RUSH: Okay. So the news is the president folded, the president caved on the State of the Union. He backed down to Pelosi, who refuses to open up the chamber. You know, the Drive-Bys and their acolytes are always painting Trump as an autocrat, dictator, Hitler, despot. What do you call the woman who is dictating that the House Chamber not be used for an address to the nation by the president of the United States? And now the excuse is, “Well, it isn’t any big deal. Nobody watches the State of the Union.”

Well enough people watch it for the Democrats to always want to do a response to the damn thing. Pelosi does not want Trump getting a national forum. Pelosi does not want Trump having a national bully pulpit in the form of a State of the Union. I mean, she can’t stop him from doing press conferences or rallies or any of that, but… She’s losing this thing. This is what’s hard to see about this, and the reason it’s hard, folks (and I know some of you are gonna think I’m nuts) is you cannot see what’s literally going on on the Democrat side of things because the media is simply not gonna tell you.

The AP has a story today which is Malpractice 101. It is a story about the near total unity on the Democrat side of the aisle. There isn’t total unity, and each day there are more and more Democrats in the House who are starting to express misgivings about this. They’re upset about two things. They don’t like the fact that their speaker is intolerant of any view that is not hers. They don’t like the idea that their party is acting in a way… It’s not a lot of them, now, but they’re there, and they’re not being reported. You’re not being told about them.

They are concerned that their party is going to be seen as intransigent and uncooperative and denying the president of the United States a duly appointed, constitutional task — the State of the Union — and then also in the mix, they’re worried about the issue. They’re worried about immigration. They’re worried about how it’s gonna, in the long run, impact them — this intransigence on a wall, this lack of any desire to stop the massive flow of illegals across the border. We’ve even got the Washington Post…

Something’s going on. The Washington Post is fact-checking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez again today, and they’re giving her three or four “Pinocchios.” In other words, they’re calling her a just flat-out liar. This is the Jeff Bezos, Amazon newspaper. Oh, speaking of which, BuzzFeed has laid off or is laying off 15% of its staff. Did you see that? Do you know what…? I feel very bad about forgetting to mention this because I’ve known it, and it just didn’t occur to me. BuzzFeed’s owned by NBC.

Comcast Universal owns BuzzFeed. They’re a major investor in it, along with a venture capital outfit out in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz. They’re owned and operated by a bunch of classic leftist socialists. But the interesting aspect about NBC owning BuzzFeed is that BuzzFeed… You have to look at it as NBC but without NBC in the name. So BuzzFeed being owned by NBC allows BuzzFeed to do what NBC wants without NBC’s name on it, and then it allows NBC to double-dip by then reporting what BuzzFeed is saying, when BuzzFeed and NBC are basically the same thing.

So BuzzFeed is the acknowledged radical left-wing extension of what NBC hopes to portray as the moderate, mainstream journalist, objective business — and they’re all the same people. They are all the same mind-set. They’re all the same objective. So it’s not going well. BuzzFeed is laying off 15% of its workforce, which I think is… I’ll double-check it here. I think it’s a couple hundred people. Just like is happening in the newspaper print business throughout the country. But, anyway, my point here is that Trump just needs to continue hanging in. Let’s go back to the audio sound bites January 16th on this program. This is what I said, just to remind you…

RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m just gonna tell you, folks, if President Trump can hang in there — if he can hang in there and not go wobbly — he can win this. It’s gonna be a few more weeks. There are gonna be a lot of risks. There are gonna be a lot of temptations to drop the ball and cave. I don’t mean cave. There’s gonna be a lot of temptation to make a deal. But he can win this if he just hangs in there.

RUSH: Now, it’s worth playing that again because it’s gonna get tougher. It’s gonna get harder. They’re gonna throw bad poll numbers at him. They’re gonna try to tell him he’s losing his shirt on this, that he’s putting at risk his reelection in 2020, but he’s got to hang in there. They’re also gonna push for something — and he’s already made a deal. This is another thing that has some Democrats unhappy. Trump is seen as willing to talk to people. He’s willing to negotiate.

This is one of the objectives of the deal, by the way. I should tell you: Nobody in the White House thinks that this deal is gonna pass the Senate. It would need seven Democrats. There’s only 53 Republicans in there. Need 60 votes. The point of proposing this was to show movement, was to show willingness, was to show the, uh, moderates and all the other so-called objectives of our politics that we’re willing to talk, that we’re willing to chat, that we’re willing to cross the aisle, that we’re willing to seek common ground, that we’re willing to cooperate and show that government can work — all this happy horse malarkey.

