RUSH: New York Times, I made a prediction. When this week began, we all learned that the New York Times had decided to implement Project 1619. Now, this is a journalism organization. Here they are announcing an agenda, and the agenda is to recast the American founding at not 1776, but 1619 because that’s the date, the year the first slaves arrived in North America.

There was no United States in 1619. There were no 13 colonies. There had not been any Revolutionary War. There were simply British settlers, the Pilgrims’ descendants and so forth. The beginnings of the nation were there, but there was no United States. There had been no Continental Congress. None of this of the sort.

So the New York Times is suggesting that that’s the date that America really began, 1619, when slaves first came, and therefore the New York Times points out that everything that’s happened since then has happened on the backs of slaves. Whatever America is, whatever America has accomplished, whatever America has achieved has been illegitimate, has been tainted, is unjust, is immoral, because it’s built on the backs of slaves.

I warned everybody that what happened next was something to keep a sharp eye for. Since the New York Times is who sets the newsroom agenda for the rest of the Drive-By Media, I said the rest of the Drive-Bys are gonna be forced to pick up this agenda. And they’re gonna be forced into building on it and treating it as a legitimate news story when there’s no news about this at all. This is a madcap leftist assertion attempt to rewrite history.

True to form, the Washington Post, within two days, had a lead headline, four-color artwork proclaiming America was founded on the backs of slaves, 1619. USA Today headline: “Her Family Came 400 Years Ago, She Says – In Chains.” The subhead: “This untold story of 1619 defines America.”

I’m telling you, folks, do not doubt me. So the Washington Post has picked it up now. Now USA Today has picked it up. They went out and found somebody who claims to be able to trace their genealogy all the way back to a slave in 1619 and USA Today just happened to find this person. Her name is Wendy Tucker. “This untold story of 1619 defines America.”

“The first enslaved Africans landed in Virginia in August 1619, and Wanda Tucker fiercely believes her ancestors were aboard that ship, The White Lion.” She doesn’t know. She just really believes it.

“Her search for answers led her on a journey to the place she believes her ancestors once called home: Angola. Along the way, she reminded herself that they had made it in the opposite direction by force – in chains. Four hundred years later, USA TODAY tells the story of the Tuckers, the founding family you’ve never heard of.”

So forget Jefferson, forget Washington, forget Patrick Henry, forget Alexander Hamilton, forget Hamilton the musical, forget everything you ever knew, the Tucker family from Angola founded America or had America founded on their backs as slaves.

Is this not incredible? Even though I predicted it, I’m still stunned. There was a part of me that said, no, they can’t, but then there was another part of me that said they can’t not do this. The New York Times sets the news agenda for everybody else in media in this country, and they’ve gotta do it.

And, lo and behold, here it is. So we’ve got somebody who thinks that her ancestors came, can’t be sure, thinks they were on the ship, is fairly certain it happened, can’t prove it, but it doesn’t matter, USA Today has their story. USA Today telling the story of the Tuckers, the founding family you’ve never heard of.

“We spent months,” writes USA Today, “We spent months on an ambitious series exploring that journey, its protagonists and the pain and repercussions that continue today.”

BS. They started this Monday when the New York Times ran their first story over the weekend. They want you to believe that they’ve been chasing this story now for months and months and months.

You want some other subheads in USA Today?

“Our nation’s original sin. It took an accident to bring slavery to the USA.”

“Slavery’s explosive Gross in charts, how 20 and odd became millions.”

“Our Standards and Ethics editor explains how dozens of USA TODAY journalists produced 1619 searching for answers.”

Now, you can say journalism is dead all day long. There are countless media people, after doing such baseless stories as this, journalism is dead, but it isn’t. There’s no journalism anymore, but everybody still thinks there is. Let me give you an example. And these are a dime a dozen. I just want to give you the most recent example.

I have a friend in the financial business. He is as attuned to media bias, he is as attuned to media snarkiness, he is as attuned to the corruption in the media as anybody. And yet he sent me a story today that he totally fell for. And it made me realize how impossible it is going to be to get everybody or even a decent number of Americans reacting with skepticism instantly rather than acceptance whenever anything appears in the media.

The story was, you know, Apple’s got this new Apple card, the credit card. It’s a digital card. You primarily use it on your iPhone for Apple Pay, but if you want you can order an actual credit card. It’s made of titanium and it’s white. There’s no number on it, just your name. Just your name and the chip. It’s the ultimate in security.

The tech blogs who hate Apple are writing stories about how it gets filthy and dirty inside of two weeks if it’s in your wallet or in your denim jeans. Really, Apple is being raked over the coals for this credit card. So my buddy sends me a link to one of these stories and says, “Can you believe this? And yet they’re gonna introduce a titanium watch. For crying out loud, if they can’t even keep their titanium credit card clean why are they gonna release a titanium watch?”

