RUSH: We’ll start with Troy here in Queen Creek, Arizona. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: First off, I gotta say any time you want to fly down here to Phoenix, I will gladly pull a Loretta Lynch, meet you on the tarmac, and talk golf and grandkids with you.

RUSH: (laughing) Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: (laughing) I got two points for you, Rush, here. I’m a Millennial and I live here in Arizona. And first off, I want to say I’m just upset that not a lot of our Republican senators are out there on these Sunday shows and whatnot saying that they’re gonna go without pay in order to relate to the American people until this shutdown is resolved.

Because they’re upset that people aren’t getting paid, and that we need the Democratic Congress to solve something for the first time ever. It’s actually affecting Americans. So that’s my first point. Second point is, I am just… It’s so hypocritical that Nancy Pelosi is willing to shut down Donald Trump’s State of the Union for “security reasons,” when us here on the border and normal Americans have security issues with human trafficking and whatnot, and she doesn’t give a crap about it. It just doesn’t matter.

RUSH: So great to hear from you, and it’s great to hear your thinking that these things are occurring to you, and I hope that you keep it up. I tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head in asking, “Where is the backup? Where are the attaboys? Where is the party of the president? Where are the allies?” We’re faced with an obvious opponent here that wants to radically rewrite the script and the foundation for life in America.

And that script involves essentially overturning the founding of this country. That should have people up in arms in opposition on our side. But it doesn’t, and it’s evidenced by the things that came out: The BuzzFeed hoax and the ho rum reaction on the Republican side. The Covington High School situation and the ho-hum reaction. People on our side didn’t even wait to hear what happened. They immediately started sounding like leftists in their criticism. So I’m glad you picked up on that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Our last caller, the construction worker out there from Staten Island, was talking about how nobody ever cared when he was laid off and nobody ever cared that he might be missing a mortgage payment. Nobody ever set up a GoFundMe page for him. Nobody ever had a food bank set up for him. Nobody ever expressed sympathy in the media for his plight. A lot of people are worried that Trump is not moving things along.

“We’re not moving things forward here. We need to get the government back up and running. We need to open the government that’s been partially shut down. Trump has made his point. Now it’s time to deal.” Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. No, no, folks. This is going along exactly as I had written it up. I’m gonna continue to say, I think Trump should just keep on. Just stay strong and committed. It’s gonna be hard. There’s no question. But he’s already…

He faces a shellacking from them every day and has for two years. This is no worse or any different than the kind of debasement, slander, and libel that he’s been subjected to since the campaign began to be taken seriously back in 2016, and maybe even 2015. But there is something that needs to be noted about this shutdown, and it is something that I believe President Trump knows. If he doesn’t, he will know about it after I have said this.

Who are the people most inconvenienced by this shutdown? Who would you say they are? Ah, ah, ah, whatever you’re saying… (interruption) Yeah. Right. “The workers.” But that doesn’t even get close to my point. The people most inconvenienced by the shutdown are members of the Democrat Party electoral base. They are federal workers. (interruption) No, I did not fall. I’m fine. I did not fall. My watch. I started gesticulating here, and my Apple Watch Series 4 thinks that I have fallen.

If I bang my hand, I can understand it. It’s got fall detection on it. A lot of people think it’s a great feature. But I trigger it just doing my program sitting here in my golf shirt. Anyway. If your answer to the question, “Who’s most inconvenienced?” is, “The workers,” exactly right. Democrat Party workers. I think the vast majority of federal employees are Democrats. They are part of the Democrat electoral base — and in the big cities where the shutdown has the greatest impact, all these people vote Democrat.

You’re saying, “So what, Rush? I mean, that’s just gonna make the Democrats angry. It’s not…”

No, no, no. Wait. ‘Cause there’s two parties here. One party is the Democrats, one party’s Pelosi, and Pelosi is refusing to budge! Pelosi… The news today is, she’s not even gonna talk to Trump. As long as he’s got this offer out there, she not gonna even talk to him. Well, don’t think that these in-great-stress and suffering, out-of-work Democrat federal employees are not aware of that. The very people who put her back in power, you could say — the Democrat base — is now largely the people affected by the government shutdown.

