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Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we remember Rush Limbaugh.
Most of this podcast was recorded live on radio while the news itself was breaking.
And so, to be honest with you, I did the best I could to remember a friend and an American hero and patriot who passed away hours before the broadcast and was actually announced during our broadcast.
So I had very little prep time.
I did my best to navigate all that.
We played a lot of sound.
I make a point at the end of this episode that when I was in the White House and I was meeting with the president and I would be meeting with Jared Kushner, I'd be meeting with Kelly and Connolly, or I'd be meeting with people all throughout the White House.
Do you know what the number one topic of conversation was in the afternoon?
Hey, what did Rush say today?
Where was Rush on this issue?
What does Rush say about this?
I remember people in the White House calling me saying, hey, can you afford this to Rush?
He would be delivering the drumbeat of American public policy from a conservative perspective.
People created their schedules around the man.
He inspired people, myself included.
In this episode, you will see all throughout some tape, some clips, some remembrances as we look back and think and remember the great Rush Limbaugh.
If you want to support our program, it's charliekirk.com slash support.
And I say this, without Rush, there would be no podcast you're listening to right now.
We remember the biggest one, the guy that made all this possible.
Buckle up.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
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We're going to get more into Joe Biden here, and I didn't want to say anything on air that isn't true or verified, but it seems to be many people are reporting that the king of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, has died.
So the man that has inspired so many Americans, myself included, has passed away.
Rush Limbaugh is an American hero.
I actually got to know Rush.
I spent time with him.
We honored him in one of our events at Turning Point USA.
I'm going to have to get my thoughts here as I process this live on air.
Again, this is one of the parts of live radio, so you're going to have to bear with me as I get these messages.
I didn't want to say anything as I was trying to dissect Joe Biden saying whatever he was saying last night with this tragic news.
Rush Limbaugh changed America for the better.
Rush Limbaugh blazed a trail forward that has left many people, myself included, in his debt.
Rush Limbaugh invented the form of communication that we know as terrestrial radio in America.
There will never be another Rush Limbaugh.
And if you're just tuning in right now on radio, we have just received confirmation that Rush Limbaugh has passed away at age 70 after a very difficult battle with lung cancer.
He's a man who saw things before they happened.
He remained in good spirits despite everything that was thrown at him.
And I'm going to have a lot more to say about that as we continue to process this information.
Rush Limbaugh has passed away, and he has been fighting cancer for the last year that we know of.
Rush Limbaugh is one of the reasons I got into politics.
I was a junior in high school trying to figure out how to articulate my political beliefs.
And I would have my lunch from, I remember it precisely, 12.27 to 1.12 every day.
And so around my junior year in high school, I was able to drive back and forth to home and get lunch and come back.
And so I used to turn on a local radio station in Chicago, and Rush Limbaugh was on.
Now, I was getting involved in politics earlier than that.
And everyone told me in the middle or the center left that Rush Limbaugh was the worst thing ever.
I never actually listened to him myself.
So I started to listen to this guy, and he made so much sense.
He was funny.
He had wit.
He saw things before they happened.
He was always of good cheer.
He was, in a lot of ways, almost like the conservative fulcrum, like the center of gravity for all conservatism, where we could find our bearings whenever we are under assault by the far left.
He kept us in good spirits.
He was relentless.
He pioneered the idea of three hours of talk radio with no guests.
You have to understand that back in the 1990s, when Rush started, I think it was late 80s, early 90s, there were a lot of people worried that there was no way for the conservative movement to be distributed.
This was before podcasting.
This was before Fox News.
This was before any sort of Facebook, social media, Instagram.
And so all of a sudden, a man from Missouri, I think he got his start in Sacramento, starting a radio station in Sacramento, if my memory serves me correctly.
And he started to do things differently.
He started to make fun of the left.
He started to use rational arguments, and he did it almost uninterrupted, long form.
He took callers every once in a while.
And this guy caught on like wildfire with a name that you couldn't forget, Rush Limbaugh, the doctor of democracy.
And his style was provocative.
And I'll never forget sitting with my good friend Brent Bozell.
He told me a story about Rush Limbaugh.
And I'll tell you plenty of stories because now it's more important than ever that we share it because I can already see what the left is going to do.
I'm going to see article after article of the man who divided America, the man who brought us into the post-political face.
I'm just a bunch of garbage.
This is a decent man who basically saved the country from getting into the hands of the far left multiple times, and I'll prove it to you.
And so, Brent Bozell told me a story with Rush where Rush was going to do 60 Minutes in the early 90s when 60 Minutes was trying to attack this idea of conservative talk radio because conservatives were trying to find a way to distribute their information.
