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RUSH: “Clinton Feels the Pressure.” Why? Even after a strong debate, Clinton has a huge staff advantage over Trump. The Electoral College is tilted in her favor. She’s running to succeed Obama, who’s a popular president. She’s running against Trump who ought to be the easiest candidate for president ever to beat. And despite all that, she finds herself in an excruciatingly tight race. “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?” Apparently she is feeling the pressure.

The next headline from Politico: “Clinton Campaign in ‘Panic Mode’ Over Florida Black Voters.” This story is from today. It’s a post-debate story. This is not something held over from something prior to the debate. “Democrats are sweating over turnout in one of the most important states on the electoral map.” They don’t even mention here that she essentially pulled out of Ohio, which I still don’t get. That still doesn’t make any sense to me, but they have suspended their advertising in Ohio. And The Politico story goes on to document the problem with black voters in Florida, not nationwide.

I saw this and I knew this was gonna happen. BizPac Review has the story. “Amazon Deletes Over One Thousand Bad Reviews to Cover for Hillary’s Abysmal Book Sales.” Clinton has a new book. It’s called Stronger Together. She cowrote it with Tim Kaine, the vice president. They didn’t write anything. This was ghostwritten. Everybody knows that. It’s been met with abysmal sales and critical reviews.

“Amazon.com came to the rescue by reportedly removing negative reviews of the book from its website,” according to our buddies at World Net Daily. Doesn’t surprise me if it’s true. Folks, the entire professional political and media apparatus has come together on one side of the aisle, and alone the other side is Donald Trump. And there is no mistaking this. They are cheating, rigging, using the power they have to stack the deck. Mrs. Clinton, who has often played the victim card as a woman who is the victim of an unlevel playing field is clearly leading a ragtag bunch of partisans, which is doing everything it can to maintain an unlevel playing field.

Little things like what Google is doing with their searches and Amazon now eliminating negative reviews. That means there probably aren’t any reviews except the ones the Clinton campaign has submitted. Her memoir book for which she got a $14 million advance, that didn’t sell. She didn’t draw anybody to book signings. They had to shut down the whole book tour. It was dead in the water. She simply doesn’t have it, they all know this. They all know it and they’re in denial. They know she has no personal connection, even with the people voting for her. She has a personal connection to people that know her and the fundraisers and donors, but the average Dick, Tom and Willie out there who are gonna vote for her just because she’s a Democrat, a D next to her name, she doesn’t personally connect with ’em. She doesn’t stimulate any excitement, and they know this.

They’re the ones living in denial when they tell themselves what a great debate she had, ’cause if she had such a great debate — we’ll have to wait for the polls — if she had such a great debate, that ought to be reflected in the polls, shouldn’t it? If she had such a great debate, if this was such a slam dunk, and we’ll find out, she should pull ahead dramatically. If what they’re saying about this debate is true, that Trump was humiliated, that Trump was embarrassed, that Trump was embarrassing, that Hillary was dynamic, that Hillary was on her game, that Hillary had him by the nose, the testicle lockbox was in full display, she just owned the night. Well, the poll data should reflect this, should it not? So we will see.

Grab audio sound bites number three and four. Last night Bloomberg Television, With All Due Respect. That’s the show that’s cohosted by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Mark Halperin is known for his work at ABC News for many, many moons. Halperin and Heilemann write this book every campaign that they release after the election that contains all kinds of stories, vignettes, little tidbits of information that they hold for after the election about, I think, both campaigns.

It’s clearly a financial effort. I mean, the information they gather during the campaign, they hold it, they shield it, they reserve it, they back-burner it for their book that comes out after the election. And some of the stuff they learn and find out, had they used it during the campaign, you never know, it might have had some impact. But all the anecdotes, all of the stories, tidbits of information, even some off-the-record stuff that people share with them, they hold all of that. That’s who these two guys are, if you don’t watch their show on Bloomberg TV.

We occasionally use sound bites from these guys ’cause we like ’em. I mean, they are excellent illustrations, classic representations of the political establishment, slash, media. What these guys think and their attitude and their view of things is a pretty good window to what the entire thinking of the Washington-New York-Boston political corridor axis is.

