RUSH: So I’m at home yesterday afternoon, it’s about 5:25, and I get an e-mail from a friend saying, “The Five is preparing to do a whole segment on your National Review column today.” So I wrote back and I said, “Thanks for the heads up, that’s interesting,” but I was in the middle of a crisis with my Apple TV so I didn’t turn it on. Well, no, it wasn’t a crisis. I was just learning things about it. No, no, no, no, nothing’s wrong. I was right in the middle of something. When my mind gets focused on learning something new there’s nothing that can permeate. It would take an explosion, large explosion to distract me and I’m certainly not gonna take myself away from it. I knew that if anything big happened I’d hear about it later. And I didn’t hear anything about it all night, not a word. That was the only e-mail I got about it. So I said, “Well, if anything big happened Cookie will have it on the sound bite roster.” So I waited for the bite roster and it came in about 11:50, 10 minutes before the program, and, lo and behold, it’s a whole bunch of sound bites, the Five show on the Fox News Channel talking about the National Review column I had. This is the clip. They played a clip of me from the program yesterday to set it up. Of course they had excerpts from the column that they referenced, too, but this is how they got it all started.
RUSH ARCHIVE: …the single greatest consequence of the rise of conservative media has been the destruction of the left-wing media’s monopoly. … the dissolution of this monopoly is what’s caused all the partisanship in this country, because the media used to be able to hide their bias. They used to be able to hide the fact that they’re just hacks for the Democrat Party. … But now they can’t hide it.
RUSH: They have been forced and they have been forced to enter the competitive fray for the hearts and mind of the American people. Remember, they had a monopoly. They owned it. They didn’t have to do anything but go on the air. They didn’t have to compete against anybody other than themselves, and they didn’t treat each other as competitors. Everybody acknowledged. And, folks, this is a… I wouldn’t say it’s crucial but in terms of learning about these people, it’s a very important thing to remember.
Nobody in broadcast news even thought about ever beating Walter Cronkite. Nobody viewed themselves in competition with Cronkite. He was number one, and he was gonna be number one, and everybody was gonna be satisfied with whatever was left. Huntley and Brinkley were number two, and ABC, which was the latest of the fray… I think it was Howard K. Smith. And I may be forgetting their first anchor, but it was Howard K. Smith in this era, and those were the three. And they were not competitors. I mean, they were, but they weren’t.
I mean, Howard K. Smith was not trying to unseat Cronkite. Huntley and Brinkley were not trying to unseat Cronkite. That was unseemly. Cronkite was acknowledged as the “dean.” Cronkite was acknowledged as the incarnation of Edward R. Murrow and he was untouchable, and it was just accepted. That doesn’t exist on our side of the media. There is no such thing as that. It is hotly competitive as it should be. On the Drive-By side, particularly when they had their monopoly, there was no intra-competition.
Because they were all on the same team and they looked at themselves all as one entity and one industry working at three different places. And it didn’t matter if you missed Cronkite. It didn’t matter, watch Huntley-Brinkley. You wouldn’t see anything different. If you missed Huntley and Brinkley, go ahead and tune over to Howard K. Smith. And it didn’t matter if you missed Brinkley and you missed Cronkite. It didn’t matter because if you caught ABC, it was the same stuff, usually in the same order. They did not have to compete. There was no alternative.
There was nowhere for anybody to go, nowhere else in broadcast, on television, to get news. The 6:30 or seven o’clock, depending if you live in New York City, 6:30, seven p.m. evening news was church. It was where everybody first learned what had happened during that day, nationally and internationally. And there was nowhere else to go. And so they were able to mask themselves and hide and cloak who they really were under various agents of camouflage like objectivity or fairness or what have you.
There were always allegations of bias, as there was bias — and times they let it show. But they were able to deny it and did deny it. But, anyway, when that monopoly was blown to smithereens, that’s when they had to begin competing for audience. And that’s all the pretense was abandoned, and that’s when all the camouflage was thrown away, and they became the partisans they’ve always been. And because of the competitive nature, the fact that they used to own it by showing up, now they had to go out and earn it, that ticked them off and they’re still mad about it and that’s why I think the partisanship.
Anyway, that’s the clip they set up. Up first is Dana Perino on The Five reacting.
