RUSH: Here is Cindy, Jefferson City, Missouri, the state capital. Great to have you with us. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: First, I just want to say, I’m talking to you from my Rush phone. Back in 2016 (chuckles), you graciously gave me this iPhone, and it has been a treasured gift for me for so long.

RUSH: Great. What kind of phone is it?

CALLER: Was it an iPhone 8, I think?

RUSH: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

CALLER: Yeah, and my family dubbed it my “Rush phone.” (chuckles) So, anyway, prayers to you and your family and all your staff at EIB, and I’ll get to my point. This morning… My husband watches Fox News every morning, and this morning Geraldo Rivera was on there.

RUSH: The Grim Reaper. Who died?

CALLER: Well, he would like for Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley’s career to die, and he said that they are responsible for the riots that took place on the Capitol.

RUSH: Oh, come on.

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: Come on.

CALLER: It’s ridiculous.

RUSH: It’s childish, this idea. Some are blaming me for promoting violence now because of my show yesterday. This is just absurd.

CALLER: It is. It truly is.

RUSH: It’s infantile.

CALLER: It is. And Brian Kilmeade, God love him, he came back and he said, “So, Geraldo, do you think that we should condemn Bernie Sanders and get rid of Bernie Sanders because of the shooting that happened on the baseball field with Steve Scalise? Because that guy was a Bernie Sanders fan.” Geraldo was like, “Uh, uh, I don’t quite remember all the details.”

RUSH: Yeah, Geraldo forget that. His mind went back to Al Capone’s vault.

CALLER: Yeah. And my son, who’s 28 and a strict conservative, said, “Well, Geraldo, why don’t you ask Steve Scalise? I’ll bet he remembers all the facts about that.” It’s just so mind-boggling how they can forget those issues.

RUSH: Well, but, see, this is… I keep going back to my point. This is who they are. Why is everybody surprised? Okay, so they’re blaming Hawley. They’re blaming Hawley for the riots. They blamed Ted Cruz. They just happen to be the most convenient outspoken Republicans. They blamed Sarah Palin for Gabby Giffords getting shot.

They blamed me for the Oklahoma City bombing back in 1995, for crying out loud! This is long before Fox News. I was it at the time and other local talk radio programs. They blamed me for the Oklahoma bombing, Bill Clinton did. This is what they do — and I tell you, it’s a study how they get away with this and nobody ever figures out who these people really are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yesterday on this program, very early in the opening of the program… It’s audio sound bite number 1. I’ll give you a countdown from four, extra time to find it. This is one of the things I said was on tap for yesterday’s program in four, three, two, one…

RUSH ARCHIVE: Can I tell you what we’re living through today? Let me just give it to you in one short sentence fragment. One wrong word, dot-dot-dot. The listening devices are out there. People monitoring this program and others, they’re out there, and they’re waiting for just one wrong word. That’s how precariously balanced we all are here.

RUSH: “One wrong word.” TheHill.com headline… This story is, I think, from today. The date’s not here. It has to be today because I didn’t do this ’til yesterday. “Limbaugh Dismisses Calls to End Violence After Mob Hits Capitol.” Let me ask those of you who were listening yesterday: Is that your recollection of what happened on this program?

Did I “dismiss calls to end the violence”? Did I make fun of people who were calling for an end to violence? Did I tell them to shut up? Did I make fun of ’em, mock ’em, and say, “Oh, listen to these cowards”? Did I do any of that? So, where does this come from? Where does this “Limbaugh dismisses calls to end violence” come from? I may not have joined the chorus and actually said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we must condemn violence,” ’cause I’m not a conventional wisdom guy.

I do not go with the flow. If everybody else is saying it, I don’t — and if everybody else is thinking it, I don’t think it. But it doesn’t mean that I’m saying the opposite. So here’s how this story begins: “Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh took a dismissive tone to those calling for an end to violence after the ugly scenes of a mob insurrection at the Capitol, comparing the rioters to the colonists who sparked the American Revolution,” and then they quote me.

“‘We’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters,’ Limbaugh said, ‘There’s a lot of people out there calling for the end of violence. A lot of conservatives on social media who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances.'” Well, yep, I did say that, and that’s pretty broad sweeping, isn’t it? Lots of conservatives on social media who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances.

And I added, “I’m glad Sam Adams and Thomas Paine and the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord didn’t feel that way.” So that becomes “Limbaugh dismissing calls to end violence.” Nope. All it means is that I refused the join the gigantic cog of conventional wisdom and thinking and speaking.

“Limbaugh said Wednesday’s unrest was a result of months of American citizens being ‘fed up’ with left-leaning political activism in the country. ‘Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people — Americans who have gotten tired of being ignored and lied about and smeared as racists by these very Democrats in the media and the popular culture,’ Limbaugh said. ‘Americans who have gotten fed up with having elections stolen from them by the Democrats, including the White House. Now they think two more Senate seats have been stolen, and they thought they were going to be stolen even before the election.’ Other conservative voices were highly critical of the mob, unlike Limbaugh.”

