RUSH: So it’s the day before Independence Day, and I have been doing my routine show prep here, and part of that routine is having cable news on. And there is one subject dominating the news today. Isn’t it amazing how the Russia collusion investigation is invisible, it’s way over there. Remember how fired up everybody was about that? And then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes along and wins and everybody’s all fired up about her. We got more news about her today.

But all of that’s gone. The Drive-By Media has left the scene of those impacts, crimes, accidents, whatever, they moved on, and now two women are the sole subject of most of the news today. One of those women is Susan Collins, and the other of those women is Amy Coney Barrett.

The left is intent on making sure that Susan Collins votes “no.” Their theory is that if Susan Collins votes “no” on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, that the nominee cannot be confirmed. The McCain seat, we don’t know if there will be a vote or if his wife will come — we don’t know what’s gonna happen with that, so there is no margin for error. But what everybody is forgetting is that Gorsuch got the votes of three Democrats that are in red states, that Trump won, and that same situation is going to be existent whenever we get to this nomination.

But it is overwhelming what is occupying the Drive-By Media today. The media, the rest of the Democrats pinning their hopes on Susan Collins, Senator from Maine to carry the day for them. Since McCain or his wife, if either of them shows up to vote, doubt that he will, but it’s being thought that the McCain seat, if there is a vote would be “no.”

The Washington Post is saying that Senator Collins’ “no” vote would be enough to defeat Trump’s nominee, but they are wrong about that. Amy Barrett, the other woman in the news, Amy Coney Barrett, I want to go through a short description of her for you, because the long knives are out. They’re trying to destroy her.

Folks, do you remember she was up for Senate confirmation when Trump nominated her to be an appellate court judge of the Seventh Circuit, do you remember she was the judge to whom Dianne Feinstein said there’s a lot of dogma in your Catholicism. Remember the outright attack on Catholicism made by Feinstein? It was to this woman, Amy Coney Barrett. And it was all about Roe v. Wade.

And she said at the time (paraphrasing), “Look, I would not be an opportunity for a ‘no’ vote on Roe v. Wade. I’m at an appellate court here. The Supreme Court’s gonna have the final say on this if it ever comes back up again, but I respect Supreme Court precedent,” she said. And Dianne Feinstein, we’ve got the sound bite, we’ll go back to it. She just launched into her for being too Catholic, too dogmatic, too religious. And the Democrats tell us they’re opposed to litmus tests.

So the experts say that one of the leading contenders for Trump’s nomination is in fact Judge Amy Coney Barrett. She checks every box. She went to a prestigious law school in Notre Dame. She’s not Ivy League, however. And there is a little blurb of story out there that says Trump wants somebody from the Ivy League. Well, she’s not from the Ivy League. And people are snickering at the idea that Trump wants somebody from Ivy League. “Trump, he’s just a status seeker, you know, Trump’s not an Ivy Leaguer, but he just wants his nominees to be so –”

Well, Trump went to Wharton. He went to the Wharton business school. Trump is not your average Ivy Leaguer in image, but he has lineage there. But she does not. Amy Coney Barrett, law school, Notre Dame. She wrote for the Notre Dame Law Review and there’s evidence of it. You know, Obama wrote for law review at Harvard, but there’s no evidence. Whatever Obama wrote, nobody can find. But they said he did run the law review. It’s a big deal.

She held an appellate court clerkship. She held a Supreme Court clerkship. She clerked with Justice Scalia. She has elite law firm experience. She taught law at Notre Dame. She now has experience as a federal judge on the Seventh Circuit court of appeals. And she’s done all of that while being the mother to seven kids! And the libs are ticked off about that! She’s had too many kids. That’s bad for the planet. That’s bad for climate change. That’s bad for worldwide food resources. That’s more kids than anybody should have. That’s not good.

She’s done everything in her life, and she’s excelled at everything, in addition to being a mom with seven kids. You would think the feminists would be cheering this woman, but you would be wrong. Because we actually don’t expect the feminists to be cheering this woman because feminism itself is a lie. If feminism were true Amy Barrett would be at the top of their list and they would be supporting her.

But feminism is just liberalism. It’s not about women doing everything. It’s not about women being all they can be. It’s not about women having it all, doing it all, getting it all. It’s about liberalism. And now communism and Marxism.

