RUSH: The special election in North Carolina. (laughing) This is so… Yesterday, the Drive-Bys have Trump losing the White House because of this election. It was over. It was a bellwether. It was not even a possibility. Now two Republicans won in North Carolina. Two of them! The Democrats get shellacked. And the Drive-By Media headlines are still about “the trouble this win portends for Donald Trump.” It’s flat-out hilarious. I have that and whole bunch of other stuff, and we’ll get to it when we get back.
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RUSH: I want to read a headline to you here. And then I want to ask you, what’d you think might have happened after having read this headline? “North Carolina Gives Republicans a Wake-Up Call.” Would you think after reading that headline — that headline, by the way, is from The Atlantic. If you read that headline — let’s say you didn’t know anything. You didn’t know there was a special election. You didn’t know that — well, no. Let’s say that you did know there was a special election, but that’s all you know. You have no idea really when it was. You don’t know how it ended up.
And then this is how the story begins. “Why does election fraud happen? Because it works, of course. Usually it works because it’s undetected, and the candidate who commits the fraud, or on whose behalf it is committed, wins.”
So a classic illustration of the Drive-By Media with misinformation, fake news trying to make you think the Republicans lost, but they still tried to cheat nevertheless, but they didn’t get away with it. The headline and the first paragraph of this story, that’s what you would conclude.
You want to hear the truth? The truth is that the Republicans won the bellwether elections in North Carolina after all. The media are ignoring Greg Murphy’s win because he won by a huge margin, 62% to 37. The Democrats got smoked in that election.
But in the other election, the Bishop-McCready race — this is the one that everybody was — the Drive-Bys were talking about was gonna be the harbinger of Trump’s defeat in 2020. And they do that every special election with that clown Ossoff down in Georgia or any of the others. Every special election is gonna be a referendum on Trump, and so was this gonna be. And McCready was gonna win this thing, gonna run away with it. The Republicans were gonna get smoked.
There was all of this outside money. And it was true. This was the most expensive special election in U.S. history, not because of money spent natively. The Democrats tried once again to buy another seat in a formally red state, and yet the Republicans still won. And Bishop actually won by a bigger margin than the Republican candidate won by last year. And the Democrats and their media said that he cheated. That’s what the election fraud’s all about.
It’s heartwarming to read and frustrating at the same time. But we talked about this yesterday. They had Bishop already defeated. Trump was on the way to losing in 2020. This was gonna be a harbinger. This was the early telltale sign. There’s just one thing. Donald Trump went into North Carolina, he had a rally on Monday night.
Donald Trump turned this race around. If in fact the Republicans were on the way to losing it — and we can’t know that, because nobody knows the way people were gonna vote before the election. All we have were preelection polls. You can’t trust them. You just don’t know. But the conventional wisdom was the Republicans were gonna lose.
Now, the Drive-Bys and the Democrats are consoling themselves by saying these elections prove that Republicans are in trouble in the suburbs! This is how it works. Oh, yeah, Trump might have won the hick vote, he might have gotten the hayseeds, but he’s still in trouble in the suburbs. So even when Republicans win, they lose. When Republicans win with certain demographics, they lose. And there’s no two ways about it.
Now, the reason the Democrats are so excited to try to convey that the Republicans have trouble in suburbia is the Democrats, already in their minds, own the cities. And so the conventional wisdom is that suburban women hate Donald Trump and that Trump was gonna lose this, even though Trump wasn’t on the ballot. Bishop was gonna lose this because Republicans are hated by suburban women, particularly Donald Trump.
Here’s AP’s headline this morning, good example. It was originally: “GOP Holds North Carolina Seat, Easing Fears of Democrat Momentum.” I guess that was too positive for the Republicans, so now the headline is: “GOP Holds North Carolina House Seat, But Shows Frailty in the Suburbs.” Obviously, the Democrat base pummeled the AP. “What do you mean, reporting it that way?” I’m sure this happened.
The Democrat base on Twitter and wherever else pressures the AP and they change their headline, which has to indicate Republicans are in trouble. “North Carolina Gives Republicans a Wake-up Call.” “GOP Holds North Carolina House Seat But Shows Frailty in Suburbs.” Here’s the truth. Dan Bishop, the Republican, won Cumberland County, North Carolina. That county is 35% black. There’s a 35% black population in Cumberland County. Republican Dan Bishop won it by a margin of 0.3%.
