RUSH: Have you guys across the glass, have you been watching this? (interruption) All right. Well, Mr. Snerdley has. You…? (interruption) Dawn hasn’t. I’m… (interruption) Brian, you’ve been trying to find Tampa Bay practice tape. The Republicans had better be learning from this, and I think they have, because I keep… You know, when Trump does his… You know what he…? I found this fascinating yesterday. Trump really was…
Who was he going after? I forget. (Oh, come on, mind; work for me. My memory usually just jumps just like that.” He was ripping somebody for not going live — oh, it was Michelle (My Belle) Obama — just like I did. You know, I really believe in things like this, you go live. If you want to engender excitement, if you want to create now, you can’t tell people that we’re gonna have every speaker on tape and the tape was made a week ago.
And then after that, you’re telling me that Michelle (My Belle) Obama can’t go in and do a one-minute insert? Guess not. Got the social swing going up there at the $12 million house at Martha’s Vineyard. She gave ’em the speech that they wanted, and that was it. “If you want more, go talk to Netflix and tell ’em, I want another special for another $50 million. Other than that, you gotta live with what I gave you.”
She couldn’t even recut or do an insert to put the historic vice-presidential pick in her keynote address? The point is, Trump is ladling into how she didn’t go live — and I believe in live, folks, ’cause that’s how I work. You know, I’m a little selfish, and I’m a little… Well, selfish may not be the word for it. But I’m oriented that way because it’s how I’ve always done it.
Remember when I’ve told you that when I was doing the Rush to Excellence Tour (which were the forerunners of Trump rallies) when this show was new and I was trying to cement this program as something that was gonna last, not just be a flash in the pan? Whenever we’d get a new affiliate, I would make a point to go into that market and do a personal appearance, which usually was an hour to an hour and a half of the presentation, ad-lib stand-up.
I had a little outline on some cards I had in front of me from the podium, but nothing was scripted. I did this to cement the relationship with the radio station that had made the decision to carry the program. So for the first two years, 48 weekends a year, this is what I did — and I loved it; it was a blast — and depending on the place we’d have crowds of 5,000, 15,000.
We priced it such that charities benefited. You know, I got my expenses paid and that was it. But I remember telling people, these things were… “You look, you’re having so much fun.” I said, “I am, but let me tell you how pressure packed they are.” “Pressure packed?” “Yes, they are.” “Why?” “Well, because what if my brain’s not working that night?”
That’s the pressure when you go live. If your brain isn’t working, you can sit up there, stand up there and you can literally die. You can squander the opportunity. So the pressure is all day. You sit there and fret. “What if I…? What if my brain’s not firing?” When you ad-lib everything, it is indeed massive pressure. If everything’s on a teleprompter and it’s already written and you know what it is, there’s no reason to even get excited about it.
There’s no reason to even get hepped up about it, because all you’ve gotta do is read what’s there. The challenge then becomes to read what’s there and try to make it look like you’re not reading anything. And that’s the… Whenever I do a speech… You know, I don’t… I’ve cut back on the numbers of speeches that I do, and one of the reasons is that the day of the speech, I literally could drive myself nuts worrying about (sigh), “Is my brain gonna be working tonight?
“Is it gonna be functioning?” That’s what live does. Trump knows it. Now, he mixes teleprompter with ad-lib (which is its own unique talent, by the way), and the teleprompter operator has to know when he goes off prompter. They gotta know when he’s gonna get back on it and then be able to follow. But that pressure is what brings out the best for anybody who is able to do it.
And they’ve scripted everything, and they put everything on a prompter, and everybody is essentially just reading what they’re saying, including the people going around the country during the roll call last night. So what I think the Republicans have gotta do is make sure that some of it is live and make sure that there is a live audience of some kind to react to what is happening.
The Democrats have not done that, and it has been obvious that it’s missing something. It’s missing various elements of excitement. It’s missing elements of drama. If you’re told that every speaker has recorded what they’re going to say a week ago or five days ago, then how much drama is there really going to be? If they’re recording it and writing it, they’re playing it safe for the most part.
So there’s a lot here for the Republicans to learn about how to do this, ’cause they’ve gotta go virtual too. They’ve gotta just like the Democrats are, because they can’t go back to North Carolina, open the venue, and start cramming people in there because of COVID. But there are ways to do this that will include drama and excitement, unpredictability, and a live audience of some kind reacting.
Trump feeds off a live audience. So whatever Trump’s involvement is, you know that there’s going to be some audience element somewhere, and I think they probably are watching what’s going on here and figuring out… They’re seeing the mistakes that are being made. I have more on this as the program unfolds.