![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/TrumpMediaWall-of-trump-C-030116.jpg\")
And here\u2019s the headline: “How Trump Blew Up the Conservative Media<\/a> — Inside the new power dynamics roiling Fox, Breitbart and the Wall Street Journal.” And it\u2019s written by Eliana Johnson, who is the daughter of Scott Johnson, who\u2019s one of the three guys at the Power Line blog. I think she was an intern, then a writer at National Review. Now she\u2019s joined the Drive-Bys over at The Politico. I think we have an implant here, an embed.<\/p>\nAnyway, 16 pages: “How Trump Blew Up the Conservative Media.” Guess who\u2019s not mentioned here? Can you guess who\u2019s not mentioned in a 16-page story on conservative media being blown up? That\u2019s right, my friends, me, your host. And you know why? ‘Cause I have not been blown up. We have not been blown up. We are not conflicted at all here at the EIB Network.<\/p>\n
We have absolutely no qualms about how we\u2019ve handled anything, how we\u2019re doing anything, how this program is done, how it\u2019s put together, how it\u2019s performed, how it\u2019s executed. We have no conflict, no doubts, no worries whatsoever. But apparently many in the conservative media have been rocked and roiled by the Trump presidency and the campaign and trying to figure out what their position is and should be.<\/p>\n
Snerdley brought this in. “You\u2019re not even in it, you\u2019re not.” I said, “That\u2019s good, that\u2019s good.” He said, “Why?” I said, “It\u2019s good, it\u2019s good, we\u2019re not blown up.” “Oh, yeah. That\u2019s right.” And we aren\u2019t. This stuff doesn\u2019t affect us anyway. I\u2019ve always told you, my success has nothing to do with who wins elections. Not gonna give \u2019em that kind of power. Those guys come and go. I don\u2019t have any say-so what they say, do, or believe anyway. It\u2019s always been a mistake to make personal investments in people in politics.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: I did not have time to go through this whole thing, but I have been rummaging through this gigantic Politico story, “How Trump Blew Up the Conservative Media — Inside the new power dynamics roiling Fox, Breitbart and the Wall Street Journal.”<\/p>\n
Now, I haven\u2019t finished it all, but it seems to me that part of this story is based on efforts by some conservative media to get close to Trump to be able to say that they are the intellectual energy behind Trump. That they are the people or the paper or the person that Trump consults for advice or what have you.<\/p>\n
And then, of course, there are people that lost in that effort, and they then got a little sour on Trump, became less supportive, then demanded that Trump supporters abandon him because Trump was destroying conservatism, he wasn\u2019t conservative, he was redefining it for people that didn\u2019t know any better to be populism or nationalism.<\/p>\n
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It really boils down to how the Trump ascendancy, the campaign and the presidency has highlighted problems for conservatism. As I say, I haven\u2019t read the whole thing. But I made reference to this happening during the campaign of 2016, particularly as it related to explaining the Never Trumpers, who occupied the conservative right.<\/p>\n
And basically you boil it down to this. For years there have been magazines and think tanks and other conservative media for, we\u2019re talking decades here, who have published and broadcast and conducted seminars on the basis that they are the definition of conservatism and that they are the spear carriers and that they are carrying the weight. They\u2019re doing the heavy lifting. They\u2019re doing the heavy intellectual lifting and spreading the word.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re seeking to define it for everybody, and they\u2019re working hard to have members of Congress influenced by it and so forth. And they\u2019ve been asking for donations all this time to continue this great work of defining conservatism and influencing power brokers and policy makers to be conservative.<\/p>\n
And it was a great arrangement, and it worked quite well for the longest time, because conservative citizens are loyal, and they are very much aware of the attacks daily on conservatism. And they very astutely understood the importance of supporting conservative media wherever it was. But then Trump came along and just blew everything up. Trump excited the people more than your average conservative organization of any kind ever had.<\/p>\n
And what really transpired was the fear on the part of many Never Trumpers that Trump was going to expose, not the irrelevance, but the overall ineffectiveness of years and years, decades and decades of conservatism in think tanks and in media and in publications and so forth. Because there hadn\u2019t been any advances in it. Republicans are getting elected, but they weren\u2019t conservative, and there were not conservative ideas finding their way into legislation.<\/p>\n
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And despite the fact that they were winning elections, despite the fact that conservatives were donating to Republicans, Republicans were campaigning as conservatives, promising to do X, Y, and Z, get elected, didn\u2019t do it. They reverted to inside-the-Beltway moderates or establishmentarians or what have you. Then Trump comes along and just, in a sense, demonstrated how that entire conservative infrastructure wasn\u2019t necessary to beat the left, to beat Democrats. And that posed a great fear. I mean, that constituted a great fear.<\/p>\n
