RUSH: Yesterday F. Chuck Todd and the NBC website, I guess he’s got a podcast. You know what podcasts are, by the way? I mean, I know you know what they are. But, I mean, do you know what podcasts are supposed to be? They are supposed to be talk shows for people who cannot make it in talk radio. Do not doubt me on this.
And all you need to know to believe this, as your daily consumption of media takes place, start paying attention to all of the references to podcasts that the Drive-Bys make. Podcasts are not yet rivaling Twitter, but they’re getting close in terms of source material for journalists. You know, journalists have to find sources. Ahem. And they use Twitter. Anonymous, insane, lunatic, don’t-know-who-they-are people on Twitter become stand-ins for public opinion.
By the way, I’ve got a story here in the Stack that only 22% of adults use Twitter in America? Does that surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve known what Twitter is since before Twitter was invented. I knew what Twitter was gonna be before it was even a dream in Jack Dorsey’s sleep.
At any rate, podcasts, you see more and more leftists are doing them, and then they quote each other’s podcasts and they get guests on each other’s podcasts. They’re wonderful, don’t misunderstand. This program is a podcast. So don’t misunderstand here. They do not even come close to this audience reach, of not only this program but talk radio in general, which is fine. Don’t misunderstand.
See, the media wants you to think that podcasts are the biggest things rivaling talk radio, but their reason for existence, at least on the left, is because they have tried and failed countless times to succeed in talk radio.
So they’re using podcasts for this, and F. Chuck Todd has one on the NBC network. It’s called: The Chuck ToddCast. How clever. You get it, Mr. Snerdley? The Chuck ToddCast. (interruption) Yeah. Anyway, he interviewed the former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner on the Chuck ToddCast. (interruption) Yeah, well, you’re going, “Oh, boy”? Well, wait ’til you hear this. So Chuck ToddCast said, “We obviously created a moment in America, Mr. Speaker, where enough of the country thought Donald Trump was the answer,” and then he said to the Speaker: We, “the establishment…”
Now, he didn’t say “we,” but he means it. He thinks he’s part of it, and he is, as a media guy. He said, “The establishment failed the country in some way perception-wise.” So what Chuck Todd is presenting here to Boehner is (paraphrased), “We in the establishment somehow created a perception that we are and that we’re aloof and that we hold everybody else in contempt and that we think we’re smarter and better than everybody else — and they figured it out. That’s what he’s saying. Here is Boehner disagrees to a certain extent…
BOEHNER: No, no. The environment that we have today was produced, uhh, by 25 years of, uhh, talk radio —
RUSH: There is!
BOEHNER: — that didn’t exist 25 years ago —
RUSH: Thirty!
BOEHNER: — 25 years of, uhhh, cable TV news that didn’t exist 25 years ago. What’s happened over the last 25 years is that the American people have been deluged with information about their government and politics. All this information has tended to push or pull people into one of two camps, leaving fewer and fewer people in the middle.
TODD: I’m so pleased you brought up talk radio. I feel like that’s the virus and now everybody has it.
RUSH: There you have it, ladies and gentlemen! So here they are on their podcast (that you wouldn’t hear if I didn’t play it for you) condemning “the virus” of talk radio. Thirty years, Mr. Speaker, not 25, and it was talk radio that then gave birth to Fox News and the cable news aspect of the right wing and then all the blogosphere and so forth. But this is a moment of open honesty. I mean, Boehner is speaking for practically everybody in the establishment. This is what they think. There was a news monopoly.
Even though he’s a Republican! Boehner ought to love what has happened here. But Boehner obviously sees himself as a member of the establishment first. Everything was fine when there was a news media monopoly. Everything was fine when no matter what network you watched it was all the same — or what newspaper you read, it was all the same. ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. Throw ’em all in there.
If you missed one, tune in somewhere else because it was identical. They’ve lost that, and now you people are too confused. You are overrun. There’s too much “information,” there’s too much democracy, and it is forcing people into — what did he say? — “one of two camps.” As though before talk radio we were all unified. Before talk radio, there was universal love. We were all one gigantic commune called the United States of America.
