RUSH: Well, I don’t know how it was at your house or wherever you were Saturday night. Man, was I having to talk people off the ledge about the Trump rally. I haven’t faced that kind of, “Uh-oh, oh, my God. Oh, no” since Trump began rallies. It got dicey out there for a while. Look, if I were Trump I would have been ticked off backstage. I would have been boiling like you can’t believe.

Now, I don’t know what went on behind the stage, backstage, but they clearly thought that there were going to be many thousands beyond the capacity of that arena, because they built the outdoor stage, and they were planning a whole bunch of people to go out there, make speeches after the inside-the-arena event. And nobody showed up, other than the 6,000, 6,200, maybe 8,000, whatever the actual number was inside.

So if you’re Trump and your campaign has been actively peddling that a million people tried to get in one way or the other, tried to get reservations, and then you show up and there’s a sea of blue empty seats in the upper deck of the arena, yeah, I can understand him being ticked off, and I can understand him being so ticked off when he took the stage that he had some score settling to do, which he did primarily with the Drive-By Media.

I can’t tell you the number of people — now, look. Just telling you what I heard. I will weigh in at the appropriate time on all of this. I can’t tell you — well, it’s not that. I had a significant number of people tell me, “I wish he would just stop focusing on the media. We all get the media. Be above the media. Screw them.” I had a number of people tell me that.

I sat there. I processed this. And I thought about it. And I thought, okay, look, the media is perhaps the most formidable obstacle Trump and we, us, face. And the media is perhaps the greatest example of just plain old-fashioned unfairness that there is in America today. And Americans consider themselves fair. And in the face of rampant, obvious unfairness, it’s hard to ignore.

And it’s also necessary that the media be dealt with. They are an opposition force. In fact, they are the leading element of the opposition force because they encourage and promote and lie and do not tell the truth about any of the anti-American stuff going on the country. They champion the anti-American stuff. And I understand everybody and their uncle being ticked off about it and mad at it. But it’s not as though it’s anything new.

So a lot of people said, “You know, it just may be better for Trump –” I think what affected everybody was the crowd size. I think the crowd size scared the hell out of everybody. In fact, I think many of the comments that I got about the substance and content of Trump’s speech at the rally were really frustration and fear about the crowd size. That if the crowd had been teeming full, nobody would have had as many complaints about Trump continually focusing on the media or other things in the speech that people had a problem with.

These are all Trump supporters, by the way, don’t misunderstand. They’re not phony. They’re not fake people like apparently messed around and meddled with the reservation system. But it turns out that the crowd size, whatever it was, makes eminent sense. For an entire week leading up to the event the Drive-By Media had nothing but pure, 100 percent negativism about the rally and about the dangers and about the threats and about the possibility that you could die, about the possibility that Trump didn’t care if you died, about the possibility that you, in fact, were supposed to show up and get sick to show your loyalty to Trump.

And while all that’s going on, the American people in Tulsa and everywhere can see American cities burning and nobody doing anything about it. No cops, no response, looting, loitering, destruction, vandalism, violence, and nobody does anything to stop it. And the media lets everybody know that that group of people is gonna be out there in force, that Black Lives Matter and all the other malcontent groups are gonna show up. And people say, “What’s the point? I could watch it on TV. I don’t have to be there. I don’t have to risk getting sick. I don’t have to risk getting beat up. I don’t have to risk being set on fire.”

And, lo and behold, a record television audience occurred on Saturday night. Seven million on Fox. Grand total, 11 million people watched that rally. So that puts the context of the rally, the substance and the content, the things that Trump said in the rally in a whole different context, if you are somebody who was very alarmed at the small crowd size.

‘Cause remember, if you go back to 2016 the Drive-Bys were saying, “Crowd size doesn’t matter. Crowd size is irrelevant. Politics doesn’t matter. People go to political rallies all the time, 25,000 there, 35,000 -” No, they don’t show up in those numbers. But because they precisely were scared of Trump’s rally sizes, the audience, precisely because — Hillary Clinton couldn’t draw 75 people to a book party, much less one of her appearances. Then of course, “Well, crowd size doesn’t matter.”

So here we go Saturday night, 6,200 people, which is still a crowd Joe Biden couldn’t hope to draw, 6,200 people show up, guess what matters all of a sudden? Crowd size. And what does it mean? It means that Trump’s base has left him. It means the media’s telling themselves they’ve succeeded, they’ve finally done it, they have driven the wedge between Trump and his voters, and it’s over for Trump. The bloom is off the rose. The magic is gone. Everybody sees Trump for what he is. This is what they said. This is what they hopefully, happily said.