So we go to the audio sound bites, and Heilemann and Halperin are talking about Trump and the presidential debate. And Heilemann says to Mark Halperin, his cohost, says “Do you believe at this point that it would do Trump any good politically to just admit that he lost the debate? Just admit it and then start shaping up for the next one?”

HALPERIN: This morning I thought he should say, “You know, this was my first time debating, you know, I didn’t like the way the questions went, but I’m gonna do better next time.” But now I don’t think so. His supporters, Rush Limbaugh said he won. I think as brazen as it is and as counterfactual to a lot of how people experienced the debate, I think he should just tough it through, pretend it didn’t happen and hope that it doesn’t impact the polls, in which case the national polls and the battleground state polls in which he could say, “Hey, I didn’t lose.”

RUSH: So I once again have confounded what these guys think should happen. Trump was so bad, in their opinion, that he should just admit it, because everybody knows it. There’s no reason to act like it didn’t happen. This is their thinking, and just own up to it, you know, just be honest with the audience. The audience knows that you sucked, Mr. Trump, the audience knows you were terrible. Let ’em know that you know, Mr. Trump, and build a bridge of strict relating with them. You tell ’em, Mr. Trump, that you know how bad you were. They already know, and they’ll think you’re an honest guy.

That’s what they want Trump to do. Until I entered the fray yesterday with my post-debate analysis, which has now thrown a monkey wrench into what these guys, Halperin and Heilemann, want to happen. Mr. Snerdley, it’s a technical point. I need to ask you. Did I actually say that Trump won the debate? I said that snap polls showed that he won, all but the CNN poll. I also said that snap polls are not scientific polls; they’re internet of-the-moment polls. They capture the passion of the moment. I also said that the Drive-Bys, like these two guys, looking at that debate still fail to understand how Trump supporters view Trump.

So when they analyze these debates in terms of who won a talking point… Like when Trump failed to hit one of these hanging curveballs, these guys say, “He really missed it there! That’s bad! Trump lost some stuff there. Man, that was a golden opportunity!” His supporters didn’t abandon him because of any of that. That analysis, therefore, is irrelevant if you go issue by issue or point by point, question by question, answer by answer.

“Yeah, Trump blew that! Boy, what he could have said, and he blew that! Oh, my God, did you see how he could have…?” And if they think that this is how people decide who they’re gonna support for… In fact, there has been a serious poll, and off the top of my head, I don’t remember who it is. Maybe it’s Morning Consult. Here’s the deal on it. It pretty much agrees with the CNN poll. Something like 60% think that Hillary won; 27-29% think that Trump won. However, only 9% say that the debate will have any effect on their vote.

Only 9%, which is my sole point in discussing this. These guys in the establishment, they analyze this answer by answer, sometimes sentence by sentence. “Yeah, that was bad! Trump dropped a bad point there. He should have said that. Oh, yeah!” As though Trump supporters are sitting out there listening. (impression) “He said that? All right, that’s it, Mabel! We’re not voting for Trump. I can’t believe it!” Same thing with Hillary. People just don’t watch ’em this way, but particularly in the case of Trump.

His supporters are in this for all kinds of different reasons, and if these guys inside the Beltway are gonna continue to judge this as though Trump is a seasoned politician when he’s not, as though Trump had… Trump doesn’t have a public record. Whatever is going on in this country right now, you cannot blame any of it on Donald Trump, including Iraq and the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton? You can attach her to everything that’s happened in this country, pretty much, particularly the last eight years, and when she was a senator, and when she was a first lady.

Trump was in none of that. Trump is a rookie. Trump is a genuine outsider. He has no fingerprints on anything, and yet they’re analyzing this debate as though Trump is as much a part of the system as Hillary is, and he’s not in any way. He doesn’t have the experience. He’s got television experience. He doesn’t have the actual business-of-politics experience. I think it’s actually a phenomenal achievement for Trump to be judged in this way. Now, they think judging Trump this way is the best way to disqualify him.

