RUSH: Here’s Ron in New Orleans. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you. Rush, Trump has recently had a bump-up in his approval ratings, and, you know, the evolutionary psychologists tell us that all human beings, even babies, find it distasteful to see somebody else being treated unfairly. We all know nobody likes a bully. I think the Mueller report showed, to a lot of fence-sitters, that Trump has indeed been treated unfairly. And, as long as he stays in the position of being the person being bullied, I think he will continue to increase his approval ratings.
RUSH: And, now, that, to me, is a fascinating comment.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: Well, but I want to talk about it with you.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: Do you mind my asking how old you are?
CALLER: I’m only 80.
RUSH: Eighty. Makes perfect sense for somebody 80 years old because the way you grew up, that’s the way things were. People didn’t like bullies, and people sympathized with what they thought were underdogs or people being unfairly attacked. But I don’t think that’s as universally true today, is my point, Ron. I think with social –
CALLER: Well —
RUSH: I think people love seeing others attacked, and they love piling on. Since they can do it anonymously now and they can do it in great numbers anonymously, and they can make it look like millions of people are joining in. You used to be right. You used to be exactly right. In his thinking, the Mueller report measured against the news, people would see this and say, (impression)”My God, this man Trump has been treated unfairly. My God, I thought he did this in the report.” And they would immediately rally to Trump’s defense. But you notice, Ron, that’s not happening.
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RUSH: Let me expand on the point made by our last caller, ’cause, folks, it’s perfect. It’s the way things used to be because of the morality and the overall cultural definitions that we have in our country. His point was that Donald Trump’s approval ratings seem to be creeping up, and he believes that it’s because of the Mueller report exonerating him as compared against two years of media coverage which had Trump guilty of colluding with the Russians, stealing the election, stealing it from Hillary.
“Hillary was the legitimate winner,” we were told, and Trump had, you know, done all these crazy things in the Steele dossier. The media reported this as though it was all true and all these people in America thought it was true and Trump had to go. And then the report comes out and people see that Trump was mistreated, that he was treated unfairly, that he was lied about. And his point was that people in our country rally to the defense of people who suffer this kind of indignity, and that’s why Trump’s approval numbers are going up.
And there was a point time in our country where he was exactly right. That’s why I asked him his age. There was a point in time where that was exactly right. This was when shame was a… What’s the term? Not relevant. “Shame” was a front-and-center characteristic. There were… People wanted to avoid shame. Being shamed in public was a very embarrassing thing, and it took a while to recover from it. You can’t be shamed in public anymore because of the dissolution of the guardrails that defined morality and decency and common sense.
We have nothing in common when it comes to our morality anymore. We have nothing in common when it comes to the definitions of morality and decency. And not only that, we have people who tell you, “You can’t define morality for whole group people! It’s not your job. You don’t know what morality is. You can’t define my morality. You can’t tell me right and wrong for me because you don’t have that right, you don’t have that power.” But there used to be — and they come from the Judeo-Christian ethic.
There used to be solid understanding, conventional understanding of right and wrong, and when somebody was really wronged… The movies are filled with this kind of story where a rock-solid, upstanding citizen is smeared and destroyed and the town folk all want the guy scalped and sent to jail — and then the news comes in that he has been wronged, and everybody rallies to his defense. This is what our caller thinks explains Trump’s rising approval numbers, and I would love for that to be the reason, but I don’t think…
There’s no embarrassment on the part of the people who perpetrated this coup or this scheme against Trump. They’re not even stopping it! There hasn’t been a single apologize from anybody involved who called him a traitor, who accused him of treason, who accused him of being a Russian agent. There’s not a sing mea culpa that’s happened anywhere in the media. There isn’t any shame over this, because all it is, is a political seek-and-destroy mission that is ongoing. “Okay. So that phase failed,” is their attitude. “Now it’s on to the next one.
“Since Mueller didn’t get it done, we gotta take what Mueller gave us and we gotta go down the impeachment road or whatever. We gotta maybe go after Trump after he leaves office, put him in jail through the Southern District of New York or whatever.” There isn’t any shame associated with this. Not en masse. There might be some Drive-By people personally, quietly feeling like they were used as suckers. But if it is, it’s not very many — and if there are those who think that, they’re never gonna admit it, and they’re never gonna betray those feelings to anybody.
And they’re not gonna change the way they’ve been acting. This is something that I have actually hoped for. All these years I’ve been doing this program, I’ve been hoping for a return to that point. I’ve been hoping that there will be a cultural or societal point of depravity that finally reaches the bottom where everybody says, “This is sick! This is enough. We’re not putting up with this anymore.” But we don’t reach it. We just keep redefining more sickness as “normal.”
