RUSH: Man, oh, man, a lot of crabby people out there. And I’m hearing from I don’t know how many, but it’s more than I can count. And I’ll share with you some of the crabbiness today. And there’s other stuff out there besides the crabbiness of the election.

Here’s the phone number if you want to be on the program. 800-282-2882. Email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

The first crabby email. “Dear Rush: You know everybody’s blaming McConnell and everybody’s blaming Bannon, but I blame you. I don’t recall you ever endorsing Roy Moore. I don’t recall you ever urging people to vote for Roy Moore.”

Hmm. I’m searching the deep, dark crevices of my memory on this. Hmm. What do you think, Mr. Snerdley? Do you have any recollection? I guess I didn’t really make a — (interruption) well, no, no, no. I covered this thing thoroughly, and I did what I always do. I identified who our political enemies are, and I exposed them. And yesterday was a championship day.

In fact, Drudge has recognized it. The best Drudge headline of the whole year: “Rush, Rush!” Sadly, it’s not about me. And if I were lost in egoville, I would say that it was about me. It’s about the tax bill. “Rush, Rush! Tax Bill by Christmas.”

Chuck You Schumer is saying (imitating Schumer), “No, no, no, no. You Republicans would be unethical and immoral if you vote for that tax bill now since you just lost the seat last night. You need to wait until Doug Jones is seated in January and then have the tax cut vote.” The scary thing is the Republicans might go for that. Especially having lost, the Republicans might think they need to re-embark on the old strategy of trying to prove to the Democrats and the media that they’re fair and balanced and not mean people.

And what better way to do that than to say, “Yeah, okay. We’ll take this tax bill on which our future depends and we’ll shelve it and we’ll wait for you to get your guy in there so you can kill it.” Now, if that happens, I can understand a lot of people being crabby. But look, yesterday was a yeoman day, but they’re all yeoman. And I do what I do every day, and I did what I did every day, and that is I exposed the left for who and what they are.

I told you what this Alabama race was all about. But the one thing, the one thing, I leave it up to people to make up their own minds, because I have always believed in the intelligence and the involvement and the awareness of the people in the audience.

Another crabby email. “Boy, Mitch McConnell must be walking on air today, Rush. He not only defeated a candidate who he didn’t want, but now he’s lost another Republican Senate seat so he has another reason to not get anything done. Mitch McConnell must be the happiest guy in town.”

I have noticed in the emails I’ve checked today that there’s a lot of animosity at Mitch McConnell. I mean, it is overflowing. I’m getting emails from people who think this is exactly what McConnell wanted, that too many Republicans are willing to sacrifice the victory last November in order to get rid of the intruder and outsider Trump.

I’ve got crabby emails from people who have finished reading conservative websites and blogs who are celebrating the loss of a Republican Senate seat, and they don’t understand it, and they are livid and fit to be tied. There is a lot of crabby. John Nolte at Breitbart has a story today on CNN and its ratings being in the basement. And I got a crabby response to that. I mean, the crabbiness, it’s all over the place. It’s kind of invigorating in and of itself.

So I wrote this person back. I said, “What are you mad at? Are you mad that Breitbart is seeking refuge in irrelevant, meaningful places here by pointing out after we lose a Senate seat that CNN is sucking?” And pretty much that was it. This is a story talking about CNN and how bad their 2017 has been and how they’re in the ratings cellar. And they are. But if you tune in to CNN today, they don’t think they’re losing anything.

CNN was actually cheering. There were cheers on the set last night during the election returns. And they’re happy as hell. CNN thinks that they are gigantic winners today. CNN has been in last place in cable news for I don’t know how long, and yet they keep chugging along. They don’t have any viewers, but they have advertising. They don’t have any viewers, but they have enough support from CNN International, which, if you combine that with the entire operation, it helps the bottom line.

