And he received the benefit of media doubt that he was categorizing all those people in a negative way:  They were minorities, they were slackers, they were welfare cheats, whatever — and that’s why Romney was saying that they would never vote for him!  They tried to destroy him.  It’s still not certain if that comment more than any other determined his fate.  We still don’t know.  But it wasn’t helpful.  The media tried to blow it up and destroy him anyway, like they had with any other comments and ads they were running.

Romney was perhaps the most decent and the most moral person to seek the presidency. He was right up there with George W. Bush, and a far cry from Bill Clinton.  Look what they were able to do to him.  They were able to characterize him as somebody who hated animals, somebody who didn’t care when the wives of his employees got cancer and died. They were able to portray him as somebody who didn’t pay his taxes.  So Mrs. Clinton’s entered the fray with a comment that is, I think, worse.

She has actually made a character assessment and judgment on half of the people who vote for Donald Trump.  Now, when she made the statement, she was ill.  You stop and think.  They could have… At the moment she said that, they should have realized that this was something she’d really stepped in, and they better walk this back.  What better way to walk that comment back than to announce that she’s got pneumonia and she’s not herself some days and she’s terribly sorry for it? They could have broomed it.

They could have gotten rid of it in ways that the Drive-By Media could’ve made a lot of hay with and limited the damage.  But they didn’t.  They saved that diagnosis announcement of pneumonia until this event that happened yesterday.  So, using intelligence guided by experience, coupled with common sense, it seems obvious that this poor woman is really sick.  And I want to emphasize again the fact that every time they send her out, it’s a roll of the dice.

They can’t predict when any of these episodes are going to happen.  They obviously can’t control whatever she has with medication.  Not enough.  Otherwise yesterday wouldn’t have happened.  The coughing spasms wouldn’t have happened in Cleveland last week.  So they can’t control it.  Now they’ve canceled a fundraising trip to California, and that’s big because that’s what the Clintons live to do, is raise money.

Now, let’s look at this “deplorables” comment and the other thing that she said as well.  “Deplorable” has many different definitions: Disgraceful, shameful, dishonorable, unworthy, inexcusable.  But we know how she meant it. She was basically saying that half of Donald Trump’s voters are human debris.  This is a woman seeking the presidency.  That’s violating rule number one!  You are going to be president of all the people.

You can say whatever you want about the candidate, but you don’t launch this way.  Then the second thing that she said. She said they’re in “a basket of deplorables.”  But the really damning thing that she said is the second part of her statement.  She said, quote, “That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, that nobody cares about them; nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change.  Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.”

Well, there is no better indictment of the Obama years than that!  But then in Pittsburgh on Friday, she said the following.  It was… (sigh) You just figure this out.  Listen to it.  “If you saw that show,” the commander-in-chief forum… Well, no, that’s… Wait a minute.  That’s not correct.  That’s somebody else’s speaking, not her.  The point is that they could have easily erased this — all these comments, deplorable and the other people that have been left out by the Obama economy — simply by saying she had pneumonia.

“Please, she didn’t mean it, that…” Well, maybe not she didn’t mean it, but, “She was not on her game. She’s got pneumonia, she’s suffering, she’s taking her latest round of medication, what have you. She’s very frustrated that she can’t be on the campaign trail,” whatever they could have said to mitigate this. But they didn’t.  They just let it fester there.  And in the process, Hillary Clinton lifted the veil and let everybody know who she really is, let everybody see who she really is, how she really looks at people, how liberals really look at people.

They’re the ones who look at people and make judgments, negative judgments based on skin color and gender, surface kind of things.  They’re the ones that seek to divide various groups of Americans, not unify or not heal.  So she totally indicts the Obama presidency and then insults people who really have lost patience with people like her being in government.  And I think this just adds to the whole equation about how she’s just not right. There’s something…

She hasn’t been right for a long time, and it’s coming to a head now.  Now, David Shuster, the guy that works at MSNBC, has tweeted out a couple times that there are super-secret meetings going on at the upper level the Democrat Party to consider a replacement, to consider a possible replacement.  Who would it be?  If they have to yank her out or if she at some point can’t continue — I can’t foresee this, but since they are supposedly discussing it — who would it be?  Would it be Kaine?

Would they automatically elevate Kaine since he’s the VP, elevate him to nominee, or would they go out and get Crazy Bernie?  Would Crazy Bernie…? (interruption) What do you mean, “They can’t do Kaine”? (interruption)  Ah, just ’cause Kaine’s pro-life? They could bury that for a couple of months, six weeks. They could bury that.  This wouldn’t be a reason.  No.  If they didn’t choose Kaine it’s because they don’t think he could win.

