RUSH: Here is Matt, Twin Falls, Idaho, Open Line Friday. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, from sunny south Idaho. I’ll get to my point real quick. With the timing of Biden and the Democrat Party attacking him, do you think it’s more protecting Obama’s legacy because he’s the one that is tied to all the scandals at Benghazi, Fast and Furious, things like that?

RUSH: Well, there’s no question that there’s part of that. I mean, there’s always the protection of the Obama legacy here. But I think the compulsion that the Democrats have to get rid of Trump overrides everything right now. Every assessment they’re making is, “Can this succeed in getting rid of Trump?” So Biden, it’s “Can Biden beat Trump?” I think more and more of them are concluding, “No,” and yet Biden is the frontrunner by a big stretch. So what are they gonna do? They don’t want to sit around and wait for Biden to implode.

That might take too long. They want to hasten it. I believe they’re trying to hasten Biden’s exit from the stage, is my personal opinion, ’cause I think they have concluding, properly, that he can’t win! He can’t keep up with Trump in the campaign. It’d be Hillary all over again. He can’t draw any crowds. The contrast between any Trump rally and a Biden rally would be so stark that Biden would have to stop doing campaign appearances, like Hillary did, because the comparison would be deadly.

Then you start talking about things like energy level and communication skills and the fact that Biden as a presidential candidate has been an abject failure. They’re doing one of two things. Maybe I ought to pull back on my belief that they’re trying to take him out, but if they’re not doing that, they’re putting all this negative stuff out there to see how Biden can survive it — and they’re loading the media with this stuff. Let me give you an example.

In fact, before I give you the example, I got a story. I ran into something right as the program was ending yesterday from Jim Treacher at PJ Media. This is such a great point, and the headline really says it all: “If Biden Is a Racist, Why Did the Media and Other Democrats Let Him Stand Next to Obama for Eight Years?” This is a question born of the fact that Biden’s out there defending his great friendships with these two segregationist senators, Herman Talmadge and James Eastland. Biden has…

Note that they were full-fledged segregationists. Back in their day, they didn’t call ’em “African-Americans.” These two guys referred to them as “Negroes,” and they wanted the Negroes in their own schools and these guys wanted the Negroes on their own buses and in their own homes and in their own neighborhoods. They didn’t want any integration. Herman Talmadge would constantly say (impression), “People in my state don’t want no integration. I’m not gonna force it on ’em.” Now, we’re going back to 1954, all the way up to 1971 for this.

But Biden got it. He’s been in the Senate so long that he knew these guys back in their heyday. This is before Plugs was Plugs! This was back when Plugs had his own hair, and he has tried to sell his relationship to these two segregationists as an example of how he can work with everybody. Meaning, “Look, I can work with the most ardent right-wingers that you hate! I can get things done. They like me. Just like I can work with these two segregationists.” Well, the Democrats don’t want to hear any part of this.

There’s no… There weren’t any segregationists in the Democrat Party! The big sin that Biden is committing is acknowledging that the segregationists were Democrats. The Democrat Party and the media have spent years revising history, trying to make as many people as possible believe that all the racist and all the segregationists were Republicans. In fact, another reporter has done the same thing, this time a New York Times reporter. “Appearing Thursday on CNN Newsroom, New York Times national political reporter Astead Herndon falsely labeled segregationist Democrat senators whom former Vice President Joe Biden praised [as] Republicans.

“The day prior, MSNBC host Kasie Hunt made the same error by misidentifying Sens. James Eastland and Herman Talmadge. She has since issued a correction, while Herndon has” not. Herndon said, “Our reporting yesterday was that some of his advisers, and even some of his supporters, were a little shocked with the way he was characterizing his relationships with those senators. And they’ve said, if you want to talk about bipartisanship, why not mention other Republicans — not the, kind of, the most controversial of them.”

Now, the question arises: Did these two reporters, these two babes, Astead Herndon and Kasie Hunt…? Do they really not know? They are young enough that they could be full-fledged products of an American public education system which has lied to them and told them that every segregationist back in the civil rights days was a Republican and they may have just grown up thinking this. They do not know the truth, or they know the truth and are purposely screwing it up. Whichever way you decide, the bottom line is these are the kinds of mistakes that journalism students used to get F’s for.

These are the kind of mistakes that reporters used to get fired for. This is a big deal, to get this kind of labeling wrong. But not a thing is gonna happen to either of these two. One of them’s corrected and the other hasn’t yet and may not. But it fits the narrative that Republicans were the segregationists, and this is the big sin that Biden is committing. He’s reminding everybody that the segregationists — and the guys with the fire hoses and the dogs and turning ’em loose on the protesters at Selma — were Democrats.

