RUSH: This Mayor Pete stuff. What do you think the main reason the Drive-Bys went batty over this?

I didn’t lecture Mayor Pete on anything. I didn’t say anything anti-gay. I didn’t even offer an opinion of my own. I was asking people to analyze — asking people to imagine how the Democrat power base was looking at their options after the Hawkeye Cauci and New the Hampshire primary. I’ll replay the bite for you. It takes about two minutes to go through, but at no point was there a lecture of Mayor Pete on family values or anything else. At no point was there a condemnation of Mayor Pete.

In fact, I’m the reason Mayor Pete’s on the map! I’m the guy, after a CNN town hall at South by Southwest in 2019… I’m the guy that came here –Snerdley has been mad at me from the get-go for this — I’m the guy that came in here and told you all, “Be on the lookout for Mayor Pete.” I saw him; I thought he performed well in the town hall. I thought he expressed his opinions well. He did a great job of hiding his liberal extremism, which is what leftists have to do in primaries in order to go out and get as broad a base as they can.

First on was Tulsi Gabbard, and it was two hours — and I was made to watch this. I had a guest in for a member-guest golf tournament. It was in March of whatever year this would have been. It has to be the last. The guest, a noted TV anchor, said, “I’ve gotta watch this.” I said, “Come on, man! It’s Saturday night! I don’t want to watch CNN and these schlubs.” “I’ve got to.” So we fired up the big 100-inch screen 4K TV and dialed in CNN.

I watched Mayor Pete, and I said, “You know, this guy is pretty smooth.” The next day, Monday, I came to the program and warned everybody, “Be on the lookout for Mayor Pete.” He’s on the map because of me! At no time have I lectured Mayor Pete. At no time have I opined on Mayor Pete as to what I think at all. Do you know what this really is about, folks? I’ll tell you what this is really about, the main reason.

Hell, the president even called me about this! The president checks in every now and then to see how I’m doing — he’s such a nice guy — and he called. It’s uncanny. I’m… (interruption) Do I respond to him? Yeah! (interruption) Well, I try to reply to all of them, Dawn. I’m not gonna be able to, but he called. And, yeah. I’m a powerful, influential member of the media, folks; I’ve got the White House private number in my phone. So when the White House calls, it says there on my phone.

So invariably — it’s uncanny — he calls when I am moments away from commencing a medical procedure, and I had to tell the doctors, “You’ve gotta give me a half hour. The president’s calling.” “Okay. We’ll wait a half hour.” Then I told the White House, “Look, I got a medical procedure in 10 minutes. Can you have the president call me back in 35?” And they did. So he called back, and he said, “Rush, I just gotta tell you something. Never apologize. Don’t ever apologize.”

I said, “For what?”

I had no idea this thing had even bubbled up. You know, I’m up doing the medical thing that I have to do here, and I wasn’t even aware of this. So here’s what I think’s going on. Then I became aware of it, and Kathryn said, “Oh, yeah, they’re all over you. It’s the usual thing. They’re saying you said things you didn’t say. All you had to do, Rush, was mention somebody is gay and here they come: You’re a homophobe,” and that’s exactly what this is.

I think what set the Drive-Bys in the media off and in Washington… I think they are mad about my remarks about Mayor Pete because I think they think that a lot of people didn’t know that he’s gay. I’m talking about the low-information voters, the great unwashed. I think they think that there’s a lot of people that don’t know he’s gay and that I sort of dropped the dime on it and let people who otherwise didn’t know that Mayor Pete is gay.

I think that’s what they’re really mad about, that I even mentioned it. You’re not supposed to mention it. Why aren’t you supposed to mention it? Well, you answer that yourself. I mean, the Drive-Bys — as I’ve read what they’ve said and as I’ve replayed it (I’ve got transcripts of audio sound bites, montages) — they even seem to be afraid that I might have revealed that news to a lot of low-information voters for the first time.

