RUSH: Well, it looks like the Russians found a way to hack the second half of the Super Bowl. Not kidding, folks. The left, if you know where to look, if you know how to read between the lines before the game, you can see that the left had all kinds of stuff tied up in this game. They wanted the Patriots to lose. They didn’t want Brady to be the MVP because Brady and Belichick and Kraft are so tied to Trump.

And I’m telling you at halftime of that game last night they thought it was nine o’clock on election night, and Hillary Clinton was still gonna win in a landslide, and the Atlanta Falcons are up 28-3 over the New England Patriots, and they’re starting to celebrate. They’re thinking they’re gonna get vindication, that Trump’s gonna be embarrassed, and that his stars on the Patriots are gonna be humiliated by the team from Atlanta.

And then they had to sit there and watch history repeat itself. In fact, you should have seen it over at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog at halftime: Patriots have 1% chance of winning the game. Halfway through the third quarter, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight after the Patriots had to punt and they were still down 28-3 midway through the third quarter: Patriots’ chance of winning now down to one half of 1%.

And the same liberals who thought Hillary had it in the bag on election night thought that Trump was gonna be eating excrement and the Patriots were gonna be disappointing Trump and Trump disappointed them and it was gonna be almost — I mean, it wasn’t gonna salve the election defeat, but it was gonna be a little bit of payback. And, instead, on the pregame show during the interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump had predicted the Patriots to win by eight.

I had predicted a Patriots win, and in parentheses, I said, and it could be a rout, and in the second half it was a rout, and they’re just beside themselves. It doesn’t seem that Trump can lose. It doesn’t seem that anything they do works.

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RUSH: The Super Bowl — remember now, folks, everything in America has been politicized. If you doubt me, look at the advertising in the Super Bowl. You had Audi and a couple of other outfits that were devoted to political issues in order to sell their products — a major, major, major miscalculation.

And I know what happens; the media buyers and the creative people at both these companies and the advertising agencies are recent college graduates, mainly women, who are dyed-in-the-wool leftists and have their sway over the media buys and the direction of the ad campaign and so forth and so on. And I think it’s all gonna come back and bite these people in the end.

But, you don’t even have to go to the advertising to find the politicization of the Super Bowl, because if you knew where to look, and if you knew what to watch, even before the game you knew that many on the left were hoping for a New England Patriots defeat. They were hoping the Atlanta Falcons would wipe ’em out, because the Patriots are reputedly and reportedly closely tied to the president of the United States. Tom Brady and Trump are supposedly good friends. Well, I know that they are. Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots and Trump, good friends, I know that they are.

Belichick wrote Trump a congratulatory letter after Trump won the election and wrote admiringly of his steadfastness, his stick-to-itiveness, his persistence, and his unwillingness to give up. And so there was a lot riding on this for the left. For millions of football hating leftists, and they are out there, the Super Bowl was to serve as a massive political cleansing. Political justice would be served. An election might not be reversed, but a statement would be made that the country had recognized it had made a mistake. The Patriots and Trump, who really aren’t patriots, right, according to the left, the Patriots and therefore Trump would be crushed.

And do you know why? Because they deserved it. Why did the Patriots deserve to be crushed and Trump with them? Because their winning is an offense. There isn’t supposed to be this kind of dominance in new America, not Patriot kind of dominance. There isn’t supposed to be this kind of heroism from the majority in America anymore. But they weren’t gonna leave it strictly to the Atlanta Falcons.

Now, there was eager anticipation for the halftime show of the noted song stylist Lady Gaga, about whom it was said prior to the game that she was going to diss Trump with a bunch of drones from high atop NRG Stadium in Houston. And she was gonna tell the world what the left really thought of all of this. And she was gonna do it in the midst of the halftime show in song and in dance, and they were eagerly and breathlessly waiting.

And Lady Gaga, in pre-Super Bowl interviews, did not disabuse them of the notion that she was locked and loaded and that she was gonna come out firing and that she was gonna let Trump have it. And the left was going to have a halftime orgasm because they were going to be able to pretend that they actually didn’t lose. The Super Bowl, the most watched television event in the world, was going to feature Trump’s team losing and therefore Trump losing and Lady Gaga, well-known leftist song stylist, was going to smash Trump in the ground in the middle of the halftime show.

And none of it happened. In fact, the parallels are eerie. Nine o’clock on election night, the Clinton campaign still thought that they were going to win in a landslide. Nine o’clock last night in the Super Bowl, the Patriots were down 28-3 and looked inept. Brady’s passes were off target. When they were on target, his receivers couldn’t hold the ball. He was sacked twice. It doesn’t happen. The Patriots were playing a style of football that people haven’t seen them play.

