RUSH: I want to ask everybody a quick question: Do you think the Independence Day holiday, the Fourth of July…? Do you think it’s a political holiday? You think it has political attachments? How can it not? How can it not? The Democrats are out there (impression), “Trump is turning July 4th celebration into a political event. It’s unfair. He shouldn’t do it. It’s never been done before! Previous presidents have never made speeches…” What do you mean July 4th is not political? It is precisely a political event! I don’t care how you define it. July 4th, what is it? It’s Independence Day.
It is the day the United States declared its independence and began the process of becoming a country. If that’s not political, I don’t know what it is — and let me tell you what this is all about, folks. This goes back I forget how many years, but it’s recent, like in the last 10 years. This is a Harvard survey. They found that images, patriotic images — of, say, the American flag, fireworks, this kind of thing — the visual images, the graphics that are associated with patriotism remind people of Republicans. They promote Republican Party values — or, in this case, conservative values.
That’s what this is about.
The Democrats know full well when people are exposed to American symbols and patriotic displays and songs, their political leaning moves to the right! Shortly after that study was made known, that’s when we became engulfed in this Kaepernick crap, the tearing down of our history. That’s called “art” and “free expression.” We had to topple statues, had to get rid of the flag. We now know this thing going on with Nike. This stuff is not accidental. It’s not just the evolutionary status of the American protest establishment and the dissent movement.
It is purposely, strategically targeted.
So they get to play politics on the Fourth of July and we don’t? We want to handcuff ourselves? “Okay, okay, right. You’re right. We shouldn’t politicize the Fourth of July.” We have to politicize it because these people are politicizing everything. Now, folks, I’m gonna tell you: I’m a little conflicted today, and I want to try to explain why. I’ve not rehearsed this. I’ve not stood in front of the mirror. I’ve not pretended that I was on the radio and begun talking to myself. I just have a vague outline here of what my intentions are, and I’m gonna bounce it off of a really great column that I found at The Federalist by David Harsanyi.
It begins this way. I can remember in the past on this program on such days as this — the day before the Fourth of July, the day before Labor Day/Memorial Day, the day before Thanksgiving, the day before the Christmas break — without exception, those days were fun. This program was devoted to jocularity. It was lighthearted and sometimes heavy-hitting satirical, but it was fun. It wasn’t hand-wringing. It wasn’t obsessed, consumed with worry and concern over things. There was a sense of normalcy.
And I’m not talking about the ability to have fun without offending anybody. I’m talking about an attitude. I’m talking about an attitude of jocularity and just general fun. It’s the Fourth of July coming up tomorrow, they say. It’s a great day. Everybody was in a great mood, got some days off work, gonna have some social activities around it for most people. And those kinds of things, those kinds of days, to me, are vanishing, at least on this program. Now what do we have?
Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July, and we’re worried about bombs and protests in Washington! And now we got the media, the Democrats out claiming that the president’s politicizing it when the whole existence of this country is a political miracle! To say that the Independence Day holiday is not political? I think what the Democrats mean by this is, “It’s not the property of one party.” Well, then join us! You are the guys abandoning us. You’re the guys on the left! You don’t want anything to do with the flag, you don’t want anything to do with patriotism. You want to sit there and tear it all down.
And I guess that’s it. It used to be that we weren’t confronted every day with the sad reality that there is a growing segment of our population that hates us and hates the country and wants to rip it to shreds. For my part, I just can’t sit here and laugh it off. You gotta deal with it. You try to deal with it with the usual ingredients of fun and jocularity but at the same time, you’ve gotta take it seriously because it is. Now, let me read to you the passage that really got me thinking about this in David Harsanyi’s column.
It is entitled, “Why Nike’s Capitulation to Kaepernick Matters.” Whatever you hear, do not hear criticism of Harsanyi here. That’s not what this is about. But he’s got a very, very important miniature paragraph in this piece that I am now going to read to you with my own dulcet tones. “Whatever the underlying causes for Kaepernick’s popularity — some of them certainly legitimate…” (sigh) What are the causes of his popularity that are legitimate? Well, maybe he was an NFL quarterback for a while, of the San Francisco 49ers, and that he got them close to the Super Bowl. Well, he got them in the Super Bowl.
