RUSH: We go to Las Vegas.  John, you’re first.  It’s great to have you on the EIB Network.  Hello, sir.

CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  Mega dittos.

RUSH:  Thank you, sir.

CALLER:  So let me first say that I think Trump is gonna win big time.  We can talk about that later.  But my question is, if he does win with the media being all-in in a way we’ve never seen before, what are the repercussions to the media?

RUSH:  What exactly do you mean?  Do you mean will there be blowback negative effects on the media because they will have been proven to be ineffective or the other side will —

CALLER:  Yes, exactly.

RUSH:  Well, the media —

CALLER:  Exactly that.

RUSH:  The media does not act like they ever lose.  If Trump wins, their attitude is gonna be, “Well, it’s just gonna take us a little longer to destroy him.”  And they will continue to try to destroy Trump.  And they will do it by finding Democrats who think that he deserves to be impeached.  I mean, look at what they did to George W. Bush after the Florida recount.

CALLER:  I understand that.  But it just seems to me that having gone all-in in such a big way and not having moved the needle an inch, and if Trump wins… I mean, at a certain point you would think that the stock analysts and everybody else who owns the stations — you know, the investors — are gonna go, “Okay, something’s wrong here.” But maybe not.

RUSH:  Now, wait a minute.  Now you’re bringing a different fact.  You’re talking about some people other than media now.  You’re talking about the betting markets now?

CALLER:  No.  No.  I mean mass media’s owned. They’re public companies.

RUSH:  Oh.  Oh.  Oh.  No, no, no.  No.  Let me… I get it now.  You think the media’s gonna eat crow. You think the media’s gonna figure, “You know what? We are so out of touch, we had better change and get with the American people.”  You’re thinking that that might be some of the reaction.

CALLER:  I think that the owners might force that.

RUSH:  It’ll never happen.  Never, ever gonna happen. No. I mean, would you expect the Democrat Party to do that?

CALLER:  (laughing) No.

RUSH:  Well, that’s who they are.

CALLER:  Yeah, but they’re turning into the equivalent of the Labour Party in England.

RUSH:  They are.  The media is the Democrat Party.  The media does not do news.  The media is the Democrat Party hacks assigned to journalism positions.  Some hacks are consultants.  Some are candidates.  Some serve in elective office.  Some are professors.  Some are teaching assistants.  Some run think tanks.  Others are in the media.  And it’s a circuitous, almost an incestuous.  They go from one to the other.  You have Drive-Bys go from being spokesmen for candidates to being communications directors, to going back to being in the news media. 

Some may even run for office sometime, although that doesn’t happen much.  But I’ve been watching things like this all my life.  When the Democrat Party lost to Ronald Reagan in two landslides, it was the American people’s fault.  It was Reagan’s fault.  “The American people fell for a dunce! The American people were fooled.  The American people were idiots.  Reagan was a stupid fool,” and the Democrats and the media embarked on plans to stop Reagan at every turn, and they failed more than they succeeded.  But it’s never gonna get to the point…

Even after the 2002 midterm elections, it didn’t.

These are a good illustration for my point.

The first congressional election after Bush had won the White House, traditionally the incumbent party loses seats in the House and Senate just because. After two years, enough people are already fed up with the new president; then they vote the other party.  Bush’s party, the Republican Party, actually gained seats in the 2002 off-years because of the Wellstone memorial that the Democrats pulled off.  And even after that shocking loss, the Democrats didn’t change, and they didn’t say, “You know what?  We’re really veered way out of touch with the American people.  We need to get back.” 

Nah.  No, no. 

They’re constitutionally incapable of that, and so are the people that run the news divisions.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Ladies and gentlemen, let me expand on the premise and my answer to the last caller and also reference an email that I saw here during the break.  I don’t like sometimes having to burst bubbles.  It is for me — I’ve been doing this a long time now — it’s easy to spot relative newcomers to all this.  And I welcome it.  Do not misunderstand.  I was one once.  I, for example, used to be of the frame of mind, I used to believe that we could change the media.  I was as naive as anybody. 

