RUSH: Snerdley just said to me, “I can’t believe it. I’m watching CNN, they got this big debate tonight, and they’re still talking about the Malaysian Airlines crash.” Yeah? They’re not covering the debate. I mentioned earlier, you were screening calls, you didn’t hear it. You know, you’d be amazed. You miss, you’re one of the biggest fans of the program. You’re one of my most loyal staff members. There may be nobody loyaler except Kathleen, and despite that, you miss 80% of what goes on here because you’re busy screening calls, which is understandable.

I already pointed out that CNN is not even talking about this debate tonight. They usually would have a countdown clock that would have started yesterday, but they don’t have a countdown clock because they’re not doing the debate. And even though they are the Drive-By Media, if it’s not happening on CNN, it may as well not be happening. They’re certainly not gonna promote Fox. If they start promoting this debate, they’re gonna be promoting Fox. They’ll be all over it tonight after it’s over and tomorrow.

But, anyway, they just had a guest on. They did talk about this a little today. It was Wolf Blitzer filling in for Brianna Keilar this afternoon, and Jeff Lord, who is a brilliant writer for the American Spectator. And Brent Bozell’s bunch at NewsBusters was on as a — I guess he’s appearing more and more frequently as a Republican strategist or analyst, conservative, whatever, at CNN. And I think they look at Jeff as kind of like a cute zoo animal. They don’t quite know what it is, but they’d like to take it home if they could.

It’s cute, it’s cuddly, says some really cute, funny things that they’re not familiar with at all. And I think they’re just intrigued. All he is, he’s just a great conservative, but CNN really don’t know what he is. So they were talking about the debate with Jeff Lord. Brianna Keilar: “Okay, so how do the rest of the candidates approach Trump? Do they just pretend that he’s not there? How do they get their message out?”

LORD: There is a story out there in an outlet called the DC Whispers, which Rush Limbaugh was mentioning earlier today, which I find very interesting, that donors, unnamed, Republican donors have been telling these candidates that they need to get on the stage tonight and, quote, unquote, “take out” Donald Trump. I would be amazed if they did that. I mean, they fingered Senator Rubio as one of the recipients of this advice. Apparently there are others in the consultants that swarm around them. But that will be very interesting to see if anybody, you know, sort of wants to deviate from, you know, this is who I am and this is my record and go down that path. Then I think they might be, you know, opening the barn door a bit the way they don’t want to do it.

RUSH: The point is CNN had no idea. They had no idea that Republican donors had put a hit on Trump. They didn’t know it. And Jeff was the first one to tell them. And they thought, wow, this is fascinating. They had no idea. It’s just hilarious. And then they went from that back to the Malaysian jet. “Okay, Jeff, thanks very much. It’s really interesting.” You know, back in the control room, “Who is this guy? DC Whispers? Come on, who is this guy? Man, he would be fun to take home and have at a party, but what really are we doing here?” Is no doubt what they’re saying.

I don’t know how often Jeff’s gonna appear there, but I guarantee you, if they have him in there regularly, it’s possible he could have some impact at CNN because he’s gonna tell ’em things they don’t know. The thing about liberals is they do not branch out. Like myself and every other conservative talk show host that’s worth his salt could tell you everything about liberalism. We study it, we watch it, we read it, and we explain it better than they do.

We understand and know the full range of the ideological spectrum, which makes the fact that we are conservatives even more authoritative and solid because it is the result of study, not just chance or DNA or bias or prejudice. We know what liberalism is, and we want no part of it. They have no idea what conservatism is. They have constructed this straw man of conservatism, which is odd, screwball, racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobic, and so forth. And of course Jeff Lord, to give an example, is none of that.

So he breaks the mold in a way they don’t know what to do with at CNN. They’re probably scurrying around there trying to find this story about Republican donors putting a hit piece out on Trump. ‘Cause they would love to be reporting that. That might edge out the Malaysian airliner story on CNN if they could get their hooks into it.