Okay, just draw the line there. Okay, maybe legitimate reasons for popularity. Let me start at the beginning. I don’t want to get sidetracked here. “Whatever the underlying causes for Kaepernick’s popularity … these protests are acts of contempt toward an irredeemable nation created in sin.” This is exactly right, and I’m not reading it for this point, but this observation is exactly what I’m telling everybody here. They are targeting this country.
Like Kaepernick lied to everybody saying he was kneeling and protesting simply because he didn’t like the police shooting people that looked like him, and it was never about that. It was always protesting the flag. It was always protesting the country and the existence of the country and the founding of the country, and Harsanyi has figured that out. “[T]hese protests are acts of contempt toward [what they think is] an irredeemable,” meaning, we can’t fix it so we gotta tear it down, “nation created in sin. ” This view of our founding is an increasingly popular position on the left,” and here’s the sentence that got me:
“And if it ever takes hold in mainstream American life, we’re in real trouble.”
“[I]f it ever takes hold in mainstream American life”? It has! This sentence would have been appropriately written 25 years ago. Twenty-five years ago, I remember warning everybody. Within the structures of this program back then, we were focused on fun and jocularity. We had serious moments. I mean, we combined everything here. Twenty-five years ago, 30 years, 20 years ago, this program was made to order to warn everybody that right now and today is where we were headed. “Come on, Rush! It’s not that bad. It’s a small band of malcontents out of there. They’ve always been around.”
I said, “No, it’s different. These people…” It was slow, but it was daily, forward-march progress for these people. We’re long past the point now where “if it ever takes hold in mainstream American life, we’re in real trouble.” We’ve been in real trouble for 15 or 20 years on this. And depending on how far back you go, you might even be able to make the case for that. How much more mainstream do you get than Nike? An American corporation acknowledging that a tennis shoe with a Betsy Ross flag on it is provocative is maybe needs to come down because one of their paid spokesmen doesn’t like it, because he hates country.
So Nike says, “Okay we’ll align with this guy because Kaepernick’s made us a lot of money.” If a guy has made a company a lot of money with anti-Americanism crusades, has that not reached the mainstream? What is the Drive-By Media today if it is not a daily attempt at undermining the values and the concepts that were there at the founding of this country? What do you mean, if it ever hits the mainstream? That’s the problem, the point. It has hit the mainstream! Unless you have a different definition of mainstream than I do.
Turn on any television show. The odds are it’s going to have something in it that literally destroys or attempts to destroy or attacks you, your values, your way of life, the founding of this country. Movies, ditto. That’s the whole point. This stuff has now gone beyond the fringe. It has escaped the fringe and is in the mainstream. The Democrat Party is seeking the presidency on the basis that illegal aliens deserve more rights and more welfare than citizens of this country, and they have not been laughed out of the arena like they would have been 25 years ago or 20 or even 15.
It’s time for people to realize this — and, folks, I’m telling you, I’m conflicted, because this is not the kind of attitude I ever brought to this program in years past on the day before Independence Day. Now we’ve got so many lies in the media. How many of you have seen the news that the president is gonna give up on the citizenship question? And how many of you said, “Aw, damn! Why?” Well, he hasn’t. It’s fake news! We have a tweet from the president: “The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!
“We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question.” Meaning, we’re still pushing to get this on the census in 2020. But yet it’s all over the news. I don’t care where you go, the stories are leading lists of headlines. “Trump administration abruptly drops quest to put citizenship question on 2020 census.” He hasn’t. It’s outright fake news. Now, the next thing the Drive-By Media is doing in their quest here to say, “Trump is just polluting the Fourth of July…”
How can anybody who loves America, wants to make it great again and celebrate the founding of this country, be considered polluting it? But that’s what the Drive-By Media’s doing. The Drive-By Media (we’ve got a montage coming up) says, “He’s politicizing! He wants to bring tanks, he wants to bring missiles, he wants to bring the instruments of war to a July 4th parade. This has never been done. This has only been done in Third World, tinhorn communist countries…” No, no. It’s been done a lot in America.