We just keep redefining more depravity, more perversion as “normal,” accompanied by, “You’ve got no business criticizing! Who are you? You don’t get to criticize that! You don’t get to define morality. You don’t get to define right and wrong.” Well, no individual ever did. That was the point. These are things that our culture and society, for the most part — not unanimously, but a vast majority — agreed with, and this is how our society remained ordered, and it’s how we did have things the common.
Even if we had political, ideological differences, there were at least foundational things that we all held in common that did serve to unite us. Those things are evaporating — and if any of them are still left, they don’t have much time. But it’s a fascinating thought. People see how Donald Trump was mistreated. Remember his opening: People rally to the mistreated. He called “bullying.” People have been bullied Trump. But Trump has more than just been bullied. People, he said, rally to people that have been mistreated and treated unfairly.
And he thinks people had a great awakening when the Mueller report came out and it was totally, totally different than what everybody was expecting. If there is… Here’s another thing. Outside the universe of this audience where you and I… We didn’t need the report to be ticked off at Mueller and Clapper and Comey and McCabe. We’ve been angry at this from pretty much the moment it began. But how about those of us outside this audience who are, you know, not regular listeners of alternative media?
They just regular, everyday customers the Drive-By Media. Have you seen…? Not only have we not seen any apologizes from the Drive-By Media, we haven’t seen any stories of people that are outraged by it. I mean, just average, ordinary Americans. Where are the man-on-the-street interviews? “Are you mad? Are you upset? For two years you have been led to believe that your president was a traitor, perhaps a Russian agent and cheated and stole the election, and now you found out that there was no such thing. Are you mad?”
Where are those stories? If people out there like this guy was talking about exist, we don’t know it. Now, don’t throw social media out because I don’t live there. There may indeed be some people on Twitter, “Hey, Rush, I react on Twitter. People really mad.” Okay, fine. But Twitter is still not mainstream. It’s… The only way Twitter gets mainstream is when the Drive-Bys report things from Twitter that buttresses their cause, and Twitter and Facebook are not mainstream anyway because they simply amplify what already exists in left-wing political operations, including the media.
So there isn’t any of this reaction, and there ought to be a hell of a lot of it. The people of this country were strung along for 2-1/2 years — and, in spite of some of this, they even elected Trump. The news about Trump before the election was… I mean, the stuff they tried to use to defeat him and destroy him was tough enough as it was. Then here comes this Russian stuff, and there were hints of it before the election. It was after the election when…
They never expected to use any of this because Hillary was gonna win. So now Hillary loses, and now they gotta come up with some explanation for it and then try to get Trump thrown out of office and, “Hello, Russia investigation! Russia collusion.” But where is the anger from (for lack of a better term) customers of the news who have been lied to? As I’ve been saying four and five times a day for over two years? There isn’t even any of that reported. Not to say it’s not out there, but if people are mad and nobody knows about it, then what impact does it have?
As far as anybody is concerned, the Mueller report was received with a ho-hum. “Oh. Okay. Nothing to see here. I guess we’re gonna move on to getting rid of Trump some other way.” It was not seen as an exoneration. It was not seen as a gigantic mistake. It was not seen as an effort, political effort that failed. It was just, “Meh. Okay. Trump didn’t collude. Okay, we move on.” No anger about it. I don’t know about you. If I believe somebody or something and they have me thinking something for two years and so forth…
It could be a friend, could be family member, whatever. If I find out that I’ve been totally lied to and used and my emotions have been manipulated on stuff that’s not even close to being true, I’m livid about it, at the people who did it. Now, I know your relationship with news people’s not personal — which is another thing. The Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, they’re not people. So when we sit here and criticize CNN, criticize the Washington Post, criticize the New York Times, we’re not criticizing people.
The New York Times, CNN, these news organizations are inanimate objects, for all intents and purposes. Yet when they go after Donald Trump, they go after Donald Trump. When they come after me, they come after me. They don’t come after the EIB Network, they go after Rush Limbaugh. They don’t go after the presidency. They go after Donald Trump. So maybe we need to change the way we go about this. Rather than say, “The New York Times outrageously,” maybe we need to name the editor. “Dean Baquet of the New York Times outrageously slandered the president today.”
Whoever it is that edits and okays everything in the paper. Not even the reporters, but the people that own these things and the people that edit these things, the management types. Put their names on these stories. Put their names on the criticism. “Jeff Zucker, editor at CNN today, purposely allowed and promoted the idea that” whatever. They go after us by name. We go after them by… “Did you see what the New York Times…?”
