RUSH: There’s Trump news.  I want to get to that first.  First, the New York Times headline:  “Donald Trump Slips Further Behind Hillary Clinton in New Polls.”  Now, hang on just a second.  There are a couple of polls out.  One of them shows Trump back down double digits.  I think it’s ABC News/Washington Post. 

Then there’s another poll that shows Hillary only up one.  But wait. Before I get to the details, there’s another polling story here.  Our old buddies at TheFederalist.com.  You ready for this?  Headline: “No, The Polls Aren’t Biased. Clinton Really Is Leading Trump.” It’s by Emily Ekins.  This is how she opens the piece: “The conservative blogosphere is lighting up again with accusations of polling bias against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in his race against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. However, Trump supporters should avoid giving into this temptation to assume unfavorable results must be biased results. Clinton really is leading Trump, and by nearly 6 percentage points.” And you better believe it.  You better accept it ’cause it’s not made up. 

“The blogospherian argument goes something like this: Clinton is leading Trump by 5 to 7 points in certain polls because the pollsters oversampled or over-weighted Democrats by about 5 to 7 points. If the polls are ‘corrected’ to include fewer Democrats, then the race is actually tied, they say.

“For instance, one blogger argues that a recent CBS News poll inflated the number of Democrats in the poll, comprised of 28 percent Republicans and 35 percent Democrats. Citing one pollster’s calculation, she thinks party identification in the United States is closer to parity, with 28 percent Republicans and only 29 percent Democrats rather than a seven-point Democratic advantage. She reasons that if you erase the partisan gap that would erase Clinton’s six-point lead over Trump.

For Trump supporters, this is a tempting narrative to believe. But this simply isn’t so. The fact is there just are more Democrats out there than Republicans, and this has largely been the case at least since the New Deal,” and you better accept it, she says.  “That obviously doesn’t mean Democrats always win, but it’s unwise to assume a pollster is biased because its sample included more Democrats than Republicans.”

Then she goes on to say and talk about how she’s studied poll after poll after poll, and she has found that hundreds of polls, aggregated nearly 100 different pollsters finds the average Democrat makeup of any poll is 34.8% and 28% Republican.  Roughly six-point advantage.  Very similar to CBS.  Her point is that, look, I’ve studied a hundred pills pols, and they all have the same six- to seven-point Democrat advantage because there are six to seven more Democrats identified than there are Republicans.  Interesting when you go liberal conservative, it’s not even close.  Almost twice as many people identify as conservatives as liberals, but they don’t poll that way.  They poll party identification. 

Now, there are exceptions to this.  We’ve found polls that sample Democrat majority of 20%.  They’re bad polls.  A lot of polls have gotten it wrong, starting in, well, 2010, 2014.  A lot of the Brexit polls were so bad, it’s not even funny.  But some of the polls have been right.  So, anyway, Miss Ekin’s points here is, you Trumpists, do not lie to yourselves like the Romney people did.  The Romney people went into the 2012 election thinking the polls were wrong by five or six points, thought Romney was gonna win.  It turns out the polls were right on the money.  Don’t lie to yourselves, is her point.  

Okay, that takes me back to the original story here.  New York Times:  “Donald Trump Slips Further Behind Hillary Clinton in New Poll.”  However, let me read to you a paragraph in this story.  This poll, by the way, shows Clinton with a… Well, let’s review the data before I get to that paragraph.  “A Washington Post-ABC News survey had Mrs. Clinton with a double-digit lead: 51% to 39%. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll had Mrs. Clinton with a smaller advantage of five percentage points.

“Both polls, released on Sunday, showed Mr. Trump in worse shape than he had been a month ago, as voters in the latest polls expressed doubts about his preparedness and qualifications to lead the nation.”  Isn’t that increasingly curious, given that’s exactly what Hillary Clinton is saying?  Well, here’s the paragraph:  “Despite his woes, not all the results of the new polls were heartening for Mrs. Clinton.