For example, when the media would call and want to interview me, I thought it was ’cause they really wanted to find out what I thought about things.  I thought it was because they really wanted to find out who I am.  I’m new, I’m not well-known before I showed up doing this show, I thought there was genuine curiosity.  That’s not what they wanted.  They already in their minds knew who I was and they didn’t like it, and they wanted face-to-face opportunities to expose my defects and my problems and my racism and bigotry and all this. 

So I would answer their questions honestly under the belief they really wanted to know what I thought, they really wanted to understand the way I thought about political matters.  I was so naive, I really believed that many of them had not considered events as I have seen them.  That’s not at all what was going on.  And so when someone calls here and says, “Hey, Rush, if Trump wins this, I mean, this has gotta be so humiliating and embarrassing, don’t you think that the investors in these big conglomerates that own these networks, like Disney owns ABC, Comcast owns NBC, don’t you think at some point, if they’re so bad and so wrong the investors and the management is gonna demand the media change?” 

That is a perfectly reasonable question if you’re not aware of how things actually function and operate. So telling somebody no, that’s not gonna happen, I feel like I’ve gotta baby them through the answer.  The fact of the matter is that at no time in our lives has the media ever acknowledged they were wrong about anybody. They have never felt the need to apologize for getting something terribly wrong. They have never, after trying to character assassinate people, apologized for doing it when shown they’re wrong. 

So if Trump ends up winning this, the media’s not gonna say, “How were we so wrong?  What did we miss?”  The media is not going to, “Wow, were we out of touch with the American people.”  They’re not gonna think that at all.  They’re gonna think they failed to get people to see Trump the way they wanted you to see Trump.  And that’s just gonna spur them to keep trying.  These are not media people.  They are leftists.  They are liberal Democrats.  And they never, ever allow themselves to believe they are ever out of touch or even in the minority.  They have a condescending contempt for the average voter out there.  That’s why they call the vast majority of the geography of the country flyover country.  It’s a foreign land. 

So much as you would like the media to do a mea culpa, much as you would be gratified and satisfied to hear them say, “You know what?  We really blew this. We were really wrong, really out of touch.  We never understood that Trump was this big.”  They know full well, and they hate it.  And their reaction is gonna be, if Trump wins, that they failed and they’ve gotta keep trying harder.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Oh, I just saw another email.  People so subtly tell me they think I’m full of it.  “Rush, I know what that guy was trying to say.  I think that guy has a point.  You might be missing the guy’s point, Rush.  I mean, what the guy’s actually saying is look at the trouble the media is in.  They’re losing readers.  They’re losing advertising. They’re losing audience, their world is crumbling around them.  It doesn’t appear that it’s happening, but it is.  And if Trump pulls this out and wins, it’s going to show they are totally irrelevant, and aren’t they going to know that?”

I don’t believe, folks, that the media people you see on TV every day from NPR to CBS to ABC to NBC to wherever are ever gonna admit they’re irrelevant, and they’re not gonna start acting like it, and they’re never gonna say, “Gee, you know what?  We might have to alter the way we’re –”  It isn’t gonna happen, even if it means the end of them.  And the reason is simple:  They hate what we believe.  They literally despise the values and the principles that we hold dear, and they don’t like us. 

They are constitutionally — and I mean the way they are made — incapable of thinking that they have media mistake or that they are wrong and that the American people are right.  They’re incapable of believing they’re out of touch.  They don’t think it’s about being in touch.  They don’t write for the American people anyway.  They do their stand ups for the American people. 

Wolf Blitzer reports what he reports so the other news journalists see it and think he’s hotshot, and the rest of them do the same thing.  They don’t write for readers.  They write for the audience of establishment types. None of them mass audience anymore.  They’re all niche.  They’re writing for other website writers and readers and so forth.  I mean, it’s a circle. 

