RUSH: In the past practitioners of this — the harassers and abusers — have been lionized. They have been elevated to positions of great authority and power within the Democrat Party, and all kinds of effort was made to save them, including the eventual bastardization of feminism.

The feminists literally destroyed their entire core belief system in exchange for maintaining Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and others like that in power. Anyway, back to the audio sound bites from the archives, Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites. 2012. There’s a TV network called Bravo. Of course, many probably know that because that’s where the Real Housewives shows are, aren’t they? Real Housewives of Wherever. They’re all on Bravo. Everybody knows Bravo.

Well, there’s a guy who had a show on there on Bravo called Andy Cohen, and on a program called Watch What Happens Live, during a “Plead the Fifth” segment, he spoke with former Today show hostette Katie Couric about Matt Lauer. She coanchored the Today show with Matt Lauer from 1991 to 2006. But wait. Matt Lauer didn’t start there ’til… She co-anchored with somebody else. But, anyway, Cohen is asking her about the most annoying habit that Matt Lauer had.

COHEN: What is Matt’s most annoying habit?

COURIC: Hmm. He pinches me on the ass a lot.

RUSH: Ohhh! “He pinches me on the ass a lot!” Now, wait. Did he just talk about pinching you on the ass or did he actually do it? In this case, Matt Lauer actually did it. Now, this aired. This aired on Bravo in 2012, and it didn’t get a whole lot of attention. But things like this are now going to be circulating, resurfacing, popping up out there. And you know what we ought to do? We ought to start a pool, “Who’s next?”

You know, kind of like you have a fantasy football league and drinking games? Let’s start a pool, and you can bet on the names of famous Democrats in the media, in their party, and in Hollywood. Who’s next on the list that is going to be accused? I mean, if such a list exists, would you have ever put Matt Lauer on it? (interruption) You wouldn’t have. See, that’s an illustration of how shocking this is. (interruption) Katie Couric stood for it? Well, obviously she did! Obviously, she stood for it; sat for it too.

But… (interruption) Oh, just because she sat doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to pinch her. A pincher is gonna pinch. If there’s one thing we know about these guys, a groper is gonna grope, a grabber is gonna grab, a pincher is gonna pinch. (interruption) Well, now, wait a second. Now, that’s… Snerdley just said, “What does this say about the strong women thing?” I’m gonna tell you, I really think that the floodgates are about to open on this all over the place, not just confined to famous people in the media or in Hollywood or in the political parties.

The reason the women haven’t stood up is because all of this occurred when they did not have any power to do anything about it. Look at how long all these guys got away with this. That’s the big thing that’s changing here. Look, I have said I don’t know how many times over the course of this program in discussing feminism and the traditional roles that men and women have in relationships… If you’ve heard me say it once, you’re probably frustrated by how many times I’ve said it.

I always have believed that in a civilized society, it’s women who have the ultimate power. It’s women who say yes or no to so many things — yes or no to going out on a date, yes or no to marriage, yes or no to everything. It’s women who have the power, in a civilized society. Well, obviously these have not been what we would call civilized circumstances. These have been work related. If Matt Lauer or somebody like that’s out there abusing you, I guarantee you part of it is the threat, “If you say anything about it, you’re gonna lose your job.

“You can’t beat me in a power struggle.” So I wouldn’t hold it against the women here in these circumstances, ’cause when it comes to this kind of behavior, it’s not just the behavior. There’s the threat, there’s the attitude, there is the callous disregard for one’s human in this business. This is despicable stuff. We’re talking about it here in the abstract. But in the workplace, this is indefensible. (interruption) Well, they might slap you in the face, but they obviously did not slap Matt Lauer.

Maybe if one of them did and we don’t know about it. Where is she now, is the point? Let’s use a different example? Let’s go to Anytown, USA, and the town bully happens to be a guy, and he goes into a restaurant regularly and is continually harassing the waitress. Everybody sees it and everybody knows about it but this guy — for some reason — has enough pull or power in town that nobody does anything about it.

Maybe the woman has stood up to him, but it’s still unnerving. We don’t know that women didn’t stand up to Harvey Weinstein at some point and pay the price for doing so. But they all feared that there would be a huge price, and the price is losing not just your job but your career. So this became the equivalent of having to eat the excrement sandwich for a lot of these women.

And I think we’re at a threshold here where this is about to change in a huge way, and then there is a risk that the pendulum is gonna swing a little bit too far here for a while where all it’s gonna take is one allegation and automatically the guy is guilty because there has been so much obvious guilt that has been publicized here. That’s just a quirk of nature of the way our culture and society works.