But they don’t get that his supporters and a lot of other people are not looking at it that way. They know who Trump is. They know he’s an outsider. The expectations they have for Trump are entirely different than the expectations Hillary’s supporters have for her. And I think, folks, this is a profound point. I call them “profundities,” how everybody in the establishment insists on plugging Trump into their world, when he hasn’t been a part of it, other than maybe as a donor.

But aside from he hasn’t been a part of it at all. You can’t blame anything… They talk about Trump’s plan for ISIS. They talk about Trump’s plan for the economy as though… He doesn’t have any past experience with any of it! That’s the attractiveness! That is the allure. We are gonna find out in November how many American voters actually think it might be time to try a genuine outsider. That’s what this is really all about.

But these people continue to judge Trump and these debate performances and everything else as though he is an abysmal failure in their system who has no business being there. It’s like Michael Goodwin in the New York Post today wrote that if the media’s not careful, they’re gonna win this election for Trump. The media might actually be Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem, even though it doesn’t look like that. It looks like the exact opposite, her biggest asset.Here’s the next sound bite, by the way. This is Heilemann going back to Halperin after I was blamed for not recognizing Trump lost.

HALPERIN: He plainly lost the debate. The big difference to me between this and 2012 when Barack Obama failed in Denver in the first debate, he confronted mass panic among his supporters. He had to admit that he lost and that he would do better the next time because Democrats were freaking out. Trump fans are not freaking out. Trump fans saw a different debate than we saw last night. They think he won.

RUSH: They judge it a different way! They didn’t see anything differently. They’re judging it a different way. This isn’t hard, unless you somehow are so locked into this establishment mode of thinking that you can’t get out of it for a while.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Hurley, New Mexico. This is Linda. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you. Hi, Rush. I really called to say thank you, thank you, thank you for straightening my head up every morning. You know, as we listen to these other news programs, we don’t realize it kind of creeps up there into the gray matter. I sat down to watch the debate, and I just didn’t realize. I thought, “Well, he’s gotta be nice and he’s gotta be sweet and he’s gotta be all this,” and after it was over with I thought, “Well, he blew it.” And I couldn’t wait to get you next morning and you straightened me out.

You said, “Hey, folks, that’s not who he is, that’s not how he got here, and that’s not how he’s gonna win.” And some of us still fall back and we think, “Oh, he’s gonna be nice and sweet and he’s not gonna interrupt, and he’s just gonna be just charming. It’s such a…” That’s not who he is, and we need you to remind us, and you do. And I wish the Good Lord would give me your discerning mind, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to say thank you. Don’t ever quit reminding us! We cannot… We cannot judge him by the way we judge everybody else. He’s different.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate —

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: I appreciate your kind words and your kindness. I really do. Look, she raises a good point. It is really hard to avoid getting sucked in by whatever the daily soap opera narrative of the mainstream media is, especially for us. I mean, we watch it all the time. We are… I venture to say that the vast majority of you are maybe not junkie status here but you’re really profoundly interested in all this because it’s the country’s future, kids and grandkids that we’re talking about here, so you are here because you’re profoundly interested.

As such, you are profoundly informed. You are well aware. And in the process of saying informed you have to expose yourself to the media. It’s really hard to have a wall built up, to have boundaries around yourself so that the attempts to corrupt your mind don’t get in your mind. I myself, on rare occasions, slip, and it happens. Something will happen me that will slap me, effectively, upside the head and I really… It’ll be a comment from a friend that I hear or an item that I missed or just a different way of thinking about it.

I understand how easy it is to get caught up in it. One of the reasons it is easy to get caught up is there is this lingering lifetime experience with the media that has as one of its features that it’s objective and that it’s actually fair and that it is actually the news. None of that is the case anymore. But it’s difficult to look at it that way. It isn’t for me. Every time… I don’t care what it is. The New York Times — which I don’t read. Folks, I don’t even read it anymore because I know what I’m gonna get. I know exactly.

