RUSH: The French election is another thing. The bottom line here is, folks: Nothing’s gonna change in France. Not a single thing is gonna change in France. These two candidates were remarkably the same in their issues. The biggest difference between the two of them — the 39-year-old Macron and Marine Le Pen — was immigration. She wanted to limit it to 10,000 for, you know, a month or a year or whatever, and he wants a limit of 210,000 on it. They’re both more socialist than centrist, especially the guy.

But Marine Le Pen is socialist, too, because all of France is socialist. She just happened to have a little nationalist tinge to it. But they’re both socialists. And there’s a guy that wrote at PJ Media named Bruce Bawer. He has lived in France for a while, and this is the best short explanation that I’ve found to explain what happened in France. People in France are “terrified to speak up about” Islam, militant Islamic terrorism, Muslims. “[T]hey’re terrified to speak up about it, let alone do anything about it.

“Viewed through American eyes, it may seem a European thing (although it’s not as uncommon in America, alas, as it used to be).” In other words, there are plenty of Americans with a blind eye rather than deal with it. Rather than confront it, just ignore it; hope it never happens where you live. But don’t dare speak up about anything ’cause it might make you a racist. Don’t dare do anything about it because it might get you get called out in the media as a pig or whatever. So people just blindly laid down and accept things because it’s too risky and speak up and stand up.

And in the case of France, it was even too risky to stand up and vote. So he writes, “Part of what I’m saying is that these people [in France] don’t have much of a sense of ownership in their own countries, their own communities. They’re used to being ruled over. They’re used to the idea that there are people above them in the hierarchy whose job it is to think about, and take care of, the big things while they — the citizens, the [hamsters and the] mice — take care of their own little lives,” and try to stay out of the way.

But they’re used to be — and they are. The European Union is gonna continue to run France as it has been running France for the last number of years. The left is trying to say… In fact, we got a sound bite from Christiane Amanpour. “That’s it! The people of French said (summarized), ‘Basta! No more to Trump!’ The citizens of France didn’t want anything Trumpian in France and so they stood up, voting against Trump.”

It’s insane! Folks, no matter where you look, there is insanity at the highest levels in government and in business.

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RUSH: If you look at the French election, this ought to prove once and for all the Russians are not very good at rigging elections, because, after all, until the polls closed in France, all we heard was how the Russians were pulling out all the stops for Le Pen, including hacking Macron’s emails. Did you hear that story right before the vote on Sunday? “Oh, no! Look at how closely things happening in France, just like they happen here. The Russians hacked Clinton’s emails, and now it looks like there’s a major hack of Macron’s emails.”

But the French government moved in and prevented the media from releasing any of those emails. So we didn’t even know if there was a hack. The whole thing could have been a made-up story. But the meme was that the Russians were pulling out all the stops to elect Le Pen, including hacking this little kid’s emails. Which is laughable in a dozen ways, not the least being that Macron’s supposedly hacked emails were not released until after there was a ban on reporting them under French law, 48 hours before the polls opened. So the French media was banned by law from reporting on the hacked emails.

So either the Russians are incredibly incompetent or the whole thing was made up by the Macron campaign in order to feed the fearmongering about the Russians trying to rig are the election for Le Pen. My money is on the latter. And if the Russians were trying to rig election for Le Pen in the same way they rigged the election for Trump by hacking emails and then releasing them and having him embarrassed, their efforts were thwarted. How incompetent of the Russians! So nothing is gonna change in France, nothing to speak of.

The people in France… You remember, my friends, back when the Berlin Wall fell in the early 1990s. After the Wall fell, there were efforts undertaken here in the United States by many people to travel to Russia and to start working with policymakers and citizens on the reestablishment of freedom, because the communism of the Soviet Union had imploded along with the falling of the Berlin Wall. Remember there were a bunch of liberal Democrats in this country — and you who are new to the program may not even know this.