Everybody’s come to believe that it was the Republicans that did that. But it wasn’t! It was Democrats who were the racists and the bigots and the segregationists all the way up through the sixties. It was Democrats that spied on Martin Luther King. It was Democrats that bugged his phone calls. (That would be Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general.) So, the question that Jim Treacher is asking here: If Biden is a racist — which they’re saying he is now. “You gotta apologize, Joe! You can’t say that you’re good buddies with those segregationists!

“You gotta apologize, man! You can’t go on like this.” Well, if he’s a racist, then why did the media and other Democrats let him get away with it all those years and not call him out? Why do they allow this guy who loves segregationists to “stand next to Obama for eight years? … If Biden is a racist now, why wasn’t he a racist between January 20, 2009, and January 20, 2017? The gatekeepers didn’t have Google that whole time?” They certainly did.

Joe Biden’s friendship with these two segregationists is well known, so much so he’s bragging about it. So the question arises: Why now? Why now is Biden a bad guy? Why now does Biden have to go running around apologizing to everybody? Why did Biden remain untouched despite these friendships and relationships when he was Obama’s vice president? Well, the question answers itself. Sadly, the answer is hypocrisy — and that’s something that also, sadly, never attaches itself to Democrats.

But now that Biden is the Democrat Party frontrunner, mainly because among the dozens of candidates, he’s the only one that most Americans could pick out of a lineup. Name recognition. I mean, really, who knows Kamala Harris versus Joe Biden? Who knows Mayor Pete versus Joe Biden? You know, Crazy Bernie is about next up in name recognition. But it’s a good question. All of a sudden Biden is the subject of a whole lot of hit pieces. Now we have one here from TheHill.com:

“Democrats Want White House Hopefuls to Cool it on Biden Attacks — Democratic lawmakers warn that Sen. Cory Booker and other White House hopefuls taking shots at front-runner Joe Biden are playing with fire and could wind up helping President Trump win reelection. … Lawmakers fear the 2020 Democratic presidential primary field is becoming a circular firing squad…” Well, it was destined to become that. I mean, all of them are. The Republicans’ was a circular firing squad in 2016.

You can’t avoid that, unless you essentially go in and price fix. “Lawmakers fear … Trump winding up as the beneficiary of internecine fighting. ‘I think everybody is picking on him, press as well as others. He’s the front-runner so he’s the one to shoot down, so to speak,’ said Sen. Dianne Feinstein…” Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat, New Hampshire, said, “I think it’s not helpful to Democrats to attack each other at this stage.”

Well, somebody’s not listening because the Drive-By Media today is filled with more hit pieces on Biden and his son Hunter. I think ABC did their job, but I don’t think any of the other Drive-Bys are willing to run the story. So whoever’s shopping this stuff is taking it to conservative media outlets to run like the Washington Examiner. But I’m more convinced than ever. After yesterday and now today, I’m more convinced than ever that there is a serious effort underway to get Joe out that’s being waged by other Democrats.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, now, this is a fascinating story here. And by the way, folks, don’t make the mistake of thinking Joe Biden excites me. I’m actually kind of torn here spending so much time talking about Joe Biden. Biden really isn’t the subject here. It’s what I think is being done to get rid of him. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I think it’s an abject study in how friendly Democrat media gets rid of one of its own. They do do that. Now, we assume that the Drive-Bys exclusively target Republicans.

But presidential stakes? Weeeell, that’s as high as it gets — and you know my theory that the Democrat Party’s actually the engine, the intellectual engine and the army/the mobilizing effort behind the modern-day Democrat Party. That’s where all the unity is. I think that’s where all the energy is. If it isn’t, tell me the Democrat running it is show. It’s not Chuck You Schumer; it’s not Pelosi, as much as she would like to think it is. It might be some invisible Democrat in the deep state that runs things.

But as far as institutions are concerned, the Democrat Party is run by the media today. It’s relatively new, but I think it’s the case. So I was really intrigued with this ABC hit piece. We played the sound bites of it yesterday. They just ran a hit piece on Biden that you don’t see the media run against Democrats, hardly ever. And it hit all the points, the things that you know about Biden and Ukraine, Biden and China, Biden and his son — Biden and his son divorcing his wife and marrying his brother’s widow, his cocaine problem, getting kicked out Navy.

You know all that because we’ve told you about it. But people that read the Drive-By Media have no idea until yesterday — and ABC hit everything. The same day the New York Post Page Six went deep, deep, deep into the problems with Joe Biden’s son Hunter and cocaine and the strange business deals with the ChiComs and Ukraine. You just don’t see this, and I made the observation yesterday that I don’t think it’s journalism. This was not journalism. This was full-fledged political activism.

