RUSH: I want to give you an update here on Tulsi Gabbard. I’ve checked. A lot of people think Tulsi Gabbard did great last night, and she did. But I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know: Because of what she did last night, the media and the Democrat Party are gonna make her a pinata. She eviscerated Kamala Harris. Let me check the audio sound bite roster and see if we have this. Grab sound bite number 15. This is a portion of it. She just…

Kamala Harris is out there bragging about what a great prosecutor she was as the attorney general of California, how great a progressive prosecutor she was — and this woman was not. Tulsi Gabbard exposed her last night like nobody has! Nobody in the media in California has… Well, there may have been a couple of LA Times stories. The New York Times has exposed her. The New York Times has a story from a couple/three years ago, about the absolute horror Kamala Harris was for progressive criminals. She didn’t want to let ’em out of jail.

She wanted to keep ’em in jail! She wanted to keep ’em on death row. Progressive criminals who she should have been trying to let out of jail, she wanted to slam the door on. The New York Times had story about it a couple years ago. It didn’t get any traction because, so what? She wasn’t running for president then. But here is Tulsi Gabbard last night. The question came from Jake Tapper. “Congresswoman Gabbard, you took issue with Senator Harris confronting Vice President Biden at the last debate. You called it a false accusation that Joe Biden is a racist.”

GABBARD: Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations then laughed about it when asked if she ever smoked marijuana.

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

GABBARD: She blocked evidence…

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

GABBARD: She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California —

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

TAPPER: Thank you, Congresswoman.

GABBARD: — and she fought to keep a system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.

RUSH: And it continued. There was… Grab sound bite 17. We’ll get to Kamala Harris’ response in a minute. But after Kamala Harris responded, which you’ll hear, here’s Tulsi Gabbard continuing the charge…

GABBARD: The bottom line is, Senator Harris, when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people’s lives, you did not. And, worse yet, in the case of those who were on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that he would have freed them until you were forced to do so.

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

GABBARD: There is no excuse for that, and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor? You owe them an apology.

RUSH: This came out of nowhere, folks. It was a sharp knife. Nobody had a retort to it until last night and today when the media got over what happened, when they realized it. Tulsi Gabbard has now been targeted for political assassination.

Here, by the way, back to sound bite 16 is Kamala Harris reacting to this.

HARRIS: As the elected attorney general of California, I did the work of significantly reforming the criminal justice system of a state of 40 million people which became a national model for the work that needs to be done. And I am proud of that work. And I am proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches or be in a legislative body and give speeches on a floor, but actually doing the work, of being in the position to use the power that I had to reform a system that is badly in need of reform.

RUSH: As you heard, not a single refutation of any charge. She was totally blindsided, taken aback. She had happen to her what she did to Bite Me in the first debate. Now, here’s what’s happened since. I have seen two media people fit to be tied at Tulsi Gabbard today. They are trying to destroy her. Guess what? Guess what? All of the Twitter responses in favor of Tulsi Gabbard, you know where they’re really coming from? The media says Russian bots!

Russian bots are giving all of the approvals and all the likes to Tulsi Gabbard last night and today! They’re also getting all over her because she won’t condemn Assad. She will not condemn Assad, and she will not condemn Russia’s alliance with Assad. And here she is positioning herself as this big anti-war Democrat, we need to get everybody out of Afghanistan, need to get everybody out, too many missiles flying around, get rid of nukes, all this, but she will not condemn Bashar al-Assad. And she will not condemn the Russians.

And so the media is now — get this. This is the culmination of it all — the media is claiming that she is a secret third party, independent candidate waiting to happen to guarantee Trump’s reelection in an alliance with Russia. This is what the media is saying. (laughing) Is this not delicious?

We just finished two and a half years proving that there’s no collusion between Trump and Russia. A lawsuit about it was just thrown out. The Michael Cohen lawsuit has been thrown out. There’s nothing here. And yet the media, seeing one of their favorites basically fileted last night by a nobody in their view, Tulsi Gabbard, they have joined forces.

And you’re going to see it if you watch the Drive-By Media the rest of today, tonight, tomorrow, they’re going after Tulsi Gabbard like you haven’t seen ’em go after a Democrat in a long time, on the basis that she is allied with Russia and Trump and that she is gonna end up as a third-party candidate specifically to split the Democrat vote so that Trump wins reelection because of her alliance with Russia. This, in fact, was just stated on CNN within the last 30 minutes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And no sooner did I give you the analysis that the media is claiming Russia is behind Tulsi Gabbard, here we have a story. This is from Breitbart. “Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)’s campaign press secretary suggested Russia was behind Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) after she landed an effective blow on Harris’ record as a prosecutor during the Democrat debates on Wednesday night. Her press secretary, Ian Sams, tweeted shortly after the attack an NBC News article from February 2019 claiming the ‘Russian propaganda machine’ was promoting Gabbard.”

Now, look at what’s happening. This, folks, is such a teachable moment, such an exciting moment. For three years — actually longer than that — but for three intense years the Democrats attempted to overturn the 2016 election with a bogus silent coup. It consisted of Obama DOJ and FBI people, intelligence, you know the drill. They all make up this story about the Russians stealing the election, colluding with Trump.

At every turn they bomb in proving it because it didn’t happen. There was never any evidence. All there was was the Steele dossier. But nevertheless the Democrats, because of all this, have created an illusion, they have created this image that the Russians are determining the outcome in American politics. They now have to live with this. And guess what?