Donald Trump lost Cumberland County in 2016 by over 20,000 votes. Tonight, the Republicans won it back. So why isn’t this the news? Well, we know why this isn’t the news ’cause this does not look good for the Democrats. They have a 35% black population in Cumberland County, North Carolina. Trump lost it by 20,000 votes in 2016. Tonight, the Republicans win with a slight majority of black voters. What’s going on? Well, take a look at African-American unemployment. Take a look at African-American poverty dropping.
Take a look at African-American food stamp participation dropping. Take a look at the number of African-Americans who have jobs and getting raises. It’s phenomenal! It’s more than ever happened for them when Democrats have been in control. You could say this is historic. Trump loses by 20,000 in a 35% black county, and the Republican wins it? That is a trend the Drive-Bys do not want you knowing anything about. The Democrats poured $8 million (about that) into this district, North Carolina 9.
They outspent the Republicans by a huge amount — it was a big, big factor — and they lost again! They lost with Beto O’Rourke in Houston with all of that outside money in Texas, all that outside money. This is what happens when Republicans fight back. This is what happens when Republicans get in the game. This is what happens when Republicans stop apologizing. It’s what happens when Republicans stop being moderates. It’s what happens when the Republicans stop begging people to not dislike them and just go out and fight for it, explain who they are.
Trump tweeted that Bishop was down by 14 points at one point in the polls, and that’s exactly right. Bishop comes back and wins. Trump was a difference maker, he was a factor, and this has got to just destroy the media. “Trump’s over, don’t you see? Trump’s days are over! Trump has already been defeated. Trump is either gonna be impeached or he’s gonna be defeated in 2020. Everybody hates Trump. Trump doesn’t have any power! He’s losing his base!” And then he goes to North Carolina, and helps turn the black vote in a county — and then the rural vote comes in — and all the Democrats can say is the Republicans are in trouble in the suburbs.
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RUSH: A couple of more stats on the North Carolina race. Now, these come from Brad Parscale, who’s running the Trump 2020 campaign. In Robeson County, North Carolina… This is just south of Cumberland. It’s a lot of numbers to try to follow here, but I am an excellent communicator. I will make this clear. In the 2018 midterms, the Republican candidate lost by 15 points. Last night, Bishop lost by only 1.1%. Now, they still lost, but that’s a 14-point shift in Robeson County. Now, there are a lot of reasons for this.
One of the reasons is Trump went in there. Trump worked hard and turned a lot of votes. But do you know what else happened, folks? Do you know what else happened? One of the things the Bishop campaign did, the Republican, is they went around in their campaign and they talked a lot about The Squad. They talked a lot about Ilhan Omar. They talked a lot about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal, all of the craziness these people are proposing. They talked about Rashida Tlaib — and let me tell you something.
That, I think, was a huge factor in turning rural Democrats to the Republican.
You know, Democrats still have a bunch of rural voters. The Democrats don’t care about ’em. They make fun of ’em, just like they make fun of everybody that lives on a farm or a rural area. But the Republican candidate was able to go in there, focusing on all of this craziness that’s being talked about by The Squad — Cortez and her gang — and, according to the best information people been able to gather, that mattered. That worked in turning rural Democrat votes to Bishop, to the Republicans. That’s not a surprise, and it’s something to learn for other Republicans as we head into 2020.
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RUSH: In his victory speech, Dan Bishop said that voters “said no to radical liberal policies.” The reason he said that is because that’s what he told people he was opposing. That’s his description of The Squad, Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and all the rest.
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RUSH: I’m wondering about this North Carolina special election. I’ve learned one more thing about this. You would be stunned to learn the amount of money the militant gay faction of the Democrat Party poured into this district. They have been trying to beat this guy for years, Dan Bishop.
Now, my question is, I wonder if the Republicans are gonna realize what happened last night. I wonder if they’re gonna learn from. All these Republicans retiring and quitting ’cause, ah, I don’t want to go on, I’m not comfortable being in the minority, I may not like Trump.
