RUSH: Holy smokes. Did you see the White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing yesterday? Holy smokes. That was a throwback to the campaign of 2016. That is exactly why Donald Trump got elected. Donald Trump and the White House comms shop put together a video montage popularized by this program. We were the first to do it on Rush the TV Show and the radio program way, way, way, way back in the early nineties, a montage of leftists and Democrats in the media. And now everybody does it.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020
The White House did their own, chronicling the media lying, chronicling the media distorting by name, by video, by face, by picture, and they had a meltdown. CNN bugged out of the coverage, claiming that Trump was turning the briefing into a propaganda session, that Trump was turning it into a meltdown. Trump himself was having a meltdown. Trump was losing his mind.
The meltdown occurred at CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times because they were exposed. The lies they’ve been telling. And look, Trump had to do this. He had to gain control of the narrative that he was unprepared. The White House did this because the New York Times ran that story — we talked about yesterday — on Saturday that Trump was unprepared, that millions and millions more lives would be saved if Trump had just known what he was doing.
We spent yesterday chronicling for you how everybody on this task force, many of them back in January and February were telling all of us there’s nothing to worry about, there was nothing to worry about because the virus was not gonna hit here, because it was not contagious. You can go ahead and go to your party, go out, nothing to worry about, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, any number of people, not just them.
It was the president who shut down flights from China in January, and they’re running stories, lying stories that were the same lies and the extent of lies that they tried with Trump-Russia collusion and the impeachment fiasco with Ukraine and all of that. Trump had to regain the narrative on this, and he did it yesterday.
I got emails from friends of mine who literally loved it. They watch these briefings every day, but that one was a highlight. And Trump had a knock-down-drag-out with a Drive-By reporter from CBS named Paula something or other that she was just — she was typical. She was classic of the media and how they hate Trump and how they disrespect him and disrespect the presidency when he holds the office.
But he had to do that yesterday, folks. And it was great because it was nothing but their words. It was nothing but video clips of the media themselves lying and getting things wrong and purposely distorting things. He just zapped ’em. I mean, just exposed them to the world. This is the kind of thing that needs to happen constantly. The American people who aren’t aware need to be made aware what the media is.
You know, I’ll tell you, I — and you who’ve been listening regularly know this — I’ve come up with so many different terms to describe the media. The one we use now most frequently is “Drive-By.” But they’re not media. They are their own political organization that is an adjunct, and maybe even the leader now, of the opposition to the Republican Party. They are not media.
Now, people believe that media is journalists gathering news and telling people what they don’t know because they weren’t there. The media goes places, they watch what happens, and then they file reports. They do newspaper stories, they do video reports on the television news and so forth. And so many think they’re getting an objective report on things that happened that they didn’t know about. That’s not what media is anymore, and it hasn’t been that way, in a concentrated way, since Donald Trump was elected.
They are not media. And we do ourselves a disservice competitively by referring to them as media. I’m not asking for anybody to suggest alternative names for them. I don’t want to do that. That’s not my point here. I’ll come up with it, I’ll fix it, I’ll come up with something. But, Mr. Snerdley, I don’t want phone calls with people and their ideas because I want people telling me what they think of the issues and so forth. It is my job to come up with a name here. And this is, to me, is crucially important.
They aren’t media. And while their job title category might be journalists, this is not what they are practicing. What they are practicing is opposition. Whatever Trump is for, they guaranteed to be against it. Whatever Trump is against, they are guaranteed to be for it. Why are they for or against anything? They are media. Their pretense is that they are objective and fair and all of that. It isn’t the case.
And look. I know that most of you in this audience are fully aware that they are not media. I think it’s astounding. Journalism is still taught as a course at many prestigious universities and prestigious journalism schools. But even the journalism that’s taught today is not really journalism. It’s activism. But that doesn’t even get there. They are activists. But they are an opposition force that has to be dealt with and acknowledged. And this is what so many of us get frustrated by, as so many Republicans still don’t see that that’s the way they have to interact with them.
They’re not interested in what Republicans really think. They’re not interested in alternative points of views. They have no curiosity about anything. The only thing they’re interested in is destroying their opposition, whoever it is at the time, discrediting their opposition. Trump, talk radio, Fox News, you name it. They are not media. And Trump exposed this yesterday. That’s what really happened.
