Going After the Media and Counting on Clinton Scandal Fallout Doesn't Work

RUSH: I can't tell you the number of times over the years -- and some of you may be even guilty of this -- some of you may know who you are when I recount this story. I can't tell you the number of times over the many years of broadcast service here, the EIB Network, that I have fielded calls, I can't tell you the number of times that I've been on the golf course -- I can't tell you, no, because it's too many times.

I can't tell you the times, there's too many to count, I can't tell you the times that I have been at a soiree, at a party, I can't tell you the number of times I've been out there doing anything where people have come up to me, "We gotta go after the media. When are we gonna go after the media? The media's killing us. The media is the story, we gotta go after the media."

Now you're seeing what happens when you go after the media. It doesn't work. But no matter how unbalanced, no matter how biased, no matter how unfair, no matter how a bunch of cheaters they are, no matter what a bunch of slavish pro-Democrat creeps they are, it never works going after them if you are the candidate. It makes you look small. Besides, despite what many people think, the media isn't on the ballot.

Greetings, my friends. We start here on an upbeat note, the EIB Network. Excuse me. Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882 if you want to join us, and email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

I'm not kidding. I can't count the number of times I've had people tell me, "We gotta go after the media. The media's unfair, bias and unbalanced. People hate the media and the people that don't hate the media have gotta be told." Maybe so. All that may be true, but it doesn't work. It has never worked. I mean, people have tried it.

Trump was in Fairfield, Connecticut. Number one, what's Trump doing in Connecticut? There are maybe 10 Republicans there, and only five of them will admit it. He's in Fairfield. I go to Fairfield every summer to play in the member-guest golf tournament at the Country Club of Fairfield. And I'm telling you, folks, it's a foreign country. What is Trump doing there? I have no idea, but when he was there, he told them in the rally, he said to heck with running against Crooked Hillary. We're not running against Crooked Hillary. We're running against a crooked media.

What ticked him off, I guess the New York Times had a story on his chief campaign guy Manafort being involved in some scandal in, where is it, Ukraine or Manafort supposedly benefiting from some policy in Ukraine. It doesn't look pretty. And the Wall Street, folks, the media today is just -- I've never seen this. I have never seen what I am witnessing. (laughing) It's gotten so bad, I'm actually wondering if there's gonna be a backlash to this. I'm not wishful thinking here. I long ago gave up wishful thinking, on anything, not just this, I mean, just anything.

But I'm looking at this, this is so unprecedented. It is just unlike anything I've ever seen. I just wonder if there will be a backlash, and not a sympathetic backlash, don't misunderstand. I know a lot of people think that people feel sorry for Trump because he's being mistreated. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't mean sympathetic backlash. I doubt it. But I still have never seen anything like it.

The Wall Street Journal has given Trump an ultimatum: You get out by Labor Day or we're through with you, and I didn't know they were ever with him. (laughing) Sorry to be laughing, but what else are we gonna do here? The editors of the Wall Street Journal are saying that Trump needs to change his tack or drop out and give the nomination over to Mike Pence. The Journal editors gave Trump until Labor Day to submit to their ultimatum. I really don't know what they're gonna do if Trump does not submit to their ultimatum. I don't know what else there is they can do.

In the good old days Labor Day was when campaigns really began. In the good old days, like four years ago and eight years ago, Labor Day actually marked the official -- well, not the official. But everybody's back from vacation, everybody's back to school, people getting up at normal times, going to bed at normal times and routine, post-summer vacation sets in, and that's traditionally when the majority of people start paying attention to campaigns.

So that's still two weeks away, so the Drive-Bys at the Wall Street Journal have declared that Trump -- at least three or four times they've declared that he's already lost the election. So it's amazing. Trump's changing a lot of things. He's changing the electoral calendar, he's changing any number of things, and now he's lost the election, here we are on August 15, with a newspaper actually giving him an ultimatum to get out. They don't say what they're gonna do otherwise.

The New York Times has a story about 20 anonymous Trump insiders who say that he can't be controlled, that he's depressed, that he's down in the dumps, that he's sullen. He's inconsolable that none of this is working out the way he thought it would work out. There are people ostensibly -- ostensibly, it's in New York Times -- close to the Trump campaign who say that Trump really thought he'd been able to win over the media with his charm and with his public appearances and with the charismatic nature of his personality and so forth, much as he did during the primaries.

