BRETT: The American people always get it right in the end. They do. It’s a fact. And you may be concerned about the election results back from 2020, but the votes that really, really, really matter are the census numbers we’re seeing unfold. And there are no progressives who are happy, no liberals who are happy with these Census Bureau numbers that have come out in the last 24 hours.
Welcome to the program. I am thrilled to be here today as your guide host from beautiful Charlotte in the Queen City. Our telephone number as always here on the Rush Limbaugh Show is 800-282-2882. That’s 800-282-2882. And be sure to check out RushLimbaugh.com. Here’s the key takeaway — and you’ve been watching the coverage of this across the last 24/36 hours as this information has been moving out from the Census Bureau, the census reporting and the implications for the states.
Six states stand to gain House seats. Seven states are going to lose seats. This is a big deal because, as Rush said so many times behind this Golden EIB Microphone, the American people live as conservatives. The American people are a conservative people. Even if you vote Democrat, at your core level if you go down on the issues, you’re a conservative person by and large.
That group of Bernie Sanders, AOC, super-leftist California and New York coastal liberals is not a huge number. It’s really not. They occupy large states, they control large states, but they are not in the majority. “California and New York are among the states likely to lose House seats in census data. Florida and Texas are set to gain.” That’s the reporting out of Fox.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune notes that “Minnesota won’t lose eighth congressional seats Census Bureau rules.” Boy, that’s… Whew! That’s a practical victory, isn’t it? California’s gonna lose a congressional seat. I’ll give you some great analysis on that coming up. But it when you look at the states that are now adding, that are now the winners — Texas, Florida, Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina, along with Oregon — but not the Portland part of Oregon.
The regular part of Oregon. They are the winners. They’re gonna be adding seats. The losers, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Now, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania — and I know Mike DeWine is the governor in Ohio, but let’s be honest. These are states that are held hostage along with California by a huge pension system, by an out-of-control bureaucracy.
These are states that, by and large, embraced full lockdowns. West Virginia’s been experiencing a decades-long exodus of residents. And that has caused them to lose a congressional seat, which is tricky because their congressional seats are… I believe it’s three Republicans and it will become two Republicans.
But Rush knew this. He predicted this. He talked about all of this — and in fact, what do you say we go back to when Rush Limbaugh talked about one particularly high-profile departure from the state of New York to Florida, President Trump.
RUSH: So I heard, like everybody else did, the tweet from President Trump last night that he was leaving New York, that he was making it official; he was going to relocate and establish — in fact, he’s already done it. His residence will be right here in Palm Beach.
And so the speculation began. He was very open about why. He said, “Look, I don’t like the way I’m being treated here.” You know, the people in New York, everybody that’s ripping him used to beg him for money, used to come by seeking his endorsement, wanted to be on his TV shows. And then he came out as a Republican and all of that ended.
I was playing golf with Trump at his golf course back — oh, I don’t know — 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And he’s asking me, “Why did you leave? What did you really leave New York? ‘Cause, you know, Rush, I’m hearing more and more people say they gotta get out.
“They gotta get out,” and I told him exactly what I told you. He said, “It’s incredible. Why are they hassling you like that?” “They’re not hassling me. They don’t like losing the money. They can’t stand losing the money, and they’re just trying to get as much of it as they can after you leave.”
He said, “I’m thinking about it. But I don’t know how I can. Everything I have is in New York. It’s what I do. I don’t know how to leave. More and more people are talking about it.” This is 10 or 15 years ago. There is an exodus, and it’s not just from New York. It’s from other high-tax states. State taxes are now much higher for people in these high-tax blue states — and look at what they’re getting for it.
I mean, the cities, in large part, are cesspools, and the income gap, the divide between haves and have-nots — middle class/rich, middle class/poor — is widening. I mean, everywhere you look, the evidence of out-of-control liberalism, unchecked liberalism is creating misery and disaster — and when people do have the ability to flee it, they do.
The problem, as you know, is that when liberals flee, they take all the crap they believe with them to wherever their new location is, and they start corrupting that place. They start polluting that place with their liberalism. So liberalism travels. So I understand the president leaving. Of course, when I left, New York state authorities were mean and vicious and mocking.
Grab audio sound bite number 2. In fact, I actually left New York in 1997. But in 2009, in an effort to beat these endless audits, I sold a condo. I had a condo there, which I loved. I announced starting in 2009, “I’m selling that condo, and I am never doing another day’s work in New York,” because the deal I have with New York tax authorities is I owe them a minimum flat amount — and you wouldn’t believe how much this is.
