RUSH: Here’s Frank in Long Valley, New Jersey. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Praying for your recovery every day.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Instead of defunding the police, if you want to make a real change in this country for race relations and the betterment of our country, we should defund the public schools in the inner cities of this country —
RUSH: Ho-ho!
CALLER: — and rebuild them with charter schools, private schools, religious-based schools.
RUSH: You know who would support that faster than you can whistle Dixie?
CALLER: Who?
RUSH: African-American moms and dads who have to send their kids to these dilapidated places.
CALLER: I live in a town, Long Valley, about 41 miles away from Newark, New Jersey, and when my children grew up, every morning, I felt 100% when they got on that bus. And 41 miles away, African-American mothers and grandmothers fear for their children’s lives.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That’s not right. That’s not right. Let’s start defunding the public schools in inner cities. We will make a complete change. I heard an African-American woman who ran a charter school once say on 60 Minutes 18 years ago, “There will never be integration without education,” and she was a thousand percent right.
RUSH: Oh, let me tell you, about that, do you think that any of this — protest, unrest, looting, riots whatever. Do you think any of this is about integration?
CALLER: No. It’s about a small number of —
RUSH: No, this is about total segregation. That’s the point!
CALLER: Of course it is.
RUSH: Bye-bye, Dr. King. I mean, he is so irrelevant now. It’s amazing to watch this. This is about total segregation.
CALLER: Total. You asked a while ago for us to come up with a new name for the press. It’s no longer the Drive-By Media. It’s the propaganda press. It’s a nice short propaganda statement: Propaganda press. That’s what they should be called. You should be calling them consistently from this point the propaganda press ’cause that’s what they are.
RUSH: Eh, but it’s too easy. It’s not… The problem is the word “press” in there. They’re not press. They’re not media. That’s what has to be overcome. That’s the real challenge of this, ’cause I’m gonna guarantee you: 75% of America think they’re watching the news when they turn this crap on. They’re not watching the news. There isn’t any news as people think of news.
There might be some news reporting in newspapers in sections that have nothing to do with domestic American politics or culture, meaning you might get some news of what’s going on in East Germany about something. Who knows! I’m sorry. Not East Germany, Germany, period. Even that is a bit of a stretch. It really is activism. It’s total, full-fledged activism.
Yeah, it’s based on propaganda, but it’s an institution that seeks to destroy all opposition under the guise of fair and objective news. It’s been fascinating for me. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. There are a lot of people, quote-unquote, “in the news business” that have been doing what they do for as long as I have. Thirty years ago, they were not who they’ve become.
They were liberal, but they did news. They always favored Democrats, but they were not openly activists. There has never been, in the news media, anything like CNN — and what’s amazing to me is Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd used to work at something called The Hotline, and then he went over to NBC. He was there when Tim Russert was the news director.
Tim Russert wasn’t what these guys are today, but he was becoming it, with no opposition, before he sadly passed away. Everybody in this business… You want to talk about Millennials? The Millennials have totally taken over, at the New York Times, for example, and they have totally taken over in a lot of newsrooms at so-called journalism outlets.
But it’s been amazing to me that these people have — and it started before Trump was elected. Trump was just the last straw. You know, Trump pushed ’em over the edge. These are people who didn’t have a problem evolving out of journalism and into this activism. There’s not a one of them that opposed it. There is not a single American journalist who opposes what the industry has become.
That is stunning to me — and the reason is, they are leftists, and they are unified. And they all are of a singular purpose. And that singular purpose is unity in the defeat of all opposition, the elimination of all opposition. They don’t believe in debate. They have time for it. We’re not legitimate. There’s no reason to debate us. What we think doesn’t matter. We’re outliers.
We’re illegitimate practitioners. We are extremists. Now, Google runs the news, and they’re trying to shut down outlets. How about what they trying to do with The Federalist and with Zero Hedge? You know what they really did? Now, I have two schools of thought on this. I understand the need for all these websites to monetize. I understand. I mean, make money.
