RUSH: We have 15-year-old Michelle from San Ramon, California. Hi, Michelle. It’s great to have you here.
CALLER: Hi. Thank you for having me.
RUSH: It’s my pleasure. It’s great to have you with us here. This is great.
CALLER: So I was calling in to ask for any advice that you can give me on how I can convince my friends that Donald Trump is really not as bad as they think he is. I come from a very — my brother and I come from a very conservative town, but the kids around here are very liberal, and so they have been protesting and even some of our school administration influenced them to do that, and it’s frustrating because we go to school to learn, right, and people —
RUSH: No. No. No. No. No. Sadly, no. I mean, they may think that’s what’s happening. They’re actually being indoctrinated, Michelle, sadly, or propagandized, rather than being taught things. That may be a fine line. Let me ask you, are they the same age as you, 15, 16, around there?
RUSH: Well, what do they think of Trump?
CALLER: Well, they think he is a sexist, a lying person. They just absolutely hate him. They think very negatively about him, but for Hillary they absolutely love Hillary. They think she’s better than him, and it’s a little bit like — yeah, it’s frustrating.
RUSH: Well, look, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to change their minds right off the bat because you’re not dealing with people who have arrived at what they believe via a logical progression of thought. They’re not engaging in thinking, critical thinking. They’re simply, I think, regurgitating what they’ve heard from either their parents, teachers, what they see on social media, you know, whatever is bandied about there, and their emotion is just taken over.
And I also think that there’s a little peer pressure. They probably think that a majority of people their age think the same things and they want to be considered — I don’t know what the word is — in, hip, whatever, with that bunch. I think time will take care of some of this as it is revealed that Trump is not what they think. But even at that, depending how deeply propagandized your friends have been, they may never, ever admit to themselves that they’ve been wrong and that Trump is not what they’ve been told or who they think he is.
Hillary Clinton is, I think, a cult figure. I think the people that ended up supporting Hillary Clinton didn’t care what she was or who she was. It’s what she embodied and what the Clinton mystique was as it was passed down from parents to children and so forth. Because logically none of this makes any sense, as you are encountering. So you’re trying to confront all these people with logic, and I would maintain to you that they don’t have any where this is concerned. Is it causing you to lose friendships?
CALLER: Not right now, but I feel like if we talk about it more, it really — it really doesn’t — it doesn’t end well when we talk about it.
RUSH: No. It exacerbates the problem the more you talk about it. Well, how have you tried to convince them that what they think is not correct?
CALLER: Well, I’ve tried to tell them that — I mean, Hillary is not really as good as the media is portraying her. She also has a lot of faults. I mean, Trump has faults also, but —
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, our time is dwindling. I have a little bit of an idea for you here. Since Hillary’s out of the picture right now —
CALLER: Right.
Ask ’em, “Well, why do you believe that? Who’s telling you this stuff?” And then, as they give you examples, you will be able to say, “No, you’re wrong about that, that’s not true.” And you’ll be able to go to various sources to tell them that they’re wrong about it. I think maybe try to challenge what they believe are their credible information sources. Now, if it’s their parents, good luck with that, but that’s what I would do. Frankly, Michelle, I only do it as a fun exercise. I don’t do it to actually try to change their minds. I’ve been doing this 30 years. It doesn’t happen very much. But, look, hang on. I’ve gotta take a break here, and we have not enough time to continue, but don’t go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We now go back to Michelle in San Ramon, California. I was a little pressured with time there. I didn’t really give you enough time to answer my question. You’re still there, right, Michelle?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay, cool. Here’s the nut of what I wanted to tell you. I don’t think that you are going to succeed in changing their minds. I think the most fun you can have with this… You need to turn this into a fun project. You need to have the attitude here not of condescension, but understanding, that they’re misguided and have been ill-educated. Feel sorry for them, because they really deserve some sympathy here. They have been programmed to believe stuff that has them scared to death that isn’t true.