The pendulum swings back and forth, and sometimes it goes way, way, way out of whack before it gets back to the center again. But I’ve always thought, you know, when we talk about this in the abstract, especially for people that don’t do it, you know, for guys that do not treat women this way and have not seen this kind of behavior, you joke about it, and you might even say, “Well, why don’t the women just stand up and punch the guy in the face or why don’t the women just –” And it doesn’t work that way in the workplace.

For one thing, the guys are choosing powerless women on purpose. That’s part of the insurance policy of engaging in this kind of behavior. I mean, you note that the actresses coming forth with Weinstein, this all happened back when they were nobodies, when they were on their career path trying to become successful and so forth. But I think it’s despicable and the hypocrisy here knows no bounds.

I asked a question before the break at the top of the hour, is it possible that we are in the midst of a crackup and breakdown of the hypocritical leftists in the Drive-By Media and the establishment entertainment sectors, political sectors? And, if so, has it been brought to us by the one and only Donald Trump? There is so much of this now that it’s impossible to escape the hypocrisy.

Here you have Bill Clinton and it’s widely known now what he did and what he got away with. The stories about Ted Kennedy are coming out. Now all of these addendum, Weinstein and Garrison Keillor today and Charlie Rose and so forth. At some point people are gonna pick up, if they’re not already, “Wait a minute. These are the people telling us they love and respect women. These are the guys telling us that they’re big feminists and that they’re pro-choice and all this.”

I think we’re a little distance away from those same people, “Wait a minute. These are the guys telling us Republicans are conducting a War on Women.” I don’t think that realization has hit yet. We need to further that one along. We need to help people remember that, that these reprobates are the ones accusing us of conducting a War on Women.

But we saw in the primary, in the Republican primary, we saw what happened to people when they get branded by Trump, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted, Crooked Hillary, Crazy Bernie, Pocahontas. You know, when Trump brands you, you own it. That’s how people know you. Even if they don’t like Trump or agree with Trump, not even Trump supporters, that’s how people now think of Elizabeth Warren.

And Donald Trump has been branding the Drive-Bys as fake news for over a year. And it really bugs ’em. They do not have the ability to laugh it off, as I would think they would do. But they take themselves so seriously, folks. I want to ask you, do you know people that take themselves so seriously that they’re not even real? They take themselves so seriously, they are so self-focused, so inwardly focused, they’re not even aware of the existence of other people and what those people feel, think, or say? And they certainly don’t care. That’s the Drive-By Media.

They take themselves so damn seriously, whether it is the acknowledgment of their business in the First Amendment of the Constitution, or whether it’s just the way they’re trained or whether it’s just owing to their personality, they take themselves so damned seriously. And here comes Donald Trump insulting them in the most successful and profound, effective way, calling them fake. If I were them, I’d laugh it off. I would ignore it. But they can’t, because they are so, so self-important. They are so self-focused.

So could it be that on top of their icons getting tossed aside like the dirty laundry they are — Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Michael Aresco, the guy Sweeney at NPR, these institutions are failing bigly, or at least they’re having the deck chairs moved.

When Trump brands somebody as something, it sticks. And fake news has stuck. It’s gotten to the point now — I repeat this ’cause I just think it’s hilarious — CNN gets all out of joint about being invited to the Christmas party at the White House Friday and said they’re not going. They’re not going. “Why, he calls us fake news. We wouldn’t dare. We wouldn’t grace the White House with our presence. We wouldn’t take that deep step down.”

And what’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders do? (paraphrasing) “Hey, finally some good news out of CNN. They’re not showing up at our party!” CNN becomes another laughingstock, except within the swamp, where they’re all wringing their hands over it, “This is not the way this is supposed to go. Trump’s the guy that’s supposed to be the butt of the joke by now. Trump’s the guy that’s supposed to be barely hanging on. We’re stars. We’re important! We are the news media. We are the power base in this country, and they are laughing at us?”

And they can’t take being laughed at. They cannot take being the brunt of the joke, because they take themselves so seriously. Conservatives have whined and moaned about the media and for the most part totally given in to the power of the media for decades, but not Donald Trump. Trump is one guy to stand up to these fallible bullies and back ’em into a corner and applaud when they tell him they’re not coming to his Christmas party.

I always knew — man, there’s some stories I still can’t tell you from the television show days. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell this one, but I’ve always known and I’ve always suggested the way of dealing with some of these people in the Drive-By is to go after them personally the way they go after everybody else. They go after everybody as paragons of virtue. They go after everybody as though they occupy the highest pedestal of morality and virtue.

And they sit there in judgment of everybody else’s moral failings. When you turn it around and try to look at their moral failings, how many illegitimate children have they had, how many DUIs have they got, they have an outraged reaction. “You can’t do that. We’re journalists, First Amendment,” blah, blah. That’s what Trump does in his own way. He turns everything back on them by way of fake news and has caused there to be more questioning of the legitimacy of the news media than there ever has been in our lifetime.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to the phones to Shawnee, Kansas, which not far from Overland Park, Kansas, where I used to live in shack and Olathe, Kansas. Here’s Mark. Great to have you, sir. How are you?

