RUSH: I got a couple of emails today and one just now in the break, and it… (sigh) I sensed in Sean Hannity last night… It’s really tough for me because my hearing is what it is, and I can’t see who I’m speaking to. When you’re doing a remote, you can’t. So I don’t see facial expressions. So I might misinterpret. But I think in one of my answers to his question about how to deal with ongoing criticism or how does Trump deal with it or how does Trump break through all this noise, I got the impression that he didn’t think that I was — and correct me if I’m wrong.

But I got the impression he didn’t think that I was taking it or treating it as seriously as it is, meaning the opposition, how hard it’s going to be to win reelection. That was when he was talking about, “Hey, Rush, for Republicans to win they’ve gotta thread the needle. Everything’s gotta be just right.” What reminded me of this today is that the emails today say, “Rush, you really do make it sound like this is gonna be a cakewalk over the Democrat.” Folks, I’ll just tell you: If the election were today, it would be. But I understand.

The thing that interests me about this is the perception that I have versus the perception others have and why the difference in perceptions. Like clearly last night Hannity — and again, none of this is a criticism. To me, this is all fascinating stuff that spawns creative thinking and conversations. But I got the impression that when we were talking about the differences in getting an audience for a show like this and getting votes. We were talking about how the Republicans don’t push back, how Trump does; the Republicans seem afraid of the media.

I made the point to him that getting votes and getting audience were different things, and he and I can survive being hated. We can even thrive being hated, but somebody who gets votes can’t. People that hate you are not gonna vote for you. When I said the thing about us being hated, he said, “There’s more of it than you know, Rush.” So he’s cognizant of it and I’m not, even though I know it’s there. Here. Play sound bite 21. It’s a couple of minutes, and there’s more in here than is gonna contribute to the point that I’m gonna try to make when this is over. But this is the sound bite of the portion of the show I was talking about.

He said to me, “I actually see similarities between you and Trump. Let me tell you what two of them are. Number one, you gotta be able to take a punch. You paved the way for a lot of us that are conservatives in the media. You’ve taken more than your fair share” of criticism, abuse, lying, slander, libel, that stuff is what he meant. In the midst of taking all of that, “then you gotta fight for what you believe. My biggest criticism of Republicans is they are weak, a lot of them, and timid and afraid to do what you do every day, to do what Trump is doing — you’re right — showing them the way. Just fight for what you say you’re gonna fight for,” and this is how I answered it…

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: Look, there are two different things going on. I don’t have to get votes. You and I can succeed with people hating us, or disliking us.

HANNITY: There’s a lot of them, Rush.

RUSH: (laughing) But people who need to win elections, people that don’t like you don’t vote for you. So I understand their reticence a bit. But I think that can be overcome with attitude, it can be overcome with confidence. This fear of the media, this fear of being called a racist, everybody needs to get over that now because all of us are racists. Everybody’s racist. They can’t talk about anybody now without labeling them racist

This thing that Trump did about Baltimore, it’s about time this stuff is called out. Where the Democrats run cities or towns or states with one-party rule, those places are suffering greatly. The people there are suffering drug addiction, they’re suffering drug infestation, and they’re suffering filth. And nobody ever calls ’em out on it because you can’t, because the Democrats supposedly are the ones with compassion so you can’t criticize ’em.

The heck with that. They deserve to be criticized. They deserve to be called out. It was Cummings himself 20 years ago — everybody’s seen the video now — who referred to his own city as drug-infested, and nobody said it was racist back then. Trump is really showing a lot of people how to take these people on. You know, we’ve got this Never Trumper problem that I think is kind of like a fly on an elephant’s ass, but people make it out to be bigger than it is because these were supposedly the intellectual leaders of our party.

They’ve been rendered irrelevant. They know it. That’s why they’re ticked off. They’re probably gonna vote Democrat if they have a chance simply because, you know, how are they gonna sell cruises now to tell people what to think about conservatism?

HANNITY: Yeah.

RUSH: For 20 years they thought they were the intellectual leaders of conservatism. They never got much done.

