RUSH: That’s right, my friends, you are in the right place to have everything that happened last night and all the reaction to it put in proper perspective. You are right where you need to be. And when we’re finished today, you’re not gonna need to go anywhere else.
In fact, this program probably would be a gold mine of information to the liberal Democrats and the Democrat Party if they would only listen to it. But their arrogance and their conceit prevents them from learning anything, so I’m not worried about giving anything away because they will discount it simply because I am saying it. I’m a conservative, I’m all the cliches.
And, plus, I’m just a guy on the radio. I don’t know anything. I mention this because people always ask me, “Do you think you should maybe dial back some of this expert analysis? ‘Cause you don’t want the Democrats to figure this out.”
I said, “Yeah, I understand, but I’m not worried about them figuring it out. If they haven’t figured it out by now, they don’t want to.” And, folks, they don’t want to have to beat Trump by figuring this out. They want to beat Trump by being able to follow what they think is their own superior instincts, intelligence, experience, and all of that.
And, like I say, they do not innovate, they cannot modernize, they cannot reform. All they can do is go back to the past and look at past glories and then try to fit everything in the present day back to some event in the past, like Watergate now and Trump collusion with Russia. They are refusing to learn what happened right in front of their eyes in 2015 and 2016. Much of it is being repeated, although on the Trump side it’s being updated and modernized. Now there’s a record and promises kept, to go along with what Trump was promising only back in 2016.
And everywhere you look, the Democrats have nothing to offer. There’s no counter. Look at Biden, he puts out a tweet. This is how bad it is. Biden put out a tweet last night. “Let’s be clear. Let’s be clear.” You know, I love people that start that way. Must be you’re gonna be confusing in your natural state and so you have to point out “let’s be clear.”
It’s kind of like saying “at the end of the day.” Why do we have to wait until the end of the day? Why don’t you tell me what you think right now? And you know what I’m starting to really get irritated by? Say you’re asking somebody a question or you’re interviewing somebody. “What did you think of that putt limping out in the eight –”
“So, I was sitting there –”
What do you mean “so”? So what? People are using “so” and “you know” almost interchangeably. As a communication specialist, I notice these things. And here’s Biden: “Let’s be clear.” Because normally he isn’t. “President Trump inherited a growing economy from the Obama-Biden administration, and now he’s in the process of squandering it.”
Folks, the Obama-Biden economy had a maximum growth rate, when averaged out for the eight years of their terms, 1%! One percent economic growth! And they both told us, particularly Obama, that this was the new normal. Everybody better get used to this. These days of everybody thinking they’re gonna do better than their parents, those days are over. The United States has kind of been living large unjustifiably all these years. Time to pay the piper. Time to pay the dues. Yeah, some of these jobs are lost. They’re not coming back. What’s Trump gonna do, just wave a magic wand?
I mean, we were all there when they were trying to make the case for “We’re the people to manage this decline and make it as least painful for everybody as we can.” That was their agenda. And so now, after two and a half years of Trump, the economic uptick is undeniable, the economic growth rate is over 3%. Unemployment record low for Hispanics and African-Americans. The stock market’s a record high.
None of this happened during the Obama years. They didn’t want it to happen! The big difference is the Democrats cannot make this kind of thing happen ’cause they don’t want to. They don’t want a booming economy that promotes self-sufficiency and self-reliance. It’s the last thing they want. But they’ve got nothing to counter with.
So now here’s Biden out there lying that this is really the Obama-Biden economy and that Trump is in the process of squandering it? How do you squander an economy that you have more than doubled? I mean, look. These people are literally painted into a corner on practically every single issue, but none more so than the economy. And now these stories are starting to creep into it mainstream, “the unreliability of polling.”
There are more stories in my Stacks of Stuff today: Polling today no longer relevant. Polling today impossible to get accurate. All kinds of things are happening here because they’re making the same mistakes. They’re telling themselves that Trump’s already lost. They are telling themselves that whoever the Democrat nominee is has already won in landslide.