But the bottom line on this is — I think there’s a point to be made. You can sit here, especially today, and you can try to make yourself feel better by pointing out how in the ratings toilet CNN is. But what does that mean? How does provide any solace? CNN’s not miserable. CNN’s ecstatic. And how does CNN survive with so little audience? I have explained this I don’t know how many times. I’ll explain it again.

It’s all about media buyers. It’s all about who they are and where they are. Let’s start with companies. Take your favorite company. General Mills, Meineke muffler, I don’t care what it is. They have their own marketing departments, and those marketing departments hire advertising agencies. And they turn over to those agencies the responsibility of media buying.

They have meetings with the agency, and they tell ’em what demographic they want to hit. They tell ’em what time of year they want various campaigns to run. And except on the, you know, big, big advertising push of the year, such as a Super Bowl ad or something, they just leave it to the advertising agency. And the agency comes up with a plan and reports it, and they execute it, and the company pays the bill to the advertising agency, and that’s that.

Now, if there’s a big campaign, Meineke muffler is running a humongous thing, they might be hands-on with the agency for that one campaign. But day-to-day the company doesn’t have day-to-day contact with the agency, other than when campaigns are presented in meetings, “Here’s our idea for the latest spot,” translation, “We’re gonna run it.” But the individual media buys, they don’t get into that. That’s why they hire the agency.

And who works at these agencies? A bunch of left-wing little college graduates. Most of them are women and they’re in the basement and they’re in windowless buildings, and they’re the ones that do the media buys. And the same media buyers that will flood CNN with full rate card advertising are the same people that will not spend any money on Fox, all because of politics. That’s why in prime time on Fox you can see penile enhancement spots and you will never see them on CNN. I don’t know if Fox is still running the penile enhancement spots, but when they started it was a steady diet of that ’cause that’s all they could get.

I mean, the bias is everywhere. I mean, we here at the EIB Network had to overcome that in our first five years. It’s something we still have to overcome on a daily, daily basis. I’m not gonna give away any trade secrets on how we’ve done it, but we have. But I’m astounded as I wonder how few people in this business, for example, know how to deal with these massive Twitter and Facebook campaigns supposedly tweeting and Facebooking and emailing all of these angry listeners threatening to never buy again. It’s amazing to me how still so many people don’t understand that most of that is artificial, is not real and generated by bots.

But that’s how CNN does it. They got people supporting them and spending advertising dollars when the ratings and numbers aren’t there. You might say, “Well, at some point aren’t these advertisers gonna demand results?” No, because CNN’s just one of many buys when we’re talking about major corporations, like General Motors, Toyota. They’re advertising so many places, they don’t base the success or failure of a campaign on one particular place, network, CNN. They’ll add it all together and then come up with the effectiveness plan. But make no mistake, these little media buyers, they know full well what they’re doing.

They can sit there and see that CNN’s got no viewers, and they understand that means CNN will be in big trouble financially unless they do something about it. So they do something about it. Of course, CNN’s got salespeople out there. They’re making deals on the rate card and all that. But I get the crabbiness of the emailer’s point. What does it matter that CNN’s ratings are in the tank when they, in their mind, just engineered a big victory? And now this is two. This is two. You got the Virginia governor’s race and then this thing in Alabama.

You can’t tell them they’re not on a roll. They think this constitutes winning the House back in 2018. This is full speed ahead. USA Today has an editorial today: Donald Trump “isn’t fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library.” USA Today lead editorial. Folks, this election… There is so much anger, so much rage, so much irrational hatred that has been bottled up all across the left and in the Drive-By Media.

This election last night with a 21,000-vote victory… When you look at all of the money the left spent in there — all of the free equivalent money the Drive-By Media coverage of this race got and provided. You look at the money George Soros spent and who knows what the hell kind of tricks on the ground were being played with vote turnout and all that. And, as usual, did you notice during the election returns last night the places where Democrat votes come from are the last to be heard from. They’re the last to be counted.