See, she’s Catholic. And therefore she’s presumed to be pro-life. Hell, the pope may not be pro-life. Who knows anymore about this pope. In fact, Judge Barrett is being attacked for Christianity. It’s open season on Christians in America, and she’s being attacked for hers. The attacks are not open. They are thinly disguised as concern about Roe v. Wade and access to contraception. In other words, the same old stuff the Democrats trot out against every Republican judicial nominee.

Mr. Snerdley, you may remember — I’ve told this story in variations a number of times — it usually happens around elections. I’ll be out and about, going where I go, running into the people I run into. And I run into a bunch of Republicans, fat cat Republicans with liberal wives or nagging wives, these guys come up to me, “You gotta stop talking about abortion. You gotta stop it. We gotta stop talking about the social issues. We’re never gonna win. You gotta get rid of ’em.”

As though I’m putting it there, as though it’s my responsibility to get rid of the discussion of social issues. And finally I’d had it. And then their wives would come up, “We’ve gotta stop talking about abortion. We’re never gonna win anything, we’re never gonna win a thing if all we stand for is –” And I finally got to the point, put my hands up, said, “You know what? I’m not talking about it. The people that bring it up are the Democrats and the leftists. We don’t bring it up.”

We’re not the ones running around pronouncing on this all the time. They are! We react to what they say, but we’re not leading any charge here on this. It was always used as a convenient explanation for why Republicans were losing elections, and it was always a bogus explanation for why Republicans were losing elections. It was a convenient excuse for people that didn’t have the guts to articulate policies and beliefs that were anti-Democrat or anti-leftist.

So many Republicans were insistent on being moderate, being seen as not controversial, because they were embarrassed. They were embarrassed of the newsmakers on the Republican side because of their conservatism. I remember catching this on all fronts, and I got sick and tired of it. I got sick and tired of people sticking their fingers at me and telling me, “You gotta stop talking about abortion! You gotta move on. We’re never gonna win anything.”

Meanwhile, we win every time social issues come up. The majority of Americans are with us on social issues. But if we don’t act like we stand on ’em, we’re gonna lose ’em. But the point is we’re not the ones that run around and talk about it all the time. The left is. They’re the ones that can’t let go of this. They’re the ones forcing things down everybody’s throats. They’re forcing gay marriage down our throat. They’re forcing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual bathroom stuff. All of those upheaval, cultural issues.

We’re sitting around, standing around minding our own business and every day we wake up and these people are trying to pervert something else in our culture and I have to end up running around listening to people point fingers at me, “You better stop talking about abortion! You better stop being pro-life. It’s hurting Republicans.” I’m not even, you know, running for office. You know, in our parents’ and grandparents’ day social issues would not even be mentioned of any discussion of nominees for the Supreme Court. It was not seen as their job.

But now it’s singularly a disqualifier for people on the left and in the media. I mean, it’s just interesting as this stuff plays out to watch the left panic over this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A couple of audio sound bites that tie in here, both from CNN this morning, right before the show. Well, one of them just since the program began. First up is Joan Biskupic. Joan Biskupic is a CNN legal analyst, and it’s time now to attack another Republican woman. In fact, you know what? Before we get to these sound bites, let me grab this the guy on Line 1, ’cause this guy on Line 1, our caller, has it nailed. His name is Josh. He’s in Brick, New Jersey. How are you doing, Josh? Welcome to the program today.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, Rush. Just to your point yesterday when you said, “Of course they’re gonna oppose Amy Barrett because she’s a woman,” I think in fact because she’s a woman they’re going to impugn and malign her even more. You see what they did to Clarence Thomas in the 1991 hearings. Anyone that the left lane thinks should be part of their coalition and isn’t, is considered a turncoat, and everything is fair game. They will treat her… They will treat Amy Barrett, if she’s the pick, a lot worse than had it been a man that was pro-abortion. (sic)

RUSH: That’s what I wanted to hear. That’s exactly right. Old Josh here as has got it. There are people on the Republican side — you know, these fat cat Republicans with their lib wives — constantly harassing me about abortion. They’ll come up to me and say, “We need to nominate a woman! We need to nominate a woman in a circumstance like this, ’cause they won’t attack a woman.” I said, “You are crazy. They’ll destroy a woman who’s not a leftist. They will destroy a pro-choice woman.”

