BRETT: We are remembering just how much Rush Limbaugh was able to peg these folks over on the left, absolutely an incredible thing. We are watching something amazing play out in front of our very eyes. We are watching the fundamental transformation of America that was first offered up, we all remember, in 2008 with President Obama (and, of course, Vice President Biden) coming to the forefront.

You had those exact words offered up by then-candidate Obama, who had become the nominee of the Democratic Party and then a two-term president. You heard and you saw the fundamental transformation of America. And when you look at what it is that’s going on right now, the conversation that is happening in this country, it’s 50 days, 40 days, 55 days without a press conference from President Biden.

He’s making his way to Atlanta today. He’s making his way to go take tours of vaccine sites and things like that with the vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. This is an incredible thing. You’ve got a man who is operating as president who has not talked to the press, has not taken a single question, not a single time yet in the format of a press conference.

It’s the first time in a hundred years you’ve seen this sort of behavior. And yet, the press just continues to run alongside him. “Can we ask a question? What do you think about Cuomo? What do you think about Cuomo staying in that job? What do you think about it?” “Oh, let’s let the process play out.” “Okay, good! That’s a great answer.”

Chuck You Schumer said when it came to the fight for Georgia, “First, we change Georgia; then we change America.” Well, you’re starting to see this now, right? And yet you have people who are purveyors of bipartisanship like it’s the magic elixir for what ails us in this country. “See, what’ll fix the border is bipartisanship,” they’ll tell you.

The covid-19 package, “If Republicans had signed on to it, why, why, it would have been…” still a bad package. The infrastructure package, that’s where we’re gonna see the remaking of voting. H.R. 1. That’s where we’re going to see the gun control. That’s where we’re gonna hear, “See, if you guys would just be bipartisan on this stuff and surrender the ground, you would be…” what? More popular? No. ‘Cause it’s not about bipartisanship for the purposes of coming together to make America stronger. It’s about, as Rush Limbaugh said, the aggressor sets the rules.

RUSH: Folks, these people on the left here, there is literally nothing about them that we would want to compromise with, that we would want to accept or come to some kind of agreement with. These people have to be regularly and roundly defeated in a political sense at every opportunity. There is no crossing the aisle and shaking their hands.

There’s none. None of that. Every Republican needs to learn this. There is no way you can buy love from the media. There’s no way you can make the media stop hating you if you’re Republican, whether Trump’s in the equation or not. Can I give you an example on the reverse end of the scale?

Look at the Never Trumpers. Never Trumpers, the conservative intellectuals of the conservative movement, the conservative intellectuals, the people that were the energy, the intellectual energy behind the entire conservative movement, the people that were telling everybody else what conservatism is, who conservatives are, how conservatives think on this and this and that and that.

Then Donald Trump gets the nomination and these people in the Never Trumpers hate Trump, don’t want any part of Trump, they’re thinking of voting for Hillary, some of them did, now they’re thinking of voting for whoever the Democrats nominate. Yet virtually everything they support policy wise is being implemented, everything.

And yet they still hate Trump. So it’s a fact of Washington, not just of the Democrats here. If common sense were a factor, these Never Trumpers would be saying, “You know what? We misjudged Trump. The guy is implementing stuff that we’ve devoted our lives to.” That’d be the mature, smart thing to do. They can’t bring themselves to because they hate the guy personally.

They’re jealous, they’re envious. They’ve been working their whole lives to get this stuff implemented, none of it has been to speak of. Trump comes along in two and a half years, gets 90% of what they believe in implemented, thereby demonstrating how irrelevant they’ve actually been. Oh, they can’t have this, they can’t put up with that.

We wake up every day here and the odds are the news is about somebody or some institution that we love and hold dear that’s under assault as being bigoted or racist or unfair, unjust. So the day begins with the need to seemingly defend everything that we believe in and people that we believe in, people that we hold dear. What are you supposed to do when the other side is the aggressors?

You know, the aggressors always make the rules. Aggressors never abide by rules. That’s the whole point of being aggressive. There aren’t any rules! You get to throw them out. You have everybody respond to what you do, because there are no limits on what an aggressor can choose to do — and that’s what we find ourselves in the midst of here. There are no limits.

BRETT: It’s incredible, it’s mind-boggling, the notion that you can keep going back and laying down your beliefs — setting aside your beliefs — and you’ll get some peace and harmony out of that. So if all the Republicans had voted for the covid-19 bill, is there any expectation that Schumer and Pelosi would that and might put out an olive branch?

