RUSH: We’re gonna start in Michigan and Port Huron. This is John. Thank you for waiting, sir. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Rush, you opened the show today with that bogus poll showing that female voters for Trump are going to abandon him or are in the process of abandoning him.

RUSH: Well, it’s not actually a poll. It is a full-fledged AP story. And I haven’t gotten to it yet for details, but I’m going to in due course. Have you read it?

CALLER: I haven’t read it, but I heard it about the same time you did, so that’s why I didn’t know if it was a poll or just an article. But I have a take on it. It was identical to yours. It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s a poll or a story or a story based on a poll. It is totally bogus.

And, you know, just to step back briefly, one of the things I’ve loved about listening to you the last 20 years is that when I think I have drained everything out of an issue, you give me a little bit of different angle of looking at something. That’s the one thing that really kept me as a listener all these years and it allowed me to turn other people on to you. And I’m gonna apply that Limbaugh logic to you and see what you think.

So when you were saying how you doubt the legitimacy of this story or poll, you then pointed out the hypocrisy, how Democrats or liberals can get away with very similar things and walk away unscathed. I don’t even have to go there. All I have to do is compare Trump to Trump. Because, if you go back to the Access Hollywood tape, if Donald Trump can say that stuff, anything you said, you could not gloss that over. Even he admitted to that. It was vulgar. That was —

RUSH: Yeah, that is an excellent point. If Donald Trump can survive that, then what the hell is all this?

CALLER: With women. He survived that with my wife, my sister, and my mother. And I’ll tell you something.

RUSH: Why? Tell me why. Why did he survive it with them? You would know. What did they tell you? Why’d they tell you it didn’t bother ’em?

CALLER: There were too many important things on the list to get done that they’ve been waiting 16 years or longer to get done. All the women in my life who voted for Trump had voted for Bush, and they thought that he was gonna be the answer.

RUSH: How much of it was? And I know I’m leading you, putting words in your mouth. Feel free to say “none” or “no.” But how much of it was due to the fact that people, your wife and the women in your family were just fed up with these kind of tactics late in a campaign, fed up with having your vote determined by that stuff and just said to heck with this?

CALLER: Oh, yeah, that is probably 75 to 80% of it because what they saw in him was a combination, not giving in to that, not cracking, not running around and apologizing, but fighting back finally —

RUSH: Right. The debate right after that story comes out is two days later and that’s the debate that Trump brought all the women Bill Clinton had abused and sat ’em in the front row, and that shook Hillary up and the whole Drive-By Media. I’ll get to this after the break here. So hang on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the headline of the story. “Suburban Women Recoil as Trump Dives Into Racial Politics.” Now, what this story is — not a poll. The AP says that they conducted three dozen interviews with suburban professional women and that they all say they will not vote for Trump because of his racist tweets.

Now, anybody paying attention knows that Trump never once mentioned race either in the, “Hey, Cortez and gang, go home if you don’t like it” or in the Baltimore tweets. He never mentioned race, never mentioned skin color, never mentioned ethnicity. He didn’t go there, not once.

Now, in this AP story, only one of the women who now say they won’t vote for Trump voted for him in 2016. Do I need to repeat that? They interview three dozen people, 36 women, for those of you in Rio Linda, and all 36 say they will not vote for Trump because of his racist tweets. But only one of the 36 actually voted for him in 2016. And that woman is the first woman who appears in the story, in the opening paragraph.

The other 35 women in the story, it’s not divulged, it’s not revealed who they voted for or they say they didn’t vote or say they voted for Hillary. They didn’t vote for Trump. We don’t know who they voted for, but they didn’t vote. So they want you to believe that they found 36 Trump voting women who are so repulsed and turned off that none of them are voting for him this time around. One out of 36!

Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb here. I think the AP is manufacturing this. I think this is fake news extraordinaire. Remember all of those stories the first year and a half of the Russia collusion story with nameless, faceless people who had all of this evidence that Trump had colluded with Russia, and none of it ever amounted to a hill of beans. And none of the people that were eventually identified turned out to be correct or right about it.

I think there’s another reason the AP’s doing this story, ’cause Trump is winning the issue! He’s winning the Baltimore issue. In fact, take a look at where they did the interviews, and you’ll find out the AP is admitting what their objective is here.

“The interviews in suburbs outside Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit and Denver are a warning light for the Republican president’s reelection campaign.” That’s their agenda. They went out, they did enough legwork to give themselves the basis of a story.

Now, I want to remind you. I have never seen a similar story like this involving Democrats. I never see a story of a Democrat making a crazy statement, an over-the-top statement, a racist statement. It just doesn’t happen. And accordingly, we never see the AP going out and interviewing disgruntled Democrats who say they’re not gonna vote for the Democrat anymore because of the way the Democrat speaks.

We may get stories how they won’t vote for Democrats ’cause they think they’re cowards or this or that, but not because of the way they speak. The only stories ever in that vein are about Republicans. Now, as our caller just pointed out, we’ve been there and done that. The Access Hollywood video that came out two weeks before, three weeks before the presidential election of Donald Trump did not have any impact on the way women voted. It did not end up hurting Trump’s electoral chances.

So this is a repeat. It’s an attempt to, I think, relitigate that as far as the press is concerned. I really think this stuff is fake news. Here is how the story begins. “Carol Evans” — this is the woman who voted for Trump who’s not going to, the only one of the 36 interviewed — “Carol Evans approves of Donald Trump’s immigration policy.” Of course she does, you see. “She gives him credit for the strong economy.” Of course she does.

