CALLER:  Hey, thank you, Rush.  There’s so many things I could talk with you about, but I want to go back to the top of your show, and I think it’s probably more significant than you may think as far as this country’s concerned. I mean, there are a lot of us out here that are searching for the truth, and you opened the show with the fact that we’re being lied to, and it is a country of commentary, of tweets, of blogs, of Facebook, that carry the same weight, apparently, as, you know, a traditional news source.

And, you know, philosophically we’re told, you know, the truth shall set you free.  The opposite is true, that the lie shall ensnare, and I feel like we’re kind of ensnared there.  We want to make educated decisions, but we don’t know who to listen to, what to believe, and I’m gonna hang up and maybe you can comment on that, how can we make a better decision based on what’s going on.

RUSH:  Okay, I’m gonna take this seriously.  People might think my answer here is gonna be a little bit flippant, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart.  Now, I know what you’re talking about.  At the beginning of the program I gave you some excerpts from Maureen Callahan, how nothing today is real, how everything is a narrative. Narrative has become a substitute for substance, that nobody can rely on the substance of reality to sell anything, to persuade anybody.  Everything has to be concocted.  Everything is spin. Everything is buzz. Everything is PR. Nobody wants to rely on substance or reality.

Now, elements of this are not new.  P. T. Barnum, of course, there have always been hucksters.  I don’t want anybody to get the idea here that I think that we’re in a totally new era.  What is different is that, as Steven points out here, the usual citadels, the institutions that people used to rely on, have themselves been corrupted.

Narrative used to be a very secret word.  Narrative is what journalism schools teach.  Establishing the narrative of the story.  And that is code language for advancing your version of the story or your agenda and how to do it, by creating a story that becomes the narrative, that becomes whatever the news is.

And let me recall for you one of the best illustrations of this is how the media always covers Democrats. It’s how they covered Clinton. It is how they cover Obama.  They never cover the substance of any Clinton proposal. They never cover the substance of Obama proposals.  For example, let me ask you a question here.  It’s somewhat related.

Why, ladies and gentlemen, should it require an author or just an average citizen who writes a book or does a radio show or TV show? Why is it those people uncovering the corruption?  Why aren’t people in Washington who are close to it uncovering it?  Why aren’t elected officials?  Why are not elected Republicans exposing the fraud, say, of the Obama administration or the Clinton campaign? Why does it require authors with books that then have to get on TV and radio to sell the book to alert people?

Why isn’t the media uncovering the corruption, say, of the Clinton Foundation?  Why didn’t the media uncover the nature and the substance of Obamacare?  Why does it require people on talk radio or blogs to read the legislation and then relay it to people? And look what happens those of us who do this! We get tarred and feathered; we get smeared.  Outsiders are having to do it because the traditional institutions everybody relies on (or has) have gone silent, particularly the media.  In the case of Obamacare, the media didn’t cover it from the standpoint of what is it.

The only thing that was important to the media was: “Would Obama get it? Would Obama be the first ever to get national health care in America?  Would Obama succeed? Will Obama get what he wants?”  Not, “Is what Obama wants good?  Is what Obama wants helpful?  Is Obama being truthful about the details of what he wants?” None of that.  The press didn’t cover one syllable of that.  Not one page of Obamacare.  The media covered the villains: The Republicans and people like me on radio and in blogs trying to stop Obama from getting what he wants.

But they didn’t report on us by telling people we were covering the substance of Obamacare.  They just portrayed us as what have you: Racist, bigots, homophobes, who wanted to deny the first African-American president a signature legislative proposal.  So the media — which most people instinctively rely on to learn what things are — doesn’t tell anybody what things are anymore.  All the media does, because they’re all Democrats… They’re all part of the Democrat agenda. All the media does is try to make sure that Obama or Clinton or whoever, get what they want.

And to facilitate Obama or Hillary getting what they want, the Republicans are portrayed as venal, vile villains trying to deny Obama and the American people what they want.  And just because they want it, they should have it.  Well, it’s much broader than that.  That’s just an example.  Look at Facebook — Fakebook — and all these supposed algorithms that are supposed to be unbiased.  Nothing is unbiased! Nothing is objective anymore, particularly in places with people claiming to be objective.

