RUSH: Aaron in Washington, Illinois, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thanks so much for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir. Happy to have you here.
CALLER: Well, thank you. I’ll get right to the point, and it’s something I was thinking about, and I haven’t heard too many people talking about it. I was at the Trump rally in Cedar Rapids a couple nights ago, and I had the pleasure of bringing my 16-year-old son up there with me. There were so many young teens and younger Americans there cheering on Trump. It was really an eye-opener, and my son even said something. He said, “Dad, with all these signs out there — you know, ‘Make America Strong,’ and, ‘Make America Safe,’ and ‘Women for Trump’ — they need to have some ‘Teens for Trump.'” Well, that got me thinking. One of the reasons liberals are so out-of-their-minds scared is they’re losing the culture war. Teenagers now, this Generation Z, and there’s reports out there —
RUSH: Uh —
CALLER: — is supposed to be the most conservative generation since World War II.
RUSH: Uh —
CALLER: Not only is it fun and exciting to be a Trump supporter —
RUSH: Uh —
CALLER: — they don’t take what liberals say with any amount of reverence or fear or awe. They look at ’em and they laugh and they look at ’em and they’re just… It’s not even anger or disdain. They’re a joke.
RUSH: Where is this happening?
CALLER: Everything the left is preaching —
RUSH: Where?
CALLER: It go —
RUSH: Where? Where? Where you seeing this happening?
CALLER: I’m seeing it with my son. I’m seeing it with my daughter. I’m seeing it with their friends. I’m seeing it with what they show on TV?
RUSH: Illinois you’re seeing this?
CALLER: I’m in Illinois and all throughout the Midwest and all over the internet. Look at all the memes that are out there just viciously making fun of what liberals stand for, and I gotta tell you: I think it gives us hope for the future. I really do.
RUSH: I’m not denying it. No, no, I’m not denying that you can see that. The conservative presence on social media is loud and it’s voluminous. But where you caught me up short here was when you said, “They’re losing the culture war.” I don’t see evidence of that, and I want to. I don’t see that.
CALLER: Well, I see in the fact that, okay, as a kid who is in high school in the late eighties and nineties, everything that the left said, I mean, you took it with reverence and awe. You truly thought the oceans were gonna flood, and you looked at them as a source of authority.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And you look at the at actors and actresses as a source of authority and you looked at musicians as a source of authority.
RUSH: No, I understand that. When you say the culture war, I’m talking about things actually happening, not what people are saying. They’ve got gay marriage, and now they got this transgender thing going and at full speed. The things that are being aimed at undermining what have been traditionally defined as right and wrong and moral and immoral, that’s been turned upside down, and it’s not changing. Yet.
CALLER: Well, not yet. I’ll agree to your point that you just made there. But this is stuff that’s being crammed down our throats. This is stuff that most Americans —
RUSH: Well, you gotta be careful there too. Depending on what we’re discussing.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: So it’s something that most of us dent necessarily agree with or even really care about. And the point I’m making… I guess the point I was trying to make, these teenagers that were born in 2000, 2001, and after, this Generation Z, they’re the ones that are gonna be voting for Trump in 2020. They’re the ones that are gonna be voting out the RINOs and the liberals, and maybe… I’ll throw a shout-out to you Rush. I listened to you my whole life. Maybe it was the influence that you had that the parents that grew up listening to you are raising our kids right, and they’re the ones that are truly gonna make a difference starting with Trump.
RUSH: I tell you what, it’s fascinating that you mentioned that because I think about this frequently. It’s a professional thing, when I sit here and ponder the makeup of the audience, the future the makeup of the audience when I sit here. It will be 30 years on August 1st. Stop and think for a minute now. In these 30 years, the program… It took two years to get there. In 28 years, this program has been number one, and the audience has never shrunken. It has remained on top. You know, ratings books for month to month you’re up or down.
But we have had a foundational audience there of 20 million people. We’re up to 27 million, audience has grown after the election. That doesn’t happen. After elections, audiences — particularly news oriented or talk, radio and TV — the intensity is over. The election’s over, and audiences tend to drop. That has not happened here. To stay number one for 30 years, that means people that started here in 1988, 1990, have stayed throughout. Now, some haven’t. Some have passed away. Some have moved. But they’ve been replaced by somebody, you would assume.
Well, we did. We did an audience research survey, an extensive survey, and I don’t want to mention this here. It’s inside baseball for internal use, but it’s astounding what the average income for our audience member here is, the age, the annual income. It would blow everybody away. And I’m like you: I think as this program goes on that cyclical things are gonna happen and once again… Like this audience 30 years ago was people in their twenties and thirties and forties that were creating the audience, and that’s gonna cycle. I think that’s gonna repeat.
I have no doubt that that’s gonna happen. You are very, very shrewd in your analysis of that kind of thing. Now, whether that means that there will be a successful reemergence of what we think and believe in the culture war? I do think that’s gonna happen too. I don’t… ’cause I think every two or three generations… Every third our fourth generation that comes along refuses to accept the way their parents and grandparents are living. They just don’t want any part of it, and Millennials are doing that in a way. The Millennials, you talk to a lot of their parents, and they don’t recognize ’em when they compare them to themselves.
And it happens. Sometimes it happens for the good. Sometimes, from our perspective, it happens for the worse. It depends, but it happens — and this program is going to be there guiding and shaping and flaking and forming it as it happens. So you’re absolutely right about that. And I like your optimism on things. Hey, he went to a Trump rally. He goes to a Trump rally, he sees all these people, including teenagers, and look what he thinks when he comes out of it. That’s good!