KEN: Earlier we were discussing the fact that Rush did a great job of not only getting you the truth but exposing the shenanigans of mainstream news media, and I was thinking back to a life-changing moment for me when he exposed them with this.

RUSH: Do you remember when Bush chose Cheney to be his vice president? Every media figure on cable news or who has a column in Newsweek or TIME Magazine or the Washington Post, New York Times, or on TV: “Cheney brings gravitas.” We have a montage that takes a minute and a half to play, with not one repeat.

You’ve got Jonathan Alter in there. You’ve got Sam Donaldson, twice! Now, you tell me: How is it that 50 Drive-By journalists can come up with the same word to describe a political event, the selection of Dick Cheney as vice president for George W. Bush? “He’s got gravitas.” Well, somebody had to come up with it first, and what would cause somebody to suggest “gravitas” to Cheney?

A bias against Bush as an idiot, uneducated, unserious, unsophisticated frat boy! So he chooses Cheney. Well, they’ve already got this picture of Bush based on nothing other than their own liberal prejudice, and so here’s Cheney, who has been in government for a long time. He’s been secretary of defense. He’s been chief of staff. He’s been a number of things for decades.

“Ah, he brings gravitas!”

Now, do they all pick it up, or did some of them sit around the bar one night and talk about this; they came up with the word and everybody went and used it? How many times I made a joke about this, but it’s true. If you miss the NBC Nightly News, no big deal. Watch the CBS Evening News. If you miss the CBS Evening News, no big deal.

Watch ABC’s World News Tonight. If you miss that, no big deal. Watch CNN. If you miss that, no big deal. Watch MSNBC. If you miss that, read the New York Times. If you miss that, read the Washington Post. If you miss that, read USA Today. If you miss that, read the LA Times. If you miss that, read the San Francisco Chronicle. If you miss that, read the Chicago Tribune. If you miss that, read…

Pick your paper. Virtually every one of those sources, the same story will lead and have the same take on every story. It’s no different — and they wonder why viewership is plummeting, advertisers are dwindling. They wonder why circulation at newspapers is going down the tubes. If you miss this show, you’re not going to get it anywhere else, for example.

So I don’t, frankly, care whether these people have conspiratorial meetings at CNN to figure out how they can screw conservatives, because, frankly, I think that’s their purpose anyway! They don’t have to get together and talk about it. That’s the reason they exist. I want to go back. I want to play this montage of gravitas. This goes back to the year 2000.

It’s one of the all-time great montages, this happened within a day of President Bush selecting Dick Cheney to be his vice-presidential running mate. You’re going to hear Al Hunt, Juan Williams, Claire Shipman, Steve Roberts, Vic Fazio, Jeff Greenfield, Jonathan Alter, former Senator Bob Kerrey, Margaret Carlson, Mike McCurry, Sam Donaldson, Eleanor Clift, Walter Isaacson, Mark Shields, Judy Woodruff, and Sam Donaldson — and none of these are repeated.

HUNT: He is a man who meets all George W.’s weaknesses: lack of foreign policy experience, lack of gravitas. I think now when Gore is trying to make the case of lack of gravitas against George W. …

WILLIAMS: Now we look and we see the son, who is seeking some gravitas, to say to people that he is an intelligent man…

SHIPMAN: There is a lot talk they are looking at older candidates, candidates with gravitas.

ROBERTS: He’s had health problems, uh, he’s worked for a Big Oil company, but he has the gravitas. You can sum it up in one word: stature.

FAZIO: I really believe that George W. Bush needed that perhaps more than anyone in recent memory because, if there is a rap about him, it may go to the gravitas issue.

GREENFIELD: If the question about Governor Bush was one of the weight, or to use the favorite phrase of the moment, ‘gravitas’…

ALTER: What he gets here is grav-i-tas, a sense of weight, competence, and administrative ability.

KERREY: I’ve gotta strengthen it in some fashion. I’ve gotta bring gravitas to the ticket.

KERREY: He does not need anybody to give him gravitas!

CARLSON: It means that Bush, you know, Gore has experience and gravitas.

McCURRY: I think he also needs to demonstrate some gravitas, too.

DONALDSON: …that he was put on the ticket, but by former President Bush, to give gravitas to the ticket.

CLIFT: Well, Dick Cheney brings congeniality and he brings gravitas.

ISAACSON: He does seem to bring some vigor as well as gravitas and stature to the ticket.

HUNT: It’s called ‘gravitas.’

NOVAK: Right.

SHIELDS A little gravitas!

WOODRUFF: You certainly have gravitas tonight.

DONALDSON: he displayed tonight a certain gravitas.

RUSH: Now, I don’t care. I don’t care how it happens. I don’t care whether they all got together and decided, or one person used it and they all decided to mimic. They are who they are, and that montage is a good illustration.

KEN: It is a brilliant illustration, and from that day on many people realized the puppetry and how the news media is, for the most part — gosh, I hate to say it, but it’s true. They’re either lazy or biased most of the time, and they make so much money, they’re gonna do what they’re told. So let’s say there’s an outlier who wants to break the story on COVID or break the story on the election. They will beat him down.