Last night, it was Montgomery, Alabama. That is a large African-American population. It’s clear that the Democrats and the voter election people there were waiting to see what they needed. We saw that all throughout the 2016 campaign. Remember there was a 90-minute period of time from like midnight to 1:30 a.m., presidential election night, where there were no new votes counted? The vote totals and the tote boards did not change for an hour and a half.

We’re watching the Drive-Bys, including Fox, and it doesn’t change, and we’re asking, “What are you guys doing? Did they stop counting out there?” Well, everybody knew what was going on. The Democrats were trying to figure out where they needed to get votes, and they gave it the old college try. They just couldn’t come up with ’em. There’s a big loser in this thing. It’s Al Franken. Now he has to quit. They have named his replacement, but he’s not going anywhere. He has not said when he’s gonna leave!

And, you know, it was almost a given that if Roy Moore won that Al Franken would say, “You know what? There’s no reason for me to leave. If the Republicans want this guy, there’s no reason I’m leaving.” Well, now that Roy Moore lost… The Democrats thought Moore was gonna win, by the way. Let me give you one other thing about this. This whole strategy of theirs of jettisoning anybody on their side who has ever looked at a woman the wrong way to clear the decks to be able to, with credibility, attack Trump primarily and Roy Moore if he had won…

I mean, they fully expected Moore to win, and they expected that to give them a huge advantage and boost going into 2018. They were prepared either way. But if Moore won, they had the campaign rolled out — “Republicans like reprobates! Republicans like kooks! Republicans like weirdos! Republicans like pedophiles!” — and for them to do that, Franken would have to go, and anybody else. Well, now Roy Moore didn’t win. Roy Moore lost, and that means Franken doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

I mean, since the voters… Democrats… Voters rejected a pedophile, a kook, oddball. Who shows up to vote on a horse? I mean, I could just see the ads coming down. So what’s Franken do in this circumstance? (interruption) Well, he’s gonna try to stay. Mark my words, he’s going to try to stay. He’s gonna do everything he can to stay and he’ll try to massage this result in Alabama as leverage. Grab sound bite number 3.

I want to hear this. I wasn’t watching CNN last night, and I don’t want anybody to get the mistaken idea that I was. I was told there was cheering on the set last night during the period of time when Jones took the lead, and we have a sound bite. Let’s see. This is exactly what happened. We have here John King. We have Wolf Blitzer. It’s just those two guys. And here goes. Three… two… one…

KING: They’re getting excited across the room there, Wolf!

BLITZER: (chortles) Yeah!

KING: That tends to happen on Election Nights.

BLITZER: Look at this! Wow! Look at this!

KING: Just came in.

BLITZER: All of a sudden, Doug Jones is taking the lead!

KING: Hill County just came in!

BLITZER: Take — take a look. This is statewide!

KING: Taking back the lead!

RUSH: It wasn’t cheering, but they were… There were no cheers there. Did you hear any? (interruption) What? They were jubilant, but I didn’t hear any cheers. But they were excited. You know what else happened last night? The pro-Doug Jones count was late arriving. It was Montgomery that the networks… The New York Times called this race two or three hours before Fox did. I don’t know when CNN called it, but it’s clear that some of these networks had a pretty good idea what’s happening.

But they hold off making the call so as to prolong viewership for ratings, which, of course, CNN doesn’t care about. And they really don’t. I mean, that’s the bottom line on CNN: They don’t care. They’d love to have ’em, they’d love to be number one, but it doesn’t matter to them, because they’re not doing news for the public. They’re doing news for other journalists and themselves. Okay. Let’s have a little rundown here of just some off-the-top-of-my-head reaction to what happened last night.

As is always the case, everybody’s gonna over-interpret the win, the Democrat victory. The Democrats are gonna say it means much more than it does. They’re gonna say that it means effectively they have retaken the House. The elections next November will just be a formality. They will say, “This proves now that we’ve been right all along. Trump is hated! If his guy couldn’t win in a red state that he won by 28 points, it means it’s over. Trump has spent every last dime of goodwill he’s got.