If I show up and do this radio program in New York for three hours, one day, I owe them more money than what the average mean national income in this country is. So I don’t go. It’s not the money; it’s the principle of the thing. And that was 2009 when I sold the condo, because selling the condo, I thought, “This will convince them. I’ve got no place to stay there.” Didn’t work. “You could be hiding out in a hotel under an assumed name,” they said. Anyway, here’s my announcement. March 30th, 2009.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I told Mayor Bloomberg: I’ll be the first to lead the way. You know, this is just… I’ll sell my apartment. I’ll sell my condominium. I’m going to get out of there totally, ’cause this is just absurd, and it’s ridiculous — and it isn’t going to work. It’s punishing the achievers for the mistakes and the lack of discipline on the part of a bunch of corrupt politicians that have run that city and state into the ground for I don’t know how many years — and I, for one, am not going to take the blame for it.
RUSH: Okay, so, when I made the announcement official… See, the fact that I had moved beginning in 1997 was kind of under the radar. I didn’t make a big deal about it. But I did when I announced selling the condo and getting out of there, and here’s the governor at the time. David Paterson held a press conference!
PATERSON: If I knew that would be the result, I would have thought about the taxes earlier.
RUSH: “If we could’a gotten rid of Limbaugh sooner, I would’a raised taxes sooner.” Well, this is what Governor Cuomo says. When Trump announces that he’s leaving, “Good riddance. It isn’t like Mr. Trump paid taxes here anyway. He’s all yours, Florida.” So you see, that’s all you are to them.
You’re just taxpayers. To liberal politicians, that’s all you are. You’re taxpayers and you’re voters every two or four years. That’s all that you matter to them. So I just want to let you know, folks, my name’s not any of these stories, but I was the beginning of the exodus.
BRETT: And you listen to what Rush just said there. “You’re just taxpayers. To liberal politicians, that’s all you are. You’re taxpayers and you’re voters every two or four years. That’s all that you matter to them.” That’s it. That’s the sum total of your value, and so as a consequence, what have we seen take place over the last…
Well, decade, right, ’cause you get the census every 10 years, but just in the last year during the covid lockdown you saw people saying, “You know what? I gotta get out. I gotta get out of New York I gotta get out of Illinois. I gotta get out of New Jersey. I gotta get out of Michigan and Ohio. I’ve gotta get out of California.” I was one of those people. I personally was one of those people who fled Southern California.
I was south of Southern California. I fled to Charlotte, to the Carolinas. And what I notice being here is that the government… It’s not perfect. Government is a pain everywhere. But at least they’re not actively trying to destroy you on a daily basis. Well, save the lockdown types like Governor Roy Cooper in North Carolina. But they’re not actively attempting to destroy you and preventing you from keeping money that you have earned.
The wrong lesson is gonna be listened after this, by the way. The absolute wrong lesson. The lesson will be, “You see? We need to get more aggressive in collecting tax dollars.” Like David Patterson alluded to in the Rush clip saying, “Oh, If I’d known that by raising taxes could have gotten rid of him sooner, I would have done it.”
Right now in Andrew Cuomo’s state of New York, they’re sitting there looking at this brand-new tax bill that they’ve put out there to really soak the rich, to really take the rich people down and the middle-class people down and to show ’em who did he see boss. That’s the lesson that’s going to mislearned. It’s gonna be the wrong lesson, and they’re gonna continue to raise taxes.
It’s just like whenever you see a national election go badly for the Democrats; they think their message didn’t get out. No, the message got out perfectly fine. It was rejected. High taxes, regulation, dangerous streets, schools you don’t want to send your kids to, places you don’t want to spend any time in because they are lawless. Those are the reasons why people leave. Those are the reasons why people leave, and the American people got it right.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BRETT: The reality is what we’re seeing from these blue states and these blue cities inside these blue states — or blue cities inside of red states — is we’re seeing that liberals are just sad. They are sad. They want desperately, desperately to have this utopian vision of everybody just living happily and getting along and all that sort of stuff. They want that to work out desperately. But the reality is these high-tax cities, they’ve been created by the liberals.
RUSH: More than 41% of New Yorkers say they can’t afford to live in the city and they plan to leave, and then there is an accompanying list of the fastest shrinking cities in the country. And you know what’s happening here. A bunch of people are fleeing cities that they have participated in creating, the political circumstances. They’ve voted for a bunch of libs, raised taxes and choked off economic growth. They’ve raised real estate prices.
