RUSH: I mentioned on Monday starting the program that I sensed a momentum shift, and I continue to see evidence of it. The White House press briefing yesterday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a reporter, a White House reporter from Playboy got into it yesterday. CNN is now making fools of themselves each and every day, as is a large swath of the Drive-By Media. There’s one reason this is happening.
I was thinking about this while consuming all of this data. For 25 years, 30 years, whatever length of time I’ve been doing this, I have been focusing attention here on the media, telling people how they operate, who they are, what they do, and what they don’t do. And how they now have become the organizing power of the American left, not the Democrat Party.
The media is now running the operations of the American left. I have spent all of these years attempting to get people to know what they’re watching and know what they’re reading when they consume media and how to spot the bias, the unfairness, the bigotry, all of the things that the media is. It has been a never-ending quest. I’m not expressing frustration here. I’m leading up to something.
For three decades I have been illustrating how to recognize and how to analyze socialism, liberalism, how to spot it, including where it is found in the Drive-By Media. But aside from me and other compadres here in the alternative media, no elected official really also tried to make the case. There were occasional elected Republicans who would have an isolated attack on the media and make a great point.
But as constant, never-ending targets of the media, the Republican Party and most of conservatism, with some exceptions, never fought back. Figuring it was stupid, that you can’t win a war with the media, the old bromide, you can’t win an argument with people who buy ink by the barrel. That was an argument before broadcast media came along, and it still survives today. And what it means is that no matter what you do the media’s always gonna get the last word.
And all during these 30 years we’ve seen example after example where the Republican Party and certain elements of conservatism have literally been cowed into silence and fear, not even wanting to enter the battle with the media, just trying to figure ways around it. In other words, they’ve succumbed to it. They’ve succumbed to the media as an opponent that cannot be dealt with. And the media has won because this has caused Republicans to actually moderate their policy positions in order to avoid what they think is inevitable: unavoidable media criticism.
And in this sense, the media has won, to the point now that you could make the case that several Republicans are victims of Stockholm Syndrome. They have just simply become friends with their captors and have sought to become friends and sought to quell the anger of their captors, i.e., the Drive-By Media. They have signed onto the idea that the media’s unchangeable, that the media is unassailable, and you can’t correct them. You simply have to either avoid them or do what you can to keep them from noticing you.
Some have said that the media is analogous to the girl that Republicans cannot hit. No matter what you do, you don’t hit the girl, until a manifest upheaval occurred with the campaign and election of Donald Trump. And in Trump we have someone who is fearless, who is consistent in not just pointing out and critiquing the media, he fights back against the media and, as such, has taken them totally off guard.
The media is now gobsmacked. They are in the process of humiliating themselves every day. They are embarrassing themselves. The latest example, and it’s glaring, is CNN and the three people that had to resign or quit or whatever over the erroneous story filed about a Trump associate working with banks in Russia. This whole Russia story has simply consumed the media, simply consumed them.
There’s nothing to it. There isn’t anything there. And now there are stories in the media about how it’s time we get rid of journalism. Opinion journalism needs to be the order of the day. Now, do you remember the Project Veritas tape that we played yesterday, which ostensibly was a recording of a CNN producer who admitted that, “Yeah, we know there’s nothing to this Russia thing, but it’s ratings, man, it’s ratings, and that means money. You know, we spend a day on the climate accords, but they come to us, the execs, Zucker, and they tell us to get back on the Russia story. We can’t drop it. We got stay on the Russia story.”
Why? Ratings, money.
I want to tell you a little story to show you how things have changed. Back in the late eighties, mid- to late eighties, a man named Laurence Tisch bought CBS. Remember this, Mr. Snerdley? Mr. Tisch was the Tisch family of New York, the Loews hotel chain and a number of other things. They are now half owners of the New York Giants. Laurence Tisch’s brother is Robert and son Steve.
And Larry Tisch was looking at CBS after he bought it and he looked at the news division and he saw that it was just bleeding money. He said (paraphrasing), “We can’t continue to operate CBS. If we’re gonna have a division here this prominent that’s losing this amount of money we ought to fix it.” And he immediately proposed eliminating several jobs, staff cuts. You remember what happened, Mr. Snerdley?