And then the TV ratings for Saturday night came in. You have a week’s worth of media warning people to stay away because of COVID-19, because of protesters, dangerous, violent protesters. Then you have all the recent images, you can’t put ’em out of your mind, American cities on fire, buildings and offices and stores being looted. What? Everybody just thought that would all be ignored and the usual hundred thousand that had made reservations would show up?

What’s more likely, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is out there claiming credit and so is this lamebrain, Steve Schmidt, the guy that ran McCain’s campaign into the ground, Steve Schmidt’s out there trying to claim credit that his teenage daughters ran the operation using the ChiCom app TikTok to reserve all of the million seats and make sure Trump supporters couldn’t. I think what really happened, I think a whole lot of Trump people signed up never intending to go because of all the things that faced them as obstacles but they wanted to show their support.

Anyway, before all details here are known, you can imagine Trump flying in being told — and by the way, somebody says that he was not happy that the news was announced that six of his staffers came down with the virus before he landed. Didn’t understand why that was announced. Then he sees the small crowd. Look. I’ve been in situations like this. As you know it’s one of the reasons I know Trump as well as I do. I’ve been there and done that.

And, you know, when you’re used to filling an arena whatever the size of the arena is and you’re not gonna fill it, it can be disconcerting, especially when you believe all week long that a million people tried to get in and you went along with building an outdoor stage, gonna have monster truck rallies out there, gonna have musical combos and groups firing up the tunes; and then none of that is gonna happen.

So I don’t know. I think he was — I detected, at any rate, that Trump was ticked off during some of that rally. Well, obviously. And a lot of it was, of course, aimed at the media, and much of it was aimed at the media purposely getting everything wrong about his appearance at West Point, the graduation ceremony.

Now, as to the content or the subject matter, the substance of Trump’s rally speech, I’ll be honest. There were a couple of times, folks, couple times I said, “No, no, no. You can’t rerun the 2016 campaign. Can’t rerun that playbook. Gotta move forward. There’s a record you have now, and it is a great one.”

It is a fabulous record to remind people of prior to the virus. It is overwhelming, particularly for African-Americans, it was through-the-roof great. The economy, unemployment, wages, all of that, something that is purposely being torn down. And I think, you know, the American people have a clear choice here, and it’s unlike a choice that they’ve ever had. This is not a choice between Republicans and Democrats. This is a choice between America, as founded, and bye-bye America, as founded. And that’s exactly what’s on the plate. That is not an exaggeration.

It is abundantly clear, and it has been abundantly clear to me for years now, these people on the left, they have no interest in correcting what they think are America’s mistakes. They’re tearing down statues. They’re tearing down artwork. They’re tearing down anything with a link to the past in this country. It’s not because the past offends them. It’s because they’re getting ready to wipe out this country. They’re getting ready to totally scrap it and start again. They believe the country is irredeemable.

Folks, it’s a bunch of Marxists. We find ourselves in this campaign not against Republicans, Democrats. This is the American people versus Marxism. It’s the American people versus communism. In stark terms, it’s exactly what we face here.

Here’s a couple tweets. Here’s a Trump tweet. And stand by sound bite number 23. Trump tweeted. This about an hour ago. He said: “We did a great job on CoronaVirus, including the very early ban on [travel from] China, Ventilator production, and Testing, which is by far the most, and best, in the World. We saved millions of U.S. lives.! Yet the Fake News refuses to acknowledge this in a positive way.

“But they do give Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is with us in all ways, a very high 72% Approval Rating. So, if he is in charge along with V.P. etc., and with us doing all of these really good things, why doesn’t the Lamestream Media treat us as they should?”

I mean, if they’re praising Fauci and if Fauci’s running the show here, then why does this administration not get the credit? “Answer,” says Trump: “Because they are Fake News!” And here is Dr. Fauci on Capitol Hill today, House Energy and Commerce Committee having a hearing on the pandemic. Frank Pallone a Democrat, New Jersey, said, “At his rally over the weekend the president said, and I quote, ‘When you do testing to that extent, you’re gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases, so I said to my people, slow the testing down, please.’ And this morning he said he meant this. So Dr. Fauci, do you agree with that?”

FAUCI: I, as a member of the task force and my colleagues on the task force, to my knowledge, I know for sure that to my knowledge none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing.

