RUSH: I might have to do a caller clinic today, and there’s any number of ways we could do a caller clinic. I could do a caller clinic without taking calls, and just give a series of examples and instructions. Or I could take calls and if something happens in the call that would make me stop everything and point out something as part of a caller clinic and do it that way. But that embarrasses the caller. No, not good. (interruption) What are you saying, “Good”?
It might help to remember the purpose of calls. I think a lot of people forget this. This is very, very, very important. The purpose of a caller is to make the host look good. Now, that’s not a talk radio rule. That is a Rush radio show rule. But it’s not what you think. A caller does not make me look good by praising me or complimenting me. That’s not what is meant. Caller makes me, or the host look good by inspiring, by triggering additional thought, causing an increase in adrenaline, which is increases energy and so forth. There’s any number of ways a caller can make the host look good. But it does not mean praise and compliments. Anybody can do that and that’s not what it means. So let me just say two things that are at the top of my mind, we’ll take a break and coming back with the calls and the audio sound bites here on Mary Mapes and me and her book and Dan Rather and forgeries and fraud and all that.
One of the things I think that callers do not know, and I’m picking this up because of what callers say. Increasingly, a number of callers are saying, “As I was telling your screener.” Folks, you need to know, I do not talk to the screener about your call. He does not tell me what you said. I have no idea what you’ve told the screener, and I don’t want to know what you’ve told the screener. What you have told the screener is relevant only in the sense that that qualifies you to get on the air. I think a lot of people think that they’re on hold for so long, that before I get to a call, I’m gonna have a little conference here and Snerdley’s gonna say, “This caller wants to say this and said this and said that.”
That does not happen. The only thing I know is there is a call screener computer here, and it lists every caller, their first name, and where they say they’re calling from, and it has a one-line summary of what they want to talk about. That’s it. I don’t know what they’re gonna say about it. I don’t know anything, other than the general outline idea and the name. I know the gender, but I don’t know the age or anything. All I know is where they are. So as callers, do not start by saying, “As I was telling your screener,” ’cause I don’t know what you said, and it doesn’t matter. The screener hasn’t told me anything you’ve told him, and therefore I don’t know anything you’ve said.
Number two, and very crucial, if the first words out of your mouth are not what I think you’re gonna talk about, red flags go up immediately, and my finger is right next to the dump button. It’s not that I suspect fraud. It’s that I don’t want to waste time here. If you say that you want to talk about Hillary and her debate performance and you start off talking about Trump and something else, then wait a minute, something doesn’t compute, I get suspicious, a little concerned, and what happens, the whole momentum that we build up slows down, and I don’t want to have to spend valuable time steering the caller back to what the caller wanted to talk about in the first place.
So, if you are approved and screened to get on the program, talk about X, make sure that when we come to you, you talk about X. Otherwise — well, you know, I never hang up on anybody, as you well know. Nobody is treated rudely on this program. But it can slow things down, and the worst thing that can happen is for the momentum to be brought to a screeching halt. And if you hear me say, “Hi, so-and-so, you’re up, welcome,” that means you’re on the air. That is not another standby you’re up in 10 seconds. That means it’s happened, you’re here. What should have happened is that Mr. Snerdley should have given you a heads-up that you’re next and to stand by and then after that the next voice you hear is mine, and that means go. So just a few little things here, all designed to streamline the content of the program.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Ryan in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Great to have you on the program, Ryan. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, good afternoon, Mr. Limbaugh. When you mentioned this morning the dropping poll numbers of Hillary, what crossed my mind was rope-a-dope. What I mean, as we know the polls create the news and opinion; they don’t reflect it.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Regardless of her performance, I think the post-debate narrative is gonna be twofold. One of them is she’s gonna be the new comeback kid. She’s gonna be Bill all over again. And the second narrative could be, it’s gonna discourage Biden from getting it. So I just wanted your opinion on that post-debate narrative.
RUSH: You know what? I gotta tell you something, Ryan. A, you get an A as a caller, in terms of following the edicts of the just-concluded caller clinic. You got in there, you got it, and you got out, and you did not, importantly, slow down the momentum of the program. I think it’s a great question.
CALLER: Well, thank you.
RUSH: Given how much news today is manufactured, given that polling can produce whatever the polling unit wants. They have admitted so. By the way, did you see, Ryan, did you see that Gallup has announced they are getting out of the presidential polling business?
CALLER: I did, yes.
RUSH: You know why they said they’re getting out?
CALLER: I don’t know the reason.
RUSH: Because they can’t guarantee that what they’re producing is accurate. There are too many people that lie to them, they say. There are too many people that are now using cell phones, they can’t find a decent, trustworthy sample. Gallup is one of the people that sort of blew it in the 2012 race, so they’re getting out of the whole presidential polling business and they’re gonna say focused on cultural things, social things. I think maybe other political races.
But, look, the question is extremely valid, given we know the Drive-Bys are in the tank for Hillary. We know that NBC’s in the tank for Hillary and there really isn’t anybody else. Martin O’Malley is not gonna do anything, I don’t think. Bernie Sanders is not going to be permitted to get the nomination. Biden, you know, remains a wild card. But Biden is a three-time loser running on his own for president. They don’t have anybody that’s won in this cycle. Hillary’s a loser in presidential elections. Biden, a three-time loser. Bernie Sanders, no way, Jose, not gonna get the nomination, no matter what. Martin O’Malley is lagging too far behind. John Kerry is too late, as we sit here today.
Then you take CNN’s announcement that they are not going to pit these candidates against each other like Fox did in the first Republican debate. So the candidates are gonna be allowed to sink or swim. So, yeah, you come out with polling that shows Hillary plummeting. And, by the way, I think that polling is pretty legit. Bernie Sanders does have a lot of legitimate excitement out there. And Hillary isn’t exciting. Hillary does not create excitement. She doesn’t engender it. The
Democrat Party is not loaded with average, ordinary, everyday voters chomping at the bit, get out there and vote, election coming up. It’s sort of a ho-hummer.
Obama has everybody down in the dumps and depressed. Obama’s let everybody down. Obama’s not who he said was gonna be, hasn’t done what he said he was gonna do, the things he did do have made a big mess out of everything. None of what Obama said he’s gonna do has happened, but more importantly, the things Obama has done have failed miserably. I think it’s really, in one sense, not a good time to be a Democrat, because you’re living with the hard, cold reality that your policies don’t work. And there are enough hard-core, random, ordinary, everyday Democrats who really believe all of this big government stuff.
The Democrat Party’s made up of a whole bunch of stratas, and you’ve got the leadership strata which is where all the conspiracies take place. And by that I mean their own version of the elites and the inside-the-Beltway establishment and so forth. You have some true believers who are not in this to see Republicans take it on the chin. They really do believe all this liberalism stuff. They really believe that there’s a utopia out there. And for them, Obama getting everything he wants with hardly any opposition, and none of it working, my point is there’s not a whole lot of excitement on the Democrat side. And what excitement I think there is, or energy they have, is fueled more by hatred for us than love for Hillary or Bernie Sanders or any of that.
So it’s a long way of answering your question, but, yeah, you have a poll come out the week before the debate, Hillary down 10 points. Debate, post-debate poll, show Hillary really cleaning up, a lot of people love her, comeback Hillary and so forth, blunt the poll. Yeah, you could do that even if the poll is legit. It’s a great question, Ryan.