RUSH: All right. I think I figured it out. Well, it’s not that big a deal to figure out, but I think I figured something very important out. And that is this ongoing business of Trump is a racist and the Republicans are racists and the Moon landing was racist, this focus on race, it’s new.

I mean, there’s always been the allegation running around, but this is new. This has reached a brand-new level and I think I figured out in part what’s going on. I’ll share it with you as the program unfolds today with examples of what I’m talking about in various Drive-By Media stories.

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RUSH: Now, the New York Times has gone all-in with the fact that the Moon landing promoted inequality and promoted racism. Because there weren’t any transgenders involved, there weren’t any women involved, because there weren’t any African-Americans involved we’re all feeling a very shameful kind of pride in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing. This is the New York Times. It’s not some fringe publication, although I think it is becoming a fringe publication in terms of who reads it and who believes what they see in it.

Now, let me move on to something here that has become front and center. Normally summertime, the time that we’re in now, is a slow period for political news. Congress is gone, president’s gone, president’s out on vacation doing things, generally takes some time off. You wouldn’t know by virtue of the news today.

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RUSH: Now, here is what I think — and I’m not gonna be able to complete this before the break, but I want to get started here. I was chatting with a good friend over the weekend. We were discussing the ongoing weirdness and oddity of so many conservative Never Trumpers and why they are. And we looked at a couple of things that — I’m not gonna mention any names of Never Trumpers because I don’t want to elevate them, but they’re starting to get in on this racism business too.

Conservative Never Trumpers are out there joining this refrain that Trump is a racist. So we were chatting about what’s really going on here, and we think we have figured out the game that is being played. It’s not just by the conservative Never Trumpers, however. It’s by the entire media, the leftist media and the Democrat Party.

Now, it starts with this. We have a two-party system. We have the Democrats and the Republicans. We have some pretender third parties like the Libertarians and the Reform Party, but even if they were to ever get somebody elected, they don’t have any kind of constituent base to form a coalition in Congress. So we basically have a two-party system.

However, we’ve got many more than just two political camps. Every political party, both these parties have derivatives. And this is the secret to what is happening here within the Democrat Party. What is their coalition? Their coalition is linked by one or two things they have in common: love of a gigantic, expansive welfare state government, and hatred of us.

So you’ve got the feminazis, you’ve got the LGBTQ crowd, you’ve got the climate change crowd, you’ve got all of these different coalitions. And they have different agendas. But their overlap is hatred for us and belief in a gigantic welfare state government.

Now, on the other side got the Republican Party. Within the Republican Party you’ve got the moderates, you’ve got the social liberals, fiscal conservatives, you have the straight-down-the-middle conservatives, got the evangelicals, religious right, this kind of thing. This is what I’m talking about when I mention the political camps that are within both parties.

But all of this still equals a two-party system. The presidential election every year is between Republican and Democrat. So they all have to divide themselves on one side or the other. All these different constituencies of both the Democrats and Republicans, at the end of the day, have to count themselves on one side or the other.

And when you do that, then you have with each element, both the Democrats and the Republicans, they both have their extremists. But the extremists’ place on each side is not the same. The extreme right wingers are really way off the map, and they have no support and nothing in common with the mainstream conservative or Republican Party. Not true on the left. The extreme leftists are now becoming the face of and the definition of the Democrat Party. And this is what the media has to cover up.

The media would like you to believe that the white supremacists and the Alt-Right, which is about 30 people, they want you to believe that that is the base for Donald Trump, while trying to tell you that Cortez and her Squad and Antifa and Black Lives Matter are nowhere near defining the Democrat Party. But it’s the exact opposite. The extremists on the left are becoming the face of the Democrat Party.

The illustration for this would be that just five years ago, ten years ago Nancy Pelosi was seen as the classic extreme, card-carrying leftist liberal. She was the embodiment of the far left. Today Nancy Pelosi is being positioned by the media as a moderate centrist. She’s being positioned as the power behind your old Democrat Party, your old standard Democrat Party which was not made up of extremists and leftists.

Well, Pelosi hasn’t changed. She’s still the fringe leftist that she’s always been. She’s just being portrayed as not that because there are people said to be further left than she is now, like The Squad; so they pitch The Squad versus Pelosi or Antifa or Black Lives Matter. But those people are taking over the Democrat Party.

