RUSH: A question I got today, “Rush, Hillary Clinton’s in trouble, Rush. I mean, she’s under 50% in the polls. She’s coughing phlegm up all the time now. She’s got health problems relating to her concussion. And now this coughing spasm due to the thyroid, I mean, she just looks horrible out there. She has no energy. Some 82-year-old guy, 75, whatever Bernie Sanders is, however old he is, running rings around her. Why aren’t the Democrat establishment guys paranoid like the Republican establishment guys are? Why is this, Rush?”

I mean, these are the kinds of questions that I, your beloved host, get all the time. “Why, Rush? Why is there no panic on the Democrat side? There’s all kinds of panic on the Republican side over Trump. Why is there no panic on the Democrat side?” I think because on the Democrat side the game’s rigged. I’ve thought from day one that Bernie Sanders isn’t gonna win this. I’m using intelligence guided by experience. How many times in the last 27 years — and that’s the length of time I’ve been doing this program. How many times have we thought, have we been told, has it been suggested to us, “We’ve got the Clintons now!” How many times? How many times have we been told, “This is it for Hillary, man; this is it for Bill”? It’s too many to count. And it’s never been right. Now supposedly Hillary’s in deep doo-doo over the e-mails and the server and all of the FBI people investigating her and the data is in, and it’s un-survivable, they say. But yet there she is. She’s still out there coughing up phlegm. She’s still looking like Miss Havisham (well, a chubby Miss Havisham) left at the altar.

She’s still looking sick, unenergetic.

Did you watch any of that thing last night? See, that’s another thing. I’m fighting depression today, folks, ’cause I had to watch it. I had to watch this last night, and I endeavored to, and we’ve got lots of sound bites on it, and I think we found evidence that the whole thing was set up. We found evidence at least that the questions were prepared for the people who asked them. In other words, I don’t think any (or very few) of the questions any of those people got were actual questions dreamed up by the people who asked them.

And the giveaway is one guy asking a question slipped up. Grab it. Audio sound bite number four. Chris Cuomo, who… This was such an odd format last night. It’s a town hall, and these guys go out separately. Bernie Sanders was first with Chris Cuomo, and it was funny as can be. Chris Cuomo, even with Bernie Sanders, was doing everything he could to defend Hillary Clinton. So Crazy Bernie’s out there answering his questions, promising a tax increase, promising free Medicare, just promising everything for everybody.

And then after that Martin O’Malley came out. Martin O’Malley was number two, and he’s by himself, and the biggest reaction to Martin O’Malley was when he took off his jacket. I guess they were just waiting for him to take off his shirt. The point is that was it. That was the total level of excitement for O’Malley when he took off his jacket. And Hillary was bringing up the rear. She came out last. And I almost had to turn the mute off because of that cackling laugh.

For the first 10 minutes that’s all she did whenever anybody said anything (cackling impression), “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha! Well, y’know… Ha-ha-ha!” It drove me… It drove me absolutely nuts. But I endeavored to sit through it. Now, here is the sound bite. This was at Drake University in Iowa, and the moderator is Chris Cuomo. He introduces a member of the audience named Brett Rosengren and his purpose is to stand up there and ask a question of Mrs. Clinton. Listen carefully…

CUOMO: Brett Rosengren. He’s from Logan, Iowa, is going to school, works as a supervisor for a janitorial company, says he’s undecided, has a question.

HILLARY: Great.

ROSENGREN: Secretary Sand — or Clinton.

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

ROSENGREN: Sorry.

HILLARY: (cackling) That’s okay.

ROSENGREN: I can see why they gave you this question. I just wanted to know, which of our previous presidents has inspired you most?

RUSH: Okay, did you hear what this guy did? Did you hear what this guy, Brett Rosengren, asked? “I can see why they gave you this question.” This guy is admitting there… Who knows if he’s even there legitimate? They might have bused this guy in. Who knows? Whole thing could have been totally staged with CNN’s cooperation. But this guy stands up and says, “Secretary Sanders… Oops, oops!” Laughter starts, Mrs. Clinton says, “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! That’s okay!” And then Rosengren says, “I can see why they gave you this question. I just want to know which of our previous presidents has…?”