They couldn't do it on the mainstream networks.
They couldn't do it through newspaper or print.
And so, all there was left was terrestrial radio.
And Rush was dominating.
So, he came on 60 Minutes, and Brent Bozell gave him the advice: Rush, whatever you do, don't do this interview.
Rush did it anyway.
And Brent said they're going to make you look bad and all this.
Rush ended up running circles around these guys.
Ended up being published as one of the most embarrassing moments for 60 Minutes when Rush Limbaugh was in this moment of growth.
And he spread to over, I think, 800 radio stations across the country.
Rush Limbaugh was more than just a talk show host.
He was people's daily source of sanity and clarity.
He was people's ability to stay anchored to the truth of our country.
And so, this is very hard to talk about this in real time, but I'm going to spend the remainder of this program remembering Rush and his impact, playing his most amazing moments.
Because I knew Rush.
Rush was supportive of our efforts.
He was supportive of what we were doing.
I was interviewed once on the Rush Limbaugh monthly profile.
Had dinner with Rush.
Rush spoke at our Turning Point USA events twice.
In fact, one thing that I can be very proud of is that one of the last public speaking events that Rush Limbaugh ever did was at Turning Point USA when he introduced President Donald Trump at our event.
We're going to play tape from that.
Rush was a generous man.
He was a misunderstood man by everyone in the media.
And believe it or not, he was one of the most humble people I ever met in my life.
The exact opposite of what the activist media would tell you.
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You see, before Rush Limbaugh, who by any measure is on the Mount Rushmore of American conservatives, he invented talk radio.
He wasn't just the best at it, he invented it.
I marveled year after year how Rush would be able to, for three hours a day, come up with original programming.
Almost no guests have ever been on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Very few.
Donald Trump, maybe Mike Pence, Ted Cruz went on once.
He was not a guest-driven show.
You were there to listen to Rush for good reason.
I will make the argument that Rush Limbaugh is the man who kept America free.
If it wasn't for Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s and early 2000s, I don't know who possibly would have been able to communicate to that many people the truth of what was happening in the country and the ripple effect after that.
Imagine reaching 15 million people a week intimately in their car with the correct message of what's happening in the country.
Rush was more than just someone who processed the news.
He became the news.
Rush Limbaugh was the news.
Show me another member of the media where people would design their entire daily schedule around what they had to say.
Show me another member of the media where people would call themselves, I'm a Rush baby.
That my political affiliation is marked with riding around in the car listening to the great Rush Limbaugh.
And every single person that is in politics today, from Donald Trump to Rand Paul to Sean Hannity to Mark Levin, everyone flows downstream from Rush Limbaugh.
Everyone.
Myself included.
So I grew up listening to Rush.
His courage, his wit, his charisma, his ability to just do a 15, 20-minute segment on what would just seem to be a small little article, the rustling of the papers, the sound bites, the callers that would call themselves ditto heads.
His ability to be able to make sense of the confusing nature, to predict things before they happened.
No one's even close.
And so I started to listen to him as a junior in high school.
He started to give me the courage and the conviction to speak up, to get involved, to do something.
That's really what helped inspire Turning Point USA.
I started to listen to his broadcasts every single day.
I wouldn't miss it.
And all throughout high school and in the early parts of Turning Point USA, no matter how crazy or chaotic things got in the country, I knew that at 11 o'clock Central, 12 o'clock Eastern, if I got in my car, I could turn on my radio and someone would make sense of that for me.
And he would do it in a way that was lighthearted in nature, factual and rational.
So then I started to grow Turning Point USA and spent more time in Palm Beach.
We had our student action summit there for five years at the Palm Beach Convention Center.
And so I knew very little about the geography of Florida.
I didn't know the difference between Palm Beach or Boca Grande to Naples to Sarasota to Miami.
And so as I was in Palm Beach, people started to say, hey, you know, Rush Limbaugh broadcasts from here.
I said, really?
I didn't know that.
Rush Limbaugh lives in Palm Beach.
And so, kind of the legend of Rush grew throughout 2015, 2016, and I kept listening to him, and I became a Rush Limbaugh application subscriber, where in the commercial breaks, he would play his old tapes of him mimicking Nancy Pelosi.
It was brilliant.
You could also listen to the old episodes of the Rush Limbaugh episode, Rush Limbaugh Show episode.
I mean, advertiser-free.
Came a subscriber to all the magazines, bought the t-shirts, the Paul Revere books, all of it.
And so I got a chance to meet Rush.
It was from a friend of mine, Byron Thomas.
