RUSH: A crazed Bernie Sanders supporter, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson, deranged and delusional, no doubt driven to that to some degree, as we’ve been able to ascertain by examining the Facebook pages of groups that he watches, joins, interacts with, as well as the media he consumes. He’s from Belleville, Illinois.

A CNN anchor asked the governor of Virginia today, The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, “How did he get here from Illinois?” I’m not kidding. The anchorette actually said, “How did he get here from Illinois?” What? Why was he here and not in Illinois? CNN is really, really, really, really low-key today ’cause they know, they know. I want to take you back to just yesterday, ladies and gentlemen. Unfortunately, I essentially predicted this tragedy yesterday.

RUSH ARCHIVE: They better be very careful because their base donors and their base voters I don’t think can handle many more of these rising expectations and assurances that Trump is gonna be put in jail only to find there’s no evidence he did anything wrong. At some point these people are gonna crack, and they’re not gonna just start cutting heads off of dolls, and they’re not gonna just start using fake knives to stab people at Central Park.

RUSH: And, lo and behold, 24 hours later, less than 24 hours later, the gunman opens fire at a baseball practice involving members of the Republican Party, the annual baseball, softball game between the Democrats and the Republicans. One of the last events of genuine bipartisanship and unity is this charity baseball game, and now that has been blown to smithereens.

Mr. Hodgkinson is clearly — well, he has passed away. He was clearly deranged, and he was enraged and obsessed. Now, whenever something like this happens, let’s remember the movie house shooting in Colorado. The first thing that Brian Ross at ABC News did was try to find out whether or not the shooter was a member of the Tea Party. And, lo and behold, there was a Tea Party member somewhere in Colorado that had a name very close to the name of the shooter. So Brian Ross goes on the air with it at ABC News. “We can’t be sure, but it looks like” da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Gabby Giffords gets shot, what happens? They blame Sarah Palin and then me. And, by the way, I am being blamed for this shooting on C-SPAN today as the source of all of this partisanship, as the source of all of this rancor. It’s me and Roger Ailes who are responsible for it, according to two callers on C-SPAN today. The sad and unfortunate fact is that, as evidenced by the sound bite of me yesterday, I have foreseen this coming.

You can’t continue to enrage people the way the left, and predominantly the media, has been doing. The Democrat Party and the left for years have been feeding this. And particularly since the election of Trump they have virtually assured their supporters that Trump is guilty, guilty of treason. And every congressional hearing is going to provide the proof. Every one. Sessions yesterday, Comey a couple of times, Sally Yates, you name it.

They build up these expectations that Trump is not really the president. He shouldn’t have been. He cheated. He colluded with the Russians. There isn’t any evidence for it, and so every time the left builds up an event where this is going to be established as fact and it blows up in their faces, it creates rising expectations followed immediately by rank disappointment and anger and letdown over the fact that it’s not happening.

And I think these people on the left have been driven to this extreme for quite a while. I have been worried about it for I don’t know how long. And I’ve been telling you so. And we could, if we wanted to, we could scour — well, we have. I could go back and show you tweets, I could read you tweets. I could read you statements made by elected Democrats and others promoting just this kind of behavior, just this kind of behavior. You can find it. If you look at the TV programs and the media personalities that this guy, Hodgkinson, was devoted to, you’ll find out how radicalized he was by left-wing TV and comedy.

Last week Tonight With John Oliver, the Nightly Show on the Comedy Central, Democracy Now, The Ed Show, the Rachel Maddow Show. He apparently loved Rachel Maddow, wanted her to run for president. The Daily Show on Comedy Central, Real Time with Bill Maher. Those are the TV shows that he recommended everybody watch. Clearly he was radicalized.

Now, I also want to say he probably started off this way. I don’t know that this guy’s ever been a rational, invisible functioning member of a community, but at some point he got radicalized, and if you dig deep you’ll find — we’ve got examples of it to share with you. This guy is the exact personification when I sit here and talk about the lunatic fringe base, the deranged base of the Democrat Party, this is the guy. This is the face. This is the picture. This is what you get when you stoke and fuel hatred, raw hatred and resentment, at some point it’s gonna blow over, because it cannot be contained, this kind of rage and repeated disappointment.

