RUSH: Let me grab a quick phone call here. This is Jill in Seal Beach, California. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Oh, good morning. Thank you, Rush.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Rush, I’m calling today ’cause I’m fired up and emotional at the same time. I’m voting for Trump, I stayed up until 2:30 on election night. You would have thought I was married to him, I was praying.

RUSH: I know a lot of women who act like they’re married to him.

CALLER: (laughing) I’m —

RUSH: I’m not kidding you! I’m not kidding. You wouldn’t believe the notes I get from women about Trump.

CALLER: Well, we —

RUSH: They love the guy!

CALLER: But, as a conservative in California, I’m asking you, as his friend, please, can you reach out to him and have him tone it down? He’s taking the bait too much, and I’m fearful that he is losing people such as me because of the tweets. It’s getting to be too much. He needs to tone it down. Make America Great Again. Be great again, Mr. President. Stop taking the bait. We don’t want a default vote of, “I voted because it’s the less of two evils.” It just has to be… He has to stop. I understand how it got going, because the media doesn’t present everything to us —

RUSH: Jill?

CALLER: — and I understand that.

RUSH: Jill?

CALLER: But it’s gotten to be too much.

RUSH: Jill?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: With everything at stake… I have to ask you this question. With everything that’s at stake — and you know what’s at stake without me telling you. I’ll tell you if you want me to, but I think you know what’s at stake. You’re actually going to not vote for Trump because of tweets?

CALLER: No. Of course not. I will have his… He’s got my full support, my full support. But I’m asking you, as his friend —

RUSH: So then what’s the deal?

CALLER: I’m asking you as his friend, can you let him know that now the cooler talk is not gonna be what he’s done to Make America Great Again. The cooler talk is gonna be, did you hear what he tweeted last night about Chrissy and the foul mouth and this and that? It’s getting off point, and what I’m saying.

RUSH: I don’t think that anything happening now on September 10, 2019, is gonna be water cooler talk the week before the election in 2020.

CALLER: No. But that’s what’s happening now and that’s what —

RUSH: Well —

CALLER: — (crosstalk) people what they go on.

RUSH: Look, I am very flattered that you think that I could ask Trump to stop tweeting and that he would, but it’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen, Jill.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Can I tell you why?

CALLER: Try.

RUSH: Well, there’s no try. I’ll tell you exactly what he would tell you if you asked him to stop tweeting. “It’s the only way I can get my side of things out. I have no other way. There’s nowhere else in media that I can get my side out. There’s nowhere I can go to respond to these lying, stinking attacks on me.” He’s not gonna stop for that reason.

CALLER: Right. But then stick to that reason instead of going a little bit further and taking the bait and doing the jab and —

RUSH: Okay give me an example of taking the bait. What do you mean?

CALLER: Well, okay. Calling John Legend a has-been or whatever and Chrissy a foul-mouthed woman and —

RUSH: Oh, that stuff.

CALLER: That stuff.

RUSH: Well, let me tell you about that. I have a little sympathy for Trump. Because here are these two people — and they’re brain-dead celebrities, so I understand your frustration at Trump giving them the time of day, but they’re out there lying through their teeth, either purposely or because they’re ignorant, about prison reform.

Trump single-handedly has done what they’ve been demanding be done and they don’t even know it. They’re running around lambasting Trump for not caring about African-Americans and not caring about people who have been illegally or unfairly imprisoned. And he’s not getting the credit for it that he thinks he should, so he goes after them for this phony, false attack on him to try to get his version of it out.

Jill, I’m gonna tell you something. The first time I met with him after the election was in February of 2017. It was one month after the inauguration. It was down here in Florida at Mar-a-Lago. And I asked him how things are going, and he said, “I’m a little surprised the country hasn’t come together. I thought the country would come together after the elections.”

“Mr. President, they are never gonna love you. They are never gonna support you. They are never, ever gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. They are gonna hate you more every day.” And he looked at me and Steve Bannon was with him and Reince Priebus. And I gathered they had been trying to tell him the same thing. I said, “You’re never going to get one ounce of credit from these people no matter what. So you may as well not try to appease them.”