Trump exposed that we’re not dealing with media. We’re dealing with just another opposition force like the Democrat Party, which they are a part of, but it doesn’t even qualify just to call them an adjunct or a branch office of the Democrat Party. The fact that they continue to get away with being presumed to be journalists and that what they do is presume to be journalism is something that really has to be dealt with, ’cause it’s not journalism that we’re getting from the media.
The media is actively attempting to destroy what we believe in and destroy the people on our side who are effective advocates for what we believe in. And fact and truth have nothing to do with it. The evidence for that most recently can be found in the Trump-Russia collusion story. Everybody involved in the story, as I pointed out yesterday, everybody involved knew that the only thing that gave them a case, the Steele dossier, everybody knew it was Russian disinformation, that the Democrats had purchased and paid for it through the Hillary campaign and the DNC.
They all knew. Comey, they all knew, ladies and gentlemen. Every one of them knew. And even after the campaign when Trump was inaugurated, they continued the operation. They all knew. And they were all in cahoots with what we call the media. They were in cahoots with what we call the media. And it is continuing.
So yesterday, Trump exposes this in his own way, and they literally had meltdowns. Jonathan Karl in the pressroom, ABC News, “Who made that? Who made that? Who put that propaganda piece together?” I knew when that question was asked by Johnston Karl… “Who put that propaganda piece together? I want a name! Who did it!”
Trump says, “We did it in the communications office. It took a couple hours. And you know, there’s hundreds more, Jon, we could have thrown into that video. We just thought two minutes of it was a good enough amount of time for you here in the briefing.” “I want to know who put that together! I want a name. That is propaganda!”
Propaganda?
All it was, was video clips of the Drive-By Media saying what they have said about the shutdown, about Trump being incompetent, lying about when Trump did this or didn’t do that and lying about who else had said or not said things. They were exposed during a media presentation at the White House briefing where millions and millions and millions of people were watching.
And they knew that they had to do their best to try to tear that down because Trump was trying to recapture the narrative. He could not let the narrative that he was unprepared — which was established by that Saturday New York Times piece. He could not let that narrative go unchallenged — and I’ll tell you what.
His mood yesterday during all this was flawless. His attitude was flawless. He was not insulting them as he talked to them. He didn’t take their bait when they tried to get him to insult them. He was confident. He was on point. He knew the material. He knew that what he was doing was a home run while he was doing it.
You know, Jonathan Karl asks, “Who put that together? Who put that propaganda piece…?” You did! The media! That’s what it was. It was you people! Karl was right to call it “propaganda,” but not the way he meant it. It was not White House propaganda. What they illustrated at the White House was media propaganda.
It was really, really, really, really, really well done. Last week, the media… See? I’m using it. I’ve got to come up with a different term. I’ve got to come up with a different descriptive term for these people. You stick with media because everybody knows what you mean. Everybody knows who you’re talking about.
So you kind of have to use it. I kind of have to use it. But I don’t like it. They’re not media as people understand it. Anyway, the media complained last week Trump was not unilaterally shutting down every state. Remember? They said, “Trump was slow to act!” They said Trump didn’t care, Trump was insensitive, didn’t care about lives lost or anything.
He was slow to act because he didn’t unilaterally shut down every state. Today, the media is freaking out because Trump says he can unilaterally reopen the economy. Now they’re out there saying that Trump is becoming an autocrat and a dictator, when last week that’s what they were demanding that he be by virtue of things they were demanding that he do.
Here’s the thing about modern media: Any idiot can do what they do. Any idiot can take the polar opposite position articulated by Donald Trump. That is all they do. Whatever position he takes, they take the opposite one, automatic — and any idiot can do it. Trump thinks, for example, a medicine might help the sick, the media says, “It’ll kill them!”
Trump advocates for hydroxychloroquine. The media attempts to discredit it, despite evidence — left and right, north and south, up and down — all over America that it works. Trump says he loves the country. The media says Trump is a traitor. If the stakes weren’t so high in all it is, it would be boring.
Here’s another little illustration. President Trump wants the country open for business. The left has to oppose it automatically. The Democrat Party has to oppose it. The media has to oppose it. Trump wants the country open for business. They have to. It is required. They have to oppose it. “But, Rush! But, Rush! What about these governors working to reopen?”