I’m gonna get fake “fact checks.” In fact, that is something I need to sound the warning on again, as I did yesterday. Hillary Clinton is unable to win this election on her own, with her own attributes and her own agenda, her own personality, her own character. She cannot do it. For all this talk we hear about she’s more qualified than anybody who’s ever held the office, it’s just flat-out lie. It is embarrassing, in fact, and it indicates they really don’t have anything substantive in terms of a resume, achievements, accomplishments.

There’s no reason to elect her. Listen to Michelle Obama. Here’s Michelle Obama, the first lady, going out trying to drum up the black vote in Pennsylvania ’cause they’re in trouble with the black vote in Pennsylvania and Florida. That’s an effort to put together the Obama turnout coalition. And they’re having big trouble. Michelle Obama, in campaigning for Hillary, what are the top two reasons to vote for Hillary? Number one, because Trump’s the opponent. Number two, Trump’s the opponent. Number three, she’s a woman. And that’s it.

That’s the best the sitting first lady can come up with. (summarized) “You gotta vote for her because Trump is a mean guy. You gotta vote for her ’cause Trump… Trump… Why, Trump… Trump’s Trump! We hate Trump, and you gotta vote for her ’cause she’s a woman.” That’s it, the best they can do. So they have to pollute your mind and corrupt your mind on Trump. Whether you like Trump or you want Trump to win or you hate her, one of the two, but you don’t want her to win.

And you panic to one degree or another when the Drive-Bys start piling on Trump. And you think it’s hopeless. “We’re in trouble. Trump’s gonna have to do something! He’s gotta change. He’s gotta change. He’s gotta do something!” No. That’s not the way. He’ll change if he wants to, but that’s not how you deal with the media as they are. It’s tough to avoid falling into the traps that they lay every day in terms of how they want you to see Trump.

This “fact check” technique is the latest. I’ll tell you what it really is. There is no fact-checking. The fact that the New York Times and the Washington Post and USA Today and all these other papers now have fact-checkers is for one reason. It allows them to fool you into thinking they have an objective, nonpartisan staff or person analyzing everything the candidates are saying and telling you what they’re saying is true or what they’re saying is false. When in fact, the fact-checkers are no different than the biased left-leaning reporters and columnists at these papers and on these networks.

But the fact check… The idea that it is a fact check story is designed to say to you that it is objective and analytically fair, and all it is is a vehicle for them to do opinion journalism under the guise of fairness — which, if you fall for it, gives it even more power. Because if you think that the fact-checkers like PolitiFact or Snopes or whoever else, if you quote them constantly as the Bible, then you’ve fallen for it. They’re no different than anybody else out there in the media. And if you look at the supposed actual things they are fact-checking… I’ll give you one example.

Trump said the other day that Hillary has started copying something that he does, parking his airplane just outside a hangar so that the TV camera spots the plane at a rally with Trump standing in front of it. He said Hillary has begun to copy. So they fact checked that in the New York Times and they concluded that Trump was lying because Trump did not invent the tarmac campaign rally. Well, Trump never said he invented it. He never said he was the first. All he said was, “Hillary has started copying me on it,” which is true.

But they put their fact checker on it with the conclusion that Trump’s lying again. When Trump never said he started the thing, he never created it, he never said anything of the sort. He just said she’s copying me. It’s not even something to fact check anyway. What the hell is the fact? What difference does it make? But they use it as the opportunity to once again try to report on Trump as a liar, as a fraud, as a phony, when, in this race, Mrs. Clinton owns those almost exclusively, phoniness, fraud.

You even heard Hillary, how many times in the debate after Trump had said something, here’s Hillary with that robotic smile. “Ah the fact-checkers are going to have fun with that one.” She was cueing them. She was cueing them. She wanted to see stories the next day, fact-checkers examining what Trump had just said. “It’s gonna be interesting to see what the fact-checkers do with that.” It was an inside joke ’cause they’re all in on it.

If you listen to this program every day, you will be given advice and you will be shown how to avoid falling for this. And if you do fall for it before this program comes on the air, you will be talked out of it. We’ll save you each and every day on this, ’cause it is a trap. The daily narrative, soap opera script, whatever you want to call it that the media says is the news of the day.

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