RUSH: To the phones we go, folks. This is Nathan in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, Nathan, I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you with us, and hello, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Very well. Thank you.

CALLER: Hey, thanks for having me. I just want to say, first of all, I’m a registered independent. I don’t agree with everything you say, but I really respect you because I think you always listen to the other side and respect them. So thank you for that.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

CALLER: I wanted to bring up Saturday Night Live. Did you watch it?

RUSH: No, I didn’t. I haven’t seen Saturday Night Live in probably ten years, but I heard about it. I may as well have seen it because I’ve seen a couple of the clips and so I know about what happened there, yeah.

CALLER: You know what? I don’t really… I haven’t cared for it for probably three years or so but… Oh, by the way, I’m a Rush Baby. I’ve been listening to you since (pause) I can even remember. (laughing)

RUSH: That would explain why, even though you’re an independent, you agree with most everything you hear. If you’re a Rush Baby, that’s even better.

CALLER: Anyways. So, yes, Saturday Night Live. I just happened to be at a friend’s house when Hillary Clinton came on. The first thing she was on, she didn’t… (call waiting clicking) They didn’t really… (call waiting clicking) Someone else is calling me; I apologize. They didn’t really dig in to her. They were very nice to her, and they didn’t attack her on. You know, it was really petty. It was like, “Oh, you know, you did that, but you could have did it sooner! Ha-ha-ha.” It wasn’t funny.

RUSH: Hillary is on her rehab tour. Hillary is really in bad shape here in terms of image and PR, and she’s on a rehab tour, an image repair tour. I don’t know how many people, in order to repair their image would go to Saturday Night Live, but she did. And I think it tells you a lot about somebody wants to repair their image and does Saturday Night Live. But NBC’s in the tank for her, Nathan. And you saw it. Now, look, Nathan, take your call here; hold on and come back. I’ve gotta break here. We’ll be back here in a couple minutes. You stay with us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’ll go back now to Nathan in Columbus. Were you able to answer that call you had coming in while we were chatting?

CALLER: I was able to send it to voice mail. I’m sorry about that.

RUSH: That is no problem. I understand. We are very flexible here, Nathan. If you have a call coming in you can’t control that. Okay, you have some uninterrupted time here. You were watching Saturday Night Live, you saw Hillary and you saw her basically be treated differently than anybody else they treat, right?

CALLER: Let me tell you, Rush, what I saw later, and I will try to speak from this generation’s perspective, not speaking for others, but what I just see with my friends and coworkers and everyone my age. So they later went on, they made a little bit of fun of the other Democratic candidates, saying that no one even knows who they are, Hillary already won, and that’s it, you know, they kind of left it at that. And it’s really funny to me because some of these people who really latch on to Hillary just refuse to acknowledge Bernie Sanders, which I will get out of the way right now, I do not supporter Bernie Sanders, I don’t support socialism.

But I will tell you the people my age really like, which you would think, ’cause this does tie into Donald Trump, too. They like this take down corporate America idea. Bernie Sanders has it, Donald Trump has it, but Donald Trump is just so abrasive, and that’s what people don’t like. But when they gave the candidacy to Hillary on Saturday Night Live, that was the funniest part of the whole thing to me. They are just refusing to believe that she’s not gonna get it.

RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you why that is. You know, the fact remains that NBC corporately and politically is in the tank for Hillary, so that’s all you really need to know. I mean, they want Hillary to win. They’re invested in Hillary winning, in more ways than one. It’s not just that they like her. I mean, there are political and business reasons that they’re invested. NBC and its related business partners have donated a lot to the Clinton Crime Family Foundation, so they’ve already paid for policy considerations after Hillary is elected.

What I find, you say they’re laughing and pretending Bernie Sanders doesn’t exist, and the reason for that, Nathan, is that nobody thinks that Bernie Sanders is gonna get close to the Democrat nomination. No matter what happens in these primaries, no matter how big his crowds, no matter how much enthusiasm, it just isn’t gonna happen. They’re not gonna let it happen. The Democrat Party’s not gonna let this guy anywhere near the nomination because he means his anti-corporate rants. Hillary doesn’t. Hillary is just doing her little populist rants to try to make people think she’s on their side on these issues, but she’s really not. They are some of her biggest donors. She travels and parties and vacations with these people. They’re buddies. They’re fellow travelers. Bernie Sanders really means it when he says he wants to do them great harm and cut ’em down to size.

CALLER: What happened to Ron Paul in 2012, then? Because I see a mirror situation right now with parties, with what happened to each of these candidates, because —

RUSH: There just aren’t enough people that favor the legalization of marijuana to elect a Libertarian president.

CALLER: See, we’re in a state where it’s a sensitive issue ’cause we’re voting on that in November.

RUSH: Well, yeah, you’re gonna vote on it, but you can’t win the presidency alone in Colorado and Ohio. You just can’t do it. Ron Paul was never gonna get the nomination. He was never gonna be elected. Look at the numbers. Libertarian candidates poll at one to two percent in real presidential campaigns. It was never, never gonna happen. I understand the Libertarian attachment to Ron Paul, believe me, I do. What interests me more, Nathan, you’re 24 years old, you said, and if you can tell me here, I know just the fact that I’m asking the question might taint your answer. I hope it doesn’t. There’s no wrong answer here. But you’re 24. You weren’t old enough to really be paying enough attention during the Clinton nineties to have an opinion of them based on that. So what I want to know, what do you really think of Hillary Clinton when you see her on TV? When you hear her talk about whatever it is she talks about, what is your impression of Hillary Clinton, not just as a candidate, just period?

