RUSH: So the president is going to Kentucky today to speak to a veterans group, and, as seems to be common now, on his way to the helicopter out of the White House, he stops and has an impromptu press conference.

Now, these are classic. As I have pointed out, there are no official White House press briefings anymore, which means that there’s no face time or camera time for members of the Drive-By Media.

There was some NBC reporter today that asked a question. I wasn’t able to hear what it was, but Trump spent a lot of time telling this person how stupid the question was. And they kept shouting things at him about background checks. So he says, (paraphrasing) “Look, I’m not gonna create the slippery slope. I’m not gonna see it so that you get your way and law-abiding citizens don’t have guns in this country. I’m just not gonna do it. I’m not gonna make the law-abiding defenseless! We’re not gonna get rid of the Second Amendment.”

They keep shouting questions. He keeps repeating the answer. So CNN’s headline, now that the press conference is over, “Trump all over the place on gun background checks.” They’re trying to make it look like Trump was the insane lunatic here. And of course if nobody saw the press conference — CNN’s audience is gonna believe what CNN says, but it’s the exact opposite.

It’s the media that looks like a bunch of Romper Room kids. It’s the media that looks like they’re just childish and don’t have any idea what’s going on. Trump looks totally in command and in control, and he’s informing these people, he is lecturing these people. He’s taking more time to talk to members of the press than any president ever has. He gives them what they claim to want more than anything, is access.

CNN is still repeating the mistakes the media has made the past three years. After a press conference, the general consensus is that we’re dealing with an idiot here as a president. When in fact all he did was answer questions factually and honestly in ways their bias and lack of objectivity prevents them from understanding. If you don’t say what they think, if you don’t reflect their values on life, you’re a lunatic. I mean, the arrogance of the left and the conceit of these people is on display.

This press conference went on for over 15 minutes. It might have been 20 or 25. We’re working on some audio sound bites of it now just to give you an illustration. But he was riffing on a ton of things. There was more substance and content in this press conference from the president of the United States than these people in the media can keep up with. And I will guarantee you that that’s the case. There was more here than they could keep up with. They don’t know how to properly characterize this. So they have to fall back into the idea that they’re dealing with an idiot, they’re dealing with a buffoon.

But the visual here is the key. The camera the whole time is on Trump, and he looks like a maestro. He’s not in any way defensive. He is in total command of this. And he’s pointing at ’em when it’s time to talk, hand up when it’s time for them to stop. When they interrupt him, he puts a hand up. He doesn’t give them control of this event at one single time. There is not a single moment where they’re in control of this. There’s not a single moment where one of them, not even one of them gets any face time.

The people watching have no idea. And one of the reasons that he canceled the press briefing was for this very reason. To deny these people the showboat opportunity and the face time. It’s got to tick them. It has got to just infuriate them that they’re not getting any face time. So the visual is anonymous, faceless, childlike, grade school-like voices shouting questions and a confident, reassuring president answering with certitude, with confidence. It’s an amazing thing. And they say that Trump is a buffoon, doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Reorienting how the president deals with the press the way Trump has done here is nothing short of brilliant. To slice their face time, to keep them from getting on TV, to keep them from showboating, to keep them from making names for themselves at his expense. This is a brilliant tactical move. It didn’t just evolve and didn’t just happen. It was strategic.

And it’s just another reason why these people continue, it is breathtaking for me to behold, this continued underestimation of Donald Trump. But they can’t help it because they think they’re smarter than everybody. Talk about people with no humility. The Drive-By Media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Welcome back, my friends. Great to have you with us. Rush Limbaugh, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.

Here are the three sound bites we have from the Trump impromptu presser today. Now, remember, in the White House press briefing the reporter (imitating typical reporter), “Hi, Dan Rather, CBS News, what the hell gives you the right to be president anymore. Why don’t you quit?”

Those days are gone. They don’t get to stand up. They don’t get to say their name. They don’t get to identify the news organizations. They’re just standing there out of camera range shouting, “Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, what about (unintelligible), what about (unintelligible).”

Calmly Trump says (imitating Trump), “You’re an idiot, you don’t know what you’re talking about, let me explain it to you.” Nobody sees the infobabe or the reporter, nobody sees the organization they’re from, nobody sees their face. So Trump’s making his way to Marine One. He’s gonna go to Kentucky to speak before veterans. A reporter says, “Uh, Mr. President, taking America into a recession, is it worth it? That’s what you’re doing, you know that? You’re taking America into a recession. Is it worth it? Do Americans, do Americans need to back that up?”

