RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have a couple things here, couple of stories I have run across in the process of show prep today, and they’re really, really good. And both of them tie back to things that I was attempting to say yesterday as I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden on television.

The one thing that struck me… So many things struck me, and I was trying to fold in my observations and comments that were happening in flash moments and trying to keep them organized in some semblance of organization and meaningfulness. It was a real challenge. But the thing that I noticed is, there was nobody there. There wasn’t anybody there, by design and on purpose.

The only people that were there were military people who had been impugned and criticized. They had to be disarmed. They couldn’t be trusted with their own ammo. There was nobody there other than the acknowledged members of the Washington establishment who felt safe to come out now and join the newly elected and inaugurated president there on the dais, on the stage.

One of the pieces that I have I want to share with you is by a woman who writes in the U.K., Katie Hopkins. She’s absolutely brilliant. She’s funny, she’s solid conservative, and she has written extensively about Brexit, and she came to the United States to attend the inauguration. She wanted to see it. She was at the ceremony, and she had many of the same impressions that I had.

She phrases them a little differently, but she had many of the same impressions that I had watching a little bit of it yesterday on television. And I want to share that with you. And then the other story is equally as good, and it is from the Ludwig von Mises website by a writer named Tho, T-h-o, Bishop. Its title is, “Trump’s Potential Legacy: 50 Million+ Enemies of the State.”

You’re gonna appreciate both of these pieces for what they are, the first one especially, and I don’t mean to say one is better than the other. But Katie Hopkins, her observations of what was happening yesterday are so close to what I was trying to say. I left the studio yesterday thinking that I had not been my best. I didn’t actually convey precisely what I was thinking and feeling watching it all yesterday.

I saw her piece today and said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s close. That’s exactly close to what I was I’m trying to say.” So let me take a brief break. We’ll come back, get started with pull quoting and analyzing Katie Hopkins’ piece.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This piece is published at David Horowitz’s website, Frontpage Mag. She came over to the United States from Britain where she has been making a name for herself writing about Brexit, but she is a brilliant conservative writer. And, as I say, she’s hilarious. She came to the Biden inaugural ceremony yesterday, and she had much the same impression that I did watching it on TV. Let me give you some pull quotes to illustrate what I mean.

“This,” the inauguration, “should be an historical moment for the country. Instead it feels like an illusion, fabricated for the TV, right down to the made-for-TV flags and columns of light on the mall. Not only is the city completely abandoned by ordinary Americans, but it feels like a military garrison, courtesy of 25,000 National Guard troops, police, and Secret Service posted at every intersection. Many of them are sleeping at my hotel and I couldn’t wish for better roommates,” meaning safety.

“But their frustration is obvious. These good men and women have left their homes, families and jobs to be here, but to what end? We can all see there is no threat to be faced. Fake news is relying on repeating their footage of the riot at Capitol Hill to perpetuate the myth that this is a city under siege to domestic terror.”

Man, is that so spot on. That is so right. The effort was clear. Nobody, no citizens allowed. It’s too dangerous. Our elected officials are engaging in profound bravery. They need to be appreciated for putting themselves so front and center in harm’s way. We need the military, we need the National Guard, we need Secret Service because we live under a permanent, internal domestic terrorist threat. And, of course, all of that is because of Donald Trump.

The cable news and all the news networks covering this yesterday were in fact relying on completely rolling again all of their footage of the riot on January 6 and intermingling it with live coverage to create this idea that it was not safe in the nation’s capital, and it wasn’t safe because of a bunch of conspiracy theory, radical, domestic right-wing, Donald Trump-supporting terrorists. They were so eager to perpetuate the myth that Washington is a city under siege, which it is not.

She said: “D.C. now feels like one giant stage built entirely for a drama of the Democrats’ own creation.”
She wrote that “It feels numb here, like watching surgery on your own hand when you are anesthetized against the pain, but can still see the knife cutting flesh and watch your own blood flow. That’s exactly what it is like in D.C. Without people, there is no emotion. And without emotion, no one can feel anything. And just like surgery, it feels unreal. It is emotion that makes these events matter.”

