RUSH: John Podhoretz, New York Post. “Trump’s ‘Blame-the-Media’ Blitz Looks Like an Excuse in the Making.” Podhoretz, JPod as he’s known affectionately to his friends, is a smart guy, and he has been in and around conservative media for most of his life. But this is traditional establishment thinking. His point is that Trump’s on these rallies, and he’s blaming the media here and blaming the media there and talking about fake news and calling some of them the enemy of the people, fake news, the enemy of the people, all this. And in his view, any Republican that attacks the media is out of everything else to say.
Trump is probably the number one source in American media for his achievements. If it weren’t for Trump’s tweets, the Drive-Bys wouldn’t be telling anybody about Trump’s economic achievements and implementation of his agenda. Trump does, and of course conservative or alternative media.
But the idea that Trump is constantly blaming the media is — that’s what Republicans are on the verge of losing to. That’s traditional Republican Party thinking. The Republican Party thinks there’s nothing to gain by attacking the media, nothing at all to gain by criticizing the media. It’s immature, it’s childish, it doesn’t recognize the rules of the game. The media is the media, and everybody in the game knows who the media is, you have to account for ’em. You start whining about them is the same as whining about a thunderstorm. You can’t stop them. It’s gonna happen.
And again, I think there’s an ongoing reluctance to try to understand Trump’s base. And in these midterms, Trump’s base is everything. Trump has to turn out his base in these midterms if the Republicans are to hold the House. And so he’s gonna talk about the things that turned ’em out in the first place. He’s gonna talk about immigration. He’s gonna talk about the wall. He’s gonna talk about the media.
He’s gonna talk about the things that got him elected, talk about the things that drew people to his rallies, but in the process he talks about the other things too. He doesn’t give his accomplishments short shrift. He heralds them. He brags about them. He talks about how many things he had to overcome to get them done.
But JPod, the pull quote here, “Instead, he’s trying something that has failed many times before. Driving voters to the polls by complaining about the media is an old Republican ploy that just doesn’t work. One key GOP slogan in 1992 was ‘Annoy the Media, Re-elect Bush,’ which neither annoyed the media nor reelected Bush.” No, that… But, see, by 1992 Bush had blown it with his base. “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
Well, he raised taxes. Bush had lost his base. He was trying to recapture it, and going after the media was one way of doing it, but it was too little, too late. You can’t compare “Annoy the media, reelect Bush” to Trump’s ongoing battle with the media, because the media is clearly anti-Trump and is trying to defeat Trump and is trying to gyp Trump out of the election. The media is every bit all-in, as the Democrat Party is.
Trump, I don’t think, is complaining about it. I think he’s reminding people. It’s a big difference. Do you get the impression he’s complaining about the media, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) How about you, Scott? (interruption) Do you get the impression…? (interruption) No. He’s not complaining about the media. I think he loves talking about it. I think he loves wagging his finger at them.
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