RUSH: This is Jim in Boston. Great to have you. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Yeah, hi, Rush. You know, after watching Spike Lee and the Oscars last night about implicitly doing the right thing and voting against Trump, it reminds me that one of the main premises of anti-Trumpism is that, you know, he’s a white supremacist or anti-black or anti-minority based mainly on Charlottesville, when Trump said, where he said — both sides had good people. As if Trump was referring to the tiki torch marchers, when Trump was simply referring to those opposing tearing down Confederate statues.

Even the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, cited Charlottesville, even as recently as last week, that Trump had no basis to criticize the Smollett case. And on CNN and MSNBC, the Democrat politicians over and over and over again cite Charlottesville, which is a giant hoax! Especially since Trump’s son-in-law and grandchildren are Jewish, and Trump is undoubtedly the most pro-Israeli president ever. You know, there are three premises that they attack the Trump presidency. One is the Russian thing, which is falling apart. Okay, that’s falling apart.

RUSH: Well, but —

CALLER: Second —

RUSH: Okay, keep going. That’s a great example to answer your question. I know what question you’re gonna ask, and that observation right there is gonna be my answer. But, go ahead. What are your other three points?

CALLER: Okay. The three premises are, one, the Russian thing, which is falling apart. The second is Trump is crazy, which is falling apart by all the things he’s doing positively. And the third column or premise or basis of the anti-Trumpism is Charlottesville, which is a giant hoax. Why doesn’t Trump simply come out and correct it on Twitter or otherwise and simply state, “I wasn’t referring to the tiki torch marchers. I was referring to those who legitimately wanted to keep the Confederate monuments”?

RUSH: Because it’s not gonna change anything, and responding to it is simply going to fuel it because they’re gonna say that Trump is responding to their premise! Trump’s nervous! Trump must feel like we’re doing damage! So he, I think, as a policy and a philosophy, ignores them. Let me give… You think the Russian thing is breaking down? Yeah, intellectually, it’s breaking down. Factually, it’s breaking down. But the latest is that Shifty Schiff is not gonna accept it!

If Mueller doesn’t find collusion, he’s gonna call Mueller up. He’s gonna subpoena Mueller. He’s gonna do his own investigation. They’re so wrapped up into this that Trump stole the election, that even if the special counsel finds no evidence of it, it’s not gonna stop anything. It’s just gonna propel new investigations because the facts don’t matter to them. It is the narrative that they must keep alive. There’s nothing Trump can do to stop their narrative.

Trump’s tweets — while great and funny — do not stop any of the criticism against him. Trump’s tweets do not change the tone or the tenor. What Trump’s tweets do is inform people. It’s a form of pushback because his own party doesn’t assist him in this. So that’s why he does it. I’ll give you another example. It may well be — and I am not exaggerating this at all. It may well be that the joke Trump told while in Miami asking the Russians to look for Hillary’s email is the second thing propelling this investigation after that bogus dossier.

Now, everybody knows that’s a joke. Everybody knows Trump was making a joke. Why hasn’t Trump come out and clarified for everybody involved, “Hey, Mueller? Hey, Special Counsel? You do realize I was joking?” That’s not gonna stop ’em. It’s not gonna change their narrative. It’s not gonna change anything. Whatever Trump was doing with his comment “there are good people on both sides,” in normal circumstances, the left would welcome that kind of a statement.

Because it would be an understanding of finding good people where they exist and not a rush to judgment on people — which the left claims we should never do, and yet it’s exactly what they always do is rush to judgment on everything. But the bottom line is, if he starts responding to this stuff it’s just gonna fuel it even more. “Ah, Trump’s got something to hide! Trump lies again. Trump is responding to our criticism. It must be getting to him.”

So it wouldn’t be effective is why. You want it to happen so that you can say he’s rejected it when you are hit with this by Trump critics that you know, and I understand wanting the ammunition, and I understand wanting to be able to point out, “Hey, the guy said what he was talking about. He’s being lied about.” But I think… Besides, that’s so long ago now. That’s something that I guarantee you the Democrats are saving that one up and trying to come up with various uses of it for the 2020 campaign.