Who cares what the New York Times did today? How do you get revved up and angry about the New York Times? It’s gonna be there no matter what you do, and it’s gonna be doing what it does no matter what you do. But if you go after the named people who are making this happen… The New York Times is an inanimate object. It’s a newspaper. Who makes the newspaper what it is are the people who want to be named, if we’re gonna deal with this evenly and fairly.
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RUSH: I’m serious about this, by the way. Stop and think about it for a second. How many people (angrily), “Did you see what’s in the Times today? It’s outrageous!” Sometimes you might mention the op-ed writer. But the op-ed writers are opinion people, and they’re used to getting hit. In fact, they like it. In many cases (impression), “Oh, controversy? Man, people are noticing!” But when you’re talking about serious abuses of news justice, just criticizing the institution, “That CNN! CNN said today…”
I think if you put a name to the management people at these places, it’s gonna have more of an impact. It just does. Their criticism of us is always personal. You never see ’em rip “the EIB Network,” and even in Trump’s case… Imagine the difference, seriously, if the news every day was, “The presidency today while in Normandy,” or, “The White House today insulted Nancy Pelosi while the presidency was in the Normandy cemetery” blah, blah, blah.
If they went after the institution, it would have much less impact than if you go after the guy or the person. We never go after the people that really make these news organizations what they are: The owners, the editors. They get to skate along in relative anonymity and prestige, way above the actual making of the sausage — and they’re not way above the making of the sausage. They’re the ones actually making it. On TV it’s producers, editors, the management.
Anyway, here’s Nancy, Little Rock, Arkansas. Nancy, glad you waited. Great to have you on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Oh, thank you! Thank you for having me. I want to specifically thank you for your recommendations of Vince Flynn, Joel C. Rosenberg, and Sidney Powell’s Licensed to Lie book. They have been so awesome. I am a big reader, but I’m also a big listener, and so the action-packed Vince Flynn and Joel C. Rosenberg make listening to a book so wonderful.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad that you like them.
CALLER: Yes!
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thank you. Sharyl Attkisson. I have been thinking about the reporter that you are looking for that’s gonna step out of the box and maybe go after this real story, and I think Sharyl Attkisson is a great candidate for it, a great choice for that person.
RUSH: Well, you’re right, but Sharyl Attkisson has already been sent away from the Drive-By Media. She used to be at CNN, and she was at CBS, and I don’t remember the exact specific details, but Sharyl Attkisson now is independent contractor. She’s entrepreneurial. She does occasional opinion pieces for Real Clear Politics or TheHill.com. But she’s already doing it. She’s already engaging in that. There’s a lot of people that are. John Solomon. Sara Carter. Paul Sperry. (If I get started, I’m gonna leave people out.)
Paul Sperry. Uhh, there’s a great guy at The Daily Caller. Oh, mental block! See, this is what happens. Chuck Ross. Lee Smith at Tablet. There’s all kinds of people exposing this. But none of them — not one of the people exposing it — are people that participated in it. Sharyl Attkisson didn’t participate in this. What I’m talking about is somebody deep in the ranks of the Drive-Bys, breaking off and telling us that they knew from the get-go there was no story there, but they were engaging in it for whatever reason they want to give.
That hasn’t happened, and it won’t happen.
That’s why there’s never gonna be an apology from any of these people, because that would be an admission that they got it wrong, and in their view, they didn’t get anything wrong. (impression) “Trump still doesn’t deserve to be president. Trump’s still an ogre! He is still mean, he’s still a scumbag, and he still has to go. So, okay, the Russia angle didn’t work. We’ll move on to something else.” They’re never gonna apologize for it, and there’s never gonna be an expose from within that tells us how it was done.
We’re never gonna get a story from a New York Times reporter how he was secretly getting leaked information he knew was untrue from Clapper or Brennan. We’re never gonna get this! But it’s there to know. It did happen, one way or the other. But we’re never gonna get it. I say “never.” The odds are that an insider is gonna do the expose. So you can have all the outsiders doing the expose you want; they’re just gonna ignore them like they have been ignoring them for the past two years.
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RUSH: No. Here’s what I’m talking about. For example: “Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos permitted executive editor Martin Baron to publish yet another story found today to be fake news on Donald Trump.” “Here’s a clip from ABC The View, apparently approved by Disney CEO Bob Iger…” Stuff like that. Attach their names to this stuff! They clearly defend it in public and more so by promoting it. Attach ’em.