RUSH: Greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. Man, oh, man. I have such a range of emotion flowing through my arteries and veins, going to my heart and away from my heart. I’m watching these people at the Biden inauguration. They think they got it all back. They think they finally have vanquished all of their opposition. And they haven’t the slightest idea.

You can hear it in the words they’re saying to each other. You can hear it in the way they’re singing their songs. You can see it in the people that showed up for this inauguration who didn’t show up four years ago for the Trump inauguration, and I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I just — (crowd chanting “We love you! We love you!”) Wait a minute. What’s this? That was obviously audio from a Trump rally, one of the many that occurred before the election last November. “We love you.”

Anyway, greetings, folks. It is good to have you here. We’re gonna try to get through the day here as best we can. I’m looking for the words to most perfectly capture the range of emotion that I feel. And I’m watching these people as they have assembled on the stage for the inauguration of Plugs. And this inauguration looks like what you would expect from a one-party state. This inauguration looks like the Chinese Olympics with hundreds and hundreds of flags to replace people who were not allowed to show up.

Now, why do you think people weren’t allowed to show up? People are not allowed to show up because of COVID. People aren’t allowed to show up because the threats of the National Guard might open fire on everybody. That’s not why. The reason that they put up all these replacements for people is that I don’t think they were confident a bunch of people would show up for this because I think they know. I think they know that they are not — I gotta be very careful here in the words I choose.

I think they know that this is something that’s been arranged rather than legitimately sought and won. And you can see this in their attitudes, in their smiles. You can see it, hear it in the words that they are uttering. It’s like, I remember the 1984 Democrat convention was in San Francisco. I happened to be there, I was covering it. And one of the speakers on one of the nights was the mayor of Washington, D.C. His name was Marion Barry. And the sum total of his speech was, “Tonight we’re on the inside.” Meaning, finally the minorities that really are the Democrat Party have made it to the power base. We’re on the inside. We’re not on the outside looking in.

And I sense a similar frame of mind with the people that are up there on the stage at this. They’ve been sweating bullets for four years. And they are now convinced that they have re-secured their complete and total hold on power in Washington. But I think they know that it’s fleeting. They’re gonna do everything they can to make sure it’s not fleeting. They’re gonna do everything possible to make sure that they never lose it again. Don’t misunderstand.

But I think all of these people have souls. And they all have deep, dark crevices where they engage in deep thoughts about themselves. And I think when they go there, I think a number of them actually have to admit that they’ve dodged a bunch of bullets here. And I think they know — and this is the big one — I think they know with 74 million, maybe 80 million people who did not vote for Joe Biden, there is no way they can honestly say to themselves that they represent the power base of the country. They’re gonna to have to take it. They’re gonna have to hold on to it and never let go of it.

They have not legitimately won it. Now, I’m on thin ice saying this. I’m making myself a target saying this, but I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And it’s really no different today than 30 years ago. No different than last week, in terms of the way I approach this. It’s almost a question of legitimacy. I’m almost of the mind that they know that there’s not a full-fledged legitimacy to this. But it doesn’t matter because they’re able to lie to themselves. They’re able to tell themselves stories. They really don’t have anybody there and they’ve got people replaced by 200,000 flags, 200,000 flags that have been placed on the Washington mall.

And it does. It looks just like when the Olympics are in China. It’s almost like the flags represent people who couldn’t be there, and they didn’t want people there because of COVID-19, because the National Guard might open fire, because whoever it was that ran the operation on January 6th against the Capitol might show up at this inauguration because, of course, nobody can guarantee anybody’s security anymore. They have to make that plain. They have to make the threat look like it’s viable at any moment in order to keep the negative vibes up about people like you and me.

But what do you think the real truth is that they are not confident that if they open this thing up to open seating that they would be overflowing with a crowd? I don’t think they think they would. I mean, nobody showed up at Joe Biden political rallies. Nobody showed up at any of the rallies of Kamala Harris. They have not throughout any of this demonstrated that they have a bond with the people that voted for them, like Trump had. They don’t have anything near that. They don’t have, I think, any assurance or confidence that if this were open to the public, that they’d set records for attendance.