Would they go back and get Crazy Bernie?  They don’t have much of a bench.  Well, we’re getting a little bit ahead of things since we don’t know if this is gonna happen.  But they have to be talking about it.  This is another thing. You rest assured. For all of the calm being portrayed in the Drive-By Media about, “Ah, it’s just pneumonia. She’ll get past it. Everybody does!” For all this calm, my friends, there is panic no doubt going on at every sector of the Democrat Party.  I don’t care how you slice it, this is not a winning profile.

Victories do not come from these kinds of things.  They just don’t.  This does not… There cannot be enough sympathy aroused by virtue of these illness events to propel her.  Not for this office.  And then we also have to keep in mind that there’s still a lot of the general population that has not seen, does not know the full extent of what happened yesterday.  ‘Cause the Drive-Bys and some of the social media sites are doing their best to hide the video from yesterday, for example.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  So I get an email: “Rush, why do you think Hillary didn’t speak to a doctor any sooner?”  Why didn’t she speak to a doctor sooner, she probably couldn’t find one to pay her 250 grand.  That’s what she charges to say things to. No, she’s been speaking to doctors.  That’s the whole point, folks.  And this “deplorable” comment, this is not the first time she’s said it.  This is a written remark.  She said this to an audience of LGBT people, and she’s also said it to a foreign policy audience.  It’s the second time that she’s made this comment.  Here it is Friday night in New York at a campaign fundraiser. It’s an LGBT event.

HILLARY:  You can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.

AUDIENCE: (laughter and applause)

HILLARY:  Right?  The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.

RUSH:  See, now this goes to something that I have always accused the left of being. They stereotype anybody not them as a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.  So here she is talking to LGBT people and she has to start talking about people supporting Trump and justify the fact they’re supporting Trump (imitating Hillary), “Yeah, they’re just a bunch of kooks, deplorable people. You and I both know it. You and I, you LGBT members supporting me, we know we’re special. We know we’re enlightened. We know we’re progressives. We know we are advanced, sophisticated, but these rubes out there voting for Trump…”

So she makes these comments to make her donors feel better about themselves and to establish a connection.  But in the process, she does just what Obama did with his bitter clinger comments.  It’s clear that these people on the left have disdain and contempt for people that really are the backbone of this country. They have contempt for the people that make this country work.  They’re not racists and sexists and bigots.  You’ll find more racism and bigotry on the left, far more than you will find on the right in this country.  This is just absurd.  This next bite, this is when she tells us who the other half of Trump supporters are.

HILLARY:  But that other basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down. Nobody cares about them. Nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures.  And they’re just desperate for change.

RUSH:  Right, desperate for change.  From what?  From eight years of Obama?  The government’s let them down?  Yeah, but they’re not depending on the government.  That’s the big difference.  The government’s let them down, but not by failing to come through for them.  The government’s letting them down by actually working against them.  The government has become an obstacle to these people.  And they just want government out of the way.

But to Hillary Clinton good people are people who depend on government and relish the government helping them through life, relish the government doing things for them.  Because they can’t do them for themselves.  So she indicts the Obama administration, the eight years of Obama in that comment.  Let’s jump forward to number eight.  You all remember Obama’s bitter clinger comments, but you might not remember this. Nancy Pelosi, 2009 in San Francisco at a personal appearance at San Francisco General Hospital.

PELOSI:  I think they are Astroturf — you be the judge — of carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care.

RUSH:  She’s talking about the Tea Party. Yeah, the Tea Party, just a bunch of Nazis. They carry swastikas and symbols like that to a town hall meeting on health care.  You know who carries swastikas and symbols to a meeting on health care?  Leftists trying to make themselves look like Tea Party members.  Anyway, the left’s contempt for the people they claim to champion is well documented, and Mrs. Clinton just did it again on Friday.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There’s another question that I have.  So Hillary Clinton’s out there calling Trump supporters in a basket, a basket of deplorables.  Now, you know what she meant by that:  racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, xenophobe, unredeemable, un-American, is what she was saying they are.  She was saying that Trump supporters are the lowest of the low. That they are essentially just wandering pieces, shreds of human debris.

Why aren’t people as irritated at that as they got with the way Trump characterized the criminal element of illegal immigrants in this country.  Remember on the day he announced his campaign, he referred to these illegal immigrants, some of them as rapists, as murderers, as purse snatchers and so forth.  Remember everybody just had a cow.  “How dare he.  How dare he categorize people that way.  How dare he call people that.  That’s just unacceptable, that’s outrageous, how dare he.”

But Hillary Clinton can call American people what she called ’em, hey, and we have to consider it.  I know, she went out, she issued her quasi-apology for this, but that was only because she had to.  It’s what they really think of us.