The so-called white nationalists, I don’t even know any. The so-called white nationalists, white supremacists, I don’t even know any. Nobody I know on the Republican side even knows these people. They’re so small, they’re so fringe. But the media is trying to say that they are the Republican Party and that they are Trump’s base and that Trump is one of them. Whereas Pelosi is this moderate, harmless, standard, old-fashioned Democrat.

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RUSH: Okay. So resuming where I left off — and those of you on hold, please stay. We’ve got somebody on hold who just received their Boll & Branch Sheets, and they want to open the package while talking to me to tell me what she thinks of them as she opens them. So we’ve got that. Lots of stuff coming up.

RUSH: So on our side, as I just explained, we have Trump’s base. Trump’s base loves him no matter what he does. It’s not a complaint. Don’t misunderstand. It’s an observation. If you add to Trump’s base, you have traditional conservatives, and you’ve got some mainstream/center-right Republicans who are not thrilled with Trump. And some of them might disagree with him on a number of things like the tariffs, the spending, the debt. There are a lot of mainstream Republicans who don’t like this blowing up of the world order that we had that Trump has done, which I have previously explained to you.

Trump’s getting rid of this idea that the United States is the world’s piggy bank, getting rid of the idea that as the lone superpower of the world we deserve to take it on the chin now and then because that’s part of the price we have to pay. Trump’s throwing all that aside, getting rid of all of that. We’re not gonna become the world’s piggy bank anymore, and we’re not gonna do things not in our interests. And we’re not gonna let people who are supposedly our allies rip us to shreds and undermine us simply because that’s what superpowers have to do.

We’re gonna be great. We’re gonna stand up for greatness. We want everybody else to follow our lead. Now, within the mainstream the Republican Party, some people don’t like that. I’m talking about… You know, you’ve got the Republicans and Democrats; then you got various camps within each. So you’ve got Trump’s base, you’ve got the mainstream Republicans who they support him, but they’re not thrilled with him for all these reasons. They don’t like the tweets. They don’t like the language. They don’t like the…

But they hate — and they are petrified of — the left. But they’re worried. They’re worried about lack of spending restraint. They’re worried about the tariffs and all of that. But they realize that Trump’s presidency is, overall, a net plus. Now, this incorporates most of the Republican Party. If you look at Trump’s approval rating within the Republican Party, he’s always over 90%. But within that approval rating, what I’m saying is, there’s some people that are not thrilled with Trump like Trump’s base is. They realize the alternative to Hillary Clinton or any of these Democrat nominees is simply unacceptable.

Now, together, these groups make up the majority of the Republican side. Then there are two smaller groups. You have the Never Trump faction (the conservative literature crowd) which comprises the neocons who loved the Bush administration, because they loved Bush going to war in the Middle East. They loved the idea of that because they believed they were bringing democracy to all the countries. What they did was democratize Islam! (laughing) The big mistake of the Bush administration was to democratize Islam. We brought democracy to Islam. Meaning that when it gets elected like in Iraq, that it is validated!

These people love that, but we don’t. But the Never Trumpers, the neocons, they loved it. And then there are the George Will types, I call ’em, who just hate Trump for everything and for any reason on principle. They see Trump as incompetent, a boob. They see him as corrupt. Combined with this is this Never Trump factions nose is permanently out of joint because these are the people that thought they ran everything. They thought they ran the Republican Party and the conservative movement from Bush 41 all the way through Obama, and now they are irrelevant. And they are having a devil of a time dealing with the fact that they used to think they were it, to now realizing they’re irrelevant. Stick with me on this, folks, ’cause this is fascinating stuff.

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RUSH: Okay. So what has happened here is that the Never Trumpers and the neocon coalition of the Republican Party — who think they ran the party and everything from Bush 41 all the way through Obama — have now joined forces with the Democrats to get Trump. It is how they are going to get Trump or trying to that we’ve figured out here.

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RUSH: Okay. So continuing here my thought — I’m sorry I didn’t plan this, to do it all at once, but I wasn’t gonna be able to anyway with commercial breaks.

