RUSH: All right, folks. It was pure genius. I mean, it was instinctive, pure genius last night by President Trump and the State of the Union show. And, of course, I’m gonna explain why I think that. Did you ever think, did you ever think that Donald Trump could cause a bunch of Democrat women — by the way, what was all that vestigial white stuff they were wearing, what was that? Was that solidarity with Ralph Northam? What was that, Wendy? Why were they all wearing white out there? Don’t tell me virginal. We know that’s not applicable here.

Greetings, folks. Great to have you — 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network.

Did you ever think that you would see House Democrat feminazis standing up and giving a standing ovation to Donald Trump? I know what you’re saying. “They weren’t giving Trump a standing ovation.” Yes, they were! Remember how this looks to people watching on television! We all know what was going on. They were applauding themselves.

You know, I have spent a lot of time today trying to look at various reaction, and there’s a theme out there that kind of disappoints me that people don’t get it. I found a bunch of people asking, “What was all this applause by the women? Why were they applauding themselves? I don’t get this.” You don’t get it? Okay. I’m gonna try to explain this. It’s not complicated at all why the women were applauding, being mentioned as having won elections in the House and so forth.

If you understand the rage and hatred that propels your average Democrat today, then all kinds of things begin to make sense. If you understand how they all look at themselves as victims who have to overcome all of the obstacles in life placed there by the white male patriarchy. If you understand that they all think that they are discriminated against and mistreated and disrespected, then their behavior becomes crystal clear. But most people for some reason don’t have the ability or just don’t see how these people see themselves. So we’ll explain all this in great detail with illustrations as the program unfolds.

But I have to tell you, that last night, from beginning to end, was a symphony. It had a simple, great theme. What was the central, great theme? American greatness, and that we should choose it. That it is the only sensible option. It was a continuation of the slogan “Make America Great Again,” although he never uttered those words. He got close a couple times but did not utter the words. It was a simple — I wouldn’t even call it a plea. It was a simple acknowledgment that we can and should choose greatness for America. Donald Trump weaved all of his accomplishments, all of his past accomplishments combined with all of his future goals and his guests into that theme.

When the president was acknowledging all the World War II heroes and all of the law enforcement heroes and describing what they had done in conquering the Normandy beaches, in rappelling the heights at Pointe du Hoc, at beating back the tyranny of the Nazis and saving the world from tyranny, what do you think your average leftist is thinking when these kinds of exploits are recounted?

That’s what toxic masculinity is to them! World War II heroics, saving Europe from the tyranny of Nazis, celebrating the kind of men who did it and what they did and detailing it and how they did it, that’s what’s become toxic masculinity today. And that’s what the left is attempting to erase and eliminate from men, is that aspect of their character and personality. And there was a reluctance to cheer these people last night.

Look at the Democrats every time an applause line came up, they were looking at each other trying to figure out whether to stay seated or do the jack-in-the-box routine. They didn’t know what to do. And it is so delicious to see this because these people all file in, all the Never Trumper Republicans in that audience, all of the Democrats, they all file in. And you could see it on Pelosi’s face. They think they are the smart ones. They have all the arrogance written all over their faces, the arrogance and the condescension, it was written all over their body language. And they were deigning to grace this glorious chamber with their presence to hear this nincompoop boob come in and talk about his wall and his racism and his bigotry.

But they did it for whatever they thought was the larger cause. And then they sit there and they are clueless how to act. They don’t know what to respond to. They don’t know how to respond to what. Donald Trump had them behaving against their instincts. Donald Trump had them cheering, what looked to people watching on TV, him! These pictures last night are gonna make some of the greatest television ads for Republicans running for office in 2020 that I can imagine.

This was one of the best State of the Union addresses that I remember, one of the best speeches by anyone in politics in recent memory. There weren’t any platitudes. There weren’t any impossible objectives. I would even object to people who say that all Trump did was pay attention to his base. That’s what sets this speech apart! He was reaching out to everybody who had the sense to understand it. It was going way beyond his base. He has his base. He doesn’t have to secure his base.

This speech may have been the prelude to a 2020 campaign. But if it was that plus whatever else it was, it was pure genius. I also think that people… I started getting messages, “Rush, is this a longer-than-usual State of the Union?” “Yes, it is. He’s approaching Obama territory here.” “Why? Why? You know, people get bored.” I said, “I’ll tell you why I think he went long. To push Stacey Abrams further into the depths of the end of prime time so that fewer and fewer and fewer people would hang around to watch the response,” and I think that was smart thinking.

I have no doubt that that was part of the calculation here. But, man, folks, the two areas where he just killed it — and there were some Never Trumpers tweeting thorough last night and they were mad because he was killing it. They begrudgingly today are having to talk about what great retail politics that was last night. So we start out with the president in one of these great examples. We’ve got audio sound bites to back all this up, but I just want to set the table. Here’s the president talking about the need for or his support of federal paid paternity leave.

Family leave, paid.

Now, this happens to be a pet project of the first daughter, Ivanka Trump.

And she has been trying to get this going for… Well, since the president began his campaign and was eventually inaugurated. Last night, it made its appearance — and, of course, what happens? The left, the Democrats… They can’t help it! They have to stand up! They have to roar! They have to applaud! It’s a prolonged standing ovation! Here are the Democrats supporting, endorsing, standing ovation-ing the concept of a mother being allowed to stay at home with her infant baby to bond with the baby at the earliest stages of life for the health of the child, the health of the mother, the health of the family.