I wrote him back, “You buy this?” He is instantly skeptical of the media, but this story, he bought it hook, line, and sinker. Apple’s credit card is junk. I had to chastise him. I had to say, “You’re the classic illustration of how we’re never gonna succeed in getting people to react to –” This is crazy! This is stupid to have 10 stories like this yesterday in the tech media, you sit here and you believe it, and you know these people hate Apple.

And he was properly chagrined. But he had to agree with me. If it hadn’t been for me, he said, he would have spent the rest of this day really believing that Apple had gone chintzy and tightwad on their new credit card. And I hear this, and journalism’s dead. No, it’s not. These people are getting away with corruption and poisoning people’s minds and lying to them.

You want to hear the latest? Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the FBI for lying, has been hired as a commentator by CNN. I ran this by a friend today. “Rush, it must mean that they’re not gonna prosecute him. I mean, his lawyers wouldn’t let him go on TV and start talking if he was gonna be prosecuted. And CNN wouldn’t hire him if he was gonna be prosecuted.”

I said, “You may be right about the lawyers, but CNN would hire him no matter what! They want to make a martyr out of him. I’ll tell you what this is. Andrew McCabe being hired by CNN as a commentator is to try to revive the Trump-is-going-to-jail audience that the media has lost. They want this guy to come back and start reassuring viewers that Trump is not gonna get away with this, that there was collusion despite what Mueller said, and that Trump is gonna get punished for it and they also want to find a way to pay these people.

McCabe got fired. McCabe was humiliated. He was fired for lying and leaking. So here comes CNN as a friendly member of the swamp, hiring him, essentially paying him for the great risk he took running crossfire hurricane and trying to get rid of Donald Trump. And that’s what this is. It’s why they hire Brennan, it’s why they hire all of these guys like Clapper.

They leave the Obama administration, they leave in disgrace. They failed in their efforts to get rid of Trump and yet they get hired and they are paid. And not an insignificant amount of money, six figures that you get. In fact, McCabe’s gonna get paid more than probably some of their reporters get paid. Wait ’til that ship sails. There are gonna be some people ticked off about that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I checked the email during the break. “Mr. Limbaugh, journalism is dead. I don’t care what you say. Journalism is dead. There is no journalism. It’s propaganda.” You know what? This is kind of like, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there, does it make a noise?” If people are reading about 1619, “That’s when America was really founded, and it all happened on the backs of slaves…” If you’re reading USA Today, if you’re reading the Washington Post and New York Times, and they think it’s journalism, then is journalism dead?

If they don’t have any idea that they’re being propagandized, if they think it’s journalism — and I will guarantee you that the readership of the New York Times not only things that the Times is journalism, they think the Times is equally balanced, that it’s fair. Readers of the New York Times do not think the Times is liberal. They do not think it’s balanced toward the left, except when they make it obvious that they’re not. But they believe in their minds that New York Times is the epitome of balanced, equal, and unfair journalism. Even though it’s propaganda.

So if they don’t think it’s propaganda, how can journalism be dead?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And, by the way, folks, this 1619 thing is a joke anyway. We’re sitting here laughing about it. It’s actually gravely serious what the New York Times is trying to do, what the American left is trying to do in essentially destroying this country. They’re trying to rip it apart by the foundations and recast it, transform it as something it was never intended to be.

But it’s hideous these lies and lying to a whole population of people. In fact, slavery 1619, there was slavery in North America long before Wanda Tucker’s family arrived from Angola. Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors practiced slavery. Did you know that? Yes, that’s right, my friends, the Indians practiced slavery.

The United States didn’t invent slavery. The United States was the first to get rid of it! The United States was the first nation of consequence to get rid of it. The United States was founded on the premise that it was immoral and had to be done away with. And all of that is written about in the first Continental Congress.

In many of the pre-Declaration of Independence writings by the Founding Fathers, slavery was acknowledged as a scourge. Compromises were needed to get the 13 colonies to sign on to revolution against the king.

All of this is fact-based American history. It isn’t taught. So I say things like this, and I will guarantee you that people, “Well, this Limbaugh guy, this Limbaugh guy’s an idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He said that the Founding Fathers wanted no part of slavery.” And they are the clueless ones because it isn’t taught. The history of this country sadly hasn’t been taught properly in I don’t know how long.

But if you really think slavery’s a bad thing, then you’ve got to start having a bit of a disagreement with your Indian buddies because they practiced it long before there ever was a white man roaming the fruited plains. Long before Columbus – what did he bring? He brought racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, horses. He brought chlamydia, he brought STDs. I mean, virtually every horrible thing, Chris Columbus brought with him. The white Europeans. Including “gongorrhea,” as my health teacher used to pronounce it.