Even after watching that rally last night, you know what they’re harping on? Major Garrett. Where’s he now? CBS? Major Garrett said (imitating Garrett), “I saw something last night I’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen this. I saw people leaving early. I saw some people leaving before Trump had finished his speech. And then after Trump had finished his speech, I saw some people making tracks to get out of there. There wasn’t any hanging around to be part of the festivities. I’ve never seen that before at a Trump rally.”
Yeah, lots of people hang around after events are over to do what? People left after the event. This is news. The event was over and people left. Breaking news, CBS: Trump in trouble. Event ended, people left. Uh-oh. Really? “Well, it’s different, Mr. Limbaugh, it’s different. They used to hang around and pal around with each other.” Well, it’s four years ago. Certain levels of excitement change, reasons for excitement change. I mean, nobody can deny this isn’t new anymore, which is all the more fascinating.
Trump rallies are not new. There’s nothing you can do to make them new. There’s nothing you can do. Once you discover — once you grow up and you learn a bunch of things you thought of as a kid aren’t true, you know how hard it is to recapture the magic when you were a kid. I mean, these rallies have been happening now for four years, they’re happening so frequently that the newness is gone. That factor is not relevant.
And despite that, there are still people showing up in record numbers. This is what the Democrats ought to be noticing instead of trying to find that people leave early, a few, or that they’re not hanging around long after the event. The fact of the matter is, a Trump rally is a Trump rally, and yet after all of these years and all these rallies, when one is announced, there are overwhelming requests to get into it.
Now, before we go to the audio of this, let me do a quick breakdown of what I think are the perfection points in terms of execution and performance in a Trump political rally such as last night. And most of them are good and most of them are good for the following reasons: Trump knew he was gonna speak for an hour and 15 minutes or an hour and 20. He knows there’s no intermission. He knows he’s not gonna hand it off to a musical guest. He knows he’s not going to hand it off to a band.
There isn’t anything but him and that podium and microphone. And no matter how good you are, there aren’t very many people that can keep people riveted with a microphone and their voice for an hour and 15 minutes. You have to break it up. I know this because I can do it for an hour and a half to two hours. But most people can’t, and Trump doesn’t want to risk it.
Now, most of these rallies — by the way, contrast this with Joe Biden’s introduction in Pittsburgh. We still don’t know how many showed up. And then his big “Trump’s gonna be eviscerated speech” in Ottumwa, Iowa. You compare what the Democrats are throwing up there in terms of showing excitement and momentum, and it’s nothing compared to any Trump rally, but particularly last night.
So these people, traditionally in politics, go out and they start introducing every dignitary in the crowd. The dignitaries usually are sitting in the best seats, by the way, down in the front row, and the candidate starts off by introducing all of them and getting them out of the way.
Not Donald Trump. Donald Trump starts right in on his message and then breaks it up by appearing to interrupt himself in the middle of – “Oh, by the way, and Lindsey Graham’s right here. Lindsey, stand up.” Crowd goes nuts. Trump goes back to the speech. “And here we have the governor of — governor just signed a great bill on sanctuary — stand up, Ron. Stand up, Casey.”
Trump uses the introduction of invited guests and other politicos as not a throwaway and not something that must be done, but rather as a break in the momentum and things of great note! I mean, these people are not just being introduced, they’re being singled out for great things they’ve done. They then get a portion of the audience response. The audience is actively engaged with these people, rather than just having their names thrown out in a long list at the beginning with these people standing up like jacks-in-the-box and then sitting back down.
Then he brought out Sarah Huckabee Sanders. This is classic Trump. When Corey Lewandowski was in trouble over supposedly throwing some infobabe to the floor back during the campaign and they almost forced Lewandowski out, the next appearance Trump made Lewandowski come up — not made him — asked him to come up there, stand beside him as a show of support.