It is the bond of the people there with the winner, with the president-elect, whoever is being inaugurated. But none of that was on display, because there were no people, there was no emotion. And by the way, the reason for this is that Biden does not have a bond with anybody. The people were not demanding to be there in the first place. It didn’t take a large effort to keep ’em away. All it took was uniformed National Guard people, a couple of news stories about how unsafe it was, and then the spread of the virus. Oh, my goodness. You didn’t have any trouble keeping people away.

She writes, “This is a sterilized inauguration in a city sanitized by a garrison of troops. All you can feel is numb. … And all I can say as I stand here now in the freezing cold with a handful of others is that I hope America never has to see anything like this again. Nothing is as it seems. It is just horrible, in every sense.

“There is no one here. And I am not saying that in the weird competitive way people talk about crowd sizes as a measure of popularity. … What I mean is that there is literally no one here.” She wrote this yesterday, by the way. “Even pressed up to the gates within sight of the Capitol Building there is barely a handful of Biden supporters — alongside a small gaggle of media, scratching about, trying to find something to film.

“Residents with the means to do so have moved out. Others stay locked in their homes. And visitors heeded the fear-mongering and stayed away. I was called ‘a moron with a death wish’ for traveling here to document this event. And even though it is perfectly safe, no one is here to bear witness to this event.” This is Katie Hopkins, again, from the U.K. writing. And even though it’s perfectly safe, no one is here to bear witness to the event. There’s nobody here! She kept referencing that fact.

The thing that struck me yesterday that I don’t think I did an adequate job of conveying, there was nobody there. The whole thing seemed artificial. Which then led to, “Well, what else is artificial about it?” Those kinds of questions that you just ask yourself.

“This should be an historical moment for the country. Instead it feels like an illusion, fabricated for the TV, right down to the made-for-TV flags and columns of light on the mall.” You know, by the way, those flags — and there were many — I don’t know how many, but there were lots and lots of ’em. And they were designed to be very sensitive to even the slightest wind so that they were in constant motion. Those flags, the Biden administration said, were there to replace people. Since we couldn’t safely accommodate the people because of COVID, because of the threat of domestic terror, sponsored of course by Donald Trump, the flags had to do a stand-in.

I know I conveyed this properly. It looked like what these tinhorn dictatorships in Central and South America, the only people present at the installation of the new leader are wearing military uniforms.

“On Black Lives Matter Plaza, just a block or two from the White House, BLM protesters seem to enjoy special privileges. The entry point to this place remains relatively open and welcoming, their music system gives the place a party feel, and there are no National Guards visible here.” So Black Lives Matter was welcomed, and there was no resistance to them. “Biden stepped up to the podium, on an empty stand, addressing a mall void of life and spoke of his hopes for unity.”

A brief time-out, and I’ll do some pull quotes from the other story that I cited.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah. Here we go. The wrap-up by Katie Hopkins. “‘We must reject a culture in which facts are manipulated and manufactured.’ I remember those suitcases of ballots being hauled out from under tables in Pennsylvania, and the statistically improbab[e] vote dumps in the swing states, and wonder how this old man is not choking on his words.”

“‘America has to be better than this. Just look around. Here we stand in the shadow of the Capitol dome. We endured. We prevailed.’ I look around just as he asks us to do, and I see how barren it all is.” Joe Biden is all but alone with what he’s saying up there. “Nothing has prevailed here, not joy, not emotion, and certainly not the will of the American people” on display here.

That’s not what explains this, and that is a very powerful line almost a throwaway. But if you were in Washington on Inauguration Day, the one thing you did not see was the expressed “will of the American people” on display. They weren’t there. They weren’t allowed there. There was no emotion because of it. Katie Hopkins concludes:

“As I walk back to my hotel, feeling about ready to sit with the homeless man and share his cheap whisky, I meet a woman who has traveled from Texas to be here because of her love for Biden — and because she was here four years ago for the [vagina hat] marches in which she had such a fantastic time. She can’t believe she is all alone,” can’t believe that she’s the only one that showed up.

