So I don’t listen to other people, and it’s why I don’t watch a lot of television anymore.  It’s why I don’t watch a lot of opinion stuff.  There’s so much out there, and there are so many people just waiting to tell you that you stole whatever you said from them.  That’s why my news gathering is on my own, and I don’t pay much attention to what is spoken on radio and TV.  I do a lot of reading.

One of two things happened with Melania Trump.  Either this was a planned act of sabotage, and you can take that and run with it as far as you want. That’s an easy cop-out excuse. Or, this is what happens when you try to go moderate. This is what happens when you try to tone things down. You look at the way other people have done it successfully, if you’re a speechwriter I’m talking about. If you’re on the staff putting all this stuff for the convention together, it comes time to write Melania’s, English is not her first Lang language, it’s no-brainer that she’s gonna be given some assistance in writing the speech, and she’s gonna rehearse it and so forth.

And so you start, if you’re one of the speechwriters, if you’re on that staff there’s no doubt you consult.  It’s just an unfortunate thing when you get right down to it that somebody lifted a portion of a speech delivered by Moochelle Obama.  I don’t know if it was laziness. I don’t know if this was a setup to embarrass Melania. I don’t know if this was designed to create what it has created.  Aside from this, you’d think nothing else happened at that convention last night, except this.

Washington Post:  “The GOP’s Despicable First Night of the Republican National Convention.” Folks, I’m gonna tell you something. Despite what the Drive-Bys are writing about, they are scared to death.  They are scared to death of this convention ’cause they’ve not dealt with anything like it before.  And to them, it’s new territory.  They don’t like Trump to begin with. They don’t like the Trump campaign. They don’t like this is outside the insider rules of the game. They don’t like this is outside the playbook and the manual for how to do conventions and how to do campaigns.

So here, listen to this.  Stephen Stromberg writing at the Washington Post.  “The evening took an early dip into the gutter.”  Anybody watching this last night think any aspect of it was in the gutter compared to what we see from Democrat Party every damn day?  The Democrat Party’s policy agenda has taken this country into the gutter.  That’s what we’re all trying to climb out of, for crying out loud.  We are surrounded by sewage and waste and detritus or detritus, however you wish to pronounce it. We’re surrounded by debris.  This country’s been taken so low that when you look up, the gutter is what you see.

Nevertheless, Washington Post:  “The evening took an early dip into the gutter when Republicans trotted out Patricia Smith, a grieving mother of a man who died in the Benghazi attacks, who practically accused Hillary Clinton of murdering her child. ‘For all of this loss, for all of this grief, for all of the cynicism the tragedy in Benghazi has wrought upon America, I blame Hillary Clinton,’ she said. ‘I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son.’ Multiple investigations suggest different conclusions, but few of the presentations Monday night were substantive. The fact that Smith seemed to be on the verge of tears conveyed the desired pathos. Her grief-stricken anger is understandable.”

That’s the acknowledgment here that the woman is a genuine human being and that’s as far as they’re gonna go at the Post.  You know, her grief’s understandable and her pain is understandable and she’s a fine America, but “Republicans’ decision to exploit her grief to execute a cheap attack on Clinton is not. Yet Smith turned out to be just the first in a series of victims willing to blame their tragedies on Clinton.”

You mean this is not like exploiting a poor little filmmaker and putting a guy who had nothing to do with anything in jail?  You want to talk about exploiting victims?  The Democrats parade victims of every imaginable tragedy up to every congressional hearing that they’ve ever had.  And they do it time and again.  They use Hollywood actresses to tell us about the woes of farm life.  They’re constantly parading, and they’re constantly blaming everything that’s gone wrong in this country on the Republicans, from racism to sexism to bigotry, to homophobia, and it’s never said to be in the gutter.

This stuff, it just ticks me off, because it’s so unbalanced, it’s so unfair, it is so biased, so compromised, but there’s real anger in this piece and it stems from the fact that they don’t like what is going on.  They want a scripted Republican convention run by a bunch of people who know how to lose the upcoming election.  And that’s not what’s going on here.

Let me find it.  You know, there’s still — here it is.  Solely on the left they’re dependent on what Nate Silver says about the campaign, the FiveThirtyEight blog, this wunderkind this analyzes polls and then reports candidates’ percentage chances to win an election.  Get this headline.  The left is supposedly comforted by this.  “Election Update: Clinton’s Lead Is As Safe As Kerry’s Was In 2004.” This is a piece saying, don’t worry, Hillary’s okay.  Didn’t Kerry lose in 2004?

“There has been a lot of polling over the past few days in advance of the Republican National Convention, which got underway Monday in Cleveland. But it mostly confirmed the conclusion our election forecast models had arrived at late last week: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 3 or 4 percentage points. That’s down from a lead of 6 or 7 percentage points a few weeks ago.

“As a result, Trump’s odds have improved. He has a 36 percent chance of winning the election, according to our polls-only forecast, and a 38 percent chance according to polls-plus. But Clinton remains ahead of Trump in the clear majority of polls.” And her lead is as safe as Kerry’s was in 2004.

By the way, did you know Black Lives Matter claimed that Pokemon Go is racist?

Have you heard this one?  Yeah. “AP FACT CHECK: No Proof of Shooting Motive as Trump Claims.” This is Baton Rouge.  It’s just incredible. I looked at the news today; it’s incredible.  “On Monday, Trump tied the two issues together, suggesting that the shooter in the latest police killing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Sunday was motivated by ‘radical Islam.’ But Trump’s comment Monday during an interview on Fox & Friends, got out far ahead of what law-enforcement and security authorities have said…

“Early indications are that he had no known ties to any radical Islamic group.” Then they quote Trump, what he said, and then they follow that with what they call “THE FACTS: The motive of shooter black Marine veteran Gavin Long is not yet known, although comments and videos he’s posted online shed some light on his thinking.”  Really?  Think… What is this, “[t]he motive of shooter black Marine veteran Gavin Long”? Not black Nation of Islam member?

