RUSH:  The Bernie Sanders town hall on Fox News has got people on both sides of the political divide agitated.  The Fox News fans are livid that Bernie Sanders was given the forum and access to that audience, a larger audience than Bernie can find on any other cable news network out there, which is true.  In fact, Bernie created the highest rated town hall yet on any network.  It was by no means a record audience, but for town halls it was: 2.6 million people, 50,000 people in the demo 25-54.

From 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., so it was a big number, but it’s not anywhere near a record.  My appearances on Fox generate no less than four million. Ahem. But for town halls, within that universe, it was bigger than any town hall there ever has been on CNN or PMSNBC.  But not only is the Fox News audience irritated and ticked off and threatening to abandon the network, the left is ticked off!  They are livid at Bernie for doing it!

They’re so mad at Bernie, they’re saying that this is a classic example of how Bernie Sanders is selfish and thinks only of himself and is not a team player, and his appearance is undermining their efforts to destroy Fox.  They’re openly admitting this.  Bernie Sanders showing up — and now, since Bernie had a record town hall, guess who is raising his little hand there and wants to be next? (impression) “Hi, I’m Mayor Pete! I’m Mayor Pete!

“Can I do one? C-c-can I come on?  I — I — I mean, I did really well in the CNN talk, really good. Can I come on?”  And they’re thinking about having Mayor Pete come on to do it. They are.  But, folks, I need to explain this.  There’s so much more involved in this.  I especially want those of you who are mad at Fox to hear a couple of things. I’m not gonna try to talk you out of being mad, but I think there’s always more to these things than appear on the surface.

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RUSH: I said one of the reasons the left is ticked off at Bernie is because he’s selfish. He’s selfish. He’s not a team player. He went on Fox News to benefit himself!

How can a guy be accused of not being a team player when he allowed an election to be rigged against him and didn’t make a beef about it? I mean, I think Bernie Sanders in one sense is the ultimate team player. He knows full well what happened in 2016. Hillary Clinton and the DNC, Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz, rigged the primaries for her. And he knows it. And he took it. And he didn’t make a big deal of it.

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t accuse them of it. He just marches on to come back another day. If that’s not being a team player, I don’t know what is. Unless, of course, they’ve had a figurative gun pointed to his head, which given we’re talking about the Clintons, nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

But they did. They succeeded in rigging the Democrat primary. They tried to rig the presidential election, and they failed. So they then had to cover up what they had done, and that’s the Mueller investigation, in a nutshell.

Okay. To the audio sound bites because I am gonna get into the Fox News thing here in just a minute, ’cause I’m overrun with emails from people and comments from Fox News viewers who are livid. And not just at Crazy Bernie’s town hall. They’re livid that Donna Brazile’s been hired and all these other Democrat commentators. They’ve all got their theories as to why. And the theories run the gamut.

They’ve heard about the Murdoch sons and they’ve heard the comments that one of the Murdoch sons is very liberal, his wife is very liberal, and he’s tired of being embarrassed when he’s out with his friends, with his friends ripping into him about how conservative Fox is so he’s gonna change it.

Or the pressure that Fox is sick and tired of being considered right-wing because of their prime time programming, and so they’re doing everything they can to tell the world that they’re not a bunch of depraved right-wingers by having all these Democrats. I mean, the theories are all over the place.

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RUSH: Now the Fox News story. And it’s kind of fascinating to go beyond just the surface. As I say, a lot of Fox News fans are livid because they even gave an hour to Crazy Bernie. It’s the largest audience in cable news, and a bunch of conservatives, “Why are we turning that audience over to the Democrats? They can’t build audiences like this on their own networks. Why is Fox doing this? It’s not right.”

And so people evolve a bunch of theories. “Fox is tired of being criticized and they want to be respected by the rest of the media, and they don’t like being called right-wing and so forth. They’re just going overboard. They’re destroying what they built. I’m never watching again.”

Then on the left there is so much anger at Bernie Sanders, you can’t believe it, folks. You don’t see it because you’re too busy focused on your anger at Fox. But the left, the radical left, the socialist left, the mainstream left is livid at Bernie for daring to go on Fox. And you know why? Because in their view, Bernie is validating Fox, and he is humanizing Fox, and he is making Fox appear to be mainstream by willingly appearing there. And this is undercutting their efforts to destroy Fox.

