RUSH: Here’s Pat in Houston.  You’re next.  Great to have you with us.  Hi.

CALLER:  Rush, thank you for taking my call.  It’s an absolute honor to speak with you, sir.

RUSH:  Appreciate that, sir.  Thank you.

CALLER:  My question for you today is on the NFL.  And since you’re such a huge fan of the league, given the ongoing issues, the concussions, the protests, Deflategate, that sort of thing, do you feel vindicated for being forced to drop your bid for the Rams and not be an owner in the league in 2016?

RUSH:  That’s a great, great question.  I don’t know about vindicated, but oftentimes I have subscribed to the belief that things happen for a reason. And I think that whole Rams episode might be, given everything that’s happened since, not just with the Rams, but what’s going on within the league, yeah, it probably was a good thing, the way it turned out. 

But then again, you know, I don’t want to get into karma or any of that. It happened the way it did, and at the time I was profoundly disappointed. And I knew exactly why it had happened, and I knew where this whole thing came from.  It came from the people that were overseeing managing the sale of the Rams, the investment bank that was dealing with it, a bunch of leftists that work at that place.  But, yeah, I have no regrets about it now.  I mean, if that answers your question.

CALLER:  Yeah, it does.  I remember at the time, I think you said you would sit back and take it, and you were disappointed, but almost exactly what you said now, things happen for a reason and, in the end, it would all work out. And feels like it did.  Sometimes the best is sit back and watch it burn and it feels like it’s starting to.

RUSH:  I’ll tell you this.  If I had any portion of ownership right now, the cash calls would just tick me off.  I mean, now the TV ratings starting to plummet, I don’t know that the league has their handle on this as to what might be behind that.  But that whole episode, I’ll never forget, all of a sudden there’s phony, fake, totally made-up quotes about me and slavery that started running in every newspaper in this country.  And they came from the lying sleaze at Media Matters.  And particularly the African-American reporters just ate it up and reported it and regurgitated it, and not once even called me. 

“Did you really say this?”  Not one call and of course I never said it.  They didn’t want me to say I didn’t say it.  They wanted to publish all that rotgut garbage.  But there were some good things that came of that that I have not, in terms of friendships, personal relationships, that I made with people as a result of that.  On balance, it all ended up fine.  I have no regrets over it.  I don’t have regrets, period.  ‘Cause you can’t do anything about ’em. 

Everything that happens in your life ends up playing a role in where you find yourself at present, everything.  You can’t cherry-pick things in your past, “Jeez, I wish I’d done that differently. Oh, wow, I wish that hadn’t happened,” ’cause it all matters, and it all is relevant.  It all is part of the recipe that makes you who you are, where you are at any particular point in time.  And on balance for me, it’s been a net positive.  Some negatives, but they’re not even close to the positives that resulted from it.  I appreciate the question, I really do.  Thank you, Pat.