CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH:  You bet.

CALLER:  I just wanted to weigh in on this whole plagiarism thing.

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  I think it’s pretty ridiculous because it’s not like Michelle had some kind of big revelation or uncovered some new theory.  It’s something that we all as Americans pretty much agree with, we say it to our kids all the time.  My husband and I have this conversation several times a week, and we talk to our kids about this, so it sounds familiar because we all say it all the time.

RUSH:  That’s an interesting point.  Why, then, is it such a big deal when we hear it from politicians?  Why does everyone applaud it, why does everyone go, “Yeah, yeah, you tell ’em!  You say it!”  Why does everybody go bananas when they hear what you teach your kids every day. It’s almost so common, you could almost call these things cliches.

CALLER:  Exactly.  I think they all applaud it because I think we feel that we’re really losing or moral compass here.  And when people say something really simple and basic, it’s ridiculous that we applaud it, but that’s what we’re going towards.  I mean, we’re so far from where we were that even the simplest things are —

RUSH:  Listen to what you just said.  I listen to what people say.  You just said everybody says this, everybody tells their kids this, everybody raises their kids with this, and yet we see it said during a political convention and we act like, “Wow, it’s a lost philosophy, and they’ve just discovered it again.  All right.”  We act like nobody says it anymore, and when somebody on TV says it, be it on a convention stage or just on a TV show, “Yeah, right on.”  So while everybody thinks that everybody else is raising their kids this way, it still is reacted to like it’s a lost philosophy recently discovered when we hear it said in a political event.

CALLER:  Well, you know what?  I think there’s one difference.  I think that people, a lot of people still raise their kids this way, but society is not.  And so that makes us think that nobody is thinking this anymore, because society has gone so far from it.

RUSH:  Well, see, that’s where I was leading you.  I was hoping you would say because —

CALLER:  I bit that hook.  (laughing)

RUSH:  Because the fact is that every parent doesn’t raise their kids this way anymore, and it’s probably an increasing number of people who don’t even believe it anymore, who think that that is part of the rigged game. This whole business of working hard and apply yourself and you’ll get ahead, that’s rigged, that isn’t ever gonna work for me, ’cause my daddy doesn’t know anybody, or my family isn’t prominent or whatever, or I’m a minority. You pick it, a lot of people, this is part of the old traditional institution aspect of America that a lot of people have lost faith in.  People in politics are presumed to be in positions of power and influence.  So when they utter these things, it makes people, “All right, all right, maybe it’s coming back,” because most people in their hearts think we’re losing all of these beliefs.

CALLER:  I agree.

RUSH:  And that’s why it stands out.  And that’s why it’s such a big deal.  And that’s why I say, “Okay, so when you hear it from X, Y, or Z personality, do you believe they mean it?”  When you heard Melania say it — everybody in the world has said it before, it’s the point, be it Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Deval Patrick, me, take your pick, do you believe her when she says it, do you believe Democrats when they say those things?  That’s what it’s really gonna boil down to.  I appreciate the call, Terry.  Very shrewd of you.

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RUSH: Chris in Charleston, South Carolina.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hey.  Good afternoon, Rush.  Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH:  You bet, sir.

CALLER:  My thought was about the Melania Trump flap with Michelle Obama.  When I hear Melania Trump speak, I hear someone that’s speaking with conviction and believes in what she’s saying, but when I hear Michelle Obama speak similar words what I hear is a liberal trying to sound as much like a conservative as possible while trying to seek a nomination.  If you listen to speeches that liberals give while they’re in the nomination process it’s really striking how much they try and sound like conservatives, but we all really know that that’s just a cover.

RUSH:  Yeah, you’re exactly right and it’s something that I have observed my entire time as an adult in politics, and that’s the realization that liberals cannot win elections promising to do what they really are gonna do.  They can’t win by being who they are.  They have to try to adopt philosophies and agendas and policies that represent mainstream American thought, and then they got elected and they start in on that agenda that has nothing to do with what they campaigned on.  Sadly, they never get penalized for it.

The Republicans, they run around and they campaign on things and they never do them, and they get savaged for it.  The Democrats get away with all this lying.  They never do the things they say they’re gonna do.  They do worse.  But folks, there’s a reality we have to face out there, and it is that there’s a sizable percentage of this country that does not see it the way you see it, Chris.  A lot of us do.  You hear Michelle talking about the American dream and hard work, and we suspect that she really snickers at it in private.

We think she probably really resents it because she doesn’t think there’s a level playing field out there. So all this business of hard work taking you where you want to go probably doesn’t apply, because in the world of the aggrieved American progressive, America is rotten, America’s never been fair, America’s always been rigged against whatever minority you want to mention.  It’s always been the white power structure probably rooted in Christianity, that’s paved the way and rigged it for themselves, and penalized and punished and ignored everybody else.

So we are approaching payback time now, which is what the Obama Regime and all the issues they are promoting represents.  And there are a lot of people that don’t care.  There are a lot of people out there, progressives, that will let Michelle Obama, Barack Obama say whatever they have to do to beat us, ’cause that’s what gives them their thrill and their satisfaction.  And if they lie in order to get elected and then start implementing a Democrat, leftist agenda, fine and dandy.  That’s even better, as far as they’re concerned.