So a number of things are gonna happen now. A number of things. Trump is now gone. These people are deliriously happy. They have vanquished Bad Orange Man, they believe. So there’s a number of things that are going to take on a different appearance, things that will take on a different identity. The temperatures are going to stop dramatically rising and falling.

Oh, we’ll still need climate change, but we won’t need hysterically oriented stories to persuade anybody because persuasion is not on the agenda. They’re not gonna persuade you of anything. They don’t care. They’re just gonna implement what they believe. So all of these bogus stories about vanishing ice, vanishing homelands for polar bears, all of that stuff?

You’re gonna stop seeing very much of it. The ice caps are gonna refreeze, for example. The polar bears are gonna be fine. Hurricanes? Well, they’ll be treated normally, that they’re six months out of the year where we have ’em, that there’s nothing we can do to stop them. There’s nothing we can do to change them. But you’re not gonna see any blame of the current crop of people in government for hurricanes.

You’re not gonna see anything of the sort of that would lend itself to being blamed on the current population of Washington, D.C., for whatever is happening to advance climate change. They will just say that climate change is advancing; we gotta do something about it. They’re not gonna have to worry about persuading anybody.

Massive graft, corruption, bribes, all that stuff can now flow normally in Washington, D.C. What do you think is gonna happen to the reporting on COVID-19? Will COVID-19 disappear and take on the identity of the flu? Will Biden attempt to co-opt Operation Warp Speed, name it something else, and try to take credit for the rapid rate at which a vaccine has been made available to the public?

It’s gonna be fascinating to watch and categorize the differences in how news is reported. Get this. This is from The Daily Wire. This is Ben Shapiro’s website. “After Investigation, Pentagon Finds No Plot Against Biden Among the National Guard Troops.” This is exactly the kind of thing I mean. Up until yesterday it was (breathless), “There are 250,000 National Guard; 90% of ’em are white.

“That means that there’s a bunch of white supremacists, and that means that Biden is not state of because only 20% of the National Guard, only 20% of white people support Biden.” So the president-elect — every day up ’til yesterday — was in grave danger because the National Guard might have gone rogue in an operation orchestrated by Donald Trump.

Now today, that’s all history. Yeah, the Pentagon has investigated. They found no plot against Biden among the National Guard troops. We were told that the National Guard’s populated with white people, which means privileged white people, which means people with white supremacy, which means that they wanted to do something to damage Joe Biden (who is white, by the way).

It was a sick political narrative to militarize the nation’s capital, to make it look like President Trump was a clear and present danger and Washington was unsafe while Trump was still there. We had to guard against the possibility that the National Guard would be rogue on secret marching orders from Donald Trump. Turns out that was all bogus.

The Pentagon found time to investigate, and they found no plot whatsoever. In fact, it remains true that it was the Obama-Biden administration that spied on the Trump campaign for four years. It was the Obama-Biden administration that set up a three-star general, Mike Flynn, from a perjury trap. It was the Obama-Biden administration that orchestrated a silent coup that continued throughout the Trump presidency.

The same people are credibly accused of winning an election with the help of massive election fraud. Now they’ve investigated their own allegation — the National Guard had an action planned against Biden — and guess what? There was no plot. Trump did not orchestrate a plot. He had no idea. He had no plan. He had no contact. The National Guard was not gonna do anything, despite days and days and days of lied-filled reporting.

And yet what went on and started four years ago did happen, and it will continue to happen as the Washington establishment feels it necessary should Trump attempt to revive himself or come back from what they think are the ashes. There are more troops at this inauguration than citizens who are attending. The media is not showing anybody how lame that looks.

Ah, you occasionally do get a little camera shot, and it does look pretty lame. More troops than citizens. And of course, this is a carryover from the threat that they said we all faced for the past week because 250,000, 150,000 National Guard troops are deployed, and 90% of them are white, and that means white supremacy, and that means Biden’s in danger.