“Our initial instincts for hatred of Trump were justified because now more and more people hate Trump. This election shows this,” and they’re gonna say, “A blue wave is now creating itself and being spread all across the country.” Their public relations firm, the Drive-By Media, is gonna be repeating all of this ad nauseam. But the Republicans, what’s their reaction? What is their knee-jerk reaction at their Democrat victory last night?

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RUSH: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He’s the guy that picked Mueller to do this special counsel investigation and gave him the broadest berth possible because there’s no crime. By the way, we have all kinds of news coming up on this, the texts between Strzok and his mistress. We’ve discovered them, and they do show an incredible bias. There’s a couple of them that are really important. But we went back to the archives and found a couple things that are gonna… I think they’re bombshell discoveries of things that have been reported last January, last April. We’ll get to those.

Anyway, I just got a note that Trey Gowdy just practically dismembered Rosenstein during his questioning. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, is up there being asked questions about the special counsel investigation. I didn’t see any of this ’cause this is happening while the program started. So we’re rolling on it. If that characterization is true, if Trey Gowdy actually did score some points, we’ll have it for you. But the Republican reaction to the Alabama election last night… I think this is undeniable. There are some Republicans who are secretly happy about this.

There are some Republicans who are openly happy about this. There are some conservative Never Trumpers who are openly giddy about this, even though the Republicans have lost a seat in the United States Senate. The Never Trumpers, some of them are already beginning the See, I Told You So’s, and they will continue to wish for a bloodbath for Republicans in 2018 and 2020. I don’t know how many of the conservative media, Republicans inside the Beltway have this attitude.

But it’s a significant number that think anything to do with Trump needs to be cleansed no matter the price, no matter the cost. Even if the Republicans don’t win the White House for 25 years, we have got to cleanse this and get back to where conservative intellectuals are the domineering force, the driving force of the Republican Party. If you ask me, this election was sealed with the choice of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.

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RUSH: I got another email. “Rush, Trump listens to you, you gotta talk to him. You gotta tell him he’s gotta stop being so provocative. He’s gotta become more likable. Rush, the craziness has to stop. Trump has got to stop feeding ’em. He’s gotta stop provoking ’em.” In the first place, I don’t talk to President Trump, my friends. I haven’t spoken to President Trump since March, since I was last at the White House.

I’ve had more people tell me, “The president listens to you. You have to…” I don’t know where this got started, because I don’t talk to him. I haven’t had a conversation with anybody that works with him. I had one note from Hope Hicks about something unrelated to this way back about a month ago. But “You gotta tell him he’s gotta become more likable. He’s gotta stop the crazy, gotta stop provoking ’em.”

I mean, Trump is who he is, and he can’t help but provoke ’em. In his mind they start all this, and Trump’s whole life, you attack him, he hits back. I think what this note is saying is “You gotta tell Trump to get more presidential. You gotta tell Trump to just be above this stuff.” Trump is Trump, and he’s going to behave as he does. He also believes that his tweets and his behavior in these tweets is the only way that he gets his side of the story out there.

And how does someone make themselves more likable? Is that possible? With the hatred that’s there for Trump today, is there anything he could do to change it? And stay who he is, I mean. Is there anything Trump could do? Even joining the Democrat Party. They’re so invested in this, Trump is a subhuman, simply unqualified and unfit, that there’s no way they can turn around and soften.

So what does this email mean? “You gotta tell Trump to become more likable. You gotta tell him to stop provoking ’em.” I think at least in the mind of the emailer there’s a lot of nervousness. I think this emailer probably loves Trump and wishes everybody else loved him the way the emailer does and thinks Trump could make that happen.

