RUSH: Bloomberg, Pennsylvania. Mike, I’m glad you waited. I appreciate your patience. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Good. Good. Good. I’m 68 years old. When Clinton ran, that’s when I kind of decided that the two-party system wasn’t working for me. However, I did stay a registered Democrat because sometimes I find in Pennsylvania in the primary I can vote for someone. What I do to try and make decisions is, I’ll listen to Democracy Now to get that perspective. I’ll listen to you to get the opposite perspective. And then I’ll listen to a couple stations in the middle, you know, MSNBC or ABC, and then I’ll do some reading —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. I just want to make sure. The two stations you said you think are “in the middle,” by that you mean they’re not either left or right they’re kind of moderate. What did you say they are?

CALLER: Well, I would describe them as the stations that most people are listening to. I don’t think most people tune in to Democracy Now. That’s pretty far left, and I think people might listen to you give and take but they’re not listening to you every day the way I think they’re listening to Fox or MSNBC or CNN or all those middle of the road, every night 6 o’clock news stations where most people go.

RUSH: You have forced me into a very uncomfortable position here.

CALLER: Let me just finish and then —

RUSH: No. No, you’re not. I’m not gonna let you finish because your premise has just been blown to smithereens. I don’t know what you’re gonna say. You just hang on. I’m gonna come back to you here in a minute. But you’re on the precipice here of having blown your premise to smithereens in your characterization of this program. This program has an audience far larger. CNN is an asterisk compared to the audience of this program. PMSNBC, at their peak, at their peak on a nonspecial events day will not even hit three million viewers.

Fox, on a nonpeak day, 4 to 4.5 million. Here we’re talking 26 million. And many of them have been listening for 30-plus years. The audience here is growing. There’s nothing middle of the road about it except that it’s moderate in the sense that this audience and I represent the normalcy of America, not the radical aspect. There’s nothing radical about me or this program or the people who listen to it. Now, I don’t know what Democracy Now is, but I can just tell you the way you’re sizing all of this up is incorrect. And so I gather what you’re saying is that you listen to all these different outlets and then make up your mind as to what you are gonna vote or think or do; correct?

CALLER: That’s what I try and do. So let’s just say I made a mistake on no one’s listening to you. Let’s say everybody is. But for me to get a perspective, I listen to you, what I consider to be on the right, Democracy Now on the left, and then I try to pick some, what I consider to be middle of the road. And here’s the real point I wanted to make. You describe the left in the ugliest of terms, okay, that they’re this, that, and the other thing. And, you know, I find that, you know, you do the same thing. I mean, you are the same thing. You criticize them. You say they’re criticizing and they want this in the nasty of terms, but you turn around and do the same thing to them. So from an educational point of view — and I’m trying to get educated on issues — I wish you guys would like forget that part of it and just present the facts, not be sarcastic, not be condescending.

RUSH: Okay, give me an example of what you’re talking about. Tell me how I’m as radical as the people I talk about.

CALLER: You, for example… I’m a former schoolteacher. Now, you often use the phrase “screwl,” the “screwl” teachers.

RUSH: (chuckling)

CALLER: I mean, I find that… I find that offensive. When I was teaching, I was not trying to harm anyone. I was trying to do the best I could for those kids, given the resources I had. So when you say something like that, I’m offended by it, ’cause it’s not true.

RUSH: Are you offended when I remind people that my talent is on loan from God?

CALLER: No, because that’s just part of your schtick. You know, that’s what you do.

RUSH: No, that’s not schtick. It’s actually gratitude. I’m deeply grateful.

CALLER: Okay, it’s gratitude.

RUSH: Okay, wait a minute. But the “screwl” business, I hated school. It was “screwl.” I talk about it in a generic sense. That’s not the way… If you want to find out what I really think about education, it goes way beyond calling it “screwl.”

CALLER: Well, here’s another example. When you talk… Any of the issues that you particularly find you don’t like — let’s say it’s something about a vegan, something about animal rights, something about climate change — I mean, you come off really nasty when you describe those people as if they’re out to destroy the country.

RUSH: They are.

