RUSH: New polling data out. This is from TheHill.com. “Hillary Clinton leads Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by 3 points in the latest national poll, a tighter margin than earlier this month. Clinton, the Democratic nominee, leads Trump 47 percent to 44 percent in the Economist/YouGov online poll of registered voters based on a head-to-head match-up. Although Clinton held a 3-point edge in the poll early this month, she had expanded that lead to as many as 7 points in recent weeks.”
The headline should be: “Hillary Loses Half of Her Lead Over Trump,” but of course it never will be. I’ll tell you, we had polls yesterday showing Hillary only up 2 in Florida, maybe Trump was up 2 in Florida. The race is tightening. And what’s amazing about the race tightening — and you can see this, the Drive-Bys in their coverage and even on some conservative websites that are Never Trumpers, they’re expecting, with all of the Trump softening and the slight modification of his position on issues, they are expecting massive abandonment of Trump by his supporters, and it’s not happening.
That’s why I said at the opening of the program, who knew that it would be Donald Trump that would finally bring the Republican base along into not outright objecting amnesty. And the reason for that is that Trump supporters are gonna stick with him no matter what. Now, people argue why that is. I have my own theories as to why Trump supporters are loyal, and I know that my theories are pretty much dead on.
And there are a bunch of reasons that explain it. One is — and in no order of priority — one is that a total, total opposition to Hillary Clinton. A lot of people downplay that, by the way. A lot of people, “No, no, no, no, Trump voters, they don’t care, they don’t care, wouldn’t matter. They’re Trump Trump Trump because Trump represents exactly what they hate about everything. It wouldn’t matter if Hillary was the nominee. It wouldn’t matter if they put John Kerry in there, doesn’t matter who it is, the Trumpers would still be with Trump no matter what.”
Well, yeah, probably, but I’m warning everybody, do not make the mistake of believing that Hillary is not a factor in the support Trump has. She’s huge. But there are other reasons as well.
The New York Times has not published one word of that AP story, Hillary Clinton selling access. Over half the people that she met as secretary of state paid for it. By the way, have you heard the way Hillary’s team is attacking this? They’re saying, “Well, but the AP left out all of the government people she met with. I mean, Hillary met with thousands of people at the State Department, thousands of people at the defense department, thousands of people in the executive branch.” Well, exactly. That’s what she should do. You couldn’t count them. That’s what the job is.
The AP’s point is, of all the nongovernmental people she met with, over half of them paid for it. There’s no way they can spin this into not being a blockbuster story. And the proof of that is that the New York Times won’t even cover it. The New York Times won’t even mention it.
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RUSH: Now, polling data doesn’t yet factor in the last couple of days, but while all of this is happening, the race is tightening. Hillary is losing ground in a lot of places, and Trump is gaining ground. And while all this is going on, Hillary is not looking good, either. Have you seen her? You know, we’re not supposed to point this out. I pointed it out the other day. I’m gonna mention it to you again.
I saw her at a personal appearance, I don’t know if it was a rally, but it must have been scorching hot, because every woman in the picture that I saw was wearing sleeveless tops, tank tops, what have you, shorts, and Hillary shows up in a house coat, looked like a heavy house coat, long sleeve house coat, giant Captain Kangaroo-type pockets and slacks. And she showed up that way again. Then there’s a picture of her getting into her SUV, and they have to put a step, a stool down there for her to step on because it’s too high for her to comfortably get in from the street.
So all of the photos of Hillary Clinton — and these are things that create perceptions that nobody talks about, but impressions are made on people. She does not present a picture of robust vigor and vim and energy, and now she’s actually linking Trump to the Ku Klux Klan. This is in response to Trump calling her a bigot. And, by the way, that line was written, it was on the teleprompter, and he delivered it, meaning they wanted him to say it, he wanted to say it. It didn’t just into his head. He didn’t go off prompter to mention it.
I mean, this is getting more intense than anybody thought it would be at this time. This is August. You know, half the Drive-Bys are on vacation. This is the dog days and yet it is intense as people expected it to be post-Labor Day.
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RUSH: The polls are tightening, and there’s one thing inescapable here. Hillary Clinton is no prize. She has her own negatives. She has her own problems. She does not make a good impression. She doesn’t have charisma, likability, any of that. Her negatives are very, very close to Trumps, and they know it.
You can track Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. They go up when you don’t see her. They go up when you don’t hear her. The convention is an exception to this because obviously the convention is gonna be its own bounce. But outside of that, the more Hillary shows up, the more she speaks, the more personal appearances she does, the worse her numbers get.
They know it, the Republicans know it, everybody knows it. The Drive-Bys won’t admit it, but they know it. It happens to be true. That’s why the Drive-Bys are not clamoring for a press conference with her. They don’t need to have a press conference. They don’t care what she thinks. Everybody talks about the Trump supporters and how they won’t abandon Trump. How about the Drive-Bys? You can’t talk them into abandoning Hillary no matter what. Hillary can be as filthy, as corrupt as they are learning she is, and it doesn’t matter.
This cuts both ways out there, folks. People love to go out and say insulting things about Trump supporters because they’re so dumb and so single-minded and so shortsighted, but when they learn the truth about Trump, that they won’t abandon. I think that’s even more the case with the Drive-By Media and Hillary Clinton. They don’t care to have a press conference with her. There’s nothing she’s done or said they want to get to the bottom of. There’s nothing she’s done or said that they want to expose. There is no questionable behavior whatsoever, as far as they are concerned.
Their job is to protect her. And if that means making excuses for no press conferences, if that means, as is in the case of the New York Times, not even running the story of selling access while secretary of state, which the New York Times has not done, then that’s what they’re gonna do. And you’ll note nobody is talking about that. All anybody can talk about, “Will Trump’s supporters abandon him? Will Trump’s supporters finally see the light? Will Trump’s supporters realize he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Will Trump supporters realize he’s lying to them? Will Trump supporters realize he’s making a fool of them?” All those questions are being asked. ‘Cause you’ve got two contingencies here, or two contingent groups.
You’ve got some people who think Trump’s supporters can be separated from him, and you’ve got others who know that they can’t be. And in both instances — and I’m talking about Drive-Bys and media types — they want to illustrate that. They want to illustrate that Trump’s supporters will not abandon him and the other contingent wants to keep trying to see if they can make it happen. They’re obsessed.
But over here is Hillary Clinton with a bunch of mind-numbed robots that are supporting her no matter what they learn about her, in addition to what they already know that they bury about her.