RUSH: The Stand up for Betsy Ross T-shirt. People have been asking, “Rush, you haven’t mentioned this.” We haven’t mentioned it on purpose. Two reasons. One, the shootings — and, folks, we needed time to fulfill the orders that have come in. We hope to finish shipping everything by Tuesday, and do you know what the total number of T-shirts is? We’re going to be close to 300,000 of these babies, 300,000, Stand up for Betsy Ross T-shirts.
We had another shipment of printed shirts just arrive today at the warehouse. So now they have to be logistically categorized, placed in the right bins, and shipped out to the right people who ordered them. This came up today on Fox, the American Newsroom show with Bill Hemmer. He was talking to Frank Siller, who is the CEO of Tunnel to Towers, which is the charitable beneficiary, proceeds from the sale of Betsy Ross, Stand up for Betsy Ross T-shirts — at RushLimbaugh.com, by the way. That’s where you get them, the “Store” tab at RushLimbaugh.com.
Here’s a little sound bite from this morning…
HEMMER: With what Rush Limbaugh has done for you and selling those T-shirts —
SILLER: (chuckles) Yes.
HEMMER: — how much money has he raised for the organization?
SILLER: So far, it’s $3 million.
HEMMER: It’s just unbelievable.
SILLER: It’s unbelievable. I went on… I was on Fox & Friends today, and we named 10 mortgages that we paid off — six mortgages we paid off, and four Gold Star family houses we started construction because of that. But, listen, that $3 million is unbelievable.
RUSH: It really is, and this happened inside of a month. We’ve been at it a little bit longer than that. But we weren’t able to start fulfilling orders for the first week. We had to scale up rapidly when we saw the overwhelming reaction here. It’s 300,000 T-shirts, folks! That $3 million is $3 million and counting, and people ask, “Is there going to be any more?” Well, just stand by, folks. We, right now, are focused on making sure we get everything out.
Again, we hope to have everything out the door and shipped by Tuesday. And then the fulfillment staff, they haven’t had a day off since this began. So we’re going to give them a half day. After working 30 days straight, we figure that’s being fair. Nah, it’s a little bit more than that. By the way, one more bite. Shannon Slutman was on also this morning on Fox. She’s the widow of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Christopher Slutman, killed in Afghanistan.
SLUTMAN: Frank has been amazing, and the whole Tunnel to Towers Foundation. And I’ve told the story before that we, on the worst day — worst day — of our life, we found out about Chris passing away. They walked in and said, “Your mortgage is taken care of.” So everybody knows that’s the biggest bill you ever deal with. For my girls to know that we were going to stay in our house, and we didn’t have to worry about moving or any changes was a big deal. It helps you focus on what you’re supposed to focus on, which is my kids, my girls. It’s just one less thing to worry about. You’re able to focus on, you know, college and making sure that they have their day-to-day needs met.
RUSH: Every one of you that purchased a Stand up for Betsy Ross T-shirt made that possible for Shannon Slutman and a lot of others. Ten mortgages. Actually, sixteen mortgages have been paid off. Four Gold Star family houses have been under construction now. I mean, it’s a tremendous amount of money that all of you made possible. So that’s the update on it and it’s still alive and kicking. If we had brought it to a conclusion, I would have told you about that. I don’t keep anything from you, ever.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Mark in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Great to have you, hi.
CALLER: Hi, Maha Rushie, nice to check off on my bucket list and talk to you, sir.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad you made it through here today.
CALLER: Absolutely. I wanted to share real quick that everything that you rkwere saying about the rally last night is absolutely perfect. There are no better words that anybody could have used. It was an absolute lovefest, which dovetails with our Woodstock discussion today. (chuckles) It was amazing, absolutely amazing.
RUSH: It was inspiring, I’ll bet, too. It was a different world. I mean, you go out there, you watch the media, you hear that Trump is destroying this and destroying that, and everybody hates Trump. And then you go to the rally, and you find the exact opposite is the case.
CALLER: So true.
RUSH: And you find yourself with 12,000 other like-minded people. It’s got to be inspiring. It had to get you up.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, and it was much more than that outside. It was probably closer to 25,000 people outside.
RUSH: Did Trump say anything that upset you? Like, CNN says he was “spreading fear and blame last night” by telling everybody, “Whether you hate me or not, if you don’t reelect me your economy and your 401(k) is going to be destroyed.” Did you feel frightened and intimidated when Trump said that last night?
CALLER: No. No. Not at all. There were a couple of protesters, 100 or so off to the side.
RUSH: One of them was a real pig.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Trump commented that the guy needed to start exercising.
CALLER: Yeah, I couldn’t see him outside on the JumboTron, so I can’t comment on that. But at least he admitted that he loves cheeseburgers.
RUSH: Who, Trump did?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Oh, yeah, he does.
CALLER: He’s not as big as me or I’m not as big as him.
RUSH: Let me just tell you: Two eggs, two pieces of bacon, two pieces of sausages, some pancakes, maybe a waffle, and what everybody else at the table wants.
CALLER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. What I really called for was to —
RUSH: Oh no.
CALLER: — I figured I had the opportunity to —
RUSH: Oh, gee, I thought you had finished because we’re out of time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’re going to stick with Mark. I thought he had gotten all that he wanted — I thought he wanted to talk about the rally. There’s one more thing. Mark, welcome back.
CALLER: Thank you. Very gracious of you guys. I wanted to let you know that I’m pretty sure I had the only real Stand Up for Betsy Ross T-shirt there. There were a number of counterfeiters selling them when I came out of the garage. And you could tell they were just cotton. And it was hot. And I stayed nice and cool. So everything you’re telling everybody about the quality of this T-shirt is right on.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad for that endorsement, and I appreciate it. And the knock-offs, we’re up to over 300 now. And we’ve dealt with enough, a number of them. But they keep popping up, which is in itself an indication of just how hot and popular the item is.
The legal team has not stopped chasing these people down, and it’s amazing. Even with all this heat on them, even with as much attention that’s been focused in telling people, “Do not buy knock-offs.” They keep popping up because people, all you have to do is go to Google. If you can’t remember the address to my website or if you haven’t heard it. Let’s say you see somebody wearing it, “Where did you get that?”
“At the Rush Limbaugh store.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know, search it on Google.” So you go to Google and Google doesn’t return my show as a search result because I am, of course, conservative and I’m not among the favored. So all of these knock-off sites end up being returned and people unaware end up going to them.
I have gone breathless trying to warn people to stay away from the knock-offs. When you buy a knock-off, none of that is going to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. None of it. The fraudsters are keeping it all. They’re not selling high-quality stuff, by definition.
We only sell one kind of fabric T-shirt, and we own every one that’s been made in the country, by the way, every one. In the color white, we own every one. Not all of them have been printed yet, but we own every one. Anyway, Mark, thanks much.