DOOCY: Looking at a slow ride up toward Central Park. You’re looking up Avenue of the Americas. Welcome to Fox & Friends, the number-one cable news show in America.

EARHARDT: We work on Avenue of the Americas. We see the American flag out there —

DOOCY: Mmm-hmm!

EARHARDT: — and that reminds me of someone.

DOOCY: (chuckles)

EARHARDT: Mr. Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host that needs no introduction ’cause he’s so famous. Hey, Rush! Good to see you. You know why —

RUSH: Ainsley Earhardt. It’s just great to be back with you guys.

HOSTS: (laughing)

RUSH: It always is.

EARHARDT: We love having you on, and last time you were here you said the Betsy Ross T-shirt — and you can tell us what it is for folks who aren’t familiar with it — that it raised $2 million, and you are donating that to Tunnel to Towers.

RUSH: Right. This is the most incredible story. Well, the bottom line is, we don’t think there’s any reason to tear down the flag, there’s no reason to tear down our history, and, certainly, there’s no reason to tear down Betsy Ross. She’s an American hero, maybe one of the first feminists. So the thing happens with Nike. They come out with the Betsy Ross tennis shoes, Colin Kaepernick says he doesn’t like them, Nike shelves them. People are tired of this, guys.

They’re tired of this. They want a mechanism by which they can push back. So we did a quick four-day turnaround with the Stand Up for Betsy Ross T-Shirt made available at RushLimbaugh.com, the store there at my website. And we partnered, as you say, with Tunnel to Towers. We would have been happy if we had been able to move 50,000 shirts and send that money over to Tunnel to Towers. It was just nine or 10 days ago I was here, and we were excited as we could be — $2 million.

DOOCY: Unbelievable.

RUSH: This is not a profit pursuit, folks, for us or the EIB Network. The proceeds here go to the Tunnel to Towers foundation. I wanted to come back today. I asked — and this is really rare. I normally saying no to the prospect of TV. I wanted to come back and thank everybody and let you know it’s still going. Today, we’re gonna announce that the donation to Tunnel to Towers is now up to $3 million and counting.

EARHARDT: (chuckles) that’s incredible.

DOOCY: Whoa!

HOSTS: (clapping)

EARHARDT: Congratulations. That’s amazing.

RUSH: It is just it’s incredible. (this mic) Whoops!

EARHARDT: (laughing)

RUSH: It really is, and there’s no end in sight. We’ve got some knockoffs I told you earlier that there’s over 225 knockoffs. Now there are a couple out there that have really crossed the line into what we think is sheer illegality that we’re tracking down. This is so big that all kinds of fraudsters and bad guys are trying to get in on it and make some money for themselves.

EARHARDT: Can you believe people do that?

RUSH: But the proceeds here — and everybody is categorizing this as a Rush Limbaugh donation. It’s not.

DOOCY: Sure.

RUSH: It’s the people that are buying the T-shirts that are making this donation possible.

DOOCY: And so many people are watching right now and they haven’t heard about it before, Rush. If they’d like more information, go to RushLimbaughShowStore.com —

RUSH: Well, let me… I just happen to have one right here.

DOOCY: And there it is right there.

RUSH: There you go.

EARHARDT: (chuckles) That’s awesome.

DOOCY: Made out of the greatest cotton in the history of the world, I heard you say.

RUSH: Well, it’s unique. Let me tell you what we’ve had to do. We’ve had to buy up every one of those blank shirts we can find in this country.

EARHARDT: (chuckles)

RUSH: If you’re gonna make something available and claim that it’s something, it better be that.

DOOCY: Yeah.

RUSH: So we’ve had to buy every size we could find. The vendor is running 24/7 to make these. Folks, this is hot: $3 million to a charity on a $27 item.

DOOCY: Yeah.

RUSH: I really have to thank all of you at Fox for helping us with this. This has been overwhelming! If this money were going to some left-wing charity, the Drive-By Media would be all over this, and I would be on all those other networks instead of yours — which I wouldn’t want to do.

HOSTS: (chuckling)

RUSH: But it’s just incredible how compartmentalized things are. But this is for people that want to push back —

DOOCY: Okay.

RUSH: — have a great T-shirt of quality. You can wash it 10 times it looks brand-new. But it is to benefit Tunnel to Towers. They help 9/11 survivors, families.

DOOCY: They do.

RUSH: They help first responders. We love the military. We love police. We love law enforcement. They need to be honored. They need to have the appreciation we have for them showed to them, and that’s part of what this is.

HEGSETH: Rush, uh —

DOOCY: Indeed.

HEGSETH: Yeah, indeed. Congratulations on this amazing effort. I —

EARHARDT: Mmm-hmm!

HEGSETH: I… $3 million? I — I can’t even believe it.

DOOCY: It’s gonna pay off a lot of mortgages.

HEGSETH: Pay off a lot of mortgages of heroes.

RUSH: It’s in less than a month, guys.

HEGSETH: Great.

DOOCY: Yeah.