And now they say they gotta leave, and they leave, and they go to other states — presumably no-income-tax states — and they bring with them the same destructive political ideas and they start electing the same people that destroyed the places that they’re leaving. Forty-one percent say they can’t afford to live in New York City and plan to leave. It’s probably not that high that will actually move out of there, but what if it was?
BRETT: “What if it was?” Think about the constraints of living in New York. I’ve lived in New York. I’ve lived on the West Coast. You now live, as I mentioned earlier, in the Carolinas. Here’s the reality of things: You have incredible confiscatory tax rates. You have difficulty when it comes to starting a business, maintaining a business because of the insane regulation that’s been put into place.
When there are opportunities for economic growth, you have Congressmembers like AOC sinking the Amazon 2 headquarters that was gonna go on Long Island City. That wasn’t just gonna create jobs for people that worked at Amazon, but was gonna create 50,000 jobs in an ancillary way. And she comes in and says, “Well, no. That’s not a good company. That’s not a good job. We don’t want that. And then, presto chango, what happened?
The coronavirus, the covid crisis comes through. And now suddenly you have millions of people who have been sent to work from home — the remote workers, the remote workers. Some of the folks are described as, according to TheStreet.com, “digital nomads.” These are people who say, “You know what? There goes a group of people leaving New York City for greener pastures.
“Now I can leave New York City for greener pastures, work from my home out in a rural part of New Jersey or Connecticut or Pennsylvania or even into South Carolina or Georgia. I can relocate and continue to do the job. I don’t have to deal with the insanity of mis-, mal-, and nonfeasance on the streets of New York,” where you see crime at an epidemic rate.
You have the wholesale subsidization of lunatic policies brought to you by comrade Bill de Blasio and the governor, Andrew Cuomo. You see these people taking great joy at the notion of being liberated and still being able to collect that salary. “I’m making New York money, but I’m doing the job out in a rural part of Virginia.
“I’ve got it made! I’ve got it made.” These cities are amazing things. New York in its prime — New York in the time of Rudy Giuliani as mayor — was an incredible place to live. I know because I was there at that time. It was an incredible place to live. That city was exploding with opportunity. Why? Because you had policing.
You had people keeping public safety a top issue. You had a mayor who was interested in bringing business in. You had a fundamental transformation of Times Square. What was once upon a time of hotbed of porno theaters and derelicts became a crown jewel that the world flocked to be a part of. And even in the wake of the September 11th attacks, even in the wake of that, the city came back strong.
It wasn’t until you ended up with full-blown socialism taking over that city and a decision to say, “We’re gonna normalize criminality. We’re going to subsidize criminality. We’re not going to arrest perpetrators who go out and commit minor crime, serious crime, any crime.” That’s when it began to spin out of control. You compound that with the coronavirus pandemic, the hopelessness and the exodus from the city out to brighter pastures.
It’s really very sad to see that city in decay, but it’s the same story in city after city. It was just a few weeks ago we talked about Lady Gaga’s dog walker getting shot walking her dogs in a nice part of West Hollywood in Los Angeles, a place with $2 million mansions, $3 million mansions, $5 million mansions. The police have been made the enemy. Criminals have been the recipients of excuse-making.
And politicians stand there and say, “The answer is more taxation, more regulation, and less law enforcement.” So why do people leave these glittering cities? Why do they head out to a place that’s got greater opportunity, a better quality of life, better schools, a functioning government, the ability to buy a home and live in a home in a beautiful neighborhood for what it costs for a one-bedroom apartment in one of these big city?
Oh, I don’t know. What would motivate them to do that? What would drive them to do that? Quality of life’s an important thing. Think about any job you’ve ever taken. One of the main concerns was how much you were gonna get paid, and what was your quality of life going to be. That’s a universal sentiment. When people were presented with the opportunity to flee, they fled.
Now there’s a challenge to make sure they don’t bring with them their Big Government, socialistic, ever-expanding taxing and regulating norms that they had in these blue states, these blue cities. There’s a reason people left New York. They didn’t want to bring… The people that they are moving toward don’t want them bringing those New York City habits into their communities. Money will flow to the place it’s respected. Money is mobile.
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BRETT: Let me grab a call from Bill in Windsor, New York, first up on the program. Bill, welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hi, Brett. Thank you for taking my call.
BRETT: Thank you.
CALLER: You’re doing a great job. You can’t fill Rush’s shoes, obviously. He was one of the greatest patriots this country ever had.
