RUSH: Here’s Tim in Columbus, Ohio. Great that you waited, sir. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I’m calling about the latest tactic of the media playing a traumatized child crying for their dad. I want to explain why this video makes me angry. I used to be a third shift investigator for Child Protective Services. I have participated in multiple child removals. Now, it doesn’t… It never mattered if it was a removal to file physical abuse, sexual abuse, parents arrested for drug abuse. The children never understood what was going on.

They just knew they were leaving their parents, and they would respond in a way like this child. So the media has taken the natural response of a child, playing it without giving the rest of the context. If people would have taped the response of some of the children, which would include some (unintelligible) to calm ’em down because they would throw up nonstop from screaming at me, everything else. If that was the only thing played —

RUSH: You know what?

CALLER: — it was them abusing the child.

RUSH: Let me tell you something, Tim. I’m glad you called to make this point you reminded me that I want to expand on a point that I made a couple weeks ago. (I need to write myself a quick note here, folks, so I don’t forget this in all the maddening stuff going on here.) These kids, their parents, it’s no different than the victims of an accident. They’re being exploited. It doesn’t matter why they’re crying; the media will lie about it if they have to. There have been all kinds of misrepresentations, photos of people in distress that the media has lied about to move along public opinion.

But this one with the kids? There’s a little bit more to it even than that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. On the kids. Now, I have to preface this by reminding everybody and admitting to all of you my perspective: I do not have children. I’ve not grown up with a bunch of them in the house. So I’m not at all… Uh, what? Familiar with modern-day parenting. My brother and his wife, Lisa, have kids, and I’m, of course, Uncle Rush, the beloved Uncle Rush. But I’m not in the house every day — and when I am, of course, the kids are allowed to get away with much more with me than their already tolerant and understanding parents.

Every one of those kids — my brother and his wife, Lisa, have five, and they are all… I don’t want to say perfect, but there hasn’t been a problem anywhere. It’s amazing. But I don’t have any experience at it. But what I do is observe and take notes. I am in many ways a cultural observer. In many ways, my purpose here is to observe culture and comment on it rather than to immerse myself in it so much. One of the ways I do this is study advertising and television shows.

The reason is that advertising is designed to separate people from their money, which is not an easy thing to do, and it’s designed to relate to as many people as possible. Advertising has to be hip — I mean, depending on what is being advertised. But most advertising is geared to people under 50, and really if you want to get specific, it’s targeted to people under 34. But we’ll say 40. So it’s gotta be relevant to the demographics that fall within that range of age: 18-54, 18-40, somewhere around there.

But, basically, yeah, 18 to 25 to 54. So I watch advertising and I watch television shows because TV shows are trying to attract as many eyeballs as possible. They want ratings, no matter how much they may claim they don’t. And I have noticed, and I must… I’m gonna admit to you that this is highly irritating to me. I’ve noticed that predominantly in television shows, adult TV shows… I’ll give you an example. One of the shows is Law & Order SVU.

You can’t have a more reprobate subject matter. I mean, this is a show about rape and sexual abuse and the cops pursuing it, and every week for 19 years there has been a new case of this portrayed in fiction in this show. Over the course of the years the characters in this show, of course, have grown, and one of them is a single parent by way of adoption. It’s not just this show, but it’s one that I can readily recall from memory to give you an example.

The character runs the SVU division at this particular precinct of the NYPD, and I’m not exaggerating much to say that if somebody like the babysitter from home calls and says the baby is crying, the character will leave work and go home in trauma, and she will say to a coworker, “I’ve gotta get out! Can you cover me? Noah’s crying! (sobs) Noah’s in tears!” I’m sorry, I can’t relate. Kid’s crying, and you leave work?

It’s one example of countless thousands I could give you where it seems to me — and this is where I run the risk of offending some of you. But I’m not trying to do that. I’m actually asking. If I’m perceiving this right, it seems to me that parents and adults for the last, I don’t know how many years — 10 to 15 years — have been portrayed as basically spineless where their kids are concerned. The kids determine when the parents think because the parents want to be friends with their kids.

