RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I appreciate the emails that you have sent that I caught during the first breaks here in the program about not taking this thing in The New York Times today apparently seriously enough.

You know, when I know that there isn’t any truth to it, then that’s the primary reason I’m able to laugh at it. And I know the motivation behind it. They simply -- folks, they cannot defeat us on ideas or debates of ideas, in the arena of ideas.

It’s been a constant attempt by the left since I started this program to discredit me, to impugn me. And their purpose has been to make sure I don’t acquire an even larger audience. They are trying to poison the minds of people who don’t listen into never trying the program. That’s the objective of it, and that’s always been the objective.

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Now we have an obviously deranged lunatic who is just part of the crowd that has been influenced, but only influenced, by conservative media. This guy apparently, according to The New York Times, was immune to being influenced by anybody else. He was incapable of making up his own mind or coming to his own deranged conclusions on his own. And this has been the baseline, or foundational, attack on me and all of conservative media since it began.

It’s actually an attack on all of you. That you’re dumb, uninformed hicks who don’t know anything and don’t think anything every day until you get marching orders after listening to this program or as a result of listening. This has always been absurd. And I think it’s always been a very weak and very, very telling admission on their part, and that is they hold average people in contempt. Average people are not smart enough to think on their own. They’re not smart enough to live life the right way. They’re not smart enough to make the right decisions, even with their own money.

So I don’t get worked up by it anymore because it’s been a feature of 30 years. And I’ll tell you this. By righteously opposing it and standing here -- sitting here -- pounding my fists on the table and acting out is not gonna stop it, either. I just mock it. I just try to make fun of it. And then I welcome other people to the montage. Now they’re adding -- you know, it used to just be me. Now they’re throwing a bunch of other people into it because conservative media has expanded and become so big that now their efforts to destroy conservative media go beyond me. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 8/12/19]