And this prison reform thing that he did was an exact attempt to appease leftist critics to show that he was not a racist and he was not a bigot and he’s not getting an ounce of credit for it, and he’s frustrated to all hell about it. So that’s why he tweeted his response to those two people.

CALLER: I got that. I understand. But I say stick to the bullet points, stick to the facts, and don’t overact with nonsense.

RUSH: I understand. Why should John Legend and Chrissy — is it Teigen? Is that how she pronounces it, Chrissy Teigen, Teigen? Teigen. We don’t even know. Do you know how she pronounces her name out there, Jill?

CALLER: I thought it was Teigen.

RUSH: Teigen, well, whatever. I understand, why is he giving these two nimrods the time of day? But he’s got a philosophy, Jill, and it’s been since long before he got into politics. If you attack him, if you criticize him, he’s gonna hit back. He’s not from the George Bush school, which says sit there and take it. And, by the way, Jill, I got go, I’m a little long here, but stand by. Billy Bush is being hired back after the Access Hollywood video and I’ve got an audio sound bite here of advice George W. Bush gave him. It will not surprise you.

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RUSH: Hey, how many of you are kind of along the same lines as Jill, our caller from Seal Beach? You’re getting worried about the Trump tweets. They’re not bothering you, you’re not going anywhere, but you’re worried other people are. Folks, if that’s you, let me try to talk you back from the ledge. I think it’s the same phenomenon as this recession poll.

The Drive-By Media says that we’re in a recession. The Drive-By Media says a recession is imminent. The Drive-By Media says we’re all gonna die. The Drive-By Media says we’re all gonna lose our jobs. The Drive-By Media says inflation is gonna go bonkers. The Drive-By Media for three weeks, and then they go take a poll, and surprisingly 60% of the respondents, “I think we’re going to a recession.”

People don’t know in and of themselves whether we’re gonna have a recession or not. But they’ve heard it on the media. Even people who are doing well, they’re not concerned about a recession, but man, it must be bad out there. I feel bad. Other people must be suffering.

It’s the same thing here. Jill, I would predict, is not worried so much about the tweets as much as she is worried that other people are worried about Trump tweeting. She’s not going anywhere, you heard her. I asked her, I said, “Are you really gonna abandon Trump because of tweets?”

“Oh, no. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.” But she’s concerned that other people will. And this is another thing. Who is leading the stop-tweeting brigade? That would be the Never Trumpers, right? And the Democrats and the Drive-Bys. They don’t like Trump tweeting precisely because he’s pushing back against them.

I think we need Trump’s tweets more than ever, folks. I don’t think it’s time to dial down the tweets. I don’t think it’s time to dial down everything that got Trump elected. Stop panicking over what you think people are doing or thinking or are going to do because of what you see in the media.

If you voted for Trump, you know what’s at stake, and you’re nowhere near abandoning Trump because of his tweets then you’ve gotta figure everybody else is like you, not unlike you. You’re not alone. You’re not the only person thinking what you’re thinking. You’re not the only person not abandoning Trump. It’s very few who are, if any.

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RUSH: Are you getting a lot of calls from people who want to weigh in on Trump’s tweeting? (interruption) Good, ’cause I think there’s a lot of projection going on with this. I think this is so classically, psychologically explainable. The Drive-By Media, like it or hate it, they still have a tremendous amount of influence.

They start talking about a recession every day, every hour for three weeks; they’re gonna convince people that the recession is right around the corner. Then they’re gonna go take a poll ostensibly proving it. If you get enough people — primarily Republicans and Never Trumpers — on TV saying, “I hate Trump’s tweets! He really doesn’t need to be doing this. It really… It really… It really would improve things,” that’s gonna affect people.

Dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters never would abandon Trump, but they’re gonna get worried that other people might. Rather than using their own knowledge of their own selves and their own confidence in Trump that they’re not gonna abandon Trump, they will nevertheless be afraid that other people might be persuaded to leave Trump because of the tweets. Despite the fact they never will! So continue to rely on yourself. You’re the best focus group analyst you can come up with, not the Drive-By Media.

Don’t let them affect your mentality or your opinion or your psychology.

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RUSH: Here is Trisha. She’s driving back to Maryland from the rally in North Carolina last night. Hey, Trisha. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you. It’s an honor to speak to you. I am driving back from Fayetteville. It was my twenty-third rally in the last year. We started in August of 2018. I walk up and down the line as part of what we do, and I speak to people waiting in line, rally goers. I specifically speak to them about the president’s tweets, and I can tell you firsthand after 23 rallies, they love his tweets. They need his tweets to feel like they’re being informed. So Jill is wrong. (chuckles) I literally have spoken to thousands and thousands of people, and the amount of people who do not like their tweets is minuscule.

RUSH: I tend to agree with you. I want to tell a little story here. The week that I was away, I had a chance to see some people that I haven’t seen in a long time. A nice, married couple. The woman in the couple… They’re Republicans, strident Republicans. The woman has always, though, said, “Gee, I wish the Republicans would stop talking about abortion so much.” Now she says, “I wish Trump would stop tweeting. Oh, it just… It’s so unbecoming. I wish he would stop tweeting.”

Now, the reasons for this, these people live in a place where they’re outnumbered. And the people that they know are constantly berating Trump on his tweets and everything else about him. I think that this is more about them than it is about Trump, and I think it’s projection, as I said. You love Trump’s tweets, and everybody you know that goes to the rallies love Trump’s tweets, and I don’t think, do you, that Trump’s tweeting is hurting him at all, do you?

CALLER: I don’t. And I don’t… It’s not even that they like them. They feel that they need them to be informed. They don’t trust the media. They don’t believe anything the media says.

RUSH: By the way, I think that is a bigger reality than anybody wants to acknowledge. I think we had —

CALLER: That’s the truth.

RUSH: We had a story yesterday. I forget the source, the details of the story, but it was about how the media is just so disrespected now, untrusted, not believed. And there’s a real visceral animosity to the media that the media doesn’t even get, particularly among Trump supporters. So I think the tweeting is more fear. I have people saying, “I wish Trump would stop tweeting.” They’re afraid that it’s gonna make everybody else abandon Trump.

But you ask them pointblank, “Well, are you gonna abandon him?” “No! Oh, God, no. No.” “Then why are you worried other people will?” “Well, it’s just so…” “No, it’s not ‘just so.’ It’s because you’re falling prey to public criticism of Trump and his tweets and his personality in the media and so forth,” and not just the media, by the way. Elsewhere. It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon to me. Speaking for myself, there’s not a thing about them that bothers me.

I don’t even care when he takes out after Teigen and what’s his name, John Legend. Now, he does things I wouldn’t do. My philosophy is, “Don’t elevate. Don’t punch down.” I just have not done it. Howard Cosell was like Trump, folks. If Howard Cosell was sitting in his office in New York and he heard that the Oshkosh Gazette wrote something critical of him, he would send somebody to find a copy of the Oshkosh Gazette, and then he’d walk it into Leonard Goldenson’s office, the CEO.

“What are you gonna do about this? They’re attacking me in Oshkosh,” or wherever, and Cosell believed that no criticism should stand. No criticism should ever be unanswered, especially if it came from other low-rent sportswriters. Trump is the same way. He’ll punch down wherever it is he’s hit. My philosophy is different. Don’t acknowledge ’em. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist. But it doesn’t bother me that he does ’cause that’s who he is.

I also know he’s not gonna stop, and he’s not doing it for the fun of it, although some of his tweets are uproariously comedic and funny. He’s doing it because he’s a social media master and he’s doing it because it’s the only avenue he has to push back and to get the truth of whatever, his policies or what he said that’s being misquoted. It’s the only way he’s got to get an alternative out there to a large swath of people. Anyway, Trisha, thank you for the call. I appreciate it.