And, I mean, not to get too serious here (chuckling), folks, 'cause I don't know that called for, but does anybody think this was gonna be easy? What are we doing here? What did this election really turn out to be about? It turns out to be trying to take away all of the reins of power and all of the perks and everything associated with being a member of the establishment. Did anybody think that the establishment -- be they Republican, Democrat, Martian, communist, whatever -- were just gonna sit around and leave that up to the democratic process? (chuckles) They are not.

They're not just gonna sit there and wait 'til November whatever the election date is and then throw their fortunes to the great unwashed on Election Day. So they've taken all these -- and the media is part of the establishment, and there are many Republicans in it. Practically anybody in Washington is in the establishment, so they were not gonna be won over. They were not going to be persuaded to abandon their club or their organization. You could look at it as globalist versus nationalist. You could look at it as populist versus conservative.

You could look at it as whatever it is, but it is the powerful versus the powerless, and the powerless were never gonna win this. (interruption) Well, now, wait a minute. You have to let me finish the sentence. I don't want to leave it there. The powerless were never gonna win this in a contest where the nominee tries to persuade the powerful to give it up. "But, Rush, what about the emails? "What about...?" The emails, the shmemails! Folks, there's nothing that's gonna happen with the emails. I don't care what's found in them. We should know that by now.

Besides, the Republicans are not serious about investigating any of this stuff on Capitol Hill, and so absent that, the media isn't gonna do it. I'm sorry. I love these people. I love Tom Fitton and all the people at Judicial Watch, but they can't do this by themselves. They simply cannot call attention to Hillary's emails. They can request them. They can do all this, and they can provide the results, but they're not gonna go anywhere because there's no official... The courts are not gonna pursue it. The DOJ has made it clear they're not gonna pursue anything, and now Leon Panetta...

(interruption) No, I haven't forgotten about Milwaukee. I can tell you what happened in Milwaukee in 30 seconds. It's just a repeat of all kinds of things. I'll get to Milwaukee in a second. But I'm waiting actually on a sound bite 'cause the sheriff up there had the best sound bite of all this, right about -- oh, I forget what it was -- an hour ago. I'm waiting for that bite to be put together, and I want to build off of that. So I haven't... I'm not ignoring it.

Back to Panetta. Panetta was on This Week. Now, Panetta is part of the Clinton war room. He was Bill Clinton's chief of staff. When Panetta was leaving as Clinton's chief, I'll never forget this. There's things in politics that I remember. I, who consume practically everything I see, remember most of what I see and read; it's an amazing feat. I don't have to practice it. It just happens. Some are born with good brains; some aren't. I am. I'll never forget Panetta and his resignation day as chief of staff.

He was just sucking up to Clinton like you can't believe. He was giving Bill Clinton credit for every damn good thing that's ever happened in the world since God created it. It was the most slavish... I thought he was gonna die of anal poisoning. I really did. He was so kiss-ass that I was sitting there listening and I said, "Does this guy not know the guy he's been working for?" So, anyway, that's who Panetta is. I mean, he's a loyalist like you can't... (interruption) No. (interruption) "Dying of anal poisoning" has nothing's to do with one's sexual orientation. It's describing...

(interruption) I said it. It's describing a sycophant. That's all I mean. So now Panetta goes on This Week with Stephanopoulos or whoever was hosting it Sunday, and he said, "Can't we just move on from these emails? For crying out loud, it doesn't matter anyway. This is politics." He was talking about the revelations of pay-for-play. He was openly admitting that entities representing foreign governments were donating to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for consideration as secretary of state or as a future president. >

"Hey, that's what politics is," and I'm sure to a guy like Clinton and Panetta, politics is selling yourself to the highest bidder, and that's what it's become. And it's been that way since Clinton was in office starting in 1993. So what's the big deal? That's why Bill Clinton's running around saying Comey's full of bull. (impression) "That FBI director, he's full of bull. That's a load of bull. What that guy's saying is bull," because to them, pay-for-play, selling access, taking money -- personally and at your foundation -- in exchange for favorable policies, that's how you do it.