CALLER: Good. Good to talk to you, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I’ve listened to you since 1990 when I carried mail and you were on a little transistor radio in my shirt pocket.

RUSH: (laughing) Oh, wow. Transistor radio.

CALLER: Yes indeed.

RUSH: The good old days.

CALLER: To get to the point, this whole thing started to get Trump, Roy Moore, whoever they could on the Republican side. I think it’s spread a little bit further now to more of a feminist thing where, who’s gonna replace Matt Lauer? Think it’s gonna be another guy or do you think they’re gonna put a female in there just because of what he did.

RUSH: Now, wait a minute. You’re on to something here. Do you have time to hold over through the break?

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: Good. ‘Cause that’s coming up in about 45 seconds. You say this started out as a way to get Trump. And that’s undeniable, but I think there’s another element to this that people are forgetting. And maybe not forgetting. Just not considering. The modern — how to phrase this. This started as an effort to inflict great damage on Fox News. Do not forget that aspect of this. And in that context, it’s fascinating to see how this is reverberating and rebounding back at ’em. Hang on a minute. Don’t hang up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’re back with Mark in Shawnee, Kansas — again, not far from Overland Park, Kansas, where I used to live in a shack — and you have an interesting point here. You’re thinking that this is the chickification of America that is occurring quite rapidly, right?

CALLER: Absolutely, and it may not stop here. It’s gonna continue on with CEOs of companies, with congressmen, with senators, and probably even the presidency in 2020. Wait ’til November 2018; you’re gonna hear a lot more about this. Every female that’s running against a male is gonna say, “We can’t have this no more. It’s gotta stop. We’ve gotta turn this around.” I was listening to Tucker Carlson last night, and he had some lady on from Teen Vogue or something says doesn’t matter if a few innocent men get caught up in this net, we’ve gotta make a stop to this, and we’ve gotta empower the women.

RUSH: Now, I will concur with this, but I’m gonna change a term. I have you said auto the term chickification of America quite a bit, but this is not it to me. The chickification of America is turning men into women. This is not that. This happens to be, in a lot of these cases… That dunderhead from Teen Vogue notwithstanding, this happens to be a legitimate issue, and what’s gonna happen here is the pendulum swinging too far. And, you’re right. Like Matt Lauer’s replacement is gonna have to a woman, right?

CALLER: Absolutely. Not only that, you can see it coming. And I don’t think it started out this way, but like you said, the pendulum is gonna swing and it’s gonna swing real hard the other way. If you put women in power, this won’t be happen no more.

RUSH: Uh… (sigh) Yeah.

CALLER: And Hillary kind of was on that same platform when she ran for the presidency, glass ceiling and everything else.

RUSH: See, now, this is my point. Your definition of chickification differs from mine. This has been going on for the longest time, the segregation of men and women from the standpoint that only women can represent women, that only blacks can represent blacks, and that only white men can represent white men, that white men can’t represent African-Americans. This kind of segregation in our politics has been going on for a long, long time. It is directly tied to liberalism and its effort to divide people into groups of victims against one massively huge majority, which is white Christian men.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: They are the target. Now, this, though? This sexual harassment? This is undeniably happening, and there needs to be a price. What my fear is is that if you combine this view that only women can understand women. Only women with represent women; men cannot. Your theory is that this is gonna lead to more female CEOs. If the replacement of Matt Lauer is not another guy but, rather, a woman? That’s gonna represent nothing more, I think, than corporate overreacting like corporations have overreacted to the so-called majority of the people believing in climate change, when they really haven’t.

There haven’t been those majorities. But, you know, corporations want to sell things, and they’re gonna target the vast majority of people they can; and if they believe that the vast majority of them believe in climate change, then they’re gonna do their best to make customers think they, too, at the corporation care about it. This is gonna manifest itself such as women will only feel safe in the workplace with other women.

CALLER: If you were a white male Republican and you had an intern, and you were to have a meeting or anything else with her, would you have her in your office alone at this point, even if you had the best intentions in the world?

RUSH: You ask…? (chuckles) Me?

CALLER: Or a senator or a congressman or anybody like that.

RUSH: Well, that’s —

CALLER: Almost it’s like Russian roulette. Who is on the other side of the desk and what they’ll say after the meeting’s over to ruin you?

RUSH: Clearly, a common sense thing to do is never put yourself in that circumstance.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: And most people will act accordingly, going forward.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: But when Mike Pence suggested that just a few short months ago, look at the reaction he got.

CALLER: I remember that.