Basically to summarize, two political parties. Within each party are many factions, many different camps. And the extremes – both camps, both Republicans and Democrats, have extremes. The mainstream media is attempting to make the Alt-Right and the white nationalist, white supremacists appear to be the mainstream of the Republican Party and that they are Donald Trump’s base.

They are not. There are so few of them. I don’t even know any of these people. I don’t know anybody who does know these people. They are so few in number, they would not represent more than an asterisk if they were ever polled. But the media is trying to portray them as the identity, the main identity of the Republican Party, the white supremacists, the white nationalists, that’s what they want people believe is the Trump base.

On the left side, on the Democrat side, their extremists are the face of the party, and this is what Trump is trying to point out and illustrate. Not just The Squad. Every damn one of them. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, this is the mainstream of the Democrat Party. But the media is trying to hide that. And the media is trying to make it look like Pelosi is the mainstream of the party, and she’s just standard, ordinary, everyday Democrat.

Now, it used to be Nancy Pelosi was the extremist of the Democrat Party. She was the face. She and Schumer and all of her leadership people in the House and Senate, they were thought to be — the Obamas — they were the extremist leftists. But now they’re being portrayed as moderates. They’re being portrayed as standard, ordinary Democrats, and it’s The Squad and some of these other people who are the malcontents. The media is trying to hide the fact that the extremists on the left are the mainstream.

Now, where this comes into play is this. The media and the Democrats are not the only people portraying Pelosi and Schumer and Biden and the Clintons as standard, mainstream Democrats. The Never Trumpers have joined that crowd. The Never Trumpers, the Republicans who thought they ran the party, from Bush 41 all the way through Obama, the neocons, the people that thought they defined conservatism, they have been shown to be irrelevant.

Their noses are out of joint. The things they supposedly stood for and represented obviously are not the primary identity of the Republican Party. And so they have joined forces with the left. They’re prepared to vote for Hillary now, or were. And they’re joining the Pelosi-Schumer-Biden crowd in their criticism of Trump!

So they’re positioning Pelosi and Schumer and all that crowd, Biden, as the mainstream, harmless, standard issue, good, old-fashioned Democrats, even though she’s not a moderate, she’s not the mainstream of the party anymore. And the media-Democrat complex and the Never Trumpers have now decided to try to portray the fringe, really fringe extreme right wingers of which there are so few you couldn’t put them all in a phone booth, the Never Trumpers have joined the media in trying to portray that as the mainstream the Republican Party united under Donald Trump.

Now, those of us, you and me, who actually are the mainstream of the Republican Party have now been marginalized and dismissed as a bunch of schemers secretly trying to rationalize racism. And that’s what all of this is. The white nationalists, the white racists said to be the mainstream of the party are now defining it as nationalist racism, and you and I, the mainstream of this party, the mainstream conservatives are being marginalized and said to be part of this gigantic amalgamation.

It is really frustrating because this is the narrative, folks, that we’re gonna be hearing from here on out. From here to the election, this is the narrative. And I’m taking the time here to explain it to you in hopes that you’ll keep it in mind as you digest news and Never Trump criticism in the days and months going forward.

You can find various Never Trumpers — I’m not gonna mention any names ’cause I don’t want to publicize these people and I don’t want to elevate them, but Never Trumpers, former conservatives at conservative publications, websites, are now writing of the Republican Party as though it is a white nationalist party, as though it’s a white racism party, with Trump as the leader, ’cause their noses are out of joint because they have discovered they’re not the face of the party, they don’t run it. Trump came in and took it away from ’em.

They’re ticked off! And they express their anger in this, “I don’t like his mannerisms. I don’t like his lack of sophistication. I don’t like his lack of civility” and in a way of elevating themselves as all of that, they are essentially joining the left-wing criticism of us — this is the thing. It’s not just of Trump. They’re saying of us, mainstream Republicans.

They’re joining the Democrats now in this cacophony of allegation that the Republican Party has become white nationalist racists, and that’s why they can no longer be a part of it and cannot be a part of it as long as Trump leads it. It’s so full of bunk I don’t know how to express it beyond saying that. It is a gigantic, concocted narrative.