Look, I’ve gotta take a break here.  But I’m gonna continue this.  It’s a good question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To the media.  The guy wanted to know where you can trust.  Folks, it’s real simple.  The New York Times has just been exposed.  I could spend some time going into detail on it.  Their hit piece on Trump and the women on Sunday, has been fully exposed as fraudulent.  It’s the same writers who did a story on Marco Rubio.

Do you remember the story where Rubio was lying about his finances because he had a “luxury speedboat,” and it turned out that it was nothing more than a 40-horsepower fishing boat?  There was nothing “luxury” about it. There was no “speed” about it. That was totally made up.  The women in the Trump piece have come forward and said, “That’s not what I said.  They didn’t report anything. They’ve taken me out of context. They’ve misquoted me,” and it’s been documented.

It’s tougher because of social media today for those kinds of hit pieces to work.  The New York Times is still plugged into their ages-old playbook on how to destroy people, and they have not yet factored in that they have legitimate fact-checkers all over the internet waiting to blow ’em up.  So I still haven’t fully answer the question.  That’s coming.  I’m not teasing you.  It’s just that time is going by faster.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To finally answer the guy’s question about with so much being bogus today, with so much buzz and PR and spin and what’s real and what isn’t, how do you spot it, where do you go. All I can do is tell you what I do.  And, you know, I’ve gotten I’ve arrived at a point here where this has been my life.

I’m 65 years old now.  I don’t need to learn.  I just need to remember the things that have guided me.  I don’t have to learn any more about how the media operates, for example.  I know how they substitute narrative for spin.  I know what their objectives are.  I know that they’re not media.  But I have to consult it all because that’s what show prep is.  Some of it, I mean, there is some in media that is real, like poll results is real news.  The poll itself, ah, dicey, you have to rely on your instincts.  What you really have to guard, what I really have to guard against is falling prey to everyday media tricks.

Everybody does it, including me, and I am the head honcho of warning people what to look for, and even I get seduced by some media stuff.  So I know how difficult it is.  What I usually rely on is, take the New York Times, for example.  I don’t read it, because I know what’s gonna be in it.  I know what the columnists, both conservative and liberal, are gonna say, issue by issue, generically.

I know what the front-page coverage of any news story is likely to be.  I know how it’s been trending at the New York Times for years.  It’s been trending in a direction anti-America for the longest time. America has become the problem in the world, and everything about America related to its founding specifically, and, if I may get bold, if you really want to know where the Drive-By Media is today, white traditional America is the root of all that’s wrong.  White Christian America is the root of all that’s wrong.

If that’s your foundational understanding, then you can read anything in the New York Times and understand it.  Take this Trump piece, the hit piece on Trump that they ran on Sunday by these two reporters.  It was classic.  The moment I read the story I knew what the objective was.  The only thing that surprised me about the story is why now and not August or September?  I mean, they put a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of energy into this story.  Two primary reporters.  But they’re out there digging deep.

And, like Dr. Krauthammer, I said, “Is this it?”  Because I knew there wasn’t one word of that that was going to bother a single Trump supporter.  And, in fact, much of it was going to buttress support for Trump.  Because the story portrayed Trump, once again, as a real guy, as a standard, ordinary, average American guy.  But to modern leftists and liberals, the Pajama Boys, the metrosexuals, the feminized male population today that’s epitomized the Democrat Party, white traditional maleness is the problem with the country.  Its predatory. It’s brutal. It’s obscenely spoken.

Traditional white American males are truck drivers, construction workers, and they wolf whistle at women and they’re dirty and they’re filthy and they cuss and they don’t care about anything but themselves.  But they are patriotic, which makes ’em also a problem, ’cause they’re America first no matter what, and that’s a problem.  Because in the view of the New York Times, America is the problem, America’s not the solution, and traditional white male Christendom, if you really look, I mean, that’s the root of all problems today that Obama and the Democrats are trying to transform out of.

