RUSH: Now, on the selection of Kamala Harris, folks, my first reaction here to this was that it doesn’t matter who Biden picked, in truth, because — well, that’s not actually true. It matters. I don’t mean to say it doesn’t. But the point is not so much who he picked, but what these people are. And this is going to be the most radical leftist presidential campaign that the Democrat Party has ever foisted on the American people.

And I think one of the reasons that they chose Kamala Harris is because she demonstrated that she will say whatever they put in front of her to say. She lied through her teeth in her opening statement at her appearance with Plugs. Grab audio sound bite number 12. This one just infuriated me. And this is the kind of thing that I listened to it, and I hope and I pray that the American people understand that this is a gigantic bald-faced lie without having to be told.

Here it is. This is just so over the top. This is proof that she, like Plugs, whatever they want him to say, whoever’s responsible, just put it on the prompter, and she or he will say it.

HARRIS: Trump is also the reason millions of Americans are now unemployed. He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground.

RUSH: Now, folks, this is a stretch even for these people. There was no economic expansion under Barack Obama. There was an economic contraction, and it lasted for eight years. And it was worse than that. Now, again, I need to beg your indulgence, those of you who are here regularly, ’cause remember we got new people tuning in every hour of every day. And there are people, therefore, who have not heard some things that are crucially important to keep everything else in context.

So I’ll make it as brief as I can. The Obama administration told everybody that there was a new era of decline, that America’s past, America’s best days are behind us. And maybe some of those days were not even fully deserved because America was founded as an unjust and immoral nation because of slavery and racism and bigotry and the women’s vote and all these other things.

So the Obama administration never had economic growth any higher than one and a half percent. They came up with a slogan saying there’s a new era of decline and that we are the ones, meaning Obama and Biden, we’re the ones to manage the decline. You need to lower your expectations. There was no Obama economic expansion. There was a Trump economic expansion in three years. The Trump administration rebuilt the American economy after eight years of the Obama team telling us it couldn’t happen. And again, another reminder. During the campaign of 2016, Trump was promising to bring back manufacturing jobs.

He was in Ohio and a number of other upper tier Midwest states that had been hard hit by bad trade deals and so forth. And Obama goes out campaigning for Hillary and says (impression), “What’s he gonna do? Huh? How’s he gonna bring those jobs back? He’s gonna just wave a magic wand? Is that what he’s gonna do? Wave a magic wand? Ha-ha-ha. Wave a magic wand!” and the jobs came back.

Here Obama was perfectly willing to tell everybody those jobs weren’t coming back, and he didn’t know how Trump was gonna bring ’em back. There was no interest in those jobs coming back. This is the thing that people have a tough time believing. It’s hard to convince people that an American president, an American administration would not want the best economic circumstances for the country.

That’s a really tough thing to sell. But that’s what the Obama administration was all about because the agenda was globalism. And for globalism to take hold, for that to actually happen, the United States would have to be cut down in size economically, and that’s what the Obama administration was doing. So this idea that Trump came in and destroyed the Obama economy…

Folks, it is so outrageous that it defies explanation. Trump rebuilt the economy, and then the COVID virus comes along and necessitates a two-month shutdown of the American economy. And already, Trump is rebounding the American economy. Jobless claims are under a million. We’re producing jobs at a faster clip than at any time in American history. Now, you might say, “Well, Rush, that’s no big deal ’cause we’re starting from practically zero.”

It doesn’t matter, folks. It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, if we had a Democrat administration right now, we wouldn’t be adding jobs at this clip. We wouldn’t be adding jobs at this rate because that’s not what the Democrat Party is all about. The Democrat Party is all about the federal government being responsible for whatever they claim is as good, and it is…

We’ve never had an opportunity greater than this to draw the comparison, the stark contrasts between Trump, say, and the Republican Party and the leftists of the Democrat Party and what the future holds. Kamala Harris was filled with other lies as well. She said, “In addition, the president’s mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worth economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

Uh, no.

(sigh) The whole idea that the Obama administration had this roaring economy is laughable and that Trump somehow came along and destroyed it. The second lie, “Just look where Trump and Mike Pence have gotten us. Millions of kids who can’t go back to school.” Who is it that wants the schools closed? It’s Kamala Harris and Biden and all the rest Democrat Party.