He did the same thing last night for Sarah Huckabee Sanders — and I don’t care what the Drive-Bys have said about her. I don’t care what elsewhere is being said. Donald Trump showed his sincere love and appreciation for somebody who works for him being beleaguered because they work for him. She was brought up to make some comments. It broke up the rhythm. It also highlighted a great job done by a great employee. It allowed that person to also connect with the audience. It’s masterful, folks.
And then when it came time to come up with a new slogan, he asks the crowd, “What do you think?” and puts it open to a vote. Even though they’ve already decided what it’s gonna be, he gets the crowd engaged, breaking again the rhythm of this so that nobody gets bored, so that nobody thinks they can predict what’s coming next. These are smart techniques. He weaves them in seamlessly. It keeps the audience fully engaged. His voice modulation, his humor — which appears to be spontaneous, not scripted, not written — his listing of accomplishments, his confidence, the improvised comments.
It’s all brilliant, and it all appears natural. You don’t know now when he’s on the prompter and when he isn’t. You can make an educated guess, but you don’t know for sure now — and as I said the other day: I think Trump looks better today than he did when he announced. That’s unusual for somebody that occupies this office. You know, hair goes gray; they begin to look beleaguered and laggard and haggard and all that. Trump looked enthused, he looked energized, and he looked younger — and Melania?
Hey, it’s TV. It matters. (We’re looking at you here, Joe.) Can that woman pull off yellow or can that woman pull off yellow? Yellow is a tough color to pull off. She pulled it off last night. Classic! Talk about sophistication and refinement and beauty. Now, none of this is new. This is the way Trump has been doing these rallies ever since they began. But it’s a whole… However long it takes, it’s fun, it’s engaging, and you don’t want to miss anything. You never know what he’s gonna do next or say next. You’re not sure.
And if you go back and you watch Joe Biden launch his campaign, hat a contrast. Trump is a naturally powerful, gifted speaker. He doesn’t need any God echo like Obama. Remember Obama using the God reverb at so many public speeches, even posing in certain light in photographs so that a halo would appear over his head? None of that showmanship for Trump! Just show up and be who you are. List off your accomplishments and your achievements and then ask people, “Where would we have been if the crazy left had been in charge?
“What happens if they do get back in charge? It’s a disaster waiting to happen.” When you watch Trump, you’re watching confidence personified. It’s another reason why they hate him. They don’t like confidence. Nobody’s supposed to be that sure of themselves — and I’m talking about your average, weak-kneed, everyday leftist college student or individual that’s running around afraid of their own shadow, afraid of feelings being hurt, afraid of being laughed at. “Nobody’s supposed to be that confident! Nobody can think they’re right that much!
“It’s just… It’s not right. It’s not fair. Nobody’s…” Just like their arrogance and condescension talking down to us drives us batty, Trump confidence (or anybody’s confidence) rips them a new one. ‘Cause right there is Donald Trump as a reflection and proponent, personification of what made America great. If you watched this last night, you were looking at the right man, the right place at the right time. You can’t imagine anybody else up there. You can’t imagine Biden up there.
You can’t imagine Mayor Pete up there. You can’t imagine Elizabeth Warren. You can’t imagine it — and especially not saying such glowing, positive, uplifting things about America. You just can’t imagine hearing any of that from any Democrat candidate. And then, of course, the icing on the cake: When Trump says, “America will never be a socialist country.” He knows who and what made America great, and the choice facing voters is stark.
