RUSH: Folks, here are the things on the table today. John Lewis, the intelligence agencies continuing to insult Trump — John Brennan, CIA, on Fox News yesterday — and something is not getting a lot of attention that I think deserves a lot of attention, and I’m going to spend some time on it today. The inspectors general report that was announced last week, we talked about it whether it happened. The inspector general of the Department of Justice has announced an investigation, the DOJ.
They’re gonna look into Comey, they’re gonna look into the FBI, but they’re not gonna look into Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton in the airplane. You know, you talk about Trump’s election being illegitimate. Hillary’s nomination’s what illegitimate is! She cheated poor old Bernie Sanders. They rigged the game against him. Her nomination is what is illegitimate. Trump’s victory is entirely legitimate. I’ll tell you what they tried to do. My friend Andy McCarthy had the best description of this, and I’m gonna use it ’cause I couldn’t come up with anything better.
What is happening is that the left is attempting to engrave on this last election that the Russians stole it from the Democrats. The effort… It’s not news to say that the Democrats are trying to construct this narrative where Trump’s win and his transition and his presidency are illegitimate. But there’s no pushback on this. Everything’s being left up to Trump to handle. The Republicans are not pushing back on this as they should be: This inspector general investigation into the election and James Comey and the FBI but not looking at the DOJ, it’s classic what’s happening here.
You know, I saw watching TV today, Obama is out saying that he regrets that he didn’t have more impact on his party. Well, hell’s bells, he sure as hell did! The Democrat Party has been decimated because of Barack Obama. What greater impact could he have had? The impact he had on the Democrat Party was to basically destroy it. It’s not a national party. You know, John Lewis, I don’t care who it is, there’s nothing they can do to stop Trump (*)if the Republicans stay unified. And that is an asterisk, obviously. But they don’t have the votes.
The Democrat Party lost over 1200 seats beginning in 2010, the midterm elections. They’ve lost seats in states legislatures, governor ships, town counsel, mayor. They have been decimated. At the state level, the Republican is running this country. The Democrat Party is being made to look like they’re still viable by virtue of the media and what’s going on in Washington with this attempt to delegitimize Trump and his election. But Obama destroyed everything he touched. We have been the war every day of his administration.
Are you aware of that? He gets the Nobel Peace Prize in March of his first term, like two months in. We’ve been at war every day during his administration. We know what he’s done to medical center in America, what he’s done via Obamacare. We’ve got 94 million Americans not working. We have an economic recession. We have uncontrollable immigration. And, you know, Trump is the one man fighting back on all of this, including John Lewis. Look at what happens with John Lewis. Who is John Lewis, by the way? I wondered when I saw this.
Two-thirds of the American people may not know who he is, when you got right down to brass tacks, because John Lewis had one thing happen to him that has made him a civil rights icon. And I’m gonna dig deep into this today, too, with the help of Shelby Steele. He had a… You know, I’ve been looking for a way for a long time to express a combination of opinion and feelings I have about the left and race. And I’ve gotten close but I’ve never gotten to the point where I felt totally equipped and prepared to bring that opinion to the broadcast, ’cause when you start talking about this stuff you better be precise, and you better say what you mean and not leave it open for any innuendo or misrepresentation.
Which they’re gonna do anyway.
But, for example, I’ll tell you just to show you what a tightrope this is gonna be. What really spawned the latest effort on my part to dig into this was the media and all the fashion magazines saying that Michelle Obama has blown the lights out on first lady fashion. There has never been a more fashionable first lady than Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama rewrote what it is to be fashionable in the White House. Well, that’s just flat-out not true. It’s just flat-out… So why is it said? And that is the opinion, that is the thought, those are the feelings that I wish to share.
‘Cause there’s a reason for it. There’s a reason for it that is found deep inside the bowels and intestines of liberalism. It’s not just feel goodism. It’s not just pandering, although it’s close to that. But it’s worse than that. It’s actually rooted in what is a great, great phrase: “The soft bigotry of low expectations.” And it’s what the American left has done to every racial minority in this country and especially to African-Americans. And John Lewis is a shining, glaring example. John Lewis… I really was thinking, how many people…?
You know, given the low-information crowd, given history and the way it’s taught, I really, how many people know? Here’s John Lewis, because in Washington they think everybody knows who he is. In Washington, the Democrats and the media think everybody knows who he is, and they also believe that everybody thinks that he is one of the greatest living civil rights icons ever. And so because they think that, they think everybody in America must obviously think that. And I was asking how many people even know who the guy is?
