This last holiday weekend, everybody is trying to cram in the last few hours of summer before the inevitable days of fall. The days are getting shorter; that always has a change and impact on people’s moods.  Some people get really revved up going from summer to fall.  Some people get depressed. You know, it just depends.  But the days get shorter and the memories of summer vanish.  We had a slow news weekend, to be sure.  No, we didn’t actually.  I was going to say that we did, but we didn’t.

First, we had this “hurricane” which nobody knows how to pronounce. It turned out to be really just another strong rain and windstorm, despite the best efforts of the Drive-Bys to whip it into a massive hurricane so that they could promote climate change.  Trump went to Mexico.  This happened last Wednesday.  I can’t tell you the number of people who said, “You’d better get back behind the microphone!  You can’t let this go without anybody hearing what you think about it.”  You were saying that, too, right?

Trump’s in Mexico, coming out of Mexico. Trump was looking presidential. The president of Mexico acknowledging Trump as an equal on the stage, as a world leader. And the word is they talked about the wall. They talked who’s gonna pay for it, or then they agreed to talk about that later.  The trip was a shock.  The Drive-Bys couldn’t believe it.  They couldn’t believe the president of Mexico was such an idiot to elevate Trump’s stature that way.  Trump looked presidential. Everybody was saying, “Oh, my God, this man actually pulled it off!

“He seemed of stature.  He seemed reasonable.  He carried off the whole aura of being president.”  And then he went to Phoenix.  And then he gave his immigration speech, complete with the specific 10-point plan — and the same people praising Trump in Mexico started savaging him for once again destroying the great reputation, the great picture that he had created, standing side by side with the president of Mexico. Then goes through his usual campaign rally, and he appeared to be a totally different persona that they thought subtracted from the great gains he had made by appearing to be an equal on the stage with the president of Mexico.

And the press conference that he had was most presidential — and, if politics is all about optics, if politics is like acting in the sense that nobody will ever remember what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel… That’s the key to acting success, by the way.  I mean, who remembers an actor’s lines other than one or two, “Play it again, Sam” type things? (By the way, which wasn’t ever said.)  It’s how you make them feel. Trump made everybody feel very confident.  Trump made a lot of detractors feel very…

All these people that have invested in Trump who are being criticized for doing so, felt vindicated.  So that was a home run for those who look at things as optics.  Then he goes to Phoenix, has his speech on immigration, a 10-point to-do list or plan, and he made a point of saying that there’s no equivocation, no flip-flopping, no softening.  And after the… I guess a couple of hours after the speech, maybe a few hour or so the next day, that hasn’t been any more on that speech in the Drive-By Media.

And I think the reason is they didn’t want to call any more attention to it than it already had achieved.  But Trump wasn’t through.  After visiting the president of Mexico and then giving his 10-point immigration plan where he assured everybody that he wasn’t flip-flopping and he wasn’t softening and he wasn’t changing anything — in fact, he was doubling down — then where did he go?  He went to Detroit!  He went to an African-American church in Detroit.  He danced.  He gave a nice inclusive speech.  He got a standing ovation.

He was honored by the pastor with a special prayer and a prayer shawl or prayer robe.  I had to ask myself, “When is the last Republican nominee or president being treated so gloriously, respectfully well in a black church particularly in a solid Democrat city?” But there Trump was reaching out to a voting bloc that he supposedly has no chance at: The African-American vote. “It’s 92, 93% locked up by the Democrat Party, guaranteed. Nothing you can do about it.” There he was, and he told them he came to listen.

He told them he came to learn, but he also went there to speak.  And he made his pitch.  He said, “Look, you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing for 50 years.  Why not give me a chance?  What have you got to lose?”  A line that the Drive-Bys said is a pathetic line. “It’s a horrible line, it’s a pessimistic line, it’s an apocalyptic line. It’s a doom and gloom line! Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing,” and yet he keeps connecting.  Have you noticed that whenever Trump goes any other and speaks to people personally, he connects.  There is a connection established.