(interruption) Yeah, “Black Lives Matter Accuse Pokemon Go of Inherent Racism.” You know why?  Don’t laugh, folks.  This is from the Santa Monica Observer, a big newspaper out there.  Yeah.  “Privileged white people” play Pokemon Go.  That’s number one.  Privileged white people then create their avatars, and Black Lives Matter says most of the avatars created by the privileged white people playing Pokemon Go are blue-eyed.  So privileged white people run blue-eyed avatars through their neighborhoods knowing the police won’t shoot them, as they search for their Pokemons.  So it’s inherently racist.  Black Lives Matter.

Anyway, back to Melania Trump.  You know what I think they ought to do?  If they want to try damage control, they ought to offer her to Brian Williams.  What could he possibly say to her? I mean, they suspended the guy for a year, right, for lying, making things up.  I don’t know if there’s plagiarism in all of that, but he almost lost his gig. Well, he did lose the gig at the NBC Nightly News, and he’s now over at MSNBC.  Put her over there.  And, you know, call Neil Kinnock.  Biden’s been accused of plagiarizing.  Obama’s been accused of plagiarism.  Are you aware of that?  Plagiarism.  Obama’s been accused.  You’ve forgotten that story.  I’ll remind you of that as the program unfolds.

And the Drive-Bys all upset over Trump’s entrance last night, looking like he was coming from the WWE with the silhouette and the fog.  And I guess they’ve forgotten Obama’s plastic, fake Greek columns at the Denver convention.  I’ll tell you, a lot of people think this thing was planned sabotage.  The reason they think it is a because here’s essentially a nonissue and it takes what was a really, really good night — what was a really, really good opening night for the campaign — and turns it into what they want it to be portrayed as a chaotic disaster.

Like this Washington Post story. Anybody who watched the speeches last night saw the police honored and saw the military honored over and over again.  Anybody watching this last night saw — finally, at a Republican event, finally saw — Obama and Hillary exposed as dangerous liars and security threats.  Finally a Republican event where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were properly attacked and categorized.  Well, naturally the Drive-Bys can’t highlight that.  No, no, no, no, no.  We can’t talk about that.

So we gotta talk about Benghazi, Patricia Smith, and Melania Trump and her “plagiarism” of Michelle Obama.  So instead of reporting what happened, the media presents soap opera storylines to deceive and to distract. But despite it all, despite the media’s 24/7 Trump-bashing, despite all of the media shielding of Hillary Clinton, the latest NBC News poll shows Trump and Hillary in a virtual tie.

“Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are virtually tied in the polls as the Republican National Convention convenes in Cleveland this week. Clinton now just barely edges out Trump in a direct head-to-head match-up, 46% to 45%. This is slightly down from the 3-point lead she held in last week’s tracking poll numbers.” So they’ve been thinking that last week, it was over. I told you, they thought it was over last week.  A, they thought it was over in June.

Remember that?  A couple days or three days, the media narrative was that presidential campaigns are actually won or lost in June.  You remember that?  We highlighted that because that’s when they thought Trump was really screwing up badly. Hillary was running all this paid advertising talking about Trump being unfit, unprepared, temperamentally unready, all that stuff. While Trump was out there complaining about the Mexican judge, not talking about Hillary and the FBI investigation and files. “A blown opportunity,” everybody said.

“That’s it! I mean, she’s got 11 points here, four points over there. She’s gonna just steamroll ahead of the guy.”  Didn’t happen.  The gap has been closed.  Conventional wisdom continues to explode in the Drive-Bys’ faces each and every day. It’s like we’re handing ’em IEDs and they’re opening up and saying, “Hmm.  Hmm.  What’s this?  A new poll showing Hillary in a landslide?”  Kablooey! It blows right up in their face.  And it probably will continue to do so, ’cause they don’t understand — a lot of people — even professionals on the Republican side — don’t understand how to analyze, handicap, report, whatever, the Trump campaign, including the Republican National Convention.

New York Times: “Rancor Reigns as Bitterly Divided Republicans Begin Their Convention.”  You know what this is about? This is about the attempt of the Never Trumpers to change the rules and prevent delegates on the first ballot to vote their conscience, not have to follow the results of the primary in their states.  I have people there, folks.  They can’t get anything past me this week.  I’m not there, but I got people I trust there.  And this was much ado about nothing.  The cameras focused on a bunch of loud voices, but it was rancorous.

It lasted a half hour.  It never had any chance of going anywhere, and it was just a bunch of people getting things off their chest.  But now the upshot of that is that the Ted Cruz contingent, all the Cruz delegates, are planning to walk out Thursday.  Have you heard that?  You haven’t heard that?  The Cruz delegates planning to walk out on Thursday before Trump’s acceptance speech.  But, look, we have more on all this.  I’m gonna have a general review of the night from my unique perspective, including more on Melania and the ostensible plagiarism.  Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn… I thought the speech by…

Oh, I’m having a mental block on the Special Forces guy that wrote the book about his unit killed in Afghanistan.  I’m having a mental block.  He was great.  He was… Marcus Luttrell.  I thought, “This is as real as you’re gonna get, as unscripted and as genuine as you’re gonna get at a political convention.”