RUSH: What I wanted to print was I just got an email that says Pompeo is in the Middle East. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, is in the Middle East, and he just was heard and videoed talking to some king that he has seen the speech Trump is giving tonight. He paused and then laughed and then said, “It’s gonna make a lot of news.” I assume this is Pompeo saying this not the king.

Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the king has seen the speech. I don’t know which king. I don’t know where Pompeo is. I just got this note from somebody who is keeping a sharp eye on the Drive-By Media. So, anyway, the Drive-Bys are gonna get ahold of this. You know what CNN’s gonna do? CNN’s gonna fact check Trump’s speech live. If you watch CNN Tonight, they are going to have chyron graphics pointing out when they think Trump has lied, when Trump is making it up, what you should believe, what you shouldn’t believe.

Let’s see. In fact, grab sound bite No. 7 and then we’ll do No. 8. This is Joe Lockhart, the former spokesman for Bill Clinton. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart. Wait. Ah, these guys run together. Was it Clinton or Obama? It had to have been Clinton, ’cause this guy then ended up… No. Damn. I don’t remember. One of the two. Then he ended up being the chief of communications for the National Football League during the kneeling and all that stuff, and he ended up leaving. Obama rented his house in the Kalorama section in Washington — around which there are numerous fences, by the way. There are numerous fences and walls.

So Lockhart was on CNN New Day today, and he had this idea about covering Trump’s national address tonight…

LOCKHART: The networks, I hope, struggled yesterday with the decision to put this on because he consistently, uh, hasn’t told the truth, and, you know, someone’s got to fact check that. If I were a network executive, which I’m not, I wouldn’t put this on live. I would let him give the address and I’d look at it and find out what’s true, what’s not, or I’d say, “Give me the text in advance. Let us decide in advance what’s true, what’s not, because we shouldn’t be using our public airwaves for someone to spew more of these lies.” You know, you have a president who’s trying to create hysteria for his own political purposes, not to protect the American people.

RUSH: This is… (laughing) The audacity of this is almost incomprehensible. (translated) “So let us in the media — let us Democrats, let us radical leftists who define the truth to be whatever we say it is. Let us see Trump of his speech in advance and let us determine what’s fit to be seen and heard and what isn’t. Let us decide whether or not Trump is telling the truth.” Yeah, Lockhart worked for Clinton, and Lockhart rented Obama’s house. Exactly right. The one with bunch of walls around it. “Let us determine what is cynical and what isn’t.”

“Let us determine what’s hysterical and what isn’t. Let us determine what you should see and what you should not see in advance. The White House should give us the text.” This is, by the way, a request for somebody there to leak the speech to them. This is actually what Lockhart is asking. He’s asking for some Trump saboteur in the White House to leak Trump’s speech, the text of it, so that they can do it right, so that they can protect the nation from the lies and from the hysteria that Trump intends to say tonight.

Because Trump doesn’t want to fix anything. He just wants to create chaos. So Lockhart is saying (translated), “We at CNN should determine what Americans see and what the American people don’t see. We alone should determine whether the president is factually correct or not, whether he’s lying or not, and then whether or not the president should be heard or seen.” David Gregory this morning, same program (now at CNN, formerly of Meet the Press) had this to say…

GREGORY: I think there’s an opportunity and a responsibility — and I know CNN will do it — to really scrutinize what the president says in real time, as well as provide Democrats an opportunity to respond so that there can be some debate in prime time that’s in the national interests about the government shutdown and about whether there is any kind of emergency at the border, which has been a case thus far made with so many falsehoods that are provably false.

RUSH: Okay. So these guys are convinced that Trump is lying, that his speech tonight’s gonna be filled with more lies, and that they are going to basically — as a public service, and as media responsibility. They’re gonna provide real-time commentary and analysis. I mean, line by line, they’re gonna determine whether Trump says something true or false and let you know. You know, this is… Again, this is something we used to do on Rush Limbaugh: The Television Show.

Now, we didn’t do it live because our show wasn’t live, but we did this. When Democrats spoke, we created — we suggested people create — various signs to put on their TV screens to help them watch a bunch of lying-sack Democrats and have fun with it. Jeez. I have more ideas being pilfered and stolen and used by the Drive-By Media than I can keep track of anymore. But aside from that, the audacity of this. Do you think they would ever do this with Obama?

Do you think they would ever even try this with Obama? If they do this with Trump, which they’re gonna do, are they not setting a precedent for now doing this all the time in the future, whoever the president is, if they determine the president should not have the right to address the American people without the media filtering it first? You know their presidents are gonna get a pass on this. The Drive-Bys, of course, have announced that they are going to carry the Democrat response.

