BRETT: Let me take this call on Ken in Florida. Ken, welcome to the EIB Network. What’s on your mind?

CALLER: Hi. Thank you for talking to me. I really miss Rush. I listened to this morning, and they released Joe Biden’s taxes this morning. And he said that his income was $607,000. Now, is it true that he has three or four houses?

BRETT: Yes yep.

CALLER: If that’s the case, then how is $607,000? We know in 50 years of office —

BRETT: Yeah.

CALLER: — that there’s a heck of a lot more money that’s missing in those accountings.

BRETT: Okay.

CALLER: And I was talking to your screener on the phone —

BRETT: Right.

CALLER: — is that all these agencies are all filled with all these dumb-as-rats people in there, that they create different policies that people like us —

BRETT: Yes.

CALLER: — who are working —

BRETT: You’re right. You’re right. Ken, you’re right. You are right. You are spot on. Now, here’s the thing — and this is a perfect segue for what’s coming up here next, because people have had it with the political class in this country. It’s “rules for thee and not for me,” and you’ve got people that game the system and take full advantage of what it is that’s going on out there in the world, and people have had it. I’m furious with it. You’re furious with it.

In fact, here’s Rush talking about being fed up.

RUSH: The American population, the working class of this country has wanted to tell the political class where to go for I don’t know how long. They do every day. They shout at the television sets at home when they’re talking to each other. They talk this way about the ruling class.

BRETT: Absolutely.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: The end of that last hour, you heard something from Rush that’s incredibly important and will form this entire hour, and that is the fact that We the People, the American people, are fed up with the political class. Now, the political class doesn’t just mean the class ruling in Washington, D.C. In so many ways, it’s Big Tech now.

And, of course, it’s the university system. It’s the special interest groups that shape policy. Think about what it was that you saw when you came to Randi Weingarten and the AFT shaping CDC policy on schools reopening. And more than that, it’s the entertainment industry as well.

I’m old enough to remember when Saturday Night Live was able to entertain by poking fun at pretty much everybody. Now, Rush said for years that the so-called comedy shows aren’t comedy anymore, and that’s where Millennial liberals go to actually get their news. Additionally, he pointed out that in the day and age of viral videos and Twitter, ratings don’t matter.

RUSH: It stuns me, but in a lot of television, ratings don’t matter. I want to go back because this sets up a giant See, I Told You So. This is me right here behind the Golden EIB Microphone.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I had an instant message flash going back and forth about ratings and late night and I offered the following opinion to the person I was talking with. I said, “It’s obvious that ratings don’t matter anywhere near as much as they used to, otherwise there wouldn’t be a CNN. There would not be an MSNBC if ratings mattered.

They wouldn’t exist. Nobody’s watching. I think television executives, management types, programmers, are more influenced by what the media says about a talent or a show than what the ratings are. I find this fascinating, because as a culture now it seems more and more everybody’s obsessed with what is said about them and what’s thought about them.

So you’re going to see, in the media you’re going to see more PR campaigns, you’re gonna see more people hiring image making PR firms to craft a public image, and somebody’s longevity is gonna be based more on what the media says about them and their show than what their ratings are.

Because if, for example, if you’re Lorne Michaels, if the media loves Fallon, who cares who’s watching. If the media loves him, that means you love Lorne Michaels, ’cause Lorne Michaels picked the guy. That means Lorne Michaels is a brilliant guy regardless what the numbers are.

RUSH: Amen. Who can dispute that? Nobody can. Okay, so let’s go to Les Moonves now, the CEO of the CBS Tiffany Network empire. In Los Angeles at the Milken Institute Global Conference, Moonves is on a panel entitled, “Entertainment: The Big Picture.” The co-president of Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter, Janice Min, speaking with Les Moonves about late-night TV. And she said, “Can you talk about the economics of late-night and why they matter still?” Remember what you just heard me say.

