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<\/p>\nRUSH: It\u2019s Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity each and every busy broadcast day simply by showing up. And now we go back to the phones to Ewing, New Jersey. This is Sandy. Great to have you on the program today. Hi.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It\u2019s great to talk to you. Thanks for taking my call.<\/p>\n
RUSH: You bet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
CALLER: I wanted to talk to you about the slogan, the MAGA slogan. I\u2019m so sick of the mainstream media spinning that to be make America white and racist and go backwards. But I think every time Trump says Make America Great Again, he should define it with a few bullet points, maybe four or five bullet points and back it up every time he says that slogan.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Yeah.<\/p>\n
CALLER: I just wondered what you thought about that.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, this is an age-old question. I had to face this question, one of the first things I had to learn, one of the first things I learned I didn\u2019t know, and one of the first things I realized there\u2019s no answer to. When I started this program — let\u2019s talk about the time before this program.<\/p>\n
All my life before this program, including the three and a half years I was on the air in Sacramento, I was never called a racist, I was never thought of as one. I was never thought of as somebody who hated other people. I was never thought of, described, or accused of being bigot. Nobody ever said I hated women. They said I made fun of \u2019em now and then \u2019cause of the term feminazi, which I coined, but nobody thought I had any of these cliched labels attached to me.<\/p>\n
So I moved to New York, start this program. August 1st, 1988. Actually, the local version started July 4th, 1988. And within six months, I\u2019m all these things in the Drive-By Media. I\u2019m racist, I\u2019m sexist, I\u2019m bigot, I\u2019m homophobic, I\u2019m all these other things. I\u2019m like, what? I didn\u2019t know what to do about it. Nobody that I knew had any advice. Nobody had been through it, nobody had any experience dealing with it. People said, “You need to get hold of a PR firm.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the PR firm gonna do?\u201d<\/p>\n
“Well \u2013” So I tried it. I called a PR firm. Big, famous PR firm. You know what they had me to do? “We need you to have a sit-down with the editorial board of the New York Times.”<\/p>\n
I said, “and do what?”<\/p>\n
“You tell \u2019em you\u2019re not a racist.”<\/p>\n
I said, “You gotta be kidding. That\u2019s what I\u2019m hiring you to do. You\u2019re supposed to manufacture the evidence. I can\u2019t be the one to tell people I\u2019m not a racist. That\u2019s not gonna go anywhere.”<\/p>\n
“Well, that\u2019s what you gotta do.”<\/p>\n
“Well, why should I need your advice to do that? If I\u2019m gonna call the New York Times, I don\u2019t need to have you setting it up.”<\/p>\n
So I said, “Okay. PR agencies are not the way to go.” And I went back and forth. On some of these allegations I responded like you want Trump to. You know what happened? The critics got all excited. \u201cOh, man, we got to him. Limbaugh reacted to it.\u201d So they ladled it on, they started adding to it.<\/p>\n
So, I mentioned that to some people. They said, “Okay. You need to ignore it.” Okay. I\u2019ll ignore it. So I started ignoring it. Then one really bad charge of racism came out, just an outrageous set of lies and people said, “You can\u2019t let that go by. You gotta react to that.”<\/p>\n
The bottom line is, what I learned is that you can\u2019t stop that stuff because of the people leveling the allegation. It isn\u2019t about truth, Sandy. It\u2019s about an attempt to destroy, in my case back then, it was my credibility. They could not refute or didn\u2019t care to try to refute my ideas, so rather than do that, they tried to destroy my credibility with anybody outside my audience.<\/p>\n
They were trying to make sure that people that did not listen to me thought all these horrible things so that they wouldn\u2019t listen. And there was no way of changing their mind because their criticism wasn\u2019t honest. It was strategic and calculated and manufactured. And it\u2019s no different than what is happening to Trump.<\/p>\n
Make America Great Again has nothing to do with white anything, supremacy, inferiority. There\u2019s no color attached to it. America is not a color. America is a series of unique and great ideas which have been systematically attacked and ridiculed, and in some cases, gotten rid of over the years because there are people that don\u2019t like America and there are so many reasons for that that it would be impossible to list them all.<\/p>\n