If that’s true, how did talk radio ever take off? How did the so-called alternative media ever find an audience if it didn’t exist? “Well, you created it.” Oh, how did we do that? How did we create this massive audience? “Well, you brainwashed ’em! You know, it’s… (sputtering) Uh, it’s obvious. You’re brainwashing them. You’re out there doing whatever you do.” The sour grapes continue.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, for those of you… (interruption) What? (interruption) Yeah, John Boehner… (interruption) John Boehner… (interruption) Yeah, John Boehner visited here a number of times when he was speaker.
I played golf with him out at Emerald Dunes a number of times. (interruption) No. No. No. He never… (interruption) He didn’t say talk radio was a virus then. No, no, no, no. And remember… By the way, I’m glad you brought this up. Because remember when Obama was inaugurated, first two weeks, Obama had the congressional leadership up to the White House for a (impression) “Okay, gang. I won. My way or the highway. You lost; I won. Here’s how it’s gonna be.” He had one of those meetings.
Remember, Obama told these guys, “You gotta stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. That’s not how things get done in this town.” It was two weeks later that Boehner was down here, and he told me about that, and he looked at me and said, “I can’t understand. Why would he say that?” I said, “Well, let me tell you why he said it. He was hoping that one of you Republicans would go to the microphones right outside the White House and agree with him. He’s sitting there thinking he’s the first African-American president.
“The country can unify around this, and all he needs is for Republicans to start denouncing members of their power structure. So he tempts you. He says, ‘You can’t do business anymore by listening to Rush Limbaugh, bringing Rush Limbaugh into legislation,’ and he means all of conservative media.” He was hoping that Boehner or somebody that’s in the meeting will walk out and agree. And, you know, I think it was probably close call. I bet some of them here were tempted to because here you have this new glow.
I’m the only guy… Remember, this is the same time that the Wall Street Journal wants to know, “Why don’t you give us 400 words on your hopes for the new administration?” I said, “I don’t need 400. I can do it in four: ‘I hope he fails.'” We’re in that era. So Boehner’s sitting there and I’m telling him that’s what he was hoping you or somebody in the Republicans leadership in the media would go to the microphones and agree that those days are in the past, and that there’s a new agreement here in Washington to move forward without the influences of talk radio or whatever.
It didn’t happen. But… (sigh) I don’t know that I’ve ever told this aspect of this story. We were talking about various members of the House in the Republican caucus, and I mention a couple of them. I’m not gonna tell you their names. Some of them are still there. I mentioned a couple of them, and he looked at me and said, “They’re kooks, Rush! They’re kooks.” These were the people you and I would think are the conservative members. That was the only indication that I had. Up until then, I mean, came down whenever he was on a fundraiser trip or whatever. We played golf a couple times at Emerald Dunes.
So something happened somewhere along the way. I don’t know what.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, silent coups, and even the good times, Rush Limbaugh, de-stressing the people of this country. You know, go back here to John Boehner. He says talk radio is… Well, Chuck Todd actually said that talk radio is “the virus” and everybody has it — and I’m gonna tell you, it is the exact opposite. The virus is liberalism. The virus… Let me shoot you straight. If there is a virus that is sickening the American people, it is the mainstream media as currently constituted. That’s the virus.
There is a poisoning of the American mind taking place, and it’s happening in many places, but every place it’s happening is run and controlled by the left — be it academe, be it Hollywood, be it Silicon Valley, or be it the Drive-By Media — and what EIB is, is the antidote. EIB is an airborne phenomenon spread by casual contact, and it’s inoculating. It cures you of this sickening, poisonous disease — liberalism — spread by the Drive-By Media. Here’s another thing. If talk radio is so bad, how come leftists have spent 30 years trying to do it?
Thirty years! I mean, they tried Mario Cuomo. They tried Jim Hightower, who was a Treasury secretary in Texas. They tried Gary Hart(pence)! They’ve thrown everybody out there. They fundraised a bunch of money for Air America, and all these dryballs ended up bombing out — and they were all heralded as “the next Rush Limbaugh,” and every time one of them was announced as hosting a show, the Drive-By Media celebrated, gave them a great coming-out party.
