A young college grad gunned down walking his dog, a young mom, Michelle Parker, vanishes after dropping off her little twins at the babysitter. Nancy Grace here. Every day on crime stories, we break down the biggest breaking crime news and study the clues left behind so we can help crime victims and their families every day. A mission every day, another chance to stop crime and keep one more person safe. Join us, listen to crime stories with Nancy Grace on the I Heart radio app or wherever you listen to your podcast.

Welcome to today's edition of the Rush Limbaugh Show podcast. It is an honor to be here to celebrate our friend. Rush Limbaugh, and today is the day the Lord has made and this is the week that God called do a loan of talent that he placed into a man named Rush Hudson.

Limbaugh the third. And Russia's left. This stage, but he has not left us. And. You're going to have an opportunity to hear a whole lot of rush today, and in fact, Ibbs not going anywhere, not for a long time. They're still going to be lots of opportunities to hear what Rush said to us.

How could there not be given the archive? Given the museum? I'm broadcasting excellence and rush with so many things to us. I'm just a fellow listener like you. And frankly, if I hadn't have paid attention to Rush's instructions and life advice and you're going to hear a lot of that today, maybe not as much politics and fact not. A lot of life advice from a man who who was that just that overnight success, right. And he wasn't he worked so hard to build this program.

That means so much to us. He was he was the all knowing, all seeing, all caring maharshi. And it was America's anchorman and truth detector, and he was also a brother and an uncle and the son and a grandson, and he was a teacher.

He taught us a lot of lessons and he was a recipient. Of a lot of great lessons from his family, I think, of his beloved family and how Rush would share the wisdom and the love that they communicated to him and inspired us, he challenged us. She said things like most of the limitations. That we put on ourselves are artificial self invented from thin air. And when Rush shared with us that his cancer was was terminal. If you remember what he said.

He said that he'd already exceeded. His expiration date. Even then, he was having fun with us. And even then, he was playing with language, and Rush also decided on this program that he'd so carefully crafted over the years with a team who's been up all night, just want you to know the team yabbie has been up all night going through and choosing some of the audio you're going to hear today. And there's still audio pouring in. You can imagine the number of people who have things to tell us about our rush.

And as he shared that news with us of the terminal nature of his cancer. I had the incredible honor to fill in for him. The day before Christmas Eve. And it was a remarkable thing to hear from you. I don't know that I really believed it. I don't know that you did. The shows that Rush did. Sick and ill with advanced lung cancer. If you've not done. That sort of performance, this sort of radio. It is a tax on the nervous system.

It is a tax on the energy systems and the excellence. I challenge people to listen. Back to back to a healthy rush and a rush who is ill and tell the difference? That took such incredible. Courage. And it took amazing. Strength. And so much of life, Rush's life took strength and he gave it to us. He chose. To do something that for years I think he'd avoided on the program, that he chose to share his faith in God and his faith in Christ, and he chose to communicate that to us because I think he wanted us to know.

I think he wanted us to know and he put it in that Limbaugh letter, God walking with him. I think he needed us to know that. His wife. Just a portrait and bravery yesterday. I hope you heard that. When Mark and Ken and I and Brent and others fill in for Rush, I think I'll probably speak for everybody.

To let you know that we know he's standing in shoes that can't be filled and yet IIIB will continue for the foreseeable future because there's so much to share about Rush in listening to the program all these years.

And to listening to Rush interact with callers. Did you ever have the sense that Rush ever considered himself above us? I don't think I've ever mentioned this on the show before, but I was a caller to rush a show twice and both times I felt well respected, even though the first time I tried to get on board with him, it's probably right not to. I never heard him treat a caller with anything less than respect. When the program began.

And it was going to go national. And people believed in Russia at that level. He could have listened to the five percent of voices. Well, if you'd listen to five percent of the people who told him it can't be done, it wouldn't be here. And he refused to listen to these voices, and this is one of the greatest lessons that I think Rush ever taught all of us was he said and I will approximate what he said because I remember listening to it.

Never listen to people who couldn't tell you you can't. Never listen to people who say that you because you chose to seek education in a different path, that you can't then go do specific things in life because you did not go to the approved of route through education. Rush's father. Live to see part of the fruition of this. And Rush had shared with us that he felt he had disappointed his father by not going into the family trade of law and and professions, and and yet if he from this microphone and from this program, he explained law in ways that grew in us, an understanding of the uniqueness of what the American exceptionalism means.

And the American exceptionalism that Russia recognized and that he taught now generations of people that will will you'll hear Russia talk about his Paul Revere books. He took it upon his shoulders in the latter part of his career to give back to young people something that's been stolen from them, that is the real nature of American exceptionalism that Rush lived. And he took advantage of the right to life, he took advantage of this unabashedly. And Liberty and Rush had the liberty to not follow in the family profession and thank God that his father had the opportunity to see the fruition of that and pursuit of happiness.

He knew. Early last year, he shared with us that he had this cancer. And again, I'll challenge you go find a moment in the last year where Rush wasn't sharing with us pursuit of happiness, there were plenty of times that Rush was frustrated. Sometimes she was frustrated with with us and the pushback that he wasn't seeing on some things and we won't get political today. Today is about Rush, the teacher, Rush, the man who communicated love and challenge just to us, and Rush, the man who loved music so much.

And I challenge you even when there were the very heavy days. After the election and when we were all feeling anger and frustration. How many times did you hear Rush come back from a commercial break? And he was having fun. I remember the story he told of hearing someone on the radio and saying they're having fun. And I don't want to be trapped in school and sitting behind a desk. I want to have fun. I want to do radio because it sounds fun and is he had this device, he shared the story with us that allowed him to do radio shows in his home and his mother was downstairs listening.

And if there's someone in talk radio who tells you that Rush didn't behave the way they're lying, it's just lying or they're bitter. And line. That was a difference maker, I think. Was the optimism used to live a year past what someone in the medical profession said, this is your expiration date, you don't tell Rush Limbaugh his expiration date.

God told them. God told them. It was the optimism, you guys. That's what sustained the show, I think. And as I worked with the team last night, just going through what you're going to hear today, the optimism just shines. Just shine's. And in fact, speaking that optimism was shared with a lot of people more important than I and here's some giants who are giants in their own right who want to share their thoughts about the greatest radio host in history, Rush Hudson.

Limbaugh the third. He was the goat, the greatest of all time, no question. Elvis invented rock and roll and Rush invented talk radio.

He did for radio what Arnold Palmer did for golf, the Johnny Carson of Radio, the Tom Brady of talk radio, the Babe Ruth of radio.

I'd even take it a step further. He was Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Aaron, Derek Jeter and everyone in between. He's in the category of Reagan and Bill Buckley. The Milton Friedman.

There was Reagan. There was Rush. There was Scalia, Justice Thomas Buckley. He was our Will Rogers.

He is a legend. There aren't too many legends around, but he is a legend.

And he was the king. Yeah, and today we talk about Rush Limbaugh, the man that I mentioned, he loved music. You'll hear about it next on the Rush Limbaugh program.

It's like waking up. You do it every day if you're blessed. And each day I was blessed to have him talking to me, saying the things that I was thinking. Now we're remembering our friends and the greatest broadcaster in history, Rush Limbaugh. You hear that? That music is another thing that broadcasters will tell you is if they paid attention, Rush use what used to be called transition music, just the transition between the segments, he featured it because he loved it.

And if you ever watched the ditto cam, well, it wasn't unusual to see Rush grooving to that like music and greatness knows greatness. It does, and that's you will have heard Rush talk about great people in every field and his admiration for them and their work and how they got there and greatness is OK recognizing greatness because they know it doesn't diminish them. And inrush did that. He shared that with us. And incidentally, I just want you to know it's OK to cry.

I think some of us are doing that right now. It's OK. We are recognizing our friends and those of us people who've never met Rush. Felt the friendship to it. I've spoken to you on the phone that I can sense that from you. So here is Rush Limbaugh showing just how much she loved music and how much his huge brain knew about the legends of music.

Aretha. Ladies and gentlemen, I was 67, Respect's, I was 16, I was just starting to work in radio. When Aretha Franklin popped on the scene, I was telling certainly everybody's calling her the queen of soul. And there's no doubt she was I think that isn't that doesn't go nearly far enough in describing. Aretha Franklin, who she was and what she did to talented, so she was she was soul, there was no question she defined it well.

She and James Brown was the godfather of soul. James Brown was the ambassador of soul. He wasn't just the Amber. He was a godfather who was ambassador. In fact, James Brown and one of his wives, they were traveling through Georgia one night and they were speeding and a trooper pulled them over. And James Brown's wife said, you can't arrest him. He's the ambassador ASOL. He's got diplomatic immunity. It's a true story.