Chuck and Nancy are gonna respond to President Trump tonight. This could be… (laughing) This could be fun. I’ll tell you why. It’s because the Democrats and the media are so cocksure that Trump is going to just make a fool of himself. They are just certain that this is the night they’re gonna expose Trump for everything they think he is. This is the night that they’re gonna destroy Trump because Trump has lied through his teeth about immigration, illegal immigration, and the wall, and the crisis at the border — and tonight, they’re gonna expose it all!

And then we have the news that Pompeo is out there talking to some king somewhere telling him that he’s seen the speech that Trump is giving. He paused and laughed and said, “It’s gonna make a lot of news.” (laughing) I’ll tell you what it is. It’s almost like The Roadrunner and the Coyote and the media and the Democrats are the Coyote. They think they’ve got The Roadrunner in their sights how many times in a 30-minute show? And the anvil still ends up falling on their head where Trump is concerned.

And the anvil falling on their head… The analogy is Trump is president the next day. Trump continues to be president, and he continues to try to implement his agenda despite their best efforts to stop it. And they have launched everything in their arsenal to stop Trump, and they haven’t been able to, and they keep launching. And every time they get an opportunity like this, they think, “This is D-Day! This is the day it’s gonna happen.”

I’ll tell you, the night before the Mueller report comes out, they may not be able to contain themselves. But they’re already starting to wonder. Some various people in the Drive-By Media are starting to worry, because there haven’t been any substantive leaks, “What happens if Mueller doesn’t have anything?” They are starting to worry. (interruption) “Are they gonna fact check Chuck and Pelosi?” No, they’re not gonna fact check Chuck and Nancy. Don’t be silly!

They’re not gonna fact check Chuck and Nancy. They’re gonna automatically assume that Chuck and Nancy are telling the truth in order to save a beleaguered nation from this disaster. You know, fact checking was practically invented for the 2008 campaign because the Drive-Bys felt they had to tear down every criticism of Obama. You remember this? In the 2008 campaign, Obama was out with one whopper after another.

We had the Reverend Wright aspect of the campaign and Obama’s real history and whether or not he was born wherever he was, and there were just constant attacks. So the fact-checking industry was practically born as a means of destroying the critics of Obama — and then once Obama was elected, all the fact-check sites announced that they were gonna go dark, unless they needed to defend Obama on some important point again. But that’s how fact checking in its current existence really got going.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. We have some more detail here. Pompeo is over in Jordan, and he is meeting the king of Jordan, King Abdullah, and it was while speaking to King Abdullah that Mike Pompeo said, “I saw an early version of the president’s speech tonight,” and then he chuckled, he says he’s gonna make a lot of news. The truth about this is that you have Lockhart saying we need to fact check this while it’s happening, Trump’s flying, chaos. David Gregory, “We’re gonna fact check it all during.”

They’re scared to death, folks, because they do not hold the factual or moral ground when it comes to what’s going on at the border. They know damn well that what’s happening at the border is illegal, is unconscionable, it is devastating to the country. It’s why they support it. They know damn well that Trump has every fact on his side. They are scared to death that Trump is going to persuade an increasing number of Americans that what’s going on — we already have polling data. Only 7% of Americans think that what’s happening with illegal immigration at the southern border is not a problem.

Ninety-three percent do, including 88% of Americans. The truth of the matter is the Democrat Party and the media are scared to death of what Trump is gonna say tonight. That’s why they’re ballyhooing the response by Chuck and Nancy. Trump has the facts on his side. They have heard what Trump says about the border. It has been a staple at every Trump rally and it generates standing ovations.

It is filled with patriotism, the desire to maintain and protect America, “Make America Great Again,” all of that. It’s designed to protect the law-abiding in this country from people who are wantonly breaking the law getting in and then committing numerous crimes, including murder. There is no way the president does not have the moral and factual high ground on this! They have been dreading that he would do a national address on this, and now it’s coming and now they’re doing everything they can to distort it and destroy it before it’s even given and will do so while it’s being given.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Ed in Las Vegas, the future home of the Oakland Raiders. Great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s great to be on your show, and I thank you for taking my call. My question is, they talk about immigration from years ago. And from my understanding, in order to for these people to come from other countries to come into our country, they had to have a sponsor, they had to have jobs, they couldn’t be sick. And, you know, all these things that went along with immigration, and if any of those didn’t fit you weren’t allowed into the country. And that’s my question. Is that law no longer there in the immigration section, or does it still apply?