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RUSH: To Charlottesville, Virginia. This is Don. You’re next. It’s great to have you with us, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, truly an honor.

RUSH: Appreciate that, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call. Hey, I wanted to make a comment listening to Jill earlier and then your recent caller, Trish. I myself could say that I was partially on the ledge about Trump and his tweets, but I wanted to get more information about why he tweets so much.

So I actually binged a buffet of mainstream media. I actually watched mainstream media for about a week to listen and understand, is it really that bad in their hatred towards Trump. And I gotta tell you, Rush, after seven days, he could tweet for the rest of his life and I would be totally happy with it.

RUSH: Exactly right. Totally, exactly right. That is great. You took the time to actually find out what is responsible for this. Why is he doing it?

CALLER: Yeah, Rush. And also I would challenge any conservative on the fence or on the ledge, go listen to what the mainstream media is saying. Their lies, their anger and hatred. And here’s another thing that doesn’t get talked about enough. Their total disrespect for this president. Anything that they say any further cannot be believed.

RUSH: Well, amen. This has been my take on them even before Trump. But it is intensified. Now, I just want to explore something. Let’s go back to before you took the time —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — to listen to the Drive-Bys. What was it about the tweeting that made you nervous or made you think he should tone it down?

CALLER: Well, he would tweet sometimes when inconsequential people would tweet. He would send a tweet back.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And I’m fine with tweets that were coming from certain individuals in the mainstream media, but people that really, to me, were so inconsequential and had no meaning whatsoever when they were saying what they were saying outside of their hatred for him, I always wondered, “Why does he need to dig in the ground?”

And, Rush, let me also comment why I think he’s doing this now. He’s doing this because he doesn’t have an outlet like the mainstream media, but I believe now that every time he’s tweeting, he’s tweeting for me and the American people. He’s fighting back because he needs to make sure we understand the truth.

RUSH: So it was the punching down that you didn’t get. You didn’t understand why he would give small fry the acknowledgment of their existence or even a second of his time?

CALLER: Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, absolutely. And it piled up, just like you said earlier, you had made a comment earlier that if you hear it enough times, the negativity, you start to wonder. And that’s what happened —

RUSH: Hell, you start to believe it. Everybody. I mean, I run into people all the time who are as educated, informed, and sensitive to media bias and lies as I am. And they fall for it nevertheless. They’ll send me a story. “You see this? How can Trump be doing this?” I’ll say, “Wait a minute. Do you not –” “Oh, yeah, oh, I’m sorry.”

Look, even the wisest among us, even the most experienced, it’s an amazing phenomenon. I’ve got a guy, an Apple fan. He knows that the tech media hates Apple, knows it. He knows they lie about Apple as much as they lie about Trump. So there was a story, anti-Apple, a couple of weeks ago and this guy said, “Can you believe Apple is doing this?”

I said, “Bobby, you know that this is not true. Why are you –” and he had to catch himself. “My God, you’re right.” My point is it happens to everybody. If it happens to even us, who are deeply immersed as daily students, imagine how it impacts the casual attention-payers of Drive-By Media. It’s something that has to be fought every day, people need to be reminded of it every day.

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RUSH: Let me ask you what you think of this. There was a ceremony at the White House honoring first responders from Dayton, Ohio, for the shooting. The mayor was not invited. Trump did not invite the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, but a lot of cops, the police chief, first responders were invited. Do you think that’s a mistake? Should the mayor of Dayton been invited?

Now, let me tell you something. The mayor was on CNN routinely berating Donald Trump as somebody who didn’t know what he was doing, as somebody who was responsible for this because of his lackadaisical attention to guns and so forth. She just joined the chorus of the Drive-By Media. She’s a Democrat, I guess. I don’t know. She joined the chorus of criticizing Trump.