What kinda…? Nobody asks a question like that. No serious voter gives a rat’s rear end a question like that one week away from the Hawkeye Cauci: “Can you tell me which previous president has inspired you the most?” And the guy blows it by saying, “I can see why they gave you this question,” which means he was handed the question. Anyway, I watched this whole thing. We got appropriate audio sound bites coming from it. It’s not that I want to torture you, but we have spent a lot of time talking about the Republican side. And it is interesting as well what’s going on over there on the Democrat side.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Here we go to the Democrat — they called it a town hall last night on CNN. It was moderated by Andrew Cuomo and I think some others, maybe, and they did it one candidate at a time. They started out with crazy Bernie, who promised to raise everybody’s taxes and make Medicare free to everybody. I listen to these guys talk about how they’re gonna raise taxes, I mentioned this once before and I know it’s a rhetorical thing, but there’s a serious point, why even collect taxes? Why even worry about it other than to control people? Because the collection of taxes and raising revenue is irrelevant to the way you spend money.

They’re spending money we don’t have already, so what is the big deal about raising taxes? Why even worry about the deficit? They don’t make any pretense of worrying about the deficit. We’re $20 trillion in debt. You listen to these people talk, and there’s no end to this. They’re gonna spend it, they’re gonna raise taxes, 94 million Americans not working. They can’t pay any taxes, and people still working don’t earn enough money to pay any significant increases in taxes. And yet here’s crazy Bernie going on and on about it as though we’re never in debt, we have no deficit, and the rich are not paying anything in taxes, and nobody is, and it’s about time we raised everybody’s taxes to a responsible level and then give away more free stuff. Juxtaposed against $20 trillion of national debt, eight trillion of it with Obama, seven trillion, eight trillion of it created in the last seven years.

The whole idea of raising revenue to run the government is meaningless when you compare it to the way these people want to spend it and do spend it. Anyway, Bernie was first, then Martin O’Malley, and then Hillary brought up the rear. They had audience members asking questions, and it looks like many of the questions were written in advance and handed to people who were selected to stand up and ask them.

Here is audience member Elena Dietz, who is leaning toward Sanders. She says, “Secretary Clinton, earlier this month Vice President Joe Biden said you were a newcomer to the issue of income inequality while praising Senator Sanders for his authentic voice on the issue. How do we know that you will keep this issue a top priority?” Now, forgive me, but I just don’t believe your average Democrat voter thinks that way nor speaks that way. I think what happened here is the Democrat Party decided the issues it wanted addressed, put them in the form of questions from a compliant, willing audience of Democrat voters, made to look like these are actual concerns of Democrat voters.

I’m not saying they don’t care about income inequality. But nobody’s gonna say, “Last week Joe Biden said this about Bernie and you and this –” This is too perfect. There’s too many foils in this, too many fall guys have been set up for Hillary to knock over. And they just happened to be the two guys being touted as potential replacements for her if she ends up indicted or behind bars.

So, anyway, here’s the question again. “Secretary Clinton, earlier this month Vice President Joe Biden –” This is the kind of question that Chuck Todd would ask you on Meet the Press. “Secretary Clinton, earlier this month Vice President Biden said that you were a newcomer to the issue of income inequality while praising Senator Sanders for his authentic voice on the issue. How do we know that you will keep income inequality a top priority?”

HILLARY: I have a 40 year record of going after inequality, and not only economic inequality, racial inequality, sexist inequality, homophobic inequality, the kinds of things that go after people to put them down and push them back.

RUSH: What?

HILLARY: I have a really long history of taking on all kinds of inequality. And when I went to Beijing in 1995 and said human rights were women’s rights, and women’s rights were human rights, that was a statement about inequality, economic inequality, education inequality, cultural inequality, every kind of inequality you can imagine.

RUSH: Okay, you see what I mean? That answer was just lying in wait, just waiting to be spoken. There’s nothing ad-lib about that answer. Now, she talks about how she’s been doing all this stuff here for 40 years. That’s a hell of a record, by the way, of failure, 40 years and they’re still complaining about it all. And these people, they were still complaining about the state of the country even after seven years of them and Obama running it last night.