What are the efforts that they are employing to destroy Fox? It’s advertiser boycotts. I can’t tell you how filled with rage they are because they are afraid that Bernie Sanders appearing on Fox is going to create new advertisers for Fox who approve of this, which will be financially beneficial to Fox and will undercut their efforts to boycott advertisers of Tucker, Hannity, Ingraham, Shannon Bream and wherever else around the network.

And so they are livid at Bernie because they think Bernie is single-handedly destroying their effort to destroy Fox by mainstreaming it, by giving it credibility, and they are deathly afraid that Bernie Sanders — and Pete Buttigieg is next, that these liberal Democrats doing town halls is going to further mainstream Fox, which is going to make it more amenable to additional advertisers, which will then further undercut the left’s boycott effort.

As angry as you may be at Fox, trust me, they are livid at Bernie Sanders for this. They are single-handedly running these boycott campaigns. They happen every day. They’re so mainstream media now that they don’t even make the news. But they’re running these advertiser boycott campaigns, and Bernie’s undercutting ’em.

Dan Pfeiffer who was a famous Democrat spokesman, Clintons, Obama, “Fox News will use these Democrat town halls to attract new advertisers, which will help keep Hannity and Tucker on the air, undoing a lot of grassroots pressure on advertisers.” The DailyKoS. “Yeah, this is a great thing for Sanders personally. But he’s undermining everybody’s efforts to destroy Fox’s ability to sell advertising.”

And they’re really mad that Sanders set the record. They’re mad that more people watched Sanders on Fox than have ever watched a Democrat town hall on CNN or MSNBC. They can’t believe it! They’re livid! Bernie is a sellout, he’s selfish. And they’re trying to whip up a bunch of anti-Bernie Sanders pressure.

But what they’re really worried about is that every other Democrat is now gonna want in on this. And Mayor Pete (impression), “Hey, can I come on? I want to come on. My husband and I would love to kiss each other on Fox. Man, that would be great, would be great. We’ll do a town hall.” And then Eric Swalwell be right behind ’em and the rest of the Democrat parade and they’ll go, “I want to kiss my husband on Fox, too, oh-ho-ho! That would be so wonderful!”

And they are livid and paranoid that their own Democrats are gonna undercut their effort to destroy Fox’s financial viability. There are a couple other aspects of this thing as well. Some of them are saying, to support their contention that Bernie’s being selfish, “There isn’t anybody watching that’s gonna change their mind and vote for Bernie. Nobody is watching. This is the Fox News audience. They’re not gonna watch a Bernie town hall and decide, ‘Hey, Bernie’s a good guy, I’m gonna vote for him.’ That isn’t gonna happen.”

So they think Bernie’s wasting his time, that all he’s doing is helping mainstream and humanize Fox. It’s one of the reasons why whenever there have been decent profiles of me, the left goes nuts. They can’t stand that I would be humanized. Because their efforts have been for 30 years to dehumanize me, to make me some gigantic bogeyman or what have you. The same thing that’s happening here with Fox.

So for all of you Fox fans livid here at what’s happening, you think they’re selling out, they may be, I don’t know. But at the same time, there are benefits accruing to them financially for this. And it’s turning a bunch of left-wing donors and activists against Crazy Bernie at the same time. So just a few additional things to put in the hopper for you to consider.

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RUSH: Hey, breaking news. Amy Klobuchar has just announced that she’s doing a town hall on Fox News on May the 8th. (chuckling) You know, there’s another reason they’re scared. Bret Baier is straight down the middle. They have told everybody that Fox News is this dangerous, conservative, right-wing bunch of you maniacs, but there wasn’t any ideology or maniacal behavior in the one hour with Crazy Bernie. They’re really… It’s just like they’re afraid of all of these enemies they’ve created — me, talk radio, the blogosphere, Fox News. They’re afraid of anybody seeing that they’ve been lying about who we are, and that’s another reason they don’t want these Democrats going on.