You could say that to ’em. “There’s no reason to be afraid of anything. We’re gonna be… The country’s gonna return to greatness. We’re gonna have an entirely different return path here to American prominence.” But then the way to get to them, if you want to — and I don’t think you’re gonna succeed, but it’s worth the effort — is to focus on why they believe what they believe. It’s gonna be the media or their parents, maybe to a certain extent teachers.
I would simply get them not on specifics of this campaign or anything, but just as a means of actually doing something smart, ask them to start challenging and questioning whatever they see in the media about things that they both believe and don’t believe. Inspire them to become curious and suspicious and not believing everything that they have been programmed to believe, and get them to focus on who’s told them what they believe and where they’ve seen it, where they’ve read it, and get them questioning that.
Because you could point out to them that they are in the minority. You can point out to them the humongous majority of Americans think the exact opposite the way they do. Now, I wanted to tell you a little story, too. By the way, to the rest of you, you know, there’s a new show on Fox News that may be the best show on Fox News. It’s hosted by Chatsworth Osborne Jr. Tucker Carlson has the new seven p.m. show on Fox and right now it may be the most interesting and engaging show.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: I wanted to tell you what I saw there, Michelle. You’re 15 and you’re in high school.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: This guy had a college senior from either Rutgers or Princeton — somewhere, I forget which — as his guest last week, and the subject was Trump and immigration. And this guy, this student, Michelle? He knew nothing. It was staggering how ignorant he was, but he didn’t know it. He thought he knew everything. And it was… He finally was asked a question. Well, I forget what his name was, but Tucker Carlson said, “Well, look, do you think that anybody who wants to come into the country should be allowed?” He said, “Yes. Anybody who wants to come to America should be allowed to come to America. That’s what America’s for.”
So no matter what Tucker Carlson tried — no matter what logic, the law, no matter what he tried — he could not disabuse this student of the idea that we can’t survive as a country doing that and that the country must have borders and that a country must determine who gets in and who does not. He thought that was the paramount example of discrimination and bigotry and all of these buzzwords these people use. I’m sure your 15-year-old friends throw them around, too, not even really knowing what they mean. So Carlson asked, “Let me ask you this: Do you put locks on your house, on your door?”
CALLER: Yes?
They will fall apart. Your friends would, too, if you had the desire to actually interact with them. There’s a third thing that’s gonna happen, Michelle, and that is the passage of time. If Trump succeeds, then Trump will be the change agent. Trump will be who it is that changes their names, and if Trump succeeds, and they don’t change their minds, then it’s hopeless. Then they don’t want to change their minds and they don’t want to think anything other than negative things.
That’s another thing, another way you might go after them, is ask, “Why do you want to be so mad all the time? Why do you want to be so angry? Why do you want to be so suspicious? Why do you want to be so down in the dumps? Why do you want to be so livid?” You know, try shaming them a little bit because, man, whatever you do, don’t act like they’re experts in anything. They’re not. It might lose you some friendships, but apparently that’s happening anyway.
CALLER: Okay. (silence)
RUSH: Well, you can talk now. (chuckles)
CALLER: Oh! (giggling) Yeah, thank you. I think it’s really helped me, opened a new way to try to have them think otherwise. And, yeah. So thank you so much.
RUSH: Well, live your life and be happy and let that be influential, too. Let it be infectious. Whatever you do, don’t let them take away your happiness. Don’t let them provoke you. You know, be bigger than that. Just walk around, laugh or smile at it. I know it’s… Michelle, I’ve been doing my program here for 29 years, and a large part of it has been trying to convince the very people you’ve called me about that they’re wrong about how they see things. And for everybody I’ve converted, there are a whole lot of more I haven’t, but I look at every one as a success.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And they’re not. And so… Anyway, let me ask: Would you like a brand-new iPhone 7 or 7 Plus? Or I should ask, do your parents let you have a phone? Do you have a phone?
CALLER: I do not have a phone right now.
