RUSH: Now, look, I don’t want to alarm anybody.  I just got a note here, and it’s from Maggie Haberman at the New York Times.  Excuse me.  “Trump campaign…” Make of this what you will. “Trump campaign is canceling hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and possibly other states, according to two buying sources,” so that would be advertising agencies or others who broker advertising buys.  Now, the first thing we have to ask is, “Is it true?”

That’s the first thing I ask.  It’s in the New York Times.  Now, to most people, that automatically makes it true.  Not me, because the New York Times is, again, State-Controlled Media.  So is it true?  Then if it is, if it is true, what does it mean that Trump is canceling? Because he needs two or three of those. If it’s Ohio and North Carolina, Florida, he needs two of those three to win.  He can’t win it without winning two of those three in the Electoral College, and, if he’s canceling advertising buys one month out, what does it mean? 

Does it mean that they hope the third-party people are gonna continue to buy and therefore they could pull back?  Does it mean they think it’s over and they’re saving money, they’re not gonna waste money?  A lot of this is his money.  Some donors.  Or does it mean they think it’s over and they’ve won it?  It could be any of those three possibilities.  But I will guarantee you the way it’s gonna be played in the Drive-By Media is that Trump is admitting defeat.

They won’t say it exactly that way.  They’ll present it as I did, and create the conclusion that they want you to draw, that Trump is already conceding.  That’s what this means.  So be prepared for that if you run into this or if you hear this mentioned later on in the day and through the weekend.  

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RUSH: If you just joined us there’s a brewing little controversy over Donald Trump and his commercial ad buys.  The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who used to be at The Politico — but these places, it’s all statute run media.  They’re just incestuous.  They go from one place, they marry each other, they have affairs with each other, they go from elective office to working for a candidate back to the news and so forth.  So she was at The Politico.  She’s now at the New York Times.  She tweeted out that Trump is canceling ad buys in North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida. 

Well, if that were true, that would not be good, because of conventional wisdom, which I’ll get to in just a second.  The way the establishment is gonna think of that is, “Oh, my God, if Trump’s canceling ad buys, he’s conceding it’s over,” and they’ll start celebrating and doing handstands at the Drive-Bys.  And then another tweet comes.  Okay.  We find out that the original tweet that got this started, was Maggie Haberman tweeted, and Sam Stein at the Huffing and Puffington Post…

And that place is home to a special brand of stupid.  You have to be a special kind of stupid to be working at the Huffing and Puffington Post, which we discussed earlier with the way they’re reporting on me and this climate change business.  But, anyway, this guy Sam Stein reports, “Well, wait a minute, now. We find out that Trump is canceling about $1.5 million in these states in small markets.”  And then it got updated again to where Trump is canceling $200,000, not a million and a half, in rural areas in Maine, Iowa, and North Carolina.

Not Florida and Ohio.  But the original tweet was — from the New York Times, which is the Bible — Trump pulling out of North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida.  Turns out he’s canceling $200,000, as best we can tell now, in rural markets, places where spots cost, what, Greg, eight bucks?  Because the population is small.  He owns the rural areas in these states! He doesn’t need to reinforce it with ad buys because there’s other places where the money could be used. 

So about an hour ago, they got it out there that Trump may already be admitting defeat, because, you see, the establishment of both parties has this… It’s part of the political structure we talked yesterday, the way they play the game in their business.  And remember Trump is not in there business.  He doesn’t prepare his tax returns to be publicly released like they do.  He hasn’t lived his life for public consumption the way they do. So he’s a genuine outsider.

But they try to plug him into their formulas and analyze and cover him the way they would cover any elected official.  And they’re doing that with this ad buy business.  Now, to the establishment of both parties, there is — in their world — an undeniable truth, and it is this:  Whoever has more ad buys is winning.  It’s dogma to them.  It’s inarguable.  If Hillary is spending more money in advertising, she’s winning!  If Trump cancels advertising, he’s losing. 

That’s the rule of thumb. 

That’s dogma in traditional politics. 

Now, the main reason that Hillary is assumed to be a shoo-in by the establishment of both parties is… Well, there are many reasons for it. But one of the things they focus on is her larger ad buys and the fact that she has more cash on hand.  And that tells them that she has much more support, because the more money you have, the more donors are giving you money, and, therefore, that equals… Well, you know the whole phrase “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” 

That was actually created by a famous, now late campaign expert here in California named Jesse Unruh.  (Willie Brown pronounces his name “Un-ruh,” but it was Jesse Un-roo.)  And he came up with that phrase, “money is the mother’s milk of politics,” and that’s how the establishment of both parties assess these things.  Now, Donald Trump if you ask me has already blown that model out of the water.  In the primaries he didn’t spend in the money. It’s another reason why the establishment’s fit to be tied. 

He didn’t spend in the money, meaning people’s skids didn’t get greased.  He didn’t have to spend any money.  He used free media.  Remember all the complaints? Remember all the warnings Trump got? “You can’t do free media in the general.  You may be able to get away with it in a primary, but you can’t just rely on free media in the general!”  But he is.  And I know some of you say, “Yeah, but Rush he’s down in the polls.”  Well, we think. 