We’ll get to that. Trump was accused of being too early reacting to the virus, shutting down flights from China, before he was accused of being too late. He was accused of being a xenophobe and a racist because he reacted in January. And then he was accused of being too late as they try to rewrite history.
Now he’s being accused of being too early to reopen the economy, before they accuse him of being too late. You watch. Whenever this economy is reopened, the media narrative will be, “He waited too long!” Mark my words. Whatever he does, they must and will take the opposite tack.
Because of this, by the way, the media is always one step behind, because they are a Trump-opposition organization. They’re always going to be a step behind because they are reactive. Trump does X; they have to disagree with it. They have to criticize it. But they’re always step two.
The media told anybody who would listen that Trump would be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, if not millions. They scared the hell out of people! Not long after the media’s Category 5 warnings, Trump absolutely flattened the curve. The curve is flattened. More on that too.
Do you realize we didn’t flatten the curve to save lives? That’s not why we did it. Are you under the impression that we flattened the curve to save lives? That’s not why we flattened the curve. We flattened the curve to try to make sure the hospitals weren’t overloaded. Pure and simple. It wasn’t about saving lives.
I don’t mean that as a criticism. I’m just telling you: That’s what the purpose of flattening the curve was. So the curve has been flattened now. Trump has flattened the curve, and instead of praising Trump and his team, now the media is for the next knee-jerk prediction, and that is, “Trump will kill millions when Americans go back to work!”
And he knows this. The first death after reopening, Donald Trump’s gonna be blamed for it. We all know it. He knows it. That’s what they’re gonna do. Whoever, whoever is the first on record to die after we reopen, you wait. This person’s gonna get hero treatment like you can’t believe, that it was unnecessary.
“This person would still be alive were it not for Donald Trump,” and then they will say, “There will be millions more like the first death because Trump is going to kill many by sending people back to work too soon.” When that doesn’t transpire, they’re gonna blame Trump for not getting people back to work soon enough. Fortunately, we have a president who’s not afraid to remind the country of media and Democrat predictions.
He did that yesterday.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m thinking of my renaming of the media. Why complicate this? Why not just call ’em what they are? For example, in the White House press briefing, just say, “Representatives of the Democrat Party in the White House press briefing today had a meltdown over Donald Trump’s presentation” or whatever.
That’s what they are. They’re members of the Democrat Party. They’re representatives, they’re activists for the Democrat Party — and not even use the term “media.” Don’t even give them that. The point is that whatever the name is, cannot include “media.” That is what has to be stripped from them.
They are not media in the conventional understanding of the word. They are not practicing journalism. They are not attending the press briefing to gather information to use to inform the American people. They are in that briefing as Democrats to oppose and harass the president. They are there to conduct a debate with the president each and every day.
They are there to deny him the facts and the figures that he uses. They are there to accuse him of lying. They are representatives of the Democrat Party in the White House pressroom. I think that might help people understand my take on who they are.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to take you back. Before playing for you the audio of the two-minute video that just caused the Democrats in the pressroom yesterday to melt down, I want to go back to October 17, 2016, on this program. At this time, Donald Trump was the nominee of the Republican Party.
This is prior to the election. The election was November 2016, and I wanted everybody to understand what had happened. I wanted everybody to understand what Republican voters had done — and why — in choosing Donald Trump as the nominee for the Republican Party.
BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: So here we are in 2016, and the Republicans had what they thought was the greatest field of potential candidates in a long time, 15 Republican candidates from across the spectrum led by the popular favorite Jeb Bush … And the Republican base said, “Not this time.” And they did what? They nominated somebody as far from the political scene as you could get.
They nominated somebody that the political class gave no chance. They nominated somebody that had no ties whatsoever to anything that had happened previously. No elective office held, no participation on any policy, no fingerprints, no nothing. And more than that, they elected a brawler.
They didn’t elect somebody who disagreed simply. They elected a brawler. They elected a fighter. … The Republican base decided to send a brawler, a knockdown, drag-out street fighter, something unseen in the modern era of politics. And, again, the reason the Republican base decided this was needed is because we, the Republican base, we know the left, and we knew what our nominee would face.