And then in the midst of that standing ovation, in the midst of that applause, Donald Trump pivots immediately to (impression) “Ralph Northam in Virginia who wants to kill those same babies after they had done been born.” And then he pivots to the New York state legislature who passed a law doing the same thing. All of these Democrat women who were on their feet and applauding the concept of paid family leave so that newborn children could stay at home with their stay-at-home moms being paid by the federal government to bond families, they immediately had to sit down. They were caught.

Donald Trump exposed the Democrat Party with a simple pivot. Paid family leave so mom can stay home — and he said “mom,” by the way. Stay home with the infant for a long period of time to bond with the infant and get family life started. “Yay! Yaaaaay!” And then he pivots immediately to those same people advocating for the right to perform post-birth abortions and calls out New York State and Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia. I’m telling you, I was sitting there, I was watching, and I was marveling.

That was just pure genius in every which way you examine this. Politically, emotionally, psychologically, illustratively, it could not have been better. And he did it another time on another issue. He did the exact same pivot, and they fell for it both times. They go from wildly applauding the whole concept of birth and a mom at home raising the baby to sitting on their fannies when Trump acknowledges that killing babies after they’ve been born is wrong. They couldn’t stand up and applaud that.

He couldn’t lose on this. This is why, you know, I was hoping before this whole thing began that he would spell out the Democrat agenda. Since the media hides it, just spell it out. You know, present two visions of America, and on one side we have this group that thinks this and believes this. Well, he did that last night in his own way. He didn’t ever say “two visions of America.” He didn’t call out the Democrats. He didn’t use the word “Democrat agenda.” But he illustrated who they are and what they are.

And they could not afford to stand up and continue applauding after he goes after Governor Northam and the New York State Legislature. They had to sit there and they had to act ticked off — and right after applaudin, the whole opposite life experience! After seeing the Democrat women last night all dressed in virginal white, did you hear what Pam Geller said? Pam Geller said it looked like a bunch of discarded Kleenexes. Why didn’t they show up dressed as Handmaid’s Tale characters? Wouldn’t that have been better? I mean, that’s what they think of Trump.

That’s what they should have done. Maybe they’ll do that next week.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned that there were two areas of the speech that were genius. They were genius in structure, they were genius in conception, they were brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed. And I am here to tell you that every political consultant in that town, although they won’t admit it, is sitting there wishing they could say today that it was their idea. They’re wishing that they worked for Trump so that they could claim credit for what he did last night. But on the Republican side especially, there aren’t any conservative political consultants.

In fact, I have a story coming up later in the Stack, the secret Republican effort to destroy Donald Trump. The story was published yesterday. And it’s largely about Republican Never Trumpers and their efforts to undermine and sabotage Donald Trump. We’ll get to that in a second here.

Folks, I cannot tell you how strategically and executionally brilliant it was to get everybody out of their seats applauding federal mandated family leave paid for, whatever length of time, it wasn’t specified, but for the purpose that Trump detailed: so that mothers could bond with their new infants at the most crucial time of the infant’s life. Family bonding, family values, family. And they are out of their chairs. They’re applauding. They can’t believe it. “This guy, Trump, he’s supporting family leave? That’s one of our issues.”

That’s another thing. They couldn’t believe that Trump was appealing to people on both sides of that dividing line in there. I guarantee you they were stunk, they were swamped, they were shocked, they were surprised. They were taken totally by surprise by most of that speech last night. They walk in there with their preconceived notions based on Trump’s ignorance, their own arrogance. He set them up and they were just like bowling pins, just one after another, knocked down and knocked down and knocked down. And they kept popping back up and kept being knocked back down.

So after Trump gets them out of their seats applauding family leave, he pivots immediately to the Democrat Party’s desire to be able to kill babies even after they’re born. You could have heard a pin drop. They knew they had been caught.

So what was the second example of this? This is called keeping them off balance, and they were off balance all night. They didn’t know when they were supposed to stand, when they were supposed to stay seated, when they were to applaud or not applaud. So here comes Trump attacking Venezuela, attacking communism in Venezuela. He’s detailing all of the failures that socialism has wrought on Venezuela.

And during this, the cameras cut to well-known socialists in the Democrat Party in the audience, the bug-eyed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the disheveled appearing Crazy Bernie Sanders. You could pick any of them, because they’re all pretty much acknowledged, avowed socialists now. And you could see the grimace, you could see the scowl on their faces, you could see the fact that they just detested this guy for pointing out the failure of their beloved socialism.

And, meanwhile, on the Republican side it’s one standing O after another. The place is hooping it up, whooping it up. They’re loving it. We don’t get this much, folks. We don’t get a president of the United States to a national audience in a State of the Union address bashing our enemies. Ronald Reagan is the last president that actually took it to, for example, the Soviet Union and their client states in Nicaragua and elsewhere. He had no problem calling them the evil empire. And when he did, remember what the Democrats said, “You can’t say that, oh, my God. He’s gonna start a war. He’s gonna make the Russians mad. Oh, my God.” And they got scared to death. And they think of Trump the same way.

So here comes Trump just calling out the socialists and the communists all over the world and then says he promises the United States will never be a socialist nation. And they cut immediately to Crazy Bernie, and he looked crushed. He just looked defeated. He looked fumingly mad. Of all things that were gonna happen in the State of the Union last night, this was the last thing any of these people ever — they thought Trump was gonna be walking out of there humiliated and embarrassed, that the women in white and the Democrats investigating Trump were going to show him who really runs that town, and it isn’t him.

So he praises women and job growth and paid family leave, turns and blasts infanticide, does the same thing with Venezuela and socialism. And as I say, I think he went long just to make sure that Stacey Abrams’ response was later and later and later.