END ARCHIVED CLIP

RUSH: Okay. There’s a lot there and the Never Trumpers were an add on that’s not relevant to my point. My point is, you heard Sean say, “There’s a lot of ’em out there, Rush,” meaning people who hate us. My take is that he encounters them. You know, he does a lot of remotes for Fox. He goes out on the road. He does Twitter. So he encounters the hate. It’s probably part of his daily existence. I don’t. I don’t go anywhere the hate is. I don’t subject myself to it. I’m not saying he does.

I’m saying he may not be able to avoid it — and if you do Twitter? (chuckles) if you’re a conservative and you do Twitter and you check your feed every day, you had better have boundaries on that are five-inch metal thick. I have no interest in reading what the Twitterverse thinks of me. A, I already know. B, I know it’s a bunch of bots. C, I know it’s a bunch of lunatics that have nothing better to do, who don’t even the guts to use their real names. The point is, I don’t subject myself to that.

So I get these emails, “Rush, I don’t think you realize how serious it is.”

I look at this and think, “How can anybody think that I don’t realize how serious it is?” I think what you’re hearing here is I’m not afraid of ’em! Do you know what, folks? Can I tell you and be honest? I might have an even bigger audience if every day I came here and told you that if this election doesn’t go our way, this country’s finished. I could be like these people in Wall Street who sell their stock market newsletters. Do you know how they goose subscriptions?

They predict a crash next week, because negativism and crisis sells.

If the market’s gonna crash next week but this guy sending you the newsletter can tell you how to avoid it (which is what his pitch will be), then you’ll sign up for his newsletter. I can’t. It’s not in my makeup to be fatalistic. But a lot of people are, and I’m very impatient with it either on a personal level or when I encounter it. When I see fatalist on TV, I turn it off. Not interested. Fatalists are not gonna take us anywhere. People that think it’s over that there’s no coming back, there’s no winning, that there’s no recovery? I’m not interested in them. I don’t want to sound that way here, ever.

Unless I really think it, and I don’t. If I really thought the country was finished, folks, I would have told you and I’d have been long gone, figuring there was nothing left to the about it. But that’s by no means the case. So even though I’m aware of how much I’m detested and how much I’m hated, I don’t put any stock in it because to me it’s part of the territory.

But, B, look who the haters are. They’re nutcases. Most of them have never accomplished anything in their lives, and the professional haters in the media is a calculated business decision. But I just made a — I don’t even think it’s an active choice to avoid it. It’s just me. But I don’t want anybody to think I don’t get the gravity of this.

When I’m pointing out the joke the Democrat Party has become, I’m fully aware that 30% of the country is applauding ’em. You should know that. I’ve been the one sounding the warning bell here on these people for 30 years. I was the one 25 years ago warning everybody where we were headed when people back then were laughing. “Come on, Rush. Nobody’s ever gonna believe this spotted oil stuff. Nobody’s gonna believe they really want to get rid of toilet paper. Come on, Rush. Nobody’s ever gonna really think we’re gonna get rid of oil.”

And now look at where we are. I was trying to warn people 25 years ago. I was doing with humor, we did updates trying to make fun of these people with parody songs and so forth, every which way I could think of. Now it has arrived, and the people I was trying to warn are deathly afraid and aware of it now and thinking I’m not taking it seriously enough.

And I just want to reiterate to you that I take it as seriously as you do, meaning this opposition, meaning the left and their designs to the country. But I’m not fatalistic about them winning. It’s just not in my makeup to be. Now, if it would make you more comfortable to hear me sound more worried about it, I don’t know that I can help you. I don’t want to be worried about it if it isn’t true. If I don’t think it’s true I don’t want to have to sit here and manufacture phony concern just to relate to people who think that way themselves.

I’m completely aware probably as much as anybody, if not more so, of the dire threat these people pose and spend maybe more time than I should each and every day warning people about it and then providing evidence. Which is what this whole week has been, evidence of the lunatics, evidence of the insanity. The more people that are aware of it, the more people that are gonna tune it out. I still have faith that what you’ve seen, if you’ve even watched it, these two nights of debates, I still have faith that nowhere near a majority of voting Americans believes it and signs on to it.

Now, I know the Democrats are trying to flood the country with illegals and get ’em registered to vote. I know all that. But they are not guaranteed success. They are not unbeatable. They are not monolithically unstoppable. They are shooting themselves in the foot right now. They are in the middle of a circular firing squad because they have so misjudged the people of this country. They have made absolute fools of themselves on this Trump-Russia collusion stuff.