And that’s what the Trump team is doing is preparing various responses or usages, explanations or what have you, for the 2020 campaign. They’re not gonna waste them now. But this is an age-old question. We talk about it all the time. “When somebody ripped you to shreds and lies about it, why do you not come back and refute it?” Because sometimes, all it does is make it bigger. Sometimes all it does — in a weird way — is confirm the narrative and it fuels and energizes the critics.

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RUSH: This is Scott in Northern Virginia. Great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you?

RUSH: Good. Very good. Thank you, sir.

CALLER: So I was just calling. I’m a huge fan of yours. I was just calling to disagree, though, with something that you said earlier about Charlottesville with another caller. There was something earlier that you — he was mentioning about what exactly happened, the Charlottesville incident that every Democrat and liberal always goes back to when they fail every other argument about why they don’t support President Trump or why he’s an evil dictator and this and that. Charlottesville is one of the go-to arguments that they go back to.

And when the caller earlier mentioned that, you know, why doesn’t Trump just lay out the truth and who he was really addressing and this and that, and you said that there was just no point because they’ll do this and that, that’s what I disagree with. Because I think that there’s people like me in the past out there who, you know, we might currently be believing something and this and that and be very strong about it, but there’s only so much you can do to get out of the truth. And when you’re exposed to the truth, you know, it just kind of changes what you’re seeing and how you’re interpreting things.

And there’s only so many ways. You can either choose to, like, be dishonest with yourself or, you know, start, maybe I don’t know anything. Maybe I need to see more. Maybe I need to, you know, just stop talking and start listening to things and seeing what’s really going on. And this is what happened to me back then when Hillary stole the primaries from Bernie, because I was blindly supporting Bernie, and when that happened I was just like, oh, my gosh. You know, no one’s upset about this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The lieutenant governor of Virginia back in the news declaring himself comparable to having been lynched during all these sexual assault allegations, the equivalent of being lynched. Anyway, we’ll get to all that as the program continues to unfold.

But now back to Scott in northern Virginia. So your point is that you think — you were for Bernie, then you were for Hillary, then you finally came around at some point to Trump. But you wish that he would explain the Charlottesville comment, right?

CALLER: Yes, I wish he would just stand by and not let the media keep running with this lie because I think this is one of the big lies from start like the same with his crowd size, things like that that were just lies. I mean, CNN’s own panoramic picture disproves that lie that the government agency released of his inauguration. But going to Charlottesville, there were many things going on. The police in every one of these big riots that have happened across the country, when you look at the video evidence and take out all the rhetoric there are local police that are always given stand-down orders by the local politicians in charge and that creates a chaotic, you know, dangerous environment.

And that’s what happened in Charlottesville. And I think there was another professor involved with an incident right before this woman was, you know, killed in Charlottesville because of what happened because these people were, you know, allowed to go into riots sort of, you know, just dangerous territory, I mean both sides, but it was allowed to happen. It could have been stopped. There could have been —

RUSH: Help me out with something. Why is Trump’s comment so bad, when he said, “Hey, look, there are good people on both sides,” do you actually think that Donald Trump was endorsing the Nazis and whoever the bad guys in that whole confab were? Do people really think that’s what Trump was doing, endorsing them?

CALLER: I think there are people out there that do, that do honestly believe that, because —

RUSH: If they do, you’re never gonna change their minds because that’s sick! Nobody would ever think that!

CALLER: I don’t think so.

RUSH: Where’s the evidence that Trump supports white supremacy or Nazism? There isn’t any.

CALLER: Well, that’s why we have to wield the truth. Like you always say, at this point it’s just about beating them. We have to beat them. And how do you beat them? They always run to their little shadows of deception and lies, so you have to keep exposing the truth, every truth so that there’s no place for them to hide. The sunlight, you know, kill them with some truth. Because they keep getting away with these lies and that’s how these people who only barely follow politics, just like I used to, how you can get so easily deceived and manipulated.