If some guy who\u2019s not even a conservative can come along and demonstrate without any Washington experience, political acumen whatsoever, some guy can come along and mop the floor with Democrats and a lot of others said, “Oh, my God, we\u2019re about to be exposed here.” And so the Never Trumpersphere was born. And it was rooted in pure, thoroughbred conservatism and the fact that Trump wasn\u2019t and isn\u2019t one and therefore posed a great, great risk to conservatism, and we must not allow that to happen.<\/p>\n
And I think that\u2019s really the genesis of a story like this. I mean, the Wall Street Journal used to be the Bible, its editorial page used to be the Bible for conservatism, but it became Never Trump. And they did everything they can to defeat Trump. Now since Trump has won the election and Rupert Murdoch has sidled up to Trump, the Journal, who he owns, slowly but surely changing a little bit, becoming less opposed to Trump. Not openly embracing him, but allowing that there\u2019s maybe some potential here of possibility.<\/p>\n
Fox is portrayed in its own way. Breitbart is portrayed as a great big winner in this internecine battle in conservatism, because they were early behind Trump, and one of their guys is now Trump\u2019s chief strategist and so forth. As I say, I haven\u2019t read the whole thing. This is one of these areas where I\u2019m wading very near the quicksand here. I\u2019m not trying to be critical of anybody, but if you\u2019re gonna talk about this, you have to talk about it honestly.<\/p>\n
I think the real problem here is not Trump; it\u2019s the fact that — and I said this during the campaign too. I said if you\u2019re a Trump voter and you\u2019re a former conservative — well, you\u2019re still a conservative, but you are gravitating to Trump during the campaign, the reason had to be, in part, that people like that were asking, “What\u2019s conservatism actually done for me? I\u2019ve sent it money; I\u2019ve donated here; I\u2019ve voted for it left and right in the name of the Republican Party, and what\u2019s it got me?”<\/p>\n
Because Trump came along and started just running rings around everybody and collecting a large group of active, engaged supporters that many feared came from the ranks of conservative donors and so forth. So there was panic in that regard. It\u2019s still shaking out. But I just want to remind you that I, El Rushbo, am not found in this story because I have been roiled by any of it. I have not found myself affected negatively by Trump\u2019s rise in any way, shape, manner, or form, except within the conservative movement, where I have often been portrayed in the last year and a half or two and a half years now as a traitor to the cause.<\/p>\n
What nobody understood — well, enough of that. That\u2019s just basically what this is, and maybe if I have more time I\u2019ll spend more time digging into it. But I have a sense that that is pretty much it.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
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RUSH: Okay, to the phones. Fort Worth, Texas, Dan, great to have you with us. I\u2019m glad you called, sir. How are you?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Rush, it\u2019s an honor. I\u2019ve been listening to you since your loser updates in 1988.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you. I appreciate that. The loser updates. Yes.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Anyway, hey, I was listening to you talking about people were upset about Trump not being conservative enough. You know, he\u2019s not the purist conservative that I would have preferred as far as ideology, but there\u2019s no conservative out there who can get as much of the conservative agenda across the finish line as he did.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Bingo. Before him, there wasn\u2019t one!<\/p>\n
CALLER: No.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, the so-called conservatives were — (crosstalk)<\/p>\n
CALLER: — I thought had a better conservative pedigree, but as it turns out, this guy\u2019s doing more with less —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, the people you\u2019re talking about that had great pedigrees didn\u2019t run! They stayed there and they wrote and they pontificated and they went on cruises and stuff, but they didn\u2019t run, they didn\u2019t run for office. So all this great conservatism people never really had a chance to vote for it.<\/p>\n
CALLER: He is without a doubt the most effective conservative that we\u2019ll ever come — well, the next 10 years.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I want to properly state this. Donald Trump is not a conservative, and in his own mind especially he\u2019s not a conservative. But that doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t think that way, and it doesn\u2019t mean that he\u2019s not oriented in that direction, particularly as he sees how the opposition treats him. These are people that used to be friends of his in some regards. New York liberal moderates, they were friends. Now he sees who they really are. And when I say he\u2019s not a conservative, I mean he\u2019s not a doctrinaire, ideological conservative. He cannot tell you who Edmund Burke is. He cannot tell you who Friedrich Hayek is. And he\u2019s not interested. Doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t — he\u2019s not interested in that.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Rush-Photos-SMALL-018.jpg\")
Donald Trump doesn\u2019t size things up this way. He looks at problems that need to be fixed, and he thinks he\u2019s got an abundance of common sense, and his way\u2019s the right way, the only way, and he\u2019s gonna do it. You know what he\u2019s doing today? He\u2019s heading over the Treasury department to do what he can to blow up Dodd-Frank with executive orders, and to do what he can do with the tax code. Since the Congress won\u2019t help him in anything right now, he\u2019s doing as much as he can with executive orders. He\u2019s not stopping.<\/p>\n