You add climate change probably to this guy’s list of grievances, and I think everybody ought to take a step back and realize this guy is not isolated. This guy is probably typical. Not that there’s going to be rampant shootings, but he just happened to go over the edge and pull the trigger. But he, to me, is exactly what I am unfortunately worried about when I look at the way all of these lies and all these nothingness, nothing burger stories have now been out there for month after month after month.

And you add everything else that the Democrat and the liberal media agenda is. It’s nothing but anger, it’s nothing but rage, it’s nothing but hatred, and it has to have an outlet. And they know it. The fact is, they know it. The Democrats know it, and the media know it. It wasn’t that long ago that the Democrats, we have a story in the Drive-By Media, they were trying to walk back this notion of Trump impeachment. This is when the Russia story was beginning to disintegrate. I mean, there never has been anything to it. But remember we highlighted it here, began to walk it back because the story indicated they were very concerned about the impact.

Now, guess what? Since the collusion story has fallen apart, now they’re up to obstruction of justice, and they’re back talking about impeachment. And you’ve got Gavin Newsom in California, governor candidates in California and other Democrats are now ratcheting up talk of impeachment via the independent counsel special prosecutor. The Democrat Party is promising to keep all of this, make all of this an issue all the way through the rest of this year and next year, to the 2018 elections, because this is it, this is all they have.

They don’t have an agenda that’s optimistic and upbeat that they can run on, and they don’t dare be honest about their real agenda. So all they can do is to continue to do what they’ve been doing, and it’s not healthy, it’s not uplifting, it’s not inspiring. It isn’t representative or reflective of any of the traditional American values that for so long have united us. A sense of optimism, a sense of can-do, a sense of unity, a sense of nationhood. All of these things are under assault.

It didn’t take long, did it, for the governor of Virginia to start winding his way down the gun control road, so obsessed that he actually misspoke and said we gotta do something about the guns, 93 million Americans die every day. Well, of course that’s not mathematically possible. He started talking about the gun show loopholes.

The sad fact is that had it not been for Scalise’s security detail, there would have been a mass murder today. Scalise is a member of the leadership. As such, he gets a security detail. His security detail is the Capitol Police. They were on the scene. It took the local police in Alexandria three minutes to arrive after the 911 call.

Had there not been — and Rand Paul is saying and any number of people are saying (common sense), “Had there not been the Capitol Police, Scalise’s security detail — had there not been a gun on site — we would be talking today about a mass murder. We would be talking about a massacre.” As it was, the man had supposedly 10 minutes. Now, when you’re in a situation like that, it can seem like a lifetime if somebody’s firing at you and you’re just a sitting duck. So I imagine two minutes could feel like 10.

I don’t know how long it really was. But it is nevertheless real and frightening, and it was shut down by a security officer, a Capitol Hill police officer with a gun. And yet what do we get? Right off the bat: Discussion of gun control! There were some really fascinating things when the police press conference began that I want to run through. But before we get to the details, start going through some of the individual tweets that I have referred to here, the guy was a dyed-in-the-wool Bernie Sanders supporter — and might I point out this is the second act such as this that has been created by a Bernie Sanders supporter?

There was an incident on a train in Oregon recently and it was not covered much by the Drive-By Media, but that, too, that act was perpetrated by a Bernie Sanders supporter. And in the Democrat Party on the left they are outraged over a lot of things. They had their primary stolen from them by Hillary Clinton, and they know it. And then they think they had the general election stolen from them by the Russians and Donald Trump. And they really believe this stuff, folks. You have to understand. Why can something like this happen today? Because they believe it!

