RUSH: Tom in Toms River, New Jersey. I’m glad you called. It’s great to have you on the program. Welcome to EIB Network.

CALLER: Hey, hello. What I found interesting last night was Jim Lehrer. He actually might have done us a favor, because if you watch Barack Obama when Jim Lehrer tried to interrupt him with the last five seconds of his comment, Barack Obama lost his cool. Then all of a sudden if you look at Barack’s face, he realizes what he just said to Jim Lehrer and then he smiles. But prior to the smile there was outright anger in Barack Obama’s face to Jim Lehrer.

RUSH: When was this?

CALLER: This was at the end of his speech. Supposedly Jim Lehrer said, “You’ve got no time left,” and Barack said, “Well, I had five seconds left before you interrupted me.” At that point look at Barack Obama’s face. There was genuine anger at Jim Lehrer, like, how dare you interrupt me.

RUSH: Well, that’s true. That doesn’t happen to Obama. Moderators at debates don’t interrupt Obama. In fact, there was at least one episode of this, one point in the debate where Romney was cleaning Obama’s clock and Romney looked at Lehrer, and said, “You may want to move on to the next subject,” and Lehrer did. I’m paraphrasing, it’s pretty close to that. “You may want to move on to the next topic.” But Jim Lehrer, The NewsHour on PBS, it was questions and they were asked in — 30 years old, 40 years — not substance, just the way they were asked, two little kids. (imitating Lehrer) “Well, you know, he says, and then you say… which of you is right? What do you say to what he’s saying about you?” Thank God, folks, that Romney just boldly took over here and took the occasion of this debate to say what he intended to say, regardless what the questions or answers were.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Stephanie Cutter, campaign spokesbabe. She’s on CNN last night, postdebate spin coverage. Jessica Yellin, a reporterette infobabe at CNN said, “The president, he seemed to get testy at one point when he was interrupted by Jim Lehrer and he sort of bristled. So I wonder, will the president do a little bit more debate prep before the next debate,” make us look better? What are you doing? We’re doing everything we can to make him look smart and brilliant and he comes out and turns in a performance like this, making us look like a bunch of buffoons. Is he gonna prepare better, is he?

CUTTER: We feel pretty good about the president’s performance here tonight. Again, he wasn’t speaking to the people in this room. He wasn’t speaking to the pundit class. He’s speaking to people at home. I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney. (laughing)

RUSH: Oh, didn’t need a moderator, had Mitt Romney out there. Jim Lehrer lost control. Obama was speaking to people at home. If that’s true, that’s the worst thing that coulda happened. The media, “No, he’s supposed to speak to us and then we tell the people what he said.”

Here’s Jim Lehrer. There were numerous times last night I thought Lehrer was trying to bail Obama out. I really did. It was going so badly, Jim Lehrer is throwing Obama lifelines time after time in the debate. It’s Lehrer, by the way, anybody else pronounces it Lehrer, but he’s on television, he’s on PBS, he’s from the South, and so that means Jim “Lerah,” L-e-r-a-h. But if you lived on Maple Street in Anytown, USA, it would be Lehrer. I don’t want you to think I can’t say the word. I’m pronouncing it the way he does, Jim “Lerah” at PBS. Here’s a montage of the moderator trying to bail Obama out.

LEHRER: Mr. President, please respond directly to what the governor just said about trickle-down, his trickle-down approach, as he said yours is. Do you challenge what the governor just said about his own plan, Mr. President?

OBAMA: Well, we’ve had this discussion before.

LEHRER: About the idea that in order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

OBAMA: There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

LEHRER: But, Mr. President, you’re saying in order to get the job done, it’s gotta be balanced. Gotta have —

OBAMA: If we’re serious we’ve got to take a balanced, responsible approach.

LEHRER: Mr. President, do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?

OBAMA: You know, I suspect that on Social Security we’ve got a somewhat similar position.

LEHRER: And you don’t support that?

OBAMA: I don’t. And let me explain why.

LEHRER: I’m not gonna grade the two of you and say your answers have been too long or I’ve done a poor job —

OBAMA: You’ve done a great job.

RUSH: (laughing) There are a couple of times in there where Lehrer is — you know, he’s wearing an earpiece. Lehrer is wearing an earpiece, he’s gotta be in touch with producers, directors, give him time and —

(interruption)

What? Yeah, and so he’s got, (imitating Lehrer) “Wait a minute. Revenue in addition to cuts, right, Mr. President?”

“That’s right. There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.”

This is fabulous. I love it. There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

“Mr. President, you’re saying in order to get the job done it’s gotta be balanced, you gotta have –“

“If we’re serious, we’ve gotta take a balanced, responsible approach.” (laughing) He was walking him through the woods. I don’t know who was talking to Lehrer. I don’t even know if he was talking to Lehrer. I don’t know. It’s just funny. If you’re in a courtroom, it sounded like Jim Lehrer was leading the witness.