Now all of a sudden the Russians are interfering with Democrats. The Russians are colluding with Democrats. Now the Russians are colluding with Tulsi Gabbard. The Democrat Party cannot explain how it’s fallen in such disfavor. Everything Tulsi Gabbard said about Kamala Harris, by the way, is true. And this is what the Democrats cannot withstand. They cannot withstand truthful exposes of them and their policies, their vision, you name it.

Tulsi Gabbard destroyed Kamala Harris. I don’t know if it’s gonna affect the primary, but just in terms of an attack it was effective. She just rip filleted her. And so what’s the retort? “The Russians are working with Tulsi Gabbard.” Russian bots are flooding Twitter today with likes and retweets of Tulsi Gabbard.

So the Democrats have built this world, they have created this world where the Russians determine, the Russians are responsible for when bad things happen to Democrats. And it’s all hokum. They’ve built this mess, and now they get to live in it. This is what I would call a classic backfire.

All of this was designed to get Trump thrown out of the White House, and now when they’ve got no way to react to a serious attack, seriously true attack on one of their favored frontrunners, Kamala Harris, “the Russians did it.” The Russians are behind it.

And don’t forget Tulsi Gabbard and this alliance with Russia really extends to Trump. She’s gonna be a third-party candidate, and she is going to purposely do that to split the Democrat Party vote, guaranteeing Trump’s reelection. These people have been so discombobulated with the fact that they lost that election, they really are losing all grounding.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just got a note from a dweeb that I know out in Arizona. He’s a good friend. I call him a dweeb. He’s a young guy, a very devoted young guy. He says, “Wait a minute. If likes and retweets from Russian Twitter bots can so easily get Trump elected and make Tulsi Gabbard so damn popular, then what the hell does that say about the U.S. media? They don’t have any more influence than Russian Twitter bots?”

You know, it’s a good question. Tulsi Gabbard does have a lot of great publicity after the debate last night. You know one of the reasons why? I’ll tell you one of the reasons why. She’s one of the only ones that doesn’t come off as mad. She doesn’t gesticulate wildly. She doesn’t seem to be anything other than even tempered. She is well spoken. She doesn’t seem to be possessed with vitriol and hate.

She’s just calm, steady, collected, and she sliced and diced Kamala Harris, who is not calm and who’s not collected, who comes off as offensively defensive, somebody I think that feels very defensive ’cause she knows she’s got some baggage, tries to cover it up by being on offense about things. And contrast her with somebody like Kirsten Gillibrand who’s just — you wonder how in the heck somebody like her even ends up on stage.

Tulsi Gabbard, by the way, won the Drudge poll last night. Now, the Drudge poll got taken down. She was far and away winning the Drudge poll. It’s nothing scientific. It’s just a popularity contest that’s a flash point of the moment. And the night before it was somebody outside the top tier that also — Marianne Williamson won the night before. So we got Marianne Williamson on debate night one followed by Tulsi Gabbard.

And I’ll guarantee you this. The Democrat-media complex, Tulsi Gabbard’s not gonna be the nominee. Tulsi Gabbard isn’t gonna be anything, and here comes Tulsi Gabbard winning accolades? They’ve got to take her out, and so that’s what they’re doing by claiming the Russians are supporting her, but it is an interesting question. How is it that the media wants anybody but her and yet she’s getting most of the favorable reaction on Twitter? Which remember now, Twitter to me is zilch, zero, nada. But to them the media has made Twitter the equivalent of national public opinion.

This is very important to remember, folks. Journalists are inherently lazy. It used to be the fax machine was the primary source mechanism. But now it’s Twitter. The media writes a story filled with their bias and innuendo and whatever, then they go to Twitter, and they’ll be able to find whatever they want to back it up, nameless people on Twitter, invisible, no-name people that they portray as representing popular opinion.

So you live by Twitter, you die by Twitter. The very Twitter they continue to build up when things happen their way, what’s the reaction? Twitter blew up, the internet blew up. They love it, then they publish all these tweets to back up the premise of the story. Now Twitter likes Tulsi Gabbard, the media doesn’t, so they’re hoisted on their own petard in a way.

I love this stuff. I love this stuff breaking down the way it does. And I think it is comical as heck now. And it’s one of these things I’m really hoping a lot of people notice, which is why I’m helping push this along. But now the Russians — (laughing) — the Russians are behind Tulsi Gabbard? And Tulsi Gabbard’s a secret Russian Trump plant as a third-party candidate to split the Democrat vote. They’ve already got this figured out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Harvey Levin at TMZ. We love Harvey Levin here. He leaves us alone, for the most part. He’s a good guy, runs TMZ. He was a gossip reporter for one of the LA TV stations and then entrepreneured up to his own gossip network. He interviewed Tulsi Gabbard today on the TMZ website. And he said, “Look, Senator Harris is taking a shot at you now. She said, ‘Look, I’m a top-tier candidate and Gabbard is a zero or one-percenter.’”

GABBARD: It’s pathetic to be honest because instead of dealing with and answering and countering the points that I was raising, the facts about her record, in whatever way she would choose to she’s instead resorted to, you know, pithy comments and cheap smears. I think that’s a disservice to voters and they deserve better. They deserve answers. They deserve the truth.

RUSH: Well, she’s right about that. Now, Kamala Harris, as we speak, is addressing the media. She must have slept late today. She’s addressing the media in Detroit after the slicing and dicing that she got last night from Tulsi Gabbard.