THE PRESIDENT: This isn’t my trade war. This is a trade war that should have taken place a long time by a lot of other presidents. Over the last five or six years, China’s made $500 billion, 500 billion, ripped it out of the United States. And not only that, if you take a look, intellectual property theft, add that to it, and add a lot of other things to it. So somebody — excuse me — somebody had to do it. I am the chosen one. Somebody had to do it. So I’m taking on China. I’m taking on China on trade. And, you know what? We’re winning.

RUSH: Talking America into recession, is it worth it? Now, the transcript says “taking America into a recession.” It’s the Drive-Bys that are trying to talk everybody into a recession. What Trump does in these sound bites is really take these people to school. And I mean that in the direct sense he’s educating these people.

Do you realize the relative level of ignorance that most of these reporters have? They only know what they read in their own publications backed up with their own groupthink collective bias. And their groupthink collective bias right now is the United States is responsible for most of the problems in the world. And the United States is the reason why there’s a trade imbalance. The United States is the reason, you add Trump as the president, and the United States is really responsible.

So that forms the foundational basis of their questions. So Trump takes them to school. Trump was then asked by a reporter, “Mr. President, Mr. President, why did you cancel the trip to Denmark? Don’t you know Denmark loves us, Denmark loves us, and now Denmark hates us because of you. Why did you cancel the trip?”

THE PRESIDENT: The prime minister used a terrible word when describing something that we’ve been talking about for years with our country. President Truman said, what about Greenland? And he talked about it very openly and it was a big deal at the time. And I brought it up again, and it was discussed many other times. And I thought it was not a nice statement the way she blew me off because she’s blowing off the United States. And we’ve done a lot for Denmark. We’ve done a lot. I know Denmark well. I have many friends from Denmark. I have many people from Denmark that live in the United States. And we treat countries with respect. She shouldn’t treat the United States that way by saying, “What an absurd –” she said “absurd.” That’s not the right word to use, “absurd.”

RUSH: He goes on to say that people are not gonna talk about the United States that way under me. So he canceled the trip to Denmark. Big whoop! This is the kind of thing that gets cheered. This is why people are showing up in droves at Trump rallies and they’re running around, “What’s the magic?” It’s nothing more than patriotism!

And to these people, folks, patriotism is not fashionable. “No, no, no. We must not wear American flags on our lapels. No, no, no. We can’t show that kind of favoritism. No way. We are journalists and we must show objectivity. We cannot show that we favor our own country. In fact, to prove our fairness, we will always criticize our country. That’s how we make our bones and so forth.”

So they’re forever gonna be asking, “What’s the magic?” There really isn’t any magic. But to them it is magic because it’s so unfathomable that anybody could have deep appreciation for Trump. I mentioned that he really was kind of funny with an NBC reporter about the stupidity of the reporter’s question. Here is that sound bite. It’s NBC White House correspondent Peter Alexander.

THE PRESIDENT: This guy is the most biased reporter, NBC. You know, I made a lot of money for NBC with The Apprentice, and I used to like ’em, but they are the most biased. Peter is such a bi– you should be able to — you should be able to ask a question, same question, in a better way. You are so obviously biased. And that’s why the public has no confidence in the media. NBC News has less credibility, in my opinion, with guys like you than CNN. I think CNN has more credibility than NBC News. Did you hear what I said? I said you have more credibility than this guy. Go ahead. And that’s not saying much.

RUSH: (laughing) He’s having fun with these people. And they’re taking every syllable like it’s death-knell serious. And that’s another thing. They simply cannot laugh. They have no sense of humor. If it were Obama saying the exact same things, they would be slavishly licking the ground Obama walked on. If Obama was saying the same stuff — Obama was really cruel to the media.

Obama was spying on the media. Obama detested them. He made it clear that they were not his buddies, but they so desperately wanted to be thought of as Obama’s friends and supporters. So whatever Obama did to spy on ’em, to humiliate ’em, they licked the ground he walked on after he walked by. Trump says similar things, and they just have a cow.

Let me get started on the phones. We’ll squeeze one in here in our remaining busy broadcast moments. Michael in Boca Raton, Florida. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Let me offer you a point, Rush. I think the left is offering these unelectable policies — for instance, the New Green Deal — so that when they present their candidate, a Mark Cuban, slash, Oprah type person, they appear far more electable. Nobody wants what they’re offering. That’s why Biden is leading. He appears less crazy. What are your thought on that?

RUSH: Let me ask you, why go through all the trouble? Why have a field of 20 lunatics if what your real objective is to have somebody that makes sense later on? Why go through the motions? Why not just put somebody up that you think makes sense to start out with? Why do you have to define the party as this lunatic leftist bunch in order to show contrast with your so-called centrists?