CALLER: I don’t really think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true at all.

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: I don’t think that’s true at all.

RUSH: You’d better get with it because their intention is to destroy the U.S. economy! Now, let me put… Maybe the people marching around in their Birkenstocks demanding windmills everywhere, but the people leading them and the people paying for it, the people who are the ideological leaders, are certainly trying to do great damage U.S. economy. On a hoax. There’s no way human beings can be responsible for the climate. We can’t make it hotter or colder if we wanted to. We can’t fix it. We have nowhere near that kind of power. And the idea that there are people running around raising money and getting votes and trying to make people feel guilty over their participation in destroying the planet is outrageous, and it’s obscene!

CALLER: Rush, you know what? Here’s the thing I think.

RUSH: You need to be able accept reality instead of hiding behind kid gloves and wishing everybody would just tone it down. We’ve tried that, and toning it down against those people just gets us run roughshod over and taken advantage of.

CALLER: You’re doing well. You’re doing well. You talk over anybody who disagrees with you. You cut them off, et cetera.

RUSH: No. I never cut anybody off, and you are shining evidence of it.

CALLER: That’s baloney! That’s baloney!

RUSH: It is not! I’m the most polite host in America. I was even told that the other night at a deal. I do not talk over people. I never disconnect anybody, certainly not where it can be heard and done in a humiliating way. Never. Never happens.

CALLER: Well, I disagree. I disagree. But —

RUSH: Well, then give me an evidence. Give me the last time you heard me mistreat a caller, be rude to a caller, and hang up on ’em in public.

CALLER: Well, you’re doing it to me!

RUSH: I am not! You’re still on the air and you’re talking!

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: The policy I’m using with you is when somebody wants to make fool of themselves, you stand out of the way and let it happen.

CALLER: You’re cutting me off in the middle of sentences. That’s what I consider to be rude. So you have a good day.

RUSH: You have not been cut off. You’re still here. You can say whatever you want. But you can’t expect me not to react to it.

CALLER: I don’t… I do expect you to react to it. I’m just trying to… You’re never gonna admit to any of this. You’re never gonna admit to the fact that when you use language describing people that you — whose policies you oppose — you do it in very nasty terms. You say that they’re out to destroy the country and… I mean, give me a break, Rush.

RUSH: I say they’re out to transform the country into being something it was never intended to be. Let me tell you why people like you disappoint me. ‘Cause we’ve lost you. You obviously are somebody interested enough that you’re trying to be involved here. You are not what you say you are. You’re not a moderate trying to moderate and find out what both sides think. You’re a leftist. You have demonstrated you’re a leftist. I wish you weren’t.

I’m trying to reach people like you and persuade you that all of America needs as many of you people as we can to give it up and join us because the country as founded — our culture, our economy, our future — depends on it. It is under assault. Western Civilization is under attack from within. It’s being bought and paid for by people who are members of the Democrat Party and supporters of the same. It is nut-cracking time.

This next election is pretty crucial in determining what kind of culture that we’re gonna have, and people like you, I would love to be able to awaken and see the error of your ways, which is why I’m so directly spoken. I don’t persuade with kid gloves and hope. If you’re who you say you are, and you’re really out there dissecting and digesting all points of view, and if you really stop and think about it, there’s only one conclusion you can come to, and that is that I am right and you need to join us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This last caller? I wish we had more. I wish we got more callers like that. I mean, he was a little contentious.

Can you imagine being accused of being cut off while he’s still talking on the air?

And being offended by “screwl”? I’m a teacher! When you say ‘screwl…’ You know, I worked hard to educate.” (Snort!) Half of the problems in our country are from screwls and what our little children have been taught, but that guy… Remember some years ago I got a statistic. I’d been told that young girls — women — 25 and under just (hyperventilating) thought there was too much yelling. They just didn’t like it. It made ’em so uncomfortable. That’s the kind of guy that caller was.

