RUSH:  Okay.  Yesterday in Carson City, Nevada, there was a Trump-Pence campaign event.  Vice Presidential Nominee Mike Pence spoke.  During the Q&A, Catherine Byrne — whose son serves in the Air Force — and Pence had this exchange, and you’ll hear some other audience members pipe in to this as well.

BYRNE:  Time and time again, Donald Trump has disrespected our nation’s Armed Forces and veterans, and his disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example of that.  Will there ever be —

AUDIENCE: (booing)

BYRNE: Will there ever be a point in time when you’re able to look at Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough? 

PENCE: It’s okay.

BYRNE: You have a son in the military. How do you tolerate his disrespect?

PENCE:  Well, I thank you for the question.

AUDIENCE: (grumbling)

PENCE: It’s all right.  It’s all right.  Folks, that’s what freedom looks like, and that’s what freedom sounds like.  Having spent time with our nominee, I have never been around someone more devoted to the Armed Forces of this country.

RUSH:  This whole episode’s being held up as an example by people for Trump to follow.  “This is how it’s done.  Trump should follow Pence’s lead here.  You’ve got a hostile audience member asking hostile questions, and you acknowledge everything and you don’t put anybody down, and then you swear by the nominee.” You know, this is a great bite, because I remember telling everybody, “When it comes time to choose the vice president, they’re gonna have to pick somebody who’s willing to go out there and defend Trump no matter what’s said.  That’s the job of the VP.  No matter what, you cannot dump on the presidential candidate.”

Pence did indeed show how it’s done. 

We got somebody who was there. This is Tim.  It’s great to have you, sir.  I’m glad you called.  How are you?

CALLER:  Hey, Rush.  How you doing?

RUSH:  Very well.  Thank you much.

CALLER:  Yeah, I was standing right behind that lady, and it was an obvious plant.

RUSH:  Well —

CALLER:  I’ll tell you, when we first got in there, there was a mic stand with the microphone in it, so you knew they were gonna ask questions.  It was there the whole time, and then Mike Pence was gonna ask this old guy a question first, the first question. All of a sudden she jumped up and she had it in her purse or something, and she just starts yelling over him, and then everyone was kind of like, “What’s going on here?” And then she said, “The Air Force,” and everyone went crazy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” And then she went on, and then everyone was like, “Oh, this is just a bunch of baloney,” and that’s what they were booing.  If she would have waited her turn and done it right, people would have listened to that —

RUSH:  Wait, wait.  Wait a minute.

CALLER:  — and let Mike answer it.

RUSH:  Hold it a minute.  This is… Folks, you can’t start go getting defensive about this.  These people, our opponents are playing for keeps.  Tim, don’t misunderstand me here, but this is a public event and all of the Hillary people in the world can try to get in there, and if they’re gonna have an open mic they can work their way to the microphone and they can say whatever they want to say.  You have to be prepared for it, which Pence was.  Pence did great with it. 

But it doesn’t… (sigh) It doesn’t serve a purpose to talk about the woman was a plant.  She no doubt was.  But you’re not gonna convince anybody that you need to convince that just because the woman is a plant, you should ignore what she said.  Even if it’s all made up, even if she made it all up — which I doubt — you still can’t complain. To do that is to go on defense, and defense never scores touchdowns. Well, rarely.  It’s not the position that you want to occupy here. 

I’m sure Pence and Trump know that there are gonna be Hillary and Obama and liberal protestors getting in, trying to get into every one of these events to sabotage them, to undermine them.  We know this happens.  It’s Hillary and Democrats that are going in and causing riots and rallies at Trump events trying to make it look like it’s Trump supporters doing it.  These people are playing for keeps, and we need to be playing for keeps, too.  They would get away with it.

I understand the frustration because if it were reversed, if it were a Hillary event… In the first place, they would probably do a good job of screening and prevent it, and every questioner would be preapproved with the question written by the campaign.  That’s how a Hillary event happens.  But a Pence-Trump event, they don’t script anything. They just take it.  Whatever happens they’ll deal with it. All comers. “Come on. We’re happy to answer any question you’ve got.” Hillary can’t do it.  Hillary would never do an event like this. 

And if she did, everybody that strode to the microphone with a question would have been preapproved, would have been part of the campaign, would have been an operative or something — would have been a donor, would have been a phone bank operator, would have been something — and they would have been given the question to ask, and it would be fawning, and there wouldn’t be any opposition in the room.

They would have been screened out.  You’d have to really pull a great trick to be a Trump supporter and get into a Hillary event.  But the fact that she was a plant is not going to make people disregard what she said, and it’s not gonna make them forget what Trump said or did dealing with the Khans or this kind of thing.  I think what’s tough — and I mentioned this last week. I think one of the things that has people so frustrated is there doesn’t seem to be any reality anymore.