RUSH: He was mocked.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: He was laughed at. He was said to be discriminating against women by denying them an opportunity to learn from him.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: You can’t win with these people. The example of Trump is don’t try to accommodate or appease ’em. Just be who you are and don’t be afraid to attack their phoniness and their hypocrisy. He does it routinely, he does it instinctively, and they don’t know how to deal with it. It can be done. This kind of inertia can be overcome and stopped. But this is gonna fall dangerously close to the area of political correctness, and sadly when most people confronted with political correctness cower to it rather than stand up to it.

But I have a lot of people on the other side of the glass here today who think it’s not automatic that Matt Lauer’s replacement’s gonna be a woman and that it’s not automatic that all these guys that are being dispatched because of abuse and harassment and so forth are gonna be replaced by women. Now, what is gonna happen where you’re really right on is that the feminist movement is going to push for these kinds of things. The feminist movement and the left is gonna find a way to politicize this and further corrupt this for their own political benefit.

And, make no mistake: Even now they’re looking for ways that they can blame Trump for what happened to Matt Lauer. You might laugh. “Come on, Rush! There’s no way they…” You do not know them as I do if you reject that possibility. I’m not saying they’re gonna succeed, but I’m telling you they’re plotting. They’re looking at ways. Their team is dropping like flies, folks. This is not what was supposed to happen! Trump was supposed to drop like flies. Remember how this started.

The modern era of this did not start with Harvey Weinstein. It started at Fox News. This started out as an effort to do great damage and harm to Fox News, and there’s a lot of schadenfreude happening here now, because the people who were just happy as they could be and cheering all over the place over what had happened to Roger Ailes? Well, isn’t it funny! Look what’s happening to the cheerleaders. Look what’s happening to cheering squad now. They’re dropping like flies. Every one of these people… Do not doubt me.

When Charlie Rose is reporting on the sexual harassment of Roger Ailes, he’s knowing what he’s doing while he’s reporting on it. While Matt Lauer’s reporting on all this, he knows what he’s been doing. And yet, these people continued to report on Republicans as the enemy and try to destroy them with these same kind of allegations, knowing full well what they themselves have been doing in their own lives. You might call it karma. You might call it schadenfreude.

You might call it life balancing out. But regardless, from the standpoint of the left, this was not supposed to be how this is happening. This is not what was supposed to happen. This is not the way this was supposed to go at all. They were to never be exposed. Only Trump was to be exposed, and Trump was to pay the price and Trump was to be sent packing, and the Republicans were gonna learn never to ever again send somebody to Washington like Trump from the outside. Look, don’t misunderstand me.

When I asked at the top of this hour, I asked, is it possible that we’re in the midst of the crackup and breakdown of the hypocrites in Hollywood, the media, the Democrat Party, I’m not saying that that’s happened. I’m asking, is it possible that we are seeing the beginnings of it? I would certainly hope so, but we don’t have near enough time in or data to know whether or not this is actually happening.

But I tell you this, you look at this objectively and honestly, how many of you throughout your entire lives ever thought that there would be this kind of reckoning and exposure of people in the media and the Democrat Party and in Hollywood? How many of you ever thought that this kind of price would ever be paid by these people? I would venture to say none of you.

No matter how much you thought it would be cool or funny, no matter how many of you thought it might be justified, I doubt very many people ever thought anything like this would ever happen. Because in terms of media and Hollywood, they’ve always been seen as impenetrably powerful. Can’t dent them. Can’t win. Can’t overpower them. It’s something we just have to learn to live with, tolerate, get used to. Never did anybody expect anything like this.

Did you ever think that a presidential administration would applaud and laugh at a news organization rejecting its invitation to a Christmas party and celebrate it? The answer is no. And it’s, again, why so many Trump voters are deliriously happy and supportive of this. And it’s not because it’s payback time. It’s because of genuine, heartfelt anger at the unfairness, at the one sidedness, call it bias, if you will, but this is far beyond bias. This has been a stacked deck for us for all of our lives. This is just a little bit of balance here on the seesaw, if you will, or the pendulum.

And it’s all because of Trump. Trump is driving them insane. Well, I say all. They’re playing a role in it too. But this kind of stuff, if Hillary had been elected none of this would be happening and we wouldn’t have the economy we have. If Crazy Bernie’d been elected, none of this would be going on. The sexual harassers would be still harassing. Harvey Weinstein would still be doing what he’s doing. So would everybody else. None of this would have happened. And we wouldn’t have anywhere near this kind of economy, and the North Koreans would not feel the slightest bit deterred.

It’s a markedly different set of circumstances, and this is exactly what people voted for Trump for, why they did. Still a lot of ground to cover. Still a lot of things to accomplish. And the opposition from the left is still as vibrant and strong as it ever has been. It’s just they have been knocked off their game.