They arrested him. Well, he was the godfather of soul, but Aretha. I mean, Barbra Streisand was envious of Aretha Franklin's voice, everybody in music was her talent, her abilities, the the range of music she could sing. But there's something else you need to we, I think, need to remember and. Kind of remain in awe of Aretha Franklin after having moved there from Detroit. There's a little neighborhood in Detroit. That an entrepreneur turned into one of the most powerful, one of the most identifiable, one of the most amazing music industry stories there has ever been.

His name was Berry Gordy, and he did Motown. There were two houses. Do you ever go to Detroit, you got to drive by these to how that was Motown, where the recording studios were. In fact, the Motown artists thought that one of them was better than the other, and as time went on, some of the acts only wanted to record in one of those studios because they felt that the sound was just better. Their acoustics and everything else would stop and think of it.

You had the Four Tops. You had Gladys Knight and the Pips. You had you had the Supremes and Smokey Robinson, the Diana Ross you had later on the Jackson five, Marvin Gaye. The Marvelettes. No, no, no. What was it, that city council, Detroit. Yeah, Martha Reeves in the vandalism, all in one neighborhood in Detroit.

That's where Aretha was. She didn't go with Motown. She went with Atlantic. She was she was wooed by the great Atlantic executive, Ahmet Ertegun. And he signed her to Atlantic and Gordy had all these other people, but just amazing in in one neighborhood of Detroit, what came out of there and what to this day still defines American R and B or soul.

However you want to describe it, those Motown hits are still played by everybody. Millennials love them as much as we did when we were kids. Although the early Motown stuff in the 60s is you really need to hear it compressed. You don't want to hear it on a CD yet, you need to hear it the way it was mastered and mixed for a AM radio back in those days. So it could be heard when you're driving around your Ford Mustang convertible with the top down or 57 Chevy or what have you.

But it's just amazing. And that's that's that's where Aretha Franklin came from as she stood above. That's hard to say. But she stood above all of it. I'm just it is the quintessential. American story, Aretha Franklin and the impact she had, the reach that she had, the talent and so forth, so, yeah, she was the queen of soul. But to me, I mean, everywhere you turn on the media, queen of soul, it seems not enough.

It's like right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, just that's not enough. It doesn't get anywhere near describing what I do, does it? Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, queen of soul, Aretha Franklin. She was yeah, she was that, but. She was she was much, much more inrush, was a thinker. And he was a man of greatness, unafraid to recognize greatness, unafraid to break with format. Look, I've never been a program director, but I've known plenty.

And. The conventional wisdom and maybe the worst thing to do was to ever try to convince Rush with conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom is you're your conservative talk show host. What are you doing talking about Aretha Franklin? He's been talking about Motown. What are you doing, hanging out life advice, you need to be always on the same topic, but Rush had this huge mind. And it couldn't be contained with just one topic or one topic matter. Just.

Was too big and for the better for it, and Rush was also a man who taught life lessons, and you're going to hear some as we continue to recognize and celebrate our friend Rush Limbaugh more than just a guy on the radio.

Friend. Really good friend. It's Tadamon, just remembering that friend Rush Limbaugh and maybe you were like this as well, that when was a break from politics and Rush would have an opportunity to talk with a young person about how to achieve success. I found myself always turning the radio up, and it's probably because, like a lot of us, Rush achieved his knowledge without without going to college. And the incredible what they call in the West Coast bandwidth, that is intelligence of this man.

I mean, it's look at the family. His brother, David's a great author in his own right, a great thinker. His family has this history. Rush avail themselves of another aspect of American exceptionalism, which is the widely available information. But he also understood something that I think is so vital that that information is only potential power. It is not power. It is potential. It's a fuel. It has to be lit with action. And and often that action requires that the striking of a spark with really, really hard work, like traveling the country weeks at a time when the program launched to meet with affiliates and advertisers and with us.

And he did that, so my mailbox is filled with people telling me how Rush changed their lives for the better, just as he changed mine. And of course, we've all heard calls like this where Rush helped people chart their course. Independence, Missouri, up next.

This is Mark. It's great to be with you, sir. Hello.

Hey, thanks. Merry Christmas. I hope the money money question for you not directly related to Democrat madness. Great. Talk to those young people who it was only eight minutes. A lot of great advice on the greatness of the country. Do you have any advice for them? And maybe all of us? Unsuccess, I remember a couple years back you said, great, you in the radio business asked you about being successful in that business. I was astounded.

I probably asked you for advice for success, not necessarily in the radio business, but in life and in taking advantage of our great country as this year approaches. And I'm sure many young people would like to hear your advice as well.

OK, I'll give this a shot. I have said over the years that there haven't been by comparison to when I was a young teenager. I want to do radio since I was eight. So when I would run into anybody who was in it, I just asked them question after question. After I asked so many questions, one guy said, you know, it sounds to me like you're more interested in how to do it than actually doing it. I said, What do you mean?

Well, at some point you got to stop asking questions and start doing things. And I said, well, I'm not old enough to start doing things and I won't get hired yet. Well, yes, you are if you really want to, but you at some point, you got to stop asking and you've got to start doing I mean, you can't you can't learn everything about doing something just by asking about it, which I knew it was.

It was still some relevant advice, probably from somebody who was tired of all my questions. But I have noticed that I've gotten much less of that than I thought myself. And, you know, I ask people in TV because it interests me. I'll talk to veterans at Fox and how many of these young people that you've hired have come to you and sought your advice about how to advance or how to do television, how to do what they're trying to do.

It's amazing the number of people who say none. They all show up thinking they know everything. If they've been hired, they think they know everything and they don't they don't need any advice. That's just a casual observation. I don't mean anything substantive by it, I guess just cultural differences. I think. And if there's one thing. About successful people that they all have in common is that they love it. Whatever it is, it's their passion, it's their number one passion.

It's the thing they love the most. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, the thing they love the most is their hobby. Something you don't get paid for. But the next thing to do is to realize that you live in a place with boundless opportunity. Don't listen to the noise, don't listen to the pessimists.

Do not seek advice from people who failed at what you want to do because they're everywhere and they don't want to be alone. Can't tell you the number of people who tried to talk me out of it. Wash Vicious, and I'll eat you up and spit you out. The chances are so slim, it's just a road to misery. And I decided after a while not to listen to those people. And then I decided after a while not to even talk to them.

I was only going to find people who had succeeded and tried to learn from them. Now than there are basics, I don't care what it is. That you want to do, you have to have a. Well-rounded knowledge and more importantly, the ability to demonstrate that you have it, you have to be able to. This is not just broadcasting or radio. You have to be able to communicate what you know.

You have to do things that are going to inspire confidence in yourself. You have to really like yourself to be confident, and it is confidence that will open up opportunity to you with confidence that will allow you to transmit what you know in ways that are persuasive and and impressive talent on loan from God, more like a gift from God.

It's just weird. I just thought he'd be there every day.

And I feel ashamed of myself for taking advantage of it because I thought he was going to be here.

When you listen to Rush. It's more than just hearing Rush. It's feeling him, feeling his presence, his humor, feeling his genuine love for us all, feeling his genuine love for each and every one of us. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you just wanted what was best. I'm just picturing Rush right now meeting all sorts of interesting people in heaven. And having great conversations, Russell was just talking with a caller mark from Independence, Missouri, and had achieved success, and this is one of thousands of life lessons taught, according to our modeling and EIB, to 80 million Americans a week.

Here's the rest of that conversation.

If you ever have a chance to have a conversation, President Trump really talks about a lot. He talks about people who are great and what they do the best at what they do.

I don't care what it is he loves talking about people like that when people ask me advice on succession. The problem with advice is that can be limiting. Rather than expansive. And so that's why I try to keep it generic, I appreciate the question, I appreciate the presumption that I know what. To advise. It's success, I'll give you an example why this is a bit of a challenge, if you, let's say, wanted to be in radio, let's say that you wanted to do your own talk show and you went to anybody.

In broadcasting that could make a decision to hire you renowned. And you tell them that you want to do a talk show. No one, even today, would advise you to do what I do. And yet this is a pretty successful venture and nobody would tell you to do it when I started. The wizards of Smart and the powers that be in radio tried to talk me out of doing what I do. They said you can't do a show without guests.

And you have to take calls and it has to be about local things. And I. Because I didn't want other people to be the reason my show had an audience. I was explaining over the weekend, somebody was saying, you know, you I've never heard a show like yours as the only reason to say that's because mine's the only one with our many guests. Yeah, that's right.

Why is that? And I said from a strict business standpoint, why should I invest? I've got an hour here. Three hours. Why should I give any of that time? Regularly and as a routine to people who are not nearly as invested in the success of this show as I am. And why should I give a portion of this program every day to people that are already everywhere else in the media? There's nobody out there that I can get.