It was done at the JFK inaugural. It was done at the Eisenhower inaugural parade in 1953. We used to have a celebrated holiday in this country called Army Day. In 1939, tanks rolled in front of the U.S. Capitol on Army Day. We don’t have Army Day anymore because back in 1939, we didn’t have an Air Force. It was called the Army Air Force back then. We had Army Day, Navy Day, but no Air Force. That was to come later. But the point is, none of this is unprecedented. We have two gigantic fireworks companies that have donated fireworks displays.
They’re the best ever, Trump says. (Of course, what else would he say?) Trump makes the point that this isn’t costing us anything. Look, we own the airplanes we’re gonna use. We own the tanks. The people driving the airplanes and the tanks work for us. This isn’t costing us anything in terms of dollars. These people are on duty as they are performing these things. So the people who tell us that Trump is politicizing the Fourth of July, the people that politicize everything with their sickness, their quirkiness, their liberalism, their progressivism…
They politicize everything, and they lie about everything. Like Ocasio-Cortez going down to the border and literally lying about what she saw there. She didn’t see what she said she saw. What she claimed happened didn’t happen there! But it made the Drive-By Media as though it was gospel. But the idea that if this wacko, progressive radicalism ever takes hold in mainstream American life, we are in real trouble? Again, this is not a criticism of Mr. Harsanyi. I don’t want anybody getting hold of him and saying that’s what this is.
He’s not alone thinking this. I think to a lot of people, they’ve never taken this stuff seriously! Not nearly as seriously as I have. You know, I know the left like every square inch of my naked body. I know them; I can predict them. I know what they’re gonna say, what they’re gonna do, what their reaction to thing is gonna be. I’ve been tracking this. You people that listen to this program know more about the American left than they know about themselves. They have been “sneaking up,” quote-unquote, for the last 50 years.
They’re not sneaking anymore. They are in our face every day. This is my big argument with the Never Trumpers. The Never Trumpers mocked us, laughed at us when we elected Trump because there is a crisis in America and the very fabric of this country and the kind of kind of country it’s gonna be is at stake. And they laughed, and they said, “That’s a bit extreme! Tut-tut-tut,” and patted us on the top of the head like the nincompoops that they thought we were. “You’re just crisismongering. There’s nothing to be afraid of. There is no crisis. These are fringe people that are not gonna…”
Yeah, you’re joining them now!
You’re doing everything you can to join them in undermining the president for whatever foolhardy reason! So the best and the brightest of the so-called conservative literary wing in Washington, D.C., and the conservative media? Nooo, they didn’t see this. They mocked people who did, while it was happening right in front of everybody’s nose. How many times…? I can’t count the number of times I have come to this program and told you of an encounter I had over a weekend with a so-called moderate Republican who said, “Well, look, I’m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative,” whatever the term.
I’m having a mental block. “I’m liberal on social issues, I’m conservative economic issues.” And all of this, you know, that stated philosophy, “I will refuse to join a Republican Party that will not allow abortion.” I said, “You people don’t know what you’re doing. You are allowing the wanton killing of people! Call ’em babies, call ’em fetuses or whatever. But we can’t have this in our society. The wanton, consequence-free killing of people. Now we’re doing it at the elderly end,” I said. “That’s a woman’s right to choose,” and so it was sneaking up on us.
We had not enough people willing to stand up and oppose it. Now here we are. Now people are saying (impression), “My God, this stuff is really getting bad, Rush. If we don’t stop this, I mean, it’s gonna take the country down.” What do you mean, if we don’t stop it? We’ve had 25 years to stop it. We can’t even get the Republican Party, up until Trump, organized around the premise. And to this day, I don’t think a lot of Washington takes what’s happening with this very seriously. In their minds, still a bunch of fringe kooks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So the Drive-By Media… We’ll get to the phones here in just a second. Something happened during the break that I gotta comment on. This always happens. I tell you I’m gonna do something, I go to a break, and something pops. During the break, I just ran across a Washington Post story about how much Trump’s Fourth of July extravaganza is gonna cost. I don’t give a flip! I don’t give a flip how much the Fourth of July extravaganza costs. I care about how much money it’s costing us to keep our border open!
