RUSH: You know, you can tell CNN knows that last night was a disaster. You know how I know that? They’re not saying a word about it. They are doing nothing but promoting tonight’s version of the debate with the A-Team. You got Kamala Harris, you’ve got Plugs. Who else we got up there? We got, uh, we got, uh, well, I say the A-Team. It actually isn’t. You got Plugs, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, de Blasio. This is not the A-Team. I’m sorry. There isn’t an A-Team! Last night wasn’t the A-Team either! There isn’t an A-Team. But they’re not saying a word about last night! Not even to promote tonight!

You would think that if last night was great, they’d be saying, “And they’ve got their work cut out for ’em tonight, folks, because such-and-such was so on fire last night that Biden’s gonna have –” But they’re not saying a word about last night. Well, Kamala and Biden could go at it. Biden has promised everybody he’s not gonna be nice this time. Not only is he gonna be carrying that torch, he’s gonna be torching people with the torch.

Now, Jeff Zucker — you ready for this? — Jeff Zucker, who runs CNN, is an official Kamala Harris supporter! He’s done a fundraiser for her! CNN puts a guy on as a moderator who actually asked a former secretary of transportation if the missing Malaysian airliner could have been swallowed up by a black hole. You know, that’s not just a talking point joke, although it is.

Don Lemon in CNN’s endless coverage over — it was pre-Trump, of course — endless coverage over what happened to missing Malaysian airliner, he literally asked if it was possible it could have been swallowed up by a black hole or something. And this guy’s moderating the debate. And Jeff Zucker has done fundraisers for Kamala Harris, and he’s running the network that’s doing this debate tonight!

Now, that story hit yesterday. So Zucker has to do some deflecting. So you know what he’s doing? Jeff Zucker has blamed Trump and Fox News for hurting the image CNN has among Republicans. “Washington Post media reporter Sarah Ellison filed a story on CNN boss Jeff Zucker after following him around on July 24, Mueller Hearing Day. She apparently asked what happened to CNN among Republicans.” It was a question about bad ratings.

CNN’s in the toilet. MSNBC has gone from number 1 to number 5 in some day parts. They’ve lost everything. They’re still above CNN. So she’s asking, what happened to CNN? You guys used to own the whole genre of cable news. And Jeff Zucker blamed Trump. He blamed Trump. He didn’t give any credence to the fact that CNN’s content might be a factor.

“At a recent Trump rally in Greenville, N.C., a teenage rock band played its rendition of a frequent rally slogan, ‘CNN Sucks.’” Can you believe a rock band actually sang a song called, “CNN sucks.” Zucker said, “I think Trump has hurt our perception among Republicans to some degree. I think it’s incredibly unfortunate. You can’t have the most powerful man in the world with his megaphone slamming the network every day and not have it have an effect.”

Mr. Zucker, let me tell you something. This is what you’re missing. You don’t have a bond with anybody in your audience. If I can make this personal, just to illustrate the point, for over 25 years various elements of the left-wing media have been attacking me equally as bad, if not worse, than what Trump has done with CNN.

Trump has been attacking CNN for two or three years. There have been people going after this show on the left for 25 years, and it has not resulted in any loss of audience. Now, it is preventing people that don’t listen from taking a chance. I’m not denying they haven’t hurt, but it’s not the case that Trump is keeping CNN’s numbers down.

CNN is responsible for CNN’s numbers. CNN’s content is a direct result of CNN editorial and management choice. CNN is choosing to oppose Donald Trump and everybody that voted for him. CNN is giving nobody who voted for Trump a reason to watch them. It’s the exact opposite. And this is what Zucker doesn’t get.

It’s really low ball and it’s lazy to blame the president for why you don’t have an audience. They could overcome that tonight. CNN could triple their audience in a week with just a couple of tweaks to their programming. But they’ll never do it. They won’t do it because they would catch hell from the social justice warriors on the left.

I mean, if I were Zucker, I would be embarrassed over this. To start whining and moaning about how — how come all of Trump’s rants didn’t hurt MSNBC, Jeff? Trump’s beating up MSNBC the last two and a half years same as he’s beating up on you, and they were doing okay. They were all-in on the Russian hoax. They were promising people Trump was going to jail, but Trump was not able to drive their audience away. Robert Mueller did that.

This is really lazy. When I see media people start blaming people that have nothing to do with their programming for their problems, it’s lazy. It’s childish. It’s defensive. But that’s Zucker’s story and he’s sticking with it.