Good man.
I don't think he ever wanted me to tell this story, but I think he'd be okay with me telling it today.
Byron called me up.
He says, Charlie, I know you love Rush.
Yes, I do, Byron.
I want you to meet Rush.
So you could get me to meet Rush.
So just so you know, Rush had cochlear implants, difficulty hearing.
And so Rush did not feel very comfortable in public spaces or public events.
And he kind of grew with a reputation of not necessarily being a recluse, but not someone that would go out on the town.
In fact, I remember driving once from Denver to Steamboat Springs, listening to the Rush Limbaugh program, and he was just describing how he lost his hearing.
It's a really fascinating story.
It happened almost basically overnight, and he almost never heard again.
In fact, the amazing thing that I never understood about Rush Limbaugh is how he was able to do all these voices without being able to hear their voice.
How was he able to mimic Barack Obama without being able to hear Barack Obama's voice?
So he had cochlear implants, and Byron says, Charlie, I want to take you to go meet him.
So we go met at a club in Palm Beach that many of you know of.
Not a nightclub, okay, it was a country club.
And I'll never forget we met at like 7 a.m. right before Rush went to go golf.
So Rush golfed every Saturday morning at this place.
And to my incredible surprise, Rush sat down and had breakfast with us.
So Rush, for breakfast, he very well could have ordered pancakes, French toast, waffles.
Maybe he wanted to go with an Egg McMuffin.
Nope.
There's a whole plate of bacon because he said the grease and the fat makes him smarter.
Direct quote.
So we had a great time.
And to my great surprise, Rush didn't want to leave after 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
And we got to know each other.
And I told him about Turning Point USA.
And I described to him the work we're doing.
And he listened intently.
Boy, this must have been back in 2016 or 2017.
My goodness.
Four or five years ago.
And God bless Byron.
I mean this, God bless Byron Thomas for giving me that opportunity to meet the man because he was like meeting a legend.
The story didn't stop there.
It got to email back and forth with Rush, got to be someone that would send him notes that I thought after some of his shows.
And he was always so communicative and responsive.
I mean, this is a guy that's talking to 15 million people a day.
And he would write back.
And thank goodness I still have all these emails from him of all of his thoughts and all the correspondence and all the back and forth.
By the way, he loved Apple gadgets, just so we're clear.
He loved Apple.
If Apple did not give him free stock, they missed out.
He did more free promotion for Apple than anyone else.
And so then I remember we had an event at Mar-a-Lago.
What year was that?
Was that 17?
I was 18?
And for those of you that follow me on social media, you'll be able to see some of the videos of this, of Rush, where I said, I want to give him the Lifetime Achievement Award.
And thank God, and I don't say that lightly, we did that.
And so we honored him with the Life Achievement Award.
And he does not go and accept many awards, by the way.
He does not do that.
So he came and he came to our event at Mar-a-Lago, spoke, gave him the award.
He was so gracious.
He made time to meet with his number one fan, the man who has impacted my life dramatically, a dear friend of mine, Tom Patrick.
Tom always wanted to meet Rush.
Tom told me, he says, Charlie, I need to go meet Rush.
Rush has, I feel like I'm listening to myself.
And so Rush was such a great sport about it.
And Rush, you know, didn't, he wasn't a fan of just sitting down with anyone.
It's just for obvious reasons here at that level.
Sat down with Tom for 40 minutes, did a personal favorite to me.
It was unbelievable.
I'll always remember that.
Then Rush gave this great speech, and we stayed in touch.
Rush did give me a new iPhone, by the way, that night.
I think it was like the iPhone 9 at the time.
He gave me a new iPhone.
We stayed in touch.
And then Rush featured me as one.
I think this was in, yeah, that's right.
That was in January of 2019, February 2019.
We had about a 45-minute taped interview conversation where Rush was asking questions, and I was the monthly newsletter interview for the Rush Limbaugh, whatever.
And so he was always just, and I need to go listen to it back, to be honest.
There's probably so much wisdom there.
He was a phenomenal mentor and friend throughout all of it.
And so then in December of 2019, we were hosting our Palm Beach Student Action Summit.
And we had just confirmed the president, President Trump.
And I thought to myself, who would be the perfect person to introduce him?
Because, you know, I could do it, but that's a fun thing.
But I wanted to say who could really make this special?
I said, you know what?
I think it would be pretty awesome to have the great Rush Limbaugh introduce the great Donald Trump.
Only happened once before, and that was at a campaign rally in Missouri where Rush came out for that.
And so through a lot of different emails and back and forth, Rush agreed to it and gave a great speech.
