RUSH: I can’t — yes, I can. I can believe it. I don’t know what the word is. After 25 years, nothing should surprise me. But winning this award, Author of the Year, Children’s Book Council, has just caused tumult like you can’t believe out there on the left. Whole television networks are leveling charges of voter fraud. (laughing)

It’s not amazing, and it’s not surprising, but at the same time, it is. Something as harmless as an award for writing a children’s book is such a threat to these people. It is a real threat. They’re really irritated. They’re really bothered by it. And they really think it’s illegitimate.

The Associated Press even has a story. Snerdley found it. I don’t read the AP. The AP is his responsibility. And he says, “Yeah, the AP, they’ve got this real long story,” he said, “Rush, it doesn’t matter. They spell your name right in it in every instance.” Yeah, I know. But the AP didn’t even know I had a book out. See, these people are the ones out of touch. They’re the ones not aware of what’s going on.

I’ve got two books in the current New York Times Top 10, the children’s list. One’s at number three, one’s at number five. And they go back and forth. The second book, The First Patriots is at number three. Brave Pilgrims is at number five, and Pilgrims goes back and forth to four and five. But we’ve got two books and the first book has been on the list now for seven months, and it was number one for half of that time. They don’t even know it. So I get the award and they’re shocked. A children’s book, Rush Limbaugh? And then they can’t believe that it isn’t political.

So AP has this long story today where they got hold of Robin Adelson, the Children’s Book Council, and they just demand for her to admit that the vote was fraudulent. They just demand that she tell them that the vote was something they couldn’t police and it really may not be legitimate. And she stands up for the vote. She explains how it all happens. She’s really a gutsy woman because her friends are coming after her on this. She’s holding firm, and she’s trying to maintain the integrity and dignity of the organization she leads, that she’s proud to lead.

The Children’s Book Council is all about children’s literacy. They’ve got a great objective and agenda. But the Drive-Bys are just obsessed with discrediting, ’cause they just can’t accept, A, they didn’t know it, B, they can’t accept that people are buying it, C, they can’t accept it would win an award. Now, I’m gonna tell you something, folks. I know that many of you are gonna be shouting back at your radio, “Why are you surprised? You’re the one that’s always telling us who these people are.” I’m not surprised, but I do continue to learn.

See, I know the left like every square inch of my again shrinking and yet glorious naked body. I know them better than they know themselves, as you well know. But I’ve been mentioning this to a lot of people lately. When you just stop and think about it in a dispassionate way, it is really stunning what average, ordinary American leftists or Democrats have been made to believe about

America’s conservatives, what they really believe. They really believe this three-eyed monster, all these stereotypes. And you can see the puzzlement on their face when you show up amongst ’em and you’re not that.

They are really confused. It’s not that they’re mad. They’re just genuinely confused. They really believe. Talk about the low-information crowd, this is it. They really believe what they’ve been told. They believe that over half of their fellow citizens are really subhuman, when you get right down to it, when you look at the things that they believe about conservatives.

So anything that upsets that applecart is difficult for them to process and comprehend. And so it can’t be real. Therefore there has to be fraud involved or there has to be cheating involved. And of course that’s just projection because that’s in large part how they arrange things for themselves, stacking the deck, you name it. (interruption) Well, Dawn just said, “Wait ’til they see the stuffed Libertys on the shelves.” There aren’t any stuffed Libertys on the shelves yet. But this whole Rush Revere series is just in its infancy here.

They have no idea. And I could announce every day what we’re gonna do and they would never know until it happened, unless, you know, some leftist media watchdog website happened to reprint what we said here. It’s amazing how disconnected they are from the mainstream and the bloodstream and the heartbeat of this country. It is genuinely amazing how removed they are. I know I shouldn’t be amazed, but I am.

Anyway, just a little sound bite to illustrate Drive-Bys all across the country reporting on Author of the Year. I mean, I knew it was gonna be sort of a big deal. I had no idea, folks. This just goes to show you, no matter how much you know, how much you learn, no matter how open you are to learning, as I am, the ability to be shocked and surprised never goes away.

And this award, children’s book Author of the Year has just discombobulated these people. They’re turning this into such a big story. We’ve got a little montage here of TV, a couple radio stations, just all across the country. This is a sample of, if you happen to be a Drive-By Media person or if you happen to be an average, ordinary American sampling media yesterday, you probably heard this.

NEAL BARTON: The winner of the Children’s Choice Book Award for Author of the Year is Rush Limbaugh!

JULIA DUNN: Rush Limbaugh receives another award and this time it’s thanks to fourth and fifth graders.

LARRY KANTER: Rush Limbaugh wins an award for his children’s book.

MARIANNE MCCLARY: Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has won a children’s book award. LimbaughÂ’s book, titled, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, won the Children’s Choice Book Award Author of the Year. The book has been a best seller.

