RUSH: Oh, oh, Ali? I need a guinea pig caller. I mean, it could be a real caller. I need one of you people on the phones to conduct a test, and we can only do this test live on the air. You know how I have complained loudly for years that when you are on the phone — particularly if you’re using a cell phone — that if you’re talking to me and I want to converse with you while you’re speaking, you can’t hear me?
Either that or all of you are rude and you just filibuster and keep talking. But I don’t think that’s it. You can’t hear me. It’s kind of like if you have a speakerphone in your house and whoever’s talking on the speaker, you try to talk to them, they can’t hear you. It’s all because of noise cancellation. It’s because of mix-minus and a number of other dazzling electronic theories that I need not mention here.
The bottom line is, callers can’t hear me, particularly when they’re on cell calls talking to me. So we are trying to fix that with some of our high-state equipment here. We need to test it. I tell you, it gets frustrating. You call here, you expect to have conversations, and people say things that inspire questions or comments from me and they can’t hear me unless I start yelling — and even then! Even then, they can’t. So we want to test it. We made some adjustments. We need to find out if that’s worked.
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RUSH: El Rushbo behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Okay, we’re going to do this phone test here. We have Heather here from Rock Hill, South Carolina. She has agreed to participate in the test. Heather, how are you doing?
CALLER: Home-school dittos, Rush. Just calling to let you know that we really appreciate your insight into President Trump’s administration, and we just appreciate, you know, all that you’ve done to combat the negative media that he’s getting as he’s trying to do the best for our country.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. You are very shrewd to recognize… In fact, after the president’s appearance on the program on Wednesday, I had an interesting note from… I don’t want to drop any names because people expect privacy when they get a hold of me. But somebody you would all know who is in the news business, said, “You know, it was a great interview you did with Trump, but you know why? It’s amazing to me…”
He’s talking to me. He’s sending a note. “It’s amazing to me the difference of people that talk to Trump who get him and understand him and the people who don’t, and he’s a completely different person when he’s talking with somebody he knows, understands what he’s about, who he is and what he’s talking about. He’s less prone to be provocative and that kind of thing.” You’re very shrewd to pick up on that.
CALLER: Yes, well, you said once that liberals take him literally and his supporters don’t, and I think that’s one of the first times that I really realized why voters understand him and the media doesn’t. Because we understand what he’s getting at and we’re not concerned with every little verbal mistake that he makes. So my husband and I were actually at the rally October 14th when he flipped the teleprompter away and said he wasn’t going to pay for it. We thought that was hysterical. But then, you know, the next day the media just went nuts. It’s just the way he is.
RUSH: Yeah, the media goes nuts all the time. Look, can you participate in a test with me? I thought you had been told about this but you weren’t, so I’m going to tell you now. Did you hear me before you called that I’m having trouble conversing with people that are talking with me on the air when they’re speaking that I can’t hear them — and when I talk to them, they can’t hear me or you can’t hear me? We tried to make some adjustments. So what I need you to do is start talking. I don’t care about what. You can count to 10, count to 20. Just keep talking and, at some point, I’m going to interrupt you and I need to find out if you can hear me when I do. Are you willing to participate in this test?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay. Start. Just start talking. You can praise me. You can praise Trump. You can count to 10, it doesn’t matter — and, at some point, I’m going to interrupt you and I need to know if you can hear me or not. No more complicated than that. Are you ready? Three… 2, 1, go!
CALLER: Okay, we’re also a home-schooling family and I wanted to let you know how much we appreciate your Rush Revere book series —
RUSH: Can you hear me interrupt you now?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You did. Did you hear everything that I said? Did you hear me say, “Can you hear me interrupt you now?”
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: All right! Well, I appreciate that, and I’m going to offer you a little prize for helping me work through this problem. Do you have…? Would you like a new iPhone?
CALLER: I would love one! (chuckles)
RUSH: What kind of iPhone do you have?
CALLER: I have an 8, but I have a teenager who has an older phone. So that might be a nice little upgrade for them.
RUSH: Oh cool. I’ll send you an iPhone X and I’m going to send you a 29-watt charger brick and a special cable. Do not use the charger and the cable in the box. The one I’m gonna send you will charge it twice as fast. It’s unlocked doesn’t have a SIM card in it. It will work on any carrier you’ve got. So if you can hang on and give Ali the address we should send this thing to you at, you might even have it tomorrow depending how fast we can get it out.
CALLER: Thank you so much, Rush.
RUSH: Why, you’re more than welcome.
CALLER: You’re great.
RUSH: I appreciate that and I appreciate you participating in the test. This is just one. We may have to do it again later in the program. But it’s been a big bugaboo to not be able to have the callers be able to hear me when they were speaking. Clearly, she was able to hear me. So whatever adjustments we made in there, at least in this instance, have been successful.
But, of course, testing must be thorough, and it must try to incorporate all the possibilities, characteristics, circumstances. So we’ll continue to conduct the test. But every further test will be one that I do not tell the caller I may be conducting a test. We’ll just actually do it in real-world conditions and see how things work out.
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RUSH: It is Open Line Friday. So here is Tom. He’s calling from Canada. Where are you in Canada, Tom?
CALLER: I’m in Kingston, Ontario, sir, just north of Watertown, New York.
RUSH: Ontario. Well, great to have you here. What’s up? What’s shaking?
CALLER: I just wanted to say I’ve not been to a movie theater in almost 20 years —
RUSH: Wow.
CALLER: — and I am looking forward to going to see Mr. D’Souza’s picture. It’s taken a lot to get me off this seat, but I think I will.
RUSH: You know, I haven’t been to a theater in about the same amount of time. It’s because I’m too famous. I can’t. That’s why… They send me DVDs that are captioned to watch in my home. But for you not to go for 20 years, are you’re down on movies or what?
CALLER: I’m down on Hollywood trying to tell me how I have to live.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: What lifestyles I have to enjoy, who I should embrace and who I should love.
RUSH: It also says up here that you wanted to offer to be a caller guinea pig.
CALLER: Well, I thought you might need an international call. So…
RUSH: That’s not a bad idea. If you’re just joining us, my friends, as you know I’ve had a very frustrating time trying to talk to people on the phones — particularly if you’re on cell phones. When they are speaking, they cannot hear me, which means we cannot converse. So I either have to shout (and that sometimes doesn’t even work) or I have to wait until I think they’re going to pause, take a breath and then start chiming in.
But it gets very frustrating. So we think we’ve made some adjustments here that have rectified the situation, and we did one test today where it seemed to work. So, Tom, what I need you to do is just start talking. It doesn’t matter what you say, and at some point where you don’t know, I’m going to interrupt and ask you a question or say something and I just need to know if you hear me. That’s all.
CALLER: That sounds good. All right. I’d like to discuss Mr. Trump’s Pennsylvania speech the other night. I watched it on the Internet and enjoyed it.
RUSH: What about the speech?
CALLER: It was very good.
RUSH: What about his speech?
CALLER: I’m sorry, I hear something trying to break up.
RUSH: Yeah, that was me. I said, “What about his speech?” Okay, so you’re not… Our test is not, I would have to say, successful with you. You did not —
CALLER: Actually, what I got is it almost sounded like a blip.
RUSH: Do you hear me now?
CALLER: It’s not working.
RUSH: How do you know it’s not working?
CALLER: Because I couldn’t hear you.
RUSH: How did you know I was trying to say something?
CALLER: Uh, because I heard kind of a couple blips.
RUSH: Do you hear me now? Do you hear me now? You’re right. It isn’t working. I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last ten seconds and while you’re talking you’re not hearing me. I appreciate your help. So we still have work to do on international calls.