RUSH: I’m getting a lot of feedback. “That was great, Rush, that comparison of Trump’s inaugural to Biden last night.” It is a good comparison because I think people forget. Four years ago is a long time, and Trump has been around every day for four years.

It’s easier to remember Trump of yesterday or this morning than it is the Trump of four years ago. Trump of four years ago was magic. The Trump campaign four years ago and his inaugural address — that whole period — it was magical, and I don’t blame them for trying to recapture it. I wish they could. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to recapture it.

You know, after Trump… In fact, I’ll give you an illustration. Sometime earlier this week Trump appeared at an airport hangar. I think it was in Minnesota. Oh, and speaking of which, Trump and Biden are tied in Minnesota. Have you heard about this? Where did I put it? It’s in one of these two stacks up here, ladies and gentleman — and Trump’s daily tracking presidential approval numbers, for the second day in a row, is 51% in Rasmussen.

Trump and Biden are tied in Minnesota. Minnesota! George Floyd, Minnesota! This is big. So, anyway, Trump was in Minnesota (I think he was in Minnetonka), and had the airplane as the backdrop, and he was doing a rally in a hangar. It was just like some of the rallies in 2016 except the plane was his 757, the gold-and-black plain with the gigantic “Trump” in red on the fuselage.

He did a rally — I think it was the one in Minnetonka — and it was awesome. It was exactly like the rallies of 2016 in terms of his energy and his focus and the subject matter and his energy. It was during The Five on Fox, and I happened to be watching. And when it was over, they went to The Five for post-rally commentary, and Juan Williams came through.

He said (summarized), “Well, you know, it was boring as hell to me. We saw that four years ago. We don’t need to be seeing this again. Come on, Mr. President! Come up with something new. You can’t go back to the well like this. That was nothing new. That was predictable. That was absolutely… I mean, the president’s gotta get in the present. He can’t go back to the past and relive and…” The hell he can’t!

That’s why it was great. It’s exactly the kind of magic Trump needs to recapture, and I think he’s doing it right now. Trump is addressing some group. I don’t know who it is. He’s in Arlington, Virginia, and I saw a little bit of it before the program started, and he’s got the attitude that he had earlier this week, standing in front of…. This was Air Force One, not the Trump plane. This was actually the… It was a U.S. government 757.

Oh, another question. “How come, Rush, he didn’t take the 747?” Well, because he had a lot of puddle-jump stops. He was in Minnesota. He had, you know, couple of hundred-mile flights. You don’t want to put a landing and takeoff cycle on a Boeing 747 on a hundred miles. I mean, a cycle adds much to maintenance costs, overhaul costs. So they took the 757, and it was the one that served as the backdrop.

But I’m telling you, it was fabulous. It was like Trump rallies of 2016 in the hangars back then, and he’s captured it in what is going on right now. I don’t know the group to whom he’s speaking. I never saw. The graphics are not saying. But he’s doing well. He’s on — and the Democrats, I think, are living in mortal fear that Trump’s gonna recapture 2016.

I think it’s what Juan Williams was doing with, “Aw, this is old. Aw, we’ve been there, done that. Aw.” Let me tell you what was old. Let me tell you what was been there, done that. Last night. The only reason last night was being held up as some kind of greatness is because Joe Biden didn’t screw up. It’s because Joe Biden was able to read the prompter, not lose his place, not lose his timing.

But in terms of substance? That speech could have been given 50 years ago. Could have been given 30 years ago. Could have been given 20 years ago. Could have been given a year ago, five years ago. There was nothing in that speech that in any way dated it to the present, other than the occasional mentions of Trump, and yet there’s nobody talking about it that way.

And if you dare talk about it that way, they’re gonna be climbing down your chili. “You can’t be mean to Biden!” See, Biden is a sympathetic figure. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Biden. Do you know why? Because his wife died in car accident and then his beloved son Beau Biden died from brain cancer. We’re supposed to feel sorry. But we can’t feel sorry for President Trump whose brother just died.