What he is, folks — and Donald Trump, you can see what happens when pioneers go out and try to change things. Trump is taking the arrows on all kinds of things. This is what it looks like when you try to transform America and take power away from those who’ve had it forever. It’s not pretty. It isn’t going to be pretty. The people who are fearful of losing their power are not going to be peaceful and give it away. They’re not gonna let go of it. It’s all they’ve got. It’s all they know.
It’s how they define their self-worth, it’s how they get their standard of living, and they’re not gonna let some upstart like Trump come in — even if he has a majority of the American people behind him — and just take it. And so it’s gonna be a bloodbath. And we’re living the bloodbath right now. We’re in the midst of it, and it isn’t gonna go away. It’s only gonna intensify. And I’m here to predict to you that this week… You may think this crazy, but I am telling you that the Democrat Party and the American left still harbor hopes and a desire to prevent Trump from being sworn in. Now, you may say, “That’s crazy, Rush! It’s absolutely…”
Yes, it is. That’s the point: It is crazy. They’re mounting all these protests, and I’m gonna make a prediction to you. These protests are gonna fizzle and it isn’t gonna be anywhere near the numbers of people showing up that you are being led to believe are gonna show up. It’s always this way. These people are the minority. They are not the majority. They got beat. They got a snookered. They were defeated. They are not the majority of the country. They can’t come to grips with that. They can’t come to grips with the fact that somebody in their mind like Trump took it away from ’em.
So they have not given up hope, desire that they can do something that would stop Trump from being inaugurated. Now, in moments of sanity — and they are rare for these people — they probably realize they can’t do that. So the next thing is to just make it all as illegitimate as possible, and they’re coming at it from every angle you can think. This inspector general investigation on the FBI, CIA director — this phony dossier that Bob Woodward — even Bob Woodward of Watergate fame — has said it’s garbage. It should never have been the subject of a briefing. It’s total garbage. He said it on Fox News so it’s not been seen anywhere else.
Carl Bernstein’s out there saying, “Well, Woodward’s the real star of my duo. How did I miss this?” Woodward continuing to absorb all the fame and glory and Bernstein’s out there trying to figure out why it’s eluded him. John Lewis, for those of you who don’t know, is a Democrat Party hack. John Lewis was, in fact, beat upside the head as he has described it. In fact, when Clarence Thomas was nominated by George H. W. Bush for the Supreme Court, John Lewis was one of many on the left that were beside themselves. And he went to the floor of the House.
He’s a congressman from Georgia, near the Atlanta area, and he went to the floor of the House and he said, “I’ve been beat…” I can impersonate him perfectly but I’m not gonna do that because that would be misunderstood because you can’t mimic; you can’t imitate. I mean, they can have Alec Baldwin out there all day long on Saturday Night Live making fun of Trump but you can’t do that kind of thing to a liberal, particularly one they think is an icon. They’ll come at you with charges of racism and bigotry and all this other business.
He went out there on the floor of the House, and he said, “I’ve been beat upside the head, but it doesn’t I’m qualified to be on the Supreme Court.” He went to the floor of the House once… I mean, he’s been living off what happened to him in Selma for all of these years. But he has become, since, nothing but a Democrat Party hack. He’s nothing but a reliable uber-Democrat Party partisan, who I don’t believe has the moral authority that has been granted to him. And once again, we’re back now to what I’m gonna get into later with the help of Shelby Steele. But why does this happen?
It’s all about liberalism and their icons and how they essentially try to shut down debate and permit otherwise morally unfit people to ever moral authority and make statements, usually against Republicans and/or conservatives. John Lewis did not think George W. Bush’s presidency was illegitimate and said so. And he’s applauded. And he is held up and put on the pedestal as a great hero, one to whom we should all listen. He went to the floor of the House back in the nineties when the Republicans ran the House, and there was some budget bill. I forget what the legislation was.
But John Lewis goes to the floor of the House and does a speech using words that were used in another famous speech about the Nazis. “They’re coming for our children, they’re coming for our grandchildren, they’re coming for our moms, they’re coming for our dads, they’re coming for,” and he was equating the Republicans with the Nazis in World War II. And the left applauded and, “What a great man! We need to listen to this man. He knows what he’s talking about,” simply because he’s one of the remaining survivors of a protest march, Martin Luther King, across the Pettus Bridge in Selma.
And if you look at how he has behaved since he was elected to Congress and throw out his claim to fame in the civil rights march, the guy is a Democrat Party hack. Some people have even described him as a fraud. John Hinderaker at Power Line: “He has been coasting on his 50-year-old reputation for decades. Andrew Breitbart exposed Lewis as a liar when he claimed, falsely, to have been subjected to racial epithets by a crowd outside the Capitol.” Oh, yes! Remember the Congressional Black Caucasians on the left prior to the vote on Obamacare, decided to march in front of the Capitol Building because there were a bunch of Tea Party there protesting the vote.