I tell ’em. They say, “No, no, no. We need to nominate a woman. They won’t go after her.” There’s a lot of moderate-type establishment Republican thinking that believes if you nominate a woman, the left’s gonna find it much tougher to savage her. Give me a break. Ever heard of Sarah Palin, folks? Have you ever heard of Kirstjen Nielsen? I mean, the examples I could give you are a mile long. They are going to destroy, or try to, Amy Barrett — and Josh is right. Just as they tried to destroy Clarence Thomas…. See, his seat, that was Thurgood Marshall.

Thurgood Marshall, he owned that seat. Clarence Thomas had no right to the Thurgood Marshall seat, even though it’s not “the Thurgood Marshall seat.” It was an open seat on the United States Supreme Court. So there’s no question they’re gonna go after this womn, if she’s the nominee, or any other woman who is the nominee. There’s no… Folks, there is no way to soften the left on this. There’s no way you can nominate… Unless the biggest mistake of the world was made and you nominate a moderate leftist.

(chuckles) You know, even then, even then I think the Democrats are so focused on the midterms and trying to win them and the resistance in the Democrat Party is so strident, that I don’t know that they’re capable of supporting any Trump nominee. So given that, I would nominate the best you can find, whoever you want, and go to the mattresses for ’em. You know, there’s two schools of thought on this confirmation battle taking place at the same time the campaign for the midterms is. Some people think that’d be a terrible, terrible mistake, because it would be airing a bunch of issues Republicans don’t want aired; the Democrats’d make hay.

And if Roe v. Wade becomes a focal point, it could have a negative Democrat voter turnout, spike it real high. The other thought is, “No! Embrace it, be aggressive, and use the Supreme Court nomination as an opportunity to get your issues out and hammer those home.” And I think that’s Trump. Trump likes offense, and he likes chaos. The one thing Trump doesn’t do is play defense. Thank goodness. I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up with playing reactionary defense all the time — or defense, to pronounce that properly.

So let’s go to the audio sound bites here. Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst. She’s being interviewed by Kate Bolduan.

Question: “The president is — at least on some level — interested in choosing a woman. There’s only one woman he’s interviewed so far. What is important to know about Amy Coney Barrett?”

BISKUPIC: I don’t think she will diffuse the abortion issue. I think she might ratchet it up because of some of your writings. She was confirmed by a pretty tight vote, 55-43 I believe it was with only three Democrats voting for her. And she’s written in the area of religion that could be — end up being a flash point in any confirmation hearing. She also is finally a, uh, former law clerk of Antonin Scalia.

RUSH: What’s that supposed to mean? Is that a strike against her? “Yeah, it is! She was a law clerk for Scalia. That means she’s horrible, because Scalia was horrible.” “She was confirmed by pretty tight vote, 55-40…” Doesn’t matter. She was confirmed. Okay, so Gorsuch. He wasn’t confirmed unanimously. Doesn’t matter. This is not horseshoes. You win, you win. It doesn’t matter if it’s one vote or 20. Here’s Jonathan Martin, formally of Politico, now with the New York Times, on a different CNN show this afternoon, and he’s commenting on how Trump makes these decisions.

MARTIN: I think, uhhh, Trump, uhh, is probably more taken with whoever kind of moves him in the moment and who he feels like looks the part. (stammer) If we know anything about the president, he’s so taken with optics and appearances and the perception, uh, that is so critical in his mind to politics and public relations. So I think that’s gonna trump all.

RUSH: Okay. What are we hearing there? How would you translate that? What Jonathan Martin of the New York Times is saying is, “Trump is gonna go for the good-looking babe. Trump loves good-looking babes. He owned the Miss USA pageant, or may still. Who knows? Trump likes babes; looks at his wife; look at Marla Maples. Trump loves good-looking women. He’s gonna go out and pick a good-looking woman! Trump’s into image!” They still don’t know Donald Trump. It’s amazing.