And that’s why they don’t let go of this charge that Trump is a racist and all of his supporters are racists because you’ve got the Democrat faction now made up of Never Trumpers who are prepared to vote for Joe Biden simply because they hate Donald Trump because Donald Trump took away what they thought was theirs and has rendered them irrelevant in the process.

It’s really maddening, it’s frustrating to have these people who always portrayed themselves and thought of themselves as the intellectual base, the intellectual strength, the intellectual energy that defined conservatism and kept it alive within the Republican Party. That’s what they claimed to be doing. They wanted your donations to enable their work to continue so they could continue to make sure that conservatism was part of the Republican Party, right?

You go on the cruises, you would contribute every year when they would send you the notes that their magazine’s about to go broke or that their website’s about to go broke without your donation, they were there to make sure conservatism stayed in the Republican Party. Those people have now joined with the left to go after Donald Trump as a white nationalist racist.

And then the media, the media is gonna love this. These people are gonna become, and already have become, some of the favorite sources. I mean, you have a got these conservative intellectuals like — pick your name — George Will, Bill Kristol, these guys are gonna quoted, they’re gonna be cited, they’re gonna be invited on TV as guests to explain how the Republican Party’s been taken over by white nationalists and racists and so forth.

They may not use the actual terms but they will be answering questions with those terms in them and they’ll be wringing their hands and be so sad, so filled with regret that this has happened, it’s so unfortunate, and in the process it will be contributing to the construct of the media-Democrat complex that Donald Trump and the mainstream Republican Party is now white nationalist and racist.

As I say, it’s a frustrating thing. But, you know, a friend of mine said over the weekend — it’s absolutely true — you, me, everybody you know, if we were to be told tomorrow morning when we woke up that the country is now gonna be run by Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, and Thomas Sowell, we would be thrilled. We would be standing up and applauding. We would be saying, “Where do we sign up?” It isn’t about race! It never has been about race with us mainstream Republicans. It isn’t about race with Trump.

It’s about American greatness. It’s about American fealty to our founding. It’s about America remaining what it was founded to be. It’s about loving the country and loving everybody in it and wanting everybody in it to be the best they can be. It’s about loving the country and loving everybody in it so that people born here or who immigrate here legally will continue to be able to access the unique opportunity human beings in this country have to pursue their dreams and their ambition.

That’s what we want. There’s no racial component to this. And I’m sure you could think of additional names to Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, and Clarence Thomas. I’m not kidding. If I woke up tomorrow and found out they are running the country, one’s over at the court, one’s in the White House, and one’s running Congress, I would be in nirvana. And if Jeane Kirkpatrick were still alive, throw her in there.

There’s no sexism, there’s no misogyny, there’s no racism. There’s just on our side a pursuit of the best. We live in the best country. We want the best people in positions of leadership. We want the smartest. We want the best. We want this country to be filled with people who appreciate and revere its history and recognize the opportunities that everybody living here has.

We want people who will explain the opportunities, expand upon them, not run them down, not rip them to shreds. Stop and think of this. The Democrat Party, the American left, has spent the last two generations doing what? Well, among many things they’ve been trying to raise the self-esteem of our children, right? “The self-esteem of our children is crucial, Mr. Limbaugh. We have too many bullies, too much unfairness,” and so we’ve been out there telling these kids, “You’re wonderful, little Johnny,” when little Johnny hadn’t done anything yet to be wonderful.

Little Johnny’s team can’t win a game so we don’t keep score for little Johnny’s team. Little Johnny can’t pass the exam to join the fire department, so we lower the standards so little Johnny can. All to raise little Johnny’s self-esteem. Then what happens? After we spend two generations raising all these people’s self-esteem, the same people come long and tell them their country sucks and that they have no hope and that they have no chance in this country.

This country’s filled with racists and bigots and sexists and homophobes and all that. Little incongruous, if you ask me. Building up everybody’s self-esteem, “You’re so wonderful. You’re the best. You’re just wonderful. There’s nobody like you.” And we come along and then what do we tell them they’re up against? Hopelessness ’cause they live in a hellhole.