She can’t believe “that the city is so deserted. Not only that, but she can’t get close enough to see or hear anything. So much for Biden’s plea to ‘see each other, listen to each other, hear each other.’ This poor woman has not seen another soul,” because there wasn’t anybody there. “She tells me she just feels really, really disappointed. I hug her and tell her I feel it too.

“Biden asked for unity. Perhaps this is it.” Maybe his “supporters and I are united in our disappointment” at it all. All right. Now the piece that ran the von Mises website by Tho Bishop. “Trump’s Potential Legacy: 50 Million+ Enemies of the State.” I’m just gonna share with you some pull quotes from this piece ’cause it resonates too.

“Should skepticism of the 2020 election, fueled by a new administration’s actions, finally convince 50+ million Trump supporters that the barbarians in the Beltway do not represent them and to react accordingly, then Trump’s presidency will be — despite his own actions — the disruption that America’s elites truly feared.”

So right off the bat, this writer thinks that Trump, regardless where he is today and how he got there, has succeeded in disrupting the Washington establishment and that that’s what they in the establishment actually feared and were not able to stop. Another pull quote: “Well, they finally got Donald Trump. But he sure scared the bejesus out of them.

“It took a massive five-year campaign of hysteria, of fear and hate, orchestrated by all wings of the Ruling Elite, from the respectable right to the activist left. The irony, of course, is that the last actions of Trump’s presidency highlighted how little of a threat he, as an individual, truly was to the deep corruption in America’s government.”

But, man, did he have them scared.

He had them scared. They remain scared!

They remain so scared that they’re not gonna stop until they have destroyed him. Yeah, “Lil Wayne may be free, but figures like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Ross Ulbricht are not. The Fed[eral Reserve]’s big fat bubble has only gotten larger as Wall Street has thrived, while American workers continue to be ‘discriminated against.’

“Trump’s impact on American politics may result in an even greater impact on the U.S. government than his collaboration with Mitch McConnell on the judiciary. A variety of polling indicates that as Donald Trump boarded Marine One to retreat to Mar-a-Lago, he does so with most of his voters believing he is the rightful president of the United States.

“One poll showed almost 80% of Republicans ‘do not trust the results of the 2020 presidential election.’ If we estimate that 75% of all of Trump’s 2020 voters hold this view, that leaves us with over 50 million Americans who believe they now live under an illegitimate federal government.” Whether they’re right or wrong, that is an incredible thing, that 50-plus million Americans might believe they live under an illegitimate government.

That’s the last thing Biden wanted.

That’s the last thing the Democrats wanted.

The Democrats want everybody to believe that “legitimacy” is what’s been restored, that Trump was the one illegitimate, that Trump was the pretender, that Trump was the danger. And this is another thing that got close to getting close to my feelings yesterday. I’m watching Biden and all these people speak as though everybody was just happy as hell they’re back, back in power.

Happy as hell. “Oh, it’s back to normal! Oh, thank God. Thank God you Democrats are back. Oh, it’s so wonderful. Now we can breathe easy.” The Democrats on the stage yesterday comported themselves as though that’s what everybody in America believed. Well, it isn’t what everybody in America believes. It’s what they hope people believe, but they’re not close.

And the reality… The reality that all of that is bogus, that the American people are finally celebrating this return to normalcy, Democrats back in power… “This reality terrifies Washington’s political class more than anything Donald Trump could have done while occupying the White House,” and he’s the one that made this reality happen.

Even though they got rid of him, even though they finally got him, they haven’t. [Quoting Murray Rothbard] “‘What the State fears above all … is any fundamental threat to its own power and its own existence,'” and 50-plus million people not thinking that their power is legitimate? Why, that can be a frightening thing.