And to simply react — here\u2019s how it would go. So Trump\u2019s at a rally. “And we\u2019re gonna Make America Great Again, and that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re gonna make it white again.” And the critics would have a field day. The critics would think they\u2019re on Trump\u2019s mind. The critics would think they\u2019re living rent free in Trump. It\u2019s not the way to do it. I know why you want him to do it. It\u2019s because it\u2019s also being said about you. You\u2019re not a racist. But you support Trump. You support making America great again.<\/p>\n
Then you hear these nincompoops out there saying that “what that means is make America white again.” Even Pelosi says it. You want somebody to push back. You want somebody to slap \u2019em in the face and say, “Ain\u2019t no way. You\u2019re lying about us.” But that\u2019s not the way to effectively deal with it, because it\u2019s not true, they\u2019re not even trying. They want people to think it\u2019s true, but it isn\u2019t true and the reasons they\u2019re doing it are not because they\u2019re really worried that Trump is a white supremacist.<\/p>\n
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They\u2019re trying to discredit him. They\u2019re creating a series of lies. This is what the left does. The left doesn\u2019t deal in the arena of ideas. They don\u2019t want to debate these ideas that we\u2019re arguing about. They want to snuff out all opposition and eliminate it. And the way they go about doing it is discrediting anybody they fear is effective and able to defeat them in said arena of ideas.<\/p>\n
But to take a meaningless, lying sack-of-you-know-what allegation and waste time defending it is not going to refute it. In fact, it may elevate it. It\u2019s gonna call attention to it. “Mr. President, what do you mean, make America great is not about white supremacy?” Here comes the press gaggle. “What do you mean by that?” And you got a whole subject on something that\u2019s not even true. Look. I share your frustration with this.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: So I realized, “Well, Rush, that doesn\u2019t help us. There\u2019s nothing you can do.” There is something to do, folks. And this is not a simplification. It\u2019s not a cop-out. The thing to do is to defeat these people. You have to realize there\u2019s gonna be some of them always.<\/p>\n
The idea is to keep them an electoral minority. This requires the ongoing education and the ongoing informing of Americans and keeping them interested, keeping them inspired, keeping them motivated, continue to get them motivated to vote and keeping these people that we\u2019re talking about here leveling these baseless allegations, make sure they remain an electoral minority.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always been the end result of everything that happens here, is to create an army of informed, educated people that will show up at every election and just dwarf these people in number, just outnumber \u2019em, just defeat them politically, keep them away from power.<\/p>\n
But let me give you an example, a shameless example. When I was on Fox News this morning<\/a> to talk about our Stand Up for Betsy Ross T-shirt,<\/a> turn on the side Dittocam<\/a> here once again. I will put it up for display. This is the last day that I\u2019m gonna be doing this. This shirt that we began selling this past Monday as an effort to push back against Nike and Kaepernick and all these others like the women\u2019s soccer team who seem to just not be able to help themselves into ripping the symbols of this country to shreds, acting like there is a daily grievance associated with living in this country, we\u2019re tired of it, we\u2019re fed up with it.<\/p>\n These are people who have been made very successful, very wealthy by virtue of the fact that they live here, they get these platforms, and what they do with the platform is begin insulting us, insulting our heritage, insulting the country, and then they get paid for that.<\/p>\n Then the media picks it up and starts championing them. For two days the Drive-By Media was also breathlessly excited about who Megan Rapinoe might endorse for the Democrat nomination. Megan Rapinoe was the latest to take out Donald Trump. Megan Rapinoe maybe could do it. Now she\u2019s a flash in the pan and she\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n So we pushed back with this shirt. We\u2019ve had to go reorder I can\u2019t tell you how many times. Look. The reason I\u2019m reluctant to give numbers — and they are astronomical — I don\u2019t know. It kind of defeats the purpose. We\u2019re not doing this to demonstrate our strength and power at retail. We\u2019re doing this to give people an opportunity to push back, and we\u2019re raising money, a portion of the proceeds go to a great charity, Tunnel to Towers Foundation<\/a>, which by now you know they take care of people that lost family on 9\/11, first responders, military personnel.