RUSH: For 28 years, actually longer than that, that’s how long I’ve been doing the radio show. For 28 or 30 years I’ve been watching the junk and the garbage that was on TV last night. And for 28 or 30 years, I still can’t believe that 40% of the country applauds it, supports it, buys into it. Especially the way it was presented last night.

Now, does anybody want to dispute with me that Hillary Clinton is gonna be the nominee? I mean, I’ve been telling you all along don’t get all jazzed up about Bernie Sanders. Martin O’Malley, the only chance the guy had last night is if he took off his shirt. And since he didn’t do that, the guy’s a joke. Look, let me take that back. He’s a lightweight. He’s not in the upper tier. And when you’re not in the upper tier of the
Democrat Party, you are almost invisible. Jim Webb? Totally, 100 percent out of place on that stage last night.

Bernie Sanders, if anybody has any doubt, they’ve already gotten to Bernie Sanders. I guarantee you they have gotten to Bernie Sanders and he is there to get Hillary Clinton nominated. It was made abundantly clear last night that the Bernie Sanders campaign, whatever it was or whatever it is going to remain going forward, is nothing more than a show campaign designed to make it look like Hillary is overcoming something, so that when she gets the nomination it does not appear to be a coronation, like she has won some sort of a tough battle. And Lincoln Chafee, folks, you know, I really thought I was looking at characters in a bad sitcom last night.

Greetings. Welcome. Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB Microphone. 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.

So what did we see last night? We saw socialism preferred over capitalism. Now, that isn’t new except that they admitted it last night. It’s always been the case with the modern era of the Democrat Party that they are socialists, but they’ve always tried to back away. Even Hillary tried to distance herself from that. (imitating Hillary) “Well, no, my job as president will be to rein in capitalism.” Hello, socialism. We were also treated to, and did you see the applause this guy got? Bernie Sanders is out there talking about climate change, the number one threat, the number one enemy, the biggest challenge we’ve got, and if we don’t deal with it in like 200 years, the planet is going to be uninhabitable. The planet, and, by the way, not 200 years, but your children and grandchildren may not have a planet to inhabit. And this stuff is being applauded.

They’re still fighting the Iraq war in the Democrat Party. They’re acting like the last seven years have not happened. They are campaigning as though George W. Bush is still president, like we’re still in Iraq. All of this talk about how bad things are and how much they need to improve and how these are the people to do it ignores the fact that things are bad because they are running the show and have been for seven years. I was amazed at how cavalierly they approached that. The last seven years have not had Republican fingerprints on hardly anything by design. The Republican Party has morphed into invisibility for all intents and purposes because they’re still afraid of upsetting the independents. Do you know that that’s still the establishment view, the reason why the Republicans should not fight back, is that it will upset the independents that we need to win the presidency?

You know what’s gonna happen even if we do win the presidency, we win it with an establishment candidate, then they’re gonna say, “Well, we gotta be very careful about advancing our agenda, ’cause if we advance our agenda we’re gonna tick off the independents who might abandon us in 2020.” We are handcuffing ourselves from doing anything with the establishment way of looking things. I’m sorry for my scattershot thoughts here but it’s just stream of consciousness. But really, I was taken aback by all the references to the Iraq war, as though it’s still going on, and all of the horrible economic things and the lack of health care.

Did you hear that last night? If you listen to these people last night there’s no health care. We still don’t have health care. We don’t have health insurance. We don’t have anything for the poor, and last night the Democrats demanded health care and health insurance free for illegal immigrants, and then they demanded free college tuition that the rich are gonna pay for because the rich aren’t paying enough now. I heard it all. You’ve heard it all. There was not a single shred of anything new from these people last night.

Now, the Drive-Bys are all excited, folks, they’re orgasmic over Hillary’s performance. But Hillary did not win a debate last night. That was not a debate and we really don’t know how Hillary’s gonna do in a debate, although we can take existing performances to date. For example, let me just ask you, what you’ve seen of Jeb Bush so far versus what you saw with Hillary last night, what’s the outcome? Yeah, sad to say, isn’t it? Sad to say that the Hillary last night would probably triumph over the Jeb Bush that we have seen in the debates so far. And then you can throw in other Republican candidates in there and play the same game.