Rather than parent them and rather than have characters and scenarios written where the parent is educating and disciplining the child, the circumstances are such that the child at 5, 10, 15, 18 knows as much as the parent does and the child’s opinions at 5, 10, 15 are just as valid as an adult with three times the experience. And it just seems to me… I know this is fiction, but that’s the point. This is being portrayed by people trying to reach as many people as they can. They want a large audience, and I know they try to reflect reality in these shows.

It just seems to me that parents are being portrayed as squishy, unable to discipline, unable to tell their kids that they are wrong or anything. It just seems it’s the other way around. Whatever distress the kids are in, the parents have to stop everything — I mean, everything — and deal with it, and it becomes its own trauma. I wonder if when we have a story like this where the media is using fake photos of children crying… Well, it’s not fake that they’re crying; it’s the children may not even be who they’re being said to be and the children may not be separated.

They may not be at the border. But I wonder how much of this that the media’s doing is to play off and to corral people who are already wimps and linguini-spined when it comes to kids. I watch some of the kids the media makes heroes and stars out of. I watch ’em go to these rallies, and every other word is the F-bomb, and every other word is some kind of profanity, and there is — from 17 and 16-year-olds — wanton disrespect being voiced. My first reaction is, “Where were the parents when this kid was growing up?” Now, is that old-fashioned and outdated?

I just run into more and more people who are constantly stressed, worried, traumatized that their kids are growing up or that their kids are suffering or in pain. My experience was… Oh, my parents cared, obviously, but David and I, we weren’t babied at all. Maybe that’s what I mean. I see kids being babied on every TV show I watch, be they young or teenagers or young adults. They’re just treated like babies, and parents stop everything they’re doing to deal with any moment of stress.

As such, these kids are not experiencing life and growing up learning to deal with adversity. It’s like they’re being shielded from any and all of it. So when you have a really news story with fake elements in it like this where a child in a video is crying over having been separated, it makes me think that it just works like magic in making a political point by the media. Because many adults are already there, that whatever we do and however we do it, we must put the children first no matter what.

On the other hand, I see kids that are well, behaved that have manners, that have the ability to show respect, and I automatically conclude that they’ve been raised well. I know that people in ways are born to turn out the way they turn out, but it’s also true that the human being is the only mammal which needs protection and guidance and moral instruction if that human being is to grow into an adult with any kind of virtue or morality.

It has to be inculcated. It has to be taught via experience and other ways. It doesn’t matter if a horse or a cat or a dog or a shark knows what morality is because it’s irrelevant. But all these things in human beings are determinant, and it’s parents who are responsible at the very earliest stages of life for setting these examples and doing this teaching. And when I see so many parents unable… Portrayed on TV. Again, I’m talking about this being portrayed on TV.

That’s why I’m asking, “Is this the way a lot of people are raised their kids these days? Kids are always right, kids come first, any stress, any trauma, parents have to leave work, stop what they’re doing, if all it is is the kid is crying!” ‘Cause the parent can’t deal with it or what have you. I realize kids are at greater risk today than ever from bad actors, perverts and all that sort of thing out there. So not trying to be not understanding it.

It’s quite the opposite. So we go back to our last caller, and he has dealt in these circumstances where he’d had to go deal with children who’ve been separated or abandoned. And they are emotional all the time. And they’re reacting. And he may not have had anything to do with it, yet he is the target! So he could end up being blamed for whatever is wrong with the kid. He’s gotta be very careful about it because we are very eager, especially to pin the blame on men and fathers for their kids being upset or frightened.

That’s part of the modern-day feminist movement. Anyway, I understood his point. Anyway, this is all being exploited. The point is it’s all being exploited here in the made to advance and political agenda and to convince people that the Republicans don’t care about kids and don’t care about their pain and don’t care about anything. In fact, they’re actively seeking to separate families. There’s no such truth to the matter.