Now, the Trump-shouldn’t-tweet brigade would probably say, “Rush, you gotta rise above it. He’s president. She’s a mayor. Dayton is being honored. She should have been there.” Others will say, “What right does she think she has to be there? She spent every moment of TV time she had trying to criticize and rip Donald Trump and blame him for something he had nothing to do with. So why should she be there?”

What is your take on it? I’ll guarantee you, any other politician would have had her there. No way would they choose such an occasion to send a signal. But Trump? You attack him, you are not going to be overlooked. You’re not gonna be ignored. You’re not going to be given the benefit of the doubt. You’re gonna be recognized for what you are. A critic, somebody that doesn’t like you. So why should you be invited? So this mayor, I think is on CNN, talking about whatever she thinks about it. What do you think about it?

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RUSH: Here is Sharon in Akron, Ohio. It’s great to have you. How are you doing, Sharon?

CALLER: I’m doing well and just thrilled beyond belief to be actually talking to the great Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Okay. We’re driving along in the country in Ohio and we stopped. And people are stopping because they think something’s wrong. And I just want to tell you this before I forget. And anyway, this one guy drove by, and he’s in an electric company car in county —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait a second. I think I’ve lost you. You were driving along and you stopped?

CALLER: Yes. I stopped because I got through to you, so I didn’t want to lose you because —

RUSH: Oh!

CALLER: — we’re in the country driving around.

RUSH: So were you on a highway when this happened?

CALLER: No, we’re just on a little side road.

RUSH: Okay. So you still pulled off to the side of the road so that made people think you might be in trouble.

CALLER: Exactly. So this gentleman stopped from this Carroll County Electric Company and he said, “Are you guys okay?” And my husband said, “Well, my wife’s hanging on the phone to talk to Rush.” And he went, “Really?” And we said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “I love him.” He says, “And I gotta tell you, 94 to 96% of all of the people I met out in this rural county in northeastern Ohio, every one of them agree with what he’s saying.”

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that and I understand it too. But it’s great to hear it.

CALLER: It is! It was great to see it. And after that we’ve had five more people stop just to make sure that we’re okay, and every single one of them, my husband’s like, “Oh, yeah, my wife got through to Rush Limbaugh.” They go, “You’re kidding!” So like they’re lining up behind us to listen.

RUSH: (laughing) You got a caravan of cars behind you listening to this phone call? They all stopped?

CALLER: Yeah. Yes.

RUSH: You know, I gotta tell you, Sharon. In a lot of places in this country people would not stop. They would keep driving. They would think it was a setup. They’d think somebody might be trying to do ’em harm. They would just keep going. But where you live you’ve had how many people stop did you say?

CALLER: There’s probably seven or eight and we’ve got probably four behind us waving at us because they’re waiting to hear me talk to you on the phone.

RUSH: And here you are. Well, this is a great testament about —

CALLER: It is.

RUSH: — the people where you live. It really is.

CALLER: Because it tells me that people out where I live, out in the rural country, even when we go up to New York, and I’m telling you, we go up to upstate New York by Geneseo and up that way by the Appalachian mountains, there are Trump signs everywhere.

RUSH: Oh, yeah.

CALLER: And people just don’t understand that. But one thing I wanted to say that has nothing to do with this, but it’s just something that’s making me crazy. You know who Jeff Dunham is, the ventriloquist?

RUSH: Jeff Dunham, yes.

CALLER: Okay. Well, his puppet, Walter, is Joe Biden without the plugs. Sorry. Just have to say it. That’s who he is. Now, on the tweets, I do not — I have a flip phone, I’m happy with it, I love it, and I don’t look at tweets. My only concern is that I work at a birth center in a hospital and a lot of the people that I work with are young, you know, between 30 and 50, and they’ve liked the things that Trump has done, but they don’t like the stuff he tweets. Now, I personally, I don’t care what he says. I would follow him to the end of the earth. I think he’s wonderful. But I do agree with your first caller that some of the — just let it go. But I understand why he does it —

RUSH: All right. You know what? I appreciate what you’re saying and I understand it entirely, and you got these people at the hospital, they’re not dyed-in-the-wool, committed fan girls like you are. They like Trump but they’re bothered by it. I want to tell you something, and do not doubt me.