And, look, if you were one of these people and you tuned into the mainstream media every day, you believe what they say. That’s why you watch ’em. I mean, if you love Rachel Maddow, if you love Bill Maher, you’re going to believe what they say. That’s why you watch ’em. And they have been led to believe all kinds of things that haven’t happened and are not true. They’ve been led to believe that their planet is being destroyed. They’ve been led to believe that Republicans want to starve their children. They’ve been led to believe that Republicans want to take away their health care and take them out of their houses.

They believe this stuff, and the people they love and admire and respect in the Democrat Party and on television do not refute any of this; never, ever try to talk sense to them. It’s a very dangerous time, a very precarious balance that we have in the country today, and it’s all because a political party cannot come to grips with losing. Not just this last election but losing the House and losing the Senate. They just can’t come to grips with it, and this is what we have to live with each and every day. Here’s some sound from the president. He had an address to the nation shortly before the program began. We have three sound bites. Here is the first…

THE PRESIDENT: Congressman Scalise is a friend, and a very good friend. He’s a patriot, and he’s a fighter. He will recover from this assault. And, Steve, I want you to know that you have the prayers not only of the entire city behind you, but of an entire nation — and, frankly, the entire world. America’s praying for you, and America’s praying for all of the victims of this terrible shooting. I spoke with Steve’s wife, Jennifer, and I pledged to her our full and absolute support, anything she needs. We’re with her and with the entire Scalise family.

RUSH: The president next praised the police.

THE PRESIDENT: Our brave Capitol Police perform a challenging job with incredible skill, and their sacrifice makes democracy possible. We also commend the brave first responders from Alexandria police, fire, and rescue, who rushed to the scene. Everyone on that field is a public servant. Our courageous police, our congressional aides who work so tirelessly behind the scenes with enormous devotion, and our dedicated members of Congress who represent our people.

RUSH: And then the president called for unity…

THE PRESIDENT: We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country. We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace and we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good. Please take a moment today to cherish those you love, and always remember those who serve and keep us safe. God bless them all, God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you.

RUSH: President Trump moments ago in the White House addressing this event.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I need to clarify something. I got some emails during the break, “Boy, you’re really out on a limb! How do you know this guy did all that? You’d better be very careful.” I forget, some of you may not know the guy targeted Republicans. He showed up, and he asked, “Are these Republicans or Democrats out there on the field?” And he was told. Nobody thought the guy… He doesn’t look deranged. So whoever was talking to said, “Those are the Republicans out there.” That’s all the guy needed to know. If Steve Scalise had not shown up, they would all be dead today.

It was only because he was there. As the leader/member of the leadership he has a security detail, that’s why there were guns that could respond to the shooter. Now, some of the tweets. Malcolm Harris. The guy writes for Vox and New Republic. He tweeted the following: “If the shooter has a serious health condition then is taking potshots at the GOP house leadership considered self defense?” So the justification is, if this guy has a serious health condition, and of course the Republicans want to kill people, Republicans want to deny people their health care, right?

So if this guy has a serious health condition and he’s watching what the Democrats are saying about the Republican health care plan, is going out and shooting Republicans self-defense (i.e., justified)?” Now, he’s later saying, “Hey, hey, hey, I was joking.” Joking? At a time like this, joking? Remember the college professor as reported in the Washington Post, a guy named John Griffin back on May 4th. “Republicans should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole. Blood is on their hands. Republican health care bill an act of cruelty.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just read something during the break. I want to get your take on this, folks. This guy, Hodgkinson, wrote letters to the editor to the Belleville newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat. Belleville is right across the river from St. Louis, or pretty much across. I mean, when you end up there, you know you’re lost, and you gotta turn around and go across the bridge. Anyway, he writes letters constantly, and here’s the thing that I… These are not kook letters. These are… I mean, he’s a kook leftist, but their policy wonkish.

They’re deep-rooted in policy. He blames me for a lot of things in some of these letters, talks about the path out of the deficit. One of his letters says, “I Never Said Life Sucks, Only the Policies of the Republicans Suck.” Now, it’s got its venom and hatred. My point is, the guy’s not some lunatic fringe wacko that storms into a movie theater. He’s deranged, don’t misunderstand. But he’s a policy man. He’s dead focused on policy here — which makes this even more disturbing to me, if that makes sense to you.