I mentioned yesterday, with all of the cultural rot, with all of the compromises that have occurred in American national security, Obama’s sitting here with a 56% approval rating.  You know, you can’t just sit there and throw the polls out.  You can’t selectively say, “Ah, I don’t believe that poll.”  And then when you get a good poll, believe it.  You can’t deal with this sort of thing that way.  So you realize that there are a sizable percentage of Americans who don’t think like you do, Chris, and don’t think like I do.

And the question is, are we outnumbered yet?  Question is, is that number on the other side growing or is it static?  And then even the bigger question is, why do we spend so much time on this?  Because, frankly, we’re trying to change minds.  I had somebody ask me over the weekend, knowing that I have been doing this 27, 28 years, “Why do you still do it?  What do you have left to prove,” they said.  “What do you have left to say that you haven’t said?”

And I said, “Well, I love it.”

“Okay, aside from that, I know you love it, yeah, understandable, but why are you doing it, what are you trying to do?  Are you just preaching to the choir?”

I said, “No, that is not what I’m trying to do.  I am trying to persuade.  I am trying to change minds.”  That is part and parcel of what I’m doing.  I’ve always assumed — you know, I think I’m mistaken in this, too.  I’ve always assumed that most people who do commentary, be it spoken word or written, print, I’ve always thought that they were about changing minds, and I’ve learned that that’s not the case.

Some are just content to get their opinions on record, but what happens after that is of no concern to them because they don’t think that it happens that way.  And those are the people that I’ve always judged as not really being in the fight.  Yeah, they are commentators, they might be right on a lot of things, and they might be really good, and they might have really forceful, breathtaking columns or comments that make you go, “Yeah, yeah, man,” but when you ask ’em why they’re doing it, “Are you trying to change minds?” “Oh, no, I could never change anybody’s mind.  I’m not gonna change their mind.  That’s not what I’m doing.  That’s not why I’m doing it.”

It is for me.  Why come here today and spend time on this Melania Trump plagiarism charge?  What’s the point? Some people think; “The smart thing would be to ignore it, Rush, you’re falling into a trap.  They want you talking about this.  They don’t want you talking about Baton Rouge.  They don’t want you talking about Black Lives Matter.  They don’t want you talking about Hillary Clinton.  They don’t want you talking about Barack Obama.  They don’t want you talking about the Iranian nuke deal.  They don’t want you talking about unemployment.  They don’t want you talking about Rudy.  They don’t want you talking about what a great speech he gave.  They want you talking about Melania, who’s not running for anything.”

I’m fully aware that that’s an objective.  But I think I can do it all.  I don’t have to come here and ignore the Melania controversy in order to make sure the other stuff is discussed ’cause I’ve got three hours here.  I can do it all.  So the reason you do the Melania stuff — and it’s every day. Every day we wake up and somebody else on our side is under attack.  Every day somebody on our side is in somebody’s crosshairs, political crosshairs targeted for ruination or destruction.

And I have always considered one of my responsibilities to be defending those people because that’s tantamount to defending what we all believe, which is what really is under assault in these things.  So the assault on Melania Trump is an assault on Trump, which is an assault on the Republican Party, which is an assault on the Republican campaign, which is all oriented toward denying Republican victory.

And a school of thought says, “Yeah, Rush, just show up, ignore that, you know, focus on the positive. You’re trying to change minds. Tell people what they ought to know from last night, what really big happened last night.”  Which makes sense, but then there’s also the part of me that thinks it’s crucially important to deconstruct the left, as an educational or informative exercise and to tell people how to recognize what’s going on and how to reject it honestly and intellectually and how to not be worried about it. How to realize what it is and how not to be affected by it.

Look how easily they took out Sarah Palin, among people on our side.  It didn’t really take them much.  And they had help from people on our side taking Sarah Palin out.  She was tremendously popular and was, in fact, the reason many Republicans even voted for John McCain.  And yet they took her out with plenty of aid and assistance from people on our side.

I had people tell me, “Rush, the media’s destroyed her.  There’s no sense. We’re not gonna get anywhere defending her.  She’s toast.  They’ve taken her out. You gotta let it go.”  And I just can’t stomach that.  I can’t just sit here and let all that happen. So that’s part and parcel.  They’re trying to take what was a great speech Melania Trump gave last night and ruin the whole thing, destroy the whole thing in the minds of people that I call low-information voters, for people that didn’t watch the convention, they’re doing their level best day in and day out.  They never take us on on our ideas.

They try always to destroy anybody who pops up that may be persuasive, who may be effective.  That is their agenda.  I just can’t sit here and twiddle my thumbs while they do that.  Almost a compulsion with me to mount a defense, as I did with Clarence Thomas over that silly sexual harassment garbage with Anita Hill.  It seems like that’s every day.  It’s every day.  And the reason I do it is to change minds — or to, in this case, maybe prevent minds from being corrupted by a media who are purposely attempting to do just that.

It may be just the pebble thrown at a battleship given the size of the Drive-By Media and their focused, unified efforts to destroy people.  But to me it seems necessary.  And to arm people, such as you, with information that would help you refute, ’cause you’re gonna run into “nattering nabobs.”  You’re gonna run into uninformed people who are gonna be repeating what they hear in the media about Melania Trump being a thief and whatever.

And if you listen to this program you’re armed with information that can refute it, then all the better as far as I’m concerned.  So that’s why I do it.  I think it’s worth it.  I think, sadly, it’s necessary.  And then you add to all this the fact that the Republican Party institutionally hasn’t seen the need to defend itself or to even oppose Obama and his agenda. It makes it all the more difficult or challenging. But yet to me, it has to be done.