RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed it already. If not, I think it’s safe to say that the worm has turned in Washington. I think behind the scenes a formal decision has been made on the part of the media, and that is to focus on their treatment of Hillary while casting aside Obama. Obama is over. He’s yesterday’s news. There’s nothing positive to report. It’s time to build up Hillary, and I think I could make the case for that today in a couple of instances, which we will do.

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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there’s been a shift in the media in Washington, and it’s characterized by two different things that I have noticed. One of them was yesterday. We pointed out that David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, were both taking shots at Obama. Remember, we’ve played these sound bites from yesterday where Gregory and Andrea Mitchell both openly stated that Obama’s statements about what he’s doing in Iraq and why and when don’t pass the smell test.

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RUSH: I want to get back to the shift that I have detected that’s taken place inside the Beltway with the Drive-By Media, the legacy media, the mainstream media. It is apparent to me, at least at NBC News and at the Washington Post. And not just Dana Milbank; they’ve had a couple of hard-hitting editorials. I think a conscious decision has been made among the Democrats in the media that it’s time to start focusing on Hillary.

Distance her, help her distance herself from Obama. Obama is trending downward at a rapid rate, is unsalvageable, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Rather than stick with Obama and try to salvage him and thereby salvage other Democrats with that effort, I think the decision has been made (at least at NBC and the Washington Post) to conclude that it’s lame duck time now, and that means it’s time to build Hillary up and provide her cover and distance from Obama.

Hillary herself signaled that it was time to do this by openly disagreeing, in a profound manner, with Obama’s foreign policy in both Iraq and Syria. When this happened, the media had, I think, decided to choose up sides and throw in with Hillary. Now, on the radio program yesterday, we had audio sound bites of David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and they were both taking shots at Obama.

Now, in Gregory’s case, if you were here, you will recall that I chalked that up to Gregory having heard the rumors that he was out at Meet the Press and is gonna be replaced by F. Chuck Todd. So Gregory decided, “Okay, I gotta do something to get my numbers up here so they don’t get rid of me at the end of the year,” and I decided to reach out to the Heartland and strike common ground with Tea Party types by ripping into Obama, which he did on Sunday.

And then Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, said that Obama’s excuse for why ISIS has become so dominant in Iraq and Syria… Obama said they got bad intel. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, called that a “farce.” She was openly disgusted and angry and even a little embarrassed. Because that, of course, is the excuse that Bush offered when there were no weapons of mass destruction after we invaded Iraq.

As I explained yesterday, everything that happened in Iraq was reported as a disaster for five years. It was the worst thing ever. And for Obama to steal a Bush excuse or to use a Bush excuse was more than they could handle. So I think that’s what this signals, in addition to the Dana Milbank piece that ran yesterday, August 11th.

Milbank’s headline: “Obama Vacations as the World Burns.” So you got that; you got some Washington Post editorials lately that have really, really been critical of Obama. So you put all this together, and it I think is official: The Hillary campaign’s begun. I think if you had any doubt that Hillary was running, cast it aside. She is because the media is telling us. I think my memory will be borne out on this.

I think that Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and Gregory and most of NBC huge Clintonistas. Isn’t NBC the network that shoveled all that money at Chelsea Clinton, having never worked in television before? They gave her a $600,000 deal. It was calculated something like $25,000 a minute, based on how often she was on TV. They just threw $600,000 at her.

The thinking at the time was, “Well, Hillary and Bill have decided that Chelsea needs to learn television, because television is so crucial to campaigning. Television’s so crucial to winning campaigns.” The truth may be quite the opposite. The truth may be that NBC just decided to throw money there to curry favor and to show their support for the Clintons. See, I think this. Let me cut to the chase here.

I think that NBC News and the Washington Post, and I think a lot of Drive-By Media, have calculated that the midterm elections are already doomed for the Democrats, including the Senate. I think that they have concluded as well that Obama is basically over, that he can’t rebound from this. It’s too deep; it’s too entangled. Nothing has gone right, and it’s impossible for a second term president who’s not even engaged.