And I told him, I said, if you have exactly five minutes, I kid you not, with no phone, no clock.
He was like five minutes precise.
That probably comes after 30 years of radio.
You have like a built-in clock.
Introduced the president.
We had a lot of fun talking backstage all together.
And I think that was one of the last public appearances that Rush Limbaugh gave.
I know that he got the congressional, not the congressional, the presidential medal of freedom shortly after that.
And then we were all so saddened to hear his diagnosis.
And I haven't seen him since the virus and all of that.
And, man, he cared so much about his country.
He was a patriot.
He did not do it for the money.
He was very successful.
He didn't do it for the glory or the fame.
He did it for his country.
He did this because he knew more than anything else that his voice was going to be a firewall against tyranny.
And I want to dive deeper into that, of the impact that he made and the legacy that he leaves behind.
And then I want to play some of the best quotes and the best tape from Rush Limbaugh.
I also want to tell you what this means for you listening right now.
And I'll say it briefly, but I'll build it out more.
This means you need to step up.
Is a guy that was carrying a lot of water for the entire movement.
He's no longer here.
And of course, right on schedule, as we predicted, Huffington Post, Rush Limbaugh, bigoted king of talk radio, dies at 70.
That's how they remember Rush Limbaugh.
Trending on Twitter is rest in, can I say that word on talk radio?
I'm going to ask our team.
It's a four-letter word.
I'm going to ask my thanks, Andrew.
Rest in piss.
I could say it is what I've been told.
That's what they're trending on Twitter.
How they're talking about Rush is how they feel about you.
The hits keep coming, everybody.
So now it's time for a new generation and for people to step up.
It's time for action.
It's time to do more.
Rush had the movement on his shoulders for decades.
He's the one that took the arrows from the media.
He's the one that had to fend off media matters.
He's the one that had to endure attacks relentlessly.
So now it's up to us to fill that void.
And as a side note, Rush Limbaugh is what they call the bigoted king of talk radio.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post called Al Baghdadi an austere religious scholar.
The media wonder why people hate them and they don't trust them.
I know a lot of people are grieving, myself included.
And I could say this, though, with my relationship with Rush, I have a lot of sadness, but I have no regrets.
I really had an opportunity to spend time with him, learn from him, have him speak at our events.
He was so generous with his time, with his platform.
And after the fourth or fifth time I met with him and I sat down with him and I would give him a compliment, he almost had difficulty processing it.
And at first, I didn't really understand it.
I was like, what?
Was he hearing me okay?
But no, he was so legitimately humble without, I think, realizing how powerful his audience was at times that he stayed so in touch with the grassroots.
You want to talk about someone that has been right about almost every single prediction the last couple years.
Never underestimated Trump, always was critical of the Republican establishment.
He analyzed things perfectly because he was always in touch with the very same people that launched his radio career.
And I think he's from Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Fun place.
But yes, he did get his career at Sacramento.
My memory was correct.
And so, what does that mean for all of us?
Boy, if you're listening right now, this is a call to action because that's what Rush would want.
Rush was very troubled about the current trajectory of the country.
He went out and defended President Trump every day.
He defended conservative values, but he was relentlessly optimistic about the future of America.
He believed our best days were ahead.
He was positive about what was to come.
And he put a lot of that on his shoulders.
And in the way that he went about his program, he was unlike any other radio host I ever listened to.
And that's not a slight at any of these other amazing legends.
Mark Levin, Sean Handy, they're amazing.
But Rush, more than anyone else, I felt like Rush was talking to me, not talking to a group of people.
I felt like Rush was having a one-on-one conversation with me.
His pauses, his inflections, his vocabulary, his diction, his humor, his humanity.
How many times did you hear Rush just shuffle together papers or say, which cut is this or what's going on here?
And you felt as if you were sitting right there in the studio with him and you were having a one-on-one conversation about the future of America.
You didn't feel as if he was broadcasting.
You felt like he was conversing.
And the country is in a very difficult moment right now.
We just lost one of our defenders.
We just lost someone with a distribution of 15 million people a day that he spoke to.
And so now in every single vertical in the church, in communities, in business, in politics, in communication, it's now time to step up, everybody.
We're now going to need 1,000 people to be as active as Rush to fill the void that he left.
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I think people listen to the radio for three reasons.
Be entertained, to be entertained, and to be entertained.
And avid listeners were wildly entertained when they tuned into Rush Limbaugh, arguably the most influential talk show host in the history of radio.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
His daily program, heard by an estimated 20 million listeners each day and broadcast on more than 650 affiliates, made him one of the most well-known voices for grassroots conservatives.