And that’s what leftists do, ’cause when I watched debates and stuff like that, I’m sorry, but it’s always like the Democrats and stuff who use faulty arguments or you can see that they’re kind of being manipulative or just not using real facts and things like that. But that is because they’re so good at using emotional arguments, they don’t need all the facts. They can take something and, just like Charlottesville, pull that one little —

RUSH: Exactly. Look, don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not arguing about whether Trump should respond to this or not, although I am curious, ’cause you’re the second caller today that has brought up Charlottesville, and I haven’t heard Charlottesville referenced in a year. Now, maybe I’m not reading or seeing or exposed to the same things you are, but Charlottesville seems to be way, way back in the rearview mirror based on what people are agitated about today.

But being that as it may, the whole point here — where I really have a problem with this is — you just said it — these people are reacting emotionally. They’re not gonna respond to the truth that is put out there, particularly if it comes from Trump. But how do you envision Trump doing this effectively? Tell me how you could be satisfied with Trump doing this. Would be a tweet? Would he make mention of this standing in a press conference about some other subjects? How would he do this that you think it would be effective?

CALLER: Well, I would never just come out and say it. I would wait until you’re asked about it and then he can just calmly lay out the facts. But he can have people on his team create some type of response to it. I mean, now it is a little late, but if it becomes an issue again where people start bringing it back up, and I think they will because for me I do see Charlottesville still get brought up, I do still see the crowd size get brought up, because a lot of these people get defeated on this and that in between but they still have those to go back and fall back on. And I would just expose the truth of what happened. What happened that day with the police stand-down order.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: How would that violent incident be allowed to happen.

RUSH: My recollection is that Trump has done this. And he’s done it all kinds of different ways and over the years. And it doesn’t count. Let me give you some Trump history. In the first place, Trump did refute it. He refuted it early and often at the time. But the media then went on to twist his words even more! They took his denial, they took his clarification, and they mixed it up and pretzeled it so that it meant something else.

Now, let’s remember this. Before Charlottesville, the proof of Trump’s racism was that he would not denounce David Duke for supporting him. Long before this Charlottesville controversy came up, they tried to paint Trump as a racist Nazi and white supremacist by claiming he would not denounce David Duke for supporting him, despite the fact that Duke didn’t! David Duke didn’t support him! And Trump did denounce David Duke! And before that Trump even pulled out of the Reform Party years ago because David Duke was involved.

Trump has demonstrated I don’t know how many ways, Scott, that he’s not a white supremacist, that he’s not a Nazi and he’s not sympathetic to these people, which is my point! No matter what he does, if they get a narrative going, they’re gonna stick with it and twist it no matter what. So if you want Trump to clarify on this, then it’s gonna have to be done in some kind of way where there is a mass audience that can hear him do it rather than have the media get hold of it because they’re gonna twist it and turn it into something or any other elected Democrat.

But I don’t know how his own handlers would advise him on this. This is such a long-ago event, and it’s made up! The whole thing is made up. And, you know, I have a big problem with the stupidity of people on the left and how to deal with it. It’s something I’ve been trying to come up with an ace policy for for I don’t know how many years. How do you deal with the total mis- and disinformation and lies that a bunch of people believe when just a slight pause and a dose of common sense would be all it would take to believe whatever the assertion is, in this case Trump is white supremacist, is caca.

Take a look at the unemployment numbers for African-Americans: an all time record low. Ditto Hispanics. This is not a president who is despised. This is not a president who despises people of color. He doesn’t despise minorities. It’s the exact opposite. And real-world and life examples somehow don’t matter. Whatever the media says, we have to deal with that and we have to come up with a way of refuting that.

And all I’m saying is that the evidence is all over the place and it doesn’t get rid of it. And it doesn’t enlighten a bunch of people. The people we’re talking about deserve to be defeated, not reasoned with, not converted and brought over to our side. I think believing this is representative of such a tiny IQ that the effort to deal with it would be almost pointless. I understand people who support Trump who want him to make it easier for them to deal with criticism on things like this, and if I were you, I’d just deal with the common sense.

Common sense, there’s no evidence he’s racist. There’s no evidence he’s a bigot. There’s no evidence he’s a Nazi. There’s no evidence he’s a white supremacist. “Yeah, there is. Look what he said after Charlottesville.” That’s evidence? “I’m sure there are good people on both sides.” If you ask me, that’s an attempt to maybe even quell the uprising and to lower the temperature of the damn thing rather than to pile on to it and raise the temperature. I gotta go. I appreciate the call, Scott, very much. How many more Charlottesville calls do we have out there? Something is going on with people calling about Charlottesville. I have been doing this long enough to recognize patterns.