And it’s this connection, folks, that has the Democrats and Trump opponents everywhere… Wherever you find them in the Republican Party and the media, it has them buffaloed.  They don’t understand the connection.  Despite how many attempts and efforts by me to explain it over the many recent months, they still don’t understand.  Maybe they understand it or resent it.  It’s not something that can be taught, it’s not something that can be coached, and it isn’t something that can be consulted.

The ability to connect with people, one on one, when speaking to thousands? Do you realize how hard that is?  The trick here is Trump is speaking to an audience, in this case, what was it, 250, 500, whatever the number was in a church. But everybody there thought he was speaking to them individually, even when he wasn’t looking at them.  That’s the trick.  That’s the trick to connecting to people.  You have the ability to address thousands, millions, whatever the number is who are watching or listening to you and have each of them think you’re talking to them individually? That’s what can’t be taught.

That’s a… It’s not even charisma.  It’s a communication skill that is… You know where it resides in the psyche?  It resides in whatever part of the brain that provides you confidence. The ability to connect to people relies and resides in that part of the brain where you feel confident in yourself.  And if you’re afraid of public speaking, if you’re not confident (most people aren’t; most people are obsessed with their faults and think that everybody’s gonna notice them), it’s gonna be tough to connect.  You can do it in those circumstances.

Honesty and confidence.  Now, not to say that everybody who has this is a saint.  I mean, there have been a lot of bad actors who’ve had the same talent, the same ability.  But that’s another story, a little bit of a derivative.  Nevertheless, Trump goes to a black church. It’s not supposed to be possible.  He’s supposed to get booed out of there. He’s supposed to be hated and despised.  Remember, he arrives as a racist; he arrives as a bigot.  This is what the media, the Hillary campaign, the Democrat Party has characterized Trump as being.

He shows up, but yet he’s greeted with open arms and open minds.

Now, to refute all this, Hillary Clinton was forced out of her whatever she’s in, wherever she’s going to rehab and rest, and she was forced out of debate prep. I don’t know what she’s doing, but she was forced out of it, and she ended up giving a tepid, wandering speech to the American Legion.  She looked ill.  She didn’t manage not to have a coughing spasm during this speech, but clearly Hillary is in reactive mode.  Hillary is reacting to Trump.  I’m sure the Clinton strategy is to let Trump own the stage and destroy himself.  Everybody knows that silent Hillary is the stronger Hillary.  The more she has to appear, the greater the odds are her numbers and approval numbers are gonna go down. That continues to happen.

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RUSH:  So to continue the review of what happened I was gone, Trump continues to have huge crowds, amazing photos of his Ohio rally with Mike Pence.  Guess what?  The gang over at FiveThirtyEight — Nate Silver, the wunderkind god-saver for the left — is now saying Trump can win Ohio.  And the left is panicking! Trump and Pence had a massive rally, great appearance in Ohio, huge crowds.  There are no photos of the crowd where Hillary had her first coughing spit of the Labor Day weekend.  Four minutes! That audio is coming up.

Then we have the Obama humiliation tour.  He jets off to the G20, economic summit in China, hosted by the ChiComs who dissed him, the moment the plane landed! They wouldn’t roll up the big stairs.  Did you hear about this? They wouldn’t roll up the big stairs or the red carpet.  Obama had to get out of the plane underneath the kitchen.  “The galleys,” they call ’em.  The service stairs!  Obama had to get off the staff entrance of Air Force One. And then the new president of the Philippines, who Obama calls “a colorful guy,” called Obama the son of a ho’.

I mean, it’s just off the charts.  And this is the continuation, of course… His name is Rodrigo Duterte, and then Putin and Obama have this stare-down.  That’s over Syria.  Continuation of eight years of dissing, disrespect, and humiliation for the Obama Regime, starting when Hillary was secretary of state.  I mean, it was all on display.  And the world was gonna love us! The world was gonna respect us! Obama was gonna restore America’s respect and greatness around the world, recover from how everybody hated Bush.  And we just see one humiliation after another when Obama now travels to foreign the countries.

And I’m still not through with the review.