<\/p>\n When I was on Fox this morning, I mentioned the fact we had 70 knockoffs. That means 70 fraudsters, 70 people are purposely trying to defraud you. On their websites they are advertising this shirt, their own very similar, very close design, even down to having my signature, and they\u2019re trying to convince people that they are the real thing. Essentially that we have licensed other sellers to sell these shirts. And we haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n The point is, this morning at 8:30 on Fox we had 70 knockoffs, 70 different fraudsters. And I mentioned this. I mentioned this as evidence of how wildly popular this is, that 70 different fraudsters have gotten into this thinking they can make a little money on it at the same time. You know how many there are now? 120. We have discovered 50 new, additional fraudsters since 8:30 this morning.<\/p>\n At one point we had 35,000 people in the store at the same time shopping. There are apps for that, you know. Kathryn runs around — this is so funny — she\u2019s got an app on the phone that every time there\u2019s a sale, she gets an alert on the phone, and the sound effect is cha-ching. And her phone never stops. We have to turn the mute switch on. It\u2019s the funniest thing.<\/p>\n The point is after mentioning that there were 70 knockoffs and after ripping them to shreds and after telling everybody that there are just basically a bunch of fraudsters, did the number go down? No. It went up. We were talking about the fraudsters. We were making it known that there are fakes that people can buy.<\/p>\n So what happened? More and more people entered the market attempting to sell fakes. I tell you the same thing would happen if Trump were to go up there and say, \u201cBy the way, Make America Great Again does not mean make America white again.\u201d It would have the exact opposite effect. The way to deal with this is to defeat these people, as Trump is doing.<\/p>\n That is the only way to do this, to keep them an electoral minority. This requires informing millions and millions a week. This requires keeping those people motivated and inspired, keeping them aware. It involves validating, finding people who already are offended and resentful of this stuff. Letting them know there\u2019s an outlet for them to push back and so forth. It\u2019s a never-ending project.<\/p>\n Now, my project here as a radio guy is to have the most successful radio show, the largest legitimate audience so I can charge confiscatory advertising rates. But part and parcel of that is the opportunity to be honest. And I\u2019m genuinely worried, as I said earlier in the program, I\u2019m really worried about the rising amount of mainstream ignorance and stupidity that starts in mainstream journalism.<\/p>\n The amount of rage and anger and lying ignorance and stupidity that then informs millions of people every day is scary to me. And it needs to be stopped, it needs to be opposed, it needs to be forever rendered a minority. So there are many aspects that go into a program here each and every day. There\u2019s some overriding themes, missions, goals, accomplishments that we seek to make. And those are just a few of them.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s the age-old argument: How do you deal with critics? How do you silence the critics? And the bottom line is, you don\u2019t. They\u2019re never gonna go away. If you\u2019re effective — this is the thing, the really tough thing to learn, that all of this criticism is rooted in the effectiveness of the person being criticized.<\/p>\n Trump is being ripped to shreds because he\u2019s so damn good at what he\u2019s doing. He\u2019s being ripped to shreds because he\u2019s effective. He\u2019s scaring the hell out of these people. He\u2019s being ripped to shreds by everybody in Washington because he\u2019s turning the town upside down in terms of how you do it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/APP-071119-Betsy-Ross-Shirt-RUSH.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/APP-070819-Betsy-Ross-SHIRT-STORE.jpg\")
<\/a>The only legitimate shirt with our unique, great — there\u2019s no T-shirts like ours, folks. I mean, even if Trump made T-shirts, his would not be as excellent and great as these are, let me tell you. The fabric of these shirts is what everybody who gets one comments on, and the artwork on this shirt is just the creme de la creme. It\u2019s the best. And it\u2019s the antique look of the Betsy Ross flag. What\u2019d Betsy Ross ever do to anybody anyway? Why the hell tear her down?<\/p>\n
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<\/a>That\u2019s what they were telling Trump. “You don\u2019t have any idea how government works.” Trump says, “I\u2019m not here to make the government you guys had running working. I\u2019m here to change it.” Which he is. Change is very hard. These people that have been entrenched in the Washington establishment for years don\u2019t want any change in the way they\u2019ve been running things. They don\u2019t want any change in who has been running things.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/APP-052319-Rush-is-Right-2019.jpg\")
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