RUSH: Can you imagine these leftists driving around hearing this, just in stunned shock? It’s fun. Now, there were six or seven other winners. They had winners in categories by age, you know, books for 6- and 7-year-olds and then first and second graders. I forget all the categories. There’s six or seven other winners. Have you heard about any of them? (interruption) You haven’t? I mean, you saw ’em listed in your AP story? (interruption) You haven’t? Yeah, you don’t know who they are, right?

There’s six or seven — well, it was funny because the one network that I’ve banned here and don’t mention anymore devoted almost their whole day yesterday to the concept that voter fraud was involved here and that there is no way that I would ever win Book of the Year in a legitimate vote among kids. And it wasn’t Book of the Year. It was Author of the Year. I didn’t win the award for Book of the Year. The woman who wrote the book Divergent won that. She won Book of the Year. These idiots don’t even know what they’re talking about. They’re so sent into orbit with all of this news.

So, anyway, life for me every day is an adult Christmas. I’ve been saying this for a long time. And this is another Christmas morning, winning this award, and the aftershock, it’s like an earthquake. Everywhere there’s a leftist. (interruption) Well, I know, wait ’til they find out teachers are letting it in the schools! Oh, wait ’til they find that out! And we’re not in any danger of them finding it out because I say it here, ’cause they’re not listening, folks, so don’t worry about that.

Now, this next story is a classic example of something I have been talking about for… well, forever, but in an intense way in the recent past.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Listen to this. You want to hear how funny this is, the AP story, this very, very long AP story on the potential illegitimate result that saw me win Author of the Year, Children’s Book Council, the potentially illegitimate result. Listen to this from the AP story.

Quote, “An individual voter can vote multiple times and does not need to provide a verifiable e-mail address or proof of his or her age.” You’re kidding? The AP is outraged over no voter ID in the children’s book awards? What, we have to have voter ID for the children’s book awards but not for political office? Hmm. Yeah. You know, here’s the thing. The left owns the awards industry, folks. This is the bottom line. They own it. They give themselves awards for things that people never see. This is famous for stuff that’s on NPR and PBS.

Dan Rather got an award for his fake National Guard story. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings arranged a dinner to give Rather an award to try to save Rather and liberalism and the credibility of journalism after that hoax. And people like me are not supposed to win awards. That whole industry is for themselves. And something went wrong. And what went wrong is that actual citizens can vote in the award I happened to win, not just leftists.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Just one more thing here on the book award. One more line from the AP story that Mr. Snerdley furnished me this morning. “A book –” talking about Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims “– a book that landed high on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com and other outlets despite limited mainstream coverage.” They are just so ticked off. What that means is, “Hey, nobody in the mainstream media even talked about his book, and yet he ends up on the top of the list. That’s not possible. How could that happen?”

“A book that landed high on the best-seller lists of Amazon.com and other outlets despite limited mainstream coverage.” They’re admitting they ignored it. They admit they don’t review it, and yet it’s there. And they’re perplexed. Now, to you and me it’s only common sense. You have the most popular, most listened to radio program in the country, to them it’s not mainstream. It’s so easy to tweak these people.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jennifer is in Floyd, Iowa. Hi, Jennifer. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Rush, congratulations on children’s book Author of the Year. We are so excited to hear about that. We’re just thrilled.

RUSH: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll bet you were. My brother said, “You gotta understand, you winning is like everybody in your audience winning.” It’s a big deal. And when the word spread about having won the award, I was hearing from all kinds of people. I know that the written word is a very powerful thing. I’ve gotten more feedback on this book award than anything in a long time, and I was telling my brother, David, about it, said he said that’s because everybody, they’re excited for you that this has happened. And I guess he’s got a point. So I thank you.

CALLER: I just had a comment to make, too. I just think that maybe the liberal media needs to talk to their own kids to find out what the popular books are out there.

RUSH: Yeah. I don’t quite know how to express this. There are very few things, that I say it that way, as a professional communicator and as highly trained specialist and as one who’s mastered brevity as the soul of wit. I generally don’t have any problem saying what I want to say in as few words as possible. And I don’t want to convey native, either, because I’m not. But despite all that, I still — and I shouldn’t be. I mean, we should just be able to see what our Millennials believe to understand how easy it is to propagandize people. But I guess in my case, I’m here every day, 15 hours a week. How many hundreds of thousands of hours have I been doing this radio program? For 25 years.

You don’t need a password to listen to this program. You don’t need a secret decoder. All you have to do is find one of 600 radio stations or go to any number of websites and turn on the radio and listen to it. It’s not a secret. It’s not shortwave. It’s not pirate radio. It’s out there. And it’s been the most listened to radio talk show in America for most of these 25 years, and yet, despite who I am every day on this program, the left has succeeded in turning me into a caricature and figure that I am nowhere near being, that millions of people really believe.

And it’s not just about me. It’s every conservative. And the things that they believe when you run into it, you see how shocked they are that you actually breathe air and don’t walk into a room and start beating people up. I mean, it’s a testament to see what these people have been convinced of, people on the left, what they have been made to believe. It’s a stunning thing, each and every day.