The fact that he is a devoted leftist that is up to speed on policy and can recite verbatim what he hears spoken by people he admires and the media and the Democrat Party, and some of that stuff is just way out of the bounds of normalcy and propriety and decency? That’s what I think heralds the identity of the modern-day left, the media and the Democrat Party. This guy’s right smack-dab in the middle of it. As a centrist policy wonk, look at what he was driven to you! (interruption) No, I… No, no. I’m not being contradictory. I’m not being hypocritical. I have said that the left is made of people genuinely fringe lunatics.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and this guy was obviously not all there, not balanced. But if you look at the way he writes about policy, it’s wonkish, meaning he spent some time on it, and that is even more disturbing to me, because it means that the mainstream support and belief of the American leftist movement is being driven to this kind of thing. When I said, “It’s not isolated,” I mean, I don’t think this is the last one. It may be for a while. You know, you watch CNN. I mentioned this. CNN is really, really low-key today.

And, you know, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’re low-key because members of Congress got shot. They’re low-key because members of the Capitol Hill police got shot. There was an attempted mass murder today. It makes sense to be low-key. But then is there, perhaps, another reason for it? Are they being low-keyed in a tortious way, meaning they really wish they didn’t have to go there, but they know they’ve gotta dial it back a little bit because of who knows who else is out there.

Now, some of the tweets.

Again, this is John Griffin, Washington Post: “Professor: Republicans ‘should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole. Blood is on their hands. The Republican health care bill is an act of monstrous cruelty. It should stain those who supported it to the end of their days.'” Tim Kaine, the vice presidential running mate for Hillary Clinton: “Democrats have to fight in the streets against Trump.” Folks, there are hundreds of these past and current tweets and stories showing leftists advocating violence on Republicans and Trump, and they’re popping up in social media — and, predictably, you have people celebrating what the guy did on the left and encouraging more people to do it.

“This is exactly what we need if we can’t get rid of the guy in hearings, if we can’t get rid of the guy with the Russians and so forth.” So as I say, I think our culture and society is precariously balanced right now, and it’s bothered me for the longest time, and those of you who are regular listeners know it. None of us like this. None of us like the awareness of the reality that we are in. The sheer raw hatred that you get from supposedly mainstream pop cultural places like Hollywood, the music industry, the television industry. I had a story in the Stack yesterday. I didn’t get to it. Maybe I put it at the top here.

I’m not gonna get into it. I just want to remind with you, show you what it is. It’s about TV writers, writers of television shows, scripted TV shows, prime time TV shows. They’re just having the toughest time. They’re having the toughest time writing TV shows because of Trump. Trump has made their job so much harder. It’s just so hard to write good TV because they’re so angry all the time, and they’re so livid all the time, and they don’t know what to do about it — and Trump is destroying the TV business, because the writers…. Here it is.

“TV Writers: ‘Catastrophic’ Trump Is Making Our Jobs Harder.” This is Entertainment Weekly. This derangement has spread to all kinds of nooks and crannies all over our country. This was a political act. It was doubtless a political act. Here’s a tweet from James Hodgkinson. “I want to say, ‘Mr. President, for being…” Well, he says… I’ll say, “butt hole.” He said something else. “I want to say, Mr. President: For being a [butt] hole, you are truly the biggest [butt] hole we have ever had in office.” This was after the cabinet meeting this week where cabinet members praised Trump.

The guy links to a story at Yahoo where the headline is, “Trump Invites His Employees to Praise Him During Cabinet Meeting,” except that didn’t happen. Members of the cabinet had been asked what… Folks, if that has happened that would have leaked before the cabinet meeting. So Trump’s gonna convene the first ever cabinet with everybody there, first ever meeting, and he says, “Look, I’m in a big world of hurt out there. I need you guys singing my praises. I need you guys telling everybody I’m the greatest president that’s ever been.

