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RUSH: Hey, you know, folks, if Kathy Griffin really wanted to shock people, if that was her objective, to shock people, you know what she should do? Try being funny. That would stun people. That would really shock them, that she could be funny.

But this tired, worn-out, dumb old woman, was it just yesterday — in fact, it was maybe last week that I began characterizing what’s happening out there as the assassination, the political assassination of Donald Trump, and here comes Kathy Griffin with her stunt. And, by the way, that apology was not sincere. She rolled her eyes when she made that apology, and she apologized to the usual, “If you’re offended, I’m so sorry, I went too far.” She’s not apologized to Trump or any of that.

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RUSH: Then you throw Kathy Griffin on top of this with her stunt, the decapitation of Donald Trump right out of the ISIS playbook. You remember, my friends, I’ve had a lot of people remind me of this but I of course remembered it myself because of my endowed wonderful memory.

There was a rodeo clown at the state fair in Sedalia, Missouri, who wore an Obama mask, and you would have thought, you would have thought that God and the Creator himself was being made fun of and laughed at and mocked. This clown, the man who wore the Obama face mask was smeared, he was targeted, he was lampooned, he was criticized, he was savaged for wearing an Obama mask, because it was sacrilegious, it was insulting, it was beyond the pale, it was over the top.

Now with Kathy Griffin and her decapitation of Trump stunt all over the Drive-By Media you hear people saying, “I don’t want to talk about it. Come on, come on, let’s move on. This is so outrageous, it’s not even worth talking about.” Mika Brzezinski, soon to be Mika Brzezinski Scarborough, on Morning Jolt, “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to see.” Some woman named Molly Ball who writes for some left-wing publication inside the Beltway was on CNN. “What’s the big deal? It isn’t any big deal.” Total, total hypocrisy.

But I’m telling you, folks, this kind of stuff will permeate the American landscape. The Kathy Griffin stunt and the beginning of the unraveling of this whole Russian collusion thing, because the media has made people believe this stuff. You know, there are consequences. You gotta be careful what you ask for.

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RUSH: A CNN panel discussing Kathy Griffin, Molly Ball (paraphrased): “I think we got much bigger issues to focus on than Kathy Griffin.” Yeah, but when it was the Sedalia, Missouri, rodeo clown with an Obama mask? They broomed everything, and they claimed that the whole fair — the whole state of Missouri, the whole rodeo where this thing happened… A clown was wearing the Obama mask and they claimed it was like a KKK convention, ’cause of course if you wear an Obama mask it’s gotta be depicting Obama as an African-American.

You had a white clown wearing an Obama mask, so made it KKK. They brought the Nazis in, and it was the usual defamation that the left engages in. Mika Brzezinski says (paraphrased), “Nothing to see here! I don’t want to talk about it. I certainly don’t want to see it. Don’t acknowledge it.” And Molly Ball says (paraphrased), “We’ve got much bigger issues. Kathy Griffin? Come on! Nothing here. No big deal.” It’s amazing.

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RUSH: It’s Kim in Houston. Kim, welcome, great to have you on the EIB Network. How you doing?

CALLER: Thank you, Rush.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I think the Limbaughs were my grandmother’s lawyer in Cape Girardeau. My parents went to college there, and so I used to visit there often. But I was —

RUSH: Did your grandmother stay out of jail? That’s all that matters.

CALLER: Well, yes, thank goodness for y’all.

RUSH: (laughing) Well, thank you.

CALLER: You kept her out of jail. (laughing)

RUSH: I’m happy… (laughing) I’m happy to hear it.

CALLER: Yeah. You know, you don’t want to follow your family tree too far back anyway.

RUSH: (laughing) Gee!

CALLER: I’m calling since, last night, when I was watching America’s Got Talent, one of the performers came out impersonating Donald Trump, and Mel B just screamed, “Oh, no,” and hit the buzzer before anything even started. So when they let the performer do his act — which was surprising — he didn’t really talk. He sang songs and danced. The other three judges enjoyed it and said, you know, “It surprised us. We want to see more, and we’re gonna let you continue.”

RUSH: Right. The guy wins the next round so that the Trump hit can continue.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: I tell you how I heard about this. I don’t watch shows like that. That’s music, right? Music, I just… It’s all the same note. It’s all the same noise to me, if I haven’t heard it before. But it was around 10:30 today and the chef was bringing in lunch, just whining and moaning about this show last night from the moment. “Do you watch America’s Got Talent?” (interruption) She almost spilled the French fries on me here! She got so worked up telling me about this show with the Trump impersonator last night.

I said, “Calm down. No, I didn’t see it but I can predict it: The guy won the first round they brought him back, right?” “Exactly right! They brought him back so they can continue to make fun of Trump!” I said, “It’s NBC.” And, by the way, about these kind of shows, America’s Got Talent? Don’t think they’re not scripted. The only difference in reality TV and the other TV is that the scriptwriters for reality TV are not union. I have been on reality TV shows. (chuckles) Believe me, my friends: It’s not just improv and whatever happens when the cameras are rolling.

There are objectives to be met. There are scenes set. They didn’t just by happenstance pick a Trump impersonator who wasn’t very good and made Trump look like an idiot. They did it on purpose. But her reaction. I think — I’m fairly confident — what’s happening here is this is not working. Trump’s approval number, the latest number I saw was 48%, and it was climbing. And that was before the international trip was completed. There are still certain truths, I think, that hold solid, and that is that at some point reality is going to triumph.

