HANNITY: Today is the 31st anniversary of his radio show and the EIB Network. Joining us now from EIB Southern Command is the Rush Limbaugh. Thirty-one years…

RUSH: Thirty-one years. I mean, it’s flat-out amazing. And, you know, it’s like everything, time has raced by on certain things, and other days it’s just been slow and plodding. But, man, am I blessed. We all are. It’s such a great opportunity to have, to be able to talk about these things that really matter, the future of the country, with so many millions of people. It’s really, really, really been an honor and it’s ongoing. There’s still nothing I do, Sean, that I get more enjoyment out of than this. And also appearing on Fox. You know, I’ve been very blessed to be invited here by you, and I can’t thank you enough for having me on.

HANNITY: Rush, I think you got the greatest compliment ever from Mary Matalin. I think it was after the Clinton years she goes, “I don’t know how we would have survived but you being there every day.” I think a lot of conservatives, including myself, feel that way.

RUSH: Well, you know, it’s been a lot of time. It’s interesting if you go back, we started in 1988, and, in 1988, Sean, there was nothing but the three networks and the two big newspapers and CNN. And that was it. In terms of conservatism in the media, it would probably be National Review, William Buckley’s magazine, Bob Tyrrell of the American Spectator, that was it, the think tanks of course, but none of them were media.

And then for four years there wasn’t anything, it was me, and me on TV. And then you got your show and other conservatives started appearing on radio, and it just built and built. Finally, Fox goes on the air in 1996, but during that Clinton campaign, not to brag, but Mary Matalin was right, there wasn’t anything else except us on the radio doing battle with that.

It’s amazing to think back to all the things that have happened and where we are. I played a clip of myself today on Charlie Rose in 1992. This is 27 years ago. He wants to know why I think radical environmentalists are actually socialists. And he thinks I’m full of it. He’s having a lot of fun with me, is laughing. These are the days when these people used to invite me on their shows when they thought I was harmless, you know, like a fun circus act to have on.

But these people had no idea of the seriousness that we brought to this. But 26, 27 years ago, and here today in that debate last night Andrew Yang, I can’t believe this has not gotten more reaction. Andrew Yang said, “We’re too late. We don’t have time anymore. It’s time to move our people to higher ground.”

HANNITY: Yeah, I remember. (laughing)

RUSH: Talking about climate change. To higher ground! Stop and think about that. Move our people to higher ground. Then Jay Inslee came out and admitted what all of this climate change is. He said, “Every progressive liberal issue is wrapped up in climate change.” And it is. Climate change is what allows them to poison the minds of young kids, to blame people for causing a problem and then offer them redemption, make them feel like they have meaning in their lives by saving the planet.

It’s gotten to the point these people actually have convinced people that we can change the weather, that we can change the temperature. And none of this is true. It’s literal lunacy and insanity that has become mainstream on that side of the aisle. And they’re going down the tubes with it. And it’s remarkable. I watched that debate last night, I’m on the floor laughing through so much of it.

You know it’s bad when Rahm Emanuel has to go on TV today and criticize these people for being nuts with this agenda. I mean, Gloria Borger on CNN after the debate, “Where was the inspiration?” There isn’t any inspiration. People need to understand how the Democrats see America. This is the thing that just boggles my mind. They look out over this landscape, they see nothing but suffering. They don’t see anybody other than in pain, victims of this, victims of that.

Then they position themselves as the people who are gonna fix it, and get even with the other people — us — who have caused all of this misery. And there isn’t anything they talk about that involves improving life. They talk about jobs, not careers. They do not offer anybody anything uplifting, and they haven’t created a group of voters that even thinks uplifting. Their voter group is mired in all kinds of misery, injustice to the point they’re covering up George Washington in murals in San Francisco, rather than cleaning the human feces off the streets out there.

It’s an amazing thing to see how this is all — your guests just before me on this show — stop and think of it — three years ago, about that, nobody thought that Donald Trump could win. I’m talking about in the mainstream, the media, the Washington establishment, nobody thought he could win. Tonight, nobody thinks anybody on that Democrat debate stage can win.

