RUSH: This is last Thursday on Comedy Central, The Daily Show. Trevor Noah is the host. This is the former show hosted by Jon Stewart, and Rachel Maddow is the guest, and the question to Rachel Maddow from Trevor Noah: “Is there something that liberals and Democrats are missing in America in learning how to communicate with people and convincing them of ideas?”
Ah! You know, that question is actually more profound than this guy understands. Do you know the difference in “persuasion” and “convincing”? You know the difference? It’s a big difference, and he asks it right here in this question: “Is there something that liberals and Democrats are missing in America in learning how to communicate with people and convincing them of ideas?”
You don’t want to convince people. You want them to figure it out on their own. You want to persuade, not convince. Anyway, what he’s talking about here is the magic of conservative media and how the left cannot beat us. They can’t beat us in talk radio no matter how they try, and he wants to know what Maddow’s theory is — and she gets it wrong.
MADDOW: I was also part of this experiment where liberals tried to do AM talk radio, uh, with Air America Radio for a long time, and it was at that point AM talk radio was basically in a foreign language — or sports or church or Rush Limbaugh.
NOAH: (laughter)
MADDOW: Like, you know, we tried and it didn’t work. So I thought about this a lot. I do think that there is something that is a little magic about the right-wing media that the left-wing media will never do, and that I think liberals and centrists will never do, which is that they tell their audience, “You can trust no one other than me. There are no facts other than those that I’m giving to you.”
RUSH: This is so spectacularly wrong. This also illustrates why they don’t understand Trump. They don’t understand the bond that Trump has, the connection he has with his voters, his base, his audience, or what have you. And they certainly don’t understand the success of talk radio, conservative talk radio. Air America? (Snort!) They were clueless from the beginning. They treated it as a fundraising operation!
They didn’t treat it as a commercial business. They had no idea… They don’t know how to make a profit. It’s not even part of their lexicon. Profit’s a dirty word. Everything is “fundraising” to them, and they have no clue about building an audience and holding it and creating credibility with the audience. This idea that we sit here and tell you, “Look, there’s one set of facts.
“It’s what I’m telling you, and there’s nothing else that’s true.” That’s not at all what happens here or anywhere else in conservative media. We just have the ability (born of honesty) to connect with people. I mean, if there’s any group of people out there which is telling their audience, “You can trust no one other than me,” what the hell have we been through for the past four years?
With mainstream media lying through their teeth multiple times a day about anything and everything having to do with Donald Trump — and conservative media. So they never did understand the success. They thought all they had to do was go on the air, that all they had to do is go out and get some fundraisers, get some donors, and they’d be up and running.
They had literally no clue how to build an audience, how to create an audience, how to connect with an audience at all. So now they look at conservative media as something they can’t beat, and, “There’s gotta be something! There’s gotta be some kind of magic. It’s got to be something that we would never do. It’s gotta be something so low, it’s gotta be something so beneath our dignity that we would never do,” and what did they decide it is?
Well, we have our own set of facts, and that we tell you that whatever we tell you is all there is. There is no alternative. What they don’t get is that I do a better job of presenting both sides of any issue than they ever will, because I am into persuasion. I am attempting to get people to think and conclude the proper thing, not by convincing them of anything, but by persuading.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Laura in Redding, Connecticut. I’m glad you waited. You’re up next. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush! Mega prayers and dittos from the Constitution State. We’re committing conservatism daily.
RUSH: Thank you very much. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you. Your point in the first hour about Rachel Maddow’s response in the interview, is exactly the opposite of the truth. Your audience is bright and fastidious about reading and research, and we actually critically think. So you are the catalyst, and we do our own analysis, research, and follow-up.
RUSH: That’s exactly right.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: It is exactly right. In fact, this goes back, ladies and gentlemen, to the early days of the program — and it still survives to this day — the criticism that you all are just a bunch of mind-numbed robots, that you can’t think on your own, that you are tuning in waiting for marching orders from me, and that’s never been the case.
This program attracted a massive audience rapidly because this program validated what millions of Americans already believed, what millions of Americans already thought. They just didn’t have anybody in national media saying what they believed. Then I came along, and this program came along, and they felt validated. It wasn’t that they hadn’t considered anything I was saying.
They knew it before I said it. They were just ecstatic that somebody was already on national media — finally on national media — to validate what they believe. And you are absolutely right. People in this audience are among the brightest and the most educated, the most politically viable people in this country, precisely because you engage in critical thinking.
You are the exact opposite of mind-numbed robots. The exact opposite of a bunch of sponges. The exact opposite of a bunch of people waiting for your Svengali to tell you what to do. And you know what? They know it. They know exactly who you are. They may lie to themselves now and then as they report to their own audience.