There were a bunch of Democrats and leftists who said that it was a waste of time to try to instruct the Russian people in freedom because they hadn’t had it in so long; they wouldn’t know what to do with it. They went so far as to say, “For some people, freedom just isn’t the best thing. For some people, freedom is a bad idea.” And they said it was a bad idea for citizens of the Soviet Union ’cause they hadn’t been free, essentially, since 1917.

They had become so accustomed to living under tyranny that the best outcome would be a continued controlling central state dominating their lives. So opposed to freedom in Russia was the American left and the Democrat Party, there were efforts made to thwart that. I remember Paul Weyrich led a contingent of conservatives over there to try to help the Russians — ’cause it is. I mean, it’s a shock to your system when everything’s been provided for you no matter how poorly and no matter how short supply.

When you haven’t had to engage in self-reliance for your needs, not wants, all of a sudden that is a shock to the system. It’s essentially what they’re saying about the French. It’s the same thing. When you read, well, sense of ownership is absent; they don’t think they own their country; they don’t think they own their communities; they’re used to being ruled over; they’re used to the idea there are people above them in the hierarchy whose job it is to think about and take care of the big things. So we’re being told here that the natural order of things for the French and for all of Europe is for the governing and ruling elite to continue as the governing and ruling elite.

Because the people, they’re really not equipped. They have no desire. They want to be dominated. They want to be ruled. They want to be ordered around. As long as they can buy some food and some soap, that’s it. And this is how the myth spread that freedom is not for every. And the French in this case have voted for the status quo. Nothing’s gonna change. Immigration is still gonna continue. Tax rates are still gonna skyrocket. Unemployment’s not gonna change. The unemployment rate isn’t gonna change. Terrorism is still gonna happen. It’s gonna be status quo. That’s what they elected.

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RUSH: Okay. Time to get started on the phones here, and we’re gonna go to Austin, Texas. This is Rick, and I’m glad you called, sir. Great to have you with us. How you doing?

CALLER: I am doing wonderful, Rush, and this is an incredible honor. This moment in time right now is on my bucket list, and I appreciate it so much.

RUSH: Thank you. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Yeah. I’ve listened to you since ’89 when I was in the Army when my friends turned me on to you, and I’ve listened ever since. I’m even on an iPhone talking to you because of you. (chuckles) But what you mentioned about the French election. My wife knows the language, and she’s been kind of following it a bit. And, you know, from the French perspective, I realize they have a lot of socialism tendencies, but they were basically choosing between a Donald Trump and a George Bush. I mean, there was no liberal even in the race anymore. And, you know, from their perspective, that’s kind of how they see it. And I see liberalism taking a hit, you know, there just like it’s taking a hit here.

RUSH: Well, I wish that were true. Everything that I have been able to learn about the kid over there that won the election… You know, he was in the government of Francois Hollande. He ran without a party, obviously, which was an optical thing. But the guy comes from socialist roots, as does Le Pen in her own way. The interesting thing about the French election is how many people didn’t show up and vote and the fact that none of the French two major parties were able to nominate a candidate. Both these people come from outsider parties. But Macron doesn’t represent a dramatic change. The European Union is still gonna dominate and run France.

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: And if this were kicking out… The issue in France, by the way, as best I was able to determine it myself — and I know your wife speaks the language and that probably facilitated her being able to have a direct understanding what of was being said. I had to read English translations of some of what these people were talking about, and it seemed to me that this election can be seen in what happened in Paris and the other 15 somewhat larger cities and the rest of the country. In Paris, I think 90% of the vote went to this guy.

Now, the 90% of the vote that went to Macron is the establishment, the elites, the globalists, the people that in this country are the equivalent of the K Street lobbyist bankers, Wall Street, the arts and croissant crowd. Their version of Hollywood, the fashion industry, all of the beautiful people in the 90% voted for this guy. It was not quite that bad in the other city cities, but it was close. And everywhere else it was much closer. And it was actually referendum on globalism versus nationalism. And the people voted for globalism. There were enough people in the cities to overwhelm the vote outside the cities.