We knew that this was the kind of campaign that whoever our nominee was going to face. … Anybody else would have folded by now. And by “fold,” I don’t mean quit, but would have moderated his tone, would have diminished and fallen back to the point that he would be indistinguishable from any other Republican. …
So this is it. This is now what a political fight looks like. …
This is what it looks like.
END ARCHIVE CLIP
RUSH: And that began my attempt to tell everybody, “This is what pushback looks like.” It isn’t gonna be pretty. The country is not gonna uniformly agree with Donald Trump. The Democrats in the media are not going to uniformly all of a sudden put aside everything and agree with Donald Trump. They’re going to oppose, they’re going to try to destroy, they’re going to try to ruin.
Donald Trump is doing what you elected him to do. I know that many people were hoping that when this actually began, when Trump actually began to implement the things that he was nominated and elected to do, that the rest of America would finally see and go “Yeah, baby, right on.”
And I was warning everybody that’s not what was going to happen because even if it did, the media would ignore it and not report it. What was going to happen instead was the American people were gonna be told day in and day out that this is not what they elected and that nobody’s happy with it and everybody wishes they could have their vote back.
That became the narrative, and that became the theme. “Buyer’s remorse! My God, the American people didn’t know that this is what they had elected. Holy smokes. This is horrible.” When in fact, they did. They did it on purpose. They knew exactly right.
But there were still Trump voters disappointed who thought that when the truth of what Trump was going to do and when he began to do it, that millions of Americans would finally see it and agree. Privately, that happened. Silently, that happened. But not publicly.
So it was left to Trump and his resolve to continue and to not cave to the pressure in order to sue for peace. Now, given that this is who he is, I want to show you evidence of this sound bite that I just played. This is the evidence of the brawler. This is the evidence of the fighter. This is who you nominated in 2016.
This is who you elected, and I want you to know that he has not backtracked an inch. He has not caved an inch. He has not succumbed to any of this pressure and softened. If anything, all that has been attempted — the silent coup, the Trump-Russia collusion, this Ukraine thing.
If anything, it has steeled and solidified his resolve to continue to defeat these people, the Democrats, wherever they are found — in the pressroom, on the Biden campaign, in governors’ offices around the country. Trump’s resolve is as strong as ever to politically defeat them and dominate them and eliminate them as much as he can from having any say-so over what his administration does.
So at the coronavirus task force press conference yesterday, during the briefing a very, a very, very self-contained — confident, noncombative, non-insulting, just down for the facts — Donald Trump played a video for the reporters in the room, for the Democrats in the pressroom, a video of them warning people there was nothing to worry about, of them assuring people.
Remember, the New York Times on Saturday runs this story rooted in Trump’s unpreparedness and people died. What Trump did was show he was the only one who was prepared by banning travel from China in January and wanting to do more, and then he played a two-minute assembled montage of various reporters telling the American people:
There’s nothing to worry about with coronavirus, that it’s not contagious, that it doesn’t pose a problem. And they melted down. I mean, in the middle of it you could see they were melting down. CNN bumps out of coverage, starts running chyron graphics, “Trump melting down, playing propaganda video!” This was a bull’s-eye, home run. Our version of it here runs 39 seconds, and here it is…
DR. JENNIFER ASHTON: (January 25, 2020) People should be more concerned right now with the flu in this country.
DR. JOHN TORRES: (January 25, 2020) A lot of people are concerned about the coronavirus because they’re hearing a lot of news about it right now. But the reality is comparing it to the flu, for example, it’s not even close to being at that stage.
MICHELLE MILLER: (February 8, 2020) How worried should Americans be about coronavirus?
DR. DAVID AGUS: (February 8, 2020) Coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: (March 25, 2020) The president took this move that he was widely criticized for by Democrats — and even some Republicans — at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from China into the U.S. He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move. (sigh) At the end of the day, it was probably effective.
RUSH: Now, that last is Maggie Haberman, New York Times, from March 25th, 2020, praising the president, at the end of the day, probably did the right thing, probably effective. Oh, Maggie Haberman, the New York Times, two days, three days after running a piece on how unprepared he was, they literally were doing you-know-what to bricks. They literally couldn’t deal with this.