It is not always, but in this case, there is nothing to any of these alleged crimes that Trump has committed during his campaign, during his transition, and now during his presidency. There’s nothing there. They will not be able to manufacture something. They’ve given it their best shot. But this… As I said in the first half hour, I think it’s begin. It has not… I’m not taking this too… It’s not falling apart now; it’s beginning to. The accompanying hysteria is ratcheting up, which indicates that people know it’s falling apart.

I mean, if you listen to Maxine Waters constantly whining and complaining about, “Why isn’t there impeachment yet! People want to know.” We’ve got a sound bite on this. Let me see if I can find the number real quick for Maxine Waters. I think. I very hurriedly ran through the cue sheet. Maybe it was yesterday. Yeah, I can’t find it. I thought we had a sound bite of Maxine Waters (it might have been from yesterday) just bellyaching, wondering where is the impeachment, and people demanding the impeachment.

Her constituents are frustrated there isn’t any impeachment. All this kind of hysteria is not the kind of thing associated with reality. And in terms of the American people, what we call the low-information voters or people that don’t pay as close attention to you or I, I don’t think this is working. Now, I also have an added element to my thought here, and that is, I’m not watching cable news every night now. I guarantee you if you are — if you watch cable news every night — you will think Trump’s getting roasted, you will think Trump’s getting destroyed, you will think it’s only a matter of time.

I don’t watch it anymore. We’re coming up on 10 or 11 days I haven’t seen it and it’s remarkable how it changes your mood. But I do find these stories — I read, hear about them — and they make a completely different impression on me when I simply inform myself through other sources, reading them, posts on the internet, or what have you. But as opposed to a steady hour by hour-by-hour diet of cable news. So those of you still watching cable news, absorbed in the media, might think I’m crazy when I say I think it’s beginning to unravel on ‘e. But I think it is, in real terms.

They’ve got no evidence on Russia. They’ve got no collusion evidence. They’ve got no crime. They don’t have any witnesses that have any. All of their witnesses that they’ve brought that up they hoped would drop bombshell testimony, haven’t. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now trying to find something, and they’ve actually been doing that the whole time. There hasn’t ever been any evidence.

There hasn’t been anything other than anonymous sources who have not produced any substantive evidence at all other than what they are telling reporters. There has never been any “there” there on any of this. And while we’ve known that, the fear has been, “Yeah, but people are watching this and they’re gonna believe it and they’re falling for it.” When you don’t watch the news every night, you don’t fall for it. When you don’t watch the news, a steady diet of it, you don’t have that impression.

And looking at the ratings, a lot of people are not watching this stuff anymore. Let’s say a cable show has an audience of two-and-a-half million people. Compared to the population that’s chump change. So to me, from the vantage point that I now occupy, just watching the mannerisms, the panic on the faces of people. I do see three hours of cable here ’cause it’s on two different channels when I’m on the air. I’m not listening to it, though, but I see it, therefore I see what they cover.

I see their facial expressions. I’ve even formed an opinion about CNN. I actually think, I gotta be very careful in describing this to get it as close to accurate in terms of representing my thoughts as I can. I’m not saying that the people on CNN don’t believe what they’re doing. I’m not saying that they’re not anti-Trumpers. But I think that CNN management has decreed all anti-Trump all the time. And I think editors, producers, and talent are having to work really hard at maintaining that. And the reason they’re doing this is because they have decided that’s what their audience wants.

Now, it’s a fine line, don’t misunderstand, but when you’re in the media and you do what you do, your shtick, your act or whatever it is, your real persona, if you’re doing it because you’re real, if you’re doing it because that’s who you are, fine and dandy. If you’re doing it because you’re tailoring it to what your audience wants, then you’re not being real.

And I think that partly defines CNN. I think there is a directive, there has been somewhere, that that network must be anti-Trump all the time. That is a programming decision they have made in the quest for an audience, much like the Obama Democrat Party decided to cast aside white working-class voters, not even appeal to ’em anymore, former Democrats, Reagan Democrats, white working class voter used to be the little guy that the Democrats claimed to represent and stand for. The Democrats, Obama in November of 2011 made it official, we are washing our hands of that group of voters and instead we’re gonna build a giant coalition of every minority group that there is and that we can create.

That was an artificial, strategic calculation of what they needed to do to win the election. They weren’t trying to devise a campaign that would reach as many people as possible. The Democrats were not engaging in any effort whatsoever to appeal to a cross section of America. They had decided that certain voters were of no value, that certain voters were of no interest. And so they publicly cast them aside and let everybody know that their future, the Democrat Party future, was tied up in a giant coalition of minority groups.

I think CNN has done the same thing here. CNN has decided somewhere at the upper tier of management that they don’t care about anybody who likes Trump. They’re not interested in it; they’re not gonna service them; they’ll have a couple commentators here on a panel now and then that are pro-Trump. But in terms of the identity of the network, it has been ordained and structured that CNN equals anti-Trump. That’s what the branding is. If you are an anti-Trump person, if you hate Trump, if you are hysterically unhinged anti-Trump, CNN wants you.

And they’re going out of their way to be the network of the unhinged, the network of any and all Trump opposition. That’s a business decision as well as an editorial position. But don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying the people on CNN are faking it. Most of them are journalists, and most of them hate Trump. But folks, when you have to come up with fake outrage every day, like fake outrage over this Trump tweet that is a typo, have you seen that?

Trump tweeted out something that had a typo in it. CNN went nuts on it for two hours. Panel after panel after panel, and you know what they concluded? Well, I’ll let you hear the sound bites. This is exactly what I’m talking about: making something out of nothing and turning it into something that will satisfy unhinged anti-Trumpists.

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