And then they quote Senator Ted Cruz and Lindsey Grahamnesty. “Limbaugh also suggested a ‘tiny minority’ of protesters and members of ‘Antifa and Democrat-sponsored instiagtors’ [sic] were the ones committing the violent acts inside the Capitol building — even though video and still photographs of the scenes showed supporters waving Trump flags and wearing ‘MAGA’ hats.”

Who’s to say that Antifa can’t pick up a Trump flag? Anyway, we dealt with that in the opening hour of the program. I gave them a target. I did it on purpose, by the way. I made myself a target. I wanted to take the hit yesterday. I was attempting to take the flak and the incoming for Donald Trump. I opened by saying “one wrong word.” We have a media montage I’ll let you hear in this regard. And then we’ll let you hear the exact thing I said in full and in context when we get back.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. That’s how precariously balanced we are all here. I said yesterday, “one wrong word,” da-da-da. I was offering myself up as the target. I offered myself to take the incoming to deflect it away from others. Here’s a media montage: Don Lemon at CNN; Steve Schmidt, MSNBC; Katy Tur, NBC, a whole bunch of people out there from NBC, weighing in on my call for violence, supposedly.

LEMON: (b-roll noise) Rush Limbaugh, standing by the president after what we saw yesterday.

SCHMIDT: (webcam) Rush Limbaugh today, talking about that he was offended that there have been calls to end the violence.

TUR: Rush Limbaugh is on his radio show talking about violence, saying that there’s a lot of people calling for the end of the violence. But he says, “I’m glad, Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual Tea Party guys, the men of Lexington and Concord, did not feel that way.” So, not turning down the heat.

ISGUR: Rush Limbaugh, citing the Revolution, and they’re like you need to read a book on the Revolution.

UYGUR: Rush Limbaugh, is trying to foment as much violence and get as many people hurt as possible and he’s glad that the American revolutionaries resorted to violence.

RUSH: Man, the degree of ignorance. What I said did not require a decoder. It did not require a special frequency to get the real words that I said. Turn on the radio. It’s free as a bell. Turn on my website and stream it. It was no mystery. This last guy was Cenk Uygur. Rush Limbaugh trying to foment as much violence to get as many people hurt as possible? He’s glad the American revolutionaries resorted to violence? They had no choice, by the way, Mr. Uygur, but I made no such comparisons. I simply pointed out that the American revolutionaries did not have this self-defeating policy of tying their hands behind their backs because their opponents demanded it.

Here is what I actually said in context after warning everybody how precariously balanced the program was yesterday, that I knew they were out there just waiting for one wrong word. I knew they think they would find it in anything that I said, but here’s the whole thing. It takes 41 seconds.

RUSH ARCHIVE: In the mother of all ironies, the Democrats and the media are calling yesterday’s protests “a bloody coup attempt.” Even though the only blood spilled was that of an unarmed Trump supporter who was shot. She was an unarmed white woman who was an Air Force veteran who had done four tours of duty in the Middle East defending the right to protest, and we’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters.

Meanwhile, four years of a coup launched in the Oval Office of Barack Obama to overturn the election results of 2016, and not a single word of concern about the potential damage to our Constitution. No. There were just utter denials. “We didn’t do it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Trump’s gotta go. Trump’s poison.”

So, yeah, there’s a lot of irony out there, and there’s a lot of people calling for the end of violence. There’s a lot of conservatives on social media who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. I’m glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine — the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord — didn’t feel that way.

RUSH: At no time did I compare anybody participating in the Capitol protest to Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord, but they think I did or they are lying about the fact that I did.

“A lot of people calling for the end of violence, lot of conservatives on social media say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable.” Well, as I mentioned, “Twenty-eight Different Times Media And Democrats Excused Or Endorsed Violence Committed By Left-Wing Activists” just last summer. One of them was Kamala Harris. June 2020, after rioting had destroyed property, businesses, and killed people in several cities, Senator Kommie Harris went on the Late Show.

She said, quote, “They’re not gonna stop,” of the protests. “This is a movement. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day,” she continued. “Everyone should take note of that on both levels, that they’re not going to let up and they should not and we should not,” let up on the violence. Harris said that protests must continue in order to make a difference. “The only way we’re going to truly achieve change is when there are people in the system who are willing or pushing to do it, and when there are those folks who are outside of the system demanding it.”

So we have Trump who told demonstrators yesterday afternoon to stop any violence, he told ’em to go home, he told ’em to go home in peace. He said, yeah, your election was stolen from you, but it’s time now to go home, go home in peace. We have the vice-president-elect, Kommie Harris, who may well be our president sooner than you can shake a stick, encouraging the continuation of the rioting in June of last year, promoting it, advocating it, saluting it. So who, again, should be removed from office? The hypocrisy here continues to be breathtaking.