Anyway, as I say, lots of crabbiness, lots of frustration. But I think — and of course this is a hindsight thing. It’s easy for people to say this, in hindsight. But the real mistake in Alabama was taking Jeff Sessions out of the Senate and making him AG. Now, I know why it happened. Sessions was the earliest — I mean, was right in there with Flynn. Jeff Sessions was the earliest Republican, the highest ranking Republican official to endorse Trump, to support Trump, to be seen with Trump at rallies.

It was all about immigration. Jeff Sessions is singularly focused on immigration, protecting the borders. No finer man exists. But he’s not a Trump personality type. He’s not a warrior. He’s partisan, but he’s not gonna be carrying the spears out there. Just not his personality type. And Trump wants people like that. But if Jeff Sessions were still in the Senate, none of this would have happened.

We could say, well, if McConnell hadn’t savaged Mo Brooks — you know, Mo Brooks was the second best alternative to Sessions staying in Alabama. But you know what happened. I mean, they went all-in for Luther Strange because he’s a swamp dweller. McConnell wanted a fellow swamp dweller. McConnell didn’t want another conservative. And, by the way, that is a central factor in the Republican reaction to all of this too.

You know, Moore losing will add to the Republicans’ arsenal of all the weapons they have of anti-conservatism and anti-conservative. They love blaming conservatism and conservatives for whatever goes wrong in the Republican Party. So on the Republican side, there’s some people who are not really unhappy with this. Not like you are. And that, again, illustrates the giant disconnect that exists inside the Beltway at the Washington establishment, the swamp, and everywhere else.

And let’s be honest about something here. Roy Moore was not a good candidate. A candidate that can’t even campaign in the final days is not a good candidate. Now, I’m not even being specific here about why. But he was just not a good candidate. Too many people thought that he was weird, just like a lot of people think that Hillary Clinton is weird. And she lost too. You know, one of the dirty little secrets, the Democrats all think that Hillary Clinton, like Bill, is loved and adored and respected unanimously and universally.

The fact of the matter is Hillary Clinton is an oddball to a whole lot of people. To a whole lot of people, Hillary Clinton is her own brand of kook. And both of them explain much of the reason for the 2016 election win and the Alabama loss. You know, you look at Roy Moore’s electoral history, never really won an election by a big margin. And even these allegations, 40 years old, 38 years old, in a statewide election where there isn’t the national focus, no klieg lights, what’s going on in your state not front and center on cable news every night, if Moore’s just running for an office or even a Senate seat when nobody cares, you’d probably have a different outcome.

You don’t have George Soros and his band throwing in so much money. You don’t have the Democrat Party depending, I mean, literally carving their future strategy on this guy’s defeat. But this is what happened. How do we get these candidates? Well, see, that’s where the blame — and it’s appropriate to place it. This is what happens when the GOP does not do what they promised voters they’re gonna do.

When the GOP promises to get rid of Obamacare, promises to cut taxes, whatever, and they don’t do it, and they don’t do it publicly and loudly for seven years. They made all of these promises, and they got elected based on those promises, going back to 2010. But then they didn’t do anything about it, and you can’t get them to do anything about it now. It’s like pulling teeth, when they are the majority.

All it takes is some local candidate who isn’t part of the establishment who can say the right things, and even though the candidate may be a little bit off the wall, off center, off kilter, kooky, whatever, there is such anger at the establishment and there’s such anger at the false promises and the betrayals that these oddball candidates become attractive. ‘Cause people are desperate. They’re tired of being lied to. They’re tired of their country being transformed and, in some cases, destroyed, at least in the ways they appreciate it.

So voters overcorrect, and they’ll go for anybody who’s not from the swamp, anybody who’s not from the establishment. I mean, my emails today blaming Mitch McConnell are too many to count and read here. And the emails that are blaming the Republican establishment, pretty much every one of them is of the opinion that the Republican establishment is very happy with what happened here, and that just infuriates people who don’t understand it.