RUSH: Oh, I could be getting in trouble here then.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Well, you know what? Ask your parents if you can have a new iPhone —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And if you can, then you tell Mr. Snerdley and then we’ll fix you up. He will find out what carrier and all that —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: — ’cause I don’t want to give you a phone if your parents don’t want you to have one yet.
CALLER: Mmm-Hmm. (background talking)
RUSH: Do I hear some conversation going on in the background?
CALLER: They said I’m okay with the phone.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm?
RUSH: Do you know what iPhones sizes are? Do you know what an iPhone 7 with versus 7 Plus — the small size versus the big size — is?
CALLER: Uh, iPhone 7.
RUSH: Yeah, but you want the Plus or the regular. The 4.7-inch screen or the 5.5-inch?
CALLER: Oh. The regular one.
RUSH: The 4.7-inch.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Okay. All right. Now, I’m gonna put you on hold. Mr. Snerdley, find out what the cell carrier is. You’ll have to ask your parents what cell phone carrier company you use, and then we’ll take care of it. And make sure he gets your address, okay?
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: And stay in touch with us, Michelle, so we can find out how your little project goes here.
CALLER: Okay. Thank you so much.
RUSH: That’s Michelle from San Ramon, California. I’m glad her parents were there. You know, some parents don’t want their kids to have a phone. What are you smirking at in there? (interruption) What do you mean high school? Did your daughters not have phones when they were in high school? They did? Oh, you can’t believe she doesn’t have one. Well, there could be any number of reasons. That’s why you gotta be real careful here. I have to be very, very sensitive. If her parents, for whatever reason don’t want her to have one, but they said it’s okay now.
Here’s Cindy, Cindy in Jefferson City, capital of Missouri, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you today.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I was just calling, I feel bad for that young girl that was on the phone a while ago. I was a third grade teacher for many, many years, and whenever it was time to teach history, we would always put together a book on past presidents. And I would say, “Okay, so who is our president now?” Of course the last eight years they would say Barack Obama. And kids, a lot of them, would boo.
I taught in a private school. We were mostly a conservative community. And I would say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, you cannot boo, because this is the president of our United States, and you need to show him, or someday maybe her, respect for the office of the presidency. This is our leader. And whether you agree with him or her or not, you need to be respectful. And booing is not respectful.”
RUSH: Well, yeah, you know, you’ve raised an interesting point here, which is this. And I think this is what this election is about. We do not have imperial leaders. We do not have distant monarchs whom we are required to bow and curtsy to.
CALLER: Right.
Like the Hamilton cast the other night. I don’t really have a problem ’cause I know who these people are, I know that they’re scared to death. I know these leftists with scared and they oppose and that they’re inflexible. They’re the bigots and they’re the intolerant ones. There is a way for them, if they wanted to convey a message to the new administration, there was a way to do it that they probably could have been hailed and applauded, but doing it the way —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — they did it totally backfired because it’s what you say, it didn’t show respect, it seemed taking advantage of an opportunity and so forth. And it wasn’t effective.
CALLER: Right. I agree. I agree 100 percent.
RUSH: But I don’t think we live in a place where we don’t want people to be able to say when they disagree with the president or incoming administration, do we?
CALLER: Well, no, what I would tell them is if you don’t agree with what your president is doing, the great thing about our country is in four years you have the opportunity to go and vote. I teach them that when they’re 18 that was their civic responsibility —
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: — to go and vote and you can change it.
RUSH: And you can do a lot things in the ensuing four years waiting to vote. You can drum up support or opposition, whatever you want to do, but —
CALLER: Yeah. Exactly. But I think these kids, these protesters and so forth, they’ve just never been taught respect, respect for people, even. And the ironic thing is they think conservatives don’t respect people.
RUSH: Oh, I know. That’s the great irony here. They are actually portraying, they are exhibiting the despicable behavior they assign to us. They are demonstrating intolerance, they are demonstrating bigotry. Most importantly, they are demonstrating pure ignorance. Liberalism has become a special kind of stupid, and it’s on full display now, which I think ultimately has the potential to be a good thing. The more people figure this out, the more people that see it and are turned off by it, the more people who find it objectionable, the more people who ask, “Gee, what kind of people,” the better off we’re gonna be.
