RUSH: All right, now back to the sound bites. We are at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday in New York City. Richard Haass is the moderator. This is all part of Hillary’s book rollout. It’s not going well, by the way. It has been calculated that the amount of media Mrs. Clinton is getting in the mainstream is $50 million. Free.
That’s how much attention, TV, advertising, media coverage she is getting for her book. It’s $50 million. That’s the calculation, and even at that they can’t get that book to number one on Amazon. It isn’t a pleasurable experience to read a Clinton book, and I think of little old me. We’ve got two books in the children’s section of the New York Times. We’ve got two books in the top five, with no media.
I’ve been on Greta Van Susteren. I haven’t done any media. It’s just you all. It’s just me on the program. We haven’t bought any advertisements. I think maybe the publisher has in some trade stuff, but I don’t do book signings. I don’t go on book tours. I don’t do any of that. Never have, by the way. Nothing new about it. There hasn’t been a massive amount of media attention paid to my Rush Revere books, time-travel adventures with great Americans.
There hasn’t been any media attention to speak of outside of what’s happened on this program. So they still can’t get Hillary to number one on Amazon. She probably open at number one on the New York Times ’cause that’s just a given. But I don’t even think she can even get to number one on USA Today. I find it all fascinating. So many things here just pierce the bubble of conventional wisdom.
Yet the bubble of conventional wisdom survives. You know, I’m thinking of my two books, and I haven’t even spoken about ’em in two weeks. There was the week that I was away on vacacione, and this week we had one call about it, and we heard on Wednesday — that’s when you get the information on what it’s gonna be listed for the next 10 days at the New York Times. It’s number five, maybe number four or whatever.
I remain in total awe and gratitude to everybody, every one of you in this audience who has bought and read the books, because the feedback we continue to get on ’em is just phenomenal. You know, there’s a mission to them. There is a real purpose behind these books, the truth of American history — and they’re fun. They are unique. They use the vehicle of time travel to take the reader right to these actual historical events.
It’s adventure. It’s not fantasy in the sense that the reality of the history is true. It’s fantasy, of course, in terms of time travel, talking horse and so forth. But man, these kids, you ought to see the e-mail, they’re loving it, and their parents love it. I didn’t mention this ’cause we found out about it while we were gone, but both books have been approved for a scholastic — I’m gonna have to look it up, but it’s a big deal, it’s mainstream public schools. It’s a big, big deal. And it’s acknowledgement that the books are good and that they’re entertaining, informative, fulfilling the mission. It’s a total upper here.
But I look at — seriously, not for any reason other than comparison. Here’s Mrs. Clinton, you can’t miss her, everywhere Mrs. Clinton here, there. Her book, $50 million equivalent in free advertising to her. And, plus, does she even need it? I mean, who doesn’t know who she is? You would think that Mrs. Clinton has a built-in audience and that all she would have to do is say, “My memoirs are available,” and there would be people making tracks to the bookstores to buy it in droves, and that didn’t happen. What does that tell you. Well, in political terms it tells me quite a bit, but it’s outside the conventional wisdom bubble, so it never gets said.
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RUSH: That’s another thing. We don’t have any unions out buying my books in bulk, like they did for Fort Worthless Jim Wright, probably Hillary. (interruption) No, the United Screeners worker union is not even buying, and the libraries, they’re not buying my books. I mean, all the usual suspects.
My point is this, and I’m saying this in political context, not book sales and comparing authors. I don’t understand why Mrs. Clinton needs to do a book tour. See, this is standard book publisher formula. Mrs. Clinton ought to have a built-in audience, right? If you’re gonna give somebody like that, what, a multimillion-dollar advance, you’re assuming that at least that many books are gonna be sold. Unless you’re giving her an advance just to keep her away from other publishers, you don’t expect to make it back, loss leader. Could be that.
But here’s the most popular woman in America, the smartest woman in America. She’s been secretary of state, she’s been a senator, she’s been the first lady, oh, man, everybody loves her. She ought to have a built-in audience. All they should have to do is announce that book is for sale, and it ought to be just marching off the shelves since the first days of pre-orders, and that isn’t happening.
Now, that tells me something in a political sense. I don’t know about book sales and the business, I don’t know what the thing costs, but I think it shatters the myth that Mrs. Clinton is formidable, is unbeatable, is untouchable, is eminently popular. You know, I think the book tour is actually a way for her to get her publisher to pay for the beginning of her campaign. Because one thing about the Clintons, they don’t spend their money. They spend everybody else’s money. They brag about how rich they are after they complain about how broke they were. So they con these publishers, and the publishers think they’ve got the biggest thing in the world.
You ought to see it. They think, “Oh, my God, Hillary Clinton’s book,” they start having orgasms in the back room. They think they’ve got the best book, the Book of the Year, they got the Pulitzer, they got book sales, and then this happens? So then it comes down to what Les Moonves, “Well, it’s not about ratings really. It’s about bragging rights.” And that’s what this is. But here again, we’re back to a favorite subject of mine, buzz and PR versus reality. Buzz, PR, image versus substance.
I’m just telling you, if Mrs. Clinton were everything they’re saying she is, she wouldn’t need a book tour. She wouldn’t need $50 million equivalent in advertising to sell the book. She ought to have after, what, 23, 22 years of prominent public life where she’s had nothing but praise and love and adoration throughout the mainstream media, the book ought to sell itself.
Why doesn’t it? And why doesn’t a $50 million campaign do it? (interruption) Well, could it be that some people are asking, “What am I gonna learn if I buy the book?” It could be — and this is highly likely — it could be that people are gonna say, “I don’t think she’s really gonna tell me anything I really want to know. National security, state secrets, so there really isn’t gonna be anything in this book that’s juicy.” (interruption) Right. “No details of a stunning success if there were any. No inside information on stuff that matters.”
I think people generally think that when you get a political memoir, it’s obviously gonna have been vetted and screened for security and that kind of thing. It could be any number of things. But even at that, she ought to have a built-in audience who’d want to buy the book just to support her if all the hubbub and prepub and buzz and PR about her is true, is my point.