Now, nobody makes this point. You probably haven’t heard this point made. But it is salient, and it is one of the reasons why I think that you — if you listen carefully and if you read carefully and if you watch carefully — you can see pockets of elected Democrats here and there start talking about, “Yeah, well, you know what? We do maybe need some wall. Well, we do need some fencing. Yeah. There are…”

In other words, Pelosi is not presiding over a unified front on this. And it’s probably far less unified than we actually know ’cause the Drive-Bys are never gonna report any kind of fractures or friction within the Democrat Party leadership, particularly on this, since they all hate Trump. Just all that aside, a little observation I wanted to assure with you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Audio sound bite No. 1. This from Friday, Sunday, yesterday, and this morning, a montage of a bunch of different media people from USA Today, NBC, the Washington Post, and former congressman Barney Frank talking about the Democrats and the government shutdown and…

TOM NICHOLS: I don’t see where the Democrats have an option here. If they give in on this, the next time Rush Limbaugh doesn’t like something, the president will have learned the lesson. I can’t imagine that that’s a good precedent.

PETER ALEXANDER: Having heard from Rush Limbaugh, he can’t go backward.

EUGENE ROBINSON: … Rush Limbaugh, those mega-voices on the right, uh, speak to his base — and he pays attention.

BARNEY FRANK: Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh now have a veto and they can’t be overridden by two-thirds. We’ve never seen this! I voted to override vetoes by Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Literally trashes the Constitution.

RUSH: That’s “My Boy Lollipop” there, Barney Frank. (impression) “Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have a veto! (sputtering) They can’t be overridden by two-thirds! We haven’t seen this this! I voted… I voted to override vetoes by Clinton and Reagan. This literally trashes the Constitution!” These people are out of their minds, and they’re all operating on a lie. I got an email from a friend. “You know, Rush, you’re laughing about this, but I am very worried what is happening to you here.

“This is Alinsky Rule No. 13. They’re trying to ‘target you, freeze you, isolate you, and ruin you,’ and they do it every so often.” I know. They do. They do it every so often, and they have failed. Now, they have damaged my reputation with people who don’t listen to this program. But at the same time, they continue to create curiosity about it. Can you imagine if you’re, you know, Average Joe Dummkopf Democrat out there, and you keep watching the news and there’s this guy that apparently is telling Trump what to do?

You’d say you can’t believe it! You heard this guy… You heard the name “Rush Limbaugh.” You never listen. “I — I — I gotta find out what this is all about.” They’re creating traffic here, and then these Joe Dummkopf Democrats tune in and pfft! Who knows what they think of what they hear here. I guarantee you that the things they hear on this program are things they have never heard before, if they’re tuning in here for the first time. Just about the news and about life in general.

I appreciate the concern that all of you have out there, but I’m not under any illusion.

They think that they are actually dissing Trump here by putting this all on me, and they also are doing an ancillary project of fundraising. Apparently, I cause people on the Democrat side to write checks. Whenever they hear my name, they run to the checkbook and send it to the nearest Democrat candidate or organization. Even if I said, “Stop it! You’re being unfair,” they wouldn’t stop it. There’s nothing to make ’em stop it here. But it’s ultimately a way to slam Trump as a coward. He’s afraid. He’s afraid to do anything ’til I give the okay.

I chuckle at the possibility there are people who really believe that, although I know that they are out there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This morning on my program, my friends — well, the first hour today — I said to people, “Can you imagine what would be happening if Barack Obama were president? Nathan Phillips would already have been invited to the White House for a ceremony on his bravery in standing up to these vicious kids.”

Now it has been leaked that the Covington kids may be visiting the White House to see President Trump. I wonder how that happened? Also, it has been leaked that the president is considering a rally in Texas instead of doing the State of the Union. I wonder where that idea came from? Wait ’til the Drive-Bys start connecting these dots. And, folks, Nancy Pelosi visited a temporary food kitchen today set up by Jose Andres to help serve free food to federal workers.

PELOSI: I’m here to thank the volunteers and to praise the federal workers for what they do and to praise Chef Andres for being a — a — an angel, really, to feed the hungry. It’s a biblical charge.

RUSH: (impression) “It’s a biblical thing. He’s feeding the hungry! Chef Andres is feeding out of work Democrat federal workers at his soup kitchen! (Gasp!) Such a beautiful thing! It’s biblical,” says Pelosi. Out of work federal employees at a soup kitchen set up by some celebrity chef, Jose Andres. I don’t know what he’s a celebrity chef of. I really don’t, but he is. Can you imagine the construction worker in Staten Island that called earlier?

Now he’s hearing about the fact that biblical that a chef is doing soup kitchen meals for out-of-work, Democrat government workers?