It's not everywhere else and there's nothing I can get them to say that they haven't said anywhere else. So why why do what everybody else does? Well, because there's a formula. Well, there you know, there was talk radio shows had a formula, guests were paramount. Issues being local was another thing that was paramount, taking calls was paramount and how you behaved with calls and some some people wanted insult hosts, some people didn't.

But I just said, why should I join the fray? Why it happened at a juncture to where I thought I had one last chance to make this work, so I wanted.

To find out, I knew, so I wanted to demonstrate that I could be the reason people listen, not some endless parade of guests who don't care about whether this show succeeds or not. They're only here to, you know, hype a book or a movie or whatever. And they're already everywhere else, so but even to this day, if you walked into a radio station and wanted to do a talk show, nobody would tell you to do it like I do.

That's not a criticism. The point is, don't don't be constrained by norms. Let your passion dictate what you want to do. And be brave and don't listen to negative is another thing, whatever you do, do not get distracted.

And absorbed over things not under your control, it's just a waste of time. It is a psychologically destructive thing to do. To try to get involved in things that you can't control, you have enough challenges trying to deal with those things that you can control. But I just I really do think that wanting it is 80 percent of all things being equal, you're educated, you're able to speak and I mean, in anything you don't begin every sentence with.

So, hey, what time is it?

So let me look at my watch it. Oh, what time? It's 12. Just learn to speak what you think. Don't be afraid to say what you think. And be passionate about what it is and if there's no money in it, find a way to make money at it, create the revenue stream if you can. It's not universally true for everybody, but there's no substitute for desire. One of the greatest tight ends in football today, guy named George Kittle.

Number eighty five, San Francisco 49ers, he has a philosophy he's the hottest tight end in football now. He believes that once you get to the NFL, the talent. Is so pretty equal that the difference in success and failure in the NFL is mental. Focus. Confidence weeding out all distractions. Don't get hung up on things you can't control. So George Kittle, the night before every game. Goes solo and alone for three hours. Mentally focusing on the game the next day, putting himself in circumstances that he foresees third down situations, team winning, team losing time left on the clock, he tries to.

Arrange things so that whatever that happens in the game is not a surprise, that he's mentally prepared for it because he's already studied it, focused on it, the weather, if it's raining, if it's going to be cold as hell, it's all mental. And he's when talking about the National Football League and the talent level. He's right.

I mean, the number of players quality qualified to play in the NFL is so few compared to a whole population that by the time you get there, the the differences in talent from position to position are not much.

There's not a whole lot of drop off until you get the third string and even then you're still talking about people that are infinitely more qualified than the rest of the population. The difference for him is entirely mental focus. Now, there's some givens in this, I mean, physical ability, he's got it. I have to work at that. He has to make sure he keeps it, but he has to work out and all that. But it's not something that he has to worry about.

He's tall enough. He weighs enough. He's strong enough. He has to work on all that stuff. But those are not everybody in the league does that. But not everybody has the same mental toughness, the same focus, the same ability to overcome adversity. And he thinks that's the difference in winning and losing and championships in the National Football League. Well, you can apply that to anything in life that you want to do.

It probably it's not an easy thing to do to sit around by yourself for three hours a night and try to imagine every circumstance that you could face the next day so that when it happens, you're not surprised by it.

Some people would advise against doing this because. All you're going to do is paralyze yourself. Game day comes, you're going to be waiting for those things to happen rather than having the ability to react to what does happen. But it works, it works for him. And so there in is the last piece of advice, don't think there's only one way to do anything because there isn't. There are countless ways and even now, depending on what it is you want to do, there are countless ways to do what you want to do that may not.

Have been done before or may not be done very often and frequently. And remember that the pressure on everybody is to conform, conformity creates the least amount of problems for bosses and managers, nonconformity a problem.

I am a nonconformist. I would never succeed in any corporate structure.

Some people are made for it, though. This is the there's no right or wrong about whatever it is you want to do. Just find it. That's half of it, if not more. And how you find it is being honest with yourself about what you love and what your passions are. And what you want to be. Some people that's what do I want people to think of me. Other people, what do I want to do, whatever it is that motivates you?

I've often found that one of the worst things you can do, though, is to get even with people you think wronged you in the past. I'm going to succeed at this job so those people will see they were wrong. Fine. Let it motivate your wife. But don't that be why you're doing what you're doing?

Because they will never acknowledge it anyway. You'll never get the satisfaction, you see.

We're going to continue to celebrate the life of the greatest broadcaster in history, Rush Hudson. Limbaugh, the third were hardly even getting started. There's so much for you to hear, including words about Rush's faith as Angela Earhart's can explain, as told to her by Rush's niece, Christine. We'll hear from President Trump and a lot more words from the Mahat himself, even as he is now in heaven.

And we miss our friend. We'll continue at Qualcomm, we believe in staying connected and you can see us wherever 5G is helping transform telemedicine, supporting remote education and powering mobile PCs. The invention ages here. Learn more at Qualcomm dotcom invention.

At a young college grad gunned down while simply walking his dog, a mom, Michelle Parker, vanishes after she drops off her little twins as a babysitter.

An Indianapolis mass murderer leaves six dead. Nancy Grace here. These are just some of the cases we're investigating on crime stories. It's so easy to think it will never happen to you, never to my family. Right. That's not true.

It does happen.

And we want to help everyday on crime stories, we break down the biggest breaking crime news and try to put the clues together. We speak with family members, reporters, investigators, police and specialists. Every day is a mission every day, a chance to stop crime and to keep one more person safe.

Join us, listen to crime stories with Nancy Grace on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast. It is and always has been an honor to sit in for Rush and. In a way, we're still doing that Rush would be here if he could, and I start my radio show it in Seattle by saying today is the day the Lord has made. And these are the times in which God has asked us to live, and it was this week where God Almighty tapped Rush on the shoulder.

And he said it's time to come home. And with Rush went the talent that God had loaned him, but Rush saw fit to leave an archive in a and a broadcast museum. It's that Rush Limbaugh dotcom. And it's available to all of us and EIB is going to continue for the foreseeable future. There's so much so much Rush shared with us that we will have the opportunity to share with you, and that will continue at this at this department this time of day.

So we were used to listening. You can know a person by their friends and you can know a person by their enemies and and you can look back on a person's track record. And you can look at some things that are not commonly looked at with Russia's program. How many small businesses? Became large businesses. Because they spent the money to have Russia endorse them after Russia investigated their companies. And came to the point where he could say, I will put my name on this, I will use these products or I will put my name on this, and there's a ton of them.

And I bet you you could create a list of hundreds. The people who surround this program. I've gotten to know them through the years, and they're with us today. And I've said their names before. Susan and Paul and Mike Mimoun, you've heard his name on the air, broadcast engineer in Ali, Craig, Bryan, Keith Crash but bunch people. Put the show together. The New York Times. Is apparently of the mind that one such partner, Nordley, does not exist, someone that Russian made up.

Well. A lot of pictures with the made up guy. And The New York Times has also decided to see fit that. That James is. Attempt to degrade his role, I'll tell you something. It wasn't in our outline today. Rush loves this team. How do I know? Because of the 32 years. Because of the longevity. Notice something. When Rush passed away. Was called to God. It was his wife who announced it on this program.

Nothing leaked. No one ran to sell the story. Because there's a family here. This family. So that sense you had, that as you listen to the program, something really special was going on all these years? You're right. I got to believe that that flowed from something. Inrush because he had enough power in this business that he could change staff every year. He could have done what he wanted to do and and guess what he did?

He rewarded. The loyalty of these people. And every single day that the program goes on, when myself or Mark Stein or Ken Matthews hosts hosted for Rush.

It was always about delivering you value. And there's tens of thousands of people. Who our success to rush in what we heard last hour was Rush. Pardon me. This is so hard, you guys. Our success. To listen to what Rush said. About not being a cog. About not. Being just a puzzle piece. I've zagging as others zig. Had he not done that? There's probably tens of thousands of people who would have a lesser income.

Because he chose not to conform and this is what has so frustrated the Mockingbird media about Rush's that he wouldn't conform. He never sought their approval. And so today, typical of this is as our friend this past on, you have Joy Reid attacking Bush Nordley.

Saying that he was just a human shield for Russia's opinions about Obamacare. I know both inertly. He has his own views. And it happens that many of them, maybe most of them lined up with Russia's. That really frustrates people like Joy Reid. I believe the treatment. Of this team. Came from a place in a huge heart. I want you to hear. Something here. This is Ainsley. Our Ainsley Earhart, and she's telling us about Russ's faith as she heard it, told by Rush's niece, Kristin.