How can you be happy at losing a Senate seat? I’ve tried to explain this. And it even includes the fact that there are some Republicans that didn’t expect to win in 2016 and didn’t want to and now don’t really want to lead. They weren’t geared up for it. It wasn’t what the plan was. And there’s been a lot of discomfort as a result.

Don’t forget, you know, Trump wanted Luther Strange. At the beginning of all of this he wanted Luther Strange to be the Republican nominee. And who knows, but it might have been different if Luther Strange had been running. But remember what happened. When Trump got behind Luther Strange, what did the people of Alabama do?

The people of Alabama said, “No, no, no, no, Mr. President, no, no, no, no, no.” And they elected Roy Moore. And they elected Roy Moore because they thought Luther Strange was a McConnell acolyte, a swamp dweller, and they’re fed up with that. So Roy Moore became attractive in exactly the way I’m saying. And Trump voters didn’t listen to Trump when he was endorsing Luther Strange. And I think the reason they didn’t is because I don’t think they thought that’s what Trump really wanted. I think they thought Trump was trying to make deals with the swamp, was trying to buy ’em off here.

So I think people that voted for Roy Moore over Luther Strange in the primary were actually trying to protect Trump. They thought they were doing what Trump really wanted even though Trump had to say he was for Strange. This whole thing has been a mess. And it’s a mess because the Republican establishment murkies the water and clouds them and ends up, in their steadfast opposition to genuine conservatives, it causes, you know, second- and third tier people to run for office who are easily characterized as kooks or what have you.

And they end up becoming purity candidates untainted by the establishment, untainted by politics, untainted by this or that. But the problem with purity candidates is they lose. They’re not winnable candidates. And who knows. Alabama voters might have said, “You know what? We got a seat to play with here and even after we send this guy, Doug Jones, to the Senate, we still got 51 there.” Who knows how they’re thinking. But there are many, many factors here. Trying to blame it on one thing, of course, is impossible. But there are a collection of things that do make sense.

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RUSH: And welcome back. By the way, I need to make a point here. I got a quick note from our old buddy Seton Motley, who points out — and this is relevant — that the House of Representatives, the Republican House has indeed passed a lot of stuff. Obamacare repeal. Planned Parenthood defunding. They’re in there on the Trump tax cuts — and, in fact, they’re 5-for-5 in post-Trump special elections.

This is a key point. Remember all of those special elections made available by Trump picking congressman to be in the cabinet? There’s been five of ’em. And every one of ’em the Democrats treated like they treated this Senate race in Alabama. Ossoff, the Pajama Boy down in Georgia, he was gonna win. That was gonna mean that people were tired of Trump. There are five of ’em.

And in the House where they have done a far, far, thorough and better job and more publicly noted job of passing legislation related to Trump’s agenda. All five of those special elections have been won by the Republicans. Now you go to the Senate, where we have this thing. This is a debacle out there. We’ll soon see. Let me grab a quick call here ’cause I didn’t grab as many yesterday as I felt duty-bound to do.

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RUSH: Eric in San Diego. Hello, sir. Great to have you here with us. What’s up?

CALLER: Wow, Rush. This is a privilege to talk to you, sir. I’ve got two points. The first one is this election in Alabama was not about President Trump. It was all about Roy Moore. That’s not to say they won’t try to blame Trump and use him for the 2018 elections. The next point is, the GOP can actually win and win big in 2018.

RUSH: Because of what happened in Alabama, or is that just an independent thought?

CALLER: Oh, about winning in 2018?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Well, I think the GOP has a great message in general, and not because of Alabama.

RUSH: Okay. What you’re saying is this race does not change their fortunes in 2018. So you’re basically trying to disagree with all of the conventional wisdom, which I like.

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RUSH: We’re still waiting on Al Franken to announce his resignation date. I think he’ll stay through the vote on the tax cut bill so it’s on record for his next comedy bit, which will be somewhere in the media, no doubt.