So they marched and they did it on purpose. When the march was over Lewis said that he had been spat upon and called the N-word, and there was an investigation undertaken, and none of it happened. It didn’t happen. Didn’t matter. The left continued to report that it did in their effort to impugn and besmirch the Tea Party. It didn’t happen. That’s the kind of fraudulent stuff John Lewis has been engaging in. But you don’t say this. He’s a “civil rights icon,” untouchable. He’s permitted to do anything. He’s permitted to say anything and be granted senior statesman, elder statesman status. This is one of the many things that we’re up against that’s wrong, because any criticism of John Lewis or Barack Obama or anybody has been paralyzed by virtue of race, civil rights.
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RUSH: The AP on Trump and John Lewis. “Donald Trump tore into civil rights legend John Lewis on Saturday for questioning legitimacy of Trump’s victory.” Trump didn’t “tear into” John Lewis. Trump was out minding his own business, and John Lewis tore into Trump. John Lewis started it! John Lewis said that Trump’s presidency is not legitimate and he’s not gonna go to the inauguration, which is fine with Trump and fine with me. All these other Republicans calling John Lewis, “John, please reconsider!
“You’re such an important figure! Will you please reconsider. We really would like you to come to the inauguration.” That’s the worst thing in the world to do to grovel for this guy. He’s a Democrat Party hack. He exemplifies what is the Democrat Party and what’s wrong with it and why they are losing elections. But Trump did not “tear into” him. Trump responded to him and it was actually pretty tame. But the way the media reports this stuff… ‘Cause, remember, there is an engraving going on. The engraving of the Trump presidency as illegitimate, perhaps illegal, and should be changed. I guarantee you that’s what this is about.
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RUSH: Let’s go back to the John Lewis business, starting with the audio sound bite support here. We’re gonna start with Lewis himself. This all happened in an interview F. Chuck Todd for Meet the Press. They pretaped this on Friday, so NBC knew what they had and they started promoting Sunday’s Meet the Press with little sound bites of what Lewis said in his interview. And this is it. Chuck Todd said, “You have forged relationship with many presidents…” This just galls me, this treatment of John Lewis as some current American hero.
He was, folks, at one time, don’t misunderstand. But he’s become nothing more than a party hack. And he’s living off this event that happened 50 years ago because the media and the Democrat Party keep propping it up for obvious political reasons. So Chuck Todd says, “You forged relationships with many presidents. Do you plan on trying to forge a relationship with Donald Trump?”
LEWIS: It’s going to be very difficult. I don;t see this president-elect as a legitimate president.
TODD: You do not consider him a legitimate president? Why is that?
LEWIS: I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. I don’t plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I’ll miss since I’ve been in the Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong.
RUSH: That’s just pure Democrat Party hackism, folks. That’s not the civil rights movement. That’s nothing to do with Martin Luther King. That’s nothing to do with anything that happened to John Lewis 50 years ago. This pure Democrat Party hackery. “I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.” You can say, “Who’s gonna believe this?” I’m telling you, we don’t know who’s gonna believe it. This is the point. There’s still low-information voters out there, and the media is still the media and the Republican Party is still the Republican Party.
The only game-changer so far is Trump. Well, and of course us here on talk radio, who has 28-, 29-year track record of fighting back and pushing back on these things, which is why Obama’s out there blaming me for the fact that the Republicans couldn’t get along with him. That’s coming up, too. But, if anything, it was the Hillary Clinton nomination that was illegitimate because whoever did the hacking… Nobody has ever disputed what was revealed in the Podesta emails and in the hack of Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz’s computers at the DNC.
They rigged the game against Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders was the subject of cheating, vicious cheating. Hillary Clinton lost in 2008 when that nomination was guaranteed her. Obama came along, and they abandoned Hillary as fast as they could for him. Well, Hillary’s people were not gonna let that happen in 2016. So she got together with the DNC and they rigged this game. Bernie Sanders was winning primary after primary after primary. It was Hillary’s delegate count that kept increasing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. If anybody was illegitimate in this campaign, it was Hillary Clinton and her nomination.
John Lewis can’t prove the Russians helped Trump get elected. Nobody can prove it. It isn’t there. There is no evidence that the Republicans or the Democrats had anything with their election efforts hacked by the Russians. There is no evidence the Russians hacked votes, vote counting, vote casting. None. Zero, zilch, nada. But that’s not stopping the media. It’s not stopping the Obama administration. It’s not stopping people like John Lewis from spreading this falsehood, this lying narrative that the only reason Hillary lost was because of the Russians.
