RUSH: No help at Fox News calling the House race before votes had even stopped last night, and there they are bragging about their decision desk and how brilliant they are and how smooth running the thing was. But yet they’re calling the House for the Democrats, what was it, 8 o’clock, 8:30 or 9 o’clock last night?

When polls are still open in California, which was a crucial place for some of these House races? But not just California. Colorado, Arizona, any number of places. And there’s Fox News Channel, “We declare that the House has gone to the Democrats!” Well, big whoop — and then you have the Never Trumper members of the Fox News decision desk on TV celebrating it and so forth. Democrats didn’t win anything last night. The Republicans gave it away.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Arthur in Memphis. Welcome, sir. It’s great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Yes, sir. Thank you, Rush, for taking my call. It is an honor to speak to you, and you’d actually addressed the question before you left your last segment. But it just really angers me that they gave Bret Baier the order to call the race. They’d only gained two seats in the House but yet they were already victorious. So what’s that all about?

RUSH: Well, what it’s all about is they have their data. They have their decision desk and they’ve got their 20 people in there, and they’re analyzing all of the exit poll data, and then the hard returns that come in. They’re looking at it all over the country, and they decided — based on the data — they had that the Democrats were going to retake the House. Fine. If that’s what their data shows them, fine.

They then decided, because of competitive things, to go ahead and announce it. I even… I think NBC might have gone first, and when that happened, then that forces others to say, “Oh, my God. NBC! We can’t be seen to be trailing behind them. So if NBC called it…” Somebody called it first. I’m not sure if Fox called it. If they called it first, it’s still because of competitive circumstances, journalism. (interruption) Who called it first? (interruption) Fox called it first. So it’s still competitive forces. “We want to be first! We’ve got this; we want to be first with it.”

Look, they knew. The people in their decision desk knew that if they didn’t, somebody was, because they all had the same data. It’s the same data. AP, all the networks fund exit polling. I don’t care what new procedures were in place, they all get the same data. So they all know that they’ve all got the same data. They can all see the same thing and make the same projections. So I don’t think there was anything erroneous in their data.

Turns out they were right. It’s just they decided to make the call while voting was still open in over half the country, and I think what irritated a lot of people beyond that is that while they were doing this, they were all smiling about it. So it served to rub people wrong. I don’t think that the data was fudged. It was what it was, and they know that they all have it. So they wanted to be first, beat the pack. Cal in Raleigh, you’re next. How are you doing?

CALLER: Rush, thanks. I’m doing great. I just want to comment that, you know, obviously we’re disappointed that we’ve lost the House. But the Republicans deserve everything that they got. They have not been there, unified for Trump the last two years.

RUSH: Well, they certainly weren’t the first year. That’s for sure.

CALLER: They haven’t been able to handle the repeal of Obamacare. They have not been there for the wall. They never thought Trump was gonna win the election. They never had a plan, they never had procedures in place, and they drug their feet all the way to this election. So guess what? They deserve everything they got.

RUSH: Well, yeah, in a manner of speaking. I think what it boils down to, folks, is that when you get to Washington — you get inside the Beltway, you get to the whole establishment — there’s just a whole bunch of ’em that just don’t see anything happening in the country as a real crisis, including immigration. And that’s a disconnect between us and them.