Back to our caller who thought the election is gonna be a binary election: capitalism versus socialism, capitalism versus communism. Trump set it up last night. Now, I also… I gotta take a break, but I want to go back to a short sound bite (about a little minute and a half) of my analysis of one of the Trump rallies from September of 2015, Trump rally in Dallas. I want you to just share with you that which I said about that rally then. And we can draw the comparison. You can draw the comparison between the way it was then and what I said about it then and today or last night.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, on the slogan: The Trump campaign has announced they’re gonna stick with Make America Great Again. They were thinking about Keep America Great Again or Keep America Great, or whatever. But they wanted to stick with Make America Great Again. You think it’s a good idea? Mr. Snerdley, do you like Make America Great Again as the conditioned slogan…? (interruption) Why do you like…? (interruption) Why do you think it’s good? (interruption) I think it’s brilliant; I’ll tell you why in a minute. Why do you think it’s good? (interruption) Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. (interruption)
Okay, so Snerdley’s answer is everybody understands it and we’ve made a lot of progress. You know why it’s great? You know why — ’cause he knows the Democrats are gonna oppose it! What a great slogan! You know the Democrats are gonna pooh-pooh it! They’re gonna come out against it in one way or another. They’re gonna mock it, they’re going to laugh at it, they’re gonna say it’s not possible. They’re gonna say it’s nationalistic. They’re gonna say it’s racist. They’re gonna say it’s a throwback to the days of Lincoln or whatever.
You wait!
Make America Great Again.
Also, because the job’s not finished. Nobody expected it would be after four years, but I think it’s great. I also got an email: “Mr. Limbaugh, this business of Major Garrett thinking he’s got a scoop because people left the Trump rally after the speech was over and some before it was over? For God’s sake, these people stood through an 80-minute speech, they waited two days through heat and humidity to get in there, and you think the story is they left when it’s over? There are no stories about how many people got there two days early.”
It’s a great point. It’s great point.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So as a public service to other candidates out there — and not just Democrats, but all of you other Republican candidates who are planning kickoffs, planning announcements, trying to figure out how to do it, trying to figure out how to make a big splash — just take note of what all went into making last night happen.
Over 150,000 requests for tickets to Trump’s reelection campaign event. Everybody knows what this is gonna be. The primary point of it is that Trump’s gonna officially announce he’s running for reelection in 2020. How exciting can that be beyond the fact that you hope he does, and yet they had 150,000 requests for tickets at a 20,000-seat arena, the Amway Center, and they put 5,000 people standing on the floor. So you have 25,000 Americans in attendance.
There were even more outside watching on remote satellite screens. They were all clad in the patriotic colors of red, white, and blue. They came in all ages. They came in all shapes. They came with all kinds of different tattoos. They came with different kinds of hair and hairstyles. They came with different kinds of wardrobe and dress. They arrived in as many different vehicles as there are different vehicles made. They all arrived smiling, they all arrived happy, and they were all enthused.
They were all religions. They were all sexes. They were all orientations. They were all everything. There was not a singular greatest demographic unit outside enormous percentage breakdown of the population of the country. Every demographic unit represented. Every demographic group. Every sexual orientation. Pretty much every religion. They were all there. Add to that unknown millions watched live on TV — and, by the way, you might have heard that CNN abandoned coverage when the audience started shouting, “CNN sucks!”
(chuckles) You didn’t know that? How’s this? Trump starts beating up on the Drive-By Media. He starts beating up on the fake news. He points out how many of them are in the back there, and that none of them are interested in getting any of this right. He points out how they were complicit in the witch hunt to destroy him and his family (he really hit ’em on that, by the way) and then the crowd starts spontaneously shouting, “CNN sucks!” So CNN — in an act of bravery and courage, in a singular illustration of journalism — cut away from the speech.
They did not have the guts to stick with it because the crowd was shouting “CNN sucks!” How small do you have to be? These are the people that tell politicians and other public figures, “You gotta learn to take it. You gotta get thick skin. You gotta learn… If you want to enter the public arena, you gotta get used to being hit.” CNN? I guess you’re not permitted to criticize CNN, and you’re not permitted to foment criticism of CNN. So they cut out. But that didn’t affect the audience any. (chuckles) How could it? They have a total of 700,000 viewers on a good night.
You want to know what else? A fundraising record was set: $24.8 million raised in just 24 hours. That is more than any Democrat presidential candidate raised in the entire first quarter! And I’m sure you’ve seen stories: “Mayor Pete has blown the roof off in fundraising. Mayor Pete has raised $6 million!” Then Joe Biden, and then Crazy Bernie, and then Elizabeth Warren. You can add them all up, and Trump raised more in 24 hours than what they were able to do in the whole first quarter. The left has had a complete meltdown in the aftermath, and it’s fascinating because it’s just a repeat.
