RUSH: Here’s Aaron in Provo, Utah. Welcome. Glad to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Hope you’re doing good today.

RUSH: Well, moderately so. I got… For the most part, yeah. Yeah.

CALLER: (chuckles) You’ve been my father-in-law Duane’s favorite for 30 years, and now mine. He’s home suffering from emphysema and hopefully listening right now. I just want to get to it real fast. We were part of the 5.1 million people that lost everything in the mortgage crisis under Obama and Biden. We still voted Dem in the primaries but not for Biden of course and it was our first-time voting.

But after realizing it was gonna be Obama’s third term and how willing they were to smear and cheat their own party members and to destroy the economy again, we ended up voting for Trump. I just wanted to thank you for helping us see that Trump was gonna be the right choice for our family. Even though we’ve been attacked in public and on Twitter and everything else, called names and racist, you know, I still feel like it was the right choice, and I just wanted to say thanks to you for helping us see that.

RUSH: Well, you’re more than welcome. How did I do it?

CALLER: Just by sort of opening our eyes to what was really happening. You know, it was our first time ever voting. We weren’t really sure. We were just kind of going with what everybody around us was going with, I guess. And when I started to listen to your show with my father-in-law, I started realizing the right choice was not Democrats. These guys are nasty people, and they’re just not what we need right now.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. You know, I’ve for 30 whatever number of years… Folks, I consider… (groans) How to talk about this? I consider… (sigh) Oh, how to say this? On one hand, looking at me from outside you think, “Wow, overwhelming success. Successful radio program, most-listened-to show in history.” AM radio? People thought it was dead. “Limbaugh comes along and it’s saved,” they say.

You know, I’m not gonna sit here and deny that. But, folks, I gotta tell you, there’s a large part of me that feels like I have failed in such a major way, in a political sense. I’ve had 30 years here to try to convince people, to try to persuade people, to try to encourage people to think — critically think — on their own, to realize the difference between conservatism and liberalism, the difference between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party as it relates to conservative versus liberal.

I know there’s RINOs, and I know that the Republican Party in the establishment wing of Washington, it’s not that different from the Democrats. But conservatism versus liberalism. And then I got some help, you know, starting in 1996, here comes Fox. Prior to that, talk radio with other hosts, then we got the blogosphere, and there’s an entire conservative media now called the alternative media.

But it’s big, and it is successful — and even with all of that, there’s still far more people than should be voting for Democrats, voting for the left. I chalk it up in part to having failed to convince people, persuade people of the truth. This guy is a success story. (interruption) Well, Mr. Snerdley is saying, “Well, wouldn’t even be in the fight if it weren’t for you.”

Well, that’s probably true, but I was in the fight, and I am in the fight. Like this last caller, this last one. Not the guy, but the lady, the Debbie Downer. You know, she could be… It’s a stretch, but she could have been a very classic seminar caller. You talk about somebody who might have succeeded in depressing voter turnout? What if she was a seminar caller?

What if she was not really being truthful about what she said? Now, I know she sounded truthful. I know she sounded very bummed out. I know she sounded like she really believed it. What if she wasn’t? These are all things that as a host you have to ask and decide a moment’s notice whether to put up with it, whether to deal with it, whether to call her out on it.

But she couldn’t have been a better seminar caller to discourage people from voting, if that’s what she was. I don’t think she was. I think she was dead certain and serious and, um… Well, you heard her. I mean, she said there’s nothing we could do. (interruption) Well, no, you can’t erase what we’ve won and so forth, and I know it may have taken tampered-with voting machines and fraudulent turnout, all this stuff in order to take it away from us.

Look… (sigh) It’s a very thin line here because, look, I’m not trying to evoke any sympathy from anybody. But it just… There’s a part of me just continually amazed that the Democrat Party, that the left gets even 30% of any vote. But then I have to grab myself and say, “Rush, you’re missing reality. The reality is the lifelong meaning of the D next to somebody’s name, the unions that they have constant support from, the money and so forth.”

I understand all this. It’s just that I’ve had my opportunities to get into people’s minds. I’ve had the opportunity to influence the way people think about these things. What reminded me of it was this guy, this current caller. I got through to him. I got through to him. But there’s so many things that I look at that I don’t understand. If I’m successful here because of A, B, C, and D, then how in the world is my side losing, especially after these four years?

Now, let me answer it myself.

What do we have these last four years?

We had nothing but full-fledged, all-out character assassination of our guy — and all of us. No need to recount it all: The Russian collusion hoax, the coup, all of that. It never ended. But then again, we countered it every day. We blew it up. We told everybody it’s a bumbling of hooey, it’s a bunch of lies. And yet there are smart people who believe it that I have been unable to reach, that I have been unable to change their minds. Anyway, let me…

Talk about being a Debbie Downer.

I don’t mean to do that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, see, folks? This is… Here I share with you the fact I think that I’ve failed and here you all come riding to the rescue.

I’ve got people saying, “No, you haven’t failed. Trump’s victory was a triumph of you and your show and conservatism. You put Trump over the top. You can’t think that.” Well, I do in… Look, folks. I told you, it’s a tough thing to understand because in the broad scheme of things who can deny that what’s happened to me has been overwhelmingly successful?

I’m not doing that.

But I’ve had all of these years to get to people, to explain the wonders, the beauties of freedom and liberty and how that is conservatism. And yet despite all that, there are Americans who are willing, eagerly voting to lose their freedom, to give it over to politicians that want to control ’em who don’t care about ’em. I wonder, “How did I miss ’em? How did I not reach ’em?”

And of course, there are answers to that question too.