We heard that Obama’s been great. Oh, yes, Obama’s been great but we still need to fix everything. But he’s been great. Everybody has been very loyal to Obama, and everybody’s gonna maintain what Obama’s done, we’re gonna make it even better. No, they didn’t say we’re gonna make it even better. They said we’re gonna fix it. They didn’t even acknowledge that things are good now. I don’t care, folks. And I know the Democrat voters are not gonna look at it this way, but they threw Obama overboard last night as far as I’m concerned. But it doesn’t matter because the Democrat voters watching that thing last night — and there were more of them than anybody predicted. I mean, their audience did not get close to a Fox News debate audience, Republican audience, but they got a bigger audience last night than they’ve ever had at CNN for a debate.

We won’t have the full Nielsen ratings representation ’til later. Of course, Les Moonves at CBS says that ratings don’t matter anymore. What does that tell you about Colbert’s new show? Hee-hee-hee. Sorry, folks, I still have the ravages of this virus, whatever it is, coursing through my body. By the way, I thought Anderson Cooper was stellar last night. I do. And I know, Snerdley, that you disagree with me. I think Anderson Cooper, he came out of the box and he was trying. They wouldn’t answer any of his questions. They showed how it’s done. I mean, he was trying to get them to react to things they had said previously. He tried to get Hillary on flip-flopping. She wouldn’t go there. He tried to get the others on things they’ve said that have changed their minds about or things they’ve said that are really outrageous and over the top.

He tried. He kept going back to these people. “I’m sorry, you didn’t answer my question. The question is…” and they kept avoiding it. I mean, they put on a clinic on how to avoid answering these questions. The Republicans, of course, are obsessed with answering the questions specifically ’cause they think they have to, in order to show the independents that they’re nice people and that they’re not tricksters and they’re not afraid.

But the Democrats can play whatever games of avoidance they want. But Anderson Cooper? I’m gonna tell you: I thought he was good last night. I thought he was frustrated at times. But overall, the moderators last night — the interrogators and so forth — were not a factor. I take that back. Look, they didn’t ask specifically about Hillary’s problems. They didn’t really get into Benghazi or really get into her e-mails. In fact there was, I think, a conspiracy of sorts to just get rid of the e-mail subject altogether.

And when that happened, when Bernie Sanders led that movement, that’s when I realized his candidacy is faux. F-A-U-X. He’s up there to get her nominated. There’s no way this guy is gonna get the nomination. He’s out there… If I listen to these people last night, here’s a summary of what we’re gonna get these people win the White House: “Higher taxes, open borders. No limits. Bring anybody in that you want to bring in or who wants to come in. We’re gonna have an even bigger government.

“Free college for everybody because 50 years ago all you needed to succeed in America was a high school diploma, but today a four-year college degree is about the same value in the job market as a high school diploma was 50 years ago. So we’ve got free college for anybody and everybody wants to go. The rich are gonna pay for it! We’ll have a much bigger welfare state.” Bernie Sanders is up there talking about, have you seen Denmark? We gotta see what Denmark’s doing.

Bernie doesn’t know that Denmark has reduced the size of its welfare state significantly. Denmark long ago… They’re only six million people anyway, so you can’t compare a population of six million people to one 300-plus million. But Denmark realized they had overextended on their welfare state, and they’re in the process of dialing it back and rolling it back. And Denmark, by the way, is telling these immigrants from Syria and these refugees, “Nope, not here.

“Go to Germany. Angela Merkel wants you; we don’t. We don’t have any room for you.” So Bernie’s living in like a time warp where Denmark was something that it isn’t anymore. Socialized medicine? I still can’t believe they are talking about health care as though nothing’s been done on it. We’ve got Obamacare. We have the law that everybody has to have insurance now. Their problem with it is that it’s gotten so much more expensive than it was and that it isn’t free, so they can’t come out and blame Obama. But indirectly they did by demanding and continuing to call for unilateral socialized medicine.

