RUSH: There’s a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger. I have quoted his work here over the course of the many years that I have been hosting this program because, when I started, I was it. I was the only talk radio program out there. Now there’s all kinds of them. When I started this program, there were 125 radio stations that were doing talk as a format, and today there’s close to 2,000. It’s been that way for a while.

I mean, the growth rate was phenomenal once this show took off. You know, the media’s a copycat. National shows sprung up. My guest hosts got their own shows then local radio stations wanted to get in on the act. Conservative talk radio just took off. As such, it has become a “thing.” Conservative radio is its own entity. These people in the media treat it as a monolith, that everybody in it thinks does the same thing. And, of course, like all mistakes made about large groups of people, talk radio’s not monolithic. But Mr. Henninger here has a piece in his column at the Wall Street Journal. It’s actually from yesterday.

It’s called “Paul Ryan and the Trumpians.” “One day after the path cleared to the Ryan speakership, a sub-faction of conservatives said they were furious at . . . the Freedom Caucus!” the conservatives in the House. “YouÂ’ve heard of road rage? Politics now seems to have its own instant-anger phenomenon — radio rage. ThatÂ’s fine. The political raging on the radio is entertaining, a testament to the market system,” and I get lumped in with all this. This whole monolithic it thing. So whenever… It usually is aimed at me if there’s no name given. Who is “radio rage” in this country? And I have not been raging at the conservatives in the House!

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RUSH: No, all I’m saying… Look, here’s the thing: I’ve cited Daniel Henninger’s Wall Street Journal work I can’t tell you how many times, and always favorably because he frequently comes up with — and this is hard to do — a unique interpretation of events when there’s just a flood of media out there. Do you realize how hard it is to be original? I’m one of the few pulls it off, and Henninger is one of the others. But this thing with talk radio… These people in the conventional media just have such a distaste for it. They try to dismiss it, impugn it.

And, as I say, they treat it as a monolith. “Well, everybody in radio is X, Y, and Z. They’re raging, angry, all of this.” I’ve not talked about this much because it’s inside baseball, and I don’t want to come off as whining. But for crying out loud, again, 125 radio stations doing talk radio when I started; over 2,000 today. Even people that we think are our friends are now out there trying to impugn and castigate the whole genre as populated by Looney Toon radical extremist loudmouths, as exemplified by this pull quote from Henninger’s piece.

“One day after the path cleared to the Ryan speakership, a sub-faction of conservatives said they were furious at … the Freedom Caucus!” This is the House conservative members. “You’ve heard of road rage? Politics now seems to have its own instant-anger phenomenon — radio rage.” I wonder, has Mr. Henninger ever written of Obama’s rage at climate change? Obama’s rage over the lack of things done that he wants done, such as amnesty and so?

Why is it always us that are tarred and feathered with this dismissive, “Ah, they’re just a bunch of angry, out-of-control what have yous”? “Radio rage.” Now, Henninger writes, “That’s fine. The political raging on the radio is entertaining, a testament to the market system. The best reaction to the ‘sellout’ charge came from Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a Ryan supporter in the Freedom Caucus, who was asked if he feared the pitchforks back home. No, replied Mr. Buck, ‘I’m the guy with the pitchfork.’

So they lump everybody that does this all together, and they don’t name any names. All I can tell you is, I have never ripped the conservative caucus in the House. I have never ripped anybody in that caucus. I haven’t ripped anybody about what they’ve done with Ryan or any of that, as it relates specifically to the conservative caucus. It’s just… I don’t know. It’s just more of the same. It’s laziness. If you’re calling people out, call ’em out! You want to go and tar and feather an entire branch of the media, it kind of gives us an indication that you’re mad at us or you don’t like us or you’re afraid of us.

And I guarantee you when you talk about the journalists, it all revolves around amnesty.

All this anger and animus revolves around amnesty, because they want it and we don’t.