RUSH: There’s something else that I want to get into today. This is such a teachable moment. It is a very, very… It’s an object lesson in media and responsibility, and it has to do with Apple. So I’m gonna probably not get to it ’til the next hour, depending on how things go in the remaining time in this hour. But Apple yesterday reported record earnings and record profit and a record profit margin in the history of the company.
Their guidance to investors expected total revenue between $84 billion and $89 billion for the fourth calendar quarter — October, November, December of last year. That’s Apple’s first quarter in their fiscal calendar. They count quarter four as their first quarter of the year. They reported $91 billion in earnings and $22 billion in profits. Now, the purpose for me mentioning this is not to hail Apple. You all know that I love Apple products.
You all know that it’s kind of strange ’cause Apple is a gigantic left-wing company that probably doesn’t like me. But I still do. I don’t care. I love the stuff. I love their products. I marvel at ’em. I try to learn everything I can about ’em. But you also know from me that the tech media hates them. The tech media hates Apple like the Drive-By Media hates Trump and hates Republicans. In addition to the tech media hating Apple, there are of course Wall Street investment and analyst places like…
Well, just take your pick. I mean, there’s Goldman Sachs. Take your pick of any of these people that go out and advise investors where to put their money. Well, there have been a couple… There’s actually more than a couple. There’s three or four of these different places that literally hate Apple who have been predicting doom and gloom for Apple for five years. They have been urging people to take their money out of Apple, have been urging people, “Don’t put your money in Apple!”
It has been the epitome of irresponsibility. It has been the equivalent of these people personally hating Apple for whatever reason and trying to damage Apple by getting investors to take their money out or not put it in. It’s been the epitome of irresponsibility. We’re talking about people’s money! These are the so-called advisers, the analysts, the experts telling unexpecting investors where to put their money, where not to put it.
The story is what happened yesterday after these earnings came out, after these earnings were reported. It is an object lesson in what ought to be happening right now throughout the Drive-By Media from the New York Times to the Washington Post, to CNN, to MSNBC and to virtually every media outlet who has been lying, spreading lies, originating lies, creating lies, perpetuating known lies from false sources — literally making things up for the past three to four years.
There has yet to be a price paid by any of these people for getting it so wrong and for embarrassing their publications, their papers, their networks. They have not been punished. They have been heralded. They continue to work in this irresponsible way. They continue to spread lies. They continue to make stories up. They continue to quote anonymous sources that probably don’t even exist. So, I will close the loop on this story — now that I’ve got your whistle whetted for it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, let me close the loop on this Apple start and let me start again. Very, very briefly. Now, I follow Apple. I love their products, as you well know, and I follow them on my tech blogs, following the stuff and staying current on consumer tech. Well, all kinds of tech. It’s a hobby of mine, and it’s something I’m just vastly interested in. I’ve noted in studying tech media reporting on Apple, that Apple is hated and despised by a large section of tech media — and, by the way, business and financial media as well, although it’s not as bad, not as pronounced there.
But I am not exaggerating when I say that to some tech media, Apple is as despised as Trump is by the Drive-By Media — and, accordingly, Apple is as lied about, is as misrepresented and is as criticized as Trump is. Now, the way this has manifested itself over the years, there have been investment houses… One of them is Rosenblatt Securities, and they’ve had an analyst there who for the past number of years has been telling investors, “Get outta Apple! They’re done. It’s over with. Everybody hates their stuff.
“They can’t sell iPhones anymore, and that’s their number one business.” He’s just been pounding this stuff, despite evidence to the contrary. Apple just had a record fourth calendar quarter — $91 billion in revenue, $22 billion in profit — and leading the way was the iPhone! I can’t tell you how many tech media people have been burying the iPhone for five years. “It’s boring, it’s dull, the American people don’t like it, the Chinese consumers don’t like it, they’re fed up with the notch in the iPhone X form.” It’s never ending.
Media people are writing of Apple products as though they represent national public opinion. The same way it happens in the Drive-By Media against Trump. Well, here’s the difference: “The most bearish,” for those of you in Rio Linda, the most critical, the most down on, the most down on “Apple analyst on the Street is parting ways with Rosenblatt Securities.” Rosenblatt Securities has gotten rid of this Apple analyst, finally. His name is Jun Zhang. He’s no longer with the firm. He has been predicting the bottom to fall out of Apple for years.