BRETT: Amen.
CALLER: And what you were just talking about, I was talking with your producer earlier. We are literally fleeing upstate New York. We’ve lived here all our lives. We love the area. And about three years ago our four years ago, the governor told us we didn’t belong in his state because we were pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-traditional marriage. My wife and I are in our early sixties. We’re not quite ready to retire, and we feel compelled now… We just sold our house — we got a contract on it — with heavy hearts.
BRETT: Yes, sir.
CALLER: We are looking into another state, a southern state, a red state to get out of this area.
BRETT: If I may ask you, what line of work are you in?
CALLER: I work in health care, physical therapy.
BRETT: Health care. So you’re somebody who is a skilled practitioner providing a service to the residents, doing your best work, and you love where you are. But you’re being driven out by the political class in Albany that is telling you that you are not welcome, you are not wanted — and as far as they’re concerned, just leave your tax dollars there on the table and we’ll collect it?
CALLER: That’s exactly right.
BRETT: Yeah.
CALLER: And we’re very afraid of… We have chosen… My wife and I have chosen at this time not to get this vaccine because of the FDA’s non-approval as of this point, and we can see what’s coming down the line with these passports, and I think ultimately, they’re gonna try to do what they do: Black against white, gay against straight, and they’re gonna try to get vaxxers against nonvaxxers, and we don’t want to be pariah, and we don’t want to be, you know, Nazi Germany. Yeah.
BRETT: Look, I understand that, and I appreciate you sharing your story because it’s illustrative of so many millions of other people who have already moved and are looking to move, Bill. I appreciate you being out there. All the best to you and your wife. And good luck.
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BRETT: Al from Lansing, Michigan. Al, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show. I’m Brett Winterble.
CALLER: Hello.
BRETT: Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hello?
BRETT: How are you?
CALLER: Hi. How are you doing?
BRETT: Doing well.
CALLER: (silence)
BRETT: What’s on your mind?
CALLER: Well, what’s on my mind is I live in a state where they’re literally trying to destroy us yet I plan on staying here for the rest of my life fighting against their crap.
BRETT: That’s awesome! That’s awesome. Now, you’re in Michigan, which is, what, that’s a split government, right, because you have Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat at the top of the government and then you’ve got Republicans controlling things in the legislature, correct?
CALLER: Well, see, part of the problem is we have this attorney general, Nessel.
BRETT: Nessel, yeah.
CALLER: And we have this Health and Human Services Department lady. I don’t know what her name is. But, man, they keep on closing us down. “Oh, it’s getting worse and worse.” No, it’s not! I live here. I see it all around. It isn’t getting worse. They’re lying about it. Okay? (laughing) This is a giant-sized crock. What they’re trying to do is keep us scared because they don’t want anybody to sign petition against Whitmer to get her recalled or impeached.
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: That’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to keep everybody locked away so they can’t go out and have petitions signed.
BRETT: Sure. Here’s the thing. I respect your desire to stay and fight this fight. You have got a very good shot at fighting that fight in a place like Michigan. That is a place that understands the importance of what the specialness of Michigan is, right? It’s a beautiful state. You’ve got hardworking people, and people — by and large — have a strong independence streak there. People want to be left to their own devices.
And here you come with these directives and diktats coming in from Lansing telling you how you gotta live your life, telling you what you have to do. I think it’s a real opportunity for that state to say to Gretchen Whitmer or to say to Attorney General Nessel, “No, you’re done. You’re out. We’re gonna vote you out. We don’t want you in here handing down these diktats — and, oh, by the way, are you ever gonna get the information on those confidentiality agreements as people left the jobs there in the health sector to not give up the numbers of people in nursing homes, et cetera?”
CALLER: It’s ridiculous. These people need to be held accountable, all right?
BRETT: Yes.
CALLER: Michigan is a great state.
BRETT: It is.
CALLER: We love this state. I grew up here. My wife grew up here. We’ve actually been all over the country and seen other places.
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: Don’t get me wrong, we love other places, too, but we love Michigan the best.
BRETT: I respect that.
CALLER: There’s no way we’re gonna allow some idiot like Gretchen Whitmer to destroy this state where we group in and a state where our children live! I’m sorry, you take a look at what’s happened in this state. We literally saved the world during World War II because of the auto companies.
BRETT: Amen.
CALLER: We changed everything over to war machines.
BRETT: Right.
CALLER: We saved the world, and now we’re getting stomped for it?