Dan Rather went absolutely loco weed. Dan Rather went nuts. Dan Rather went public and said (paraphrasing), “We in news, we in journalism cannot be concerned with the bottom line. We should not be held to any profit-and-loss standard. Our job is too important, our mission is too sacred to have it dominated by such pedantic things as profit and loss. We need, as the news division, to be exempt from any of this. We demand that Laurence Tisch and CBS forget whatever money is involved, because our mission is too crucial.”
So, what, 30 years ago? And, by the way, I happened to be in Sacramento when this happened. Tom Brokaw was in town doing an appearance, the NBC affiliate there had like 50 shares, KCRA-TV Channel 3 owned the market out there. So Brokaw would come in, he’d do a couple personal appearances. And I ended up talking to him on the radio, and I asked him about this. I said, “I can’t believe what Rather said. You guys actually think in the news divisions of your companies that you ought to be exempt from making a profit?”
“Oh, no, we have to. We have to be concerned with making a profit.” And I think he was just lip servicing. But now look what we’ve gone to. Thirty years ago, “We need to be exempt. We can’t be tied to such meaningless things as profit and loss. Our mission’s too important,” to now focusing on nothing but ratings and profit and earning money as the excuse for not letting go of a hoax.
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RUSH: In fact, I’m gonna tell you a little something else. You know, back in the Walter Cronkite days and the Edward R. Murrow days, and the Huntley and Brinkley days, their buddies, their friends at the time always made fun of them, chastised them for working at networks that ran soap operas during the day.
Soap operas were considered to be the lowest rent. It’s like here you are the Tiffany Network with Walter Cronkite, CBS News, and you got trailer park trash on in the day. And they always said, Walter Cronkite, “That’s how we pay for the news division.” And of course their friends said, “Well, then that’s fine. If that trash is to fund the news division, fine.” Now all of a sudden news divisions are focused on profit and they’re focused on ratings. And the traditions of journalism used to be that that was so small-minded, irrelevant. Our mission is too important. Massive change.
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RUSH: Now back to CNN and the Drive-By Media and what happened in the pressroom yesterday. Sarah Huckabee Sanders did the briefing. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, like Trump, is fearless. She cannot be intimidated. And, boy, did they try yesterday. She opened up with a statement about the CNN story that had to be declined, deleted, and canceled, and the three people were fired.
And she used it as an example of the fake news that’s out there. And she started listing other examples of fake news, and a Playboy reporter lost his mind over this, over the way the Trump administration is trying to portray the media. And she stood her ground.
Let’s get started. We’ll start with audio sound bite number two. She’s the deputy press secretary. She did the briefing yesterday. And during the Q&A, she opens up with somebody from Breitbart, which also ticked off the media. Our old buddy little Jim Acosta who’s chasing the red laser pointer around and bumping into walls and sofas, he tweeted later (paraphrasing): “This is just unreal. They called on conservatives. They call on conservatives and they won’t call on us. And they call us fake news. Is this America? Is this the Constitution?” Just losing his mind. The Trump White House owns CNN now.
Anyway, the guy from Breitbart, his name is Charlie Spiering, and he said, “Recently Breitbart News challenged the accuracy of a CNN story. And afterwards the story was retracted, it was deleted, and the editors responsible were fired, as well the network apologized for the story. One of the targets of the story accepted the apology,” that would be Anthony Scaramucci. “The president went on Twitter this morning and repeated that CNN was fake news. Why isn’t their response, why isn’t their apology, firing the three reporters, deleting the story, why isn’t that good enough for the president?”
SANDERS: It’s the constant barrage of fake news directed at this president probably that has garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report, there are multiple other instances where that outlet that you referenced has been repeatedly wrong and had to point that out or be corrected.
RUSH: There’s no other Republican White House that would ever deal with this like this. This is earth-shattering, it’s precedent setting. And the press of course, after she said that they started erupting and trying to ask the next question, but she held them off and continued.
SANDERS: There’s a video circulating now, whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know, but I would encourage everybody in this room and, frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it’s a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism. I think that we have gone to a place where if the media can’t be trusted to report the news, then that’s a dangerous place for America. And I think if that is the place certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings and if that’s coming directly from the top, I think that’s even more scary. We’ve been going on this Russia-Trump hoax for the better part of a year now with no evidence of anything.