So that was a news report.
20 million people a day that he influenced.
20 million people every single day.
The highest rated ever talk radio show in the history of the United States, airing on over 600 radio stations across the country, including some massive radio stations.
It started in 1988 and has never looked back.
And people were skeptical of whether or not people actually wanted to hear the conservative point of view over terrestrial radio.
Rush Limbaugh kept the Reagan Revolution, which is a grassroots, people-centered revolution, alive for decades.
When Obama swept into office in 2008 with a mandate and Democrats and House, Senate and the House coming alongside of it, it was Rush Limbaugh that was the number one thorn in the side of the Obama administration.
Daily Rush would go on warning against what Obama was going to do to the country using comedy, levity, lightheartedness.
Let's play the two cuts here of President Trump talking about Rush just a couple moments ago.
President Trump, are you with me?
I am, and it was a great honor to do so when we gave the Medal of Freedom.
It was something special.
It was an incredible night.
We gave it during the State of the Union address, and it was especially half the room.
Half the room went crazy, and the other half the room, they knew he should get it.
But it was special, and he was special.
Let's play the next clip.
Rush is irreplaceable, unique.
He had an audience that was massive.
And, you know, he could do something, Bill, and he would get up in the show and would just talk.
He wouldn't take phone calls where, you know, people would call in every two minutes and that's sort of easy to do.
He would just talk for two hours and three hours, just talk.
And that's not an easy thing to do.
And being able to do that uninterrupted put him as the leader of the conservative movement.
If Rush Limbaugh went after you, your political career could basically be over.
Mobilizing the American conservative grassroots in a way that no one has ever done before.
Keeping the voice alive.
And he was the man that kept America free.
Who else but Rush can say for 30 years he was able to keep a consistent message, a following, keep people engaged and dedicated around conservative values.
Not the Bush family.
A couple authors here and there.
But the daily drumbeat kept people over a course of almost a short lifetime, 30 years, engaged and interested in American politics.
The country is already reacting.
The left is celebrating and trending things on Twitter that are disgusting in nature.
And you could tell by the way the left reacts to Rush's passing at how big of a threat he was to them.
You could tell by how nasty and how mean that they are being right now and how effective he actually was.
Many of whom have never met Rush.
They only knew some caricature of what they were supposed to hate based on some television clip.
And despite many calls for his cancellations throughout years, he only grew in strength.
It seemed as if listening to him just a couple months ago, he was still in his absolute stride.
I want to play cut 43, Rush Limbaugh speaking at our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
Why is Make America Great so controversial?
Play cut 43.
Make America Great!
Why?
Why is Make America Great so controversial?
Stop and think a minute.
Who could oppose it?
Somebody comes along and says, I want to make America great again.
Why is that controversial?
Why in the world is that controversial?
And then somebody comes along and says, I think we ought to be America first again.
Why is that controversial?
Why do people oppose America first?
Why do people oppose making America great again?
I'll tell you why.
The people who think Make America Great Again is not good think that it is a throwback to 200 years ago America.
They think that it is code for taking America back to the days when it was manifestly unfair, racist, sexist, big, and homophobic.
It is not that.
Make America Great Again is let's get back and restore the principles of the founding.
America first is based on the solution and the submission that America is the solution to the world's problems.
It is not the problem.
The left in America, the left around the world thinks America is the problem, and we're not.
When America leads, when America triumphs, when America prospers, the world does greater than ever.
That was at our turning point USA Student Action Summit, where Rush was articulating very eloquently that when America succeeds, the world succeeds.
Who could possibly be against the phrase, make America great?
You could see in the way that he just did that description at our event exactly why the left needed to rise up against him in such awful ways.
Because as long as Rush Limbaugh was talking on radio, their totalitarian takeover was in jeopardy.
As long as Rush Limbaugh kept on broadcasting, he was adding transparency to their theft.
We talked about yesterday about a secret ballot that very well might have happened, which would have got Donald Trump indicted.
But the fact that there was a public ballot ensured that Donald Trump was acquitted because they didn't want to face their voters.
But do you know who else the Senate Republicans are afraid of?
When the Senate Republicans were thinking about selling America for a cheap price, and Senate Republicans were thinking about doing policies or voting for bills that might have been dangerous to our country, they whispered to each other, well, what if Rush does a segment on us?
And it made them stop for a minute.
He's a man who kept Republicans in check, kept the conservative grassroots engaged.
Let's go to Cut 46, Sean Hannity saying there would be no talk radio or even Fox News without Rush.
Cut 46.