They are repeating almost exactly what they said after the escalator speech four years ago. It’s the exact same stuff. Nothing new. Nothing original. Just recycling the same lists of criticism after the elevator descension, after the elevator speech in 2015. It’s an amazing thing. I want to now go back to September 15th, 2015, on this show, where I was again attempting to explain to people why these Trump rallies were so exciting, so overwhelmingly expanding, why there was so much interest in attending them, why they were so eclectic.
And you might remember I kept talking to people, kept trying to remind people that Trump has created a bond here with his supporters, with his audience, with his base, and how key that is in anything. In politics, in showbiz, in media, in broadcasting, you have to create that bond that nobody else can break except you — and Trump did it. Not a one in the media, not a one on the Democrat side (and very few Republicans) have any concept of this.
So when you mention it to them, they pooh-pooh it. “Ah, you don’t know what you’re talking about, Rush.” It may be true for somebody in media, but it’s not true in politics. We don’t have to do bonds. That’s not what we do. It’s all fundraising, Rush!” They don’t get it. Audio sound bite number 1. It’s not very long, minute and a half, minute 45. Three, two, one…
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: Okay, so I’m working here at the office late yesterday, and I walked in, Kathryn’s here. She leaves about 10 minutes before I do. I get home, I park in the garage, I head into the kitchen, and she is… Actually, she greets me at the door from the inner sanctum of the estate, the garage. She’s laughing uproariously. I say, “What in the world is going on?” She says, “Trump… Trump…” … And, you know, for the inside-the-Beltway crowd that’s trying to figure all this out, it’s really not hard.
Well, maybe it is. I don’t know. It’s all about developing a bond. He has established a bond with his audiences, call ’em voters or supporters or what have you. But the importance of that — and I keep drum beating this, because it is crucial. If establishment types are really serious in wanting to understand this, and if they’re really serious about wanting the same kind of success for themselves, you have to establish a bond with your audience.
Now, some people can do it naturally and some people can try their whole lives and never pull it off. It’s hard to do. It requires sincerity. It requires the audience believe that you are not BS-ing them; that if you joke, you let them in on the joke. You never insult their intelligence. They are in the club; they are not outsiders. You let ’em in. They are every bit as responsible for your success as you are.
If you can do that, then there’s nothing that can break the bond except you. Negative advertising can’t break the bond, the media can’t break the bond, other candidates can’t break the bond. CNN can’t break the bond. But you can. And Trump has that. He has that ability because, at the end of every one of these, he telegraphs that this has deep meaning to him, that he’s not just out getting an ego massage here.
END ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: And it’s still true. At every one of these rallies… He may spend five minutes on it or 30 seconds, but everybody in attendance hears from him how important they are to him, his life, his objectives — campaign in this case. And, you know, this ingredient, the bond? It’s exactly what’s missing throughout most of the media. Do you think CNN has a bond with its audience, for example? I can guarantee you… MSNBC? Do you think they have a bond with their audience? I guarantee you they don’t.
The people watching CNN or MSNBC were watching to have hatred fed every night. They hated Trump; they needed to have it fed. They need to be assured that Trump is gonna go to jail, he’s gonna be impeached, that Trump has stolen the election. Everything they thought, had to be fed. They had to be told that they were right, had to be told that Trump’s gonna go to jail. Hillary’s gonna be president. We’re gonna overturn the election results!
And then when the audience starts dropping off after the Mueller report comes out and none of that is gonna happen, what happens? These networks start losing their audience. You know why? Because there’s not a bond. There may be a couple of hosts on these networks that have a small degree of a bond. There may be some members of the audience that watch because of the hosts. But overall, I think the mind-set of media people is that it’s beneath them to create a bond. I’ve never seen a business like news — and it’s a business — which holds the customer in more contempt than the news business does.