Just watching these proceedings and listening to the words that the participants are uttering, I’m having difficulty verbalizing the emotions that I’m feeling on this. It is… (interruption) No, not ’cause I’m afraid to say it. I want to be exactly right. You know, I’m a communicator, and I want to come up with the exact, proper way to communicate this.

It’s like, we know these people think that they were unfairly frozen out the last four years, and we know at what they did everything they could to vanquish the guy that beat them — and they failed. For four years, they failed to overturn the election results of 2016. But now they’re back, and everything’s normal. Now everything is as it should be.

There’s Amy Klobuchar saying to the American people who she thinks are watching this, “My fellow citizens, this is the day we have been waiting for for four years,” as though they speak for a nation in total which uniformly hated Donald Trump, hated the last four years, had been waiting impatiently for Trump to be sent packing.

That day has arrived, and they are uttering words that make it look like the entire population of this country is now breathing a gigantic sigh of relief. They know that’s not the narrative. They’re making it up.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Rush Limbaugh on Joseph R. Biden Jr. III Inauguration Day. Here I am behind the Golden EIB Microphone. It’s a good thing I’m here, folks. I doubt that the words you’re saying could be uttered today behind the microphone because many of you are swearing and cussing. I’ve got a limit here on that, a professional limitation.

I’m just teasing. I can imagine the frustration. I feel it. I am experiencing it exactly as you are. I’m trying to get as close to describing it accurately as I dare — and I know you know what I mean, and each time I make an attempt, I get closer to it. Still, I don’t think I’ve gotten it there a hundred percent yet, but I’m still working on it– and the bottom line is this.

I look at the people on the dais today, up on the stage — and I watch what they’re saying and how they appear as they are saying what they say — and there’s just a little part of me… Because I myself am an introspective person, there’s a little part of me that is comforted by what I think is a reality, that they know they have a tenuous hold on this ’cause they didn’t actually…

They don’t have a nation filled with support.

They don’t have millions of people that would have shown up at the inauguration today. They don’t have a bond of connection with the people that voted for them. They know this. They know they can’t compete with Donald Trump on the retail politics. They can’t compete with Trump on crowds. They can’t compete with Trump on loyalty.

They can’t compete with him — and, folks, that is a big one. These are the kind of people that demand loyalty, and when it’s not there, they’ll take care of it another way. Because when you boil it all down, they really don’t expect loyalty. They demand it. And if you don’t exhibit it, they’ve got other ways of dealing with you.

As I say, they’re not interested in persuading anybody. It’s beneath them. They want the power to deal with you regardless. Now they think they’ve got it. And what I’m trying to say here is that that power they think they have, I believe it’s tenuous. I don’t think that it is the power that is extended through what they keep calling our country: A democracy.

We are a democracy. But more than that, we are a representative republic. We actually are not a democracy. I don’t want to make a big deal of this, but it is because of the way they keep throwing that word around. So I’ll use it as they do, and I’m just telling you that within the boundaries of this country as a democracy, they don’t have unbridled, massive, unconditional love or support.

And they know it. Retail politics. They can’t compete, to this day, with Donald Trump. It bugs he them. It will continue to bother them. There will continue to be signs of this bond that Trump has with his supporters. Do you know this would be… Snerdley, have you ever thought that seriously we should go to third party at any time in your political life? (interruption) This may be the time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I got some audio sound bites I want to get started on as well, such as this one, and the reason I’m gonna play this one is because it runs in direct contravention of my interpretation of what I saw at the inauguration. Now, I admittedly… I’m not gonna tell you I don’t watch this with total objectivity and no bias. I do.

I know these people like every square inch of my whole naked body, not just the back of my hand. I know them. I know Democrats. I know leftists. I know who they are. I know how they think. This is one of the reasons I’m so frustrated that I’ve been unable to convince more people of who they are, but it doesn’t matter ’cause I’m not gonna stop trying.