EARHARDT: Yeah.

RUSH: It’s, I mean, barely over just three weeks that this has happened. It’s incredible.

HEGSETH: It really is. Speaking of —

RUSH: If this were a book, it would be on the New York Times best-seller list for over a year, guaranteed.

EARHARDT: Yeah, you’re right.

DOOCY: You’re right.

EARHARDT: Frank Siller is at the White House today, Rush. He’s gonna be there at 10 A.M. for the Victim Compensation Fund when the president signs it. So I know he’s gonna be thrilled to know that there’s another million dollars coming to his organization.

RUSH: Incredible.

EARHARDT: Okay.

RUSH: And counting.

HEGSETH: And counting.

RUSH: And counting.

HEGSETH: Indeed, so go check it out.

RUSH: I mean, we had another multiple thousand weekend —

DOOCY: Right.

RUSH: — without anybody even talking about it. People are being great. They’re really great. They’re into this, and it’s a wonderful thing to be part of.

DOOCY: Since we have you, we’d like to talk to you a little bit about the news of the day. Pete?

HEGSETH: That’s right. So, Rush, over the weekend we talked a lot on Fox & Friends about the battle over Baltimore. The president striking back at Elijah Cummings. He felt like the chairman was unfair, his characterization of treatment of folks on the border, saying they’re sitting in their feces. President Trump saying, “Hey, how about in your backyard of Baltimore?” And, predictably, Rush, the left-wing media — the Drive-By Media as you call them — have been calling President Trump a racist.

RUSH: Of course.

HEGSETH: But they’ve missed one thing, Rush. Bernie Sanders, in December of 2015, had this to say about the conditions in Baltimore. Listen…

SANDERS: Anyone who took the walk that we took — we took around this neighborhood would not think you’re in a wealthy nation. You would think that you were in a Third World country. What we’re talking about is a community in which half of the people don’t have jobs.

BALTIMORE AUDIENCE: (smattering of applause)

SANDERS: We’re talking about a community in which there are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable.

HEGSETH: So Bernie can say it, Rush, but not the president?

RUSH: And guess who’s running these places? It’s not just Baltimore. Go to anyplace. You know, there are certain things you’re not supposed to say. You’re not supposed to criticize anything the Democrats run. You’re not supposed to criticize anything where minorities are involved, because that’s automatically labeled racist. But I am going to tell you right up front, the president is not a racist. He didn’t say anything racist. He didn’t call anybody… Well, he called Cummings a racist after Cummings reacted.

But, folks, look: Detroit, Flint, Los Angeles, San Francisco, massive homeless problems. Wherever you have had this decadent decay, you’re going to find Democrats having run the operations or the city, the state, whatever it is — the county — for decades. And Democrats have this magic boundary that they are the ones who own compassion, they care and love people, care about them. So you’re not allowed to criticize them. Trump… This is classic pushback.

People that elected Trump, this is exactly why. Pushback against conventional wisdom, pushback against… I mean, Elijah Cummings and these guys can have a free run at Trump? Look at what happened. They’re criticizing him for being mean to people on the border. They’re subpoenaing his family. They won’t give up this Russia thing. It’s been 2-1/2 years that they have been trying to run Donald Trump out of office. If I were him, I’d be fed up too. But what he’s saying here is the absolute truth.

DOOCY: Right.

RUSH: But it’s not supposed to be said about anyplace where the Democrats are in charge. But this is what you get if you elect Democrats and there’s no opposition, there’s no pushback, there’s no balance of power. This is exactly what it is, because the Democrats want people in need.

DOOCY: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: The Democrats need people unable to provide for themselves. The Democrats need a permanent underclass of people that are incapable of self-reliance, and so these situations are allowed to fester. The Democrats get to claim that they are compassionate and that they care. But they never do anything that actually improves the quality of the lives of their constituents.

DOOCY: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: Their constituents are as unhappy today as they were 50 years ago. The Democrats take every one of these minority groups’ votes for granted, and it’s about time somebody pushed back against the real human misery that results from unchecked Democrat leftist control and power. I like it.

DOOCY: The president’s been pushing back today on Twitter. Doubtless he will do more of that. Rush, let’s move on to Russia. You know, we saw finally Mr. Mueller testify. It did not go the way the Democrats thought it was going to go. You know, you’ve read the book, now you’ll see the movie. The movie, not a good movie. But you wanted to point out a consequential sound bite from the last year. Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, said this about the investigation into Russian tampering.

ROSENSTEIN: There’s no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime. There’s no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.

DOOCY: So, Rush, what is the significance of that?

RUSH: Let me tell you when he said that. He said that in July of 2018 announcing the indictment of the Russian troll farms, the Russians. The only time they have ever made this case was that troll farm, and Rosenstein goes out there and announces that not a single American was involved, not a single vote was changed, and no election outcome was altered.