MOONVES: Late night is not what it used to be. During the days of Johnny Carson, even the early days of David Letterman, it was much more of a profit center for all of us. The last few years it’s been more about bragging rights, and clearly we’re at a point where there’s a real generational change. …

Late night is a very important part of our culture. It is not as economically profitable as it used to be. So they make a lot about the ratings, you know, and that really doesn’t affect the bottom line. So I’d rather have the best guy, maybe, that doesn’t quite have the ratings of the other guy.

RUSH: Well, folks! I mean there you have it! This is the guy that hired Colbert. “The ratings don’t matter. It’s not nearly the profit center for us it used. This is about bragging rights. This is about who appears the smart executive picking the best guy.” Do I know these people? Do I know this business or do I?

He just admitted it. He said here: “It is not as economically profitable, make a lot about the ratings, you know, and that really doesn’t affect the bottom line.” If the ratings don’t affect the bottom line, then what does?

Media buzz and PR.

Now, there’s one more Moonves sound bite. Janice Min, Hollywood Reporter, then said, “Are you concerned about Stephen Colbert? Because it’s been just the slightest hint, just the slightest hint of people expressing concern about the political views he has expressed on Comedy Central.”

MOONVES: You know what? Eh, you know, ironically, you know, Stephen Colbert is much more moderate than people think he is. He’s a great social commentator and that’s sort of what we want. That’s sort of what David Letterman has been. If you’re referring to remarks from Rush Limbaugh —

MIN: Yes. (snickering)

MOONVES: — that we have attacked the heartland of America, I would, uh, respectfully disagree with that assessment of who Stephen Colbert is — and as one reporter said, “So suddenly Rush is going soft on Letterman?”

RUSH: I don’t get the connection there. How…? What does one have to do with the other? Rush going soft on Letterman? Letterman’s the same thing. But, anyway, you see, ratings don’t matter. He wanted to go out and he wanted bragging rights. He hired a guy and he doesn’t even know who he really is. He hired a guy, a character, who makes fun of conservatives — Colbert — who then they promptly said he is dropping the character.

So now CBS has hired a guy that the question is, “Who is he?” It still doesn’t matter ’cause Les got his bragging rights. He got the hip guy. (interruption) Why does this matter? I’ll tell you why it matters. Because we’re straying further and further from reality, and we’re being consumed by what isn’t real. We’re being consumed by what we’re told is important, what we’re told is real and substance. Reality is falling by the wayside each and every day.

Comedians are gradually replacing the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, PBS, ABC, CNN, as the arbiters of when Democrats can be held accountable and when they can’t be. So if you want to know when the Drive-Bys are gonna harp on Obama, pay attention to the comedians. When they do it’s a signal to the Drive-Bys that it’s okay to.

It’s very pathetic, and it’s how you end up with low-information voters who don’t know what the hell’s going on. It’s how you end up with Millennials down on the country, down on themselves, rather than on the people responsible for the mess that we live in and that’s the Democrat Party.

BRETT: And the truth of the matter is, as Rush notes, comedians are gradually replacing the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, PBS, ABC, CNN as the arbiters of when Democrats can be held accountable. And what has happened to the comedians? They have been replaced yet again by another group.

What we see happening now in our culture, in our entertainment, is we have replaced a ratings score with a social credit score, which is what the Chinese have pioneered to control the people inside China and that’s openly discussed by people in Silicon Valley. That’s the model moving forward. The most woke person is the most important person, all that sort of stuff.

Saturday Night Live’s numbers cratered to their lowest ratings ever with 3.5 million viewers. All that despite Olivia Rodrigo singing Driver’s License. The lowest ratings ever, and that’s just one week after Elon Musk’s hosting gig. That’s with Keegan-Michael Key hosting. It cratered. So I guess in the metric of what Les Moonves is talking about, well, it was an unbelievable successful thing.

We are tracking an elite 3.5 million people out of 330 million rubes. It’s like one of those restaurants where you go in and there’s like three tables in New York City or Hollywood or whatever. You go, “I’m gonna go in it’s such an elite restaurant.” There’s literally one chair in the restaurant. You can’t even bring a date, it’s so elite. It’s ridiculous to look at this.