Who is it that wants the ongoing chaos associated with no progress? It’s Obama, and it’s Biden, and it’s Kamala Harris. It’s the entire Democrat Party. It’s not Trump’s decision whether kids go back to school because the federal government does not run the schools. He’s urged the School of Medicine to reopen. The primary reasons kids can’t go back to school is opposition from the teachers’ unions, which is a bunch of Democrats.

It has nothing to do with Trump. She also said, “Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis. It was called Ebola. We all remember that pandemic.” Ebola was an outbreak; it was not a pandemic, according to the World Health Organization. You know, every bald-faced lie that they could put on the teleprompter for her to tell, she came through.

But I think, folks, the things here that we’re gonna have to keep in mind, is I don’t think they’re gonna let her be who she is — meaning the Democrats, the Biden campaign, the apparatus running this show. They are reinventing her. This is gonna be up to Mike Pence to expose this in debates, and I’m gonna ask him about it in a few short minutes when he appears here.

They are attempting to reinvent Kamala Harris as a moderate centrist — a pragmatist — to go after the swing voters on the premise they think they’re gonna win the minority vote anyway despite the tough Antifa, Black Lives Matter talk. The black vote’s got nowhere else to go, especially with her on the ticket; so they don’t even have to do the usual pandering to the African-American community.

They are just taking all of you for granted that you are going to be there, and so they’re going to position her as a pragmatist, a centrist, a moderate. They’re gonna target her at suburban soccer moms in swing states so that they can try to feel good about themselves. And in the process of feeling good about themselves, they’ll feel good enough to vote for Biden because Kamala Harris is on the ticket and she’s one of them, when she isn’t.

This is one of the most radical leftists in the Democrat Party. But, folks, even that… You know, I’ve been struggling all week as I’ve watched everybody weigh in on Kamala Harris. You know, Kathryn and I have been watching and trying to figure out the best way to go about explaining to people who she is. And reciting a laundry list of leftist characteristics doesn’t strike me as — I don’t know — the most effective.

It’s gotta be done; don’t misunderstand. But it doesn’t strike me as the end-all way to go about it because I’ve got 33 years’ experience behind this microphone trying to persuade people about leftists, about liberals, who they are, how to recognize them, what they mean, what they portend, what the dangers are. And I think it becomes predictable if people are watching television, there’s a bunch of conservatives, you got a liberal, and they start launching.

People tune it out after not very long a time, even if they agree with it. See, it’s gonna be a good project. It’s gonna be a neat trick here to figure out how to properly inform swing voters about Kamala Harris. ‘Cause right now, the ideology of people is not the primary concern people have. You’ve got this virus, which is wrecking the country. The economy is in bad shape. You’ve got streets in America on fire.

And people, sadly, are not associating any of that with a particular ideology, which they should be and need to be. That’s happening for specific ideological, political reason. It’s because liberals are behind it. But at some point — because the Democrats are going to be reinventing Kamala Harris as a moderate, pragmatist, centrist to go after suburbanites — the Trump campaign is going to have to redefine her as the 2020 hard-left primary failure that she was, that she is.

You know, the highest number she ever got in California during her presidential campaign was 7%. She was the first one to drop out of the Democrat primaries. She was the least popular of all of the candidates, of the major candidates that were running. The first… Tulsi Gabbard literally destroyed her on her phoniness as attorney general in California and district attorney in San Francisco.

The leftist base always says it’s gonna sit out, meaning they’re not gonna make of themselves big targets. But they never do. Power for them is far more important than ideology. They assume Biden is not gonna make it through the first term. They’re gonna take over. Kamala will revert to form once in power. This is what Democrats are being told.

They’re being told not to believe the reinvention of Kamala Harris. “Don’t believe that she’s a moderate. Don’t worry about it. She is the radical leftist that you want her to be. We just can’t reveal that yet. But don’t worry.” This is what Democrat voters and donors are being reassured because there are a lot of people in the Democrat side nervous at this attempt to remake her as some harmless moderate pragmatist.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have a little montage here just to illustrate how the Democrats in the media are doing everything they can to try to portray Kamala Harris as somebody that she is not.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: She became known as a pragmatic moderate.

LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER: What’s great about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden is that they are pragmatic.