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RUSH. Folks, I think the Charlottesville thing is just one of many deceptions that the media and the left use consistently to falsely create an image or picture that a majority of Americans are outraged about something, and I’ll give you an example. It’s the one I usually cite in these circumstances. The Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I will never forget this. Mike Pence is the governor and they pass the law, and basically what it says is that it just reinforces what’s already in the Constitution, that you cannot be made to violate your religious beliefs!

Essentially. So this is back during the time where gay couples were finding businesses to sue. If they want a cake for a reception, they do some research, and they find a place that might reject them ’cause it’s owned by Christians, and they go in there to create trouble. Then when that happens, the media climbs onto it and makes it look like everybody’s outraged. When Indiana passed that law, if you did nothing but watch the media, you would think the entire country hated the state of Indiana for what they had done; they’re a bunch of bigots.

So the media starts knocking on doors, trying to find evidence of the bigotry and the racism. The media is looking for just one example of a business that would not serve a gay wedding or gay reception. After two days, they found one. They found a little pizza shop, family owned. One of the daughters of the family, 20 years old, was behind the counter when they walked in. They thrust the camera and microphone into her face.

“Would you serve your pizza at a gay wedding reception?”

“No, we wouldn’t. That violates our religious…”

Bingo!

That’s all there was needed. “Indiana: Racist, sexist, bigot homophobic!” and the news media starts running with this, and that pizzeria became nationally known. Indiana was routinely ripped to shreds, with the imprimatur… And, of course, the image in the media coverage was that everybody in America was outraged by it, that everybody hates Christians, and everybody hates bigotry, that everybody loves gay marriage and gay weddings, and everybody normal would show up at a reception.

Same thing in Charlottesville. Trump was talking about the argument over whether or not to pull down Confederate statues. Remember what was going on at the time was a bunch of leftists were waking up and thinking, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Statue of Robert E. Lee? Oh, my God. I can’t look! I can’t look! Oh, my gosh. Tear it down! Tear it down! Tear down that statue!” So the argument became, “Should we leave these great American historical monuments up or tear ’em down?” The left wanted to tear ’em down.

A little protest happened in Charlottesville and Trump says, “There’s good people on both sides of this issue,” while the media is running pictures of the atrocity that happened! So the media’s running pictures of the warring factions and the automobile in the midst of the crowd. (impression) “President Trump, Donald Trump, says, ‘There are good people on both sides.'” The whole thing was a setup, and I’m just gonna… Speaking for me, I resent the whole idea, the idea that I have to intellectually respond to every damn lie these people tell.

It offends my sensibilities like you can’t believe. It offends me they get to set these kinds of lying, stinking narratives and that nobody will push back on it! You know, one of the reasons for this, by the way, is a whole bunch of conservative Never Trumpers just chimed in on what a bigot and idiot Trump was ’cause they didn’t want anybody thinking that they were a religious bigot or a white supremacist. So they had to pile on and join this criticism, and Trump was not even talking about white supremacists and Nazis when he was talking about “good people on both sides.”

Okay. So now I’m told that this is one of the three things that the media always falls back on when they think Trump is gaining ground on ’em. Another one is child separation at the border. What a lie that was! That’s worse than Charlottesville, folks, because that was being done by virtue of the law created by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals during the Obama administration! Child separation from families claiming asylum happened during the Obama administration. Nobody was telling the truth about it.

To this day, the left runs around and talks about dividing families at the border — a flat-out, out-and-out lie. The administration has responded to that lie. Sarah Sanders, I don’t know how many times, has said to you exactly what I just said. Then, of course, there’s Trump-Russia collusion. You think you can sweep this stuff away with the president tweeting out the truth? How many tweets has the president put out there calling this a witch hunt in any which way, matter, or form — claiming it didn’t happen, it’s all made up, there is no evidence for it?