My thinking was confirmed today with this story in the Washington Examiner. Now, they’re a fine publication, do not misunderstand. But they are not part of the Drive-By Media, and they’ve got the big story today: “‘He Needs an Intervention’: Inside Joe Biden’s Chaotic Campaign.” Now, I find it really, really interesting that Democrat insiders are leaking to the Washington Examiner, and this is not a comment on the Washington Examiner. Do not misunderstand me.

I’m thinking this is happening because the New York Times is not yet ready to run this stuff. The Washington Post is not yet ready to run this stuff. But somebody within the Democrat Party wants Biden gone, and they’re trying to maneuver the Drive-Bys into helping them get rid of him. When this kind of stuff starts… You know, it could be that, as I speculated yesterday, ABC did this just to do it, and they did it early enough where people could forget it and it wouldn’t hurt Plugs, and then they could say later on (sputtering), “Hey, we’re fair.

“We — we — we did a hard-hitting piece on Biden and his kid.” But with this today and then the New York Post Page Six with another one today — these two things on top of it — I think the bottom line here is that Biden is finished but doesn’t know it. And he may know it, by the way. He just hasn’t fallen over yet. But it’s coming. Whoever this is… It could be elements of the Obama Regime. It could be the Democrat National Committee. It could be a Democrat strategerist somewhere. It could be a Democrat consultant somewhere, could be people inside his own campaign.

Somewhere, there are serious questions and doubts about Biden beating Trump, and this is also how you know that whatever the polls say today about Biden beating Trump, they don’t believe it. Let me give you some pull quotes from this story: “Biden’s light schedule, off-the-cuff ramblings, lateness to important events, and seeming inability to heed the advice of his [advisors] create an impression of a directionless campaign. Just below the surface are fears of another campaign crash like Biden’s first presidential effort, for the 1988 nomination, which ended amid plagiarism charges and a wave of unflattering stories.

“Twenty years later Biden didn’t even make it past the Iowa caucus, finishing with under 1%, behind not just … Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton but also John Edwards and Bill Richardson.” Do you remember this? In 2008, Biden ran, and it was nowhere. He didn’t get anywhere. In 1988, he ran, and that’s when the Neil Kinnock plagiarism stuff hit him. “A Biden staffer told the Washington Examiner the candidate lacks senior figures inside his campaign who have the authority to tell him what to do.

“Former Obama administration national security adviser Thomas Donilon, Biden’s longtime Senate chief of staff Ted Kaufman, and lobbyist Steve Ricchetti have all worked with and known Biden for decades. While all offer external advice, the staffer said the campaign lacked a powerful figure on the inside. Instead Biden, 76,” years old, soon to be 77 (pointing that out), “has hired Obama veterans, such as Greg Schultz, his campaign manager, and Kate Bedingfield, communications director, who are almost four decades younger than him.

“Democratic strategists fret that his Philadelphia-based campaign lacks coherence.” You don’t see this stuff about Democrats until it’s time for one of them to be taken out. And the sources for all of this are Democrats. And I’m telling you, the fact that they leaked to the Washington Examiner means others rejected it for now. That’s Biden. That’s the link, I think, that’s keeping him alive is that ABC will go for it, but none of the others have yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

Another pull quote: “Uncertainty about Biden’s position in the race extends to Obama alumni as well, with one former 2012 campaign official telling the Washington Examiner that ‘someone needs to get to Biden and make a real attempt to change the man.'” This is a Democrat presidential candidate. It’s all of them, in a nutshell. They are never their own person, folks. I’m ad-libbing here. Hillary wasn’t. She needed an adviser. She needed people, remember?

All these people need advisers to tell ’em how to be real people or they need to focus group where to go on vacation. They need to focus group what to wear when they’re on vacation or what to wear when they make the phony trip to Walmart or wherever it is they go. They are the person that a finger in the wind tells them to be at the moment based on research. “‘Someone needs to give [Joe] an intervention,’ the source said. ‘I have vivid memories of 2008,’ when Biden ended up fourth in the Iowa caucuses and quickly dropped out of that year’s Democratic primary.

“‘It’s like a time travel machine,'” everything’s repeating itself. “Party pros and alum from the administration of Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama, are also watching warily. ‘There are definitely knives out for Biden among the Democratic National Committee and those who worked in the Obama White House,’ added the source.” Now, I will guarantee you this stuff was floated to the New York Times; it was floated by the Washington Post. They didn’t take it yet. So rather than let it die, these people went to the Washington Examiner.