In just three years we have gone from a candidate that everybody was laughing at and thinking had no prayer and wasn’t even serious about winning to now nobody on the Democrat side is — they’re asking Michelle Obama to get in and save them. If they’re doing that, that’s a tantamount admission that nobody they’re running now has a slight chance or even a prayer.

HANNITY: Let me ask you, so my buddy Bill Cunningham — you know Bill from Cincinnati, radio talk show host, great guy, funny. So he’s telling me, they’re lined up at six in the morning to see the president. You were gracious enough, you invited me to your wedding. The only people you see lined up around the block for long periods of time usually can sing well, play piano or guitar. Explain the Trump phenomenon versus what we’re seeing here.

RUSH: Well, the Trump phenomenon. You mean why people have glommed on to him? It goes back, I think, to the differences that the Democrats and us — that we — had in the way we see the country. You know, we conservatives — and I’m gonna take the opportunity of this stellar appearance tonight to remind people who conservatives are. We love everybody. We love people. We see a sea of potential as we look out over the country. We want people to be the best they can be.

We want people to be happy. We realize what a blessed opportunity it is to be born in the United States of America. And we want everybody to maximize their potential because that’s how you get a great country. That’s how you get great innovation. that’s how you got great modernization. It’s how you get a great military. It’s how you get great anything is great people. It’s the people of this country who make it work. Now, the Democrat Party, that’s just a foreign language to them.

Those kind of people… Stop and think. This is really true. Those kind of people are of no use to the Democrats. The Democrats are threatened by people who can rely on themselves. They’re threatened by people who can take care of themselves. They’re threatened by people like that, because those people are not dependent. Those people are not gonna be in need. Those people are not running around trying to figure out who it is that’s responsible for their unhappiness and their misery.

They’re too busy taking advantage of the blessed opportunity to live in this country. Now, not everybody is. But the point is, we have freedom to be and do whatever we want. The Democrats want to put obstacles in people’s way. The left wants to shackle people because they don’t believe in people. They don’t believe in freedom and liberty because they don’t trust people. They think most people are decrepit and dishonest and racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes — and it’s a such a gigantic contrast.

I don’t know how in the world anybody on that side thinks that they’re gonna put together a majority to win a national election with that kind of an agenda, which thinks this way. “America is not great. America is not exceptional. America is immoral and unjust and has been since our founding.” How do you build any kind of a genuine, serious movement on that kind of attitude about the country?

HANNITY: Stay right there. Rush, his 31st anniversary at the EIB Network, Southern Command, he’s with us for the rest of the hour. I’ll ask him about the deep state, about the Comey news — and, of course, socialism and election 2020 as we continue tonight. Stay with us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: All right, we now continue on the 31st anniversary of the Rush Limbaugh Show at Southern Command headquarters, Rush Limbaugh. So we talked about this phenomenon: People will wait in pouring rain 20 hours to see Donald Trump.

RUSH: Well, it’s because Trump appeals. He appeals to people in the way that I just talked about. He appeals to people’s better interests.This is what people don’t understand about Donald Trump. They get caught up in the tweets. They get caught up in all the manners that he supposedly doesn’t have. The man touches everybody’s hearts talking about greatness, talking about inspiration, aspirational living, being great. Everybody wants that! Everybody wants to improve their life for their family, for themselves.He touches people. He’s got a bond with his voters that nobody can break. He’s got a bond that… It’s innate. Not everybody can create this bond. There’s not a Democrat on that stage either night that has any kind of a bond with anybody in the Democrat Party. Trump is untouchable. There’s not one person, Sean, on that Democrat stage the last two nights that can even be on stage with Trump and not be overshadowed simply by his presence before he even opens his mouth.