The names of people on this video, the audio you just heard, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, John Torres, Dr. John Torres — they’re all media guests — Michelle Miller, Dr. David Agus, Maggie Haberman, all of these people cited by the Democrats in the media all suggesting that there’s nothing to worry about. Trump was nailing ’em, just nailing them.
The full video ran a couple of minutes, I believe, and he said they could add a hundred more clips to it if they wanted to, and for this they accused Trump of running propaganda. Yeah, he was, media propaganda. It’s nothing more than actual sound bites of what the media was saying.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to the audio sound bites. We’re up to number three here. We just played… In fact, go back and let’s get number two. Get the 39-second montage again of the video that the White House comms shop put together yesterday that caused the absolute media meltdown. Trump was not melting down. Trump was in total command. Trump was loving every moment.
He was not insulting. He was not offensive. He was confident. He was assured, knew the material, happy to be doing what he was doing. He was exposing them. Remember, now, on Saturday the New York Times runs this piece, Trump’s unprepared, people died. Trump’s unpreparedness one of the major problems here, when Trump is the only guy who was prepared early on. He puts together a two-minute montage.
We have 39-seconds of it, of various members of the media telling everybody not to worry about it; the coronavirus is not a problem. There are some doctors in this montage, some media people. “It’s not a problem.” Some media people in the montage agree with that Trump did the right thing because this sets up some sound bites to come next.
DR. JENNIFER ASHTON: (January 25, 2020) People should be more concerned right now with the flu in this country.
DR. JOHN TORRES: (January 25, 2020) A lot of people are concerned about the coronavirus because they’re hearing a lot of news about it right now. But the reality is comparing it to the flu, for example, it’s not even close to being at that stage.
MICHELLE MILLER: (February 8, 2020) How worried should Americans be about coronavirus?
DR. DAVID AGUS: (February 8, 2020) Coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: (March 25, 2020) The president took this move that he was widely criticized for by Democrats — and even some Republicans — at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from China into the U.S. He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move. (sigh) At the end of the day, it was probably effective.
RUSH: Now, that last is Maggie Haberman of the New York Times on March 25th. The reason Trump put that in there is because as recently as March 25th, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times was praising Trump as having done the right thing. The New York Times, praising Trump, having done the right thing.
In the midst of being accused of xenophobia and racism, “at the end of the day,” Trump’s travel ban on the ChiComs “was probably effective.” Trump puts that in there because on Saturday, the Times has this story that he’s unprepared. He just destroyed the New York Times! He had to regain control that narrative. So they have this media meltdown. “That’s propaganda! Who put this together? We want a name!”
CNN literally lost it. Their chyron graphics read, “Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session!” “Trump melting down in White House briefing. It’s the worst we’ve ever seen!” So here’s Jonathan Karl interacting with Trump. Karl says, “Why did you feel the need to do that? Why did you feel the need to put together a propaganda video? Who did that? We want a name! Who put this together?”
THE PRESIDENT: Because we’re getting fake news, and I like to have it corrected. In New York, ventilators were gonna be a problem? They didn’t have a problem. We got ’em tremendous numbers, thousands, but we got ’em a tremendous number of ventilators. You didn’t hear ventilators were a problem. Beds were gonna be a problem.
I mean, I’m happy about it. The Javits Center, which is incredible, is almost empty because they don’t need them. That’s good news not bad news. All they did was take some clips and they just ran them for you. And the reason they did it is to keep a you honest. Now, I don’t think this is gonna work.
RUSH: Trump, “I don’t think this video is gonna change the way you guys are doing your business, but it’s to keep you honest.” By the way, it’s an important point. They had this massive emergency construction project to turn the Javits Center into a hospital and they didn’t need it. Hospitalizations have been way down, including in New York.
The hospitalizations are now on the downside. Cuomo’s even saying, “You know what? We’ve seen the worst. We’re on the downside now.” Cuomo is one of six or seven other Democrat governors starting to talk about reopening. So Jonathan Karl asks, “Who put that together? Why did you feel the need to do that?”
To reject the narrative that you people have started. Then he totally nuked another Democrat in the pressroom yesterday. Paula Reid from CBS. Her tone was utterly disgraceful and disrespectful. No Democrat in the pressroom should ever talk to the president of the United States this way. And very few Democrats in the pressroom really ever have. Sam Donaldson has had his moments and Dan Blather has had his.