I mean, that’s a huge… This is Obama’s signature issue, the biggest accomplishment of his presidency, and these people are out there ripping it to shreds as though it doesn’t exist. And of course it was being applauded by the Star Wars cantina scene that was the audience at the Wynn Hotel. And, of course, the piece de resistance: There will be no guns. There will be no oil, and there will be no banks. I mean, that pretty much sums it up. That was the Democrat debate last night.

Higher taxes, borders are wide open — anybody who wants in, come on in — the government’s gonna get bigger. Want to go to college? It’s free! It’s not gonna cost you anything. And also, in addition to your free college tuition, we’re going to lower your student loan interest rate. Wait a minute. If college is gonna be free, why is there a student loan interest rate? By the way, who is running the student loan program now? That’s right. Barack Hussein O took it over, took it back from the banks under the theory that the banks were ripping everybody off.

So now Obama’s ripping everybody off. The welfare state’s gonna expand to include illegals who are gonna be welcomed into the country. We’re gonna fund welfare by nobody having to pay anything for either health treatment or coverage or insurance, and we’re gonna close down all the banks. We’re gonna get rid of everything that runs on oil, and we’re gonna shut down the oil wells, and we’re gonna get rid of guns. There you have it. And it’s wildly applauded.

They had to take commercial breaks to get the dandruff off Bernie Sanders’ suit. He should have worn a seersucker suit out there. But, you know, in the commercial breaks they had to take him out, and every time they came back there was less dandruff on Bernie’s jacket. Hey, I’m watching on 4K. I know that they are not transmitting in 4K but I have gazoodle amounts of pixels out there and I see things on my giant, big screen, projector TV.

The last commercial break Hillary almost didn’t make it back. She went to potty. And we know this because when she got back she acknowledged that it takes her a long time, quote/unquote. “Takes me a little longer.” Did you know that Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the Soviet Union? I was rolling on the floor. I mean, that’s part… Anderson Cooper, one of his opening questions was, “Okay, you went down…

“I guess you proposed when you went down to immediate the Sandinistas, the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and you honeymooned Soviet Union?” Nobody goes to the Soviet on purpose, certainly not for a vacation or honeymoon, but Bernie Sanders did! I didn’t know that. And I’m just rolling on the floor when I heard that. I had not paid attention to Martin O’Malley before. I knew he was the mayor of Baltimore and the governor of Maryland, but man, I had much higher expectations of the guy. The guy got no gravitas whatsoever.

That’s why I say, since he didn’t take his shirt off like Putin, there’s no “there” there. Student body president, maybe principal-type personality or what have you. I don’t know. It was fascinating to me to listen to these people talk about this country as though they have not been in charge of it the past seven years. And did you know only one of them would actually say that all lives matter? And that was Webb.

Only one of them would say that. You know John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) met the Vietcong in Paris during his honeymoon. (interruption) Not with Teresa. Before he… (interruption) No, no, his first wife. He’s honeymooning in Paris, and he finds out the peace talks were there. In fact, he probably went to Paris because the peace talks were there. He took time out to go meet the Vietcong. What is it with these people?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I got a note from someone surprised that the other Democrats on the stage didn’t go after Hillary on the e-mail business. Folks, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Hillary got a pardon for the e-mail crimes by the debaters last night ’cause they know they can’t win. Everybody up there, from Bernie Sanders to Jim Webb to Lincoln Chafee to… Who am I leaving out? Oh, whoever they had. They know they can’t win. If Biden doesn’t get in, Hillary wins this.

The Drive-Bys are spending the morning telling Biden, “Don’t bother! Hillary hit a grand slam last night. You’re not needed. You don’t have a prayer.” That’s the message from the Drive-Bys to Biden. But these dwarfs on the stage last night have to preserve their worthless careers as nobody Democrats. They’re not gonna go after Hillary on this e-mail thing, because not a single one of them knows they can win. They’re all placeholders in this thing. Even Martin O’Malley.