JEREMY DIAMOND: Senator Harris is viewed, uh, as much more of a moderate within the Democratic Party.

KRISTEN WELKER: …cultivating a moderate political reputation and inviting criticism from some liberals that she was insufficiently progressive.

RUSH: What an absolute joke this is!

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Harris comes from the middle-of-the-road, moderate wing of the Democratic Party.

CORNEL WEST: My dear sister, uh, Harris is not a radical. She’s a centrist and a moderate.

RUSH: Ah, come on, Cornel. That’s Cornel West. Cornel, what happened to your pride, man? What is this, “My dear sister Harris is not a radical. She’s a centrist and moderate”? You know what this tells me? These people are not willing to come out and be honest about who they are. They’re lying through their teeth about who this woman is. Why? I’ll tell you why.

It’s because this country is not Twitter. This country is not Facebook. It is not what the Democrats think. It’s not what the media thinks. You know, the media doesn’t get out… One of the things that’s happening here because of this pandemic is that fewer and fewer people are actually having personal interactions with other people, and this is true even of journalists.

They’re probably living in a bigger bubble than they’ve ever lived in. They’re talking only to themselves electronically, and they’re relying on things like Twitter to give them confidence that they represent a majority of thinking in the country. But this country isn’t Twitter, and the fact that they’re having to try to recast this woman…

Folks, she is one of the most radical leftists in the Democrat Party, and they don’t have the confidence to have her be that. The fact that they have to remake her, that they’re having to recast her as some pragmatist moderate is all we need to know about what they really think they have to do to win this election, which means not be who they are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back, folks, to the point — this is a really important point. The Democrats have chosen in Kamala Harris one of the most radical leftists in the Democrat Party. I’m not saying that to bash radical leftists. I’m pointing out that they have nominated, they’ve put somebody on their ticket that their base is demanding. They have put somebody on the ticket that they had to put on the ticket, that is known as a radical leftist in order to turn out their base, in order to turn out Twitter.

In the midst of all of this, they are trying to convince everybody that she’s not who she is. Now, I don’t care, I don’t care who you are and I don’t care what you’re trying to do. If your starting point is a denial of who you are, then you are not operating from a position of strength. If you have to construct an identity that is the exact opposite of who you are and yet you have been chosen because of who you are and yet you can’t be public about it, you got big problems. And this is where the Democrats find themselves now.

They’re gonna do everything they can to privately tell people “don’t worry when you hear her campaign as a centrist and a pragmatist and a moderate and a soccer mom, this is what we have to do right now to win. But when all is said and done, after we win, then she’s gonna become who you think she is.”

Now, why do all this is they’re actually winning? Their polls show them up 12, 10, eight, wherever. Every poll shows Biden just creaming Trump every which way from Sunday. So if that’s true, then why all the games? Why all the feint? Why all the deception? They are pretending that they are not liberal. They are pretending that she is not liberal or radical left. Which means that they know privately that the country isn’t where they are.

Because, folks, I’m telling you, if they were confident that this country was radical left, if they were confident they had pulled it off, that they had converted a majority of Americans to Black Lives Matter and Antifa and all that, they wouldn’t be playing any of these games. They wouldn’t be trying to fool people about who she is and who she isn’t. What this means is that they are not so confident of their automatic victory. They’re not confident of it at all.

Contrary to what you might see in the Drive-By Media, contrary to what you might hear them say, Biden or Kamala Harris or any of the Democrats, they are not confident that they’re gonna win this. In fact, I think their confidence is way, way down compared to what they’re trying to make everybody believe.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ll tell you something else that’s gonna happen. The people running these polls are gonna keep these polls fake. They’re gonna keep Reuters, Politico, Quinnipiac, whatever, they’re gonna average them out so Trump never gets any higher than 45. The reason for that, that will allow Biden to stay in the basement. If Trump gets higher than 45, 47, 48, that would draw Biden out. They can’t afford that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned earlier that I’m struggling — not struggling, but I’m trying to figure out how best to persuade people about who Kamala Harris is, and I go back and forth.

I ask, does it really even matter who Biden chose? Because they are who they are. It doesn’t matter, you know, whether she’s the vice-presidential nominee or not. The Democrat Party is what it is, and that’s what’s going to have to be explained to people. And I think if you… My thinking on this is if you target an individual — and I don’t want to be critical, but I’ve watched a lot of TV this week.

