RUSH: So, I said to myself last night, I haven’t seen a movie in a while, I think I’m gonna watch Dumb and Dumber. And then I remembered I can’t watch a movie, I gotta watch this debate. So I turned on the debate, and it turns out I watched Dumb and Dumber.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And, now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: I’m just gonna tell you this, like I told Snerdley today. Snerdley came in here, he’s all excited. “Those people are committing suicide. Do they not know how stupid they sound?” Folks, that’s not the way to look at this. The way to look at this is that millions of Americans were cheering this last night, the same way millions of Americans were cheering Trump in 2016.

These people have scared a big portion of the population. They’re scared to death. The Democrat agenda is to scare everybody. The picture of America they painted last night, there’s nobody I know who is sane that wants to believe that’s America, that does believe it’s America, but the Democrats have created a constituency and a base who believe all of that and more. All of that pessimism, all of that apocalyptic stuff, the doom and gloom.

Kathryn came in when I was watching it. She came in and she said, “You know, Rush, I have to tell you, you and I are laughing at this, but do you realize how many people are watching this, ‘Oh, man they care so much. They want to help people so much, giving everybody health care and getting rid of student loans.’” And I had to stop, you know, it’s a good check ’cause I had the same reaction you had, Snerdley. I’ve been saying for 30 years, nobody is gonna buy this, and yet there are people who are, and there are people that do.

And I’m just gonna tell you something else, folks. It may look like there’s no unity in that party right now, but don’t pay any attention to that now. I told you way back — grab the audio sound bite number 1. This is July 15th on this program. There were a lot of people telling me back then, “Don’t worry about it, these people can’t — they’re so angry at each other, they are so fractured that they can’t possibly put things back together in time.” And this what I said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Folks, the Democrats are already unified against Trump. I don’t care about this circular firing squad they’ve got going on. They’re unified against Trump. When it comes to the 2020 election, there isn’t gonna be any circular firing squad. Now, there will be up until then, and who knows how much damage they’re gonna do to each other on the Democrat side in the interim. But they’re always gonna be unified against Trump. There’s nothing that’s gonna bust up that unity.

RUSH: Okay. So I also discovered last night that I’m suffering from a phobia. We learned about a new phobia. My phobia is wackophobia. It is a visceral repulsion and fear when seeing clusters of small politicians with major flaws in their policies all get together and shout at me at once. Wackophobia. And I have to tell you, folks, I was triggered last night.

I had enough of it after two hours. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I said, “I don’t care if something happens, if they shoot Biden or do something, I’m gonna miss it. I’ll have to catch up later.” Well, I thought that based on what Julian Castro did. Julian Castro obviously is angling to be Elizabeth Warren’s vice presidential-running mate.

His job last night was to take out Bite Me. Bite Me almost lost his teeth. (laughing) I’m sorry. He almost lost his teeth on one answer. He told other people (paraphrasing), “Look, you take care of kids, I’ve done it my whole life, you’ve done it, you know, you just gotta make sure the radio’s in the bedroom, make sure the TV’s in there and the record player.” Record player.

I know vinyl is coming back, don’t misunderstand. But it hasn’t hit kids yet. They don’t have record players. If you look at the Drive-By Media today, it is obvious they want Biden gone. The New York Times wants him gone. The Washington Post wants him gone, ’cause they don’t think he can beat Trump.

I gotta tell you, Biden had more energy last night than he’s had in the previous debates combined. (interruption) No, he was more than awake. He was more than awake for most of it. Now, he had a little slack-off there in the middle. As I say, I tuned out after two hours. Apparently, the ratings for this debate, the overnights, are pretty high, which for us is probably good. You know, the more people see this, we think, the better.

But it’s still frightening to realize how many people watched that last night and just cheered and stand up and go, “Right on.” It’s scary. I mean, they’re raising everybody’s taxes. They are giving away everything no matter how many trillions of dollars. None of it’s gonna happen, by the way. None of the promises they’re making are going to happen.