Her question was, “Your ban bought you some time. What did you do in that time?” You didn’t do anything. Your ban, your ban on flights from China bought some time. But you didn’t do anything. You wasted an entire month, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: He called me xenophobic. He called me a racist. Every Democrat thought I made a mistake when I did it. I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands —
REID: What did you do in that tame that you bought? The argument is that you bought yourself some time, you didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now nearly 20 million people are unemployed. (crosstalk)
THE PRESIDENT: You’re so disgraceful. You’re so disgraceful the way you say that. You know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you cover it is fake. And most of you–and not all of you, but the people are wise to you.
RUSH: People are wise to your fake, fake news. What she was getting at is, ’cause there was a lot of cross-talk there. “Well, what did you do with the time that you bought? When you banned all this travel and people weren’t coming in? You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals. You didn’t use it to ramp up testing.” Didn’t use it to prepare hospitals? He just got through explaining what they did at the Javits Center. They built field hospitals in Central Park, for crying out loud. What do you mean, didn’t do anything? They ramped up the supply chain for ventilators. How many of you got sick and tired of hearing about the ventilator update every day at these task force briefings?
“You didn’t use it to ramp up –” So Trump says, “You’re so disgraceful.” And then the infobabe said, “People are unemployed. Tens of thousands.” What do you expect to happen when the country is shut down? And when Trump talks about reopening it, these people, the Democrats in the White House press briefing room, oppose reopening it because whatever Trump suggests they take the opposite tack. Now, over on CNN, while all this was going on, John King blew a gasket over what Trump was doing, calling it propaganda.
KING: That was propaganda. That was not just a campaign video. That was propaganda aired at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room. And it was selective cherry-picking information. He has every right to defend himself. He has every rate to push back. He has every right to challenge things that are factually not true, but to play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room is a new — you can insert your favorite word here — in this administration. That’s just plain out propaganda.
RUSH: How is it propaganda? If there’s propaganda there, it’s in the words of the media because that’s what the video was. The video was video clips, sound bites of media people telling the American people in their newscasts that there was nothing to worry about with coronavirus. Not a thing, it was nothing but the flu. Nothing to it. Don’t worry about it. How in the world can that be propaganda? How in the world?
It is so obvious. You do to them what they do to you, they can’t take it. You illustrate for fact their lying, you illustrate how they distort, you illustrate how they make up, you illustrate how they are dishonest, you can’t do that. They will call that propaganda. They can do that all day long. They can run a fake news story on Trump colluding with Russia four or five times a day, every day, every week for four years. And they haven’t stopped. They can do that all day long. They can run up and make up stories about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine. They can lie and try to derail the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. They can do all of that.
You turn any of their tactics around on them — in this case this is not even a tactic. This is simply taking their own statements and playing them in the White House briefing room. “That’s propaganda.” Propaganda because it happened in the press briefing room. “It should be a campaign ad, and Trump’s running it in the briefing room. It’s propaganda.” It’s not propaganda. How can it possibly be propaganda? A, it’s true. Everything on those video clips happened. Am I missing something here? Mr. Snerdley, do you think it was propaganda? (interruption) There’s no way it’s propaganda.
Just for the fun of it, Jim Acosta. And we’re back now, because this was such a sign of desperation, the walls are closing in on Donald Trump. That was the line used every day for two years on Trump-Russia collusion as the Mueller investigation puttered along.
ACOSTA: I have to tell you, that is the biggest meltdown I have ever seen from a president of the United States in my career. I don’t think a reasonable person could watch what we just saw over the last hour and conclude that the president is in control. He sounds like he is out of control. He was ranting and raving for the better part of the last hour. He’s claiming that he has authorities that he doesn’t have. The walls are closing in on him when it comes to managing this crisis.
RUSH: If it’s such a meltdown, why did you stop covering it? Why did CNN bump out of it? What are you so afraid of? If Trump is melting down, if the walls are closing in, if Trump is demonstrating that he’s about to go nuts ’cause this is driving him crazy, why not keep your cameras on, Jim? Why not let the American people see what you say is happening? Why did you bump out of coverage? You bumped out of coverage ’cause it was gonna hurt you. I love it. I think this was one of the highlights of these briefings, and I hope that there is more.