PERINO: Interesting to hear him say it that way because, having worked in it for so many years, you just had to factor it and you get used to it. And I remember I think was Bill Kristol one time when I was frustrated said, “Dana, you’re just gonna have to get over it because this is the way of the world.” I think that he’s right. You know, I remember when reporters started writing front-page analysis pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post. And, as a press secretary, I would say, “Well, wait. So are you the reporter calling me today or the analyst calling me today?” And the truth is there really was no difference. So I think that that has been exposed, and that’s a good thing.
RUSH: It’s exactly right. The editorial was on the front page. It always was, is the thing. It just was never labeled as such. But there was a… That’s all the Drive-By Media ever has been is opinion and agenda oriented. Here’s Tom Shillue after Perino says it’s a good thing, reporters have been exposed now as both analysts and opinion writers and reporters. Tom Shillue who is a Fill-In Host, added…
SHILLUE: Rush Limbaugh, God bless him, he’s so right — and his article in National Review this week is fantastic. I think that, you know, it was always a myth. It was always, the myth of the objective journalist. All my liberal friends all say, “You know, I liked the day when we would sit down to Walter Cronkite and have objective journalism,” and say, “Walter Cronkite was always a liberal.” All of them were always liberal. Now it’s out of the closet, it’s out in the open, and so they’ve been exposed. So that’s why, you know, they wear their politics more on their sleeve because we all know it now and I think it’s a good thing, because it was always a myth.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, there’s no question it’s a good thing. I’m just using it to explain why there is the literal hatred. CBS News is livid at Forbes magazine. Forbes magazine happened to put Vladimir Putin as the most powerful man in the world, and Obama’s number three, and CBS News is livid. They can’t understand it. Now, back in the monopoly days, they’d have been happy if a communist leader was the most powerful guy in the world. But now the jig’s up, and they want to why their communist guy is number three to some Russian.
It literally ticks them off. It’s funny.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, this next bite, this is Kirsten Powers, and I find this instructive, and I think you will, too.
POWERS: I thought it was interesting what Rush wrote. There was a couple things in it that I should have known about but I didn’t know. He talks about how in 1993, “while aboard Air Force One, President Clinton called my St. Louis affiliate to complain that I had three hours each day on the radio and that there was no truth detector responding to me.” At another point Harry Reid called Clear Channel and basically complained about him and wanted them to do something about things that Rush Limbaugh was saying. This is very heavy-handed behavior from the government. I’m liberal, and I can see that they’re liberal, but that’s not just the only problem. The problem is — is that they don’t even want there to be one Rush Limbaugh. It’s not enough that they’re already in control of everything. It’s, like, they literally can’t tolerate this one person!
RUSH: Now, she’s exactly right about that. But here’s the thing. It’s a dilemma for me. It’s 28 years, or we’re into our 28th year. The two incidents that she spoke of were big things when they happened. I mean, Bill Clinton… And they both happened out of the blue. Clinton is flying into St. Louis to dedicate some new federal program at the train station or something. I don’t know what it was. And as a promotion, he calls the morning show at our St. Louis affiliate, KMOX, and when he talking to them he starts complaining and whining about me, and this is what that sounded like…
CLINTON: After I get off the radio today with you, Rush Limbaugh will have three hours to say whatever he wants.
REPORTER: Would you like to leave a message?
CLINTON: And I won’t have any opportunity to respond, and there’s no truth detector. You won’t get on afterwards and say what was true and what wasn’t!
RUSH: Now, for crying out loud, it’s the president of the United States! He’s the most powerful man in the Free World — the most powerful man in the world. He’s got the bully pulpit, he can go to the White House Rose Garden. He can summon a network, whatever he wants, and say what he wants to. He’s on the radio here complaining that I have three hours to the radio to say whatever I want (imagine that), and that he won’t have any chance to respond. And that there’s no truth detector. And he’s chiding them for not getting on KMOX after my show and pointing out what I said that was true and what wasn’t.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just a couple of more brief moments on this. Again, it’s a teachable moment. This Bill Clinton call to KMOX in St. Louis was June 24th. That was actually 1994. And it was his second year in office. And it came out of the blue. And, you know, I’ve referenced it a number of times on this program. But here’s Kirsten Powers, who is on Fox. Now, there was no Fox in 1994. Fox wasn’t around ’til ’96. So I don’t know what she was doing in 1994, but she admitted she never heard of this. And there’s a reason she never heard about this, ’cause the Drive-By Media didn’t report it.