They think they do, and they haven’t gained any significant ground at all in their quest to understand Trump, and that sound bite is an illustration. But, you know, Jonathan is not alone in bringing looks into this. See, that’s something we’re not supposed to do, folks. We’re not supposed to comment on the looks of people in politics. Because you know why? Politics is showbiz for the ugly. We’re not supposed to talk about how people look. But they do. And our old buddy Chris Cillizza — formerly with the Washington Post, now with CNN — has been blasted for a tweet that he sent about her appearance.

He tweeted a photo of Amy Coney Barrett and said, “If you believe Trump makes decisions based on image and appearance — and he does — then here’s the next Supreme Court justice.” And he plastered a picture of Amy Coney Barrett there. “Cillizza wrote in an accompanying article that Trump is ‘obsessed with image.'” Notice how, okay, I don’t know who said this first, but she doesn’t know it Martin and now Chris Cillizza saying identical things: Trump is obsessed with image. He’s obsessed with PR. He’s obsessed with buzz.

“Trump, Cillizza says, ‘will appreciate that Barrett is a young woman with seven children. How you look is a major marker for how you will do in Trump’s world,’ Cillizza said. ‘You need to look the part for him to imagine you in the job.'” My friends, far be it for me to cite any specific examples here, but… (chuckles) Folks, don’t make me say it. I mean, the evidence abounds that these guys are wrong! The evidence is everywhere that these guys are wrong. They want you to think that Trump picks 10s because Trump is out making news with 10s.

Trump’s doing things with No. 10s, No. 9s. The evidence abounds that this is not the case, both men and women. But look who it is case, again focused on looks. It isn’t us. Look again who’s focused on abortion and Roe v. Wade. Not us. It’s them. Here’s Dianne Feinstein. Grab audio sound bite No. 11. Feinstein interviewing Amy Barrett — well, interrogating her — during confirmation hearings September 6, 2017. Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on Amy Coney Barrett for the Seventh Circuit court of appeals.

FEINSTEIN: When we ready your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country. I assume if you are on the lists that you would be a “no” vote on Roe. And that puts a number of us — just very honestly, in layman’s language — in a very difficult position.

RUSH: Okay. So what she means by dogma is the Catholic dogma. DiFi said, “When you read your speeches, [Barrett], the conclusion one draws is that the [Catholic] dogma…” Catholic dogma? Dogma? Catholicism is dogma? It “[l]ives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for…” Meaning, “There’s a bunch of us that don’t like Christians and we’ve been working really hard to take this country away from you, and you’re gonna stop us from getting away with taking the country away from you!”

That’s what Dianne Feinstein means here. Dianne Feinstein’s Jewish. Is she “dogmatic” in her Jewish faith? I’m just asking. I don’t know. But we’re not supposed to bring this stuff up, are we? But they do. There isn’t a religious test. Your religion does not exclude you. It does not disqualify you. But the left wants it to because this country was found by God-fearing people, the left is trying to change this country’s identity and transform it.

So what this means is there’s a lot of people who fought for for years in this country to take this country away from people like you and your Christian dogma. And then she said, “I assume if you’re on the lists,” meaning the president’s lists of qualified judges. “I assume if you are on the lists that you would be a ‘no’ vote on Roe. And that puts a number of us — just very honestly, in layman’s language — in a very difficult position.” Why do you need to say “layman’s language” when you say “very difficult position”?

Here is how Amy Coney Barrett responded, in part…

BARRETT: I’m being considered for a position the court of appeals, and there would be no opportunity to be a “no” vote on Roe.

FEINSTEIN: Well —

BARRETT: And as I said to the committee, I would faithfully supply all Supreme Court precedent.

RUSH: Gotta take a break.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Tony in New York. Tony, glad you waited. Great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Happy Fourth of July from a proud American.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Right to the point. If the Supreme Court was a big issue in the last presidential election and if Trump nominates Amy Barrett, it could be a great strategic move to get vulnerable Democrat senators in red states like Manchin and McCaskill on record against a pro-life woman. It’d be a nice Trump strategy.

RUSH: For the sake of these people being defeated in their Senate races in November?

CALLER: Exactly. She either gets confirmed or they risk losing their seats because they’re voting against the values of their constituents.

RUSH: Well, let’s look at this. You mentioned McCaskill, I haven’t heard her name in this mix, but she’s in trouble anyway.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: The latest thing we learned about old Claire, she had a bus trip through the state of Missouri to meet the voters, except she was never on the bus. She took the family private jet to all the locations and then had a secret vehicle take her to the bus before it rolled into town at every one of the stops.