His brother Robert, who happened to be his best friend. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! We can’t feel sorry for Trump. (impression) “Trump deserves to be miserable, as much pain and suffering as he’s causing people. Trump deserves it!” But no, we’re supposed to feel sorry for Plugs. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Plugs ’cause he’s losing his mental acuity. He lost his wife years ago, and he lost his son, Beau Biden.

We’re supposed to feel sorry for him ’cause he really can’t do what he did last night.

But I’m here to tell you…

So, Trump manages to replicate the energy, the subject matter, and the excitement, the infectiousness of a 2016 rally. And what now do the Democrats say in the media? That’s old hat. There’s nothing new there. This is proof the president’s run out of excitement, proof the president’s run out of material, proof the president doesn’t know what he’s doing, proof the president has got nothing new to say.

No. Biden proved all of that last night. Biden is who proved he’s got nothing new to say. Biden is the guy who recycled a 44- or 47-year Washington career last night in 22 minutes. But we’re not supposed to say that. No, no, no, no, no. Because that’s mean. Well, I’ll tell you. There was nothing about that speech that was innovative. There was nothing new. There was nothing in it but a bunch of cliches, overworked, a bunch of bromides. Light is more powerful than dark. Oh, my God. My friends, you don’t know how I was uplifted when I heard that.

When I heard Plugs say, “Light is more powerful than dark,” I literally jumped out of my chair, started dancing around the room. Then I felt rejuvenated. I had never thought of that before. Well, that’s the reaction some of these yokels are having. I’m just telling you, Trump was magical with that rally earlier this week. He’s doing a great job with what he’s doing now. We’ll have sound bites of this.

It was the Biden speech that was classic, predictable inside-the-Beltway greatest hits. And this is why people reacted so well to my playing the two sound bites of Trump’s inaugural address compared to Biden’s speech last night. We’ll do it again.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Trump is speaking at the Council for National Policy. This is the conservative version of the Council on Foreign Relations that the Rockefellers and Kennedys, the Brzezinskis, whatever, set up. I once emceed a Council for National Policy event. I nearly got the hook because I had not been properly informed as to who the entire membership was. And I told a true but funny Ted Kennedy story, and it bombed. And I could not believe it bombed until I found out who half the audience was.

I had to go up there, had to do a mea culpa and apologize. I thought it was gonna be a home run. I thought these people are gonna love it. And it didn’t go over. But I recovered. I recovered from it. I used to put this story in the opening of every Rush to Excellence Tour. It’s hilarious.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Trump’s at the Council for National Policy. We have four sound bites, and here is the first one. This is the president, I guess, previewing the convention, the Republican convention that’s coming next week.

THE PRESIDENT: They spent four straight days attacking America as racist and horrible country that must be redeemed. Joe Biden grimly declared a season of American darkness. And yet look at what we’ve accomplished. Until the plague came in, look at what we’ve accomplished —

CROWD: (applause)

THE PRESIDENT: — and now we’re doing it again.

CROWD: (applause)

THE PRESIDENT: It’s the most successful period of time in the history of our country. They want to punish America and its citizens instead of holding them high. Where Joe Biden sees American darkness, I see American greatness.

RUSH: So maybe a little preview here of what the convention is gonna be. It’s not hard to figure out what it’s gonna be. Some of it’s gonna be live. Some of it’s gonna be uplifting, as you can imagine. It’s gonna be devoted to American Greatness and American exceptionalism and the people who have made it so. It’s going to stand out in stark contrast to the misery and the pain and the “shuffering” and the “shtruggle” that was portrayed throughout this past week by the Democrats. This is Trump talking about how people just need to reject what the Democrats are standing for.

THE PRESIDENT: It’s time to reject the anger and the hate of the Democrat Party. We have the biggest election coming up of our lifetime. (applause) No party can lead America that spends so much time tearing down America.

RUSH: Boy, is that not true. How can you expect them to lead when they devote themselves to tearing it down? And, I mean, literally tearing it down. They won’t even stop the destruction of their own cities — Chicago, Seattle, Portland, all in an effort to bring down Donald Trump. Although in Chicago it’s kind of funny. The mayor there, Lori “Lightweight,” apparently her house and other houses on her block have come under threat by malcontent protesters.