That's what politics is to these people! There isn't anything illegal. There isn't anything shady. It's just the new norm. And, of course, that fits perfectly with the devolution of our culture overall. But, anyway, when I saw Panetta say it -- Can we all just move on? -- I imagined practically everybody in the audience watching that show. "Yeah, yeah, 'cause I'm sick and tired of hearing about it," people are saying. You know, you can only hear so much, and then there better be some action behind it or it begins to become a tune-out.

We've been hearing about Hillary Clinton's emails for how many months or years now? Well, it's a long time, whatever it is. And we can have news stories about what's in there. We can have information from Judicial Watch. AP might even run an occasionally a story about what's in Mrs. Clinton's emails. But if the sheriff doesn't come calling, if the Department of Justice doesn't... Better yet, if the FBI director goes on TV and says, "There's nothing here," then Panetta comes along... (interruption) Well, he did. He said, "There's nothing there prosecutable," even though there is.

But he said, "There's nothing in here that a reasonable prosecutor would pursue." That's it as far as the low-information crowd is concerned. So then Panetta goes on TV Sunday. "Can we move past this?" and I guarantee you there's a chorus of people going, "Yeah, yeah." But I... (sigh) Look, it's always dangerous getting into See, I Told You So mode, because people interpret that as condescending and being negative, and I don't intend to be either.

But I have never believed it, because I have intelligence guided by 25, 27 years of experience. We are not going to "illegal" the Clintons out of office. Scandal is not ever going to harm them. There is no evidence that it ever has, and there's plenty of evidence that people believe. There are all kinds of Clinton scandals that people believe, and it doesn't matter to 'em. (interruption) No, Trump's not making a big deal about the emails. But people who are opposed to Hillary -- and I am at the top of that list.

I'm the head of that club, waiting for some kind of magic to happen. People have been waiting for that to happen, to befall the Clintons for as long as they've been in national public life. Nothing's happened. I want to remind you, too... I made this comment. Remember when the Supreme Court vacated the convictions of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his lovely and gracious wife? You may not remember this. But they had the evidence on them: $175,000 of basically bribes, pay-for-play. They had accepted all these goodies.

I mean, it was chump change stuff. It was like TVs and stereos and rings and who knows what else. The Supreme Court threw all that out, threw the convictions out, even though the evidence was conclusive. When the Supreme Court threw it out, I said, "This is the best news that the elected class in Washington could possibly get." The Supreme Court has just said, essentially -- by vacating the convictions on McDonnell -- that it's too difficult to prove political corruption. Pay-for-play.

It's just too difficult to prove it. It's really difficult to prove when nobody's trying to, outside of Judicial Watch or Citizens United; when the DOJ's not trying to, when the Republicans don't want to get anywhere near it. (interruption) No, no, no, no. Mrs. Clinton's vulnerable in a lot of other ways. It just doesn't have to be scandal. She's vulnerable as she can be on policy, but for some reason, the decision has been made to go after the media today.

Now, there's also a funny story... Let me take a break. It's somewhere in the Stack. I won't find it in time. Let me take a break. It's something about Clinton campaign bracing for a final Trump attack or whatever. I can't imagine the Clinton campaign "bracing."

RUSH: No, no, no. I do not believe... I find it hard to believe that 20 Trump staffers would go crying to the New York Times.

The New York Times tried to mislead everybody on what happened in Milwaukee. The New York Times tried to portray a picture where the shooter was another innocent, unarmed black man gunned down by a voracious racist white cop. It's in their headlines. "Unarmed." The shooter was not unarmed, and he was not...

He was a thug. We now know who he is, and the cop was African-American. But the New York Times tried to get everything thinking that we were looking at Gentle Giant 2 here. So would they report the 20 unhappy Trump staffers would call 'em up and start crying about the Donald? I wouldn't put anything past them! I'd be really hard-pressed to believe that, is my point. Here's the story here:

"The Clinton campaign is gearing up for Donald Trump 'to bet everything on one final, major attack,' according to a fundraising email sent Monday morning by campaign manager Robby Mook. Mook has come to this conclusion, he writes, because Trump has raised a ton of money but hasn't spent" any of it yet. So the Clinton campaign thinks that Trump's saving up all this money for one big, huge nuclear blast on Hillary and her campaign. We'll see.