But look, you got Joe Manchin, got Heidi Heitkamp, and there’s one other Democrat senator, red state, that voted for Gorsuch. And that’s how he ended up being confirmed. By the way, folks, we don’t know that it’s gonna be Amy Coney Barrett.

Let me just put the brakes on this. Nobody knows who Trump’s gonna nominate. We find out on Monday. He’s got a list of 25 that he says he’s narrowed down to five. It could be her, but we just don’t know. She’s been confirmed before, and so there’s that that you add to the plus column.

But the idea that you would not nominate somebody to flush out a bunch of phony red state Democrats so as to defeat them in November in the Senate, I can understand the thinking. I don’t know that I would toss away a Supreme Court nomination for that reason. This is defining. Folks, you have to understand, to the American left, to the Democrats, the Marxists and communists, the Supreme Court is the legislature, not Congress.

The Supreme Court and the judiciary as a whole, that’s where law is written. You get liberal judges appointed when they have the White House and they have these people appointed for life, and they exercise their personal policy preferences rather than judge the law. Take a look at the four libs on the Supreme Court. It does not matter what the case is. Those four liberals vote in lockstep 98% of the time.

So if the nominee is somebody who’s designed to flush out a bunch of Democrats that might go down in flames, if you’re forward, maybe you do that because it enables confirmation of future nominations a little easier if you get rid of some Democrats in the Senate. So you might have a point here. I just — did you mean to use the nomination on somebody you really don’t care about just to flush these people out or —

CALLER: No, no. You want them to be confirmed. So, first of all, you definitely want her to be confirmed, and if all things were fine, then she would just go through. But it’s a double-prong strategy, because if she isn’t confirmed, you at least have the people who are vulnerable on record. So then that does play into the second win, which would be future appointments.

RUSH: Yeah. Interesting. You know what I’ve noticed as I’ve watched the news — and again, it’s not the news. I have watched broadcasts where ostensibly news is reported. And I have seen a bunch of female and male analysts who are advocates for Trump and various of his nominees. And the confidence that they all are expressing is notable. There isn’t a one of them that doesn’t think Trump’s gonna get who he wants, get ’em confirmed.

Normally you see some people expressing caution, “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s gonna be a very, very tough fight. This could be a knock-down, drag-out could go long beyond the elections.” But everybody I’m seeing, I mean, with connections to The Federalist society or other legal, conservative think tanks all believe that Trump is gonna get whoever he nominates confirmed and before the election.

And yet if you turn to the left side, they’re already calculating that Trump’s lost his nominee because McCain can’t vote, they’ve lose Susan Collins and Murkowski, and there aren’t any Democrats, and the left is telling their audience that Trump can’t nominate anybody that he really wants ’cause nobody he really wants can get confirmed.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Democrats and the media are very crafty. But one of my singsong points is that the media makes it look like whatever their outrage of the moment is is shared by the vast majority of Americans. It’s an illusion. Like Dianne Feinstein when she was questioning Amy Barrett when she was up for confirmation to the Seventh Circuit court of appeals.

Dianne Feinstein, “There’s a lot of people who’ve worked very hard to overcome all of these discriminations and biases and so forth that your Catholic dogma stands for and so forth.” And what she meant was is that there’s a whole lot of people who don’t like the way this country is founded. They work very hard to change the way it was founded, and you want to stop us from succeeding. And Dianne Feinstein makes it look like they have become the majority.

Chuck Schumer makes it look like they, the Democrats, the left, the radicals are the majority in America. And they’re not. And it depresses people, it dispirits people because the media picks this up. They’ll have terms like, “We are fighting for America. This is not the America I know and love. This is not our values. This is not who we are.”

And, of course, they are not who we are. They are the ones who have strayed from the boundaries of what we all consider normal. And they come out and say, whenever they’re trying to actually dismantle or tear apart the Constitution, what they say is we are fighting for our Constitution, we are fighting for our basic rights, we are fighting for our innate human rights. And what they’re actually doing is trying to tear everything down.

So they have this method of describing their actions that make it all sound patriotic and make it all sound like it’s promoting the goodness of America when in fact they’re trying to transform America into something it was never founded to be.