St. Louis is on fire. Iraq is on fire. The Middle East. The world is on fire! And Obama is playing golf and took Susan Rice with him to make sure she can stay informed so as to brief him at the 19th Hole when he gets off the golf course. Now, as well as all of that is happening, Obama’s policies continue to explode. That could damage Hillary or any other Democrat running in 2016.

So it makes sense to dump on Obama now, because there’s no longer any real cost of doing that. I mean, how do you hurt Obama? He’s not up for election again. He’s not gonna face voters again. So how much can it hurt Obama to dump on him? In their world. I’m talking the way they see things. In Obama’s world, they could do a lot of damage. He’s still gotta fundraise for his social justice presidential library and his lifestyle after leaving the White House and everything else he wants to do.

So he’s very much interested in maintaining his image, but they’re not. So what they have decided to do is put distance between what Obama is now doing, particularly in foreign policy. Hillary’s gone for almost two years already. What they’re doing now is they’re contrasting Obama and the world on fire with what a President Hillary would have done, and I’ve got a couple of sound bites to prove this coming up.

That’s how they’re beginning to cast this: What Hillary would have done versus what Obama has done and how it have been much better if Hillary would have done it. I know this is all gobbledygook because Hillary is just as big a disaster as Obama is, but not in their world, and it’s their world that we’re speaking about now. Taking a few shots at Obama now increases NBC’s credibility, by the way.

It shows them to not be in lockstep with the Regime, so that when they do cover Hillary and what Hillary says and give her a comfortable forum to claim she would have done X, Y, and Z differently from Obama, it enhances her status, because NBC has already enhanced its own credibility by dumping on Obama. This is how these people think; this is how these things work.

All these journalists know their credibility has been thrown aside, but it’s been worth it to defend and prop up Obama. But now it’s time for the next Democrat to get elected, so this time throw Obama overboard and gain credibility in that process, so that whenever you say whatever you say about Hillary, it has credibility. So NBC, I think, is gonna tee up 2016 as the Buyer’s Remorse Campaign. It’s gonna go something like this: “Oh, yeah, sure. We all got swept up in the historic Obama excitement.

We all got caught up in that. We all got caught up in hope and change. We all got caught up in the historical aspect of the first black president. We all got caught up in this blank canvas, that we could make anything of him we wanted him to be. We got caught up in all of that. But the smart, savvy experienced Democrats knew in 2008 that smart, savvy, experienced Hillary was really the better candidate. This is what’s gonna be said now, mark my words.

See if I’m right. Remember this. And as you go forward and listen to NBC News and ABC, CBS, all the rest of them, I think what you’re gonna be hearing, and it’s just to position Hillary, “Oh, yeah, we all got caught up in 2008 and Obama this and Obama that, but remember Hillary came close. She was great and she was the better candidate.” They’re gonna do their retrospectives, their deep analysis with their analysts on camera stroking their chins, lost in deep thought.

And they will conclude in a very erudite and intellectual fashion, that, yes, Hillary really was the better candidate back 2008. We all got caught up in this excitement, and who could blame us. After all, everybody did. The first black president, it certainly was historic, but let’s face it: Hillary was always the better candidate. And let’s not make this mistake again, David. Let’s not make this mistake again, Chuck. In fact, let’s correct that mistake by nominating her this time. This time let’s get it right.

We got caught up in all the excitement of 2008, and everybody did, so we can’t be held accountable there, but we can admit that maybe we let it get away from us, that even then we knew that Hillary Clinton really was the better candidate and would have made the better president. But we got sucked in. We got sucked in by the racial component. We got sucked in by youth. We got sucked in by the great crease in his slacks. We got sucked in by the fact that he sounds just as smart as we are. We got sucked in by the fact he’s got the same Ivy League pedigree, that he was Harvard and Yale and Columbia and law review, and he’s just like us.