And I’ve watched a lot of attempts people have made to characterize her and to educate people about her and to try to inform people about who she is and what she believes. And some of it makes me uncomfortable because it… I guess it’s unavoidable, but it comes across as a personal attack.

How could it not? But then I ask myself, how effective is that? As somebody who has been doing this for 32, 33 years and attempting to identify liberals for people and explain liberalism and the ideology, I’m going back and forth on how best to be effective. And I think just targeting her as a single entity tends to make people get defensive. “Why are you attacking the woman? Why are you attacking the girl? You conservatives, you always do this.”

I think she has to be held up as nothing different, as nothing special, there’s nothing particularly unique about her. She’s classic in terms of who they all are. I think the effort here needs to be to continue to inform people, educate people about the Democrat Party as a whole and what will happen to the country if they secure power, not just Kamala Harris and what will happen if she — I know she’s gonna be frontrunner for president if Plugs doesn’t make it.

I know there are people who think that Plugs isn’t even gonna be on the ticket by the time the election comes around. There are people who think she is actually the nominee, that this is the Democrat Party, that something’s gonna happen, Plugs can’t go, Plugs can’t make it, now they’ve got her, now they’re positioning her as the pragmatist and the centrist, and she’s going to be the nominee.

Have you seen that Hillary Clinton, by the way, is saying she’d be happy to work in the Biden administration? This woman is pathetic. Laughably pathetic. Hillary Clinton is doing whatever she can to try to hold on and relive or maybe experience the glory days that Trump’s victory denied her. It’s pathetic and laughable at the same time. Well, no. Let me give an example of what I mean. Let’s go through some things here about Kamala Harris.

In the United States Senate she had the most liberal voting record last year. She had a more liberal voting record than even Bernie Sanders. She is in favor of things like late-term abortion. She thinks Catholics are not fit to serve on the Supreme Court. She has tried to criminalize climate change denial. She wants to criminalize the manufacture of guns. She wants provide taxpayer funded health care to illegal immigrants, free.

She once compared ICE — immigration customs enforcement — to the Ku Klux Klan. Nevertheless she was endorsed by police unions when she was California’s top prosecutor, when she was the attorney general. She is an Indian-American candidate to one audience, an African-American candidate to another. Her father owned slaves. Her family were slave owners. She was not. They’re from Jamaica depending on the day you talk to ’em. And this is just a partial list of things about her.

Miranda Devine in the New York Post writes: “She is the presidential candidate by proxy, yet is protected from the usual scrutiny that goes with the position. She won’t have to debate Trump. She doesn’t even have to be likeable to voters.” She is there because of identity politics. She’s there because she’s a woman and a woman of color. Not because she’s the best. Not because she’s got the most meritorious record. She’s there strictly because she checks off identity politics boxes.

But the point is, folks, that no matter who they chose you’re gonna be able to say much the same thing about all of them. It is the entire Democrat Party that people need to be educated about, informed on, what have you. Even though she’s radical and even though she may be one of the most glaring examples, she’s not uncommon. She’s very common, very typical of who the Democrat Party is today. And it is the entirety of the Democrat Party that people need to be educated about and informed of.

And I think, just speaking for me, it will be far easier to inform people on a party rather than focus on an individual, particularly a woman, particularly a woman of color, which is naturally gonna have people say, “Why are you hitting the woman? You shouldn’t hit the woman. Shouldn’t attack the woman. It’s not fair. It’s not nice. It’s unbecoming,” and so forth. You go after the party as a whole, then that’s a whole different ball game. And it also has the added benefit of being true. And it is the Democrat Party in entirety that we are up against. It’s the Democrat Party and its total turn to radical liberalism that threatens the American way of life.

And that’s what this campaign is about, is preserving the American way of life, and it is threatened by the Democrat Party, not just by Kamala Harris and not just by Joe Biden. It is threatened by every Democrat that is out there in elective office. Take your pick of any of them. Biden could have put any of them on the ticket and we would still be facing the same threats. We would be facing the same dangers, and we would be facing the same challenges.