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RUSH: Continuing a brief review of what all went on when I was away.  Much of it we are going to return to and visit in a little bit more depth.  So the Obama humiliation tour goes to the G20, is disrespected in any number of ways, which, look, part of this is the fact that he’s a lame duck and world leaders do not have to kowtow or bow down to Barack Hussein Obama, because he’s on the way out. But this is all the more relevant because Obama campaigned as the guy that was gonna fix all this.

Obama was gonna take over the world.  He was going to reinvigorate the world.  He was gonna make the United States the most revered, the most respected, the most loved nation on earth simply by being there.  So reviled was George W. Bush, so hated by the world, so disgusted by the Iraq war was the world, that Obama was going to unite everybody, and now look.

There is no unification in our own country, quite the opposite is taking place, and there isn’t any around the world, and Obama is considered to be a paper tiger by pretty much every one of our serious military endowed enemies.  It’s not a pretty site.  I mean, we even have the president of the Philippines with a huge diss.  He’s apologized for it since it wasn’t one of his better moments and he’s taken it back and Obama covered it, well, said (paraphrasing), “Yeah, I know the guy’s quite colorful, and these kind of crazy, colorful things happen at these meetings and so forth.”

The fact that it was said in the first place, and it was about US intervention, and it was about the US thinking it knows best and the president of the Philippines not wanting any of it.  Putin with a stare down of Obama.  Actually Putin had to stare up because he’s shorter than Obama, but it didn’t matter.  The humiliation of the Obama administration includes Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.  Let’s not forget that Russia has on several occasions buzzed U.S. Navy battleships.  Iran has captured and embarrassed our corpsmen.  We have paid a ransom for them to be released.  It’s just unprecedented.

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RUSH: I can’t leave out something else that happened, and that was on Friday, a typical Friday move by the Regime, a document dump, Hillary Clinton and all of these unknown FBI documents relating to their interview of her and even some more emails, and it was simply incredible what we learned.  The divide in this country is never better illustrated by the reaction to this.

On the left, the reaction I have seen is that everything the FBI released in that document dump proves Hillary Clinton didn’t do anything wrong.  She didn’t violate a single law, she didn’t lie, she didn’t lead anybody astray, she was totally aboveboard and honest.  And they believed this.

And then on our side you look at this, and it’s the admission of one crime after another and the realization that she’s told one lie after another.  It is incredible the things she told Comey and the FBI.  For example (paraphrasing), “I didn’t know that C meant classified in an email.  It was right in front of a paragraph.  I thought that was paragraph C.  I didn’t know that the C meant classified.”

Really?  Where was paragraph A then?  Where was paragraph B?  There wasn’t any paragraph A or paragraph B in those documents.  It was that kind of sophistry.  This woman gets away, she plays down the sex card, she plays down the race card, or sometimes the victim card, and at other times she’s actually totally comfortable with portraying herself as dumb or ignorant.  Here’s the smartest woman in the world, right?

And Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both said at the Democrat convention there has never been anybody more qualified to be president than Hillary Rodham Clinton.  “Sorry, President Lincoln! Sorry, FDR! Sorry, Bill!” Obama said. “But Hillary’s better than all of us,” and yet this woman is totally at home saying, “I didn’t know.  I — I can’t recall.  I don’t remember!  I — I — C?  I thought that was beginning of Paragraph C! I… I… It was classified?  Nobody told me that!”  She’s totally at home portraying herself as an ignoramus, which means Hillary Clinton is entirely comfortable with acquiring support by way of sympathy.  I have never seen anybody market sympathy — “Feel sorry for me” — as a means of gaining and growing support, and yet she tries it.

Folks, there’s a reason that she’s at 39% in these polls.  There’s a reason that people don’t respect her.  There’s a reason that people have serious questions about her.  The Drive-By Media, try as hard as they have, are not able to hide the character deficiencies.  She has been on the public scene for 30 years.  I mean, the simplest question to ask Hillary when she campaigns on any issue is, “Mrs. Clinton, why isn’t this done?  You’ve been at it for 30 years!  You’ve been saying you want to accomplish the same stuff for 30 years.