And so the mayor of Chicago, Lori “Lightweight,” has brought in security teams, armed security teams to patrol outside her house. And she says: Well, what would you do if your house were under assault? You’d do exactly what I’m doing. I’m bringing ’em in. I’m protecting my property.

But you’re not protecting anybody else’s is the point, Mayor “Lightweight.” You’re letting the rabble-rousers do whatever they do, but, when it’s all turned on you, what happens? Oh, it’s intolerable then. And she doesn’t see, she literally doesn’t see the hypocrisy or the unequal treatment.

You know, we give these people credit for a lot more than they deserve, in terms of intelligence, and strategy, and so forth. Folks, they’re just not as smart as you think that they are. And they don’t have the class, and they don’t have the character to even understand their own hypocrisy.

If you’re gonna worry about being a hypocrite, you have to have a certain degree of character. You have to have a certain awareness, self-awareness. And they don’t. They just believe that they’re special and that you ought to look at them that way too. And if their house is threatened, you ought to support them doing what they can to protect their house because they are your leader. And, as such, they matter more than you do.

This next bite from the Council for National Policy — it’s Arlington, Virginia. When I spoke to it, they met at the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon. It’s real close to the Pentagon. I don’t know if that’s where the Council for National Policy still meets. Yes, yes, that’s where I nearly got — well, I didn’t get the hook because the offensive comment I made led right into a break for dinner.

It was during dinner that I, you know, saw my future flash before my eyes if I didn’t fix the mistake I had made right before dinner. (interruption) Oh, yeah, I remember the joke. It was not a joke. It was a true story. I’ll be happy to share it with you. I thought the room was filled with conservatives. And it was. What I didn’t know is that half of the room was evangelical Christian conservatives. That’s what I had not been briefed on.

The Council for National Policy was a new organization to me. I knew it was big, and I was very flattered to have been asked to emcee the night’s festivities. Bill Bennett was there. Paul — what’s his name — I’m having a mental block on his name. One of the great, great, great conservative organizers. It’ll come to me. Anyway, I’m standing up, and Tom Clancy is there, and it’s a festive night.

And so right before the break for dinner, after introducing some of the luminaries, and after a few brief speeches, I told the story of Senator Kennedy who had been caught in a boat off the coast of the South of France by paparazzi helicopter and that the photos had appeared in the New York Daily News. So, it was a true story. It wasn’t a joke.

And I said the first photo showed Senator Kennedy and this very young bikini-clad woman cavorting on the boat. It was a relatively small boat. It was classy boat. It wasn’t any bigger than 60 feet. They were cavorting around, and you could see it because the helicopter photos got pretty close. The next photo showed the young woman in the water and Senator Kennedy jumping in after her, which I said may be a first. Senator Kennedy jumping in the water after a woman.

Now, they laughed at that. And I said, the third picture that they got, well, that picture got shown around all over Capitol Hill, folks, and they took it to Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama, big old guy, and they showed it to Howell Heflin, and he looked at it, he said, “Why, I do declare. It sure look to me like Senator Kennedy done change his position on offshore drilling.” And I expected massive laughter. I expected humongous applause.

And the room was dead quiet. And I looked around, and I thought, what the heck happened here? What in the world went on? So, I cleverly ended and turned everybody back to their tables for dinner, went back and sat down. And then I had it explained to me what had gone wrong.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I really thought that was gonna be a home run. It was Paul Weyrich, who was the chairman of the Council for National Policy, that had invited me, and he was one heck of a conservative mover, shaker, and organizer. And I remember, I went up after dinner, and I apologized, and I explained how I had screwed up, that I did not know the makeup of over half the audience, and I asked for forgiveness, and I assured them that it would never happen again, and so forth.

When the evening was over, we’re walking out, leaving the ballroom, and it’s crowded, and I see Dr. James Dobson, which tells me even more about the makeup of half the room. And he’s got somebody with him, I said, “That can’t be, just can’t be. I’ve just been reamed out here for –” and I went up, introduced myself, “Hi, Dr. Dobson, Rush –”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh, that woman you were just talking to, that looked like Donna Rice.”

“It was. You have a problem with it?”