There is no talk radio as we know it without Rush Limbaugh.
It just doesn't exist.
And I'd even make the argument in many ways, there's no Fox News or even some of these other opinionated cable networks.
And he literally did something that nobody at the time ever thought was possible.
And that's exactly right.
That without Rush and his contribution to the American conversation or the zeitgeist, you could say, the country would be in a much different place.
So why didn't Senate Republicans and the Gang of Eight pass amnesty back in 2014?
Or is it 2013?
It's because Rush Limbaugh did three hours of radio on it.
Senate Republicans and Congressional Republicans, in their most private moments, would confide and say, you know, it's one thing if they run a bunch of ads against us if we vote a certain way, but if Rush goes after us, that'll be the end of our political career.
He kept politicians in check.
Democrats couldn't stand how effective Rush Limbaugh was.
Mind you, all of this was created before social media, before that sort of distribution.
So you had to really earn your audience through terrestrial radio.
You had to keep your audience.
You had to persuade people to keep on tuning in again.
I mean, there was a lot of options on radio.
And he grew to mainstream stations all across the country using humor, using wit.
And the impact is absolutely incredible.
I'm going to get to another cut here.
Let's go to Cut 40, the State of the Union medal ceremony, Cut 40.
A longtime personal friend of President Trump's, there was this State of the Union first.
I am proud to announce tonight that you will be receiving our country's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And that was when Rush Limbaugh received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
And so this is a wake-up call for a lot of us.
And we must mourn and grieve and remember that we must get back to action.
Rush Limbaugh bought us some time.
Without Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump would not have won the presidency in 2016.
Without Rush Limbaugh, you do not have Justice Kavanaugh.
You don't have Justice Gorsuch, you don't have Amy Coney Barrett.
You don't have Clarence Thomas, which happened right in the middle of Rush Limbaugh coming to fame in the radio, the radio world.
The model was completely and totally unproven.
You're trying to tell me one guy is going to talk uninterrupted and make his own jokes about the news of today and people are going to want to listen to that.
We can sell advertisers to that.
No, people want music.
People want maybe a daily rundown, a little bit of a funny show with a couple people here and there.
And then that's it.
Even liberals who now call themselves in the intellectual dark web, like Eric Weinstein or any of those people, they all follow in the footsteps of Rush.
Anyone who's in long-form podcasting follows in the footsteps of Rush.
Rush was podcasting before podcasting.
It was deliberate.
It was detailed.
It was long.
It had its own flavor, its own style, for a very specific purpose and for a reason.
Because Rush trusted the listeners enough that they wanted more than just political popcorn.
And if you listen to Rush and you really listen to him two years ago, three years ago, in the midst of Donald Trump under duress, and you look at the deep philosophy, the analysis, it's the best that was out there.
Seeing exactly what motivates the left, going a level deeper, asking the proper questions, analyzing the proper information correctly, bringing people to a higher level of engagement and expertise.
And so in the next segment, I want to explore what are the main lessons.
I also want to remember some of the best moments.
We have some great cuts here of Rush Limbaugh handling some liberal callers.
But what are the main lessons that we can take that we can apply to our own life and to the conservative movement right now?
All of you listening to my words right now are listening to these words because of Rush Limbaugh.
The man who pioneered this medium, who fought daily and valiantly for the country, for freedom, for conservative values.
I want to play some tape here.
Let's play cuts.
I want to first start with cut 49.
It's a longer cut.
Catherine Limbaugh announcing Rush Lumbaugh's death today on radio.
Cut 49.
From today on, there will be a tremendous void in our lives, and of course, on the radio.
Rush loved our miraculous country beyond measure.
An unwavering patriot.
He loved our United States military, our flag, our Constitution, our founding fathers.
He proudly fought and defended conservative values in a way that no one else can.
Rush often stood up and took arrows on his own because he knew it was the right thing to do.
Rush encouraged so many of us to think for ourselves, to learn, and to lead.
He often said it did not matter where you started or what you look like.
As Americans, we all have endless opportunities like nowhere else in the world.
Rush gave us hope that through hard work and determination, we can overcome the obstacles in our lives and be our best.
Many of you started small businesses or pursued personal dreams because Rush gave you the faith that you could.
He made the most complex issues simple to understand while making that level of genius look easy.
It most certainly was anything but easy.
Irreplaceable, remarkable talent.
On behalf of the Limbaugh family, I would personally like to thank each and every one of you who prayed for Rush and inspired him to keep going.
You rallied around Rush and lifted him up when he needed you the most.
I am certain, without a shadow of a doubt, if he could be here today, he would be.