Now, I’m looking at people on the other side of the glass — Snerdley, Brian, and Dawn — and they’re look at me. “No. It can’t be that,” and you know why they think that? ‘Cause they know he’s gay; so they think everybody must believe he’s gay. But I’m telling you, there has to be a reason for this. (interruption) Well, no… (interruption) Well, I know they’re mad that I got the Medal of Freedom and they’ve been looking for a way to lash back, and so here they come along.

And all I happened to say was, “If you’re in the Democrat Party today and these are your three options based on the returns from Iowa and New Hampshire, how are you feeling about this?” I went through the whole thing from the perspective of Democrat powerbrokers. So I mentioned that Mayor Pete is gay, and, bam! That’s all it took, and here comes, “Limbaugh’s a racist, bigot, sexist, homophobe! Decades and decades of negative comments, besmirching comments! Inhumane comments!”

It just flows out of their mouth and across their lips like water. It is knee-jerk. They didn’t even have to take the time to find out what I was really saying. What it was is just like I said last week talking about Biden. I told you from the get-go: I never thought the guy was gonna win. It’s not personal with Biden. I’m giving you straight political analysis here. It’s exactly what I was doing with this Mayor Pete situation. So Mayor Pete’s out there saying, “I’m not gonna be lectured to on family values!”

Well, I didn’t lecture him on family values. I didn’t lecture anybody on family values, and they all know this. So now they’re gonna take these comments and they’ll further distort these. You know, this is why I don’t like responding to this stuff. But I said, “What the hell.” This is something that those of you who were listening know the truth and know how it was distorted. Those of you who weren’t, who are now listening, deserve to have it known.

I’ll go through the comments that I made afterwards — and, by the way, if you keep listening, you will find out… Do you know what James Clyburn is, folks? James Clyburn is a former chairman of the House Congressional Black Caucasians. He’s from South Carolina (his daughter is named Mignon Clyburn), and he agreed with me. Not by name. He didn’t say (impression), “Rush Limbo is right.”

He said exactly what I said the Democrat hierarchy was going to say after the results in Iowa and New Hampshire. He proves my point. But the Drive-Bys and the leftists, there’s an activist gay community — I have it here if the stories in the Stack of Stuff. They’re mad at Mayor Pete because he’s trying to undersell it. They’re mad at Mayor Pete because he’s not flaunting who he is. So the point is, El Rushbo, anti-gay? (Snort!) I could care less. Nothing I can do about it anyway.

I didn’t lecture anybody on family values. I would not do so on this program. I simply was engaging in political analysis that is politically incorrect as far as the left is concerned. You simply are not — a conservative is not — permitted to identify a gay candidate as gay. These people need to be thanking me. Mayor Pete is on the map because of me — and himself, of course, obviously. But he’s on the map because of me.

I guarantee you, after that appearance on CNN at South by Southwest a year and a half ago or whenever it was and I came here the following Monday and said, “Folks, keep a sharp eye out for Mayor Pete,” I guarantee you that was a great day in Mayor Pete’s campaign. “Wow. Did you hear what Limbaugh said? Limbaugh said, ‘Keep a sharp eye on Mayor Pete.'”

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RUSH: March 18th, 2019, Mayor Pete, CNN, South by Southwest, that couple days after that is when I put Mayor Pete on the map.

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RUSH: Now, my friends, do not doubt me when I tell you that the primary reason the Drive-Bys — now, you can argue that I got the Medal of Freedom. Yeah, that’s gonna bug ’em for the rest of their lives. But there’s another reason why they’re ticked off at me and they’re trying to besmirch me on the Mayor Pete stuff, and it’s the fact that there’s a lot of primary voters out there that do not know he is gay. You may think, “Rush, that’s absolutely absurd.” I have (shuffling papers) here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. Put it up on the Dittocam.

Here’s a headline, NBC News. This goes back to the 5th of February: “Iowa Caucus-Goer Pulls Buttigieg Vote After Learning He’s Gay, Viral Video Shows,” and then there’s a picture of this voter. I’m not gonna put the picture of the voter on the Dittocam. “The Time magazine cover photo didn’t do it. Nor did the March appearance on ABC’s The View or a year’s worth of digital and television news stories.