“I need you to tell ’em how honored you are, how gratified you are that I chose you, that you’ve never had a job like this before , that you’re so excited we’re making great things happen, and we’re gonna do great things. You just go out there and say that.” If Trump had tried that before this meeting took place, it would have leaked. Somebody in that White House would have heard about it and leaked it out of there. The fact that it didn’t leak… Well, it didn’t happen, and members of the cabinet have said so. But, look, this guy was made to believe this. Who knows what else he was made to believe!

Let me grab a phone call here, squeeze one in before we have to go to the break. Line 5. Greg in Pittsburgh. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Good Rush. How about yourself?

RUSH: I’m okay.

CALLER: I just wanted to comment about how today the Democrats are coming out saying how much in support they are of Republicans and how terrible this is. But if you remember… There’s a bunch of examples. But, for example, the Gabby Gifford situation before they knew what side of the aisle that guy was on, that came out right away, vilified Republicans. It was Republicans’ fault. It’s because of what Republicans said. But now when it’s their time to take a beating, they want nothing to do with it be they love Republicans. It’s, “Both sides are out of control! They both needed to tamp down.” But, I mean, obviously when you have —

RUSH: Wait a minute. Are you saying that you don’t think the Democrats mean it when they are talking about solidarity and unity and all of that happening on the House floor?

CALLER: Rush, when I called you, I was listening to Nancy Pelosi on the floor, and she brings up about how she gets tons of death threats and how Barack Obama got the most death threats in the history of any presidency. Why would you bring that up today? It doesn’t fit here at all.

RUSH: Yes, it does! This is my point. If you know these people like I do, it makes total sense.

CALLER: Well, no, I agree with that. That’s what I’m saying.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What is this, besides everything else, what is it? It’s a news story. What happens when a news story happens? Everybody wants in on it. So Pelosi go, “I’ve had death threats too. And, you know, our president, Barack Obama, had more death threats than any president ever.” She wants to get herself in the story.

She may be trying to say, “Hey, we’re just as at risk. We’re just as at risk as the Republicans are.” It’s all about political positioning and getting in the story. Your instincts on this are right on the money. Let me ask you this. Did you see the picture — the Democrats are practicing for this game on a different field, and there was nobody that showed up on that field with a gun. And there was a photo of all the Democrats after the event had taken place, they were all in a circle praying? Did you see that?

CALLER: I haven’t seen it, but my instincts say it was staged, absolutely.

RUSH: Really? You think that they staged a prayer?

CALLER: Oh, no doubt about it. I mean, it’s the Democrats. I mean, anybody that thinks anything else doesn’t know what’s going on.

RUSH: All right, that’s interesting.

CALLER: They obviously haven’t listened to you, that’s for sure.

RUSH: Well, absolutely right. Anybody who had listened to this program — you’re exactly right. Greg, thanks much. Yeah, the Democrats were praying. There was a photo. They were in a circle and their heads were bowed. They were in their baseball uniforms wearing shorts and so forth, and they were on the sideline like in the bleachers behind a dugout or something. They were all praying.

I gotta be honest, my first thought was, “Wait a minute. These are the people that took God out of the party platform at the last convention so as not to offend people that didn’t believe in God.” So I asked myself, “What am I looking at here?”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, that guy Malcolm Harris who said he worked at Vox and the New Republic, he’s the guy that tweeted essentially that if the shooter had a medical condition and the Republicans’ health care bill was going to do great harm to him, then maybe shooting these Republicans was an act of self-defense. Well, he doesn’t work at Vox. The Vox people got mad and made him take down that part in his bio where he works for Vox. He doesn’t.

About CNN being low-key, look, folks, I don’t think there’s any doubt about this. Nobody would ever admit it. It’s gist between you and me. You know it and I know it. But CNN is being very low-key today, and I’m sure they think it’s a solemn circumstance, members of our precious government were shot by — oh, the FBI, the FBI, the organization of James Comey who, by the way, has been voted the number one sex symbol by women in Washington. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding.