CALLER: Now I’m gonna sound like a politician ’cause I’m generalizing, but I have the same opinion on her that I have Marco Rubio, with which sounds really out there. But when you get up there in front of me and you start saying words very robotically, you know, someone made those words for her, someone made those words for all these politicians and when you just get up there and recite them, that is not what I want to see, and that’s not what I will vote on. And if no one like Donald Trump or Carly Fiorina existed on the Republican side the most appealing candidate right now for me would be Bernie Sanders, because like you said, he’s speaking the truth of what he believes —

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: — despite how wrong —

RUSH: Okay, speaking the truth of what he believes. Does it matter that he’s wrong? Does it matter that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about even though he believes it?

CALLER: It does. It does.

RUSH: Then why are you still drawn to it?

CALLER: I’m not drawn to Bernie Sanders. I’m drawn to that honesty. I mean, I don’t see Hillary Clinton as an honest person.

RUSH: Well, she’s not, so that’s good eyes on your part. She’s not. What about Trump? Trump’s telling you exactly what he thinks, man.

CALLER: No, he is very honest, but I do truly believe, I mean, when it comes to — I know this is a big criticism of him but I’m totally on board with it, you know, foreign policy stuff, there’s a level of maturity missing from Donald Trump that he needs to grasp in order to appeal to everyone. He just doesn’t have it.

RUSH: He doesn’t have a sense of maturity overall or just on foreign policy?

CALLER: I mean, his general persona —

RUSH: General persona —

CALLER: — the way he acts. I’ll tell you, I haven’t even got this out there yet, I, right now, like Fiorina, because, to me, I don’t care about gender, I don’t care about any of that stuff, she is very honest and she is very articulate and elegant and intelligent. Like she has the whole package to me. Donald Trump is missing that likability.

RUSH: Okay, let me tell you what I’m hearing. And again, I don’t want you to take this personally ’cause it’s not an attack. I’m just sharing with you my observation. Your assessments of these candidates are based on one — nothing wrong with this — your feelings, and number two, your assessment of how they come across. When it comes to what they actually are saying, it may not even matter to you, is what I’m hearing, it’s just how they say it, how they appear saying it, do they seem honest, are they honest, do they seem competent, mature, or what have you, and that seems to be the things about these people you notice the most.

CALLER: That’s my criticisms of them. That’s not what I would act on, though. I mean, that’s what I observed about them. When it comes down to it and I go to vote, it’s gonna be more than just — it’s not American Idol, it’s not do I like ’em.

RUSH: All right. In that case, well, we’ll see, depending on who you have a chance to vote for when the time comes. But you’re 24. Does Hillary’s age bother you at all? I mean, young people tend to look at people Hillary’s age and think they’re not hip or cool anymore, they don’t understand young people anymore, and they’re just, you know, kind of out of it. I don’t mean to be asking you leading questions. I’m just trying to get more understanding here of how you interpret her.

CALLER: No, I mean, I don’t think — first of all, I don’t think she’s hip or cool. I think she may try to be, but age is a concern to a degree, but when it comes to something I truly believe in, if age was a really big concern, I would have never been a supporter of Ron Paul.

RUSH: Right. Okay. Well, that makes sense. That’s true ’cause he is ancient. You’re right about that. (laughing) Sorry, I couldn’t help it. That’s just who I am. Nathan, I appreciate the call. I really do. Thank you for spending so much time here today. Quick time-out. We’ll be back with — oh, wait, Nathan, hang on just a second. Nathan, are you still there?

CALLER: Yeah, I am.

RUSH: Do you have a — how can I ask this? Well, I’d like to give you an iPhone, but I don’t know what kind of phone you have now. I don’t even know if you have a phone, if you have a phone account.

CALLER: I have an iPhone.

RUSH: What kind of iPhone do you have?

CALLER: The 6.

RUSH: The 6 or the 6 Plus?

CALLER: Just a 6.

RUSH: Just the 6. Do you like it?

CALLER: It’s all right. It’s not my favorite. (laughing)

RUSH: All right. I’ll tell you what, then. I’m gonna send you an iPhone 6S. Are you AT&T or Verizon? I need to know that first.

CALLER: I’m Verizon.

RUSH: Verizon. You hang on here. Mr. Snerdley will get your address and we’ll get it out to you. Do you have a color preference? I don’t know if I can match it, but I’ll check. Do you have a color preference on your iPhone 6S?

CALLER: The black one, if possible.

RUSH: The black one, space gray. Fine. I’m sure —

CALLER: Hey, Rush —

RUSH: — we’ll find one in there.

CALLER: Could I do something that would mean even more to me than that? Can I say happy birthday to my dad? It’s his birthday today.

RUSH: Oh, sure, you want your dad to have it?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: You want to say happy birthday to your dad? Okay, sure.

CALLER: I want to say happy birthday to my dad, but I want the phone.

RUSH: All right, well you just did. What’s his first name?

CALLER: His name is Dave.

RUSH: Name is Dave.

CALLER: Dave Goldsmith.

RUSH: Dave Goldsmith. Okay, now, hang on here, ’cause the 6S, it looks just like your 6, but it is the most significant upgrade Apple has ever released. There isn’t a phone in the world in its league any way you cut it.

CALLER: Well, I appreciate it.

RUSH: Hang on, Nathan, do not go away so Mr. Snerdley can get your address.