And they’re trying to engrave that. Everything they’re doing is designed to create this impression in Trump supporters’ mind and everybody else’s mind that there’s nothing legitimate about Trump’s win. That’s why I cringe when I see these Republicans reaching out to John Lewis begging him to change his mind and show up. “We need to be unified.” You’re begging a Democrat Party hack. It’s just like begging Obama to change his mind on something; it isn’t gonna happen. Up next, Reince Priebus.
He was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, who said, “Isn’t it harder for the Obama administration to tell Democrats to come together and try to work with the Republican president-elect after a tweet like that?” Wait a minute. What he’s a talking about here is Trump’s tweet to John Lewis. Once again, Trump didn’t start anything. Trump was minding his own business. It was John Lewis that trashed, John Lewis that disrespected, John Lewis that attacked, John Lewis that went after Trump as illegitimate and everybody knows what Trump’s gonna do.
Everybody says John Lewis is really smart; he baited Trump. Nobody baited Trump. Everybody knows what Trump’s gonna do because Trump’s an honest and up-front person in this regard. If you attack him, he’s gonna hit back. I had him on this program back in October and asked him about it. He said that he does it because when people lie about him, he’s not going to let it sift in. He’s not gonna let it stand. He’s not gonna let it get established. He’s gonna fight back on it. He’s not gonna let his family name be impugned or his name be impugned.
So when things like this happen, he’s gonna hit back.
The Democrats think they’re really baiting Trump and he’s an idiot and you can really get him to make a fool of himself. What people don’t understand is that Trump supporters are standing up and applauding this stuff. This is exactly why Trump was elected. People like John Lewis and all these other Democrats is exactly why Trump was elected to stop these people and take power away from these people and end the way they have been doing damage in this country. And it’s not pretty to see them react to them losing their country. It’s not pretty at all. It’s what we’re in the middle of. So the premise to the question of Priebus is: Why Trump’s really an idiot! How in the world can he expect the Democrats to work with him when he tweets out something like tweeted about John Lewis?
PRIEBUS: John Lewis stood up in an interview and said that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. That’s insanity, and it’s wrong, and DNI [Director of National Intelligence] director Clapper said as much many, many times that there is no evidence that any outcome of the election was changed. President-elect Trump won 30 of 50 states, more counties since Ronald Reagan. This man won in an electoral landslide, and to question the legitimacy of the next United States president? You know, and you’re worried about a tweet that says, “Hey, why don’t you get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy”? Too bad.
RUSH: Mr. Priebus, just to make sure you know, they’re not questioning legitimacy. They know Trump’s legitimate. That’s one of the things that’s bothering them. What they’re trying to do is change public perception of Trump. They’re trying to get his presidency and his election — the transition, everything about it — declared illegitimate. They want that to be the first thing people think of when the 2016 election is mentioned. They want people’s gut reaction, knee-jerk reaction to be, “Russians elected Trump. Russians stole election for Trump. Russians cheated Democrats.” That’s what they’re trying to establish here. Take away any Trump mandate, take away any respect that Trump has.
That’s what they’re trying to get here. That’s why I’m call Lewis “a party hack.” He’s doing Democrat Party dirty work here, and he’s got a bubble around him. He’s protected. He’s insured. Nobody can criticize John Lewis because of what happened 50 years ago in Selma. It’s a time-worn, honored trick that the Democrats use. And they use all kinds of people — with disabilities or racial history, all kinds of people — they throw up there that they think are inoculated from criticism. And those days are over, and Trump is showing it. Up next, Jonathan Karl, ABC’s This Week. Well, I don’t… Yeah, here. I think the bite is self-contained. So here’s Jonathan Karl.
JONATHAN KARL: Incredible how unnecessary it was. He really created something that — that he didn’t need to.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It doesn’t seem like anyone around him can stop those early morning Tweets!
SARA FAGEN: They’re not handling the John Lewis flap the right way, clearly.
CORNELL BELCHER: People like John Lewis and all these other groups, you have to start building bridges towards. This week was a disaster.
BILL KRISTOL: Yeah. (snorting and snickering)
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Donald Trump is a bully who thrives on division. Martin Luther King weekend he takes on John Lewis? Anyone who has — I don’t want to call it audacity, it’s too good a term, to appoint Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as Attorney General should damn well be respectful of John Lewis.
RUSH: What the hell is that? This is the Stephanopoulos show roundtable, by the way, and that was Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation. She said, Donald Trump is a bully who thrives on division. Martin Luther King weekend he takes on John Lewis? Anyone who has — I don’t want to call it audacity, it’s too good a term, to appoint Jefferson Beauregard Sessions as Attorney General should damn well be respectful of John Lewis”? What the hell does that mean? These people are sick, folks.