I don’t know what capacity he has to fool himself, but it was clear that last night was not a debate, that none of those candidates was gonna go after Hillary, and the media was not gonna make that happen. The media was not gonna treat these people as Republicans and try to create controversy or fights between them. So, you know, you shouldn’t look at this thing last night as a standard, ordinary debate where every candidate up there is trying to win the thing. Every other Democrat and Hillary is trying to preserve their status as Approved Democrat Worthy of Remaining in Office in some capacity and in power at whatever level.

I mean, Hillary Clinton? For crying out loud, what are we…? This is a woman who has more baggage than a Kardashian on an extended European vacation. And to defeat her, you cannot give her a pass on anything. You have to go after everything she has done. And you cannot let her get away with evading everything like she did last night. You have to know her record cold, and you have to be relentless in attacking it. That’s the Republican objective when they get to that point. These people on the stage last night were no way gonna do that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Did you know Hillary Clinton is a woman? I know that in some people’s minds the jury is still out, but she admitted it last night. How many times now has she told us she is a woman? I don’t know about you, but I kind of get the idea. I got it. She’s told us enough that she’s a woman. Why does she have to remind everybody of that every five minutes? Is there some doubt out there?

Can we not tell she’s a woman by looking at her? No, no. Seriously. She can’t let five minutes go by last night without reminding everybody that she is a woman, and all of that is predicated on she’s a victim, and being a woman makes her an outsider. And I’ll tell you why she brings it up. She brings it up ’cause that’s about her only accomplishment. Now, here’s one thing that I’ll tell you I learned last night. I don’t want to put my words in your mouth. You may disagree, but feel free to say so. But Hillary came out last night, and she was not robotic.

I don’t know how they did it, but they pulled it off. When Hillary Clinton is unchallenged, and when she knows that she’s not going to be challenged — and she knew that last night. She knew that Dana Bash wasn’t gonna come after her, and she knew that Anderson Cooper really wasn’t, although I don’t want to take anything away from Anderson Cooper. I thought he was pretty good last night. But at the end of the day, any Democrat candidate knows that nobody in the Drive-By Media is gonna come after the Clintons.

They’re royalty.

The Drive-By Media salivate over the chance to be close to the Clintons. They want to be in the Clinton orb. So they’re not gonna approach Hillary in any sort of confrontational way, and she knows that. When she has the… I guess it’s true of anybody. When you’re in a circumstance like this — either public speaking or doing a speech or presentation or you’re on a roundtable or even in a debate — when you know that nobody’s gonna come after you, you can be supremely confident. You can be extremely relaxed, and you can even shed some of your self-consciousness.

If you’re able to do that, you’re going to have a good night. So we know she’s a very good debater when unchallenged. But we will never know (at least in this primary) how effective she is as a debater until they participates in a real debate. Now, she has done that against Barack Hussein O. Does anybody remember? Go back now to 2008 to this, and maybe even into late 2007. Does anybody remember any of the Hillary and Barack Obama debates? And if you do, do any of you remember Hillary Clinton, the obvious runaway winner?

I doubt that you do.

What happened last night, when you strip everything away, is Hillary Clinton was applauded and complimented for running an illegal e-mail server exposing national secrets to hackers. Now, that doesn’t happen to most people in a debate who have done what Hillary has done. Most people would not be applauded for things like that. Mitt Romney would not be, for example. Nor any Republican that you can name. But Hillary last night on the stage was applauded, she was complimented, and she was exonerated for not only the e-mails, but for her role in Benghazi.

And by the time they had finished discussing Benghazi, it was only an issue because these mean-spirited, extremist Republicans are trying to come after her; there’s nothing to it. So anybody can be a good debater when circumstances like that exist. Anybody can “win.” Anybody can appear to be in total command and control when you know, as Hillary did, that every vulnerability she had was going to be either ignored or praised. You allow Hillary Clinton to get away with various improprieties as secretary of state in a debate.