Anyway, the FBI said, “We are not sure at this time if congressmen were targeted.” The FBI, “We’re not sure. We’re not sure that it’s congressmen who were targeted here.” The guy shows up, “Are those Republicans or Democrats?” he asked a bystander. Bystander says, “Those are the Republicans.” The shooting begins. The FBI: “We’re not sure.”

They also say they haven’t found a motive. They’re looking really hard, but they can’t find a motive. It’s too soon to say, not at this point, they can’t confirm, too early in the investigation. They’re not aware. They think they got a good handle on it, but they can’t comment. Everybody’s being treated. The officers are in good condition, but it’s too soon to know the details about the who, what, when, where, why. We’re not gonna go into it now, they say. We’re not gonna comment now, they say. It’s significantly early in the investigation. We don’t know.

Senator Sanders has confirmed that this guy was a campaign volunteer and has issued a statement about it. He doesn’t believe in this kind of thing. He believes nonviolence is the only way to permanently solve circumstances. The point about CNN is, look, folks, just between you and me — don’t tell anybody this ’cause this will really irritate ’em — but this is the kind of thing that could put a damper on your anti-Trump hysteria for a few hours, you know what I mean?

I mean, this guy goes out and shoots a bunch of Republicans, it turns out he’s a Bernie Sanders guy. You investigate, find out he hated Trump and he used the same kind of language against Trump that he hears in the media every day. So CNN, “We gotta downplay, we just gotta tone it down for a while, the hysteria, the anti-Trump hysteria,” which is kind of quite telling in itself, if that’s the case.

Matt, Tampa, Florida, you’re next. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Sophomore in college dittos. I’ll be quick. I have two observations, and you just touched on one of them but I’d like your take.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: The first one is the possible correlation between the Shakespeare in the Park production where a Republican politician is murdered and the attempted murder of Republican politicians this morning in a park. And I believe Time Warner and the New York Times are still sponsoring that play. And then the second is, which you just touched on, while Comey and the rest of federal law enforcement and intelligence have been looking under every rock for Russians, this guy was planning a mass political assassination, and that’s upsetting. So what are your thoughts?

RUSH: I like that observation. Here they’ve been looking for — by the way, I told you I’ve got one of the most astounding things I’ve seen in a while. It’s related to this. They’ve been looking for evidence that doesn’t exist. By the way, folks, it’s not they’ve been looking. They’ve been looking for ways to manufacture evidence. That’s how bad this foolish investigation is. It’s how lame it is. It’s how empty it is. There isn’t any evidence. All they have is a premise. All they have is a narrative they’re trying to create. They wrote a fake dossier and tried to pass it off as evidence. And they’re still searching.

They now have appointed an independent counsel since every witness to a Senate and House committee has blown up on ’em. There isn’t a single witness who has any evidence whatsoever. The allegation that Trump colluded with Putin and the Russians to affect the outcome of the election. And yet here we have this, a deranged Bernie Sanders supporter, a Trump hater, 66-year-old from Belleville, Illinois, who has been living a life that has barely containable rage 24/7 for the last number of years, and the FBI says they can’t yet determine the motive and that it is too soon to say that he was targeting congressmen, even though they are in the hospital with gunshot wounds.

Meanwhile, over there at the FBI, work continues uninterrupted and unabated to find nonexistent evidence for something they’re telling us already happened: the Russians tampered with the election. They’re telling us this, no evidence whatsoever. An event with evidence that’s plain as day. “Nope, nope, nope, nope. Too soon. Too soon to say.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Regarding our last caller, he had a good point. Has anybody in the media asked the director of the play in Central Park where Trump gets assassinated every night to thunderous applause, by the way, from Manhattanites, has anybody asked the director for his reaction to the shooting spree in Alexandria? The director of that play, has anybody asked? I bet they haven’t. I bet they haven’t put two and two together yet. And I don’t think they will.