She had the affair with Gary Hart(pence). “She has found the Lord, young man, something you might want to look into rather soon.” Oh, jeez. I thought, oh, have I stepped into it here. So I went and found Weyrich, and I said, “Dobson is still really ticked.”

“No, no, no, no, no, they’re having fun with you. But you have to understand, you gotta be very careful about –” but I said, “It had all the ingredients. It had Ted Kennedy, it had adultery, it had Howell Heflin with a great line.”

“Those things are not funny to a lot of people, you need to understand.”

I said, “Okay. Okay.” So, yeah, that used to be one of the opening, lighthearted parts of every Rush to Excellence Tour appearance that I did.

Okay, when we come back, we have to get back to your phone calls. And Karl Rove literally destroyed Biden last night on his narrative on COVID.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A couple more Trump sound bites from the Council for National Policy. This is gonna send ’em into orbit. It probably already has, the next bite. Here we go…

THE PRESIDENT: I really don’t think that you’re gonna know anything on the evening — anything meaningful or anything real on the evening — of November 3rd. I don’t think you’re gonna know anything. You’re not gonna know what happened. I don’t think you’ll know two weeks later. I don’t think you’ll know four weeks later. And I don’t know what’s gonna happen. You know, there’s a theory that if you don’t have the… by the end of the year, Crazy Nancy Pelosi would become president. You know that, right?

AUDIENCE: (gasps and boos)

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, think of that. Think of that. There’s that mad theory too. You have heard that theory. Now, I don’t know if it’s a theory or a fact, but I said, “That’s not good.”

AUDIENCE: (laughter)

RUSH: Have you all…? I’ve heard more people asking me about this, and Mr. Snerdley informs me that we’ve been inundated with calls about this, and I have told him, “Don’t put any of ’em up there because I can’t believe it. It doesn’t make any sense.” The theory is that if after an election, November 3… Let’s use this one.

If the election is November 3rd, and if by January 20th there has not been a winner declared, that the Speaker of the House, who is third in line, becomes president. In which case it would be Pelosi, if the Democrats win the House. You see, the new Congress will get sworn in sometime early in January. Now, I have never seen this provision.

I can’t sit here and tell you it’s not true. I just never heard it. It doesn’t sound like something the Founding Fathers would actually write as a provision. I could be wrong about it, though. Just the fact that I never heard of it doesn’t mean it can’t be possible. I’ve been trying to think, why would it be I have never heard it before? So what could the thinking behind it be?

The thinking behind it could be it’s a way of staving off any postelection chicanery and “trickinology,” that somebody that wasn’t even running for president will be appointed if the powers that be cannot come to a mutual decision on the winner. But the president’s obviously out there pushing it, and that’s what he’s talking about: That if there’s not a declared winner, an acknowledged winner by January 20th, then the Speaker of the House shall become president.

Now, we assume it’s Pelosi ’cause that assumption’s based on the Democrats holding the House. It could well be a Republican if the Republicans win the House. But this whole comment… I guarantee you this whole comment is gonna have them climbing the walls, because they’re gonna say that what Trump is setting the stage for here is not leaving. They’ve got themselves believing that he’s not gonna leave.

They’ve got themselves convinced that if he loses, he’s not gonna leave. Do you know that there are Drive-By, New York Times columnists (maybe Washington Post) who have literally written pieces already urging the chairman of the “Chief Joints of Staff” to remove the president if he loses and refuses to leave — and do you know what?

I know for a fact that the chairman of the Chief Joints of Staff does not have that constitutional authority. The chairman of the Chief Joints of Staff also does not have the authority to order troops to do anything. Did you know that? The chairman of the Chief Joints cannot order troops to invade the White House or to invade Congress or to invade Iraq.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an adviser to the president. Now, he’s a powerful military guy, but he does not have the authority to order troop movements, so he cannot order a coup. Now, that doesn’t mean that some renegade wouldn’t try. We’re talking about constitutional authority.

My point is that the Democrats are so paranoid — they are so convinced that, if Trump loses, he will not leave — that they are now suggesting in newspaper columns and elsewhere that the chairman of the Chief Joints of Staff literally get ready to make a move to physically remove Donald Trump from the residence of the White House and the Oval Office.