They are unhinged and deranged. Donald Trump didn’t attack anybody! What’s he supposed to do? Here is a member of the Congress on the Democrat side who goes on Meet the Press and says, “I don’t think his election is legitimate. I think the Russians defeated Hillary Clinton. I think the Russians helped him beat Hillary. I think… I’m not gonna go to the inauguration. He’s not legitimate.” What Trump’s supposed to do? The definition is, “Oh, he’s supposed to be the bigger man!
“He’s supposed to reach out to Congressman Lewis and try to find some common understanding, some common ground.” Yeah. Trump’s supposed to grovel. Well, screw that! Why grovel with the losers? Why grovel with the people who have given us the current state of the United States of America? Why grovel to people whose objective has been to divide the people of this country in as many ways as they can? This is… It’s entirely frustrating.
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RUSH: This is Sarah in Decatur, Illinois, the original home of the Chicago Bears, by the way. They were known then as the Decatur Staleys, named after the automobile dealership owner who sponsored the team for George Halas. How you doing, Sarah?
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: I’m very fine. Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m actually a third-time caller, still as nervous as I was the first time I called you. My son has all your books, and I’m just very honored that you took my call again so thank you.
RUSH: You’re more than welcome. It’s great to have you here. And I understand being nervous. I’d be nervous if I spoke to me too. I never get to speak to myself ’cause I never talk to myself. I never get to listen to myself. It’s something I’ve missed in life. You people get to do that, and I don’t. So I understand being nervous, but you don’t sound nervous. You sound fine and dandy, actually.
CALLER: Well, thank you. And the reason I called is because I read an article this morning by Paul Krugman, you know, at the New York Times —
RUSH: That’s your first mistake.
CALLER: — and it’s called, “With All Due Disrespect.”
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And the whole article is about how patriotic and heroic and wonderful Representative John Lewis is because of what he said about Trump. I mean, this guy might as well be painted as, you know, a saint in this man’s eyes. And I remember back to when you said years ago after Obama got elected that you hope he fails, and you were crucified for it. And the hypocrisy is just boggles me. And I feel like, you know, I voted for Trump because he spoke to me and not at me. He understood what I wanted, he talked to my values, and I feel like with articles like this and representatives like this, you know, constantly putting it down and making people who don’t like Trump heroic —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — and you’re still not listening to me. They’re still not listening to who voted for ’em and they’re gonna continue to lose elections.
RUSH: They’re not gonna listen to you. They’re not gonna listen to you. As far as they are concerned, you are a person… They look at you with contempt. They look down upon you. You’re stupid, you’re dumb, you were fooled by Trump and so forth. Paul Krugman has the distinction of being wrong about most everything he says, and it’s incredible, which makes him perfectly qualified for the New York Times. But you’re right. They’re holding out Lewis as this great hero. I know. That’s my whole point here. He’s living off an event that happened to him 50 years ago.
If you want some analogy, look, Ronald Reagan got shot, and they never, ever said that Reagan was great because he got shot. Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt and they still hated his guts. John Lewis got beat upside the head? Ronald Reagan got shot. They never, ever treated Reagan as great and never allowed Reagan to be unquestioned on anything simply because he had been shot. John Lewis gets a free pass. Whatever happened to him 50 years ago on the bridge now allows him to say and do anything he wants and be proclaimed an American hero at the same time.
And there’s a reason this happens, folks. It’s deeply embedded in liberalism. And it is this that I’m going to explain in the monologue segment of the next hour with the help of a really timely piece from Shelby Steele. As I mentioned, I’ve been looking for a long time a way to explain this. I really first encountered this in ways that made me start questioning this in sports by listening to leftist sportswriters deal with African-American athletes. I thought, “There’s something…” It was odd to me.
And I finally figured it out: They feel sorry for ’em. They feel sorry for ’em because what happened in the 1800s. The way liberals look at these minorities, they’re never gonna get anywhere. Liberals think that minorities and the poor are forever destined to be minorities and poor, forever destined to be second class, third class, whatever, and they feel sorry for ’em. So any time anything happens, it’s really, really, really special. But that doesn’t really get close to describing or explaining it in full.
That’s a partial explanation for it. They feel sorry for John Lewis. They feel sorry for him because he’s black. That’s part of liberalism and its view of civil rights and minorities. And because they feel sorry, they have been deferential, and they’ve got so many strikes against them because of how unfair things have been that whatever they do is qualified, justified, and okay, and above and beyond criticism today. Anyway, thanks for the call out there, Sarah.