RUSH: Let me start here at number 2. The Drive-Bys have a new tack. The Drive-By Media, a new approach here. Now, rather than Trump listening to me, which has been their foolhardy story since before Christmas, just to refresh your memory, in case you’ve been away and don’t know the history of this, very briefly. Trump was all set to sign a continuing resolution, keep the government open with no money for a wall, no money for border security. That was the news.

On this program I heard about this, and I started saying this is a bad thing to do. I can’t believe, no, no, no, don’t do this. And immediately I got an instant message from somebody in the White House assuring me the story wasn’t true, the president wasn’t gonna sign it, and he was never gonna sign any legislation that does not have money for the wall in it. And this I reported to you. I said, “I just received a note from a third party from the president assuring me that he’s not gonna sign it.”

The Drive-Bys took that and totally reworked it and made it look like Trump was already signing it. He’d maybe even already had written the D of his signature. And then somebody rushed in and said, “Mr. President, Mr. President, Rush Limbaugh says no, don’t do it.” And Trump stopped. That’s the story they ran with. That’s not at all what happened. He was never gonna sign it. I was reporting that he was gonna sign it. He got word to me that the reporting was wrong. So the Drive-Bys then start saying that I am the cause of the government shutdown because I am the real president because Trump is too big a dodo to know what to do without me telling him.

I corrected them the next day. I said you guys are getting this totally wrong. They’re doing it on purpose. It was a way of diminishing Trump and getting people mad at me. Well, apparently it didn’t go the way they intended, because now there’s a new tack. They’ve decided on a new narrative, and that is that I tricked Trump. That Trump’s voters don’t really care about the wall, and he’s being lied to by people like me. That he’s being lied to by people like me, that his voters don’t care, that they’re perfectly fine with him signing legislation that has no money in it for the wall. Here. We have little montage of the Drive-Bys attempting this new tack.

BOB HARDT: He’s painted himself into a corner. Rush Limbaugh called him and said, “You can’t bend on this.” He has nowhere to go.

RACHEL SHABI: The radical right, Rush Limbaugh, suggested to him that he will lose his base over this.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: …Rush Limbaugh, who pitchforked him into this situation in the first place.

YASMIN VOSSOUGHIAN: … the Rush Limbaugh base he was scared by.

MICHAEL STEELE: Rush Limbaugh. That’s the voice in his head.

NICOLLE WALLACE: …Trump’s trepidation of individuals with names like Rush Limbaugh.

KATY TUR: Donald Trump’s base is not holding him to a wall. The media has been holding Donald Trump to a wall, specifically the right-wing media.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The fringe of the Republican Party, the Rush Limbaughs, screech again at the president. Is it legitimate that these people should govern or should the president and Congress govern?

RUSH: Oh, don’t you just love that, Christiane Amanpour, who thinks it’s her job to govern. It is her job to have influence with people in the foreign policy administration and to have daily chats with them and discuss the proprieties of whether or not we should cooperate with the European Union or not. She thinks she has the influence over government policy with her contacts and the people she knows in the swamp, in the establishment.

They can’t stand it! They think talk radio is the lowest rung on the showbiz ladder, and it just galls them. Everything about the way they think of my success just galls them. So now Trump is even stupider than they thought. Now Trump is being tricked. It’s not that Trump is listening to me for his own best interests. Now Trump is being tricked by me into doing things not in his own best interests. The Drive-Bys must be getting frustrated, because they’re unable to alter the course of events here so they change these narratives off and on, and this is the latest incarnation of it.