That’s what future jobseekers do. That’s what all these other Democrats did. They let her get away with everything. Bernie Sanders effectively wiped the e-mail scandal away, telling me he’s not serious. He knows he’s not gonna win, and he wants to stay in the good graces of Mrs. Clinton and the Democrat Party. You have to relentlessly attack every issue because Hillary is going to avoid it. She is going to deal with it like the Clintons always do. Ron Fournier has a piece today that we all could have written back in the nineties describing the Clinton technique for escaping circumstances like this.

His piece today says, “Yeah, she got away with it last night, but she’s not gonna be able to get away with it once the Republicans are on the stage,” and we hope that’s true. But don’t doubt me when I tell you the establishment Republicans are still obsessed with not upsetting the independents and the moderates. And they really believe that criticizing Obama, opposing Obama and the Democrats is a way to… I’m not making it up. It’s become a cliche, but they actually still do believe it. The evidence was all over Twitter last night.

Hillary said she wasn’t there last night to talk about her e-mails. She was there to talk about what the American people want from the next president. Does that sound familiar? “I’m not here to talk about my e-mails. I’m here to talk about the future of America for everyone, particularly the forgotten.” (Bill Clinton) “I’m gonna say this one more time: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss. Lewinsky. Not a single time. I never asked anybody to lie! Now, I need to get back to work for the American people.”

Does that sound familiar, the technique? When you are allowed… The big winner of this debate last night was Santa Claus. When you are allowed to promise to buy votes without any effective opposition response, when you are allowed to attack Republicans without any effective response, when you are allowed to flip-flop on votes without being hammered on the flops, then you can be a great debater. And this is why the Drive-Bys are claiming that she’s a great debater. They think she tackled this stuff head-on.

She was met with these allegations. She had attacks. She just swatted ’em away like a bunch of irritating flies. Except that’s not what happened. She didn’t face one challenge. She didn’t face anything remotely serious. So all of you people in the Drive-Bys clapping your hands and saying, “Wow, what a great performance! Man, Hillary’s back!” That was not a debate performance last night. That was an enablement, if you will.

Like, I’m a very good golfer when they give me 25 strokes. I can play with anybody if they give me 25 strokes, and I can even say after that round, “Hey, I broke 80,” but I don’t admit to anybody they gave me 25 shots. So you gotta be very… And look at another thing: CNN’s audience numbers. The preliminary ratings for the audience for the debate last night were about half the size of the Republican debates, on both CNN and Fox.

Half the size! The media is out there talking about, “Why, this is huge!” They’re so excited at getting an audience half the size of Republican debates. So the Democrats get half the audience of the Republicans and it’s a triumph for the Democrat Party? Half the audience, half the interest, half the tune-in factor, and it’s a triumph for the Democrat Party?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here Jack in Grand Rapids, Michigan, great to have you on the program, Jack. You’re up first. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: I just gotta say after watching the debate last night, where is the outrage in America? Where is the dumbfoundness of America? This debate last night, this show last night, I was dumbfounded by the lack of substance in what these people were saying. And yet today Fox News, CNN, all of them, “Oh, it was a good debate. Oh, she did a good job. She didn’t hurt herself.” I am outraged as an American as to everything that has gone on in the last six, eight months, year, in the Middle East, everywhere else, our economy, and this is what we’re fed from the Democrats? I’m dumbfounded. I’m outraged. I cannot believe that they weren’t even ushered off the stage for just lack of substance. I’m pissed. I just can’t believe that the American people are gonna watch this pabulum.

RUSH: I know. I hear you. Forty percent of the American people watching that last night, Jack, and they’re applauding it. I know. It’s depressing, isn’t it, Jack? I know. Like every day for 28 years, Jack. How else do you conclude that half this country’s a bunch of ignoramuses? Well, I don’t, but a lot of people do. But Jack, everybody hears you. It is a giant mystery. How are these people created?