russia and Putin better than Obama, everybody think is so that's he's repositioning everything here as he's a dealmaker and Cruz can't do deals because everybody hates him.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Okay.  Let's talk about deal-making here for a minute.  Just a quick minute or two.  When you are in business, let's say you're J.R. Ewing and you're up against the cartel in Dallas, and you're making deals, those are businesses deals.  Any kind of a business deal.  The experts who teach business school students how to do deals, the best deals are those in which everybody at the end feels good. 

The Art of the Deal in business is making sure that you get what you want while making the other side think they got enough of what they want that they're happy, too.  That in business it's a bad thing to skunk somebody and leave them with nothing.  Give 'em something, no matter what cards you hold, and if you go into the deal holding none of the cards, the objective is, both sides like it and both sides don't.  If there's commonality, if both sides are unhappy they didn't get it all, fine.  If both sides are happy with what they get to one degree or another, then you got a good deal, an okay deal, and you're out of there. 

In politics, that's not how it works.  Take a look at the deals the Republicans have done with the Democrats and ask yourself, in every one of them, be it a budget deal, be it an immigration deal, is there any, is there a single deal that the Republicans have made in the past seven years that any of you have felt, "You know what, we got something out of this?"  No. 

However, if you listen to the Republicans who participated in the negotiation of the deal, they universally come out of there and start telling us, "Hey, you know, we got some stuff in here that we didn't have. And out of the budget deal you know what that was?  We won back the right to export oil.  We smoked 'em.  We got a great deal."  And you're saying, "You think that makes this a good deal?" 

So from the Republican establishment standpoint, they think you will be made to believe that they made a good deal if they tout what they think they got out of it.  The Democrats, when they go into one of these deals, it's smoke city.  There isn't going to be one iota's compromise.  The Republicans aren't gonna get anything that matters. 

Now, the Democrats might give them something inconsequential, just enough that the Republicans can leave the negotiation and say, "Look what we got, look what we got here, we did okay."  And their voters are saying, "You got skunked, you got nothing, we lost it again, and what you promised to do is kick it down the road and we'll deal with it next time.  It keeps happening and happening.  We didn't get diddly-squat." 

"Yeah, we did, look at Medicare Part B!  We skunked 'em, we got a brand-new entitlement that's got conservative free market principles all over."  You think that was a win?  That's what we were told after that happened.  How in the world can you, with a Republican administration, Republican House, agree to a new entitlement, it's your idea for a new entitlement.  And they dare come out and tell us that that's a win? 

But in Trump's world, where he does deals, he's gonna have to do business with 'em down the road.  He doesn't want to make enemies like he says Ted Cruz does.  Ted Cruz is not nasty.  You know, this is the thing.  I have warned them about this I don't know how many times.  Ted Cruz is not nasty.  (imitating Trump) "He's a nasty guy. Everybody hates Cruz."  No, they fear Cruz, maybe respect Cruz, but, hey, look, if you're running a scam and somebody comes along in your own club and calls you out on it, you're not gonna love 'em, which is what Cruz did many times.