RUSH: Well, when it comes to sponsors, I think that there has been some sponsorship, certain aspects. But when you talk about the health of people attempting to get into the country, that would require us to go back and look at Ellis Island, which is where hundreds of thousands of immigrants legally entered the United States. Ellis Island, by the way, is not the island on which is built the Statue of Liberty. People confuse two, but it’s not. They’re close, but it’s not the same place.

And you can tour Ellis Island, you can take a ferry out there. You can drive to it, actually, strangely enough. I know this because I have delivered speeches there. But it’s one of the things happening at the southern border. At Ellis Island if you had any kind of a disease, even if you had a bad cold, if you had anything communicable, you were not let in, you were not the permitted in. We had leaders and we had a population with good sense, and that good sense had not been beaten out of them yet by leftists.

And so back then, the population of the country was not going to be subjected to any communicable diseases being permitted into the country. Everything about immigration back in those days was for the benefit of the United States of America. That was the purpose of it. And people who made it in had to demonstrate that they wanted to be Americans. They had to demonstrate love for country.

Trump talks about this all the time, and he’s exactly right about it. This is the kind of thing that people don’t know. They certainly haven’t been taught it, and they don’t want Trump talking about these things in something like a national address tonight. But it was restrictive as it could be on the premise that nobody deserved to get in, nobody was owed a living or life in the United States.

Now, we realize the importance of immigration, melting pot, all that stuff. But all of the requirements for immigration were based on whether or not it was going to benefit the United States. That’s not at all the judgment that’s being used today. Whether or not it helps the United States is irrelevant.

In fact, many of the people who believe in illegal immigration do so because of their belief the United States is immoral and unjust and deserves whatever gets in because we’ve caused all this suffering and this misery around the world, and we should not be able to build walls or other limits to protect ourselves from it. We have been founded in injustice and racism and bigotry, and we are responsible for most of the suffering and misery in the world! And therefore we deserve to see what we have caused, and we owe it to these people to be admitted into our country! Whether or not it helps the United States is not even a factor to the open borders crowd.

In fact, it’s worse than that. If it will harm this country, then bring ’em in! Because that’s what needs to happen. The United States still has not paid the price for all of the suffering and misery and racism and bigotry that was present at its founding. And so now what’s the practical result of this? I have a story here from the Washington Times. Right here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.

“Tuberculosis, Flu, Infections Rampant As The Number Of Sick Migrants Surge At Border — Border authorities are referring 50 people a day for urgent medical care, including tuberculosis, flu and even pregnant women about to give birth, a top official said Monday, saying it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. Most of those in need of care are children, and a staggering 28 percent are under age 5, having been dragged along for the trip by parents who in many cases are hoping to use the children as a shield against speedy deportation from the U.S.”

This would have never been permitted. It would have never happened during the salad days of legal immigration. And I hope this is something Trump mentions tonight as he defines and explains the crisis that is occurring at our southern border.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Listen to this. This is Democrat Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and this is his idea for President Trump’s address to the nation tonight.

MENENDEZ: The president’s address should also come with a warning to viewers, and that warning is the comments you are about to hear are not based on fact and are likely to include misinformation, blatant lies, and fearmongering.

RUSH: Well, why, Bob? Because CNN’s already gonna be fixing all that. They’re gonna run instant fact check. You’re gonna clutter up the screen here to the point nobody’s gonna be able to read anything. Gonna have too much up there. You’re gonna have all these Trump warnings. This is another idea that I’m telling you they’re stealing from us here at the EIB. We’ve done all of this and more on Rush Limbaugh, the television show. We can find it in the archives at RushLimbaugh.com.

You can see the episodes where we have suggested signs that people — now, this is back, you know, the internet, digital stuff had not yet become widespread. You had to make analog signs and tape ’em to your TV screens, but we suggested, you know, during Clinton States of the Union or any other type speeches that leftists were making. These people, I’ll tell you what, I actually think — I’ve thought this for a while, and I’ve been wrong. Or have I? It may be too soon to say.

I really think, despite the elections last year, the midterms, I think these people are in the process of imploding. I think the Democrat Party still has nothing but their hatred for Trump. They don’t have anything salable to a majority of the American people. The reasons they won the midterms are undeniable, and more and more people, more and more people in this country have become deranged leftists at the same time.

But the things the Democrats are doing are not things upon which a strong foundation is built. We may be too close to it to see if it’s affecting us and it’s nothing imminent, but I think they’re in the process of self-destructing just on the basis of the immorality alone of what they’ve become and how it’s worsening. Like with the Soviet Union, it took time, and they needed to be nudged.