But not enough Americans know that yet. But that’s going to happen. I have full confidence that in the 18 months between now and the election all kinds of revelations are gonna happen. The timing is gonna be purposefully arranged so as to have the most impact during the presidential election campaign. And believe me, you don’t want to waste this stuff now when the Democrats are in the process of beating themselves up. You know, save it for when they’ve got a nominee, save it for when they’ve got somebody who’s gonna be — I think they’re gonna nominate, I didn’t get to say this last night, but I think Biden is the equivalent of Mondull in ’84, or maybe the equivalent of Bob Dole in 1996.

The Democrats threw Mondull up there. He’d been a war horse. He’d been a royal Democrat. Reagan was not gonna lose, so Mondale get it on his resume. Let him run for president. Let him raise the money. Let him have this legacy as a Democrat presidential nominee. But he wasn’t gonna win anything. And Dole was not gonna win in ’96 versus Clinton.

At some point somebody in this party is gonna realize throw somebody up there who, when they lose, does not take the party with them. And if they don’t think they’re gonna lose and nominate somebody as radically extreme as anybody on that stage has been, all the better.

I look at this as a glorious day when the American people reject whoever it is these Democrats are gonna nominate. And I’m just gonna tell you right now, this is today, and anything can change next hour, next day, next week. There’s not a one of these people that can hold their own on a stage with Donald Trump, particularly not with the baggage they’re gonna be bringing to it.

They’re gonna show up to a debate, whoever this nominee is, they’re gonna show up with the attitude they’re smarter, they’re better, that Trump is a reprobate, that he’s a scalawag, that he’s a skunk, that he’s an ogre, that he doesn’t deserve to be there, and they’re gonna go overboard in the debates talking about how unqualified as a human being Trump is. They’re not gonna be able to attack any of the issues because they can’t compete on the issues.

I just don’t want anybody to misunderstand. I’m not taking anything for granted. I’m not unaware of how desperate the times are with this party as radical as it is. I just don’t expose myself to all of the hatred and misery. I do enough of that in show prep. I’m aware of it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me say one more thing about this. As long as we’re talking about things that concern us. I have no concern. I just want to be open and up front about this. I got no concern over whatever the hell the Russians did or whatever the hell the Russians are gonna do or whatever the hell the Russians want to do. You know who worries me? Google, Facebook.

Right now, as we speak, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, the Google guys, are having a climate change forum over at some resort in Italy, 114 private jets, a bunch of gigantic mega yachts for getting a bunch of actors and politicians — Where do you think Cummings and Pelosi are? They’re at this thing!

All kinds of activist Democrats, actors, talking about climate change. These people are, in their own method of getting there, contradicting everything they claim to believe. Meaning they’re not getting together about climate change. Saying they’re getting together about climate change is simply a way to disalarm a bunch of young people and others.

Google and Facebook have the ability, with the reach they have, to manipulate what people think and do in ways we have never had to contend with before. The kind of power that is possible to exercise with Google and Facebook dwarfs any other kind of political power you think may exist. And I don’t know what people can do to stop it.

Look at our Betsy Ross T-shirt just, just for example — and this is a minor example — there are 250 knock jobs. One of the reasons they survive is that you go looking for Stand Up for Betsy Ross in a Google search and you’re gonna get sent to a bunch of knockoffs rather than my website, which is the only place the authentic T-shirt and charitable donation is made. And that’s just a minor example.

So those are the things, plus illegal immigration, those are the things that concern me far more than, you know, whatever radical Democrat Party happens to be assembling out there because Google is gonna be promoting whatever the Democrat Party puts up. Now, the Democrat Party base right now is as radical left as there has ever been in this country. And so if they nominate a guy like Biden, Biden’s not gonna satisfy the Democrat base.

See, if Biden is the nominee, I’m gonna tell you, I think the Democrats know they’re gonna lose. And that means they will want a moderate, old Democrat to lose to illustrate that that’s not how to win and that they’ve gotta go full-fledged, full on radical left if they want to win back the White House.

And there’s gonna be Google and Facebook doing whatever manipulation, and people are gonna be manipulated and not even aware that it’s happening simply by the virtue of how they interact with those services and social media.