RUSH: Grab sound bite No. 6. This is Trump last night bashing fake news. There’s a big controversy that Trump has called the media the enemy of the people, and there’s a lot of people that are seeming to agree. “Trump, he’s called the whole media the enemy of the people.” He’s not. We went back and looked and he referred to fake news as the enemy of the people. But he’s never said that we can find, all of, the entirety of the media, is the enemy of the people.

But that’s a fine point, because when the Drive-Bys report it, they don’t say that Trump said fake news is the enemy of the people. They report he says the entire media is. And they act outraged and act like they’ve been placed in great harm, great danger. And April, what’s her face, April Ryan goes out there after the press briefing and goes (imitating Ryan), “I’m really worried, I’m worried that Jim Acosta is going to be the subject of violence. I’m very, very worried.”

Oh, you mean like all the Republicans getting shot out there, April? So anyway, Trump at his rally last night decides to address an example of what he calls fake news. There are countless instances of Trump being lied about each day. But this is the one that he chose.

TRUMP: I was about 15 minutes early and I’m waiting with my wife and that’s fine. Hey, it’s the Queen, right? We can wait. But I’m a little early. So I then go up and meet the Queen and she is fantastic. It lasted for like an hour because we got along. So here was the story by the fake news. “The President was 15 Minutes Late for the Queen.” Wrong.

And then here’s the rest of the story. Now here’s the rest, here’s the rest of the story. So they said I was late when I was actually early, number one. Number Two, I guess the meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes and it lasted for almost an hour. “The President Overstayed.” (laughter) So I was late and I overstayed. And honestly, folks, it was such a beautiful, beautiful visit and afternoon. But they can make anything bad because they are the fake, fake disgusting news. (cheers/applause)

RUSH: The audience is eating this stuff up. The crowd there in Wilkes-Barre is eating this stuff up because they know, they know exactly who and what Trump is talking about. The Drive-Bys are another one of these groups of leftists, who, in their own minds they have free rein. They can set out to destroy anybody. They can do research and they can impugn and they can do hit pieces and they can destroy you anytime they want.

But don’t you dare react to it and don’t you dare ever act in a reciprocal way. Don’t you dare ever investigate them. They are protected by the First Amendment. They are journalists. And they are not the story. Yes, they are. They are the story. And they do fake news. And they make it up. And the examples are too numerous and frequent to mention. They happen numerous times a day.

But because the Drive-Bys are so childish and so squeamish and so sensitive and so worried about being offended, they can destroy anybody. They can lie about people. They can accuse them of things that they haven’t done. But let them get called out for what they actually do and they lose it, as evidenced by Jim Acosta, sound bites eight and nine, Jim Acosta in the White House press briefing yesterday afternoon.

ACOSTA: I think it would be a good thing if you were to say right here at this briefing that the press, the people who are gathered in this room right now, doing their jobs every day, asking questions of officials like the ones you brought forward earlier, are not the enemy of the people. I think we deserve that.

RUSH: (imitating Acosta) We deserve that we’re not the enemy of the people. We go to war every day. We have to confront powerful people. And we have to ask them questions. And it was so bad during Obama that we had that — I mean, we didn’t want to ask him any tough questions because we didn’t want Obama to be mad at us, and so it was really tough. But now it’s really hard because we hate you. And we can’t wait to ask tough questions. And you, you won’t let us get away with it. And you’ve got to tell everybody that we’re not the enemy. You’ve got to tell everybody we’re not trying to destroy you.

And here’s what Sarah Sanders said.

SANDERS: It’s ironic, Jim, that not only you and the media attack the president for his rhetoric when they frequently lower the level of conversation in this country. Repeatedly, repeatedly the media resorts to personal attacks without any content other than to insight anger. The media has attacked me personally on a number of occasions, including your own network, said I should be harassed as a life sentence. That I should be choked.

ICE officials are not welcomed in their place of worship and personal information is shared on the Internet. When I was hosted by the Correspondents Association, of which almost all of you are members of, you brought a comedian up to attack my appearance and called me a traitor to my own gender. In fact, as far as I know, I’m the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection. The media continues to ratchet up the verbal assaults against the president and everyone in this administration, and certainly we have a role to play. But the media has a role to play for the discourse in this country as well.

RUSH: What do you think the reaction to that was? The Drive-By media ripped into her. They ripped into her for being overly sensitive, for not telling the truth about things and not being big enough to deal with the hard aspects of the job. And meanwhile, Jim Acosta, they’re running around, “I was really afraid, I was afraid Jim was going to get beat up.” Then, of course, Jim goes back to CNN and acts like he deserves a Purple Heart and a Gold Star all for dealing with this.

You talk about a bunch of people that do not know their audience. You know CNN’s ratings, either this week or last week, the week before they came in under HGTV, whatever that is. Shark Week. They got beat by Shark Week! That’s what it is. They got beat by Shark Week. Shark Week had twice the audience that CNN had, 1.7 million. And CNN’s sitting there, Guppy Week.

If I worked at a place, a national news organization with a world-renowned reputation, I’m sitting there and I’m working there and I know that nobody’s — 700,000 — if I’m perennially in last place, I wouldn’t accept it. I would be very bothered by it. I would be worried about why it is the case. But you notice they’re not. They want a badge of honor. They don’t care if nobody’s watching, as long as they continue to stick it to Trump and speak truth to power, whatever that means to them.

Well, I swear, I’ve never seen a media organization that is so unaware and so unattached to its own audience and so ambivalent, uncaring about it. In fact, I don’t think CNN gives a whit about the public as the audience anyway. I think CNN’s audience is the other networks. I think the other networks, their audience is CNN. I think it’s a circle you-know-what. You cannot convince me that the people that run CNN, the managerial side or anybody in the executive branch, you can’t tell me that they have the slightest understanding of how to relate to an audience, to build an audience.

It shocks me. It really does. And they’ve been here in third place for years and they apparently don’t even care, and they want a medal for that. They want a medal for being in last place and not wavering from the cause.