CALLER: I think they may have read his book. And, you know, (unintelligible) just go crazy, and then (unintelligible). So they’re trying to make someone —

RUSH: Oh, you think they’re doing The Art of the Deal retro, that they are asking and positioning, portraying, demanding things that nobody would ever get so that they will be able to convince people to settle for less than what — I don’t think this is the case. I understand and I appreciate the thinking. And what is the root of the thinking? The root of the thinking is, “Rush, don’t fall for it. These people can’t be this liberal. They can’t be this communistic. They cannot be this crazy.”

Ladies and gentlemen, they are. And what is driving them to this — do not doubt me — hatred. They are being poisoned by it. This is not a scheme. These people think this is the way to win. This radical liberalism to them is the way they think they will win. This is way beyond a show.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Right. We have one more Trump sound bite from the impromptu presser with the Romper Room press corps today, and this is the bite where I was describing for you his answer to the question about background checks. Now, this is classic. This is classic Trump. If you remember the last shooting — well, the El Paso and Dayton shootings — shortly after that, Trump goes out and says that he’s open to maybe additional background checks.

And the media goes nuts, “All right. All right.” Not because they’re happy Trump’s with them but because they think maybe they can move this agenda forward, which — do not doubt me on this — they want every gun out of the hand of every law-abiding citizen in this country. And it’s not about preventing further shootings ’cause law-abiding people don’t do that.

It’s not about preventing shooting. This is about a fundamental belief that you don’t have the right to have a gun, for whatever reason – they’re too dangerous, you’re too irresponsible, it’s too big a challenge to the power of the government, whatever. They don’t think you should have a gun.

Trump plays them like a fiddle with this stuff. And he makes his own supporters nervous. Still happens. “Yeah, I’ll be willing to talk about additional background checks. We gotta do something to stop this.” I even, folks, I even got — well, he just plays ’em like a fiddle.

And then a week ago will go by or a little more, a little less, and Trump will pull it right back. “Nah. I’ve looked at it. There’s no need. We got plenty of background checks as it is.” He does this on purpose. It’s how he demonstrates he’s open to an idea and has considered it and has decided he doesn’t need to change his mind. And in this he prevents them the blanket criticism that Trump is inflexible, that doesn’t even consider things that he doesn’t already believe.

It’s a technique. He did it with Dianne Feinstein on comprehensive immigration reform. One of the first cabinet meetings where Trump did not make the cameras leave. They stayed in there for the whole thing. And you could see the Democrats didn’t quite know what was going on because the way these things happen, the media is allowed in for a minute or two while the meeting is getting started, people are being seated, and then the media’s told leave, and the meeting begins.

Trump began the meeting with cameras in there. And during this meeting, he looked right at Dianne Feinstein. “Well, I’d be open to comprehensive immigration reform.” And eyes lit up. “Oh, you would? Well…” And she started writing down things on a notepad. “Well, let’s make a plan to talk about this.” She bought it hook, line, and sinker.

And a week later or so Trump totally yanked the rug out from under them on this. And he keeps getting away with it and they keep falling for it, which is what tells me that they simply do not have the ability to learn. They don’t have the ability to deal with this guy. They’re still trying to get rid of him using the same attitudinal efforts that they have used since he got in the race the first place.

So I don’t know who the reporter is here, and that’s the point. We don’t know who the reporters are unless Trump identifies them in the process of embarrassing them. A reporter says, “What happened, what happened to the strong appetite for background checks? You said you had a strong appetite. You said you were maybe looking at expanding ’em. And now you’ve said no. What happened? What went wrong?”

THE PRESIDENT: I have an appetite for background checks. We’re gonna be doing background checks. We’re working with Democrats. We’re working with Republicans. We already have very strong background checks. But we’re gonna be filling in some of the loopholes, as we call them at the border, and speaking about the border, it would be really nice if the Democrats would indeed fix the loopholes because it would be really nice. We have a lot of background checks right now. Gun owners can tell you that. Others can tell you that. But there are certain weaknesses.

We want to fix the weaknesses. And I think that will happen. Let’s see what happens. I’m concerned that no matter what we agreed to, when we get there, I’m concerned the Democrats will say, “Oh, well, we now want this, and we want.” And, you know, it’s a slippery slope. And that’s what actually your gun owners and a lot of other people are concerned with.

RUSH: There he goes. “I’m not gonna start the slippery slope.” He went on with this. “I’m not gonna start the slippery slope.” He must have used the phrase five or six times. “I’m not gonna start the slippery slope where everybody’s got no means of protecting themselves. I’m just not gonna do it.” The point of this is he knows from the get-go what their objective is. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump assumes their intentions are honorable. He knows what they’re doing from the get-go. And that’s why he toys with them. We like to tweak the media here. He loves to tweak them, too, as much as he talks about enemy of the people and all this. Believes that. But he loves toying with these people.