Most of them could only do one hour or two and then they were out of things to say. None of them lasted. They are nowhere to be found today, other than on podcasts or CNN or MSNBC.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We start in Stroud, Oklahoma. This is Mike, and it’s great to have you. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, thanks for having me on. Hey, I just wanted to call and say that Boehner has got this all wrong. I was there in 1992. We were dying, we were waiting for Rush Limbaugh to show up. I remember the day I heard you on the radio, that day I went home and I told my wife, “We’re not alone. We’re not the only ones that think this way.” It changed everything knowing that we had a voice. But you didn’t cause us to think that way. You united the people that already thought that way. We were alone and abandoned by the news media, and you came along and allowed us to speak together.
RUSH: You know, that’s actually right on the money. And they knew it. That’s why they originally started out by criticizing me, actually you, people in my audience. You were called mind-numbed robots, if you remember, and you didn’t know anything. You were just dumb as stumps until I came along and then I started playing you like I was Svengali, and I created this army of conservatives who didn’t know anything on their own. And everybody missed it. You just nailed it.
All of you existed anyway. There just wasn’t a national representation of what you believed in the media. So I come along, and what happened was validation. You just described validation. What you believed at that time was validated when you heard it expressed by somebody else in national media. Nobody told you what to think. You already thought what you thought.
CALLER: That’s right. And there were people that came along and tried to do that, but they weren’t articulate, they weren’t well thought, they said things that weren’t true, and you couldn’t get behind them. Not for long. There was a guy on TV, Morton something, came on late at night. But he was half crazy. You came along, you knew exactly what you were talking about, you weren’t crazy, and we could identify with it and say, “Yep, that’s what we’re thinking.”
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. You’re very, very perceptive. And, you know, we’ve done days long ago in the past, “Where were you when you first heard this program?” And everybody, you’re right. Everybody remembers what they were doing when they first hard this program. Just like you described it. You’re referring to Morton Downey Jr. Morton Downey Jr., in fact, worked at KFBK radio Sacramento and was fired.
That turned out to be my big break. I was hired and given a chance to do radio the way I’d always wanted to do it for the first time in my career. And then they hired a new morning team out there and focused everything on that, so I was ignored, which was a benefit to me. There was nobody riding herd on it, so I could do what I wanted, and it took off.
And then Morton Downey Jr. went to New York and got his TV show. Morton was a funny guy. Not all there, and he was having the time of his life. But, you know, your observation about others came along, copycat is something that happens throughout media, be it in movies or TV shows or anything. And the perception was, “Oh, my God. Why is this Limbaugh guy — must be conservative. Go out and find a conservative.” So anybody who was conservative was given a radio program.
But like anything else, like the Democrats are not yet really curious enough to find out why people like Trump and why people voted for Trump and who are they. You would think that would be an objective if you’re a Democrat political consultant, to find out who these people are instead of holding ’em in contempt and making fun of them, find out. That’s your job. Need to get those votes back.
They don’t do it. They just make fun of Trump, make fun of the Trump voters and so forth. And a lot of people thought that all they had to do was go get somebody who could articulate conservatism to one degree or another and the magic would happen again, but there was more to it and that’s where the bond that you create with the audience comes in. And not everybody has the ability to do that.
At the first Trump rally I saw the bond, and that’s when my original theory that this guy could win was confirmed, the first rally, because I had seen that before. I had seen it happen. And I walked around the edges of that without telling you exactly why I knew because I didn’t want to insert myself into it. This is Trump’s campaign, he’s doing this and I have not ever run for president, but I had seen and experienced that bond develop and create.
And I saw it happening with Trump. And when it’s real, call it an audience or voters, a large group forms a bond with a public figure, and in this case a politician, nobody can break that bond except the politician. The media can’t break it with fake news, phony news, scandal stories, the media cannot break it, the opposition party can’t break it. October Surprises don’t work.
Only the candidate, only the guy can blow it with his own people. And once that developed, I began to be confident that Trump could win if he actually wanted to. I appreciate the call Mike very much.
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