This raises some stuff. I’ve about reached my limit in patience with it. It’s been part of the daily fabric of the Democrat Party for as long as I’ve been alive. I would think by now people would have just learned to ignore it because it’s so commonly alleged. But then you have to remember that there’s a new generation of people born every 20 years, every 20, 25 years, and they’ve not heard it. To them it’s brand-new. They’re in their teens or twenties, it’s something brand-new to them.

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RUSH: Owings Mills, Maryland. This is Darren. Great to have you. You’re up first today, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s great to talk to you once again. You know, the whole word “racist” or “racism,” it’s being overused and it’s worn out. It’s like a dirty baseball that’s being constantly thrown around, and it’s being done out of desperation. Look, Rush, I’m a black American, and I’m called racist. I’m called racist because of my conservative ideas, my conservative principles. I have… The majority of the time, I have whites calling me racist and then I have blacks calling me Uncle Tom.

But the thing is that racism has really lost its whole purpose, and all of them think that racism or being a racist has something to do with disagreeing with someone of the opposite color or whatever the case may be. And it has everything to do… Racism, that if you believe your race is more superior than other race, and you believe that you should control that race — just like with slavery — then that is the proper definition of being a racist or racism. It’s not the fact of being a white person disagreeing with a black person’s philosophy or principle or vice-versa.

RUSH: That’s very shrewd of it because that’s exactly what racism has become. Disagreeing with a women is sexism — a woman in politics. Disagreeing with an African-American or a person or color, a minority? That’s racism. That’s exactly what it has become, and it really was amplified during the Obama administration.

CALLER: Absolutely!

RUSH: Obama knew it; he used it; he capitalized on it; he encouraged it. It was divisive as it can be, and we’re still suffering from it.

CALLER: You know, and I wanted to say this: I think the reason why racism is constantly being used is because there is a fear of name-calling. There is a fear of being called prejudiced. There is a fear of being called bigoted, even though you’re not. But the mere fact of someone throwing that word at you or throwing the word of being intolerant or homophobic, people cringe and they’re (sputtering), “I — I — I don’t want you to tell me that! I don’t want you to say that I am! I’ll… I’ll do whatever you need, just don’t call me these words.”

And President Trump, I love him. I love him. And what he’s doing is he’s using it on them. “If you’re gonna call me racist, I’m gonna call you racist, and we can go back and forth with this. We can play this game.” What he’s doing with The Squad, it’s absolutely brilliant. I love him. I was the first one to say, “Listen,” when he’s coming out of the escalator, “that man’s gonna be elected,” and he’s gonna surpass in 2020 brilliantly. So I do appreciate all that you’ve done, and I appreciate all that the president is continuously doing. He’s just a fantastic guy.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you called, Darren. Thank you very much. You’re right on the money. Racism has become something else, though, now too. By the way, I wish he was right. My sentiment is — and I’m sure those of you who are my age, you’ve heard it your whole life. But he’s right about something. When somebody calls you that, you don’t want to be called that. I remember the first time it happened to me after this program began. This is 30-plus years ago. I didn’t have near the experience then with any of this that I have now.

And there was palpable fear among the accusation partners. “Oh, my God! You can’t let that stand. If that sticks, we’re done! If they portray you as a race, it’s over!” They were right. Once the label sticks to you… It has been used so effectively against Republican politicians. They will not criticize. They wouldn’t criticize Obama. They won’t criticize the Congressional Black Caucasians. They won’t criticize Black Lives Matter. They want everybody to think they marched in Selma along with all the others, because they don’t want to go there. They don’t want to have to try to defend themselves again it.

Now, I no longer… (sigh) It doesn’t register with me, but I’m different. I’m fortunate. I’ve got an audience of multiple millions of people who know that it isn’t true. Most people don’t have that. You got your inner circle. You’ve got your friends and so forth. But those of you who I depend on — and I don’t say that lightly — for the success of this program, you know the truth. So the allegation bounces off. Where it does have effect is on people that don’t listen to the program. But, gee, it’s about time! (sigh) It’s worn out, don’t you think?

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RUSH: Adam Schiff, Pencil Neck “Trump has decided racism is good politics.” President Trump’s “go back” remark in the workplace might be illegal, says the Associated Press. Racism is good politics. I’m telling you, this is an allegation and a strategy launched by the Democrats. And they’re all falling in line now with the media taking a lead.