And yet look! The Drive-By Media and the Democrat operate each and every day on the premise that it did happen. Now we’re on the verge of the Mueller report may or may not be coming out. Advance word is that the Mueller report may not have much to say about Russian collusion. What’s the Democrats’ reaction? “Well, screw Mueller! We’ll do our own investigation.” Pencil Neck Schiff says, “Screw Mueller. We’ll subpoena him! We’ll do our own investigation!”

Hey, Schiff? You don’t have nearly investigative spectrum that Mueller had. But the point is, it’s nothing. It’s not real. It doesn’t matter whether it happened or not. It’s a narrative. It is an agenda item. The objective is to overthrow the Trump presidency! Either today, tomorrow, or in 2020. So whatever… “The truth. Gotta get the truth out.” The truth doesn’t matter to these people! I’ve just told you the truth about Charlottesville.

I’ve just told you the truth about separation of children and families at the border. The Russian collusion stuff you already know. The travel ban. They fall back on that. There are a couple other things they always fall back on when Trump starts gaining ground. The idea that the truth of these incidents is somehow not out there and people have not been properly told? The president has been tweeting for years the truth about the Mueller investigation being a witch hunt.

In fact, I’m gonna tell you something. There have been more conservative or so-called alternative media man-hours spent correcting the record on the Trump-Russia collusion… The truth of what really happened there is out there and out there, and it’s been out there for two years. The truth of who really colluded, the truth of the dossier, the truth of all this has been out there, and it hasn’t changed the Democrats approach. It hasn’t changed the media one iota!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Want to talk about white supremacy, racism and all that? Virginia! Whatever happened to the governor, Ralph Northam? The guy seems to have just done disappeared under media blanket. Where is that story? Hmm?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. I’ve been doing some deep investigative diving, and I think I have an idea why Charlottesville has come up today, and it’s ’cause of the Academy Awards last night and Spike Lee. As best I can piece together, I went back during the break to our news digest archives. And there was a Hollywood Reporter story back on July 31st last year that makes me think that the Academy Awards last night may have sparked these calls today about Charlottesville.

In addition, Spike Lee didn’t win a director Oscar. He won a coproducer, cowriter, some such — best adaptive screenplay. Yeah. For BlacKkKlansman I guess is the name of the movie. So Spike’s up there and he’s got yellow legal pad size notes that he’s reading his acceptance from.

So Trump apparently saw it and tweeted: “Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President, who has done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts, etc.) than almost any other Pres!”

Okay. So that lit ’em up. They think Trump’s making fun of Spike ’cause Spike was using legal pad size notes to read his acceptance speech. So I went back here and I got the story from the Hollywood Reporter on July 31st.

“At the movie’s New York premiere Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, the prolific filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter why he decided to include footage from last year’s riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered to protest the removal of Confederate monuments throughout the South.”

Spike Lee said of the August rally, “It happened before we started shooting. I was in Martha’s Vineyard –” Spike, what are you doing in Martha’s Vineyard? Guess he’s up there with Skip Gates and Obama, yeah. Anyway, “I was in Martha’s Vineyard and watching CNN and saw a homegrown, American apple pie act of terrorism.” He’s talking here about Charlottesville.

“Days later, President Donald Trump said there was ‘blame on both sides,’ telling reporters during a combative exchange, ‘You had a group on one side that was bad. You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I’ll say it right now.’ Lee chose to feature clips of Trump touting those controversial remarks in the movie because, as he told THR, ‘He said those things. And people need to be reminded that the current president of the United States says things like that.’”

Okay. So it came alive in this movie! Which nobody saw! This is the thing about the Academy Awards. Nobody sees the movies that win awards anymore! Nobody knows the people in them! And then there has been even a reference to Charlottesville in the aftermath of the Jussie Smollett case. Oh, by the way, the police superintendent of Chicago, Eddie Johnson, showed up on Good Morning America today to be interviewed by Robin Roberts, who also interviewed Smollett while he gave the — shame they don’t give Emmys for acting on television morning shows, ’cause Smollett clearly could have won an Emmy for that piece he did with Robin Roberts.