They’ve been promising people this stuff. Go ask African-Americans. African-Americans have been promised all of this stuff and more for the last 50 years, and they’ve got nothing. Women have been promised all of this utopia. They’ve got nothing. Every Democrat constituency group is still enraged, they’re still angry, they are still miserable, they’re still unhappy because the Democrat Party never gives — one of the things I kept asking myself when the health care subject came up, why in the heck — I thought Obama fixed this.

You people had eight years. Obama, Biden, the Democrat Party had eight years to fix health care. How in the world can it be such a disaster? But you see, this is a microcosm for the Democrat Party and what everybody ought to learn. They are unable to fulfill their agenda items. It’s not possible. We don’t have the money that they want to spend.

People do not react to their policies in real life like they think they will. The Democrats simply do not succeed with any of this stuff. So what they do is scare the daylights out of people. And then they make a beeline for their emotions. That’s how they do it. They come off as people that really recognize the pain you are in, the pain of being alive, the pain of being alive in America if you are a minority or a victim.

And if the Democrats are involved then everybody is one or the other. The misery that is part of living with Donald Trump in the White House, the misery that is part of realizing there is a Republican Party. And they zero in and make this emotional connection as good people who care.

But if you stop, just check history, every group of people they have made promises to are still unhappy, still haven’t realized what the Democrats have assured them is going to happen. They haven’t gotten rich. The income gap between rich and poor has not shrunk. The rich are not giving money away. The rich are not being penalized like the Democrats assure people that’s gonna happen.

Nothing, folks, literally nothing that the Democrats promise in terms of salvation, solution, happiness, none of that happens. There is stuff that happens. Things get worse. People get angrier. People become unhappier. And they keep turning to the Democrats to fix it because they have bought the idea that the only people who care about them and fixing the problems happens to be the Democrats.

And that’s the obstacle that we have. And everybody’s talking about the story in the Washington Examiner. Bret Baier was asking Tom Perez, the DNC head honcho, there wasn’t one question on the economy last night, not one. And you know what else didn’t come up? Abortion.

Beto O’Rourke said (impression), “Hell, yes, I’m gonna take your AK-47 away! Hell, yes, I’m gonna take your AR-15 away!” I had somebody call me. Do you know how rarely that happens? Somebody called me over FaceTime audio. That’s okay; I can hear that. He was talking about how he couldn’t handle any more stupid, just the stupidity of this thing last night. He just couldn’t handle it, and he wanted to talk to me about, “Am I seeing this the way you do? Is this as stupid as it seems to me?”

“Yeah, I have to agree with you.”

He said, “This gun business. You know, I don’t have any guns. Let ’em take my AR-15. I don’t care. But they’re not gonna take my shotgun! My shotgun is hidden in the house. I don’t need an AR, Rush. I got a shotgun.”

I said, “My, man,” I’m not gonna mention his name to you, “don’t let ’em take your AR-15. That’s exactly what they want people to agree to do.”

“I don’t even have an AR-15. Go ahead!”

“No, no, no! You don’t let them take anything. You don’t let them buy back anything. You don’t let them take a thing. If you do that, if you start that ball rolling — if you establish the precedent that you will allow the Democrats to come take an AR-15 away from you — then the next thing they’re gonna take away is your shotgun. And then they’re gonna want to take away your pistols. And then they’re gonna take away whatever else you have. You can’t!”

He said, “Oh, yeah. You’re right. I was just thinking about it from the standpoint…”

“Don’t give them anything! You gotta broom that attitude out of your head.”

“I just want ’em to shut up, Rush.”

“That’s exactly the point: They not gonna shut up if you give ’em your AR-15 that you don’t have. You give them your AR-15, and they’re gonna be energized, they’re gonna be enthused, and then they’re gonna start demanding more.”

“Oh, yeah. I see that.”