He has cost people money! People who listened to him sold their Apple stock, did not buy Apple stock. It reflected badly on Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt has said (summarized), “You know what? We’re not gonna replace the guy. We’re not gonna even talk about Apple anymore.” Their reputation and association with Apple as a performing company has been shot. All the way back three years ago, four years ago, April 2016, this guy “said that if the iPhone 7 didn’t have a ‘panel upgrade,’ there would be no other feature upgrade possible to drive demand.”
In May of 2017, he “predicted that what was ultimately became the iPhone X was suffering from [fingerprint] ID supply problems — a feature not on the iPhone X — and wouldn’t ship [on time] until the first quarter of 2018,” it was gonna be delayed. “Later, in 2017 and 2018, Zhang didn’t appreciate Apple’s growing Services business at all, and didn’t see it…” He ripped it. In other words, there are business bloggers, business reporters with a personal bias anti-Apple so bad that they are costing their firms money.
Well, they’re being gotten rid of. That’s the difference in what’s happening here because these guys are actually costing investors and their firms money — and there’s a bunch of them. There is a… For example, here’s a headline: “The Thing Apple Fans Hate Most About the iPhone…” Dawn, let me ask you. You have an iPhone. What is the thing about it that you hate the most? (interruption) Answer: “Nothing.”
What do you hate about your phone? (interruption) Okay, but you don’t get rid of it for that. (interruption) Okay. You know what this guy thinks you hate most about the iPhone? The notch. The notch at the top of the screen. That’s the thing people hate the most. Oh, and the second thing they hate most about the iPhone is it looks the same year after year after year, that Apple is not innovating in design. So they write these stories: Apple fans hate the iPhone! Apple fans bored with the iPhone! Apple fans…!
Yet, the iPhone is selling in record numbers. Wall Street Journal is another one. They’ve got people — and Forbes. They’ve got people writing things presupposing public opinion about Apple products that are their own personal opinions made to look like the opinions of a majority of customers. The number of these stories saying, “It’s over for Apple. Apple’s seen its best days. There’s nothing new at Apple in the last five years.” Really? Apple Watch? AirPods? AirPods Pro? Services?
Look, this is not to defend Apple. Don’t misunderstand the point. This is media — and, in this media, they’re costing people money, and some of these investment houses and financial institutions are finally firing these analysts who have been predicting doom and advising people to get out of Apple for years. Now, what if that happened…? How is that any different than what’s happening at the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, ABC, NBC, whatever?
For four years, we have been listening to one lie after another about Donald Trump, and I guess ’cause it’s not costing anybody any money… I don’t know how it’s not costing CNN money. I mean, their viewership is plummeting. I don’t know. There’s gotta be some relationship between advertising agencies and buyers to prop ’em up, because there’s no reason to buy a commercial on CNN anymore. There aren’t enough people watching it.
My only point here is that where there is accountability for media people being blatantly wrong, lying through their teeth, expressing an anti-whatever-it-is bias… It’s stunning to me how long some of these investment houses stuck with these people who, for the last four or five years, have been predicting it’s over for Apple, doom and gloom, ignoring every Apple success, putting in their own words what Apple’s customers think.
Do you know what the Apple install base is? It’s 1.5 billion devices that are currently running and logged into the Apple ecosystem, and there’s stories out there about how people hate their iPhone, “people hate their iPad, people hate their AirPods, people hate Apple,” As they just keep growing and setting sales records. How does this happen? So the personal animus and the personal bias is all over the, and the correlation between this media and the standard Drive-By Media and the way Trump — and not just Trump, all of us conservatives are treated.
It’s identical. Anyway, I had to just… “The Thing Apple Fans Hate Most About the iPhone Isn’t Really a Problem…” Well, then…? (chuckles) You know, they hate that the iPhone looks the same every year. They hate the notch. Really? There isn’t another cell phone close to it! There isn’t another cell phone that comes close. You know, Apple is soaking up almost 88% of all profit in the premium smartphone sector — 88% of all profit!
And yet we get headlines, “The Thing Apple Fans Hate Most…” “The thing Trump supporters hate most about Trump is” his tweeting, his whatever. It’s all bogus. But when these clowns start costing their firms money, they are packed away, fired away, sent away. But no such accountability has yet been on display in the Drive-By Media. Don’t you think it’s about time for some there too?