Anyway, the police superintendent shows up and people are saying, “Hey, you know, that check, that check that doesn’t mean that he was paying for mugging supplies and so forth.” Oh, yes, it does, yes, it does. And the superintendent said we’ve got more evidence than you even know we’ve got. We’ve got more evidence on Smollett that we haven’t even revealed yet. So people are going (gulping sound).

But Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, in his reaction to the whole Smollett situation in Chicago, made some reference to Charlottesville. So it is something that the left falls back on. So that’s why it’s come back to life, because you see, for those of you worried about this, Charlottesville is the same as Russian collusion, it’s the same as separating children from families at the border, it’s the same as the travel ban, which is the same as any other outrage ostensibly committed by Donald Trump.

They’re constantly in storage. And whenever anything happens that makes it seem logical to revive these as though they just happened, then the left and the media bring them back up. I understand those of you who wish Trump would come out and clarify what he was saying. But it’s not gonna mean the left is not gonna use this anymore.

I know what you’re saying. “Yeah, but it would mean that a lot fewer people are gonna believe it.” Yeah, hopefully that would be the case. But then we’re relying on what? We are relying on the intelligence and the common sense of the American people, A, to accept what Donald Trump says, B, to believe it, and then, C, the next time Charlottesville is brought up these people, “Hey, hey, you can’t fool us with that anymore. We now know that you’re making it up, Trump didn’t say that.” That’s the hoped-for reaction to this stuff.

And you tell me. Has that worked on any of these other items that are always in layaway just waiting for the left to bring ’em back to life to hopefully in their minds advance some agenda item of the moment. In this case they’re bringing it back up to retaliate against Trump for his tweet against Spike Lee. I don’t think there’s any question that’s what this is about. He tweets Spike Lee has to read notes, it’s a shame, and what’s Spike talking about anyway? Well, life has never been better for African-Americans.

Ho, ho, ho. We can’t stand that. We can’t let Trump get away with that. We can’t let Trump say that he’s done more for African-Americans than Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton. So we have to get into gear, bring up Charlottesville again. If Trump hadn’t tweeted anything — it might have still come up because old Spike put it in his movie. In fact, I made a note here. One of the things that Spike Lee said in his notes, reading his legal pad size notes that he was giving his acceptance. The BlacKkKlansman, he opened up by bringing up 1619. Somebody else did this recently. Oh, it was Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia who reminded us it was 400 years ago that we are celebrating the arrival of the first slaves to Jamestown. Yeah. Celebrating it? Okay.

So Spike Lee said, “Our ancestors were stolen from mother Africa and brought to Jamestown, Virginia, enslaved 1619, 400 years ago.” Hey, Spike, have any idea when that all ended? Spike, when did slavery end, and what brought that about? See, in Spike’s world it never ended. To all of these people on the left it never ended. It can’t ever end because the United States at one time did it! And so the United States is in perpetuity evil, immoral, and unjust. No matter what fixes have taken place, no matter what repairs have been made, no matter what steps have been taken to alleviate, those don’t count. Four hundred years since our ancestors were stolen from mother Africa and brought to Jamestown. Who stole ’em, by the way? Who ran the slave trade? What color were they, Spike? Any idea?

It’s as though we still have a slave nation, and this is the 400-year anniversary of it, as far as Spike Lee is concerned. I don’t know, folks. I’ll tell you, I’ve been dealing with this my entire career is one of the reasons I’m having this reaction. I’m a little bit jaundiced to it. I’ll tell you why. In fact, to make the transition, grab Nick in Chicago, ’cause this will transition to what I want to say. It will let me take the call at the same time so Nick doesn’t have to hold on. Nick in Chicago. It’s line 4. I’ll give you time to make the switch. Three, two, one. Hey, Nick. Great to have you on the program. What’s your point? What is it you want to say?

CALLER: Great to be here, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: You’re spot on. I think more or less it’s a failure of conservatives and the Republicans on a public relations and messaging front. I think the liberals live in this echo chamber where liberals, they only get their news from, you know, mainstream media. They never hear your show. They never watch Fox News. And I think we need to come up with a strategy that’s kind of asymmetric. Because, you know, if you have 80% of media being mainstream liberal, how are you gonna combat that with just, you know, a few voices here and there. We have to do something, you know, grassroots — I don’t know what it’s gonna be, but I don’t think the resources are being put in by the RNC or any other conservatives to combat this in an asymmetric way.