“Why isn’t any of it done?  You’ve been secretary of state. You’ve been senator of New York. You have been first lady. You ran the first effort at health care.  Why is none of your agenda any closer to being achieved than 30 years ago when you started it?”  Now, I don’t know that people ask that question consciously.  I think it’s a subconscious thing that people realize. And then the lying and the fact that there isn’t any excitement?

You can’t fake that.  She doesn’t draw any crowds.  Nobody’s busting down barriers to hear her speak, and people know this.  So they’re running a totally defensive campaign. The Democrat Party, the Hillary strategy is to shut up, cough in silence where nobody can see it, and hopefully watch Trump self-destruct.  But Trump’s not playing the game. Despite the Drive-Bys doing everything they can to cause him to self-destruct, or report that he’s self-destructing, it just isn’t happening.

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RUSH: St. Charles, Missouri.  This is Bob.  Great to have you on the program.  Hello, sir.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  Fellow Capricorn dittos.

RUSH:  Well, great to have you on the program, sir. It honestly is.  One Capricorn to another.

CALLER:  Yeah.  I’ve been listening since 1990, and you were mentioning about the document dump on Friday, and it set my memory back to when Hillary was first lady. She was called before Congress. I think it was the investigation of the Rose Law Firm or something, and most of her answers were “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember,” and you all had a really good parody song from Try to Remember.

RUSH:  Yep.

CALLER:  I’d like to hear that.

RUSH:  We’re gonna play that. I’ll set this up. There were a number of documents people needed or wanted that nobody could find in the White House.  Some of them were the Rose Law Firm billing records, and a number of other documents that for months and months people had been trying to find.  And one day — honest to God, folks, one day — a maid or some campaign staffer found the Rose Law Firm billing records in the Map Room at the White House.  They just happened to be on the table in the Map Room at the White House.

For months and months, people had been looking at the Rose Law Firm. They had been looking in Clinton personal and business files. They had been looking everywhere. Nobody could find them. But one day, they showed up.  So Mrs. Clinton was called to testify about the Rose Law Firm billing records and a number of other records that had been sought and had mysteriously appeared.  And when it was time to testify, it went this way… (playing of parody song)

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RUSH: Bob in Youngstown, Ohio.  Great to have you, sir.  Hello.

CALLER:  Pleasure being on, Rush.  Listen, the story this weekend was not Cleveland, Ohio, by any stretch of the imagination.  It was the Canfield, Youngstown area.  As you know, the Trumbull County, Mahoning County, and Cuyahoga County are the bastion for Democrat politics in this state.  And something interesting happened at the Canfield Fair on Monday, and it was not Donald Trump.

Richard Trumka was there and a gentleman by the name of David Betras, who is the head of the Democrat Party in Mahoning County. And they’re pulling out all of the stops because they know and they have taken poll after poll after poll and they know that this Democrat bastion is gonna go Republican for Donald Trump and that’s a fact, and you can take it to the bank.

RUSH:  Okay.  But what happened at this event, if you say that —

CALLER:  Well, Trumka, who is the head of the AFL-CIO, he’s a biggie, they brought him in to try and change minds.  They had him at the Canfield Fair.  David Betras was absolutely apoplectic screaming that Donald Trump is a phony, Donald Trump is a liar, Donald Trump. Everything he was saying is Hillary Clinton.  It isn’t Donald Trump.  The only chronic and habitual liar in this campaign is Hillary Clinton.  She lies when she gets up in the morning and she lies when she goes to bed at night.

RUSH:  Wait, I’m still missing.  Did the crowd —

CALLER:  Oh, the crowd was apoplectic for Donald Trump.  He was like a rock star.

RUSH:  That’s what I was missing.

CALLER:  Yeah you, like a rock star.

RUSH:  So you had all these Democrat officials, Trumka and this other guy and they’re going on about how horrible Trump is and the crowd kept shouting Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump?

CALLER:  Yes.  Trumka and Betras, they had a Democrat tent there, and they had a Republican headquarters tent there.  I don’t know exactly specifically the location —

RUSH:  Look, I’ve gotta go.  I don’t have any more time.  I’m on one of these breaks that doesn’t float.