Every victim in this country happens to be victimized by white Christians, predominantly men.  That is where you find, you trace back to the founding, that is where you’ll find the tentacle of all the evil, the discrimination, the unfairness, the lack of civil rights, all of the stuff that the left finds abhorrent, that’s where it is.  And Trump fits that definition to a T.  He is boorish, he’s loud, he’s outspoken, and all of that means he’s inconsiderate, he uses people, he’s powerful, he steps on people and sweeps others that don’t please him out of his way. He’s not accommodating.  That’s the caricature.

So they write a story — well, they actually conceive the story and then proceed to write it.  They don’t research it, report it, and then write it.  They get their concept, they get their narrative, and then they go out and try to find the evidence.  And when they don’t, they have to manufacture it or use half quotes or what have you.  But nevertheless the story on Trump is actually no different than painting by dots, you know, color by dots.  You fill in the blanks based on what their own biases are and what their preconceptions are of the people they find to be the problem.

So Trump magically, automatically is going to fall into or fit into that profile.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons why he’s successful, you see, because traditional white male Christians are livid that the people they have subjugated, subordinated, and victimized, are rising up and taking their world away from them.  The New York Times applauds that, celebrates that, thinks it’s justice, social or otherwise.  Trump becomes the epitome of that.  Any Republican presidential nominee would be to one degree or another, but they can’t get away with it anymore, and for substantive reasons.

Twenty-five years ago the Times could get away with that.  The Times could have destroyed Trump with that story 25 years ago.  They could have made it very problematic if all of this were happening 25 years ago.  But they can’t get away with it today.  They can’t get away with out-and-out lies or fraud or out-of-context quotes or misrepresentation.  Just like Dan Rather and the boys didn’t get away with the forged documents about George Bush and the National Guard.

Now, they still get away with some stuff, don’t  misunderstand.  They have some misses, but they have some hits, too.  Generally their successes are against people who haven’t the slightest idea how to fight back.  They haven’t the slightest idea how to rebut or don’t have the desire to and just let it happen and trust that the readers will understand the truth.  They will trust that the readers will read the story and remember things they read about the subject four years ago that don’t quite fit with this.

And you can’t rely on the readers to figure something out because the attention span happens to be two minutes after they’ve read the story.  And then they’re on to something else.  That’s why you have to hit back pretty quickly and immediately if that is your policy of doing so.  And it is Trump’s.

Trump told Megyn Kelly last night — she had a special on TV last night and Trump told her last night that if he perceives himself to be wounded, he is going to react immediately to unwound himself.  If he gets shot, he’s gonna go to a hospital, get the bullet taken out, get sewn up and get back out as soon as he can.  He’s gonna get rid of the wound.  He’s not gonna let it sit there and fester, especially, you know, when it’s a crock.

But the point is, how do you spot this?  In my case with the New York Times, I just wait to be proven wrong in believing that most of what I’m getting there is just agenda-driven drivel.  CNN, same thing.  MSNBC, same thing.  I just know.  I know that they’re not news.  I know that they’re not media.  They’re not telling me things I don’t know, as an objective.  They may tell me things I don’t know, but that’s not what their purpose is.

Their purpose is to promote some and destroy others.  Sometimes it’s subtle; sometimes it’s flat-out, direct, and in your face.  But I do it every day.  For people that don’t, it becomes even more problematic.  And there’s something also that happens to everybody, including me.  If it’s published, anywhere — if it’s written down and published in a mass-media way — which could be the most obscure website in the world… Somebody can send you some of the most ridiculous stuff.  I’ll give you one thing: Do not believe any mass e-mails you get that have been circulating the internet.

One out of 25 of them may be true; 24 out of 25 are gonna be bogus, made up, abject lies.  But they’re seductive because it’s written and it looks like people have researched it. The written word, there’s something about it. The published, written word, there’s something that automatically grants it truth and credibility — as opposed to, say, the spoken word, radio or TV (doesn’t matter), or just casual conversation. Somebody can tell you something that they know for absolutely fact is true.

You tell ’em you know for an absolute fact it is true. You tell ’em, and they’ll still demand, “What’s your source?” and it’ll have to be a source they can go read.  This is something that journalism professors and journalists have known for years.  It’s why they’re so upset at what’s happening the newspaper business.  It used to be a gold mine for opinion manipulation, the written word.