If Trump decided to cut back on the tweets, I doubt that anybody would notice. I don’t think that magic moment would come where your people in the hospital you just described — let’s create a hypothetical. Let’s say that Trump today hears your call and the first caller and says, “You know what? I’m gonna stop tweeting about small fry. Just not gonna do it.”

So he does, he stops. And two weeks from now you’re back in that hospital. And I’ll guarantee you that the people that you tell me are tired of Trump tweeting will not know that he has cut back on his tweets. They won’t have the slightest idea. Even if they pay attention every day, they won’t have the slightest idea.

It’s like the old adage, when I was a top 40 disc jockey, “You can never be hurt by a song you don’t play.” What it meant was, you play a song that people don’t like, they’ll tune out, they’ll punch the button, go to another station. So don’t play anything but the hits, don’t play anything that isn’t a demonstrable hit. Which is why back then radio stations had playlists of 18 records. I’m not kidding. So you would never know if they didn’t play something ’cause you don’t listen all the time.

So if Trump cuts back his tweets, there’s no way anybody’s gonna know that he’s done it. It’s not something that your people in the hospital are gonna realize one day, “You know what? Trump hasn’t tweeted on those small fry in the last couple weeks. I think I like Trump a little better.”

It doesn’t work that way. They’ve already got it in their minds, Sharon, that he tweets too much. There’s nothing that’s gonna change that. He could stop tweeting for two weeks. No Trump tweets in two weeks, they would still say he’s tweeting too much. It’s already registered in their brain that he tweets too much.

Something else I’ve learned. You can’t let other people run your life. In my business, I can’t let anybody else tell me what I should talk about here. I have to be the judge. And I am. And if I care about it, I do. If I don’t care about something, I don’t bring it up. There’s not enough time here.

Trump cannot start listening to all of these various opinions on too much tweeting, not enough tweeting, stop tweeting about small fry, can’t satisfy anybody this way. It’s not possible. He’s gotta continue to be who he is. It got him elected president. They’ve failed in every coup attempt to take him out. He’s still there. He’s still implementing his agenda.

He’s still president of the United States. He’s still dealing with the ChiComs. He’s still attaching tariffs to their goods coming in. He’s still firing people like John Bolton. He’s still president. They have not taken him out. If he stops tweeting, Kellyanne Conway’s husband’s not gonna all of a sudden start liking him. If he stops tweeting, the Never Trumpers are gonna say, “You know what? The guy stopped tweeting. I think I like him now.”

It doesn’t work that way. And you know it as well as I do, Sharon, as do the four to five people lined up in cars behind you. It just doesn’t work that way. And it’s true of anybody. Let’s say there’s a quirk in your personality, Sharon — I’m sure there’s not, but let’s say there is — something people just don’t like about you and you stop doing it because you’ve heard that a couple people don’t like it. They’ll never know you stopped doing it. It’s already in their minds that you do. You have to tell ’em, “No, I stopped that. I don’t do that anymore.”

“I didn’t know that. Okay, good for you.” But they’re still gonna think you do it no matter what ’cause it’s in their mind. It’s like a mind notch.

“Are you saying it’s impossible to change, Rush?” No, but I’m telling you it’s gonna take a long time for people to realize you’ve changed on something like this. How many people read every Trump tweet? How many people know of every Trump tweet? What about Trump’s tweets do people think because they actually read them, or do they think Trump tweets too much because they hear other people complain about it?

It’s a dangerous road to go down because everybody has to be who they are. You have to be true to yourself. It’s very hard to do ’cause a lot of people have inferiority complexes or doubts about themselves, a lot of people don’t like themselves. They’re always trying to compromise and do what this person says or what that person says. This is the Republican Party. “Oh, you hate me for this? Okay, I’ll change. I’ll be for open borders.” Republicans are still hated, aren’t they, by the way?