This the thing that continually amazes me. It’s the Limbaugh Theorem all over the place. It’s like this country’s been on autopilot from George W. Bush ever since 2001. They haven’t been able to stop anything and finally, finally we’re gonna stop it. Mrs. Clinton detailing everything that’s gone wrong, including the last seven years. Never once mentioning that they have been running the show the whole time.

But we went back. Mrs. Clinton here talks about her 40-year record, racial inequality, homophobic inequality, how she’s been fighting homophobic inequality for 40 years. That would mean that Mrs. Clinton has a record of being pro-gay marriage, right? Well, well, well, well. As we went back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites here, we found November 20th, 2002, PMSNBC, a special Hardball college tour with Hillary Clinton at the University of Albany.

Chris Matthews, back when he was sane — well, relatively speaking — was interviewing Hillary Clinton, and during the Q&A — now, this goes by fast, eight second sound bite. So turn up your radios here. Here’s Matthews’ question: “Do you think New York state should recognize gay marriage?” You’ll hear him ask the question, and here’s her answer.

MATTHEWS: Do you think New York state should recognize gay marriage?

HILLARY: No.

MATTHEWS: No. Okay. (crowd booing)

RUSH: Hey, folks, that’s just like 14 years ago. But she said she’s always been for it. She did. Last night, in addition to this thing, she said she’s always been in the camp supporting gay marriage. Just like Obama wants you to believe. But none of these people were for gay marriage until, what, three, four years ago. None of ’em. Every damn one of them, when they were running for office prior to 2012, were opposed to gay marriage, including Mrs. Clinton.

The next question came from a Millennial, audience member Taylor Gipple, Iowa native, leaning for Bernie Sanders. Question: “Mrs. Clinton, it feels like there’s a lot of young people like me who are very passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders, and I just don’t see the same enthusiasm from younger people for you. In fact, I’ve heard from quite a few people my age that they think you’re dishonest. But I’d like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn’t there.”

So the question: Mrs. Clinton, I’m a Millennial. A lot of people my friends love Bernie Sanders. They think you’re a liar. But I don’t care about that. I want you to tell me why they’re so enthusiastic for Bernie.

The guy just told her that his friends think that she is dishonest. But he doesn’t ask about that. He wants to know what she thinks about why there’s more enthusiasm for crazy Bernie.

HILLARY: I’ve been around a long time. People have thrown all kinds of things at me. And, you know, I can’t keep up with it. I just keep going forward. They fall by the wayside. They come up with these outlandish things. They make these charges. I just keep going forward because there’s nothing to it. They throw all this stuff at me, and I’m still standing. You have to say to yourself, why are they throwing all of that? Well, I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve been on the front lines of change and progress since I was your age.

RUSH: Yeah, well, this kid doesn’t think you have much to show for it. That’s the point. And that’s the whole reaction (imitating Clinton), “I’ve been doing this, and I’ve been doing that, I’ve been leading this, I’ve been fighting for that.” And yet you’re still complaining about all of it as though nothing has gotten done. There’s still inequality out there. There’s still bigotry out there. There’s still racism out there. There’s still sexism out there. There’s still unfairness out there. There’s still mean-spiritedness out there. There’s still extremism out there. There’s still Republicans out there. She’s been fighting it her whole life.

So here you’re a Millennial, you’re basically standing up asking your grandmother, and Hillary’s answer, “I don’t know that that’s what Millennials want.” This this sounds like a parent or grandparent lecturing you, yelling at you, telling you, “Hey, look, Bud, I’ve been fighting in the trenches while you were just a whippersnapper eating Cheerios with your Snickers bar. I’ve been out there fighting for real change my whole (coughing) thyroid problem, cough, life.” That’s Mrs. Clinton’s answer. Grab the hook.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Not only was Hillary anti-gay marriage, she was anti-gay marriage as recently as 2008 during that campaign, folks. She was anti-gay marriage. She was also pro-Iraq war. She voted for the Iraq war. Now, poor Crazy Bernie has tried to make that point. Crazy Bernie just does not make it forcefully enough. Crazy Bernie knows! I mean, he doesn’t want to be the kind of guy that dies by virtue of suicide with two gunshots in his head. So he’s playing it (laughing) close to the vest.