Now, they may think that putting a woman of color is something historic and that this is going to pave the way for them and get them some extra votes, but we’ve been the history route. We’ve been there, done that, we’ve had the first African-American president. We’ve had the first female nominee. That would be Hillary. So first woman of color to be vice presidential pick, big whoop. The historical aspect of this is not nearly as powerful as it once was.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: First time jobless claims fall below one million for the first time since March. This is progress. From a disappointed CNN. They’re terribly depressed over this. First time jobless claims fall below one million for the first time since March. The actual number, 963,000 Americans filed for regular first-time unemployment benefits last week. This is a seasonally adjusted basis. The first time in five months that the number has dipped below one million. This according to the Department of Labor.

Now, wait a minute. I thought Trump shut down the economy. Didn’t Kamala Harris come along in her announcement speech and talk about how Trump had destroyed the economy, a great, expanding economy left to him by Barack Obama? The Democrat Party wouldn’t know what an expanding economy is. And when they find one, they look at it as though it is an enemy and needs to have something done to it, needs to be shut down.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just, in fact, checked my email during the break. Somebody said, “Dear Mr. Limbaugh: The president during a press conference today talked about how Kamala Harris was ‘meaner and more disrespectful to Joe Biden than anybody in the Democrat primary. Why did he pick her?'”

I think… First, that observation the president made is right on the money. It’s absolutely true, ladies and gentlemen. She was vicious. But it was phony. She’s fake! Biden knows it was fake. Biden knows that it was a last-ditch effort to get noticed. The story about the little girl that got bussed, and that Joe Biden made it impossible. Joe Biden was (muttering), ‘I was that little girl.'” Oh, here come the tears.

And then the business about how the… What was the other thing she was all…? Oh. He was a racist, segregationist. She believed all of the women. It’s a legitimate question. If she was telling the truth, if she believes these women — if she thinks that Biden is a serial abuser, and if she believes that Joe Biden is literally a racist and a segregationist — what the hell is she doing on the ticket? Why did she accept it?

And the answer is she doesn’t believe all that stuff. That was all faked up. It was all manufactured in a last-ditch effort to save a flailing campaign of hers. Remember, she was the first one out. She was the first one to split even before there had been any votes cast, and Biden knows it. Now, the other thing about it is that Biden doesn’t care. Biden probably didn’t even make the choice, folks.

May we go there?

Can we make the point?

Yes, because it’s my program and I’m going to. I don’t think he even made the pick. Somebody else is running this show from behind the scenes. She has been told the way things are gonna go down, depending various options — you know, what happens to Biden. Does he make it, does he not make it. Does he win, does he lose. If he wins, does he have the ability to, A, be inaugurated. They’ve got…

I guarantee you, they have a plan for every scenario, and she has been told what her role is gonna be in every one of these potential scenarios. But the idea that she would accept the pick, knowing the guy — or believing he’s a segregationist racist and a serial abuser? She didn’t mean it. Obviously, she didn’t mean it. If she did mean it, if she really believes that Joe Biden’s all those horrible things, then what is she doing on the ticket?

Well, pure opportunism.

It’s just classic illustration of the phoniness that is rampant in so much of American politics.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 28. This is from Trump’s press conference this afternoon. He did not take the bait. A Drive-By journalista, an infobabe, attempted to entrap Trump with a question about Kamala Harris.

THE PRESIDENT: She treated Joe Biden worse than anybody else. I watched those debates. They were very boring, but they were debates nevertheless. And I watched, you know, pretty good parts of ’em. And she treated Biden worse than anybody else by far. There was nobody, including Pocahontas, nobody treated Biden so badly as Kamala.

REPORTER: Well, let me ask you this, then. Do you have an issue with a strong woman of color being in this presidential race?

THE PRESIDENT: None whatsoever.

REPORTER: You don’t see her as a threat?

THE PRESIDENT: As you know, none whatsoever. No. Not at all.

RUSH: So how do you go — here’s Trump answering the question. “Nobody treated him worse, not even Pocahontas, nobody treated Biden so badly as Kamala.”

“Well, then ask you then, do you have an issue with a strong woman of color being in the –?”

“No, not at all, none whatsoever.”

“Do you see — you don’t see her as a threat?”

“None whatsoever.” Nope. Not at all. Yeah, it was a baited question, and I’m glad he did not take the bait. He’s been really good about this, this past couple of weeks, by the way, folks.