RUSH: So Fauci, once again every opportunity here to let the Democrats have what they want, said nobody’s been told to slow down the testing. This is another example of these people not knowing what Trump is, not knowing his sense of humor. It’s no different than, “Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, maybe you can find Hillary’s missing emails. Everybody is looking for ’em. They can’t find ’em. Maybe if you could, I mean, the media might love to hear from you.” And so the Democrats immediately think that Trump is asking the Russians to hack Hillary’s emails? Meanwhile, the hack has already happened months ago.

So when I watched him say that in the rally, I chuckled. I said, this typical Trump since of humor. The testing is showing more cases. More cases is feeding the media that we’re losing control. Slow down the testing, I told ’em, slow down the testing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to play some Trump sound bites. He was on Fox this morning, I think. No. This was one of his “conductor” conferences. He’s on the White House lawn on the way to Marine One, the helicopter, and he’s conducting the media. He’s doing a press conference, but they are never seen. Speaking with reporters, this is what he had to say about the protesters who tried to pull down the statue of Andrew Jackson at Lafayette Park last night.

THE PRESIDENT: We stopped an attack on a great monument, the monument of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Park. And I just want to thank law enforcement. They did a great job. Numerous people are in jail and going to jail today. And we are looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators. And call ’em whatever you want. Some people don’t like that language, but that’s what they are. They’re bad people. They don’t love our country. And they’re not taking down our monuments.

RUSH: And I’m gonna have more on these people as the program unfolds because they need to be adequately, properly explained, not in the conventional wisdom way the Drive-By Media does. One other quick question. An unidentified reporter said, “Mr. President, at the Tulsa rally, were you just kidding when you asked to slow down the testing?”

THE PRESIDENT: We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the world. We did 25 plus, 25 million tests. Think of that: 25 million. If you look at other countries, they did one million, two million, three million. Therefore, we test; we’re gonna have more cases. By having more cases, it sounds bad. But actually, what it is, is we’re finding people. Many of those people aren’t sick or very little. What’s happened is, because of all of the cases that we find, we have a very low mortality rate.

RUSH: He was kidding about slowing down the testing. What kind of idiot question is that in the first place?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And welcome back. Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. Great to be with you. We’ll be getting to your phone calls as the program unfolds right before your very eyes and ears.

Some emails I checked during the break. “You sound like you had some problems with Trump’s rally speech.” Well, folks, you know, I’m not a nitpicker. I hate nitpicking, especially when people nitpick me. Because nitpickers I have found are people that actually didn’t hear what they thought they heard. And I have no patience for nitpickers.

It routinely happens, you go out and you make a speech, whether it’s at a rally like that or anywhere, and you have two or three things you really intend to drive home. And then the thing’s over. And you go talk to people, and nobody mentions the two or three things that you really meant to drive home. They nitpick about something. It’s frustrating.

Trump, I think, was masterful as usual at moving in and out of the teleprompter. The stuff that was on the prompter was awesome, particularly when he went after Biden, because that’s what this is about. This is not Trump versus the media. I know you think that it is, but the media’s not gonna be on the ballot, folks. This is Trump versus Biden.

Biden has not faced a reporter in 82 days. Biden has not got a question from a reporter in 82 days, it’s almost three months. Joe Biden is incoherent. Joe Biden is incogent. He doesn’t know where he is half the time. It is not unfair to point this out. The Democrat Party has nominated the guy knowing full well who he is and what he is.

And it leads to a bunch of questions. Who really is pulling the strings behind Joe Biden? Is it gonna be his vice presidential choice? Or is his vice presidential choice being told, “Do not think you’re gonna be president. Even if Biden leaves office and you get the role, we’re running the show.”

Who are those people? If you ask me, they have to exist. Biden can’t do this. He certainly can’t do it by himself. There’s gotta be a cabal of people. Not talking about conspiracy. Talking about people who actually want to be president without having to run for office, put their name out there, don’t go through the media anal exam. Whoever those people are are who we are ultimately gonna be dealing with even if Biden is the president.

And because this is true, the Biden campaign put something out over the weekend to the extent that “Don’t you believe that I’m not gonna be running my own presidency here. Don’t you believe that. Nobody’s gonna be kicking me out of here.” They purposely responded to this — I don’t even know who made the allegation beyond me. But whenever they respond to something like that, it means that it’s gotten to them.

But Trump was masterful in pointing out Biden’s America, that what we’re seeing right now with all of the looting and all of the fires and all the explosions and all the insolence and all the disrespect, all the rioting, all the protesting, that is Joe Biden’s America. You know why? Because that is the Democrat Party’s America. This is what they are promoting, this is what they are encouraging, this is what they’re standing for.