BRETT: The Arsenal of Democracy. You’re a hundred percent right, Al, and I would encourage to you fight for your state. I would encourage you to do the sort of things that require organization, organizing people, getting people committed to try to liberate Michigan. It’s not just people moving around the country to other places, other states, other cities, other communities.
There are people that want to stay in a place, and they want to fight. You’re seeing it take place in California with the attempted recall of Gavin Newsom. That thing is going to the ballot. That’s the second time in 20 years you’ve seen somebody get recalled in the state of California, potentially, and believe you me he is getting that message loud and clear. Now we have to see what the people are able to pull off. That’s a big part of the story.
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BRETT: Let me get Robert in Lively Grove, Illinois, quickly. Robert, welcome to the program. What’s on your mind?
CALLER: Yes. I’m a resident of Illinois, and this is where we live under a state of Chicago.
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: Earlier you were talking about the population law in Illinois.
BRETT: Yes.
CALLER: We might lose like 50,000 people a year.
BRETT: Sure.
CALLER: That’s the net. We need to remember, the people… There are thousands moving in and thousands moving out. The people that move out of the state, that I’ve observed, are generally the retired people with the large nest egg —
BRETT: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: — or, like my nephews, the ones who have a college education with the potential for a high income.
BRETT: Right.
CALLER: The people moving in are generally just high school educated or less and of the immigrant category.
BRETT: Right.
CALLER: Keep in mind the people I meet, the high school-educated people I meet —
BRETT: Yes, sir.
CALLER: — in church, they are definitely the type of immigrant we want. But still, it’s an economic death spiral!
BRETT: Well, let me jump in there very quickly because I’m up against it on the clock. The reality is this is not happening in a vacuum, and when we’ve got a border crisis at the southern border and you got population shifts happening…
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BRETT: Greg in Augusta, Georgia, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
CALLER: Hey, Brett. One of the things I just heard — one of the clips from Rush — talked about how people don’t need to come down from the North to the South and bring their baggage with them. I equate that to, like, the old days when people assimilated into the United States, or came over and came in to the United States to enjoy our country.
BRETT: Mmm.
CALLER: They assimilated themselves into our culture.
BRETT: Sure.
CALLER: So, yeah, they brought some of their Old World stuff with them, but they learned how to speak English, and they became an American. That’s what you come to America for. Same thing with the folks coming from the North now.
BRETT: Mmm.
CALLER: They’re coming down here bringing their baggage, and they wanted to, you know, have a nice life, but they’re bringing the same old thing. They’re bringing their Democratic policies, and so what happens is like Stacey Abrams moving down here from the North, wherever she came from — I think Minnesota or Michigan or something — trying to turn our state blue, it’s not gonna work. You know, you get the same answer, you know, and they’ll turn us in a conservative area. They’re trying to turn us into a Democratic stronghold.
BRETT: So let me say this, Greg, and you’re in a beautiful part of Georgia. I envy you living in Augusta. Let me say this. And I appreciate your call. Let me spin it forward this way. It’s not just about hoping that folks don’t bring, say, socialist inclinations or Big Government inclinations or union control of state institutions, all that sort of stuff. It’s not about that.
What has to be done in these places that you have people migrating to is the folks that are there have to also sell them on the benefits of being more conservative fiscally, financially, from a perspective of government, because we know that if you let the camel’s nose under the tent, it is potentially devastating when it comes to any number of things.
So I believe that in the places where people are moving into, the folks who have been there longer term, maybe all their lives, have a responsibility to evangelize the people that are moving in into the values of limited government, smaller government, lower taxes, greater opportunity. Many people who move to these places may not know any better.
They may have just been conditioned their whole life to think that, “I’m supposed to pay heavy-duty property taxes. I’m supposed to pay heavy-duty income taxes,” and they’ve now made a decision to leave. They’ve decided to pull up stakes and go to greener pastures. Not just ’cause the houses are cheaper, not just because the schools are better, but because they’re wanting to affiliate with that new reality.
So when you talk about the assimilation of an immigrant coming into America, that’s true. The immigrant should want to assimilate. But it’s also up to those people in the community to help those new Georgians, those new Carolinians, those new Tennesseans, those new Alabamans to assimilate and to become a part of what has made that part of the country so successful.
The same with the Intermountain West. Many people in Montana will tell you how badly the people of California have come in and messed that up with their weird watering restrictions and different sorts of regulations that they want to see put into effect. Respect where it is you’re moving, learn as much as you can about it, and figure out that common ground that unites us all in freedom.