Now, when I watched this today, when I watched this inauguration today, I put myself on that stage. I put myself on that stage as one of those people. And I am always honest with myself. I am the mayor of Realville. You know, if I am the recipient of false praise — if people give me credit for something that I didn’t do — and I don’t deserve it, then I tell myself I don’t really deserve it; somebody else does.

I do not live in the lie. I do not live in the false impression just to make myself feel better about myself or about things. I may not go public with how I don’t accept it. But in the way I deal with myself, I do not allow myself to accept praise for things I haven’t done, things I haven’t accomplished.

So I’m watching this, I’m watching all the people that are performing and all the people that are speaking and all the people just there observing and watching. And I know they’re going through a gamut us of emotions. They’re excited as they can be that they have vanquished Trump. They’ve been trying for four years. Everything they tried bombed.

Everything, every step they took blew up. It didn’t work, in terms of getting rid of Trump. They retarded the speed of his agenda implementation. They did do great damage to his reputation, but they didn’t get rid of him. That was the objective. The objective was to overturn the election results, and they failed. But then they finally succeeded.

But you see this is where accepting false praise comes in. They didn’t really succeed. I don’t think that the people on that stage today are genuinely the choice of a majority of Americans. Now, the results say they are, and they will tell themselves they are — and they will, thus, lie to themselves, something I will never do.

I just don’t. I can’t. I can’t lie to myself about praise for things I really didn’t do. They can; they’re doing it. This does not set them up well. This allows them to be arrogant; it allows them to be condescending, when those two things are not really warranted and deserved. Didn’t let anybody show up. They did not allow an audience because of why?

“Well, the potentially out-of-control National Guard. Oh, yeah! The National Guard has got 90% white people, and that means they’re white supremacists, and that means they support Trump, and there might have been a secret operation!” Except that wasn’t at all happening.

And they finally ran a story, the DOD investigated the National Guard, found out nothing to those allegations. So a bunch of flags were put on the Washington Mall to represent the people who could not be there. The reason people were not allowed there is not COVID-19. It’s none of that. It’s that they weren’t confident there’d be a big crowd, for whatever reasons, COVID-19 included.

So rather than run the risk of having a crowd half the size or less of what Trump would draw, they just tell the crowd, “Don’t show up. We’ll handle it. We’ll take care of it.” Those kinds of things — in the deep, dark crevices of their own minds — will tell them that they’re not as popular as they think, that they are not as overwhelmingly beloved as they think. And in the end, that kind of thing matters.

Here’s Stephanopoulos’ report about how happy everybody was on that stage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Barack Obama is a happy man today! You can definitely see that right there. A lot of fist bumps, a lot of elbow bumps.

BYRON PITTS: In watching this moment, today’s inauguration felt more like a church service.

RUSH: What?

BYRON PITTS: Right? And we see there that like after a good sermon, the congregation doesn’t want to go home, right? People are still huggin’, shaking hands. And I thought from Joe Biden today, certainly he was commander-in-chief. There was also papa-in-chief. He gave a speech to comfort the nation.

RUSH: What the hell is with these Democrats and every one of their leaders must be a parent? Joe Biden was papa-in-chief? I don’t need the Washington establishment to me my dad. I certainly don’t need Biden to be my dad. I don’t need any of those people to be my dad. But you heard ’em. Oh, they were so happy! This is the media projecting.

It was the media that was happy. The media finally got what they failed to pull off for four years. They finally got rid of Trump, in their minds. These people were hugging; they were kissing each other. Nobody was worried about getting COVID. But their restaurants are still shut down. In blue states, blue cities, their restaurants are still shut down.

So, “it was like a church service,” except these people, as you well know, have no love lost for religion. So why are we told that this inauguration ceremony was that? “Ah, it looked like a church service out there, felt more like a church service.” How would they know? “Like a good sermon, the congregation doesn’t want to go home.”

No, the congregation wants to be the first in line at the restaurant after the sermon, but the restaurant’s closed because of COVID-19. So they have to hang around. No, they’re hanging around ’cause they’re still not really convinced it’s real. “Did we really do this? Did this really happen?” And half of them are sitting around, “Did Joe Biden actually win the presidency?”