RUSH: I love that. She actually called it a hoax. I love that! She actually called the whole thing a hoax. So she’s taking it right to them here. She’s talking about the Project Veritas video that had the CNN producer admitting that they know that there’s nothing in the Russian story and they’re just doing this because the execs as CNN want to pursue ratings. And so here’s the guy from Playboy. You’ve probably already seen it ’cause the Drive-Bys cannot stop playing this. This guy lost it.
His name is Brian Karem, and he is a Sentinel newspapers exec. Now, wait. I’ve seen that he’s a Playboy reporter. This says Sentinel newspaper. Whatever, doesn’t matter. I’ve not seen the guy before, by the way. I mean, I don’t watch these things every day, but I have never seen this guy in the press. That’s why when I saw this happening, there was no sound on, it happened during the program yesterday, I said, “Who is this guy?” Not that he shouldn’t be in there, I had just never seen him before. Well, his name is Brian Karem, he’s either at Playboy or a Sentinel Newspaper executive, and he couldn’t take it anywhere.
KAREM: Come on. You’re inflaming everybody right here, right now, with those words. This administration has done that as well. Why in the name of heavens any one of us, right, are replaceable, and any one of us, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years at least. There is no option other than that. We’re here to ask you questions.
SANDERS: Right.
KAREM: You’re here to provide the answers. And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, “See, once again, the president is right, and everybody else out here is Fake Media.” And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.
RUSH: No, they are not. She’s exactly right. It is Fake Media. The New York Times, the Washington Post are using made-up stuff from synonymous sources and they’ve been pursuing nothing for a full year. Now, what do you think Sarah Huckabee Sanders did? She did not back down.
SANDERS: I disagree completely. First of all, I think, if anything, has been inflamed, it’s the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media. And I think it is outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question.
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RUSH: Okay, the reporter, Brian Karem, it turns out he’s a contributor for Playboy, so whatever else he is he’s a contributor. How come nobody’s asking how a Playboy contributor has a White House press credential? What the hell is that? What’s going on in there that we don’t know about? Well, did Playboy get a credential during the Clinton days? And were they in there, you know, everybody reads Playboy for they words, for the stories, for the articles, so what’s been going on in there that we don’t know about?
Anyway, this guy was livid, and of course he was a big hero after he challenged Sarah Huckabee Sanders and he told her that she’s destroying the reputation of the media and her job is just to answer questions and not to characterize the way the media operates. Gonna be there four years, she can’t keep doing this. So they had him on CNN New Day today. Fredo Cuomo talked to him and said, “What motivated the exchange there, Brian, between you and Sarah Sanders?”
KAREM: I don’t like bullies. I’ve been tired of being bullied. I’ve been tired of being blamed. I’ve been called an enemy of the people. We’ve been told that we’re all Fake Media. At the end of the day I’ve been browbeaten for six months and told I’m the enemy. And to be quite honest, it’s not accurate. And I think it is driving a wedge between us and the public, and I think it’s undermining the fourth estate. I think it’s very detrimental to the Constitution and the foundation of the republic. And those people in that room are merely trying, as I said to Sarah, trying to do their job. And to be browbeaten every day and bullied isn’t right. And it’s gotta stop.
RUSH: I think this illustrates the surrealness of the existence of media today. You know, they’ve gotten completely immersed in their supposed constitutionality. The press has its freedom specifically mentioned in the First Amendment. I think it’s gone to their heads. And I’ve thought for the longest time these people really do think that they are the singular thing keeping our country together. But what’s happened is they all think that you can’t criticize them. They are so far above and beyond that you can’t criticize them.
What they’re doing is too important. They’re simply trying to explain truth to power. They’re trying to hold truthful people accountable, and you can’t criticize them, you can’t, it’s unconstitutional, it’s undermining their precious responsibility. Well, the fact of the matter is Sarah Huckabee Sanders nor Donald Trump’s driving a wedge between the media and the people. The media have been doing that themselves for decades. They have polled near the bottom of respectability professions for I don’t know how long, and they are still there.
But what’s happened since Trump, you could arguably say since he became a candidate and since he got the nomination, and then since he won the election, what’s happened to Trump has totally blown every pretense that journalism lived by to smithereens. They have been forced into exposing who they really are. They’ve always been leftist activists. They have always been pro-Democrat by a vast, vast majority. And they’ve always gotten way with masking themselves under the cloak of fairness or objectivity.