“The Journal-NBC survey found that her lead essentially disappears when candidates from the Green Party and Libertarian Party are included. She essentially tied Mr. Trump, with 39% to his 38%. Together, third-party candidates grabbed 16% of the support.” Well, isn’t that kind of relevant?  Because the libertarian candidate is not going away, right?  Gary Johnson, he’s gonna be there.  So doesn’t this paragraph kind of undo the headline, “Donald Trump Slips Further Behind Hillary Clinton in New Polls”? If it’s just Trump and Hillary, yeah

But if you throw the other candidates in there, she’s reduced to a one-point margin.  I don’t know if these candidates are gonna hold up all through the campaign or what have you.  But the point that she’s trying to make is that all of you Trumpists out there, “Don’t lie to yourselves when you see your guy down in the polls. It’s a mistake to lie to yourself and tell yourselves they’re not true because they’re biased.  You better accept it and deal with it, and Trump better accept it and deal with it so as to fix it.” 

In the New York Post, Michael Walsh: “Five Things Trump Must Do to Win the Election,” and I’m just gonna go through the five.  I’m not gonna read every point made about the five.  “First, keep pummeling Hillary.  Second, learn a lesson from John McCain and Mitt Romney. The Maverick was a media darling until he had the effrontery to run against The One in 2008, while Romney was transformed from a successful Mormon businessman into a rapacious ogre. Overwhelmingly Democratic and partisan, the media votes with its pens and cameras every day…” 

Do not rely on overwhelming, constant media coverage to cover for you, Mr. Trump. “Third, skip the ‘gotcha’ game.” You know, don’t go out there playing Twitter games with Hillary.  Stick to the issues.  “Fourth, make it clear to the junior wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party, who’s boss now.”  This is what Walsh calls the Republican Party: “the junior wing of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party.” That’s his way of describing the Washington establishment. 

And number 5: “[B]e yourself…”  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  There’s one more.  What did I do with it?  Oh, yeah. There’s a piece by Jonathan Tobin.  This is a Commentary, which is a… Yeah, you’d call it conservative website. Jonathan Tobin.  “Where in the World Was Trump?”  This guy is just beside himself that on the Friday of the results of Brexit, Trump was opening a golf course.  Why didn’t Trump lead with Brexit?  Why is Trump so tone deaf that there he is, he’s in Scotland, he’s in the UK, the vote has come in and it’s one of the biggest things that ever come down in the history of the UK, of the EU, and he starts talking about his golf course?  Where the hell was Trump? 

Does Trump not have anybody telling him what to focus on?  He’s really upset about this, and he’s using it to indicate Trump doesn’t even know what he’s doing.  He doesn’t have a sense, he doesn’t even have the perception here to understand what’s important on his own if there’s not somebody to tell him: Hey, you better address Brexit!  “Trump was taking care of business, but not the business of running for president. He was promoting his golf courses.” He was also doing something else.  He was actually supporting his son, Eric. 

Eric was in charge of that project.  You people may not know this, but Eric Trump was in charge of the Trump Turnberry thing.  And it finished on time, and it came in under budget.  And Trump went over there, of course, to brag about it, to extol virtues, but also support his son.  But Tobin says: My God, this campaign’s in enough chaos without Trump knowing what the hell to talk about!  I mean, you just don’t go talk about yourself as a presidential candidate. You don’t talk about yourself. You don’t talk about your own business interests!

You don’t brag about how good you’re doing. You don’t brag about how well you’re doing.  I’m telling you, I think these people are well-intentioned, but I still don’t think they understand why Trump’s support base supports him.  Now, I know Trump has to grow his support base.  Don’t… I’m not living under any illusions here, but I do know this as well. 

A lot of people supporting Trump do so because they think he is profoundly competent in running things right and getting things built on time, under budget, and having them operate as they are intended.  And, believe me, there are a lot of people supporting Trump who thinks there isn’t a single person in Washington who has the slightest idea how to do anything right.  So Trump showing up bragging about how this project is going gangbusters and this one is actually gangbusters for him.  Now, whether he can build a base based at another thing.