Except he’s not. But we didn’t know that then. He’s maybe too disengaged. Maybe Obama really is too big for this office. Maybe it just doesn’t challenge him, whatever. We misjudged it. But now it’s time to get it right. And we knew in 2008, and so did Rush Limbaugh, that Hillary Clinton — remember Operation Chaos — we should have listened then. We should have listened to Limbaugh in 2008. He was telling us the mistake we were making. And now we understand and are ready to admit that Hillary should have been the nominee in 2008 and would have been the better candidate. So let’s correct that mistake by nominating her this time.

This is what the coverage is gonna be. Mark my words. This is gonna come. This is gonna be a giant See, I Told You So. You wait. This is exactly what they’re gonna do. I think this what NBC is up to. They’re gonna continue ignoring Benghazi, ’cause that’s not good for Hillary. That’ll continue to be just a Republican scandal opportunity. They will ignore the Muslim Brotherhood because Hillary has real exposure there.

See, the thing is, Hillary was in Barack’s back pocket, but they are gonna have to make it look like Hillary was never really on board. She was just being loyal, but she knew that there were mistakes being made, but he helped her retire her campaign debt. He didn’t have to help her out, and he didn’t have to put her in his administration. And of course there’s the subtext with Bill and the racial stuff, so there’s a lot of stuff, but now, now Hillary is the one.

But they’ll ignore all these things. They’ll do their best to ignore all the similarities — and there are many — between Hillary and Obama. And they’ll take shots at O when it will help her. I don’t think it’s gonna work, now, let me say this. I don’t think it’s gonna work and it’s not gonna work because I don’t think the country like her any better than they like Obama, nor do I think they like NBC. I don’t think it’s gonna work. I’m just telling you what they’re gonna do, because they are in the midst of panic time now. Their guy has really let them down. This foreign policy mess and all of it, and Obamacare — remember, he did everything they believe in, policy-wise.

This was supposed to create a utopia. We were supposed to create a growing economy and the poor were gonna be in the middle class by now and the middle class were gonna be pushing the rich guys out and replacing them, and the rich guys were gonna be poor and gotten even with. All of this was gonna happen. Everybody was gonna have affordable health care and affordable health care insurance and affordable this and affordable that. It was all gonna be so wonderful.

And Al-Qaeda was gonna love us. The Brotherhood was gonna love us. Robin Williams wasn’t gonna die. It was gonna be just wonderful. And none of it has worked out. So now it’s time for Hillary. Mark my words. It’s clever, what they’re gonna try to do, but it isn’t gonna work because the people like Hillary no more than they like Obama, nor do they like NBC at all.

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RUSH: Grab a quick phone call here and then some supporting sound bites. James, Peapack, New Jersey, welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hello.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Yes. You know, I tried a lot to get through. I’m glad a got through. I do want to mention how much I love the Two If By Tea, before we get to my point about Hillary and Obama.

RUSH: Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate that very much.

CALLER: You know, there’s one thing I thought it needs. It needs one more thing, and what it needs. It says, “One if by land and two if by sea.” It needs a lemonade: “One if by lemon, Two by Tea.”

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: So I have to have that trademarked, and if you want to get in touch with me, that’s great.

RUSH: Always selling something.

CALLER: Always selling something! That’s the American way.

RUSH: Stick to the topic, sir. Sick to the topic. (laughing)

CALLER: Okay here’s what I had to say about Hillary. You know, Obama doesn’t like it when people say he’s wrong, and especially when Hillary said that and they brought it up. He got kind of angry. He said it was horse… horse… Well, I can’t say all that. Horse hockey.

RUSH: Horse manure. Horse excrement.

CALLER: Horse manure.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: It seems like when other people have cursed, you know, they get covered. When Bush and Cheney cursed, they got a lot of hard time for that, when they got picked up cursing. But he seems able to do that.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah. He called him a Clymer. Look, here’s his point. James’ point is that Obama’s not going along with this. I mean, NBC and the Washington Post might be trying to throw him overboard and distance Hillary from him to set her up for a more easy campaign or an easier campaign. His point is, Obama’s not going along with it, and that’s a crucial point.