He loved you, and he loved this radio program with every part of his being.
Amazing.
Catherine Limbaugh announcing the death of Rush Limbaugh, her husband.
Let's go to cut 48 of President Trump and what Rush told him right after the November 3rd election, Cut 48.
Harris, what did Rush Limbaugh tell you after the election of November 3rd?
What were those conversations like?
Well, Rush thought we won, and so do I, by the way.
I think we won substantially.
And Rush thought we won, and he thought it was over at 10 o'clock, 10.30, it was over.
And a lot of other people feel that way too, but Rush felt that way strongly.
And many people do.
Many professionals do.
And I don't think that could have happened to a Democrat.
You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat.
We don't have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system, but we have great people as Republicans.
And let's go to a little bit back in the Wayback Machine, Cut 47, Rush Limbaugh just going after a liberal caller.
This was Rush at his best, Cut 47.
Starting, you weren't as upset when Clinton was being investigated for Ben McGhazi incident.
You wanted a full investigation for that, didn't you?
Yeah, there's all kinds of evidence there that she'd been derelict in her duty.
Four people died in Benghazi.
Is this the best you've got to sit here and claim that I was interested in getting to the truth about Benghazi, where four Americans died because of the incompetence and laziness of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who was off the grid during the whole time.
We couldn't even find him.
And you think because I wanted to get to the bottom of that, I don't want to get to the reason there's no bottom here.
Fred, the problem with this is there is no bottom.
You just said the investigation just began, and you don't know that.
If we've been reading the media, this investigation has been going on since even before Trump was nominated.
Comey said today, this investigation has been going on since last July, Fred, old buddy Opal.
This is a hell of a long time to have no evidence whatsoever.
There's no bottom to get to here.
And I'm not scared, Fred.
I don't do scared.
I am pissed.
Amazing.
We're now, we're actually going to get some clip here of Rush and his final broadcast.
But before we do that, let's go to Cut 50 of President Trump calling into Rush's radio show to congratulate him on 30 years, Cut 50.
Rush, I just wanted to congratulate you on 30 years.
This is your favorite president, and I think you are fantastic.
And I heard about it, and today is the big day.
30 years.
I wanted to call personally and congratulate you.
I am floored.
I thought there was nothing anybody could do to surprise me today.
I've been preparing for anything.
Mr. President.
You're a very special man, Rush, and you have people that love you.
I'm one of them.
But you're a very, very special guy.
What you do for this country, people have no idea how important your voice is.
So I just wanted to personally make this one.
And I said, I'll even dial the number myself if I have to.
But I just want to congratulate you.
30 years in that tough business is incredible.
And you're stronger now than ever before.
Well, I thank you so much.
It's such a thrill to hear from you.
And so, man, will he be missed?
Let's go to Cut 42, President Rush Limbaugh speaking right before President Trump at our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Cut 42.
Folks, we're not in a standard political environment where the Democrats win and then the Republicans win.
We share power.
We trade power.
We are in a war.
We are in a war for the kind of country America is going to be.
There's always going to be an America.
But the war being waged now is aimed at overturning, overthrowing the principles of our founding.
That is what the left is attempting to do.
And now tape from Russia's last broadcast, which was two days before Christmas, December 23rd, 2020.
We want to take you back to the end of December.
This is December 23rd, 2020.
And this was part of Russia's final broadcast.
He would not know it then, but we all know it now.
Listen.
My point in all of this today is gratitude.
My point in everything today that I share with you about this is to say thanks and to tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizable and growing and still beating heart.
And there's room for much more.
All because I've learned what love really is during this.
You know, I have a philosophy.
There's good that happens in everything.
It may not reveal itself immediately.
And even in the most dire circumstances, if you just wait, if you just remain open to things, the good in it will reveal itself.
And that has happened to me as well.
The good in it will just reveal itself.
It's amazing.
It's last broadcast.
Let's go to Cut 51, Tucker Carlson, talking about the void left by Rush's death.
But before that, you think about what Rush just said in that clip, that he was filled with gratitude for his listeners, for the people that defended him, for the people that believed in him.
And little did he know that was going to be his last broadcast ever to the largest radio audience ever assembled in the history of talk radio.
Let's play Cut 51, Tucker Carlson.
I've outsourced its, you know, philosophical exposition, its explaining of their beliefs to Rush Limbaugh.
And I don't mean that as a criticism of anybody.
It's just true.
It's like you didn't have to explain what it meant to be a conservative when Rush Limbaugh was doing it better than you could.