“It was not until Monday night — after casting her caucus vote for [Mayor Pete] — that an Iowa Democratic caucus voter, known only as ‘Geert,’ first learned that the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is gay and married a man in 2018. ‘Are you saying he has a same-sex partner?’ the woman asked in a now viral video…” Then she goes and asks for her vote for Mayor Pete back. Now, don’t doubt me, my friends, when I tell you that one of the…

You know, aside from the Medal of Freedom business — which is gonna be a constant (chuckles) thorn in their side (chuckles) that’s never gonna go away — believe me, the reason that the Democrats in the media and in Washington are really mad about my remarks about him is because there’s a lot of Democrat primary voters who don’t know that Mayor Pete is gay. It wasn’t even my intention… It never occurred to me. Now that I think about the coverage over the last few weeks, it seems to me the media would like us to forget that Mayor Pete is gay — and that, in itself, is kind of puzzling.

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RUSH: Just a couple more things on this Mayor Pete business, then I want to move on. One thing is, don’t you find it a little strange — and look, when Obama won the Democrat nomination, “Oh, my Lord, what a great day. What a great progressive day. What a great day for America. We’ve finally matured. We’ve come to the point in our history where we can embrace an African-American, as a primary major party nominee for president, great, great, great, great day.”

When Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, the Democrats, “Oh, what a great day, a woman has finally proceeded to the glass ceiling, isn’t it a great day, we are overcoming our bigotry.” So Mayor Pete wins Iowa, they say nothing about the fact that Mayor Pete is gay and it represents such a major, major step forward, a major progressive step forward, overcoming bigotry, racism, whatever it is. Silence. No mention of it.

Then Mayor Pete, competitive close in New Hampshire. No mention of it. Anybody curious why that is? Well, I could go back, I could tell you why. I could tell you exactly what I told you — that bite takes two minutes to play so I’m not gonna do it, but the comments that got the Drive-Bys all fired up were last Wednesday.

So here you are, you’re the Democrats. You’ve just had an absolute chaos of a disaster in Iowa in terms of your caucus and your vote counting and all this stuff. The Russians got in there and messed everything up. Then you learn that the DNC was in charge of the app that got messed up. And Mayor Pete’s the winner but nobody’s sure.

Then you go to New Hampshire, Crazy Bernie. So you got Crazy Bernie — the top three, Crazy Bernie, Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar. So you’re the Democrats. Over here you got Donald Trump, who is a well-known quantity, everybody now knows exactly who Trump is and how he is and what he is, and he’s formidable.

You’re leading the Democrats. Okay, you got Amy Klobuchar. Well, she’s not gonna go anywhere, and we don’t want Amy Klobuchar to be the nominee ’cause she’s gonna lose. That would mean two women in a row would lose. We can’t have that. You got Mayor Pete, who I said has made a practice of hugging and kissing his husband on the stage. The Democrats looking at that, you’re gonna measure that up against Donald Trump. I don’t know how that’s gonna fall out, don’t know how that’s gonna look.

Then you go to Crazy Bernie, oh, no, you’ve got a mad scientist, socialist, communist. I said the Democrats are panicking. They have no options here. And that’s the thrust — essence of what I said. And here comes all this, “It’s anti-gay, bigotry, Limbaugh is typical of the mealymouthed, mean-spirited extremism.” All I was doing was engaging in smart, unique political analysis detailing the problems Democrats have with either Klobuchar, Mayor Pete, or Crazy Bernie — and now Bloomberg.

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RUSH: This is Joe in Denver. I’m glad that you waited, sir. Welcome. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. You know, I’m a gay Republican, former Democrat, voted for President Obama twice. And I spent the weekend defending you to my liberal Democratic cadre of friends. And I told them exactly what you said. I said, “Rush was not making a judgment about Mayor Pete. He wasn’t making judgment about gay people or two people kissing. He was merely saying that there is a conservative portion of the Democratic electorate that may not be comfortable with nominating a gay person.” And a reminder of that is Mayor Pete kissing his husband every chance he gets is not gonna sit well with a certain portion.” And I said, you know, if you remember back in 2016 — I’m sorry — 2008 when Prop 8 passed in California, largely because African-Americans turned out to vote for President Obama, and they weren’t comfortable with the idea of gay marriage.