“Now you’re seeing what happens when you go after the media. It doesn’t work. But no matter how unbalanced, no matter how biased, no matter how unfair, no matter how a bunch of cheaters they are, no matter what a bunch of slavish pro-Democrat creeps they are, it never works going after them if you are the candidate. It makes you look small. Besides, despite what many people think, the media isn’t on the ballot.”

Trump needs to find ways to bypass the media and their lies.

I don’t think calling out the media on their lies is bad but the problem is you end up bogged down debating the media and not your opponent.

Get the truth out. Expose the media lies. Be on message about Clinton. That I all Trump can do.

“I must disagree with Rush. The media are clearly the enemy of Trump and free Americans everywhere! He should recognize they are his enemies. The media must be discredited to the point where few if any even watch them anymore. Trump often criticizes Hillary and Obama for not identifying radial Islam as the enemy. Rush, why should Trump do the same thing with media? They are the enemy!!!”

The problem is the media tell only their version of the story, not the truth. Trump is accused of opposing the media and is bogged down because they continually falsely accuse him of wrongdoing.

Trump needs to by pass the media and get the truth out. The media will never let him do that.

The media will also encourage self described “conservatives” to attack Trump and quote them when they do.

I must disagree with Rush. The media are clearly the enemy of Trump and free Americans everywhere! He should recognize they are his enemies. The media must be discredited to the point where few if any even watch them anymore. Trump often criticizes Hillary and Obama for not identifying radial Islam as the enemy. Rush, why should Trump do the same thing with media? They are the enemy!!!
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I could not agree with you more. If Trump limits his attacks to the Hildabeast and ignores the media, they will eat him alive. Unrelentingly, everyday they will be lampooning and demeaning him, dismissing as crazy his attacks on the Hildabeast. The Never Trump crowd will join in. They will completely take over the public narrative. The media is enemy number one and if you do not attack them relentlessly, they will destroy you. Trump's media attacks also give him free public exposure like he got daily during the primaries. My record is that he won most if not all of those attacks and irritated the hell out of the media in the process. The result, very few believe anything the media says anymore. Their credibility is below the water line.

I don’t disagree with a thing you said, but Trump is NOT getting his message out effectively because he is allowing them to make the election about themselves and Trump - not the ideas that will win or the shortcomings of the Queen. We all follow this stuff closely and the guy has a terrific platform of common sense stuff that WINS! However, the election is now down to the disinterested swing voters and all they are hearing non-stop are soundbites from Trump about the media, saying Crooked Hillary (she is), and defending himself for something he said off the cuff three days before.

I want to win this election worse than any election in my lifetime because if Hillary gets elected my children will be ruined by 40 trillion in debt, a liberal court, and a feckless foreign policy that will drag us into conflict after conflict. On top of that, the economy and healthcare will continue to be shredded. She will grant immigrants amnesty and the right to vote and place them in the swing states guaranteeing that nobody but the DNC will sniff the white house.

This is for all the marbles. It’s not popular to say this here on FR, but somehow Trump has to stop drowning out his own message. It’s not fair - it’s just the reality he faces. His speech today was outstanding and he picked a few key points to attack with, but it was mostly about his own vision. That needs to be the tone moving forward and he has to minimize distractions (very hard for him) during interviews because one flippant remark automatically means his message is drowned out for another news cycle.

It is absolute bullcrap and while I usually appreciate his answers, it is very obvious what is happening here. The rat campaign recognizes that this fact combined with their machine will take her to victory in November. We can all whine about it (Lord knows I have), but he has to attract swing voters into giving him a serious look based on issues and not “attacks” or constant clarification of prior statements. He can still take shots, but he needs to be more selective and concentrate on getting out his message because that is what will bring victory. That message is what the media does not want to broadcast.

All of us need to admit that the media won’t explore Hillary’s warts. It’s wrong and it ticks me off, but we (his base) can be mad all we want after he wins this thing! It’s time to call it what it is - one gigantic distraction that is preventing him from reaching the swing voters. That is what this election is about now - the base vote is set.

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