“That’s exactly right. So make sure you keep calling me before you start making rash decisions like this.”

He just wanted them to shut up, like a lot of people. “Oh, let ’em! Just… Just let ’em! I’m tired of hearing about it. Let ’em do it.” No, folks. Not one question from the Democrats who were moderating the debate, not one answer from the Democrats participating in the debate on the economy. Why do you think that is? You might think the answer is, “Well, Rush, the economy is going so well, there’s no reason for the Democrats talk about it. It just alerts people.” Well, that’s partly true. But it’s deeper than that. It was completely ignored. So was abortion.

It was completely ignored, because Donald Trump has taken the issue away from them. If there were the slightest hanging thread, something going wrong in the economy that they can zero in on, they would have. Donald Trump has taken the number one electoral issue off of the table — and it’s not just the economy. He’s taken a lot of things off the campaign table, and the reason is that Trump fixes things. So the Democrats are left with their clown car agenda and their extremist agenda and scaring everybody to death.

Elizabeth Warren tweeted recently, “The warning signs for another recession are flashing.” Stop. Stop think about this. For the last three weeks, the Democrats and the media and the Democrats in the Democrat Party have been trying to assure you that a recession was coming. They have been trying to tell you, “A recession is here; you just haven’t experienced it yet. But it’s out there! It’s just around the corner. This recession is undeniable!” They’ve got everybody talking about it, and the economy doesn’t come up last night as an issue?

You had Fauxcahontas out there before the debate saying, “The warning signs for another recession are flashing.” Biden said a few days ago, “The economy’s teetering on a recession.” Bernie Sanders’ big-time top aide, Jeff Weaver, said, “We’re now about to start the Trump recession.” All these people said it. This is weeks ago, days ago. They took note of a Washington Post poll. Trump’s approval rating had fallen in light of the fact that 60% of Americans fear a recession will arrive next year. Remember that poll?

We told you about it. It was a random poll, which we nuked. It was not even likely voters. We didn’t believe it, but we talked about it. Sixty percent. Trump’s approval number had fallen to 38% in that poll. That’s just last week. So what happened? Why is there no talk of “the recession” last night? Why was there no talk of the economy? After that gigantic buildup of a recession that’s imminent, brought on by Donaldus Trump, where was this last night? You want to talk about the Democrats trying to scare people? They didn’t try to scare people with a recession coming last night.

They didn’t try to scare people with notes about how bad the economy is. As I say, the Democrats on the stage didn’t talk about it and the Democrats moderating the debate didn’t talk about it. The only person that said the word “recession” was Julian Castro, and he was talking about the ABC/Washington Post poll, that it had uncovered recession fears. The word “unemployment” was never spoken last night. “Employment” was not uttered. There was not a single word discussed about job creation, and there wasn’t a discussion about wages.

Why?

Added to this, they didn’t talk about abortion. The Democrats didn’t bring it up. Now, you think, “Well, Rush, why was that?” Well, because they’ve gotta keep the feminazis engaged and happy, folks. That’s the only thing they care about, and it didn’t come up. They’re afraid somebody’s gonna ask ’em about post-birth abortion, and they’re gonna have to defend that. They don’t want to. Probably a deal was struck between the Democrats moderating the debate and the Democrats doing the debate that that wouldn’t come up.

Okay. Let me take a break. We have an ongoing review. We have sound bites of the debate last night, such as it was. Bernie Sanders… Snerdley, you know this. You grew up in New York. Back in the fifties in Brooklyn, when you walked down the street, there was a Bernie Sanders on every corner — some old, white-haired guy — shouting about communism at everybody who walked by. That’s who Bernie Sanders looked like last night. John Podhoretz made that observation in a New York Post column. Exactly. He just looks like one of those old, white-haired guys back in the fifties in Brooklyn shouting communist things at people as they walk by.

That’s how he appeared. What a difference. You couldn’t avoid noting that.