RUSH: Here is Gerard in Atlanta. Great to have you, Gerard. Glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s great to hear your voice.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I have a question for you. Are you starting to get as frustrated as I am that the public and leaders on the right still don’t understand who the far left is and what they’re dealing with?

RUSH: I’ve been this way for 25 years, Gerard, maybe longer. Yes, exactly. I don’t understand why so many people on our side of the aisle do not understand or see the genuine danger and radical nature of the people who are our political opponents. It’s been a frustrating thing to me for I can’t tell you how many years. It’s not new.

CALLER: The reason I bring it up, Rush, is if I see one more story where I see maybe a preacher or a minister who is shocked or appalled that, “Oh, my gosh. They’re allowing protests, but they’re not gonna allow us to have church services,” I just want to say, “Well, that’s what the left is. There is no religion on the left.” And so why is this so shocking to these people? It doesn’t scare me, but it just makes me scratch my head that they’re not in tune with what these people really stand for.

RUSH: Well, you know, the clergy as a group, the left was very smart years ago in co-opting a significant number of priests by equating welfare with charity. When they successfully built that bridge, that government welfare, like AFDC, is the equivalent of charity, then they converted these clergy men and women to big-time supporters of government. And from there it was a very short trip to them becoming leftists and liberals.

And it was all rooted in the idea that they were being big-hearted and charitable and they were helping the downtrodden and the thirsty and the hungry and so forth. And they thought they were scoring points with people this way. All the while — you’re exactly right — on the left, there is no religion permitted. No religion is allowed, except theirs, which is the climate or some other wacko aspect of their agenda. And their purpose is to wipe out religion, that the state is going to be the replacement for God, for Christ, or what have you.

And it’s frustrating as all get out. But it’s not just limited to religious people for me. I have to repeat stories I’ve told a bunch of times, but it is amazingly frustrating to me — this is why I’ve said I don’t know how many times over the course of my career, Gerard, that I think everything is ideological. I think we wouldn’t be here today if there had been a proper education and understanding of liberalism by a majority of the American people.

Now, I’ve done my part to educate people on liberalism, and a bunch of other people in conservative media have. But some haven’t. Like look at this bunch of Never Trumpers, who haven’t been able to get anybody elected. They couldn’t get McCain elected. They couldn’t get Romney elected. They’re a bunch of absolute losers. Now they’re trying to get a Democrat elected because they got their noses out of joint.

These people are the exact kind of people you’re talking about. They look at the left, and they don’t see a danger. They look at Trump and see the danger. They look at Trump and Trump supporters and see the problem. The fact that so many people on our side do not recognize and have not recognized the threat posed by standard, ordinary, everyday liberalism.

And some of the people that have fallen short are people who have maintained that they are conservative intellectual leaders and that we need to go on their cruises and give them money and buy their magazines or subscribe because they are responsible for carrying forth the conservative message. And they won’t even tell the truth about the American left because they don’t want to make enemies of them. They want to be accepted by them because they think the left runs everything.

I once asked a prominent conservative editor — not gonna mention any names because that’s not my point. Pick a name. It was in the early days this program. And I’m feeling, we’re making progress, this is good, we’re gonna have some real success here. ‘Cause the program was taking off, and there were other shows starting, and Fox News was picking up. So I asked this guy, “How long do you think it’s gonna be before we end up becoming the majority ideology?”

“Rush, I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.”

I said, “What? You don’t think it’s ever gonna happen?”

“No. No. No. That’s too much ground to cover. No, no, no. No, no. Liberalism is always gonna be the dominant ideology. All we can do is try to make a dent.”

So here’s somebody asking you to donate to his magazine or subscribe to his magazine, whatever it was, contribute to his think tank, admitting that he didn’t think it was ever possible to overcome the left. Well, sorry. That’s not why I’m here. They are people who need to be defeated. So, yeah. Long way of answering the question, Gerard. It’s a great question. I’ve been frustrated for a long time.

I told you this story about a dinner party, I walked out of one of my own dinner parties ’cause a couple of people who were guests started trashing Sarah Palin on the basis that she was worthless because the media had destroyed her, so we need to throw her overboard. I said, “Did you ever think about defending her? Did you ever think about the things they’re saying about her are not true?”

They said, “Doesn’t matter, they’ve destroyed her, we need to pick somebody else.”

I said, “Well, they’re gonna destroy the next person we pick.”

“Well, so we have to pick somebody they’re not gonna destroy.”

We have to pick somebody they’re not gonna destroy? That means picking one of them. These guys, they were clueless. And, yeah, I think there’s — in fact, I wonder now, with all of the warning sounds that I have made, the warning bells that I have rung over the course of the many years here, I wonder how many people privately are out there, “Yeah, now I see, now I know what Rush was talking about.” I wonder about that all the time.

It has been a very, very frustrating thing. And now look where we are. I mean, now it’s patently obvious what and who the left is. And even now you don’t see a lot of pushback against it. Anyway, Gerard, thanks much.