This was a lost cause last night! Yesterday. Supposedly. Will the Republicans pay attention? Will they believe their eyes, or will they believe the media spin today? Let me go to Rhonda in Willow Springs, North Carolina. Great to have you, Rhonda. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I’m so excited. Yes. I do believe that the Republicans need to pay attention. Those establishment Republicans need to open up their eyes and wake up. As I was telling Snerdley, I think the bottom line, we’re not gonna be a purple state come 2020. I really truly believe we’re gonna go red.
RUSH: Well, I happen to know people in North Carolina politically in touch, politically attuned, and they are telling me that it’s too close, it’s too dangerous. That at the very bottom of the local level, the Democrats are taking charge from dogcatcher on up in county after county after county, that it’s not being reported. That it appears, if you look at state government and all this, it might appear that North Carolina still is a red state but that the Democrats are making great inroads and that’s why this election last night is so important, folks.
And it really is crucial to me what the Republicans are gonna believe in the aftermath. This was a victory. It was a victory that many believe was snatched from the jaws of defeat. So how did it happen? Well, you can’t eliminate the presence of Donald Trump. You can’t eliminate the details of the campaign.
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RUSH: So the media is now trying to downplay the significance here. But what’s obvious about this election — one of the many things obvious about it — is you cannot ignore Donald Trump’s appeal, Donald Trump’s amazing ability to energize Republican voters. Let’s look at this the other way. Let’s look at Donald Trump the way the media portrays him every day. And how is that? “Well, everybody’s tired of Trump now. They just wish Trump would go away.
“Everybody regrets voting for Trump. Trump is an embarrassment. Trump’s an ogre. Trump tweets too much. Trump is just… Ew! Just no manners. He’s foul-mouthed. The guy is unsuited. He’s unqualified. Everybody realizes we made a mistake. We gotta impeach the guy! He cheated with the Russians. We gotta get him out of there.” That’s how the Drive-By Media portrays public opinion about Donald Trump every day. So what happens?
Well, we got this special election North Carolina 9 where the Democrat has been running for this seat for 27 months! A Republican has been running for this seat for a few. The Democrats are throwing eight-million bucks in there. The militant gay population donors of the Democrat Party, they are in there. They don’t like Bishop. They want him gone. The media’s telling everybody the election’s over before it happens. “It’s a referendum on Trump!
“Trump is so hated, so reviled, so despised, voters in North Carolina are gonna tell the nation what the nation thinks of Trump.” That’s what the media says. So Trump goes in there. Now, tell me something: If Trump is so hated and despised — if people are so embarrassed that they voted for him, if they regret that they did, if they wish that he would stop tweeting, if they wish Trump had better manners, if they wish Trump would just stop embarrassing them — then how is he able to go in and turn a district that he lost by 14 points into a loss by only one in a certain segment?
How is he able to go in there so hated and so reviled? How is Donald Trump able to end up making the difference? Because he did. He went in and did a rally the night before, focused on the election. So how can what the media says about Trump be true? Trump should have bombed out. Trump should have failed miserably. (impression) “Why, he’s hated. He’s despised! People are embarrassed. People have buyer’s remorse! People regret vote for Trump. He’s so bad. He tweets too much.”
And yet Trump went in there and is the difference maker. So are the Republicans gonna believe what they saw or are they going to continue to react to the media? Because Trump proved again last night that he is a force. He proved he’s not on the ropes. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Trump’s not on the ropes. He’s the one delivering knockout punches on the economy, the ChiComs, his battle with leftists in the media.
Right now, Donald Trump’s the best friend Republicans have had since Reagan. Will they realize it? Let’s go to the audio sound bites and I’ll show you what I’m talking about. Here is Norah O’Donnell. She’s the new infobabe anchorette at the CBS Evening News. She’s talking here with national correspondent Dean Reynolds. These are the people who see themselves as the heirs of Walter “Klondike,” and here is a portion of her report about the special election in North Carolina — that, again, the Republican won.
O’DONNELL: A new update on that House race tonight in North Carolina. It’s getting a lot of national attention as a possible preview for 2020. Polls say it is neck and neck in a district that President Trump won by 12 points in 2016. Dean Reynolds reports from North Carolina’s Ninth CD.
REYNOLDS: The big question in the special election here today is whether the Republicans can hold onto this traditionally Republican seat without cheating.