But he doesn\u2019t get up and say, “What conservative things can I do today?” He doesn\u2019t get up and say, “What are the liberals doing today that I can really humiliate and embarrass them with?” He doesn\u2019t do that. He gets up and looks at the problems that he sees and has identified and does what he can to go about solving them. And he goes out and says, “Yeah, we got the greatest armada that there\u2019s ever been, we got the greatest armada, it\u2019s steaming right now to North Korea.” People, “What? What? Where is it?” They conclude Trump\u2019s a doofus. Doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s talking about. Mike, grab that theme that we used for Dukakis fundraisers, the Pat Metheny thing that we use, \u2019cause I want to play it for people. He\u2019s talking about the loser update and I\u2019m sure people are wondering, what the hell is that? Let me know when it come up with it. It goes back to \u201988, \u201989. You might find Dukakis in the computer reference, might be tagged that way.<\/p>\n
At any rate, none of this means that Trump is not accomplishing conservative things, because he clearly is. And in fact he\u2019s probably accomplishing more conservative things than previous Republican presidents who have tried to tell us they\u2019re conservative but they really haven\u2019t been in terms of doctrinaire. But this came down to something. This election wasn\u2019t even about that. This is what conservatives — I for the life of me, this I will not understand.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ll just speak for myself. And I know I\u2019m speaking for you. The objective in this election was twofold. There were two things. Well, three. I\u2019ll throw in a third. The third thing was lack of trust of the Republican Party, because of all the promises, all the elections that people had voted for and won. They won them the House, they won them the Senate. And every time that happened, the Republicans came back and gave another excuse for why they couldn\u2019t do what they said they were gonna do during the campaign.<\/p>\n
So the two factors were no way was Hillary Clinton gonna become president. No way. The second thing was, beat the Democrats, beat Obama, beat the left because that\u2019s the source of the problems that most people in the country are facing. Liberalism, socialism, the eight years of Barack Obama and absolute disaster when piled on previous years, say the Clintons and even some of Bush stuff. And so the Trump campaign represented the only shot we had of stopping Hillary and stopping the left. And people rolled the dice and said that, as a priority, is good enough for me.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t sitting around saying, “I don\u2019t know that Trump\u2019s conservative enough. You know, I don\u2019t want to be betrayed again.” They didn\u2019t look at Trump as betraying them. They didn\u2019t look at Trump as a typical politician. You know the way people looked at the this? Year after year after year, doctrinaire politician after doctrinaire politician gets elected, and nothing changes! It was an opportunity to vote for somebody that had nothing to do with the system that most people thought was standing in their way or not adequately representing them. And the people inside the Beltway and some in the conservative movement never figured this out.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/650-031417-Trust-in-Trump.jpg\")
And I\u2019ll tell you why they never figured it out. Because they didn\u2019t agree with you or me that the country was in crisis. They thought we were silly when we said if Hillary Clinton wins, we might lose the country. They were embarrassed when they heard us say that. They thought that was the most asinine thing, because the country wasn\u2019t gonna end for them. Where they live, operate, and work, everything\u2019s fine. They don\u2019t have any illegal immigrant problems. They don\u2019t massive unemployment problems and trade deals are not negatively impacting them.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t care whether they were doctrinaire conservatives or hard-core leftists, if they were part of the DC-New York establishment when they heard people say we\u2019re about to lose the country, they laughed. They thought how absurd, that\u2019s so extreme. We can\u2019t support people who think that way. They did not, they could not get their arms around the idea that the objective was to stop the left, to stop the Democrats, to stop Obama, to stop Hillary. And that\u2019s what Trump was a vessel for.<\/p>\n
Now, you add in some real love for Trump, some real attachment to Trump, real connection to Trump based on the fact that people believed Trump, and then you have a slam dunk win. But people were so far removed from the America in which you live that they couldn\u2019t understand it \u2019cause they don\u2019t see things that way. To them it boiled down to, “Conservatism is being betrayed. You can\u2019t support the man. He\u2019s a phony, he\u2019s a fraud, he\u2019s destroying conservatism. Look at the stupid things he says.”<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t care, \u2019cause there\u2019s nothing more dangerous and stupid than Democrats, leftists, the media, Hillary Clinton and whoever she would put on the Supreme Court. This was not complicated at all. So many of them didn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: Sixteen pages: "How Trump Blew Up the Conservative Media." Guess who's not mentioned here? Can you guess who's not mentioned in a 16-page story on conservative media being blown up? That's right, my friends, me, your host. And you know why? 'Cause I have not been blown up. We have not been blown up. We are not conflicted at all here at the EIB Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n