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RUSH: From the New York Times: “‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum.” This actually is a hilarious article. The New York Times says the Democrats are scared to death that Bernie’s gonna win the nomination and that they can’t think of how to stop him.

Now, part of trying to stop him is to rip him a new one for appearing on Fox News, but now Mayor Pete wants to go on Fox to kiss his husband there in a town hall, and Amy Klobuchar wants to go. And I will guarantee you this is gonna create a train of other Democrats that want to parade through Fox News town hall.

By the way, Tom Perez, this really radical leftist head of the Democrat National Committee is now doubling down. They said that Fox News will not be allowed to televise any Democrat primary debate ever, no way, no how. But, folks, the real reason for this — and there are many — but the real reason is the left has an ongoing campaign to destroy Fox financially.

There is an ongoing advertiser boycott attempt. They are continuing with this, and they think Democrats appearing on Fox is gonna undermine it by legitimizing Fox to the left, by mainstreaming Fox to advertisers. I mean, if the left saboteurs are out there trying to intimidate advertisers, “You can’t advertise. That’s a racist, bigoted network! This is a network that that that that…” And they make up all this garbage, whatever they say it is, and advertisers just slink away. Some of them who are not properly explained to what is happening here, slink away.

And then after they think they’ve succeeded in driving a bunch of advertisers away, here comes Bernie Sanders, and here come Mayor Pete, and here comes Amy Klobuchar appearing on Fox, which is gonna maybe even bring new advertisers in to the replace the ones the boycott is succeeding in scaring away, which I think is outrageous anyway. I think these advertisers ought to have more guts. But that’s another story.

If you bring in new advertisers to make up for the ones the boycott claims to be getting rid of, then you’ve undermined the primary effort that the radical left has. The radical left cannot stand competition. They do not want any alternative point of view anywhere. They don’t want to win a debate. They don’t think they should have to engage in it in the first place.

So they’re objective is to rid the country of Fox News, to rid the country of talk radio. And they have been trying to do this with advertiser boycotts and intimidation. So as these Democrats appear on Fox, it undercuts that. The advertiser says, “What do you mean Fox is this? I just watched Bernie Sanders, and they treated him fairly. What are talking about, Looney Toon wacko leftists?”

And don’t think Fox doesn’t know this, by the way. I know there are a lot of you who think that Fox is caving ideologically because of pressure from high up in the executive suite or maybe pressure from Shepard Smith, who knows. But believe me there’s a financial component to all this as well.

So here’s this New York Times story: “’Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum.” They are scared he’s gonna win the nomination. They can’t think of how to stop him. Which, to me, is a knee slapper. They had no problem stopping him in 2016. They rigged the election against him.

If you don’t want Crazy Bernie to win then go ahead and play delegate games like you did for Hillary. This isn’t hard. You’ve done it once, Democrats. What’s to stop you from rigging the game against him again?

In fact, folks, I will go so far as to say that thanks to the revelations in the DNC emails that were published by WikiLeaks, we know that not only was the convention rigged against Crazy Bernie and the election, the primaries and the debates were rigged against Crazy Bernie!

Hillary was given questions in advance. Moderators were a little tougher on Crazy Bernie than they ever were on Hillary. And the New York Times story does not mention any of that, of course, which is like writing an article about the sinking of the Titanic without mentioning the iceberg.

Then there’s another story The Daily Wire: “Bernie Sanders Releases Tax Returns, Is Immediately Called Out For Stinginess.” Because you know what his charitable donations were? Let’s see.

“Bernie Sanders, who incessantly preaches about the greediness of the upper class, has an interesting history; in the last ten years, as his income has risen, he has only once (barely) given more than 4% of his income to charity, twice given a little more than 3%, twice given roughly 2.5 %, and five times given less than 2% of his income to charity.”

Now, there are some people who do not donate to charity simply because they don’t want any — no. Take it back. There are people that don’t claim their donations. I know people that donate to charity that do not claim the deduction ’cause they don’t want anybody to know where they’re donating. And one of the reasons, once you start donating, every other charity eventually finds out about it and finds you and comes knocking on your door with their hand out. So a lot of people want to do it in private.