His niece is a good friend of mine and she works here with us and she's in my Bible study. I always tell that family, Christian, I would love to meet your grandparents because Russia's is such a stellar individual and just fought for freedom and fought for conservative ism in our country. David has written so many books, he has a deep love for Jesus. And his daughter, Kristen is an amazing person. And I asked Kristen yesterday, I said, what would you like me to say about Russia?

She said he never missed a Christmas with our family. All of Kristen's siblings, sisters and brothers were like Russia's children. He would fly to Cape Girardeau, where they grew up, to go see Kristen in her high school plays. She said that he showed up for his family in a grandiose and generous way and didn't just throw money at us. But in ways he really put his heart into our family because he was so generous, she said. Her sister loved video production, so he would always buy her the best equipment.

One time Kristen was going home to Cape Girardeau for her, her wedding shower, and there were a lot of problems with the flights. And Rush sent his plane there so that she could come back and not be so upset about almost missing anything that that was his gift to her. And she said when he was diagnosed, they texted a lot. And she said, if you mention anything this morning, please talk about his faith. That was the core of who he was and everything that he believed.

He wasn't vocal about it, but he had a deep relationship with Jesus. She sent Romans eight twenty eight to him. And we know that God works all things for the good of those who love him. When he was diagnosed and wrote her back and said, I believe that to the T. It's not that everything that happens is good, but he knew with all of his heart that God is good.

God is good. I will tell you something I've never said on the air. And this is fully about Rush. I got to do the show in New York with his team, the team that's with us today, and we got on the topic of Gold Star, that Gold Star Families and a gentleman called. OK, guys, this can be really hard. He called. Because they had found in their son's effects he was a gold star that they'd found in their son's effects.

His son was was killed in an on on duty. Believers in Iraq. A. Collection of cigar's. Too expensive for their son to afford. And then too nice of a box. And so his father became very curious. And he looked into the box and there was a note. A handwritten note. From Rush. Because Rush chose. To communicate with him. And to take care of them and it said no. This is my private number.

If you need to reach me, if you need anything, you can, you can use this and please do. And I asked that gentleman to see his son's name, his son's full name and job title on the air, and he did. And then as I was just wrapping up this phone call. Ali. He's with us today, often screens, calls, I don't know if you remember this, but she said, don't let him hang up, do not let him hang up.

Whatever you do, do not let that man hang up. Russia wants to be able to get in touch with them. See, that man had seen on the rush 24/7 Cam Rush TV, he had seen a flag. He had sent Rush in, thanks for the cigars, his son's flag. Behind our Russia's head. Someday. The stories of this heart. Will hopefully be told none other than President Donald Trump spoke for the first time since he left office and talked about the last time he spoke with Rush three or four days ago.

I'd call him just to find out. You know, his fight was very, very courageous and he was very, very sick. And, you know, from diagnosis on, it was just something that was not going to be easy, but you wouldn't know it. And he is married to an incredible woman, Catherine, who really every time I spoke to him, he would tell me how great she was. She took such great care. He was very brave.

I mean, he, in theory, could have been gone four months ago, really. He just he was fighting until the very end. He was a fighter. You were great gentleman. It was a unique guy. And he was a he became a friend of mine. You know, I didn't know Rush at all. I had essentially never met Rush. And then when we came down the escalator, he liked my rather controversial speech. I made that speech that was a little bit on the controversial side, and he loved it.

And he was without ever having met him or talked to him or, you know, had lunch with him and asked if he was with me right from the beginning. And he liked what I said. And he agreed with what I said. And he was just a great gentleman. Great, great man. And I bet you you get a chance to talk to him, maybe you'll hear the same thing, Russia is so much more to share with us.

You will hear Rush Limbaugh's voice next as we continue to celebrate our friend in the. I'm going to miss his voice, his presence every day on the radio and EIB will continue for the foreseeable future. We'll continue to share Rush's voice as we do here. As Rush reminds us, never listen to a person who didn't achieve something when they say you cannot do it. This is Rush Limbaugh, speaking of you, relying on yourself to be your best.

You're going to have people above you wherever you work. Some of them are going to just be mean, incompetent, insecure people. Others are going to be great. And, you know, we have choices in this country. You can either accept a situation, try to make the most of it and say, OK, I have to stay here, my family's here. I can't pack up and move in this country. Who knows where I can find a job?

Or you can say, you know, I'm not going to put up with this. I'm not going to be disrespected like this. And I if I'm better than the people I work for, then I'm going to go get a job where I can use all my talents. It just it's an attitudinal thing. If you're going to sit around and accept the attitude that you're always going to be an employee and you're always going to have a boss and you're always going to have to eat the excrement sandwich order, you someday want to be your boss.

Do you someday want to be independent and free of that? And we live in a country where people can make that choice each and every day. But that's why I've always said that most of the limitations that people have are self-imposed. Most of the limitations we have are not because somebody won't let us do something, it's because we don't want to do what it takes to do something else or we can't move or we whatever.

But most of the limitations that people place on themselves are self-imposed or have are self-imposed.

And so a union is not is not the solution to any of this. Unions not not the correction. But I please don't misunderstand. I have absolute total support for each and every employee in this country where they're unionized or not.

I can see I want a successful country. Defined in a lot of ways, I want a moral country and I want a prosperous country and I want a country with all kinds of future for everybody who has yet to be conceived and born. And this requires the people who are alive today also want the same things and have the ability by virtue of how they live their lives and govern themselves to create the same set of circumstances we were all fortunate enough to be born into.

And this is why cultural, moral decay is a great, great, great concern. It's not because. There are some of us who disapprove personally we want. It's because of the overall effect over time, long, long after I'm dead, what's going to happen to this country with his moral rot, with this silly notion that you kids are so fragile that you can't tell them the truth about the economy or that you have to drag them in and show them a propaganda movie by Al Gore and then bring their parents in and threaten the parents.

If you don't come watch it, your parents grade will suffer. Well, now we got some of the silliest economic notions. That the people of this country voted for and we just we sit around and we hope and pray that they overreach and I'm convinced they will. I'm convinced the Obama people are going to vastly overreach and that if he if he if he puts this eight hundred and fifty billion dollar stimulus package, a billion dollars trillion dollar, whatever it is, a year and a half from now, folks, you're going to see the approval numbers for Barack Obama.

They're going to stun you and him and everybody else. And here come the midterms. But what's going to happen in 2010 is going to depend totally on whether or not the Republican Party has grown a set and has the audacity to actually present an alternative rather than watered down sameness. So understand here, Faith, I love you and I understand. Garbage that your husband goes through? I've gone through it and so has everybody else.

It's part and parcel of going to work every day in this country, we've all had reprobates and idiots that we work for. We've also had great people that we end up working with.

If you're lucky, you end up great people you're working with and working for. But you have to those people aren't going to find you. You have to be out there working and finding them. So please don't misunderstand. We support the workers I support I, I have respect, love, admiration for everybody in this country who gets up and goes to work every day.

I don't care where and what they're doing. It's the people not work who have entitlements, expectation, who can but don't you know, that's that's a that's a whole different thing. I have no sympathy for sob stories because we've all had them. If we all we could all cry every day about something, we could all go through the day, we got nothing.

Welcome to life.

The more you get, more you're able to get in control of your own life, in your own future, the happier you're going to be if you structure your life, your life, so that you're always waiting for the next explosion to hit, they're always waiting for the next creep to pop up.

It's going to happen. You can be a person of action or you can sit around and wait and hope and remember hope.

Outside the biblical don't get confused here, hope is simply an excuse for doing nothing. It's Rush, tough love and loving the workers. Remember what we talked about? The longevity of this team. Don't tell me personally to meet a person. Don't tell me his opinion didn't matter to Rush Limbaugh. But. Mark Stein, Ken Matthews, and those of us who've been fortunate enough to get to fill in for the greatest broadcaster of all the time, all time we've seen the work, we've seen the teamwork, it's not an accident.

These are people Rush worked with because he chose to. Because when you've achieved the success that he had. You can have anybody and he had the people he wanted. And everybody starts somewhere. Now, there are people even on the night where Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the broadcaster's Hall of Fame. Where he got to meet Paul Harvey, another legend in radio that's a broadcaster there, thought that she would hurt him. Take that occasion where he was being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

A woman who herself got paid to express opinions thought she would hurt Rush, but she gave it her best shot.

And you get to hear Rush to tell you that story as we continue to honor our friend Rush Limbaugh.

When he shares a story, it's as if he's telling me that story one on one, just he and I intellectually, I know there are millions of others listening and hearing that same story, but he was talking to me, just me. When Rush talked about having talent on loan from God. Later on, he told us that had taken on a new meaning to him, and he also told us we all have talents on loan from God and he shared an incredible philosophy with us.

His philosophy, most of the limits we put on ourselves, we invent out of thin air.

Our next caller was on hold for two hours last Friday. We didn't get to him, so we asked if we'd call him back. Is this Stephen from Murray, Utah? Stephen, I have about 30 seconds here.

