RUSH: Your host (that would be me, Rush Limbaugh) your guiding light (a man, a legend, a way of life), uttered something, made a comment yesterday about the way Trump is campaigning and how Trump has brought to the campaign a standard operating behavior or procedure in social media called “trolling.” I just casually offered it as an offhand comment. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just happened to say that trolling is big.
It’s big out there on Twitter, it’s big on Fakebook, it’s all over social media. I said, “That’s what Trump does. He sits around and he trolls Twitter all night and all day long, and he’s the first politician to do so in such consistent and frequent ways.” It’s another way that Trump has distinguished himself from your average, ordinary, everyday politician who doesn’t go anywhere near it. They might have campaign staff doing it here or there, but it’s focus grouped, it’s tested.
You know, Trump’s just shooting from the hip.
So I mentioned this, and it was picked up on by a bunch in the Drive-By Media, and Chris Cuomo actually kind of blew the lid when he admitted he heard about this from Media Matters. You know, you’re not supposed to say… If you’re a Drive-By Media person ripping into me or trying to, you’re not supposed to say that you got your information from Media Matters. You’re supposed to make it look like you knew it on your own. But it’s true.
They don’t listen to this program, the Drive-Bys don’t — Chris Cuomo, anyway — and they wouldn’t even think of going to my website to actually check what I said. They just rely on Media Matters. So this is — let’s see — actually three sound bites. The first two relate to that specifically, and the third one is is related to it in an offhand way. CNN’s New Day, Chris Cuomo speaking with CNN politics correspondent, Dylan Byers, about what I said on this program yesterday.
CUOMO: Things! Have! Changed! Social media… Rush Limbaugh had an interesting point the other day. Ehh, talk about how things have changed. Media Matters, which is a lefty outlet —
BYERS: (snickering)
CUOMO: — has an article about Limbaugh (chortling), who is not a lefty outlet —
BYERS: (snickering)
CUOMO: — saying that Donald Trump has introduced trolling to campaigning. And there is no question that these campaigns have waves of haters who come after the media and others who go against them. What do you make of the dynamic?
RUSH: You why he likes it. He thinks I’m equating Trump with being “a hater.” That’s not what I meant. I’m talking about the constant presence. But to these guys, you know, they sit around… I guartee, folks. DonÂ’t doubt me on this. You don’t know these folks like I do. They can’t digest, they can’t they can’t fathom people hating them. They are of a mind-set that they tell themselves they’re universally loved and respected and looked up to ’cause they’re media people and they’re good liberals.
Now, they know conservatives don’t like ’em, but they think that that’s fringe and way over there. But it bothers them when they have a bunch of people that join Twitter threads that say mean things about them. They don’t like it! So they think that I have hit on something here, even though I’m not “a lefty,” I have pointed something out that’s true, and it is that there’s the all kinds of “haters” out there. They’re calling trolls “haters “because they’re trolling them, in the media. So that’s what Chris Cuomo is talking about, that Trump has introduced trolling and that means Trump’s trollers are “hating on” the media and hating on different people.
He asked Dylan Byers on it, the chief political respondent on CNN who said this in response.
BYERS: I think that’s exactly right. And — and I think that Donald Trump has played a very unique role in doing that, and that’s because he’s been more active on social media, and especially on Twitter, than any presidential candidate in history. Donald Trump has a very aggressive and vocal group of supporters. And, while we can’t identify every anonymous Twitter troll, I think there are a lot of people on there who are ready to take on anyone who they think would stand in the way of Donald Trump’s nomination or anyone who they see as opposing Trump.
I’m trying to make the point of how significant this is when you look at, what, seven-out-of-10 Americans’ primary news source is the Fakebook newsfeed. It’s huge. Fakebook has over a billion people worldwide — they blanket the United States — and the newsfeed on Fakebook is curated by a bunch of leftists. So now what you have, you have all these Drive-By leftists who are learning that their work is dependent on Fakebook to be seen. People don’t automatically tune in CNN anymore, or ABC, or CBS, or what have you.
Unless there’s a particular personality that people watch and want to have an appointment with every day. But for the most part, the daily news cycle, people are going to Fakebook. And they’re bothered about it, and so now they’re starting to tailor what, you know, late-night comedy shows have to produce skits and bits that’ll go viral later that night and the next day on social media. That’s how they measure success. Not ratings, how much content from a late-night show ends up in a video that goes viral the next day.
Same thing here: People are asking themselves, “How do we get our news in the Fakebook newsfeed?” And they don’t like it, because there’s all kinds of trolls out there. So that’s why, against their better judgment, they are praising me for pointing something out that they think offers them an excuse, or whatever they think it is.
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