And the people in the cities are doing — relative to other people — quite well. Unemployment’s not as bad. The economy’s not as bad. If you get outside the cities — and not just in suburban areas, but rural areas — those are the equivalents of the Rust Belt and places in America which have lost manufacturing. But the real thing that you happen was Paris itself has become segregated and violent because of militant Islamic terrorism, and the vote does not reflect any anger or disagreement or any willingness to do anything about it. And that’s the stunning thing. They voted to accept the status quo rather than cause problems.

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RUSH: If you look at geographically speaking in France, Marine Le Pen did her best in two areas. In the north of France, which is France’s industrial base, which is now its Rust Belt: Big, big, big decline there because of globalism. She did well in the south, around Marseille and Nice. Marseille is a big organized crime area in France, and Nice, of course, the Cote d’Azur, the French Riviera. Those areas have been completely overrun by Islamic immigrants. Now, Macron, the kid, on the other hand, he did his best in the cities, as I said, particularly in Paris with 90% of the vote.

They are full of immigrants. And they’re areas that the communists and the socialists have always carried. And remember, you know, I was out in Sedona, Arizona, over the weekend, and I had a couple of drivers in my group of people that were from Venice, from Italy. They were nice guys. They’d only been here a year. They’re doing their best to establish lives here, and they’ve got their business of auto transportation. And I asked them, “Why are you here?” And they said, “There’s nothing left for us in Italy. It’s been taken care of by the communists and the immigrants — and people like us, we’ve been shunned. There’s nothing for us there.”

So they fled, and they are in Sedona, Arizona. I understood completely what they were talking about. In fact, when we began a conversation about it, these guys were very informed and explicit. And the fact, they love Italy. I mean, it’s their home; they love it. They’re pained that they had to leave. Didn’t want to leave. But their government’s not looking out for them. And it’s the same as here. I mean, these are native Italians. In their minds, they were portrayed as the problem, or they were taken for granted and overlooked. It was just assumed that whatever the Italian government did, these people would suck it up.

It’s the same situation in Greece. There’s one country in the European Union — and, by the way, this is an interesting little tidbit. I can’t remember if I mentioned this on Thursday or not. Macron is angry at Poland. Poland has very strict immigration policies and is not changing them. And this guy, part of his campaign was to make Poland pull the more of its weight in the European Union and in the European region. There was an accompanying chart to this story that had all the countries of the European Union, and there were colored dots in various parts of each country to denote terrorist attacks that had happened.

And the dots were color-coded. A red dot meant multiple terror attacks had occurred in that area. Most of the dots were yellow. And they were all over the place. There was only one country where there were no dots — meaning only one country where there were no reported terrorist attacks — and that was Poland. So when I heard that Macron was dumping on Poland, claiming it wasn’t carrying its fair share, it obviously meant that Poland wasn’t opening its borders to these immigrants, as evidenced by the fact that there weren’t any terror attacks there.

Now, rather than look at Poland as maybe a guiding and learning exercise, what liberals do is they look at all the countries where there is terrorism and acknowledge why, and get mad at Poland ’cause they don’t have any. “It’s not fair that we’re having terrorist attacks in France and you in Poland aren’t having any. It’s not fair they’re having terrorist attacks in the U.K. and you people in Poland aren’t. And so the way we equalize this and the way we bring justice to this is to make sure that Poland experiences some terrorism too.”

That’s not what they say. What they say is, “Poland must start carrying its weight on refugees and immigrants,” and Poland says, “We don’t want any! We don’t want our culture disrupted or whatever. We don’t want our economic system overburdened.” And so they’ve been immune from the accompanying crime and terror attacks. Instead of looking at that and saying, “Wow, maybe we ought to start emulating Poland,” instead they look at Poland and get mad! “Poland is not carrying its weight here.” It’s 180 degrees out of phase.