HANNITY: But still, Rush, you know, we follow elections. This is our life. This is what we do. We live, eat, breathe, sleep this. For any Republican to win the presidency, they always have to thread the needle: Florida; North Carolina, Mark Meadows’ state; Ohio. You gotta pick off Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. It’s never gonna be easy, and there’s always that appeal. “Oh, we’ll take all your fear away and everything will be taken care of.”

RUSH: Well, I guess maybe I’ve been at this for so long and I do have to remind myself that they have a lot of supporters. That’s one of the scary things.You watch the debate last night and you hear this lunacy — and it was lunacy! It was genuine… You can define normalcy in any which way we would have in common. Those people are lunatics, the things they were saying and believing, and then you realize that people are applauding it. I mean, I was warning people 20 years ago when some wacko thing would happen in the environmentalist movement and people laughed. “They’re never gonna believe that,” people said. Now here we are; they do believe it. No, I understand the threat here. Let me give you an example of, I think, where we have a golden opportunity. Tulsi Gabbard.Tulsi Gabbard came out of nowhere last night because she reamed Kamala Harris. Now, what is the media doing today? I love this. Guess what? To explain Tulsi Gabbard, they are saying… I saw this on CNN, Sean. They’re saying that she’s actually working with the Russians who are still working with Trump —

HANNITY: (laughing) No!

RUSH: — and her game plan is to become a third-party, independent candidate to split the Democrat vote.They started this Russian insanity and now they’re wedded to it. They can’t let go of it. And there’s nothing in it for them on this. There’s no winning with it, I don’t believe. Now, I’m not a political professional. When you talk about threading the needle in all these states, I just say, “Just have Trump be Trump.” Just appeal to people, their better interests, and he can permeate this noise like he did in 2016.

HANNITY: Three words I want to throw at you: Green New Deal.

RUSH: Well… (chuckles) It’s a trick. The Green New Deal… Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her chief of staff Saikat — Saikat, Saikat, whatever — Chakrabarti, admitted that it’s not even about the climate, it’s not even about the weather, it’s an economic plan. And it is. It’s designed to get massive federal power, grow the federal government under the pretense that average Americans cannot be left to live their lives without ruining things, especially for the Democrat Party. It’s unaffordable, it will never happen, and the premise behind it is bogus.There is no man-made climate change. There is nothing we can do to stop whatever the weather is gonna do. We can’t make it warmer. We can’t make it colder.We can’t change hurricanes’ directions and we can’t dissipate them. We can’t create them. And yet they’re campaigning and trying to convince people.

I mean, look at Millennials. It’s really sad. There’s a lot of young people that really think this planet is not gonna be habitable by the time they hit 65. These people are ruining people’s lives, they’re ruining their futures, all in the pursuit of power for themselves. It’s disgusting, on one level to me, and I think they need to be called out, and I think this stuff needs to be said point-blank to them because the media’s not. The media’s their best buddies. The media is their support group and so forth. It’s a big battle. I’m just optimistic. I’m confident that these people can be beat because they are getting nuttier and nuttier every day — and they’re demonstrating it. We don’t have to tell people they’re getting nutty. They’re showing us.

HANNITY: It’s never been easier. In that sense, you’re right. His 31st anniversary, Rush Limbaugh. We’ll ask him about Mueller, the deep state, the witch hunt, the media mob. Much more, straight ahead. Stay with us.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: All right. As we continue, joining us Rush Limbaugh, 31 years of broadcast excellence. Well, I mean, this is a milestone. I remember when I first heard about you, I started in radio in 1987. I was in a college radio station. A guy says, “You ever hear this guy, Rush Limbaugh?” In Santa Barbara, California, and you created a huge firestorm out there. There was a barbecue place that boycotted you, and you sent all of your listeners into the barbecue place, and they came back.

RUSH: (laughing)

HANNITY: So 31 years, it’s an amazing accomplishment. And you’re right about conservatism —

RUSH: Hey, look, you were my first guest host, Sean. We’ve kind of been in this all together.

HANNITY: We are.