But they have become so frustrated at their inability to destroy Donald Trump, that’s what they have sought to do. And they thought they would have succeed by now. I mean, look at their associates. They’ve got a bunch of nameless intelligence people, holdovers from the Obama administration who are literally leaking lies to them, and they’re running these lies as though they are true. They’re not naming sources. They’re openly admitting that Trump is a disaster, he’s rotten for the country, we’ve got to get rid of him. Not all of them have admitted that, but some of them have.
They have lost all sense. They don’t even know how to cover up what they do anymore. I think they’ve been stripped naked. I think Trump has got them so discombobulated and so disoriented that they themselves are being consumed with hatred and rage and they are frustrated now at their inability to get rid of the guy. They know if they really want to take somebody out, that they’ll probably be able to do it. In most causes the person they target will eventually say uncle and give up long before we’ve reached this point.
Most people, “I don’t want to deal with this. I quit. I don’t want this kind of attention. I don’t want them doing it to my family.” Trump doesn’t care. He just spits it right back at them. This they are not accustomed to. They’re not accustomed to their targets firing back. So that’s why they’re saying, “You can’t do that. We’re the fourth estate. You’re undermining the fourth estate. You are attacking the Constitution.” And of course it’s the exact opposite.
Where is it written that targets of media destruction have to sit there and take it? And I think it’s causing them to lose all equilibrium. They have lost the ability to camouflage who they are, and it’s now just wide open, particularly the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Sarah Palin now suing the New York Times, which many people hoped that she would.
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RUSH: Let’s face it, there’s a lot of people out there that think the media’s job is to destroy Republicans. A lot of people think the media’s purpose is to destroy Republicans, destroy conservatives, and destroy their ideas and discredit them, that that’s the job. Look at the sycophantic way they dealt with Obama and they claim they’re just trying to do their jobs in there and ask the questions. They’re not doing anything of the sort. It’s being exposed and they don’t know how to deal with it.
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RUSH: Now, once again here, folks, just to make the point, Brian Karem, Playboy White House correspondent, Sentinel news executive, berating Sarah Huckabee Sanders for destroying the credibility of the media for attacking the fourth estate, for attacking the Constitution, for doing great damage to the relationship between the media and the people.
This administration isn’t doing that. The media themselves having working for a long time to undermine their relationship with whatever you want to call, the American people, news consumers. Take a look at every poll of respected industries, jobs, whatever, right now, even below Congress is the media. The media, we’ve been chronicling it for 30 years. The media’s objective is to build up Democrats, advance their agenda, and protect them while at the same time disparaging and ruining and impugning anything that’s in opposition to the Democrats. They’ve gotten so powerful, they are more powerful than the Democrat Party.
The Democrat Party’s losing elections. The media’s not up for election. The media is running the worldwide left-wing agenda. And part and parcel of that is destroying and impugning any opposition, which, to many people, is their job, to destroy Republicans, Republicanism, conservatism, conservatives, impugn them, destroy them, get rid of them. It’s all they’ve been trying to do with Trump. They’re so offended, their sensibilities, their fiefdom, the inside-the-Beltway establishment.
Trump is an intruder. He’s not sophisticated. They wouldn’t want him at one of their cocktail parties. He doesn’t speak the small talk language. He’s just, “Ew.” He’s just, “Ew,” and then he grabs women like that NBC video, ew, ew.
Oh, speaking of which, I have a story today. You know, every now and then — well, occasionally I run into stories about the male-female relationship, you know, and the current status of it, which always changes generationally. And there’s a great piece today about how men, the Millennial-age men and one generation above think that they know what kind of man women want and have sought out to become men like that and how they’re blowing it. That women don’t want Pajama Boys. Women don’t want to marry Pajama Boys.
They want to dominate Pajama Boys, but they don’t want to live with them or marry them. Of course there are exceptions to this, but it actually dovetails with the media, in a way, in terms of personality types. Like Donald Trump’s an alpha male. Alpha males, in modern left-wing existence are despised. Alpha males, confident, brash, take-charge kind of guys are despised. They’re called bullies, they’re called mean, they’re called insensitive, selfishness, whatever you want.
And Washington, D.C., men have adapted, of course, and they’ve become a bunch of Pajama Boys thinking that that’s what women want and what everybody else wants and at the end of the day, it’s not. But the focus of this, folks, is the media has done this damage to itself. Trump didn’t do anything to them here. All Donald Trump is is the first president in our lifetimes to call ’em out.