People on the left were excited, thinking that their dreams were gonna come true, that Brady was not only gonna lose, he was gonna look silly in the process because, by extension, Trump was going to look like the fool, because Trump had gone out on a limb, making it known to everybody that he and the Patriots bigwigs are best buddies, inseparably good friends. And so when bad happens to the Patriots, the thing you have to remember is, in the final analysis, when everything’s balanced out, nothing bad happens to patriots, with a capital P or not.

And so they were excited, and so people on the left who don’t even understand football and just hate it cause it’s too violent and ’cause there’s winners and ’cause there’s losers. The young snowflakes that populate America’s college campuses, who care not a whit about the game and actually think it should not be played because it’s so mean, it’s so violent and people lose, were watching in eager anticipation for Donald Trump to take it on the chin by virtue of the New England Patriots being wiped out.

And at halftime, it was just like election night. But then, about halfway through the third quarter, everything changed. You know when I knew, folks? Snerdley, you didn’t watch. Is that right? You did not watch this? You missed the Fox pregame show from six to 6:30. You missed something that I’m going to tell you that happened, and you’re not gonna believe it. Well, you’ll believe it.

Fox, the broadcast network, obviously intent on establishing deep contact with patriotic Americans, Fox wasn’t going to be the architect or author of any division. They may not be able to control Gaga, they may not be able to control the outcome of the game, but the things they were in control of, there wasn’t going to be any promotion of divisive issues. And yet who did they bring out to read the preamble of the Declaration of Independence? None other than noted communist, Harry Belafonte.

I’m sitting there watching this, and they bring out Harry Belafonte, and I said, “What in the world is this?” Of all people, Harry Belafonte thinks Cuba is paradise on earth. Harry Belafonte is part of the Black Lives Matter organization, which this judge in Seattle, by the way, is very sympathetic to, by the way. And Harry Belafonte starts reading. This guy is a bigoted hatemonger with a rich history of singing the praises of communism and bananas, communist dictators.

And somehow somebody thought this would help the country unify after Donald Trump supposedly divided it. And so they brought Belafonte out. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I expected him to change the words or to say he thought this was full of it. I thought, what a risk. The only saving grace was it was on tape. And then, after reading the preamble, he said, “In 1974, the great American artist Johnny Cash wrote of Our Ragged Old Flag, ragged and old from the conflict and the suffering that come from our fight for freedom, pride in our flag, freedom’s symbol should now inspire us to keep striving to become a more perfect union,” playing a Johnny Cash tune, Ragged Old Flag.

Yeah, because no one believes more deeply or represents more fully unity and freedom than Harry Belafonte. That was sarcasm, for those of you in Rio Linda. The left began to realize it might not all work out the way they wanted when Lady Gaga did not utter a single word that could be even imagined or construed as critical of Donald Trump. (interruption) Who? No, Jeremiah Wright was not on the show.

But Lady Gaga, you have to say, it was a great halftime performance, and I, because of my hearing limitations, I’m not up to speed on 30-year-old song stylist superiors, but everything I’m reading about her performance today says she has reignited her career. I didn’t know that it was being flushed.

And it was. It was overwhelmingly talented. It was well choreographed, and it was brought off without a hitch. It was really — and, of course, everybody was waiting, you know, for somewhere in the middle, “Trump sucks,” something like that. Didn’t happen. And then the third quarter started, and you could sense it wasn’t to be.

The third quarter, when the Patriots’ comeback began, the left realized it wasn’t to be. Trump was not going to be humiliated. The Patriots were not gonna get creamed. Trump was not gonna be embarrassed. They were not going to be able to relive election night as a victory because the Patriots were coming back.

And the Falcons — now, I’m gonna get in trouble for this, but I’m the mayor of Realville, and I saw all of the reaction after the game. “Greatest game ever. Oh, my God, I’ve never seen, greatest comeback ever, greatest game ever.” I’m sorry. It was a fun game to watch, and the Patriots were overwhelming in coming back.

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RUSH: As I said on Friday during my Super Bowl prediction, I pointed out that the one thing nobody can predict, and therefore you cannot account for, is momentum. It is impossible. It’s impossible to predict who’s gonna come out with the momentum, who’s got it when the game starts. It’s impossible to predict when it’s gonna shift and why.

NFL coaches get heart attacks and pull their hair out when momentum shifts. If they could control momentum shifts, they would never be fired, they would never lose their jobs. It’s one of the intangibles that nobody can identify. But clearly the momentum shifted. I think I know when the momentum shifted in this the game, the first big momentum shift. But you just can’t make it happen.

Atlanta had it the first half, and then it shifted. And then things that shouldn’t happen happened, and we had a great comeback. Hollywood could not have written that game and this year and tied it to current events any better than reality did. But I have a problem with the — yeah, depends on how you define “great game.”