No, because what they will do is they will default back to the original sin of whatever the political cycle is. “Well, you didn’t pass it big enough. You made it wait too long. These people suffered.” No, you’re just not gonna get any credit. You’re not gonna get invited on Bill Maher’s show. You’re not gonna get invited on Chuck Todd or Stephanopoulos.

You’re not gonna get invited on Chris Wallace. Have any of these programs told us, “You know what? We just wanted to bring you in here today to tell you you did a really good job, Dr. Cassidy! You did a great job, Senator Cassidy! Senator Barrasso, great looking out and helping to get this thing moving.” No, because what you would get from them is, “What took you so long?

“Why did it take all of this to have to get to this point and what are you going to do about not doing that in the future?” You’re looking at people, the media, by and large, the press, and there’s a phenomenon for what they do. They live in the wreckage of the future.

They are convinced that the country is terrible, that Republicans are the reason that America’s not a good place, that we’re not committed to equity or equality or any of that sort of stuff. “So just give us your tax dollars and stop talking to us. Just give us your money, just surrender your voting rights, just surrender your guns — your rights to keep and bear arms.

“Put away your troublesome positions on abortion and on judges that believe in originalism.” It’s an incredible thing. You’re not going to get any credit at all. Look, the Supreme Court at one point did a hearing and held on President Trump’s tax returns, right? And it was a unanimous run, right? You had the majority going for it.

And you don’t see them going on TV saying, “Amy Coney Barrett has really come around! We gotta rethink this a little bit.” You’re not gonna get any credit. You have to be aggressive, and it doesn’t mean physically aggressive, physically jostling people, but you have to set out a marker. These are the same press corps members who told Ronald Reagan, “You can’t go give a speech at the Brandenburg Gate and say, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ You’ll make them angry.

The State Department didn’t even want that in the speech. I mean, I know the Ronald Reagan was the president, they were the State Department. Technically, they work for him. But you know what I’m saying. So this is where Rush nails this. This is where Rush has been consistently right for years, for decades, the fact that surrounding your beliefs, your values, your core conviction does not buy an ounce of relief.

It gets you to a place where you look like a quisling. You look like the person who, as Rush famously said for some years ago, you put your finger on your tongue, you put it up in the air, and you try to feel which way that wind is blowing. You don’t want to be that person. Rush never was and will never be, and we need to follow that example.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: Let me talk to Danny in Ohio next. Danny, welcome to the program. I’m Brett Winterble.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call.

BRETT: Sure.

CALLER: First of all, you’re doing a fabulous, fabulous job filling in for The Great One, and I love it when you’re on. Thank you.

BRETT: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I wanted to borrow Jen Psaki for a second. I want to “circle back” to something from the top of the show regarding succession if President Biden is removed from office. Succession to fill the vice-presidential vacancy requires a majority of approval of a nominee by both houses. There’s some stuff out there that Pelosi automatically becomes veep; that’s not the case.

BRETT: Right.

CALLER: So whoever she picks, we have president… I hate to say “president.” Whoever President Harris picks, needs a majority approval in both houses of Congress. She’ll be the president. She can no longer break a tie in the Senate. If she picks a moderate like Manchin, the left will be insane. She’ll have to pick a far lefty. So it’s doubtful that even the RINOs would go for that.

BRETT: Yeah.

CALLER: So she would have a hard time getting a pick through the Senate, and when it comes to the House, if the GOP takes the House in 2022, we might be looking at Speaker McCarthy next in line. So I want to bring us up just because I haven’t heard anyone go there.

BRETT: Well, yeah. I get it. I get it. Can I be totally honest on this, because I’d have to go and dust off my books on the different moves as it relates to succession, okay? But here’s the thing that I think is important. No matter who is in the presidency in the current iteration of the administration, right?

So whether it’s President Biden or President Harris, if she were to move up, the fact of the matter is we have gotta keep our eyes on the immediate challenges in front of us. What that is right now is border security. It is what is happening with H.R. 1, with the attempt to grab guns, all of this sort of stuff. That’s really…

Honestly, Danny, we can speculate — we can have those debates and discussions if they become much more apparent and then they will become very clear — at that point. But I think our energy is best spent on looking towards taking the House back in ’22 and looking towards knocking out a couple of Congress folks in ’22 who are running in Democrat seats right now that may not end up holding forth.

So I think it’s an interesting conversation, but I think we need to focus, and I know Rush would want to focus on where we are right now, the challenge to our bottom line, the challenge to our sovereignty as a nation, the challenge to our future. And I think we have got to take a very, very close look at that.

I do appreciate the call and your very kind words. But if that in fact does become a conversation, I can promise you that here on the show we will be driving it in a big, big, big way. That much, I think you can be absolutely assured of.