Again, nothing against them. Don’t misunderstand. Now, here we have the New York Post Page Six: “Hunter Biden’s Alleged Love Child Debacle Just the Latest in String of Suspicious Incidents.” Now, before you think, “Rush, Page Six? Come on!” This is the stuff that gets retweeted, plastered all over social media. This is the kind of stuff Millennials get up and eat for breakfast, folks. Everybody’s gonna see this. And it’s kind of interesting also, at the same time, because the Drive-By Media literally have swarmed around these exemplary Trump kids.

Up ’til now, they’ve been ignoring Biden’s kid. But Page Six goes through it all here about his affairs, about his cocaine problem, about his getting kicked out of the Naval Academy because of cocaine, the shady business deals with Ukraine and the ChiComs. I’m gonna go back to me on this program yesterday. In the midst of all this, I thought I would try to extend some help like we did with Operation Chaos and Mrs. Clinton. So this was my advice (audio sound bite number 13) for Joe Biden yesterday…

RUSH ARCHIVE: The first thing he should do is apologize for his white privilege. The next thing I would have him do is apologize for his cisgender identity and privilege. He’s had it really easy in life going through it as a natural-born man. He hasn’t had any confusion. Life for him has been binary. He hasn’t been confused by all these other options and choices. Like, he never had to question which bathroom to use. He never had to face that kind of pressure. He needs to apologize for that.

RUSH: Exactly right. You and I, it’s been easy peasy, folks. We never had any doubt whatsoever what bathroom to use, but people today don’t have this that easy. There’s rampant confusion each day and there’s rampant guilt. Biden needs to apologize for it. Now, to show you I’m on to something here, let’s go to Martin Savidge on CNN New Day this morning, a portion of his report about how Biden’s comments about segregationists are impacting voters in South Carolina…

SAVIDGE: Everybody we talked to said that Joe Biden’s words, what he said, did not change their opinion of the man or the candidate. A number did say that they didn’t think it was the best analogy and he should probably steer away from using it again in the future. There were some who suggested that he apologize, and they say he should do it right away in order to get this matter quickly behind him.

RUSH: See? There it is. The meat, the nut in that sound bite is that there were some suggest that he should apologize. See? I was on this yesterday, folks, fast and quick. He needs to apologize. Here is CBS talking to black voters in South Carolina about the problem that Joe has stepped in regarding his praise for these two segregationists.

MAN #1: You’re talking to a group of folks who, 50 years ago, I mean, had to deal with segregation and Jim Crow laws. And Vice President Biden seems to be genuine in everything that he’s done up until his political career but, I mean, he does have a few hiccups.

WOMAN #1: I think his statement was very insensitive, and he does need to make some kind of public statement —

RUSH: See?

WOMAN #1: — that really backs up not only just his —

RUSH: See?

WOMAN #1: — personal feelings, but say, “Hey, you know what?”

RUSH: See?

WOMAN #1: “I didn’t mean it this way.”

MAN #2: If he was speaking in a sense of, “I’m able to work with others who share different opinions and beliefs with me in order to get things done for American people and for the voters,” I don’t see a problem with that.

WOMAN #2: Maybe just say that he may have… He was just being a little insensitive and express what’s — what he meant to say.

RUSH: See? See? They know he really didn’t mean this. They want him to apologize! They want him to take my advice. They want him to grovel. They want him to say he didn’t mean it. They want him to acknowledge the pressure they face deciding which bathroom to use, for example. They want to know that Joe Biden understands the pressure they face, and he didn’t really mean all of that. Skip number 16. Here’s Cory Booker last night on MSNBC. Question: “Did you come to a better understanding of Biden’s side of the experience?”

BOOKER: I understood where his intentions were; I understood where his heart was. The fact is, though, it’s not about me or him. He said things that are hurtful and are harmful. I believe he should be apologizing to the American people and having this discussion with all of us.

RUSH: Right. There you have… I’m trying to help. I’ve told you Joe he needs to go out and apologize. Here’s Cory Booker. Here’s Doug Schoen. Doug Schoen of Fox Business Network Varney & Co. today. Stuart Varney, “Do you think Joe Biden makes it all the way through the primaries now?”

SCHOEN: I hope he does, but I fear that the left — as you correctly said — which votes in primaries, will try to knock him out. And since he’s maladroit with his language and he’s raising issues that I don’t think need to be raised — talking about these segregationists — I think he is hastening that possibility. So something two weeks ago I would have said was virtually impossible, I now would say, is within the realm of reason.

RUSH: Doug Schoen: I don’t think the guy’s gonna make it.

Subhead: Unless he starts apologizing. He’s gotta start apologizing.

I mean, this is what the left demands. So it won’t take long to find out if all of this is actually part of a grand plan to get rid of the guy. But I am confident that it is. It doesn’t matter either way for Trump. Don’t misunderstand.