I’m kind of caught in the middle here because I… You know, it’s the kind of thing I think people who listen to this program do remember and will remember, but maybe not everybody was listening that day, so it’s… For me it’s a challenge to remind people, but then not overdo it. You know, I donÂ’t want people listening to say, “Come on, Rush! Move on. We know. We know.” Well, but not everybody does. She’s learning this for the first time, and she also didn’t know about the Harry Reid phony soldier letter.
And that was huge.
She only found out about it reading my column. So I’m sitting here saying to myself, “How many other people in the Drive-Bys donÂ’t?” And that happened long after Fox News had debuted. She was on Fox News, and they didn’t make a big deal of it, either. The Drive-Bys don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about the news that’s made on this program. They spend a lot of time trying to defame me but not on the news that’s made here. And I find it fascinating. Here’s a woman whose job is to be informed, stay informed.
And she didn’t know about particularly the Harry Reid incident, which ended up raising $4.2 million, and US senator trying to silence a private citizen. And it went on for a month, that story went on for a month, and she didn’t know about. Not ripping here. Don’t misunderstand. It’s fascinating — and I’m sure you who listen to this program think, “Wow, everybody’s gonna know about this!” And they don’t, because the Drive-Bys don’t want people to know the kind of success stories that happen here on the program. But she was fascinated.
And she’s right. The left doesn’t want there to be even one Rush Limbaugh. She’s more right than she knows. They don’t want debate, they don’t want compromise, they don’t want to work with the other side. They want to rid the playing field of all opposition. Here it is again. This is Clinton. It’s just 14 seconds, June 24th, 1994. (replaying of sound bite) Can you imagine? The president of the United States complaining about a guy on a radio from noon to three every day! And the Drive-Bys didn’t see fit to make that any kind of a story. Then they played another clip that I mentioned from the program. I think this, folks, is a crucial, crucial point. And I made it yesterday in my analysis of the election results Tuesday night, which was another Republican sweep just like 2010, just like 2014.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The Republican Party is still more inclined to work with Barack Obama and move his agenda forward — be it amnesty, be it the Export-Import Bank, be it climate change, whatever it happens to be — despite this resounding defeat for Obama and the Democrats and liberalism last night.
RUSH: The Republicans are still inclined to work with Obama and to move his agenda. Eric Bolling on The Five at Fox had his reaction.
BOLLING: He’s taking a shot, obviously, at some of the policy that the Republicans who control the House and the Senate are letting get through and hit the president’s desk and not get overruled a second time around. I see what he’s doing. He’s… Rush Limbaugh is staking out the conservative red-meat thread and he’s doing a great job of it.
RUSH: Conservative red meat? I’m just pointing out that the Republicans have got a winning market waiting to be joined, and they seem reluctant to do it. They seem more inclined to want to be seen as working with Obama. Now, Dana Perino. Now, Dana Perino is from… I guess on balance she’d have to be categorized as an establishment Republican. But she’s okay, don’t misunderstand. But she next… This is kind of a tortured, establishment Republican view of her reaction to what I said about the Republicans in Washington still being more inclined to work with Obama.
PERINO: There are going to be people that will say, “Climate change!” They look at the signs and think, “Okay, look, we want a cleaner environment, too. So we should do things that are smart. We should not kill our coal industry over it.” Today, for example, and this goes to his point, which is, you constantly find out other things. For example, China turns out for the last several years has been lying about its output of carbon emissions.
POWERS: (giggling)
PERINO: They’re actually way up over and above what they had actually reported. So next week, President Obama goes to Paris to have this consultation about a big climate change summit, and it’s based on lies, and I think that’s what Rush is saying, is: Why do the Republicans keep falling into this trap?
RUSH: Yeah, see, and she’s exactly right. Well, I don’t know that they’re falling for a trap. That would be the worst case. If they’re falling for a trap, the evidence is clear. They don’t need to fall for it now. The trap has been exposed. That’s what worries all of us, that they’re not falling for a trap, that they have willingly decided to help move Obama’s agenda because they don’t want to be called racists. You know, the average stuff.