I don’t know what happened to the Atlanta Falcons in the second half. I don’t know. It looked to me like they went into a prevent offense except that they didn’t. A prevent offensive meaning run out the clock, don’t take any risks, think you got a big enough lead, and sit on it for the entire second half. The prevent defense is the term that’s actually used, and that’s a defense that will give up yards and yards and yards but then tighten and not allow a touchdown, and the prevent defense prevents victory.

It’s amazing, the prevent defense is never seldom successful. And I’ve coined the term “prevent offense” to describe an offense that thinks they’ve got the game in the bag and stops taking risks and stops being aggressive and tries to sit on a lead and run out the clock, except the play calling for the Falcons, particularly in the fourth quarter, I don’t understand it.

So, folks, I don’t know if it was just momentum. I don’t know if the Falcons were gassed. I don’t know if they were just out of gas. I don’t know if they choked. But blowing a 23-point in the Super Bowl — I felt kind of like when the Cincinnati Bengals blew a playoff game to the Steelers, committing 30 yards of penalties during dead ball-time. Now, this was not that, they didn’t commit any dead ball penalties, there was not any bad sportsmanship, there was nothing like that, like the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh game.

I sent people a note. In the third quarter when the Patriots scored, I said, “This game is over. I can already tell you, this team, the Falcons, are doing dumb stuff.” And I had people write me back, “Don’t jinx it, don’t jinx, if you start saying that, it’s over, the Falcons are gonna –” I said, “No, it’s not, it is over.” Middle of third quarter. I have a witness. My wife, a Patriots fan, who nearly left the room in anger at me when I said that for jinxing the game, and she saw sought another TV to watch the rest of it, and then told me, “Don’t say anymore,” and as the game progressed, “Don’t be mad, babe, I was right.” But I’m the husband, so really not right.

Here’s Robert, Waldorf, Maryland, great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: How you hitting ’em, Rush?

RUSH: Very good, sir, thank you.

CALLER: That’s what I hear. Look, I’ve been sitting here last week, and I watched this sports media. This morning I thought they were gonna accuse the Russians and Trump of spiking the Atlanta Falcons with Gatorade at halftime, they’ve been flipping out so bad. Last week I sat and watched them. These guys have blatantly taken off their masks. You said the sports media, I heard you say the sports media is no different than the other ones. I mean, they flat-out said the reason they couldn’t stand the Patriots is because they have too many white players, that white guys ain’t supposed to be out on the field —

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Where did you hear that? Who said that?

CALLER: There’s two shows on ESPN A Conversation with Colin Cowherd, one of them was, and me and my wife sat here and we watched this and I just looked at her —

RUSH: Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did somebody actually say the Patriots couldn’t or shouldn’t win ’cause they got too many white guys?

CALLER: The reason that they despise and hate the Patriots is because of the amount of white guys that they have on the field.

RUSH: Well, I don’t know.

CALLER: They’re not supposed to be —

RUSH: Star quarterback, got those two little white wide receivers. I could see that could tick off some sports leftist media types. I wish I’d heard that when it happened. I didn’t know about it. Thanks for the call out there, Robert.

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RUSH: No, no. I had heard it. I’d read it myself. I didn’t even give it the honor of mentioning it, but there’s sports Drive-Bys all over the place that were commenting on the racial makeup of the Patriots at skill positions and how that doesn’t look like the NFL anymore, that’s not right.

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RUSH: I looked something up here during the break, top of the hour. NBC Sports a few months ago: “Bill Belichick Has the NFL’s Least Diverse Coaching Staff.” That was the NBC Sports blog, ProFootballTalk. The piece was back in July. There have been complaints about the Patriots being too white since 2012, maybe even earlier. So I… Look, I’ve heard this. I’ve heard it about the wide receivers for the Patriots, the fact that the skill-set guys are white on the Patriots when they’re not on most of the other teams. And it’s the sports media making these comments. It’s not players.

It’s the sports media, which is every bit as liberal as their brethren in the Drive-By news media. And they may even be worse. They may actually be even worse in terms of liberalism and bias and just throwing all pretense of objectivity out the window. And with them it is almost all race based, almost entirely race based, with the belief that it’s still so out of balance, the discrimination and the… (sigh) Well, I just want to read it in writing. They say even worse, and it’s despicable and it’s sickening — and I’ll tell you, this Super Bowl, folks, for me — aside from all this that I’ve said — was the most…

Well, it was the least anticipated. I played golf yesterday! I never do that on Super Bowl Sunday. I played golf. I played golf, got home at five o’clock — an hour and a half before the game started — and I just made it to the TV for the pregame stuff around six or 6:15. And I don’t know what it is. I’ve asked myself. Am I just getting older and because of my age, the players are no longer these superstar, unreachable people on pedestals, or is it a combination of the way the game is reported on now? It’s been so politicized by the media, and now the all-out effort to damage and injure the game by convincing parents that their kids shouldn’t play.