But in their frustration at having lost, they’ve thrown away the camouflage now. They’ve gotten rid of the mask, and they can’t help themselves. And they are exposing who they really are every day now in random acts of special kind of stupid, to which and from which we certainly can benefit. I mean, I’m all for as many people as possible seeing who they are, but I know what you were doing with your class, you know, no booing, we must respect the president. I totally agree with that.
I’m not disagreeing with what you did there, but I do think that we don’t want to get to the point where people who disagree, dissent, are not allowed to say so. It’s just from their standpoint if they’re gonna do it, you want to be effective when you do it and the cast of Hamilton was not effective. They didn’t rally anybody to anti-Trump and anti-Pence who wasn’t already there, and in fact they may have hurt their own cause with the way they chose to do this. Anyway, I appreciate it. Oh, oh, oh, Cindy would you like a brand-new iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus?
CALLER: I would love one.
RUSH: I thought you might. Do you know which one you want?
CALLER: The Plus would be great.
RUSH: The Plus. What carrier are you on?
CALLER: AT&T.
RUSH: Ho-ho right. Do you have a color preference?
CALLER: No. Any one’s fine. I guess the shiny black is fine.
RUSH: Black is fine? Here are the colors. There is black, rose gold, gold, and silver. The last three have a white front. The other two are black.
CALLER: Black is fine.
RUSH: Okay. Then you shall have it. Hang on. Mr. Snerdley will get your address.
RUSH: Here’s Margaret, Pocatello, Idaho. Great to have with you, Margaret. Hi.
CALLER: Hello! So great to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you. Same here.
CALLER: So, first of all, I just want to let you know that I have come from four generations of Rush. I’m 29 years old, so I’ve heard you since the beginning.
RUSH: Well, thank you.
CALLER: Second of all, I have three children and be my oldest is six years old and she’s in kindergarten, and my husband and I had talked to her about the election and that we voted for Trump. And a few days after the election she comes home from school and informed me that she voted for Hillary, and so it makes me question what’s going on at this school, or is it possibly a future rebellious teen I have to look forward to? (giggles) I’m not exactly sure, but I hold here in my currently nicotine-stained fingers one of your books, and we are about to start reading that with her, and we’re very excited to give her a proper education and share what it’s about to be a true patriot.
RUSH: Well, God bless you. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Well, thank you.
RUSH: You want to know what to do about the kindergarten teacher?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You’re afraid that the kindergarten teacher is already brainwashing the kids in the school? Is that what…?
CALLER: Yes. I like to call it “libwashed,” but yes.
RUSH: Yeah. You know, this remains one of the toughest things for a parent to confront.
CALLER: Oh, man, that’s the truth.
RUSH: How to deal with this, because you don’t want your kid targeted.
RUSH: — by the teacher, by the administration.
CALLER: I don’t want to be blacklisted.
RUSH: You don’t want grade punishment that’s undeserved, yet you don’t want them countermanding everything you’re trying to teach your kid at home.
CALLER: Yeah, yeah. And I thought I at least had, you know —
RUSH: So look —
CALLER: — an elementary school of normal teachers.
RUSH: Margaret, let me interrupt you. I’m out of sometime here and there’s not enough time to tell you what I want to tell you. Can we call you back tomorrow?
CALLER: That’d be awesome!
RUSH: Okay. Cool. Then if you hang on here, Mr. Snerdley will get your phone number, we’ll call you back tomorrow at a good time for you, because this is a question and answer that I hope will be of value to a lot of people out there over —
CALLER: Yes. Thanks, Rush. I appreciate it.
RUSH: — what to do about a school that’s messing with everything you’re trying to teach your kids. So I appreciate that. I don’t want to have just give you a 10-seconds answer and hope that you get it. So we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
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