RUSH: We’ve been connected since this all started. Look, I know time is limited here, and sometimes people accuse me of being a little too Pollyannaish and not aware enough of the pitfalls. You just talked about threading the needle. I’m not naive. I know how difficult it is. I’m not trying to claim this is going to be easy. I want people to look at the Democrats — I’m sick and tired of being afraid of these people.

I’m sick and tired of people acting intimidated by Democrats, especially this current crop. There’s no reason to fear these people. I know they have the media on their side. Donald Trump doesn’t fear them. Donald Trump doesn’t let them intimidate him. Donald Trump is showing how people on our side can win, for the first time in many, many years that I’ve been doing this, he’s showing people every day how to win and there’s an art to knowing how to win, not just play the game and not just be on the stage.

And the Democrats are making themselves gigantic targets here. This Russia thing has blown up in their face. The media’s not telling anybody, but it has. They’ve got nothing. All the lawsuits are being thrown out now. Cohen was thrown out, the thing that was thrown out earlier this week, there’s nothing. We’ve been in a race. This business with Comey, I know everybody’s upset that it looks like Comey’s gonna walk. I have faith. I have faith that the people doing this investigation are going to hold these people accountable.

For three years, two years we’ve been hearing that all this is gonna come to fruition and a lot of people are frustrated, disappointed. They were today when it was said that Comey’s not gonna be prosecuted for all reasons ’cause he didn’t intend to do it. There has to be accountability here. And I think that it’s going to happen in great timing for the 2020 election. Let’s just see.

HANNITY: I agree with all that. I actually see similarities between you and Trump. Let me tell you what two of them are. Number one, you gotta be able to take a punch. You paved the way for a lot of us that are conservatives in the media. You’ve taken more than your fair share. And then you gotta fight for what you believe. My biggest criticism of Republicans is they are weak, a lot of them, and timid and afraid to do what you do every day, to do what Trump is doing — you’re right — showing them the way. Just fight for what you say you’re gonna fight for.

RUSH: Look, there are two different things going on. I don’t have to get votes. You and I can succeed with people hating us, or disliking us.

HANNITY: There’s a lot of them, Rush.

RUSH: (laughing) But people who need to win elections, people that don’t like you don’t vote for you. So I understand their reticence a bit. But I think that can be overcome with attitude, it can be overcome with confidence. This fear of the media, this fear of being called a racist, everybody needs to get over that now because all of us are racists. Everybody’s racist. They can’t talk about anybody now without labeling them racist.

This thing that Trump did about Baltimore, it’s about time this stuff is called out. Where the Democrats run cities or towns or states with one-party rule, those places are suffering greatly. The people there are suffering drug addiction, they’re suffering drug infestation, and they’re suffering filth. And nobody ever calls ’em out on it because you can’t, because the Democrats supposedly are the ones with compassion so you can’t criticize ’em.

The heck with that. They deserve to be criticized. They deserve to be called out. It was Cummings himself 20 years ago — everybody’s seen the video now — who referred to his own city as drug-infested, and nobody said it was racist back then. Trump is really showing a lot of people how to take these people on. You know, we’ve got this Never Trumper problem that I think is kind of like a fly on an elephant’s ass, but people make it out to be bigger than it is because these were supposedly the intellectual leaders of our party.

They’ve been rendered irrelevant. They know it. That’s why they’re ticked off. They’re probably gonna vote Democrat if they have a chance simply because, you know, how are they gonna sell cruises now to tell people what to think about conservatism? For 20 years they thought they were the intellectual leaders of conservatism. They never got much done. Yeah, I know we’re out of time. I’m sorry about this. I get diarrhea of the mouth with you, Sean, ’cause I like being here.

HANNITY: I should have just given you the whole hour. Thirty-one years. I want to just tell people one fact.

RUSH: Right.

HANNITY: When you started in syndication there were less than 200 talk radio stations in America. Now, there are thousands. Rush, happy anniversary. Thank you so much for being with us.

RUSH: Thanks, Sean.