“But the Republican from the affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, a GOP bedrock in the state, just can’t commit to voting for the president next year like she did in 2016. ‘I just don’t like the way he talks about other people,’ Evans, a 79-year-old retired data entry supervisor, said recently as she walked through a shopping mall in Brookfield, Wisconsin, days after Trump fired off a racist tweet at Democratic congresswomen.”

Well, except that it wasn’t racist. “I just don’t like the way he talks about other people.” I would love to get hold of Ms. Evans. Do you like the way the Democrats talk about Trump? Do you have no problem with Trump being called a traitor? Do you have no problem with Trump being accused of treason? Do you have no problem with every Republican always being called a racist or a bigot or a sexist?

See, this is what tells me that these stories are fake from the get-go. Because if we’re to believe the AP, the only people who are upset in America over the way certain people speak is people upset with Donald Trump and your occasional conservative Republican talk show host, you name it. I’m sorry, folks. I’m not buying it.

I think there is more anger and rage at Democrats over this kind of crap than the AP will ever know and thus ever report. But I think people are fed up with the way Donald Trump is routinely slandered and libeled and obstructed. And I think a lot more people understand his pushback and reaction to it. I think more people understand Trump doesn’t start stuff. He defends and responds to things. But still, the one-way street here is so blatantly obvious.

I love citing the example of the Indiana law, the Religious Restoration Freedom Act. So Mike Pence signs it into law. It basically says that if you have a religious objection to certain lifestyles, you do not have to accept business from people representing that objection. So what did the media do? The media starts going town to town, shop to shop looking for a bigoted pizzeria or bakery that would refuse to serve a gay wedding ceremony.

And they find a 20-year-old woman who is the daughter of the owner of a pizza shop. “It’s against our religious principles. We wouldn’t do it.” And that’s all it took, one person, took ’em three days to find her, they blow it up, and then they make it look like the entire country thinks this pizzeria is despicable and needs to be burned down, when the state of Indiana just passed the law legalizing what she wants to do!

And yet here’s the media trying to create this illusion that this 20-year-old woman is in such a small minority that she’s obviously a sexist and a homophobe and a bigot and you name it. So the one-way street here has become a practiced meme and narrative for the Drive-By Media. We are to believe that the only anger in America is directed at Trump and that everybody’s fed up with the way he talks, everybody, including people who say they’re not gonna vote for him again.

Except the AP in 36 suburban women, they could only find one who voted for him who says she’s not going to because, again, “I just don’t like the way he talks about other people.” Why do the Democrats always get a pass on that? I’m not saying this rhetorically. They are some of the most vile, some of the meanest, most vicious bullies in all of American politics. The way they’re going after white people with white privilege, the insults.

I mean, these people show up and visit violence. Antifa, why is nobody, why aren’t there any stories about the damage that the Antifa rioters might be causing the Democrat Party? Why don’t we get stories of people that voted Democrat, voted for Hillary in 2016, but now that they see Antifa and they see Black Lives Matter, they just can’t do it anymore.

No. We are led to believe that that’s exactly what the majority of the people support in this country. And I’m telling you they don’t. It’s bogus, fake news. We have been making the point that after all of these supposedly uncivil, unacceptable, shocking things Trump does, that we don’t see any polling data after those stories. I know I made that point last week and the week prior. Where’s all the polling data? I’m sure they’re taking polls, but they can’t get the result they want, so since they can’t get the polls, let’s go manufacture a story.

And that’s what the AP has given us. “Suburban Women Recoil as Trump Dives Into Racial Politics.” Trump has not dived into racial politics. What? Not allowed to criticize Democrats? Not allowed to criticize Democrat politicians? If they’re women, if they’re African-American, if they’re Hispanic, not allowed to criticize ’em?

“That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh. You’re not. If you do, you’re a racist. Those are our rules, we have set them up, and you have to abide by them.” Sorry. We’re not going to anymore.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Wayne in Ellicott City, Maryland. It’s great to have you. You are up next, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: Your books should be required reading in grades one through 12 of all schools. Here’s my point. Listen to the fake news and the Democrats, some of the comments they say, if you do any fact-checking on them, they have to believe that the average person is stupid, to get away with the things they say. They truly believe that people are stupid. They’ll believe anything that they say.

RUSH: I think in a certain segment of the population, they do think that. It’s kind of a dichotomy. Because the mainstream media audience — this is really a tricky thing. But if you get to the Washington practitioners of mainstream media, the public is an audience, and they all want it, but that’s not for whom they primarily are doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs for other journalists. They’re trying to impress other journalists, other editors. They’re trying to stay high-ranking in the club.

And so the guys that are in the Drive-By Media in Washington largely aim their stuff for consumption by others in the Drive-By Media so as to gain and maintain approval and to show that they are continuing to earn their keep and earn their spot within the Drive-By Media.

The AP, on the other hand, is, with so many newspapers, carrying what they do, their obvious focus is — and Google — their obvious focus is the public at large. I don’t know that they think about the intelligence or lack of so much of the audience because they’re all so inwardly focused. One of the big things about media today is that it’s all about them.

But overall I think you’re right. I think they do assume a third grade reading level, for example. They do assume a very shallow level of understanding, and they capitalize on that. But they end up thinking that everybody ends up agreeing with them and that that represents a majority of thinking in the country. And that’s where they fool themselves.

That’s where their arrogance comes in and that’s why they’re always surprised when their candidates lose. They still cannot believe Hillary Clinton lost. They thought they had that wired every which way from Sunday. But I think overall you’re right. I think they have a very condescending attitude toward most of us. I’d have to concur.