Now, the reason this is important is because the Democrats will not let go of this whole collusion and obstruction narrative. There’s polling data out there, you guys, and it shows that 42% of the American people believe that the Russians tampered with vote machines, that they actually altered votes. They didn’t. There was no collusion any more than there always is. The Russians are always trying to infiltrate America. They have been since I’ve been alive. You too.

And not just the Russians. The ChiComs, the North Koreans, the Cubans, we are constantly under this kind of attack. The Democrats want you to think this is something brand-new, never happened before, and that Trump worked with Putin to steal the election. And at no time — I mean, even the Senate Intel Committee on Friday, they put out a report, “Russian Interference Was Unprecedented.” And then if you read long enough in the report, you find out not a single vote was changed and no outcome of any election was affected.

So what are we talking about? If nothing happened, then why this big hullabaloo? And nobody talks about this Rosenstein sound bite. This was the Russian indictments that were announced. And they were PR indictments. These guys were never gonna be dragged into court to face charges. So this was just a way for the investigators to make it look like they were linking Russia to this when they, to this day, don’t have any evidence that anything of the sort happened. And it never gets mentioned, and I want to thank you guys for allowing me to bring this sound bite here. In fact, there’s one other, if we have time, because this is crucial too.

DOOCY: We have.

RUSH: Do you have it?

EARHARDT: We have it. This is from 2016.

RUSH: Well, let it rip because this is Obama in 20 —

EARHARDT: — 16, October 18th.

RUSH: This is three weeks before the election, October, 2016. Let it rip.

OBAMA: There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even — you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved. There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time.

DOOCY: Rush?

RUSH: Three weeks before the election, and it’s not possible. Because we don’t have a single presidential race. We have 50 state elections. So you realize how bogus all of this has been, starting at the central contention that the Russians somehow changed the outcome of our election when they didn’t and when even Obama says it’s not possible.

HEGSETH: Rush, I mean, at that point though Barack Obama thought Hillary Clinton would win. I mean, that was the context, but, as soon as that didn’t happen, they took everything they could to flip it around.

RUSH: Well, that’s a very good point because they didn’t want anybody — they didn’t want anything tainting her election, so they were downplaying this Russia thing. But the point is, Obama was telling the truth. The Russians still haven’t managed to change a vote or alter the outcome of an election. It still hasn’t happened, and it’s really frustrating to me because they’ve convinced the American people in large numbers otherwise. The Democrats and Mueller and all of these people working with him have done more to destroy the integrity of our electoral process than anything the Russians or Putin could have ever dreamed about doing.

DOOCY: But, Rush, isn’t what we hear from the Democrats regarding the president and Russia collusion and obstruction of justice, isn’t that primarily just to damage him on the route to 2020?

RUSH: Well, of course they want to impeach him. They want to get him out of office. I think they’re living in a delusional hatred at their inability to beat him in 2016 and then to get rid of him. They’re able to get rid of whoever they want in the Republican Party. They’ve launched everything they’ve got. They can’t get rid of Trump. So this report was geared, it was written for Congress. It was written for Congress to pick it up and run impeachment proceedings or just to never drop the so-called investigation of Trump.

But, in the process, you guys, they are lying to the American people about what happened. Any time you try to convince the American people that a presidential election is illegitimate — they did it after 2000. After the Florida recount they tried to say that George W. Bush’s administration is illegitimate because he was the winner by virtue of a Supreme Court rig. They just can’t accept losing elections.

In the process, they are destroying the integrity – now everybody thinks the Russians are already working on destroying the 2020 election. And there’s no evidence for this. And the Drive-By Media is just as culpable as the Democrats on this. It is a tremendous lie and a great disservice being done to this entire great country by the people on the left conspiring to claim that a bunch of things happened here that didn’t, and for which there still isn’t a shred of evidence. Not one.

DOOCY: Well, there’s a lot of evidence that people have really embraced your Stand Up for Betsy Ross T-shirt, which benefits Tunnels to Towers. If you would like to get your own copy go to RushLimbaughShowStore.com.

EARHARDT: Rush, thanks again.

RUSH: Thanks guys and remember there’s so many knockoffs out there. The only place to really get it and make sure your proceeds go to Tunnel to Towers is RushLimbaugh.com and the “Store” tab when you get to that website. Thank you guys again so much. We love you all. We owe you such a debt here for letting us use the opportunity here to push this, ’cause it’s such a great charity, such a great thing —

EARHARDT: It’s great we’re all family. You know, we’re all pro-America.

RUSH: That’s right, we are.

EARHARDT: We remember 9/11. We love Frank Siller. He turned something so horrible that happened to his family into something positive. He’s helping other families, and we get an opportunity to help, too, by spending $27. So thank you for setting it up, Rush.

HEGSETH: Thank you, Rush.

RUSH: You bet. He’s doing the Lord’s work. You’re right, Ainsley.

EARHARDT: Yeah, he is. So you are.

RUSH: Thank you for your time.

HEGSETH: Always great to have the golden microphone on Fox.

DOOCY: Rush Limbaugh takes the airwaves on radio coast to coast in three hours and 11 minutes on the EIB Network, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.