RUSH: We start with the phones now in Detroit. This is Timothy. I’m glad you called, sir. You’re up first. Welcome.

CALLER: Mega dittos from the highest auto insurance state in the country.

RUSH: What a thing to be known for.

CALLER: I know. So the Democrats are much better losers than we are, and they’re much better winners. We seem to take this moral high ground like Dana Perino, George W. Bush. Why is that, Rush? Why can’t we —

RUSH: What do you mean, we take the moral high ground when we win like Dana Perino or George W. Bush? What do you mean?

CALLER: Well, let’s fund Planned Parenthood. Let’s not get money for concrete to build the wall.

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: Let’s give in. I love that Senator Kennedy yesterday. I want more of him. I want to go after the jugular. I want to take these people down. Rush, your last segment —

RUSH: Let me tell you about Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy is from Louisiana. His name is John Neely. (laughing) Look at everybody on the other side of the glass. “Senator Kennedy? John Kennedy? No, no, no. What are we talking about?” It’s Senator John Neely Kennedy, from Louisiana, and he just nailed Yates. “Who appointed you to Supreme Court?” he said, after she offered her interpretation as an acting attorney general to Trump’s executive order. “Who made you a Supreme Court justice?” He was fearless on that. Your question basically is why do we not act like we win after we win, right?

CALLER: Yes. One last thing if I may, Rush.

RUSH: Of course, you may.

CALLER: You have always taught us, the liberals project onto us what they are.

RUSH: Right. That’s true.

CALLER: And what they’re doing is they’re projecting on the Russians what they’re doing. They’re trying to blackmail Trump. They’re trying to compromise,. But they’re blaming the Russians. Just to get money. It’s all about donations.

RUSH: What do you mean they’re trying to blackmail Trump?

CALLER: Well, with all the unmasking, who knows what they know, Rush!

RUSH: You mean they’re threatening Trump?

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Right. Look, let’s go back to your first question. This is a question that everybody has asked me over the years. I have a bunch of different answers. Take your pick. I don’t think there’s one catch-all answer to explain this. It is a phenomenon. The Republicans win and they almost sometimes act ashamed of it or guilty of it. Here’s one explanation, and I think it’s got some validity to it. It doesn’t explain it all, and it’s an analogy. The Republicans… Let’s look at the House of Representatives.

For 40 years prior to 1994… So you’d have to go back to 1954. From 1954 to 1994, the Democrat Party controlled the House of Representatives. The Republicans won with Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America in the ’94 campaign. One of my theories is that after 40 years of losing — and, believe me, they weren’t just defeated. In some cases, the Republicans barely were able to scratch 130 members together out of 435 in the House. They were mincemeat.

The Democrats, in many sessions of Congress, didn’t even let them into meetings. The Democrats said, “Look, why are you even showing up? You can’t stop us. We don’t care what you have to think. Go play golf.” The leader of the Republicans for many of these years, not all, was a guy named Bob Michel. He was the ranking Republican in the House. He was from Illinois, Peoria. He, after a while, seemed to be satisfied with being the ranking Republican. He was the leader of the losers.

It had its power base. It had its prestige. He was the leader. You could not say that they were the minority because of him, because he was from Peoria. He never ran nationally. So the Republicans began to accept that they were losers. They began to accept that. Forty years of it, for crying out loud — and then one day, they won. I know this is going back to nineties. It’s one of my answers to your question. I think it’s — psychologically — a challenge.

After 40 years of being not just a loser, but an invisible, made fun of, not even taken serious loser, and the next day you’re the winner? Psychologically, how do you make that transition? How do you go from being irrelevant, laughed at, and mocked to overnight becoming the center of power. When you have no experience with it; you never expected that it would happen. And, like, I spoke to the freshman class in 1994. I was made an honorary member of that class, and they had their orientation at Camden Yards.

I went and spoke to ’em, and I said, “Here’s what you people have got to remember.” Remember, now, this was the freshman orientation. It was not the whole House. It was just the freshman class. It was like 56 of ’em, I think. It was a huge number of ’em. I said, “You’ve got to remember, the media is not going to start treating you as winners. They’re not gonna start treating you as the people running the show.

“They’re going to be angry at you that you had the audacity to win, and they’re always gonna be going to Democrats for reaction to what you’re doing. You’re not gonna get a fair shake. They don’t like you. They resent you winning. They’re not gonna treat you as winners. Do not fall for any of these female reporters batting their eyes, wanting to do profiles. All they want to do is get the Democrats back in power.”

There was a press contingent, and a couple of female reporters — one from the Washington Post and one from the New York Times — came up to me after my speech, “Do you really mean all that BS you just said?” “Hell, yes, I meant it!” I’d already taken my seat back at the table. “Do you really mean that?” “Hell, yes, I mean it! I just hope they heard it! ‘Cause it was damn well true.” And they were never treated by winners. That’s part of the answer out there, Timothy, and even today they’re not treated like winners.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It was true in 1995 is true today: Republicans win the White House, the House and the Senate, and the media’s treating it as illegitimate, as a fraud, as the result of cheating and collusion with the Russians and illegitimate. Nothing changes.