RUSH: The Democrats are beside themselves. They have been focus-grouping Trump’s briefings, and they’re finding out that these briefings are helping Trump, and they can’t believe it. They think Trump is stepping in it every day. They think Trump is blowing it, whining and moaning.

They can’t believe the briefings are out… The sound bites are kind of funny.

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RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This Friday NPR’s On the Media segment. The guests are somebody from National Public Radio, and the Atlantic magazine staff writer McKay Coppins, and they’re talking about Trump’s briefings, and the NPR guy says, “You know, there has been plenty of discussion about how the press should deal with these briefings with all of the lies and misinformation, video shorts of propaganda that Trump does. Are you satisfied with all of this?”

COPPINS: The ratings for these briefings at times have rivaled The Bachelor. There are signs that these briefings are helping the president politically. I spoke to one Democrat strategist who told me that they tested the effects of these briefings and showed voters 90 seconds of one of them and found that after voters saw 90 seconds of one of these briefings, Trump’s performance in a general election matchup with Joe Biden improved by more than two points.

RUSH: They think Trump is sitting there blowing it because they think Trump’s being repetitive, they think Trump’s being petty, they think Trump is just acting childish, that he’s not getting to the point, they think he’s killing himself. Then they find out that Trump’s numbers are going up. And McKay Coppins, he wasn’t finished. He’s afraid of other things happening too.

COPPINS: The New York Times reported that President Trump at the beginning of all this was seriously considering launching a White House talk radio show. He ultimately decide not to do that because he didn’t want to compete with Rush Limbaugh, a friend of his, but I can’t help but think that that helps us understand how he’s treating these briefings. Right? He ultimately doesn’t want to go up there and answer tough questions from reporters. He wants to use these briefings as a platform to push campaign for reelection and advance these propagandaistic narratives. That’s what he’s been trying to do with these White House briefings. And the more reporters kind of get in the way of that, the more frustrated he seems to become.

RUSH: I swear these people, how is it possible to misunderstand somebody who is so public? Donald Trump does not hide from the media. Even before the briefings he’d go out and do a press conference of 45 minutes to an hour on the White House lawn on his way to the helicopter. He doesn’t hide from ’em. And he doesn’t hide from tough questions. Jim Acosta’s in there embarrassing himself often. He doesn’t want to answer tough questions from reporters?

Let me tell you something. You people in the press corps ought to be ashamed. You’re not asking decent questions. You’re not asking questions people want to know the answers to. You’re just in there trying to embarrass Trump. You’re trying to trip Trump up. You’re trying to expose Trump as a liar or somebody that doesn’t remember who he’s telling what to. You’re missing the point. Trump is not running away from tough questions because he’s not getting any.

I’m serious. If I were the media, I’d be embarrassed watching these briefings because most of these questions have nothing to do with actually eliciting useful information for the American people. Every one of these questions Trump gets, or the vast majority of them, “You said this. Doesn’t that make you a liar? You said you didn’t care. You said, you said.”

They ask Trump to go back and square things he said two months ago or two weeks ago with something he might have said yesterday. He’s not getting tough questions. And he’s not doing propaganda. They call it propaganda when he replays video clips of actual media broadcasts. Somehow that has become propaganda. I think Trump would love to do a town hall on this program. I think he needs to do one. I think a radio — not televised — a radio town hall would be great to do.