RUSH: Right. Well, what did your friends say when you explained the truth to them?

CALLER: Yeah, well, they said, “Oh, he’s a bigot, he’s a racist, how can you listen to that guy, he’s such a jerk,” and blah, blah, blah. I said, “Listen to what he said. Listen to what he said. He was merely making an –”

RUSH: They can’t afford to listen to what I said, Joe, because then they’d have to face the fact that they’re the bigots.

CALLER: Right. Right.

RUSH: Or they wouldn’t call themselves that, but they’d have to face the fact that they’d been lied to about me and what I think and say and so forth. I appreciate the fact that you took ’em on nevertheless. I really appreciate that.

CALLER: Yeah. And I want to say one last thing, Rush.

RUSH: Yeah, what’s that?

CALLER: I asked the Holy Spirit to put his hand of healing over you just like I ask him to put the healing hand or protective hand over President Trump every night. So we’re all praying for you, we’re rooting for you, and keep on the fight.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Look. This is what I was addressing at the beginning of the program. I don’t have a way to accurately or — that’s not even the word — properly thank everybody or even acknowledge everybody. But it’s overwhelming. It literally is overwhelming what people are doing.

And, folks, let me just tell you, I feel great. I know I sound great, as always. I feel absolutely fine and have through all this except for when I had the flu and the medical procedure to facilitate what’s next, but I feel absolutely great. So I think all of this outpouring of love and support is already having an impact, a positive impact on me. I truly, truly do.

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RUSH: Here’s Kent, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. You’re next. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. The topic of your comments about Mayor Pete are being blown out of proportion.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I heard exactly what you said that very day. The next day, I go to the Fox News website, which I do every morning, and it said, you know, like, “Rush Limbaugh Is Anti-Gay” or “Said Something Negative About Mayor Pete,” and I thought to myself, “That’s not what he said. It’s not even close to what he said.” So I’m as amazed at the media as you and many other people are, and it’s —

RUSH: Well, here’s the thing: I’m not amazed by it. You know, I have a problem. I’ve been spending most of this hour on it, and I’m of the opinion that we’ve been there, done that. But I’ve had, “Look, they’ve been hammering you for three days on this! They’ve been hammering you for almost four or five days on this, and as so many people out there having lied to and have a misunderstanding about it, you owe it to yourself and to everybody else to straighten this out.”

I said, “Okay.”

So here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go back; I’m gonna grab what I said. I’ve got the whole sound bite here. It’s about a minute and 52 seconds. I have time to squeeze in. This is gonna be it. Now, this is kind of an interesting A-B, side-by-side comparison. You’ve heard the attacks — racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Limbaugh mean-spirited extremist — all of this rotgut that they always say, this knee-jerk stuff. Many of you may not have heard what I said that caused all that. Well, here it is. This is last Wednesday talking about the Democrat Party, who they might want to see become their nominee after the results in Iowa and New Hampshire.

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RUSH: You’re looking at your options today (laughing), and you’re asking, “Okay, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer. Trump’s gonna wipe the floor with her, and that would mean two women in a row get wiped out by Donald Trump. Two Democrat women in a row. We can’t have that! We can’t let that happen.”

Then they’re sitting there and they’re looking at Mayor Pete — a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage — and they’re saying, “Okay. How’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage next to Mr. Man, Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?” They gotta be looking at that, and they’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great wokeness and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president.

They have to be saying this, don’t they? Now, there may be some Democrats who think that is the ticket. There may be some Democrats who think, “That’s exactly what we need to do, Rush. Get a gay guy kissing his husband on stage! You ram it down Trump’s throat and beat him in the general election.” (laughing) Really? Having fun envisioning that. What are you left with? Crazy Bernie.

They’re left with the avowed revolutionary socialist who isn’t even a Democrat. So which of those three…? They want to take all three out. They would like to get rid of all three of those, the establishment of the Democrats. But if they can’t, which of those three would they rather lose with? Who among those three losing will do the least damage to the Democrat Party going forward? That’s what they are facing, if you ask me.

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