RUSH: Seth in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Back to you, sir. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, it’s a huge honor. I’m sorry. I’m a little nervous. It’s a huge honor. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to mention Trump’s greatest asset and that’s his ability to be unaffected by satire. Saul Alinsky said in his book Rules for Radicals that satire and ridicule are the organizer’s greatest weapon. And if you don’t believe me, look at what happened with Bush. Look what happened with Sarah Palin. We almost identify Saturday Night Live skits more so with the SNL skits than we do with the actual people. And you had mentioned earlier, you know, the convention, looking at Jeb and Ryan and maybe Rubio, in a contested convention, and I have to ask these people — and I like Cruz, too, but I have to ask, you know, can these people take it, can they take the vitriol that’s gonna be pointed at them once Trump is out of the picture, if he is out of the picture.
RUSH: Wait a minute. That’s really not what you’re asking. It’s a good question. You know what he’s asking? Okay, Saturday Night Live is gonna make absolute fools of whoever the nominee is. Your question really is not who can take it, but who can remain unaffected in terms of public opinion by it?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: In other words, who can survive being made fun of by Saturday Night Live and not have their image destroyed or ruined, and you’re thinking Trump is much better qualified for that than anybody else. That’s what you think?
CALLER: Yes, I truly believe that. I believe that the left uses satire as a weapon greater than anything else, and I think that, you know, any time our guys get put on these late-night talk shows or anything like that, we kind of wring our hands, go, “Oh, jeez, gotta sit here and watch ’em take it, watch the audience laugh at ’em,” and with Trump we don’t see that. You know, we see sketch comedies and things making fun of him, and you just kind of laugh along with it and go, “Well, yeah,” you know, it just doesn’t affect your opinion of it. It doesn’t change anything.
RUSH: Yeah. I know what you mean. Last Saturday night is a good example. Saturday Night Live did a parody — you know, I haven’t watched Saturday Night Live in years. But their bits, if they’re good, they make YouTube. So you can watch what happened on Saturday Night Live in a couple of minutes without having to spend 90 minutes on Saturday night watching it. And they did a parody of all of these women on TV defending Trump no matter what. And they parodied these people as know-nothings. Trump advocates on TV, his official spokesman and others, as literally brain-dead ignoramuses, defending Trump against the most outrageous things. And the audience is laughing itself silly.
Now, what Seth here is saying is that, when you say Trump isn’t affected by it you don’t mean that he doesn’t get depressed and angry. What you’re really saying is, all those parodies do not destroy Trump, like they have destroyed Sarah Palin, for example, or like they destroyed Gerald Ford, like Chevy Chase destroyed Gerald Ford. See, his point is that despite all the making fun of and despite all the satire, it doesn’t change people’s opinions of Trump. They still respect him, they don’t end up thinking he’s a joke, but these other guys, Saturday Night Live has been able to make a joke out of Sarah Palin.
I’ll tell you, you know what? One year I was one of Barbara Walters’ top 10, what, most famous personalities of the year, whatever it is. And also in the top 10 was Tina Fey. And she was in the top Ten Most Fascinating People of the Year because of her impersonation of Sarah Palin. And I said, “Why isn’t Sarah Palin in this list? You’re putting an impersonator of Sarah Palin on the list?” And it’s exactly what Seth — and he may have a point about this. I don’t know. I have to think about that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, folks, one thing about this point that I think Seth made — the caller named Seth –saying that we need to take into account parody and satire of our candidate. “Who can survive that on things like Saturday Night Live?” I have to tell you something about that. I really believe that that stuff doesn’t work against a person the American people really like. I mean, people really liked Reagan, and there was endless satire and cartoon attempts to make Reagan out to be just the biggest walking dunce ever, and it didn’t work.
And I really think the key to it is, if you’re likable, and if the American people like you, they end up laughing at the satire. Sometimes they even get offended at it. But I think it’s hard for satirists to really destroy somebody that’s liked. It’s an Alinsky rule to ridicule somebody. The Alinsky rule is you use ridicule to get people to concede to what you want them to do, so the ridicule stops. That’s the Alinsky point with it.
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