IRA, I'm just kidding. I'm going to we're going to get you started here, but I'm going to hold you during the break and we'll continue after the break. But you're calling them you read a book by Steve Young, the former quarterback. Right. That's true, and I made a connection between his story and a quote of yours, where you talk about most of the reasons people say they can't do something for reasons they've made up. If you like me to, yeah, yeah, that was that my belief that most of the limitations people have or face are self-imposed, that Steve Young.

Right, that he wrote that in his book.

No, no, it's not in the book, but in the book he talks about. Becoming an NFL quarterback, he said it was a great opportunity in my life. It was also one of the most challenging things I've ever done.

So you're reading Steve Young's book and the challenges he faced coming up reminded him of the quote you heard me say about the not quite rush.

It reminded me of your quote. It reminded me of your quote where you said, most of the reasons people think they can't do something for reasons they didn't get it right. Everything you do in life is up to you. Part of life is realizing you have much more potential and ability than you'd ever know. But it's up to you to face the fears and unleash that which really drives you. Now, as I read this book by Steve Young, his path to the NFL was at BYU.

He was number eight on this team. And he said, well, I could have thrown a pity party and just given up and gone home, or I could have chosen to have a positive perspective on life and let my play proved people wrong. People told Steve Young he'd never make it as a left handed quarterback that his accuracy wasn't there. Well, he worked on his accuracy. And I mean, look at the way his career turned out in the Hall of Fame and his Super Bowl ring.

So that just reminded me of that quote from you. And I've noticed that quote. True, true in my own mind. You see, I was born premature and I have some challenges. And I use this quote of yours in college essays or during lectures in journalism classes. And my professors are pretty impressed and I've noticed that quote of yours to be true in my own life. So I wanted to thank you for that.

Well, I appreciate that. I really do. I love having this come back like this because that's that's always great to have affirmation like that.

You know, speaking of Steve Young, I mean, he's overcome a lot. There's no question that he had and he's achieved a lot.

But I think one of the things he probably would admit this if he were here, and I think people in the sports media, people follow the NFL are pretty much aware of this. But he was second string to Joe Montana for a number of years. That's like being second string to Babe Ruth. It doesn't matter who's next, there's no way they can measure up. I mean, Joe Montana was wasn't mythologically huge, in fact, Joe Montana, that was one name, I mean, Joe Montana was such a big deal in San Francisco.

It wasn't Joe Montana with Joe Montana. He just owned everything. And Young was on the bench. I can remember I was at a game the 49ers and the New Orleans Saints at the Superdome and Montana was hurt and Young was the starting quarterback. And it was it was not yet his job because Montana was going to come back and reclaim the job, but soon thereafter would be traded or released and go to the Kansas City Chiefs. But during the pregame.

Joe Montana was granting interviews on the sideline to anybody that had a camera, even though he wasn't playing, he was a bigger deal. Then Steve Young, who was going to be starting that day now, I don't know. I know Steve Young. I've got I got to know Steve Young during my stint.

At the pre politicized days of ESPN and the Sunday NFL pregame show, I only met Montana once, but folks, the reason that I have all these things about such philosophies is the only limitations we have in life for the most of them are the ones we place on ourselves.

When you get to the rarefied air that people like Montana and Steve Young and other NFL quarterbacks are breathing, you can't believe that competitive, the cutthroat.

Competitive nature of things and make no mistake, and this is not a cut, I don't want anybody calling Montana and telling him that I was because it's not. But Joe Montana, on a day that Steve Young is going to start because Montana hurt and Montana is still trying to soak up all the oxygen with all the pregame interviews. No, not I mean, he could turn them down, but it's not going to happen. The press wanting to talk to Montana was quite natural.

He wasn't seeking them out, but it was a way to keep the light shining on him. He wanted the job back. It's just the way it is. It wasn't mean. It wasn't cruel. It's just the nature of competition. And my fear is we're not teaching competition. We're shielding people from it for the longest time. Children, you know, nobody's allowed to win anything with the participation trophies.

But when you get to real life and if you really want to amount to something, when you get whatever line of work you're in, as you get to the top of that line of work, there are very few people there. That's why the phrase rarified air. And it is cutthroat, the competition is cutthroat, even among the best friends, and you have to be able, by virtue of experience, to be able to deal with it. You're not going to win every outing.

I don't mean game. You're not going to beat everybody out for the top job. And there's all sometimes you're going to be the best, but you're not going to get the gig because there are other factors. People making the decision might like somebody more than they like you. It's vicious. And you have to be totally singularly focused on yourself, not in a bad way. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe there's a reason you're trying to pursue the highest levels you can go.

That's because you can do it and you can do it well and you can do it better than anybody else.

The minute you carve out that that life for yourself, you are making enemies because a lot of people are going to be fighting for the same thing and they're going to try to be beating you out and denying you what you want. You're going to be doing the same thing to them. They're going to be others who just resent you for thinking you're that good. They're going to resent you for even having the audacity to try to climb that high. I mean, folks, it is vicious out there.

It's also very healthy, all of these things. Are things that successful people have to go through in order not just to reach the pinnacle, but then to stay there, because I'm going to tell you, getting there while fraught. With stress and competition and never ending assaults, getting there is not even half as hard as staying because once you get there or close to it, everybody wants what you have. And there's really it's much easier to go south than north when you're at the top.

And so that's why I have this philosophy about limitations. It's easy to be a victim. Look how easy the Democrat Party has made almost half this country think they're victims of something. And what happens to you when you're a victim? Well, when you're a victim, you automatically have a built in excuse for failure. When you are a victim, it's always somebody else's fault when you're a victim, success is not possible. When you are a victim of something, you are acknowledging that you are as far as you're going to get and you can't get any further because there are more powerful forces arrayed against you than the force of yourself against it.

So if you think, for example, that, well, let's say you you want to do a job and you want to be really you want to rise really high in that career, but where you live, that job doesn't exist.

Your town's too small or maybe the businesses in your town, but even if you reach the pinnacle there, it's not because it's a small town, it's it's not nearly as high as you could go if you're unwilling to move. Well, that's all on you. That's a limitation you're placing on yourself now. That's fine if that's if that's what makes you happy. I'm not criticizing things. I'm just pointing out that it's not usually anybody else's fault when you don't want.

Sometimes it is there's exceptions to everything, but usually the self limitations. That we attach to to our souls, and I wanted to be a success in radio. There was no way it was ever going to happen. If I stayed where I was born, it was not possible. Nothing against where I was born, nothing against the people there. It just wasn't possible.

I knew when I was 15 that I was going to have to leave if I was serious or what I was doing. And back then I knew that, that every climb, every rung up the ladder was going to involve another move. And it did.

And it's I wanted it badly. I remain dedicated to my desires.

And it's what enabled me to come back after being fired seven or eight times, whatever it was only twice for legitimate insubordination, not just the doctor of democracy, not just America's anchorman.

He was America's storyteller.

He was Rush was inducted into the Hall of Fame, Radio Hall of Fame, met Paul Harvey. He was impressed by Paul Harvey's career and kindness. And then a woman decided that as a fellow broadcaster, she'd try to hurt Rush on the night that he was inducted, a swing and a miss.

Rusty Franklinton, North Carolina, great to have you with us on the EIB Network.

Hello, Bryce. Thanks for taking my call. And congratulations on 32 years. Thank you, sir. I've always wanted to ask you this. Did you ever meet Paul Harvey? And if you did, what was your take away?

Oh, sure. I met. I met. There's a actually, it's a it's a good story. When when I first time I met Paul Harvey, what day was at the Chicago Radio Hall of Fame induction ceremony where I was being inducted. And it was a big night. I had a lot of family there. They came up from Cape Girardeau. This was in Chicago. Bruce Dumont was running the National Radio Hall of Fame and the crew from the NPR Morning Edition.

They were getting in that year. Larry King was the emcee. They broadcast this thing worldwide because I was getting in. I was the most famous inductee and Paul Harvey was there. He was instrumental. He was one of the key figures in the in the radio hall of Fame. And he lived in Chicago, of course.

So, I mean, this is one of the one of the one of the instances of naiveté that bit me in the back.

I was told that Dumont said, hey, Sally Jessy Raphael wants to be the one conducting what? Yeah, Sally Jessy. Obviously, this was this was the night of the abduction as well. OK, what could go wrong?

What went wrong was she stood up there and she said, I don't think this man should be inducted in the Hall of Fame.

He calls women like me, Feminazi said, and I'm thinking, oh, for crying out loud, it's the only time I'm going to get inducted in the Radio Hall of Fame. And this B.I has to get up there and do this where moms in the audience and my brothers in the audience, my brother is steaming and so was Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey was livid. And Sally Jessy Raphael, who's about five to when she's not wearing those rockabilly high heels, she just beaming at me. I just totally ignored her. And I went up there and I thanked everybody, the American people, and gave my remarks and so forth.