I understand the need for these websites to get in on Google’s advertising, shall we say, golden goose. But it’s Google! At some point, you’re gonna have to realize they hate you and they’re gonna try to take your money away from you — and then, when that happens, why in the hell act surprised? Why act surprised that liberals hate you? Why act surprised that liberals want to destroy you?
Why not become self-sufficient? But that’s just me — and I’m telling you, self-sufficiency is a definite minority point of view. You wouldn’t believe the number of conservatives who think their primary objective in life is fundraising — as in getting donations — instead of earning income. But that’s just a bugaboo of mine, and I realize I’m in the minority.
So what Google did, is Google found out that there were some commenters at The Federalist website and Zero Hedge. Commenters! People that do not work for the websites. They were just posting comments, public comments. Free speech. Freedom of speech. They were posting comments that Google didn’t like, so they came along and they threatened The Federalist. (summarized)
“If you don’t get a handle on that, we are gonna cancel your access to the Google advertising plan,” and they did cancel Zero Hedge. For people in the comments section! So The Federalist has a reprieve. The Federalist is not an extreme organization at all. They have some of the best and brightest literal journalists and reporters and opinion writers that you will find in the business today.
The Federalist has, in many ways, the creme de la creme. No wonder they’re a target. Zero Hedge is said to be a conspiracy kook website, and so they have ended up in the crosshairs. But I don’t know. (sigh) Depending Google for your livelihood, putting yourself in that position? I know. Look, I don’t mean to be making anybody mad out there.
I know you’re saying, “Easy for me to say.” It wasn’t easy for me to say. We had to go through four years of poverty when this show began, to get ourselves to a position of financial independence and success — and there were long knives and guns out for us. Before Google, it was called ABC Spot Sales. When this program started, 80% of our advertising came from ABC Spot Sales.
ABC network, radio, TV, they had an advertising unit, and they placed advertising for every American business you can think on radio stations, radio networks. Within a month of when this program started, the no-buy orders went out. ABC Spot Sales said, “We gotta cancel advertising on the Limbaugh show because he’s too controversial!”
“What? We only have 56 stations. How does anybody know we’re out there yet?” “Well, they found you. (muttering) They’re telling us that they don’t want…” The organized campaigns for this stuff go all the way back to at least 1988. So I remember having a meeting with my syndication partners. “We have got to get out of this arrangement. We cannot at all be dependent on these people. They’re just selling us out.”
“Well, how are you gonna do it?”
“We’ll hire our own salespeople, for crying out loud, create our own data!” Anyway, it took us four years, maybe three, but we became financially independent — and not one of these efforts to Stop Rush or to eliminate advertisers has had any success at all. If it had, I wouldn’t be here. So I always cringe when I see all these other conservative organizations end up being harmed by this.
Because you don’t have to go through it. But I understand if you want to do a website. (interruption) No, we don’t… Look, we end up on our website… There is some Google money that gets placed there because Google tries to own everything. But we don’t seek it. It’s a strange, strange circumstance.
But the bottom line is we are in no way dependent on it for revenue to RushLimbaugh.com — and, again, look, folks: I’m trying to get anybody in trouble. I’m not being critical. I just watch all this stuff happen, and I’ve been through it and learned how to end up insulated against it. So, therefore, I know it’s possible to insulate against it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Tucker Carlson, this Google stuff came up last night. He was talking about the effort to silence The Federalist and the Zero Hedge website, and he revealed the truth. And this is accurate. Google controls 70% of all online advertising. So if you’re in the news business, if you have a news website, the odds are you obey Google. Can’t afford to be shut off. When they tell you to do something, you do it. They can bankrupt you in a minute if you disobey. In history, no entity has ever held more power over information than Google does right now.
Where is Congress weighing in on this in the form of anti-trust? Section 230 of the United States Code, Google – do you know that Google is exempt from liability? They can punish Zero Hedge. They can punish The Federalist for thing commenters post in the comments section, but Google can do anything, say anything, put anything they want on any website, and nobody with do anything to them.
But there is a way using section 230 and some senators are beginning to talk about it. Ted Cruz, I just saw him on the tube saying he sent a letter to the CEO of Google demanding to know why this and why that and what for and all that. So we will see.