We got Sherri in Jacksonville. I gonna come to you right after the break because she has a good point that fits right here. So hang on, Sherri.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Sherri with an I on the end there. Jacksonville, Florida. Great to have you. I’m glad you called.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. It is such a pleasure to speak with you. I was listening to you when you were touching all around the comment that I wanted to make. I think you have to hit it square on the head. Our government takes children into protective custody all the time. If you go to jail for breaking the law and you don’t have, you know, two-parents or maybe both of the parents are having trouble with opioids — which we have this huge epidemic about the opioid crisis. I mean, this happens every day. But while you were talking, I was just thinking about the hypocrisy. If somebody took their kids out into Death Valley with a gallon of water and they had to come and get rescued, those children would be taken to protective services just for the sheer fact of —

RUSH: Oh, hell, yes! That’s a great point. Child Protective Services are just waiting for people to get home and take their kids away from ’em. That is a brilliant point.

CALLER: I don’t know why we are not hitting that on the… This is just a law of the land and —

RUSH: People are try to. No, no. People are try ingto. The media is overwhelming everything on this. Every White House press briefing this week, the special one yesterday, has been one theme: “Why are you separating kids…?” Not families, “Why are you separating children from their mommies and daddy?: That’s been the theme. Kirstjen Nielsen —

CALLER: (unintelligible)

RUSH: Let me tell you something: She blew them up yesterday. But you don’t know it, do you, unless you saw that, they’re not report. They’re reporting she was so bad that Trump needs to fire her.

CALLER: I work. (giggles)

RUSH: I know. You were. That’s the point. But you’re saying that people need to hammer this, and some people are, but the media is just overwhelming this. I have given countless examples yesterday and today, not to be defensive here, and not to… I’m not criticizing you.

CALLER: I think you should stick with it, though. I think it makes more sense to put in, you know, kind of a more appropriate context. It happens to break the law.

RUSH: Okay. What else do you think I need to be doing?

CALLER: Well, I think that our creative class that happens to be on the conservative side, we need to rally them to kind of counterbalance what’s happening with the liberal media.

RUSH: Who do you mean, the creative class?

CALLER: There are a huge number of creatives that just get blacklisted because they speak out about their politics.

RUSH: You mean actors and stuff?

CALLER: Not just actors.

RUSH: Oh.

CALLER: Graphic designers get discriminated against.

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: People who write. I have friends who work at national magazines who are very private about their politics ’cause they don’t have to discrimination.

RUSH: I understand. Yeah.

CALLER: That’s a whole other topic for a whole other show.

RUSH: Well, we’ll do that when you call back.

CALLER: Okay. I’d love to! (laughs)

RUSH: (laughing) You… (laughing) Sherri, you’re great. You’re sitting out there saying, “Here’s what you ought to be doing! I’m gonna call him and tell him that,” and you did. And you’re right, these things need to be repeated. Whenever you come up with a winning idea, it does need to be repeated because that’s how you make impressions finally on people. But I’m here to tell you… I know you work and you’re not able to hear it all, but a lot of people are trying to make this point of the natural separations that we applaud every day in this country.

That’s why I keep trying to tell everybody this is a completely manufactured political crisis that is surrounded by hysteria, and it’s being presented as a news story! But it isn’t. It’s created. This whole thing is created. None of it is new. None of it’s original. But here’s another thing, Sherri. When you take this approach, you, by definition are gonna be on defense, and that means you are reacting, and they are always defining the premise and setting the terms.

And that’s what ticks me off is that we don’t seem to be able to get out of this pattern — and the reason is they are constantly on the attack and every week are plotting some new crisis or hysteria. Like it was Stormy Daniels for a time, then it was Camera Hogg and his students at the school after the shooting, then it was the gun control marches here and there.

They just every week will go back to Trump-Russia collusion when those things die out, then they move on to Trump obstruction — and then when things go bad for them they change the subject by creating this. They’ve gotta cover-up the great economic news and the horrors that exist for the Democrats, the FBI, the political leadership as a result of the inspector general report. So, anyway, I appreciate the call. I thank you very much.