And when it was over, I met Paul Harvey and he shared with me that he was very disappointed in what had happened and so forth and what she had done.

And the following Saturday, it was that was a ceremony took place. I think it was a Saturday night. In Chicago, and it was, I think, the following Saturday on Paul Harvey's Saturday show, and I think it is Saturday broadcast, was like a 15 or 20 minute thing. But he did a he devoted, I think, over half of that broadcast to me being inducted in the Hall of Fame. And it was it was it was so great.

It was it was well, I just heard the one line. There's nobody who does what Rush Limbaugh does. And so there's nobody ever who can do it better. And he was he was effusive in his praise. And part of the reason was he felt it necessary to spend the Hall of Fame. Nobody was was happy with what Rafael did. She she had she had duped everybody. You know, Bruce Dumont was apologizing to the NPR. People loved it.

Larry King loved it. But but the half the other crowd didn't. And I remember flying home, dropping my family back in Cape Girardeau. And I was still ticked off on the airplane.

And my mother. What do you what do you think he's gotten a hold of?

Yeah. Look how it happened that you can only do this one time, Mom. I mean, I can't go in I can't get inducted next year the right way. No, you should be proud. That's never happened to anybody before. Well, that's probably true.

Nobody's probably better been inducted by somebody protesting that reduction, although I think Marlon Brando came close to the Academy Awards one year. But I don't know. But she always had a unique way of unique, positive way at looking at things. So we get look, I know I don't I don't know. I don't know where she is.

We look you know, my TV show was taped in the same building on the same floor that her stupid show was taped on. And there was somebody on her staff. I still don't know. You may know who it was. There was somebody on her staff who surreptitiously, privately and secretly got us a photo of Sally Jessy Raphael without any makeup. And now, I don't know. I don't want any of you ladies getting upset with me here. This came in over the transom.

And I know it's not it's not polite to comment on such things, but I don't think I have ever seen in a single human being a stark contrast between makeup and no makeup, as was exhibited by that in that picture of Sally Jessy Raphael. And I think correct me if I'm wrong, I think I think that picture ended up in a television. I think, yes, switcher made a mistake. And that picture was up there for like ten seconds mistake before we realized it.

And yeah, it's strange the way things things work out. It is Tadamon celebrating with you the life of our friend Rush Limbaugh, and there's so much more in this last hour that team EIB has put together for you a lot of Russia's voice to follow on the EIB Network.

We're saying thank you to our friend Rush Limbaugh. And we're recognizing that the Lord has called him home and he spoke to us about his faith. He left a gift, a terrific gift. Ideological demoralisation has left our young people with an in incapable of understanding, let alone defending what the United States of America means. And so Rush Limbaugh became an author again, this time for children. Folks, I.

I have to. I have to tell you, we are with with my upcoming book, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans, I announced this book on Thursday. The book hits on October 29th. It has been, number one, everything Amazon since it still is. I don't know if this is unprecedented or not. Maybe the announcement of Harry Potter books. Stays at No one preorder, this book's preorders are higher than sales of other, but it's just it's astounding.

I went to a little to my first book. The way things ought to be a publisher, which was the same the same publisher, Stayman owned Shuster. And they threw a book party for me at the famous New York eatery. 21 and I was meeting people in the publishing industry that I didn't know and they didn't know me and I've been in New York for years and I was still. Trying to get my feet wet in that market city and so forth, and so guy from time life, I wish I could remember as he was ranking, very ranking senior executive, been there long time white haired guy came up to me.

And asked me how it felt. Because at the time of the book party, the sales have already taken off and it was number one. On The New York Times was that book stayed at number one for 24 weeks. This guy comes up to me and asked me how I felt about it, and I said, I'm humbled. You're what? I said, I'm humbled. You've got a book at the top of the Times list of your humbled, and he really was incredulous.

I mean, almost just this side of angry, incredulous said, yeah, I'm humbled. What do you mean by that? He hadn't the slightest idea what I was talking about, I said, well, I'm. This is my first book, it's this is something I never thought I would do in my entire life, imagining whatever a success track would be if I ever got on one in radio.

I never thought it would include writing a book in the fact that. People are buying it. I'm deeply appreciative, I'm totally humbled by and he did not understand that. I couldn't make him under. He thought he thought I was a nut. And I said, well, how should I feel? He said, well, you ought to feel on top of the world great. Well, I do, but I mean, I'm really humbled by it.

He didn't understand how I could understand the idea of appreciating people who were buying.

It didn't didn't you know? And I should have that should have been a big red flag to me because, I mean, the guy's office, New York publishing world, he's a leftist in his politics. That should have been a huge learning experience. It wasn't I mean, it was at the time, but it wasn't until sometime later that I actually realized what that meant in terms of the way those people look at their audiences, remember their news people and their audiences don't know what they're talking about.

The number doing, I mean, news audiences, time, life guy, news audiences, let them complain and the people in the news business will tell them it's the only business where the customer is always wrong. What? You don't understand what we do? Well, you're not quite smart enough to understand. And I. I feel the same way. I am just I'm overwhelmingly humbled by this. It's inexplicable how we how we feel here. Now, we did slipped a number to it, Barnes and Noble, but we'll fix that today.

And what else we've done here, we have we've posted on my Facebook page. A short little video behind the scenes video, 40 seconds is, what, 39 seconds of the of a portion of the recording session to do the audio version of the book.

Which a couple of weeks ago did that. Over three consecutive nights and the the video was actually taken from the control room, what you see in the upper right hand of the video frame is me on a TV monitor, the the ditto cam and the back of the broadcast engineer's head, Brian Johnson, which is as close to fame as Brian says he wants to get. And so it was taken from the control room and it's just a little bit behind the scenes.

So we've got some more that we might post. But the audio version that that that, too, is doing phenomenally well in its own category and preorders and the audio version I've never done anything like this in the audio version was a real challenge.

I I still love professional challenges, folks.

I still get jazzed by by doing something I haven't done, and I mean I read my other two books, but but nothing like I mean, this is a dramatic reading, very many voice inflections, some impersonations, some accents, storytelling. And it was a real challenge. I had not done it before. And I'm really proud of it because it's it's it's some of the in my mind, some of the best work I've done, the audio version of this of this book.

So anyway, by that by this time, you know the drill.

And I can't do the feedback we continue to get from people who are thrilled people, I guess the number one thing we're hearing, it's about time.

People wanted me to do something besides the radio program, and a lot of them wanted me to do a book and it just didn't.

It didn't excite me, and if I'm not excited, I'm not going to do it, and then Catherine said, look, why don't you do a book for kids? That's something I had not thought of and start squaring history. You know, it's not being taught properly. It's one of your big bugaboos. And so here we go. This is it. The true story of the pilgrims, true story of Thanksgiving, although much more in it than just the real story of Thanksgiving.

I've seen some critics pin that our press coverage has been awesome. Actually, there's nothing yet to criticize other than me, but there hasn't been any of that. There's I mean, there's some snarky comments on blogs, but the drive by media been pretty fair, accurate in their reporting of the existence of the of the book. But I really I'm humbled by it.

I, I don't find that odd, this guy at times life. But that was the oddest thing. You know what I mean, Don, when I say I'm humbled by it, but this guy could not understand that. Of all things to feel, that's the last thing, I mean, he walked away shaking his head. Not quite, not quite getting it. So, you know, created this vehicle here, folks, that is so much fun.

We have brought to life the icon from our iced tea company to if by Tea Dotcom or Rush Revere, who is me dressed up as Paul Revere. And he's got this smart aleck talking horse that can time travel. Well, once you do that, boy, you can go anywhere. And that's Rush Revere and the horse Liberty can go anywhere in American history. And we're going to and we can take students with us and we've got smartphones. We can record what happens in history, bring it back to the classroom and show the students on a projector using airplane technology.

Oh, folks. I mean, this has been it's it's it's a rush. It's it's huge fun. And I just I couldn't start the program today without once again. Telling you how appreciative I am and humbled I am. That you have, I mean, five days. Was it Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Yep, five days. And I know that it's it's going to continue. And they you know, it's written for 10 to 13 year olds, but it's for everybody.

Grandparents and parents to give Reid with home schoolers, I mean, it's just it's for everybody and it is you know, it was so much fun because it's just it's.

It's fun to have a chance to correct what's happening in public education today, just as. The American left, as typified by the president, sadly doesn't think much of this country the way it was founded, that's the way this country is being taught, sadly, you know as well as I do. And to have an opportunity to.