RUSH: Well, let me tell you about PR. It’s a good point. You’re essentially saying that there is not a public relations effort on the right that gets into gear and immediately refutes some of these claims. You think the left has a PR machine, and they do. It’s called the media. We don’t get a fair shake in that media. The media is not even media anymore. I mean, I don’t even like calling them media. They’re just a wing, they’re an adjunct of the American left, the Democrat Party or whatever under the guise of reporting the news, under the guise of doing news.

There’s not any news. Everything’s an agenda. Everything’s a narrative this, narrative that. There isn’t any news anymore. But that’s who gives the Democrats their public relations response. I have been dealing these kinds of false allegations and near slanderous and libelous allegations for almost as long as I have been doing this program.

And like I’ve told you many times, there doesn’t seem to be a single proven way to deal with it. And my first five or seven years I was really struggling with this. I mean, folks, they started calling me a racist within six months of this show starting. And then it just only got worse. Then they started calling me a liar and then they said that I made things up, and they just revived that last week on a fact check.

They recycle these things in my case every 10 or 15 years with the ongoing underlying, you can’t believe a thing the guy says, the guy lies, he makes it all up to fit his agenda plus he’s a racist, a bigot, a homophobe. It just never ends. And I ran into somebody, “You need a PR firm.” Really? A PR firm? “Yeah, you need a PR firm. You need to go get a PR firm.” So I entertained the idea. I went and talked to a bunch of PR people. You know what they told me?

“You need to have a meeting with the New York Times editorial board. And you need to sit down, you need to tell them they’re lying about you.”

I said, “No, no, no. I can do that on my own if I wanted to.”

“Okay, then. We can get you on 60 Minutes.”

“No. I can do that on my own. If I want to be on 60 Minutes, I’ll just wait for the next controversy and then call ’em and tell ’em I want to come on.”

The point is, the PR people weren’t gonna do anything. They were gonna advise me what I had to do. And I’m here to tell you that what you mean by PR is you want an army of people out there defending Donald Trump. You don’t want him to have to do it himself. When any Democrat gets in trouble, the entire Democrat Party circles the wagons unless that person is on the outs and the party wants to push ’em out.

Whenever one of the news anchors gets in trouble, the rest of the news business circles the wagons and defends ’em. They don’t have to do it themselves. Bill Clinton, when he got in trouble with Lewinsky and lying under oath, he had an army of people, including the media, out there speaking for him, refuting charges, talking about what a great guy he was.

What you actually are saying, when you want PR, you want an army of people out there defending Donald Trump. Public relations people, in my experience, have done nothing but tell me what I have to do, and the things that they have told me to do are things I could do on my own. “Well, you need to be on 60 Minutes. Well, you need to have an editorial board meeting with the New York Times. You need to tell the truth about who you are.” No, no. Isn’t that why I’m hiring you? Usn’t that your job? And one of them said, “Stop worrying about this. The only reason this stuff’s happening is because you’re effective. Learn to deal with it. Be worried if they stop criticizing you.”

I mean, I’ve heard everything. I’ve heard every advice, every analysis, every strategy there is. And not one of them involved anybody else doing anything. It was all advice I had to do. So put me in Trump’s position, ’cause this has happened. And I get, well, how about when they made up all this garbage that I was making fun of people who had Parkinson’s disease? So what do you want me to do? You want me to go on MSNBC where all the criticism was and say, “You people are lying. I didn’t do it. You know I didn’t do it and you’re making it up.” Wouldn’t have been effective. Wouldn’t have been effective if I did that on my own show. Wouldn’t have been effective if I went on some other network.

I’ve always thought that whoever the target of an attack is needs an army of other people refuting it. That’s what happens on the left. Somebody on the left gets in trouble, they don’t have to do much. Maybe do a mea culpa. But look at the minute Smollett made an allegation, look at the army of people that circled the wagons and supported him. Even after he was exposed as a liar and having made it up, he still has people defending him. And he hasn’t had to say much at all.