RUSH: (Snort!) That’s the big question? “The big question … is whether the Republicans can hold on… without cheating”? That’s the CBS Evening News last night. New we have before the election a montage of several Drive-Bys saying that North Carolina 9 was a referendum on the Trumpster…
ROBIN MEADE: …a test for President Trump going into 2020!
DIANNE GALLAGHER: …a litmus test for 2020!
KRISTEN WELKER: …a barometer for voters’ energy for him in 2020.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: It’s being viewed sort of as a referendum!
RON BROWNSTEIN: If you see this kind of district go down for Republicans, it would be a sign of a pretty broad suburban recoil from the president.
RUSH: There you have it. That’s Ron Brownstein. He’s with.. I don’t know who he’s with anybody. These people are just revolving doors, travel off, and they work for member of Congress then go back to the news, then back to a senator, back to the news. I don’t know where Brownstein is. Anyway, they all had him losing. You see. His loss was a harbinger. His loss was the barometer. This was going to be the evidence last night that Trump’s presidency is over, that Trump doesn’t stand a prayer of winning in 2020 — unless he cheats — because of the sad circumstances and situation in the suburbs.
Okay. So it was a referendum on Trump. This was gonna tell us that Donald Trump’s presidency was over, except Dan Bishop won. Donald Trump campaigned for Dan Bishop. So we would expect the media today to point out, “Hey, you know, it’s looking pretty solid for Trump in 2020. Last night’s election was a harbinger. It was what we were telling you — a referendum, a barometer — and it looks like Trump is sitting pretty.”
Let’s see if that’s how they did report this.
DON LEMON: This is a race that should be an easy win for the GOP. It shouldn’t even be close.
FREDO: This should have been a no-brainer for the Republicans, a layup!
CHRIS HAYES: … a district that the Republican candidate should win walking away.
JOHN KING: The president won the district by 12 points. So why are we talking about this tonight?
DANA BASH: The fact that we are talking about this is a big deal.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: If you’re Republican, you’re worried!
HEIDI PRZYBYLA: It shouldn’t be that narrow.
TERRY MORAN: It is a win — and a win is a win — but it does spell trouble for Republicans.
LARRY O’DONNELL: If the election is a referendum on Donald Trump, he will lose.
RUSH: That was Lawrence O’Donnell. That’s the guy who claimed a source told him that Russian oligarchs had bankrolled Trump’s finances. So the night before, this was it. This was a barometer of how Trump’s presidency is over, that he’s finished, that this was gonna illustrate once in a while the American people are tired of Trump. So the Republican wins. And what’s the Drive-By Media reaction? “Man, oh, man, is this trouble for the Republicans!
But no! It’s all about how, “Well, the only way they can win was cheat. Trouble! Trouble for Republicans! If you’re Republican here, you’ve gotta be worried.” So if this is what happens when Republicans win, what the hell would the news have been in Bishop had lost? (laughing) Folks, I maintain… I said to you yesterday, I think people notice this stuff. I think all kinds of people who believed these people every day for two years that Trump it colluded, that Trump stole the election, that Trump cheated, colluded with Putin.
People believed that crap for two years; then all of a sudden, “Sorry, didn’t happen!” I don’t believe people just forget it. I think the media is damaged, and they’re not even acknowledging it. No apology, no attempt to hold on to their audiences that now are obviously confused. They just roll on with the same agenda: Get Trump, however. “This doesn’t work? Okay, here. We’ll launch something new. We’ll go from hoax to hoax to hoax.” My point is that I believe…
It’s gonna be hard to know, it’ll be hard to prove this, but I think these people are doing irreparable damage to themselves. You just can’t assure people of something for two years, something as basic as the president’s a traitor — as basic as the president cheated, the president stole this election from Hillary Clinton — and then you cite the sources, all the respectable people in the intel community and all the respectable people in the FBI and all the…
You can’t just bombard people with that stuff, and then have it blow up in your face and not a shred of it be true, and have it not have an impact on people. I think the same thing here. They’ve been telling everybody for a week Trump was toast. Bishop was toast — this is gonna prove Trump’s presidency is finished — and the guy wins? And people that ended up believing the media are scratching their heads. “Wait, this is not what they told us was gonna happen.”
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RUSH: Shane in Charlotte, North Carolina. Great to have you with us in the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure, Rush. Just get to my point real quick and you touched on it already. The importance of the fact that McGreedy — I’m sorry, Freudian slip — McCready was campaigning for 27 months and Dan Bishop only four but he still won.
