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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: So a new website has been created supporting small business — all those small businesses who are being damaged by the intimidation and the censorship campaign that’s being waged against them as advertisers. The website is DefendSmallBusiness.com, and it has been organized to let your voice be heard productively in the fight against this kind of intimidation and censorship that’s taking place in what was a free country. Also it’s doing it in a way that doesn’t sink to the level of the opposition, doesn’t get down in the gutter with them. When you go to DefendSmallBusiness.com you can sign a petition. You can contact members of Congress.

You can voice your support for free speech and free enterprise and for small business. You can voice your opposition to the intimidation tactics of people like Media Matters and their ilk of self-appointed censors, which is what we are. I don’t have anything to do with the website. It’s not mine. I just want to tell you about it. These are people who want to advertise on radio programs like mine because it works. It helps their businesses. And they like having relationships with you, their customers. And they are being threatened. And the people threatening them are frauds and fakes! They are not genuine customers. But they’re threatening to shut down the business, making it impossible to conduct business.

It’s pure censorship, and it’s not based on anything other than a political effort, if you will. It’s a political objective. The name of the website is DefendSmallBusiness.com. You ought to check it out because it’s no sweat off your back, and it’s an effort by small business to fend this off. Everybody asks, “What are you doing about it?” I want to ask, “What are you doing?” Well, this is what some people decided to do. I actually think that this kind of thing has been going on since long before this program hit. But it’s been intense since this program started and since we hit a level of popularity. This program’s been a target and advertisers have been a target like this, but it’s never been this focused because they will smell blood in the water.

And this is the first time that small business has not cowered. Honest to God, folks. In 23-plus years this is the first time small business has not cowered and caved and gone away. And thought if they just shut up, it will go away. Because you know what they’ve realized? It won’t go away. The next show will just be the next target, the next host or what have you. In the meantime they’re not gonna be able to advertise their business. And they know that it works, and they want to be able to do that. So small business people have set this up to try to defend themselves. It specifically identifies Media Matters for being the instigator of all this.

If not the instigator of a lot of what the small businesses are experiencing. This is an effort to empower as many people to go out and approach this the way Mark Stevens is in New York and help clarify for others where this noise is coming from, that it’s not legitimate. It’s not genuine. It’s not angry customers. We haven’t lost any audience in this program. The audience is larger than it’s ever been. The people who have been hurt on this program are the advertisers who left! They’ve been creamed. But nevertheless the pressure is being brought to bear on those that remain, and the new ones that come on board. Okay. So the website to see what they’re trying to do to fight this and stave it off is DefendSmallBusiness.com.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I get surprised all the time about things I think everybody understands, and it’s probably good that I get surprised. I just said in talking about this small business website… The name of which is DefendSmallBusiness.com. I mentioned when talking about it that the only advertisers here who have been harmed are those who have canceled advertising. Now, to me that makes perfect sense. I checked the e-mail during the break, and a lot of people ask, “Is that right? We thought you were being harmed.” Folks, the ones who’ve left here have already been replaced. You just don’t know it yet. We’re fine here.

The people who have been harmed — that is not me. The people being harmed are these small markets, these average-sized markets and these small businesses that these thugs and these censors are intimidating. That’s what the website is all about: DefendSmallBusiness.com. But the advertisers who’ve really been hurt are the ones who’ve abandoned here. I just assume everybody understood that. Let me tell you: We have 22 million people here who have stopped patronizing these people, stopped patronizing them. It’s major in many instances, the harm that has been inflicted. Whew! Those people are leaving.

I’m not going to get into any details because I, frankly, am uncomfortable the whole notion of advertising being harmed anyway. The whole point of it is to work! The whole point of it is to be helping — and it was helping. It always has been here. It’s the reason there is such a long list of people that want to be on the program. But the ones that left? This is a very sophisticated audience. They go out there and make it that they’re leaving because of some trumped up, phony issue and they hear about it in the form of cancellations, which doesn’t really make me comfortable, but it’s a free market. So those people have been hurt. They hurt themselves. The advertisers that hung around have not been harmed.

Their businesses are still thriving. And I’ll tell you something: These so-called angry consumers are not patronizing any of these sponsors. They’re just calling and threatening them. These so-called angry consumers (who are not angry consumers, they’re just Democrat Party operatives or people sympathetic to the Democrat Party) are just calling and harassing and threatening them. They’re not buying anything from these sponsors. That’s one of the whole points of DefendSmallBusiness.com. These people, these businesses are being hurt and shut down by Democrat Party operatives.

What is really truly amazing is that in 23-plus years for me, this is the first time they’ve not caved. And this has gone on since long before I started this program. No-buy lists have been common in broadcasting for all kinds of controversial programming. (Why do you think Stern had to go to satellite, for crying out loud?) The point is, this is the first time that businesses have fought back, and that’s why… This website is not about me, even though I’m a small business.

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