Correct that and do the real story of this country, because it's a great story and it is a once in a lifetime of the planet story, this country, it really is exceptional and have a chance to explain that and have a shot at these young skulls full of mush with their parents and grandparents, as you know, it's just it fills the bill when you ask yourself what what else can I do?

And for me, this is fabulous in the book as a way of teaching what's not being taught. We have an amazing free country here founded by people. That had an unwavering spirit and determination to triumph, and they had hardships and they had obstacles that we try to bring to life. That people today don't have we have our own, but not the kind they have nowhere near it. And it got people thinking that exceptional Americans are rare, ordinary people doing extraordinary things is rare.

It's not it's not rare. It's it's it's why this country is is what it is. People coming from nothing to make the most of their lives. This is the one place on Earth where that can happen to one place on earth where dreams are promoted and can come true.

And so that's all of this this book and those which follow come under that. Umbrella and I thank you again, I really do, and I want to just let you know, there's a little video posted at our Facebook page and I think that links back to the home page. And it's also two of my Titcomb. If not, it will be. But it's all over their little video of. A behind the scenes recording session for the audio version, so I checked the email during the break and a couple of more which would address this, the preorder success of your book shows how how much your revered audience loves you.

If that's not that's not what this is about. I don't think I and this is what I mean by makes me feel humble. The greatest thing about this is.

That I think this is we're all on a team here, family, this is Team Rush showing that there are a lot of Americans who still love this country, white people running out, making this book, number one, preorder on Amazon and all these place.

This is just people wanting to be heard. They have not given up on this country. They don't buy into what's happening to this country. This is their way of making a statement. It isn't about me. It really is. It's an opportunity. This is this is this is America. A vast majority of this country showing that they still love this country and that they care about what's being taught to young people. That's what it really means when you get down to it.

As serious as Rush can be, there was that playful side of him. He's telling the truth when he says he's having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. He really is. Imagine every day going into work and doing what you love doing, all while making other people love doing what they do, being a compassionate patriot, one who loves their country, one who loves others. My dad always said be humble and be loved.

Now I know where he learned that from because he listened to Rush four years before I was. Thanks, Dad.

He's been my daily voice of truth. I always loved it when my wife would say, You know what? He's right for the first few years, I checked to see if he was right after I just stopped checking because he was he was the voice of truth. And Rush shared so much with us, obviously, he chose to side to share his faith in God Almighty, also his face and a faith in this team. We talked earlier about the fact that there are small businesses that became large because of this program and rush talents you select comfort is simply safe.

Snapple, LifeLock, Hotwire, Mandarin, USA, Carbonite, it became I drive legal Zoom, Citrix and Regius offices that this happened because of this team. We spoke earlier about a lot of members of the team. And I want you to hear a sound byte that's put together. By a woman named Cookie, and you've heard Rush mentioned Cookie on the air, cocoa on the air, and of course, the other members of the team you mentioned earlier, you heard a sound montage at the beginning of the show where people like President Trump and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and others were praising our friend Rush as he has gone to the Lord.

And that takes hours to do overnight. Cookie spends hours finding these soundbites to make the program what it has been all these years. And you've found that on the website Coco runs and helps run. And there's there's teams of people that do this. Greg Chapman, Joe and Greg do this as well. So this is something that you are going to hear for the first time. This is country music star John Rich wanted to share with you a story of 100000 dollar anonymous charitable donation that actually came from our rush.

People don't necessarily know that side of him, which is why I put that tweet out. That was more of an acquaintance with him. But when I was on Celebrity Apprentice, you I'm playing for St. Jude Children's Hospital, and my goal was to try to eclipse a million dollars and fundraise. So I called a lot of different people and I reached out to Rush and I said, would you mind making some kind of a donation to add to my total?

I'm trying to get past the million dollars that I'll send you a donation. But you can't ever tell Trump I made a donation. Don't say it on television. Don't tell anybody. It's just anonymous. He said, I believe that's the way charities should be. I said, You got it. I didn't know how much he was going to send until it showed up. And I see a six figure check to St. Jude Children's Hospital, man. What an incredible moment that was.

Yeah, I happen to know some of those stories, and they're not mine to tell, but I will tell you they were anonymous and they weren't always the big organizations. Sometimes they were just people, friends of friends, family members of staff. They're not my stories to tell, but I hope one day people decide to tell them. Because that side of Rush. It's known within the family, maybe that's where it should stay. Kookie also grabbed something from the Ingraham angle, this is Laura Ingram and she's speaking with former Vice President Mike Pence, who himself was a radio talk show host.

He spoke here about Rush's incredible talent radio.

You have to you have to show heart. And I actually think that was the he had an immense intellect, a capacity to to articulate conservative ideals and American principles, like like very few Americans of our time. But he also had heart. I mean, when you listen to somebody every day, as millions of Americans have done for more than 30 years, you get to know them for who they are. And this was a genuinely good man who he had a heart for our country.

He loved the American people. And I think that spirit of fun was all reflected in a sense you had listening to him that he loved the people that he was talking to. He believed in the boundless potential of every American. And I really do believe that the best days for America are yet to come. And and when they come, we're going to build that that boundless future on a foundation that Rush Limbaugh helped to pull. Right. There will never be another Rush Limbaugh.

You know, they can't be you've heard today on the program, Rush, explain his philosophy of success. To not conform, not be a conformist, to never listen to people who didn't. So they tell you you can't. The difficulty of staying on top, the importance of asking people, how did you do it? The importance of self-confidence, the importance of faith, and you've heard from family members and and extended friends of the family, the importance of family, the focus on that.

And then, of course, the recognition that with freedom comes responsibility. And in my mind. When Rush communicated to us, he came back from from rehab. It was the most stellar moment of broadcasting I've ever heard. As he took responsibility for a mistake he made. He taught so much at that moment. And maybe that's maybe that's what I'll miss most of all, the combination of freedom and responsibility, much more rush as we continue.

You know, I think one of the reasons that people get confused and have hatred for Rush when they've maybe never listened to him is they think, oh, look, the luck, the luck, the fortuitous ness. And they don't know the story of the hard work. They just don't. And the double shifts for a year, six hours of live radio, everybody starts summer, six hours of live radio every day. Everybody starts somewhere. All of us do.

And folks, here is Rush Limbaugh with one of those radio names, Jeff Christy. Now, I said at the beginning, we don't have a lot of audio from way back, we've done all that at the 10th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, but in some of the the 25th. But we do have some things here that I don't think that we've aired. And if we have aired them, it's been so long ago that I don't even remember.

And some of them are actually kind of instructive in explaining how we got here, because they go back to 1989, which was a year after this program had started. But grab audio, sound bite number one. This one I have not heard. Now, what this is Cookie found a she's put together a montage of me when I was a disc jockey in suburban Pittsburgh, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in 1971. I was 20 and this was my first job away from home.

And I remember I moved there in in February of 1971, arrived in the middle of a blizzard with the windshield wipers on my 1969 Pontiac LeMans having shut down. And the last 30 miles in the town were harrowing. But there was no way I was going to stop. I was going to get there. I don't know how I did it without running into something, but I got there. Now, anybody who does what what I do here will tell you they don't they don't like looking at years old stuff.

It's embarrassing. Like Sean Hannity has told me, he thought he cannot stand watching tapes of the old Hannity and Colmes show. He can't believe he looks so nerdy. And it's the same thing here. I, I don't watch myself on TV ever even two hours after it's done and listening to old radio tapes, it's painful. It really is painful. You know what I just said at the top of the hour break when when some people have said, and I don't take this personally, don't misunderstand these people that made this comment to me.

We're not trying to be offensive. Everybody wants to help. I have found that over the years, friends, acquaintances, everybody wants to help. And people have said everything that shows never been better. You know, I kind of liked it a little bit better way back when there was a lot more production value in it. You ever thought about going back to that? I said, yeah, I have. And in fact, I've even done it a couple.

I've gone back and done some of those old updates and I feel ten years old. Again, that was that was appropriate for who I was then. But he just doesn't feel appropriate except to do it as a greatest hits kind of thing. But to start sneaking that stuff back in is part of the regular ingredients in the program. Believe me, this doesn't it doesn't feel right. It doesn't fit. And the reason for that is really it's quite simple.

And it's back to this note that I got from a friend last night. Do you do you know, and again, I do not know. I don't stop to think about things like this because honestly, I'm too busy thinking about the next day. I don't know how else to say this, but I don't reflect it before I got to this point, I thought that I would when I gazed around at other successful people in any field, be they athletes or business people.

I wondered, what are their lives like? What do they do? Do they go home at night and think. About all they've done, do they just sit alone and think about what they've done and feel really good about it? And I eventually got a chance to ask that question to a lot of people. And I can tell you the honest truth is that not a one of them have said yes, they've all never occurred to me. And it doesn't occur to me either, because the next day is too important.