Obama’s not just gonna sit idly by and watch ’em build Hillary up. It’s gonna be fun! But they can’t afford for her to be tied to him, folks. They just can’t. Look, they just can’t. Yeah, that’s why she’s thrown him overboard on his Syria policy, and that’s why he called what she said horse manure. So let’s go to the audio sound bites here, just to illustrate. Here’s Beltway conventional wisdom.

It’s forming, and it is that Hillary Clinton… You’re not gonna believe this. This is a positive! They’re distancing Hillary from Obama, and they’re setting her up, and they’ve got to distance her from his foreign policy. Specifically she was secretary of state, and they can’t have her tied to that, nor can she be tied to it. So we have a montage here of media people. Wait ’til you hear what the conventional wisdom is.

BRIAN KILMEADE: Hillary Clinton now sounds like Dick Cheney.

LAURA INGRAHAM: She’s much more hawkish.

CHARLES BLOW: Hillary Clinton, always been much more of a hawk.

ERIC BOLLING: Hillary Clinton is more of a neocon.

PETER BAKER: She seems to see it more as a long-term existential threat, closer to, in some ways, uhh, the way the previous president his administration did.

MARK HALPERIN: Hillary Clinton is sounding like Dick Cheney.

RUSH: Holy smokes! All of a sudden Bush and Cheney are worthy of emulating. All of a sudden Hillary Clinton being “hawkish” like Cheney is a positive. All of a sudden! I’m telling you, this is all part of the media conscious campaign to start promoting her candidacy and distancing herself from Obama, or distancing her.

Now out of the blue, the Bush-Cheney foreign policy is golden! Who would have thought? Folks, what that means is that’s the size task they’ve got in order to distance her. Now, here is Daniel Halper. He is an author, Clinton Inc. He’s on Fox this morning. He was asked, “Is this about 2016 or is she being honest about how she was squelched under Obama? Who’s behind this, Daniel?”

HALPER: It’s totally all about politics. This is Hillary Clinton. She is completely political; this is completely transactional. The truth of the matter is, as I outlined in my book, Hillary Clinton was put in a bubble in the State Department. Foreign policy was essentially run from the White House by President Obama and his minions. Hillary Clinton didn’t have much say in foreign policy. So she traveled the world. She visited different places, she made new friends, but she didn’t really have much say in foreign policy.

RUSH: See? “She was just there traveling the world. It wasn’t her idea to do what Obama did or didn’t do in Syria. It wasn’t her idea to do or not do what Obama did or didn’t do in Iraq! She had nothing to do with Benghazi. She had nothing to do with Khadafy. She had nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. It wasn’t her, wasn’t her, wasn’t her! She was just there, she was a placeholder, and she had to do what Obama told her to do.

“But she really didn’t want to. She just flew all over, and she met a lot of people, and she made a lot of friends, and she set herself up for her own foreign policy. But she had nothing to do with Obama.” See how this is working out, folks? You see what’s happening here? It turns out it’s not just NBC News, and it’s not just the Washington Post. Here’s Dana Milbank: “Obama Vacations as the World Burns —

“Hillary Rodham Clinton, his once-loyal secretary of state and his likeliest successor, has gone rogue, criticizing his foreign policy as too timid. Obama responded with not one but two rounds of golf.” “Obama Vacations as the World Burns.” Do not doubt me on this. Now, don’t misunderstand. I’m not frightened by any of this. I’m the last guy to be frightened by any of this. I’m just telling you what’s happening here.

I want you to be able to understand it when you watch the news elsewhere, what it means and why it is being done. Benghazi was her and Obama! This effort to say that she had nothing to do with Obama foreign policy is BS. Once more they’re trying to make up a bunch of stuff in order to inoculate her from the poison that is the Obama foreign policy. Make no mistake about it. She was right in there. That is the cliche, the dirty little secret.