Let me get back to the phones here.  I think I pretty much blown and obliterated this point and exposed it as well as anybody.  Enrique in Los Angeles, you’re next.  I’m glad you waited, sir.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  Thank you.  The question I got, with two more debates coming up, it seems that the moderators are always liberal and Hillary and them know what questions, how to answer them ahead of time.  What can the Republican Party do to counter that?  Because they’re not allowed to answer questions.  What is the proper thing to do?

RUSH:  Well, Chris Wallace is moderating one of these debates coming up, right?

CALLER:  Right.

RUSH:  Chris Wallace is the best of the bunch.  Now, he’s gonna be hard-hitting on Trump, but he will be on Hillary, too.  Chris Wallace is not afraid of the Matt Lauer treatment; he already gets it working at Fox.  So Chris Wallace is going to be good.  When I hear Chris Wallace’s voice, I actually think I’m listening to something that matters.  I’m watching something that has genuine substance to it, like Brinkley and like the old host of these shows in days gone by.  But the other moderator, I don’t know who the other moderator is.  Let me ask you, in answering your question, let me ask you one.  What did you think — did you see the debate last night?

CALLER:  I sure did.

RUSH:  What did you think of it?  How did Pence do, do you think?

CALLER:  He seemed like a baby.  I mean, I couldn’t even believe how he was jumping in immediately.  I mean, so unprofessional, so unpresidential, just really —

RUSH:  No, no, not Kaine.  Pence.  How did you think Mike Pence did.

CALLER:  Oh!  No, no.  I apologize.  Pence did incredible.  The opposite of what I just said.  Very professional, very right, but he got cut off so many times.

RUSH:  Okay.  Stop right there.  So Pence did a great job, you think, but he still got cut off.  One of the next two moderators is gonna be this moderator on steroids, not gonna wait for the candidate to remind Trump he called women whatever he did and Mexicans, the moderator’s gonna do it, and what should Trump do? 

I mean, there’s various strategies here on how you react to these kind of things attacks and assaults.  The next moderator is gonna try to do it for Hillary.  Kaine did it himself last night for Hillary.  The next moderator is gonna have to do it for Hillary ’cause Hillary won’t.  Well, she will.  But the point is you want the guy, you want Trump to look good, look strong.  How do you do it when you’re being assaulted the way Pence was last night?  In your mind.

CALLER:  That is the question.  You know, that is I guess the question that — it’s just unbelievable.  I mean, the cutoff —

RUSH:  Let me ask you this.  Do you think — and, by the way, the debate audience last night was small.  It was smaller than the veep debate in 2012 and smaller than the audience in 2008, but regardless, the people who saw the debate last night, the conventional wisdom in the Drive-By Media and a lot of places, Pence was great, he was calm, he was cool, he was collected, he was smart, he didn’t take the bait. 

Now, do you think, Enrique, the majority of people watching the debate reacted to it that way?  Do you think the people that stopped listening to Puff Daddy for two minutes last night, “You know, this guy, Pence, he was really calm, cool and collected.”  The people that stopped following Kim Kardashian for two hours last night, do you think their conclusion, “This Pence guy really came off like an adult?  Why, this guy, he was really calm, cool and reserved.” I mean, the consensus review of Pence is what I just told you.  Do you think most people watching the debate saw it that way?

CALLER:  I guess that’s the question, if most of the people are pro-Republican or anti-Democrat —

RUSH:  Well, the Frank Luntz focus group says they did.  The Frank Luntz focus group said that most people watching thought Kaine was a jerk and Pence was great.  If that’s true, if Trump does the same thing, will he get the same accolades? If Trump doesn’t take the bait, Trump doesn’t fight back, if Trump remains cool, calm, and collected and stays focused on the points he wants to make and ignores the personal attacks from Hillary, will he get the same reviews that Pence got? 

“Man, he was good, man, he was calm, did you see that?  So cool, so collected, not rattled whatsoever.  Hillary was flapping her gums and didn’t have any impact at all.  He stayed focused on his message.”  Do you think he’ll get the same positive reviews that Pence did, if he replicates Pence’s strategy and performance?  And I’m here to tell you the answer to that is “no way.”