In the news business, the customer is never right. In the news business, the customer is dumb and stupid and has no idea how the news business works and, therefore, has no say-so. So when you accuse a news person, a journalist, or a network of being biased, they’ll just, “(Raspberry) you!” and tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about because you’re not sophisticated enough to understand their business. They do their work for others who do their work. The people on CNN, when they’re broadcasting, are thinking, “Gee, I wonder if they’re watching this at CBS — and if they are, I hope they like it.”
At MSNBC, same thing. “I hope they’re watching this at CNN. I hope somebody over at New York Times is watching. I hope they’re impressed!” That’s who their bond is with — and, of course, that’s not a bond. These are people trying to impress each other, trying to job search, trying to network, build resumes and so forth. But in terms of having a bond with their audience… Last night, for example, if CNN had a bond with anybody in its audience, when that crowd started chanting, “CNN sucks,” CNN fans in that crowd should have hit back.
Now, you might say, “Well, there couldn’t be any CNN fans in that crowd, Rush.” No, that’s not true. There could be if CNN had any kind of respect for its audience. But I don’t think any mainstream or Drive-By news organization has this kind of respect for its readership. They look at them as people to be monetized, sell subscriptions to, sell the daily newspaper to or whatever. But in terms of doing their jobs with the readers in mind? If it happens at all, it’s very surface, and it’s along the lines of, “We gotta give ’em what they want.
“We know our readers hate Trump, so we gotta give ’em that.” But there’s no… There’s no mutual respect from people in the news business on their customers. In the news business, they’re way above, they look down at, and this is why over the years… I remember when Laurence Tisch bought CBS from the Paley family or whoever he bought it from. The first thing Laurence Tisch did was look at the P&L sheet for every division, and he found the news division was losing its rear end. And so he announced a series of budget cuts — staff layoffs and so forth — in the news division.
Dan Rather and the news division people went bonkers!
“You can’t do that!” they said. “We shouldn’t even be held to these bottom-line concerns. Our mission is constitutional. We shouldn’t have to be adhering to your budget demands. Our work is too important!” They have no humility whatsoever, no concern that whoever owned them was losing money — and therefore, no interest in helping reverse that. If you’re working in a division of a corporation that’s losing money, wouldn’t you want to be among those figuring out how to turn that around and make money and make your division profitable?
They don’t care about that! They are above that. As such, they’re unable to recognize this bond. And instead, they pooh-pooh it and they mock it and they laugh at it and they make fun of the people who do have a bond with Trump. Now they’ve thrown in with the very people they’ve always been suspicious of: The intelligence community and law enforcement. Now there’s no difference in a Washington bureaucrat and a Washington journalist. There’s no difference in any left-wing personage at all in Washington and a Washington journalist.
And people know it, and they’re losing respect for what they do and not trusting what they do. And they have no hope of reversing this because they eschew the very thing that could save them. And that is having a large group of people who love what they do and respect it and will go to the end of the world to defend them and help them do this. There’s nobody in the news business that does that, but Trump has gobs and gobs of them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Some media analysis of Trump’s speech. And this, by the way, this follows along on my theory, these people cannot innovate. They cannot modernize, including their own media. TheHill.com, the rest of the Drive-By Media call Trump’s rally last night dark, dank, and filled with fearmongering. They claim that it was very effective, that Trump is nothing but selling darkness, anger and rage and fear.
And that’s exactly what they said after the escalator speech in 2015. It’s what they said after every Trump rally. It’s what they said after his inauguration speech! After every speech he gives, “It was a dark speech. It hearkened on a dark future, dark days, loaded with fearmongering.” And of course it was the exact opposite of that.
The dark days are what the Democrats are promising. Dark days is what they’re forecasting. Dark days is what they claim is normal. Dark days is what they claim they are there to help us get through! They are not there to end the dark days. The Democrats think we need to acknowledge that it’s a dark moment in American history, but only when we work together can we limit the pain. Not eliminate it, but limit it.
I just think these people, you’d think they’d look for some characterization that might be different or that might work instead of recycling the same old stuff.