I think Trump is toying with these people and playing with them like only he can. I think he’s doing it for the fun of it. This whole line here, “I really don’t think that you’re gonna know anything on the evening — anything meaningful or anything real on the evening — of November 3rd. I don’t think you’re gonna know anything. You’re not gonna know what happened.

“I don’t think you’ll know two weeks later. I don’t think you’ll know four weeks later. And I don’t know what’s gonna happen. You know, there’s a theory that if you don’t have the… by the end of the year, Crazy Nancy Pelosi would become president. You know that, right?” The audience starts gasping and booing. He said, “No, no, think of that. Think of that.

“There’s that mad theory too. You have heard that theory. Now, I don’t know if it’s a theory or a fact, but I said, ‘That’s not good.'” But just to allude to the fact that we’re not gonna know? But, folks, about that, I have to remind you, the Democrat Party — and I want every one of you to know this like you know your ABCs.

The Democrat Party has corrupted our elections. They have done more to disrupt the honor and integrity of the American presidential electoral system than any other entity in the world. They have done a far better job of causing people to question it than Vladimir Putin could have ever hoped, or the ChiCom leader Xi Jinping, or the little pot-bellied dictator in North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

There is nothing those three together could have done to create more damage to the perception of fairness in our electoral system than what the Democrat Party and the American media have done in the past four years — and I mean that as seriously as I have ever meant anything. They’ve already been talking about how the Russians have begun to tamper with the 2020 election.

They never gave up on the lie that the Russians tampered in 2016. It is not possible to tamper with an American presidential election! You wouldn’t know where to start. You wouldn’t know where to go. It’s too complex. Even Obama has admitted that it would not be possible to do in the way they said, like by tampering with machines, the way the Russians were supposed to have done it.

But that doesn’t matter. How many people in this country now do you think are prepared to question whatever the outcome is? I’ll guarantee it’s a large number. Here’s the final bite where he tells the media he’s not trying to steal anything. He’s trying to keep an election from being stolen.

THE PRESIDENT: This will be the greatest catastrophe — one of the greatest catastrophes — in the history of our country. That’s how serious it is, and they all think I’m trying to steal an election. Just the opposite. I want the fair results of an election.

CROWD: (applause)

RUSH: Absolutely. Totally believe it. Let me tell you something as far as Donald Trump is concerned, folks. What really bothers him more than anything about the Trump-Russia collusion stuff — and it’s tough to pick one thing because this effort they’ve engaged in has been designed to destroy him and to destroy his businesses, to destroy his life and the lives of his family and to destroy virtually everything he’s worked for. It has been massively inclusive, the effort they have engaged in.

But the thing about it that I think offends him the most is their insinuation that he didn’t win fair and square, that he cheated, that he stole it. This is the single greatest achievement of his life. It would be of anybody’s. But in his case, he’s a total outsider. He ran one of the most unconventional campaigns ever. He beat a shoo-in candidate, who is one of the supposedly most unbeatable members of the Washington establishment.

And he did it handily. He did it with ease. He defeated the entire Washington establishment while they were mocking him and while they were laughing at him for the entire number of years of the campaign, while telling everybody he didn’t have a chance, while literally making fun of him as often as they could. And he literally won that election right out from under their nose while they were looking at him every day.

He didn’t sneak up on anybody. He didn’t cheat. He won that thing fair and square and the fact they’ve tried to take it away from him, the fact that they have tried to sully his victory by claiming it’s illegitimate is what bugs him more than anything. And that’s why he wanted to get to the bottom of this. That’s why, you know, when Comey told him that he was not a target, that’s why he believed it.

If you had done what he did, it would be the proudest thing you’ve done in your life. And then imagine four years of a bunch of people trying to take it away from you by spying on you, by making things up about you. He doesn’t want to win the presidency by cheating it or stealing it or taking it. He wants it to be 100 percent legitimate. It’s worth nothing to him if he has to fake it. It’s worth nothing to him if he has to steal it. To these people, it doesn’t matter how they get it. They’re making that abundantly clear.