I care about how much money it’s costing us — and the lives we are ruining — with an ever-growing, expanding welfare system. I care about the cost to humanity of allowing everybody that wants to, to become a victim — thereby giving up on themselves and their own self-reliance and then joining the club that thinks America is the problem in their lives. Those are the kind of costs I care about. Those kinds of costs cause massive increase in taxes, massive take-aways on disposable income.
You know, I care about dropping a $15 billion worth of cash on a pallet at the Tehran International airport for the mullah sponsors of worldwide terrorism like Obama did. That’s the kind of wasteful money I care about! How about the money Robert Mueller spent on a bogus attempted coup? We never hear about this. All of a sudden, for Trump’s Fourth of July extravaganza, we’re getting an itemized cost bill for this. How much can it possibly be cost to celebrate our country? In fact, Trump has tweeted about this. “The cost of our great Salute to America tomorrow will be very little compared to what it is worth.”
“What it’s worth.”
He said, “We own the planes,” meaning the jets that are gonna be flying over, flying by, “we have the pilots,” they’re Air Force pilots, we pay them, they’re working that day, “the airport is right next door (Andrews), all we need is the fuel.” And we get a discount on the fuel because we’re such a bulk buyer. “We own the tanks and all.” We own everything that’s gonna be in the parade, and the fireworks are being donated by two of the greatest fireworks manufacturers and display companies in the country.
What cost are we talking about here? And, of course, the key identifier: “what it’s worth.” That’s how he looks at things, the cost-value assessment, the cost-benefit analysis. He’s hell-bent… This president loves this country. This president is fighting every day against this slow creep of leftist radicalism, and he’s practically the only one who is, within the Republican Party — and if this is how he chooses to do it, then he’s got my full support.
The best way to stand up against this garbage is to celebrate the greatness of this country and to not let anybody take it away from anybody, not let anybody diminish you or anybody else from engaging in a celebration of this country, however that happens where you are. They’ll come… You know what they’re denigrating now? They’re denigrating the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. ESPN is denigrating it. Do you know how? (impression) “It’s not fair! It’s not fair with so many starving immigrants to show people jamming hot dogs in their faces like there’s no tomorrow.”
I’m not kidding you! Now the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest! Frankly, I couldn’t care to watch it, but that’s not the point! It’s a tradition; people like it and get into it. But here comes a bunch of leftists who want to control everything. “You can’t do that! What…? (sobbing) The starving children. What… what…?” The starving children? What about all these renegade television shows and the impact on children those shows are having? We’re worried about a hot dog eating contest humiliating the poor because they don’t have enough to eat, the illegal immigrants?
This is the kind of crap we’re dealing with. It’s become mainstream. It’s become something… You know, the Nathan’s hot dog contest will say, “Okay, okay, we’ll cancel it”? I don’t know that. I’m making it up. But I’m saying this is the kind of thing that we’re dealing with now. You know, you got Donald Trump. He’s one of the most open within one of the most transparent, one of the most communicative presidents this country’s ever going to have. He does not see himself as above everybody.
He’s gonna do a July 4th celebration to not promote him, not to politicize him. See, to the left when you promote America you are “politicizing” an event. To them, opposition to America is as legitimate as support for America, maybe even more so. So if you’re gonna get a guy out there who’s gonna be supporting America — (chuckles) on a national holiday celebrating our Declaration of Independence — the left wants an opportunity to come and disagree and tear it down. Therefore, Trump becomes a political provocateur. “If Trump wouldn’t do this, well, then the left wouldn’t have to do what they’re gonna do.”
Because no matter all the negativity surrounding him, he never stops speaking of his love and support for this country and its greatness and its potential — and if the left wants to run against that, they can have at it. They have no idea what’s gonna happen to ’em. But even if they lose elections, they’re still perverting the basic decency of this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So the left, the Democrat Party thinks that the Independence Day holiday is a political holiday where they deserve equal time. All right. We are out celebrating the founding of America, and they want equal time. To what? To oppose it! And they accuse us of politicizing it. They accuse Trump of politicizing Independence Day, when they’re essentially demanding equal time. By the way, as to the cost of fuel, we now are the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. So do you think we can get a deal on our own supply for whatever it’s gonna cost to do the flybys?
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