If you take what you do seriously and I do and when I talk about meeting and surpassing all of the expectations of you people in the audience, I mean that more than anything. And so I'm always thinking forward and I will beat myself up if I think I've done a lousy show or lousy job. But then I'll console myself by saying that it's tomorrow to fix it. So she sends me this note. She says, Do you know how few people can say they've had the same ethics, morality, conscience?

Political core beliefs, connectivity with themselves in their 20s to their 40s and into their 60s, into their best years. You know how few people can say that? I don't think about it. I have had friends of mine say in the recent past, the last five or six years, why don't you do something else?

What else do you have left to prove? How many times can you say what you think for crying out? These are all people who have stopped doing what they were doing when I met them and either not doing anything or trying to do something new.

Why not? You just got you can do anything. Why don't you do it? Because I love what I do. I absolutely love it. There's nothing else I want to do. There's nothing I'm not sitting around thinking, what else could I do if I do anything else? It would be an add on to this with this remaining as the foundation. But to drop this and do something that would never even occur to me, just like changing my core beliefs would never occur to me, changing my beliefs or what I consider important and whole would never occur to me.

And so in that sense, the note goes on, this is why you are perceived as reliable.

But I don't I don't actively think about that. I just try to be who I am day to day and I have an opportunity to do it in public. So anyway, we get these old tapes, old examples, and they are always embarrassing. But at the time I thought I was hot stuff. I mean, at any time this Pittsburgh deejay stuff or 1992 or during the Clinton years thought it was hot stuff.

Go back and listen to some of it I honestly saw is good. I'll admit some of it. Yeah, that's. But a lot of it. But it's true, I think of anybody, but I look at pictures of themselves from the past or have audio or video reminders of themselves in the past and not just appearance, but the maturity level and all that.

So I played this with some trepidation. I haven't heard it. I vaguely remember it. Well, no, I don't vaguely I remember this like it was yesterday, too. So again, this is a station. It was called Wyborcza Quixey. The format was always called salted solid rock and gold. I call it salt, salted rotten mould. After having to play the same 25 oldies for three years. Anyway, Cookie put together a montage and this is it now.

W Hi Ecstasy. McKeesport continues with much more Wickstead thirteen sixties solid rock and gold. Those 1967 hello, goodbye at seven 00, 3:00 in the morning, I went see solid rock and gold for the morning rush hour, sunny and cold today. Radar says a near zero percent chance of precipitation. A big hand for Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Pelusi celebrating their 25th refrigerator payment today, a little off the cuff of weeks of solid rock and. A Canadian group which is involved created the USA back in nineteen sixty nine, mother lode.

When I Die, which 13 16 where the hits roll on. When brothers get it on little hippie lingo, they're curly downtown, it's 90 degrees again, shooting for a high today of 31. This is Mersea women's liberation theme song Love Can Make You Happy. Mercy Three Chicks from New York City. This is WASC McKeesport.

Right. Love can make you happy. Women's Liberation theme song was under the feminazi even back in 1971.

Oh, of course. I hit the posts. I was nobody better hitting the post. That's talking up the music intro right to where they began singing. I was important. I can still do it. Absolutely. That's the timing talent I want to jump forward to.

Let's see. Let's go sound by four and five. Sacramento, California was the first place in my radio career I had any kind of success. I spent ten years in Kansas City prior to that five and radio and five working for the Kansas City Royals.

And in none of that could I honestly say I had any success. And in some of those places, some of those ten years, I wasn't even viewed as somebody who might be successful. And after five years at the baseball team and I figured out I just can't stand corporate life, it was too constricting. I'm not enough of a conformist. I don't collaborate. I don't want to collaborate. Those five years with the royals, I met people I would another otherwise met.

But I also learned what I was not good at doing. And so I ended up back in radio because it's the one thing I was I was happy doing. And Sacramento, California, is where I went. And that was the first time that that's 1988. And I started radio in 1966. Twenty years. I was sixty or fifteen when I started. I mean twenty years. It took twenty years to have anything like success. The first time in my whole broadcast career that I had any idea what a success track felt like and look like.

I knew what it didn't look like, I knew what it didn't feel like. But I never experienced it until Sacramento. Which is why I've always said that my adopted hometown, and it was the first place I had lived outside of my hometown, were actually planted roots and became part of the community rather than just a passing personality passing through town onto the next town, hoping for the next break. So after I left, Campi came to do this program nationally.

There was a natural pull to go back there and to express gratitude for all of the people there who had made it possible. So we started the Rush to Excellence tour, which if you've seen a Trump rally, it's what the Rush to Excellence tour was. When this program started, nobody knew who I was and nobody thought syndicated radio in the daytime had a prayer. A bunch of people had tried it, moderate success. And I was just the next one.

And if it didn't work, nobody would think anything of it either. But nice try. I figured it would set me up for a better job later if it didn't work because it never had. People thought you had to be the local, local, local in the daytime doing radio. I didn't believe that. Want a chance to show it. So I started the Rush to Excellence tour. Every time we got a new affiliate, I would go there, I would go for a weekend, I'd arrive on a Friday night, have dinner with a radio station people and do a personal appearance on Saturday and fly back to New York on Sunday.

And I did that 48 weekends a year for the first two years to cement the relationship with the stations that took the show and to cement a bond with the audience. I was stunned at how many people showed up to 5000. If the place held 10000, that's how many showed up. And I would do an hour and a half, sometimes two hours with just some notes to remind me things I wanted to say. And that's why when Trump started his rallies, I knew exactly what was going on.

I was able to spot the bond because I had lived it and I knew exactly what was going to happen with Trump's supporters sticking with him because I had lived it and had happened. Well, one of those Rush to Excellence tour is I was hell bent on going back to Sacramento. And because I felt I owed them so much, Kev became the the city, Sacramento, the audience there, the people live there.

And this was in what month this was. But I think it was summertime because it was very hot and they put the roof at Arco Arena open during the day, for what reason? I don't apply some lib who wanted me. We were videotaping this. I said I show up, you know, three hours before the event in the room. So what what do you do with the roof? Don't worry. It closes and it cools down real fast.

Well, it didn't. But anyway, the place was over 15000 people in the place. Clarence Frogman Henry showed up and saying, I got no home. And the local paper wrote a very caustic piece of frogmen claiming he was clueless, didn't know how he was being used. He loved him. His career was being revived. He had the greatest time. But we got a couple of sound bites from that rush to excellence appearance. And it's I think it's cuts four and five and we have time to squeeze on both ends.

So here's the first six years ago, I was working for the Kansas City Royals. I had been on radio 12 years previous to that, working for the Kansas City Royals six years ago at the end of five years there, after five years there, I was making eighteen thousand dollars a year. Now, I don't know what kind of money that sounds like to you, but believe me, in Kansas City, Missouri, at age 32, it's an embarrassment if you take yourself seriously.

And I was I was miserable. I was unhappy. I was aimless. I had given up on radio. I thought I had already failed at that. I bombed out as a DJ. All I knew was Donny Osmond, his birthday. A couple of other things. And nobody is going to take jazz seriously. It really I was down in the dumps.

I had nowhere to go. I was really without any self-esteem whatsoever. And I've talked to some friends and they said, you know, you're blaming the wrong people for this. It's not the royals, it's not your friends. You're sitting there miserable. Why do you put up with it? If you don't like it, do something else. So what are they going to do? They said, well, what do you best benchtop? And I said, probably being on the radio.

Well, there's your answer. Do what you're best at and you'll at least be happy regardless how well you do it.

So I decided to give radio one more chance and it brought me here to South Africa what is actually a broadcast consultant who was consulting the station in Kansas City. But I really went back to work for after the Royals five years, and he was the one who arranged this guy's got a chance to be something to me. I actually was hired to replace Morton Downey Jr get fired for telling an ethnic joke.

It's his voice that tells me that all is well with the world and he's going to talk to me for the next three hours. I hated politics. I still do. But when he's talking, it's more than just politics. It's an educational experience. I mean, the amount of work he put into every show just for us, three hours a day, that's love because he loves his country as much as he loves us.

And all he wanted to do is tell the truth.

We miss our friends, Rush. And he always told us his talent was on loan from God, and then he told us that that took on a much bigger and different meaning to rush after you shared with us that, as our friend put it, he had gone past its expiration date. I want to share with you just a thought. And when we come back, I just want to wrap up this day as we as a family have just been in tears together.

And it's OK. A lot of people are sending me notes that they're crying. It's OK. We're also laughing, remembering.

So I want to just share that thought with you when we come back on the one and only Rush. Limbaugh are strong spirited friend Rush Limbaugh has gone to the Lord, and with some of his last shows, he chose to tell us he accepted the will of God Almighty.

And maybe that was his final lesson. We love you, Rush Limbaugh.

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