“I just don’t like you all those things you say! (sniveling) It makes me nervous.” (interruption) What’s that? (interruption) Oh. Oh. (laughing) Snerdley… (laughing) You know what Snerdley said? “You know that guy’s gonna get some tonight.” You know, I’m thinking… My head is way, way, way above gutter when I do this, and Snerdley’s thinking, “This guy’s gonna get some tonight.” I said, “Wha…? Wha…? Wha…?” Then it hit me. So you think that there’s somebody out there that is going to sexually reward this…? Oh. Oh. Because he’s probably getting accolades over, “Way to take it to Limbaugh!

“Way to put it out! You just cleaned Limbaugh’s clock. You destroyed Limbaugh.” You mean for that kind of thing? I’ll bet that does happen. I’ll bet this guy become a hero. “Limbaugh destroyed on his own show by guy who hates pronunciation of ‘school’ as ‘screwl’!” Yeah. Anyway, I don’t care. (Apple Watch Alert) Now, here my watch thinks I’m fallen again. So my options are I can let it go and EMS will be called and take me outta here or I can say, “I’m okay, “I fell but I’m okay,” or “I didn’t fall.”

Well, obviously I didn’t fall.

It must be when I am wildly gesticulating in here that the watch thinks I’ve taken a kerplunk.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is John in Wichita, Kansas. Welcome, sir, and thank you for waiting.

CALLER: Howdy, Rush.

RUSH: Hey!

CALLER: I’m a Millennial. Hey, how you doing? Pleasure to talk to you.

RUSH: So you are a Millennial?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: I’m 29 years old from Wichita, Kansas. And I wanted to tell you, earlier you talked about how the left wants everybody to think that all these Millennials are swinging towards the left. I want to tell you, that’s wrong. Almost all my friends I know, all the people I went to high school with, the majority of them are definitely supporting our president. Even some of the ones I personally know really well that did vote for Trump in ’16 have now decided to back him because they’re so sick and tired, and disgusted of how the media treats him on a daily basis that they just want it all to end.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. I hope that your anecdotal example is statistically representative of a lot of people. There’s no way of knowing. My point earlier was that people your age and younger have been grossly misled about the eight years of Obama. The news today is how divisive Donald Trump is. “Donald Trump is ripping America apart. Donald Trump and his mean-spiritedness, vulgarity and all of that is just ripping this country to shreds like it’s never been before,” and these people have been lied to about how unified we were during the Obama years.

The way the media got away with that was Republicans were scared to death to oppose Obama because he was the first African-American president. Any disagreement, especially on policy, was chalked up to racism or bigotry. So there was no pushback. There was no pushback. You had some pushback on Obamacare, but there really wasn’t any pushback on Obama! You couldn’t criticize the president of the United States!

That created an illusion of total unity out there! When there wasn’t! Democrats began losing elections in droves starting in 2010 because so many people were disappointed with Obama, they were not happy with their vote. And they still didn’t say anything. So now people who were never aware of the disunity that Obama largely sponsored and was in favor of, Obama and his team and the Democrats were all for dividing the country. That was part of transforming it into something that it wasn’t intended to be.

So now they see this disunity with Trump, and they think it’s new. They think Trump is unique, that we have never been divided like this, and it’s because they didn’t see, and they were lied to about the fact that we were all unified during the eight years of Obama. That’s part of the history revisionism and the myth. (impression) “Oh, look at how wonderful things were when Obama was president. There wasn’t all this angst. There wasn’t all these arguments, division, this partisanship. People got along, unified around the first African-American president.”

Don’t believe it.

It didn’t happen.

Anyway, I hope you’re right.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Checking the email. “Rush, did that caller upset you?” People are so worried that that guy upset me. Ladies and gentlemen, I am A, a man, and, B, an adult. C, not a whiner. D, not a complainer. And, E, I wish we got more calls like that. I’m jealous of shows where people that disagree call in. I understand why they don’t here. They understand what a losing proposition it would be.

I wish we got more. But we deal with what we get. That’s not to say I’m unhappy with the rest of you who call who are nice and supportive and all that. But, I mean, sometimes people like that, you know, offer an opportunity for the host to look good, which is the primary role of a caller. No, my feelings were not hurt. I’m so far beyond that. I don’t even know what that feels like anymore.