RUSH: Yeah, the Democrats have been eyeing this seat for all the reasons that we have been discussing here. But $8 million of outside money — well, I don’t know how much of it is outside. But $8 million and Bishop didn’t spend anywhere near that.
CALLER: Nowhere near it at all.
CALLER: I mean, it was close the last race except for the balloting issues that they had. I mean, it was a tight race. But most people that I talked to felt that Bishop was gonna win.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, you know what —
CALLER: I travel both states, North and South Carolina all day for work.
RUSH: I did too. I thought Bishop was gonna win. I’m not in North Carolina. I don’t have any inside knowledge. It wasn’t just a reaction of hope. I’m watching the media talking about it, and I don’t believe ’em. I just don’t believe that the Republicans are as hated and despised or that Trump is like the media portrays. And I don’t believe that people who voted for Trump have abandoned him and I don’t believe that they’re embarrassed. I don’t believe any of this.
When Trump announced he’s going in there for a rally on Monday night in Fayetteville and is gonna work on it — and, by the way, let’s not forget something else, Mike Pence spent the whole day in there on Monday. Mike Pence was doing the old-fashioned politics is local business. He was calling people on the phone and getting them out to vote, which is how you do it.
Mike Pence was engaging in old time, old-fashioned retail politics, and it worked. Which is the point. It can work. It does work. I wish I could give you a list of political reasons that would demonstrate my prescience and brilliance on why I thought bishop was gonna win but I can’t. It was just a hunch. It was a gut instinct.
And also, when I run into a lot of people that are pessimistic, there are a lot of people in North Carolina who wanted it to be so bad they were just — kind of like you think you know your team is gonna lose in the Super Bowl. “Oh, my God. I know they’re gonna lose.” You get prepared for being disappointed. I don’t fall for that. I think it’s gonna be a good night. Turned out to be.
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RUSH: This is Chad in Austin, Texas. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you so much for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: You know, I had called to kind of second what you were talking about earlier, that, you know, the Democratic Party and the left and the Drive-By Media, they’re the most vocal people, even though it’s a small handful. And so, you know, these polls and the media are convincing everybody that Trump is so unfavored, and I don’t believe any of it. I think they’re using metadata to target the demographs that they want to get the polls that they need.
But, you know, Trump supporters are quite a bit different. I’m a Trump supporter, all my friends. We don’t put Trump stickers on our cars ’cause we don’t want our windows broken out or our tires slashed, but here in Austin, you know the hipsters have — everybody’s got a Beto sticker. And they’re creating an echo chamber for the small majority that they have. And they’re just the loudest. It’s not that they’re the majority. They’re just the most vocal.
RUSH: That is an excellent point. And you throw the media in with their daily trumpeting of Democrats and Democrat issues and the fact that Trump supporters, Republicans in general are not loud and attention seeking. They’re not bombastic, they just go about their lives and they live out there in relative anonymity until there is an election. And then all these people on the left end up being shocked, surprised and blown away ’cause they believe their own hype! They believe all of their polls. They believe their own hype. But that is an excellent point. The left is a small minority that’s loud as hell, creating a perception about them that’s not correct.
RUSH: We got Larry here in Peoria, Illinois. We have time to get one more in here. Larry, how are you? Great to have you EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. I was listening Monday to mainstream media, and they were playing part of the North Carolina District 9 Democrat candidates stump speech. He talked about reaching across the aisle and working with Republicans. And I thought to myself, there’s no way that is ever gonna happen. ‘Cause if he truly is sincere and believes that he’s gonna be able to do that, the leadership in the Democrat will never allow that to happen.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I’m sorry.
RUSH: No, I was gonna say that’s exactly right. This guy, that’s a foolish thing to campaign on. But it tells you what he thinks his voters wanted to hear. This Democrat thinks his voters wanted to hear he was gonna reach across the aisle, work with Republicans. Do you know a Democrat that wants to work with Republicans? I don’t. Now, they may exist in rural North Carolina, I don’t know.
But see, I think that’s standard, boilerplate politics 101 in both parties. I think this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t think he knows his constituency. ‘Cause you’re exactly right. Even if he does want to do that, even if his voters did want that, the Democrat leadership isn’t gonna permit that.
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