So this is the new ruling political class. You know, when you hear frustration from people like we heard from a caller, and the idea that, “Well, they’re doing all this stuff, and how do we stop it?” The reality is conservatives are checking out from so many of these platforms. I know tons of conservatives that don’t watch SNL any longer.

I know tons of conservatives that wouldn’t be caught dead watching any of the late-night offerings that are there because you have been told as a consumer, as a television consumer, as an entertainment consumer, that you’re not welcome to view the program. They don’t want you in the audience.

Well, then why am I gonna stay up ’til 12:30 or 1 o’clock in the morning? Why am I going to DVR it and watch it in the morning, the next day, if I’ve been told that they don’t want me watching it? I’m not gonna think most of the jokes are funny and I’m gonna think they’re kind of obvious.

So when you look at the way this is moving, the political elites continue to afflict us, especially the elected officials. Your Andrew Cuomos and your Bill Clintons and that group of people, Bill de Blasio. They continue to afflict us, because they have the alternate to control policy. They have the ability to raise your taxes to determine your future and how you live.

But even their conservatives are opting out. They’re leaving New York City. They’re leaving the state of New York. They’re leaving California and Los Angeles and San Francisco. And they’re going to places where they’ll be welcomed. And where are the places they’re adding population, organic American population?

It’s the red states, the conservative states, the states of low taxes, and I guarantee you there’s a correlation. If you were to put up a map of the United States and a ratings map of what was going on in SNL or the late-night shows or any of that, I guarantee you the correlation will be clear. It will be New York and LA and Washington, D.C., and Chicago watching these shows.

Yay. And even out of the hundred million people or whatever that number is between those cities, you still only drawing 3.5 million. That’s embarrassing. We’re watching the extinction of a media, and it’s because of the politics. They’re completely out of step, and they’re no longer edgy. They are the overclass.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: Oh, the arrogance of Andy Cuomo. This is just unbelievable. Yesterday in New York City at Radio City Music Hall, Governor Andrew Cuomo held a press conference, and an unidentified reporter asks him, “Have you ever had an intimate relationship with a fellow state employee?”

CUOMO: “Intimate” has a number of, uhhh, manifestations. I think we have an intimate relationship. Don’t you think, hey?

ZUCKER: (nods)

CUOMO: Yeah. Not a sexual relationship! (laughing)

BRETT: Oh. It was “Quandary Cuomo,” the governor of New York, talking to the health commissioner, Howard Zucker, about whether or not they “have an intimate relationship.” Reminds me of another prominent Democrat.

BILL CLINTON: It depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is.

BRETT: (laughing) Bubba. Rush reminds us that Andrew Cuomo — who, by the way, “just sold the rights to his best-selling pandemic memoir for $5.12 million, according to tax returns that he made public on Monday.” That’s according to the New York Post reporting.

Yes, that’s the same Cuomo who forced nursing homes to accept covid-19 patients, which has been tied to as many as a thousand-plus deaths. It’s also the same Cuomo that was involved in another scandal that Rush reminded us about.

RUSH: Andrew Cuomo is hip-deep in the subprime mortgage crisis. I do know that a lot of people are fully aware that the subprime mortgage fiasco is why, the primary reason why we’re in this economic mess that we’re in now. The subprime mortgage mess, when explained to people, is easy to understand. You gonna loan money to people that can’t afford it? You gonna loan money to people who never pay it back, call it ‘affordable housing’ and then you gonna bail them out, we’re gonna be paying for all this?

We’re struggling to get mortgages, we’re struggling to pay ’em back on time, and now you’re loaning money to a bunch of people where all you’re really doing is buying votes? In the process you’re screwing up property values, you’re messing up the market big time. Andrew Cuomo is at the forefront of this program. And this is what more and more people are starting to learn.

Andrew Cuomo’s been involved in policies that have genuinely harmed people, that have genuinely negatively impacted the country. The American population, the working class of this country has wanted to tell the political class where to go for I don’t know how long. They do every day. They shout at the television sets at home when they’re talking to each other.

BRETT: People have had it. You’ve had it. I’ve had it. It’s unbelievable.