I don’t know. It’s probably a cumulative effect of things. And I said, “Maybe I don’t like these teams, or maybe I’m not crazy about these two teams.” I don’t know what it was. But I’ll tell you, I played golf on more NFL Sundays this year than ever. Ever. Now, it wasn’t long ago — last year, certainly the year before — that on Sunday, everybody knew, I didn’t play golf. I’m totally NFL, all day, all night Sunday. Not this year. Don’t know why. Didn’t get into deep, deep analysis of it.

But, anyway, congratulations the Patriots. It was a heck of a comeback, despite the fact that the Falcons… I don’t know where they were. As I said, I don’t know if they’re out of gas. I don’t know if they were overcome by just lack of experience, not being in the big game before, thinking they had it won and they were gonna sit on the lead. I don’t know. They probably don’t, either. That’s the old thing that momentum, you just don’t know.

Let’s move on to some other things, folks, because there’s all kinds… I want to touch on some things. We’re gonna then go back to like the court ruling on executive order, get in some detail about the judge and some of the other aspects of this.

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RUSH: Here is Rich, Brunswick, Ohio, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, thank you, sir. Hope you’re having a good day/

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Hey, I got a question for you, and also a comment regarding Rush Revere. But to my question.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Seeing how crucial that one play was with that pass that almost touched the ground and where they had to verify it or validate it using cameras, who’s cameras are being used for the referees to validate calls like that? Is it the broadcasters, or does the NFL have their own cameras?

RUSH: No, those are all network cameras. Look, this used to be a slam dunk. I used to know this question because it was always the network cameras that were granted permission by the NFL. They’re not the same at every game because the networks have different budgets. You know, for a game that’s gonna go to 10% of the country, they won’t use many cameras. The NFL does not move in and use camera locations if the network doesn’t provide in those cases.

So I think every camera at the Super Bowl yesterday was a Fox camera. Now, I say that asking permission, that because it’s the Super Bowl I might be wrong. Maybe the league does provide some cameras, but I don’t think so. Why does it matter to you, what is the point if they do?

CALLER: Well, just from a number of camera standpoints, I imagine Fox probably had at least a dozen to 18 cameras out there on that field yesterday or around the field.

RUSH: Oh, they had more than that.

CALLER: That’s why I wondering, who do the refs defer to.

RUSH: Wonder who the rest of his defer to. Oh. The refs are deferring to the replay official in New York and on the sideline.

CALLER: Who’s looking at whose cameras?

RUSH: Fox’s cameras.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Every replay you see, they don’t have a review, they don’t have an angle that you’re not shown on TV. Well, wait a minute, now. The networks try to show you every angle they have of a play, and they may not show you one that is inconclusive, but the league has access to all of them. But their network camera. I get what’s going on here. I get what’s going on here. I know exactly. “Well, was the league maybe trying to cheat one of the two teams? If it’s their cameras, can they have one not work at a crucial time, something like that.” No. These are network cameras, I’m pretty sure.

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RUSH: And here’s Eric in Armada, Michigan. Great to have you. Really glad you waited, Eric. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Oh, I’m doing great, Rush, and I hope you and your family are, too.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: Yeah, when I watched that game last night, and I’m a Packer fan, and of course I was rooting against Atlanta to begin with because of what they did to us. But, anyway, you know, they started talking bad about, you know, Tom Brady, I’m thinking, wait a minute. He’s a sixth-round draft pick —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Who was talking bad about Brady?

CALLER: Oh, just, you know, I guess the people that, you know, they’re the pro-Atlanta people, I mean, they were looking at, you know, the record and —

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: — how Matt Ryan had got MVP of the league and all that. Anyway, they were babbling on, I’m thinking, he’s a sixth-round draft pick. He’s a mediocre quarterback at Michigan. So he wasn’t, you know, really expected to go anywhere. But that’s the American dream. The American spirit is to not be expected to do something and to achieve greatness. And I will say this, like you said, I’m a Packer fan, but he is the best quarterback right now.

RUSH: Well, I think Brady is the best quarterback ever, I don’t care how you measure it. I don’t care how you measure it. There’s nobody that can make a claim to being a better quarterback than Brady. He’s had a differing, wide character of wide receivers. The Steelers great teams were all — unit stayed together basically three or four years, same thing with the 49ers and Montana. But you’re right, he is the epitome of a part of America that many people don’t like anymore.