And so now that he's gone, you have to sort of wonder, like, is there, and again, I'm not taxing anybody, but it's your question, is there any elected Republican in the Congress right now who could stand up in front of a microphone and tell you in 10 minutes why it is you vote Republican or why it is you're a conservative or what it is you believe or what America is about?
I mean, maybe there is.
I haven't seen that person and I know all of them.
So it does leave a real void because that's important.
I mean, you know, people have instincts, but they need words to make those instincts make sense, right?
You have to articulate something in order to really understand it.
And that was his job for the country.
Tucker, you mentioned going...
His job was to articulate people's natural instincts for half the country.
That is perfectly said.
And that's what he did every single day.
People had a feeling about things.
They saw something in the New York Times or they read something in the morning.
Millions of people lived this pattern.
They woke up, they got ready for work, they turned on the news, and they heard some liberal talking head say something they knew wasn't true.
It bothered them.
And their instinct said, I don't like that.
They got in the car and went to work, and it bothered them the whole day.
And they thought to themselves, at least the morning, and they said, there's something not right about what I heard there.
Then 11 o'clock rolled around Eastern and 11.30 and 11.45.
They looked up at their clock and they said, in 15 minutes, I'm going to see if someone can put words to my instincts.
They turned on that radio and Rush articulated exactly what their instincts were feeling.
He put words behind their deeply held beliefs.
And he took the arrows for all of us.
Winston Churchill, the man who saved Western civilization, said, quote, without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.
Rush Limbaugh had courage.
Rush Limbaugh stood up every single day and said what so many other people were thinking.
Rush Lumbaugh was unafraid to articulate the politically incorrect issues of the day.
And so, when people were bombarded over the weekend with their liberal family or their relatives, people would start to get a little anxious.
And they just knew that on Monday at 12 o'clock Eastern, they could turn on that dial and that famous music would begin.
And the introduction would say, and now the Doctor of Democracy from Mission Command in sunny South Florida, Rush Limbaugh.
He'd always start with some grandiose introduction and get right into it.
And his lead was always can't miss radio, his first 15 minutes.
So, whatever Rush led with, it was talked about everywhere.
It spread.
Now, a lot of people listened to the show all the way through, but the lead itself was the most listened to part of radio probably in American history.
That's right when people got on their lunch breaks on the West Coast.
Some people were just getting to work and they'd wait in their car a little bit.
I knew one guy in Los Angeles who worked for a big corporation, and part of his negotiation was that he could get into work every day at 9:30.
It was part of his negotiation.
In fact, I was just texting with him earlier because he was such a big Rush Limbaugh fan.
He negotiated with his boss, and I don't think he told his wife, that he was going to have to start work 30 minutes later and stay after work 30 minutes later.
Why?
Because he needed his 30 minutes of rush before he got into work every day.
I know people that were run banks, and they had all their employees knew that you do not walk in and interrupt them between 12 or 3 any day.
You could have meetings before 12 or 3, but it's called rush time.
I know people, Tom Patrick and many others, have been able to recite chapter and verse of every single topic Rush Limbaugh went throughout the week.
He had such a mastery of words.
He painted pictures with his diction.
He understood the anxiety of a conservative American that was seeing their country be crumbled before them, that was being attacked by powerful liberal forces.
With Rush, you always felt like you were on offense.
With Rush, you always felt that no matter what was happening around you, he was the captain of the ship.
He was the head of this mission, and it was going to be okay.
Because he exuded confidence and clear solutions.
He looked at things very rationally.
And then the next segment, he would get into the appropriate amount of sarcasm and mockery that the left absolutely deserved.
And sometimes he pushed the boundaries a little bit too far.
But then you could still look away because it was all the while incredibly entertaining.
But then there were the moments when Rush got very serious.
He used humor as a way to communicate, as a way to make it easier to consume.
But then there were the moments when Rush got down to business.
When Brett Kavanaugh was under fire, that's all Rush talked about for three hours a day.
Christine Ballsey Ford is what he called it.
Went through all the documents, went through all the trials, asking the right questions.
And do you know who Senate staffers were listening to in between breaks?
They were putting in their headphones to see what was Rush saying.
When I would walk the White House to go visit Jared Kushner and to go see the people negotiating Middle East peace, do you know what they were saying at 2 o'clock Eastern in the White House?
Hey, what did Rush say today?
The White House was looking to Rush for guidance.
Rush was not looking to the White House for guidance.
That is a man that shaped public policy.
That is a man that shaped the daily interaction and behavior of millions of people.
A legend, a hero, and full of courage.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, the organization that Rush himself put his name behind, go to tpusa.com, email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.