It’s risky to say that anybody in 2017’s doing something for the first time that’s never been done. Meaning there have to have been presidents in the history of this country who have fought with the media and called ’em names and taken it right to them. But in our lifetimes, we’ve not seen anything like this, particularly among Republicans. We’re used to them cowering. We’re used to them being fearful. We’re used to Republicans altering their stated policy objectives simply to avoid being criticized and destroyed by the media.
So that’s how we get Republicans for amnesty and Republicans for legalizing gay marriage and transgender bathrooms and all this stuff. This cultural upheaval, Republicans go along with it ’cause they’re scared to death of being ripped to shreds by the media for whatever. And Trump is the first guy to come along and call ’em on it, “Fake News, you’re making it up, you’re lying.” And all of the evidence is on Trump’s side.
The greatest example I can give you, James Comey has known from the beginning of whatever investigation you want to mention that Donald Trump has never been a suspect. James Comey, the FBI, everybody at the FBI, everybody Comey testified to before Congress, and everybody they were leaking to in the media has known since before January Donald Trump was not a suspect. They wouldn’t tell anybody.
In fact, they continued to lie and try to convince the American people that the investigation was solely about Trump, including Comey with his testimony! And Chuck Schumer knew all the while! Chuck Schumer saying we should stop the debate on Gorsuch. We ought not debate whether he gets on the court because Trump is being investigated here on the Russian collusion story. And all the while Schumer knew because he had been told that Trump was not a suspect.
What greater example of media malpractice do you need, and that’s not just media malpractice. That’s media malpractice that’s worked in coordination with the FBI and with the deep state, Obama embeds held over from his administration, and anybody you want to talk to in the media that’s been reporting this.
For a period of at least seven months, the people of this country have been lied to and have been misled into believing that Donald Trump is a focus, a target, a person of interest in a lie, something that has yet to be proven, that there was collusion with the Russians to tamper with the election.
I don’t know who the media people think they are claiming that Trump’s out to get ’em, claiming that Trump’s disrupting their job, that Trump is preventing them from doing their jobs and asking their silly, fool questions? Look at what they have tried to do the past eight months. There’s not a term for it.
You know, they have constitutional protection, so you can’t run around and calling what they’re doing illegal, but, for crying out loud, it’s irresponsible. You want to talk about danger, trying to take out a duly elected president on a lie, a series of lies that you know are lies, that you’re trying to convince people are true. Everybody in the media knew, in the Washington media. Everybody who’s relevant in Congress knew. Even some of the Republicans knew! And nobody would go public and say, “Hey, wait a minute, Comey told us two months ago Trump’s not a subject.”
Nobody would do it. That’s why Comey got fired! That’s why Trump referenced it in the letter he sent Comey when he fired him. Imagine you’re Trump, you’re sitting there, you see all this going on, you know a lie after lie after lie is being reported, that you colluded with Putin to defeat Hillary, and yet you know that you’re not a focus, you’re not a suspect, you’re not a target. And nobody will say so.
What’s the obvious conclusion? They’re trying to get me. Trump says screw this. But Trump didn’t start this. The media started this. The media made this bed. The media has been trying to destroy Republicans and conservatives my entire career, long before Donald Trump came along. Trump is just the first guy to call them out on what they do and not back down from it. And then they say, “He’s got to stop tweeting. This is so unpresidential, he must stop.”
And Trump says, “Yeah, I got stop tweeting, watch this,” and here comes five more tweets. And this is why Trump’s base is never gonna abandon him. This is why Trump’s supporters are applauding what he’s doing each and every day. And that enrages the media because their seminal focus, their objective — and there have been many aspects — they have wanted to separate Trump voters from Trump. They have been trying to convince Trump voters they made a big mistake and they’ll never be able to do it. You know why? Because they didn’t create the relationship; Trump did. They cannot destroy Trump because they didn’t make Trump.
And that’s another thing that bugs them. Trump is outside their sphere of influence. Any other president with this kind of treatment for this many months would be gone. And if not gone, any other president would have been rendered impotent. And the media would be celebrating, and both political parties would be talking about impeachment seriously. Any other president.
And because Trump fights back, they don’t know how to deal with it. And they’re livid. This is not done. You don’t criticize them. They are above and beyond all of that. This is unconstitutional.