I don’t think you can assess anything with Trump the way you would assess say a Romney or (sigh) Rubio, any Republican politician in elective office or formally who is running. You just can’t plug Trump into these strategies and formulas you have to judge success.  Here’s another one.  Mike Pence today is at a rally in Pennsylvania, and it has got 10 times the people that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine are drawing.  Trump’s rallies still overflow every arena, and what do they tell us? 

“That’s meaningless.  That’s all anecdotal.  You can’t judge that! You don’t know how those people are gonna vote.  You don’t know how many of ’em are registered to vote.  That’s not science,” like climate change is.  So they discard it, and then they’ll point you — and I myself have even been guilty of this — point you to Romney and they’ll talk about his large crowds.  The thing with Romney, his large crowds occurred in the last five days of his campaign whenever he’s in Colorado.

Even I was saying, “Whoa, look at this,” and the Romney supporters said, “Wow, something’s happening here,” but it wasn’t. He still end up losing by six or eight points, whatever it was.  But Trump, it’s not the same thing as five or 8,000 or 20,000 whatever, showing up for Romney, because Trump’s have been consistent wherever he goes.  Everybody shows up knows what he’s gonna say.  You don’t show up because of the unexpected.  You don’t show up ’cause of the drama.  You’re showing up ’cause you want to be part of it. 

But they discount it.

Whereas Hillary cannot draw flies to a book signing…  crowds are not even numbering in the thousands.  Remember, Hillary went into Kansas City. They have this giant convention center in Kansas City, and they had to cordon off 95% of it to make it look full for TV cameras at her rally.  It was public employee union or teachers. I forget what it was. Preachers? It might have been Baptist convention. For her speech, nobody showed up, and they tell us be doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything!

Look at the money she’s generating and all that.  Again, folks, it takes a really supreme effort, but as we discussed earlier, the media has become defenders and protectors of the state.  It’s stunning to me, the more I think about it.  It used to be they were the ones that questioned authority and held them accountable and were suspicious and still are if they’re Republicans but now they’re just echoes.  They are… There’s no pretense. 

And if you don’t fall into full being Wednesday with the state, then they come after you.  If, for example, you don’t buy into what they tell you about climate change making this hurricane what it is, they’re gonna come after you, ridicule you, joke about you, do everything they can to destroy your character and your credibility — and they do.  So they are agents of the state.  Trump isn’t and Trump supporters aren’t, and they’re plugging Trump into all this. 

You just got to resist.  What did I do, just to use myself, when I first reported Maggie Haberman’s tweet, what was the first thing I said?  “If this is true.”  I’m telling you, my initial reaction to anything in the New York Times about this campaign: Doubt. First thing: Confirm it, like I have been doing.  Imagine if I hadn’t dug deep.  What if I just believed her first tweet that Trump’s pulled out of North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida? 

Well, that’s what most people are gonna do, except maybe we can change that here.  But it’s the way it works.  You have to… As depressing as it looks, and that’s what they want to do is dispirit and you depress you, make you think that Trump has no choice and you have no choice, it’s all over but the shouting, you have to resist this. Because they are trying to win this thing in the court of public opinion long before votes are even cast.  

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RUSH: We have a montage of State-Controlled Media people.  We’ve got here Megyn Kelly, we got Wolf Blitzer, Charlie Rose.  It’s a whole bunch of ’em out there, talking about how — and this is predebate spin — whatever happens, even if he wins the debate Sunday night, even if it’s a knock-down-drag-out in the first round — doesn’t matter.

BLITZER:  Donald is getting serious about preparing for his upcoming, uh, presidential debate with Hillary Clinton.  But are his plans too little, too late?

KELLY:  Is it too late?  Is it too late? If he goes in and has a stellar debate, would that be enough at this point?

ROSE:  What does Donald Trump have to do in this debate, or is it too late?

HEILEMANN: Donald Trump merely performing better than he performed disastrously in the first debate is not a win.

McMAHON: It’s getting very, very late in the game for him to turn it around.

HALPERIN:  He’s so far behind now in so many places where he needs to be ahead, including nationally, that the bar it is different for him in terms of what would constitute a win.

RUSH:  Yeah.  So it doesn’t matter.  Even if he wins, it’s too late. Doesn’t matter.  Where do they get this?  How come they all end up saying the same thing?  I’m telling you, they’re getting talking points from the Hillary campaign.  Mook will call ’em up or send ’em a fax, whatever, “Look, we think Trump’s done, can’t win, too little, too late.” They run with it.  How else do they all end up saying the same thing?  Here’s Dr. Krauthammer last night on Fox, Special Report with Bret Baier.

KRAUTHAMMER:  The most important thing here for Trump is the morning after.  He might have lost the debate.  It was pretty close.  It was not the rout that people say it was.  But he really threw it away the morning after when he went after… He went down the rabbit holes on the Miss Universe.  I think he can hold his own.  Ignore the bait.  He should just dismiss all the quotations that he hears the way that Pence did.  Deny it ever happened, and then ignore the fact-checkers the next day, and then to pivot and to talk about her, focus in on her weaknesses on Benghazi — which he never mentioned — emails, other stuff. And then just have somebody remove the cell phone overnight at least for a week.  I think he’ll be all right.

RUSH:  So Dr. Krauthammer thinks he clearly can win this thing within it’s not over.  But he’s one of the few.