It’s designed to show the Democrats are the ones that are not willing to talk, not willing to negotiate — and it’s doing that! You just don’t see it because the media doesn’t report it! Just like the media lied through their teeth and are still trying to lie through their teeth about the Covington High School kids and Nathan Phillips. They’re still lying about that. They’re still trying to make the case that what we know, we don’t really know. What we know is not true. The kids really are a bunch of creeps. They’re racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, hate Indians.

They’re still trying to make that case ever so subtly, using adjuncts like BuzzFeed rather than NBC saying it. By the same token, we’re not seeing the friction and the fracturing on the Democrat side. But the deal is out there. We’ll hold firm on the DACA kids and then we’ll do the TPS arrangement. The Democrats are gonna come back with something like, “Well, how about a pathway to citizenship?” No, nothing can be added to this. There’s no way this thing is gonna pass. It’s not even its express purpose. I mean, even from the White House side.

So right on schedule, exactly as predicted, the Drive-By Media is gleefully reporting that Trump is getting creamed in the polls, that his approval numbers are plummeting. There’s even a Fox News poll out there. Let’s see. What is it? The Fox News poll says that people are more upset with the shutdown than they are with illegal immigration. Sorry, folks. Not buying it. That’s what they’re saying. But it’s all designed to put pressure on Trump. Here is a montage from yesterday and last night about the polling data. When this happens, my theory is this is when Trump is winning. When we get this predictable media montage focused on polling data showing how Trump is losing, it’s because that’s what they want. Polling data is being used to create a mind-set.

Here’s the example of it…

ABBY PHILLIP: (whispering) New polls show the president may be on shaky ground.

BRIANNA KEILAR: Recent polls show a majority Americans blame President Trump.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: New polls show he’s bearing more of the blame. His approval rating going down.

SUSAN PAGE: The president’s taking it on the chin and polls consistently show him down.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Trump loves polls. How’s he living with the fact he’s down?

GWENDA BLAIR: The polls are showing people don’t want him to do this.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: His approval ratings are really taking a hit.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON: His job approval has slid.

KAREN FINNEY: Each week he’s hurting in the polls.

SABRINA SIDDIQUI: A series of polls that show the majority of the public still blames President Trump.

WOLF BLITZER: Look at the polls: Job approval number only 37%! That’s pretty pitiful.

RUSH: Uh, what poll is that? The poll I saw yesterday had Trump holding steady at 45%. I think it was Rasmussen I saw. Network morning shows today, a little preview of what’s gonna happen, I think, if there is a cave on the shutdown. These are the network morning shows rejoicing in the breaking news of Trump caving on the State of the Union.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: (bouncy music) Good morning, America! Breaking overnight: President Trump backs down in that State of the Union show down.

NORAH O’DONNELL: (bouncy music) Breaking overnight: President Trump agrees to delay next week’s State of the Union address after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says he won’t be invited.

HODA KOTB: (bouncy music) Breaking overnight: Trump folds!

RUSH: This is a preview of what’s gonna happen if there is any kind of an acquiescence on the shutdown — and we know Trump, and Trump doesn’t cave. Trump repositions. We just have to wait and see what’s going on here. Here. Here’s Pelosi. She’s also doing a victory lap. This morning in Washington while she was cogent. I mean, she had brain freezes and everything during this, but here’s this.

PELOSI: As you know, last night the president accepted the fact that the State of the Union should be at a time when government is not shut down. I’m glad we could get that off table. … It is so unimportant in the lives of the American people in terms of especially those who are victims of the shutdown, hostages to the president’s applause line in a campaign speech. Thank goodness we put that matter to rest. … We urge the president once again: Thank you for recognizing that it’s inappropriate to have a State of the Union address for people working hard, very hard to protect all of us in that room and not getting paid for it.

RUSH: Oh. So that’s it? We can’t do the State of the Union because the security staff would not be getting paid, and that would be immoral? When did these people become the arbiters of morality? But they have. I mean, they’re the ones that get to define it under terms of racism and identity politics now. So she’s gloating. You can imagine what it would be if there is any kind of a… I don’t like the word “cave.” “Folding” is another term. But this is what it would be. This is a foreshadow of how the Drive-Bys would be acting. Last night on CNN’s Fredo Prime Time, Fredo Cuomo, the Democrat strategist Paul “The Forehead” Begala had this to say about Pelosi’s decision to cancel the State of the Union ’til after the government shutdown…

BEGALA: The frustration thing here is that just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump agreed to a bill that the Senate passed — every single Republican voted for it — that funds the government and then we can go debate a wall or a barrier, a fence in the regular order. Then what changed? Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh started attacking him, and the guy just folded like a cheap suit. I-i-it’s just embarrassing. There’s something about this guy: Hillary Clinton, Ann Coulter, Nancy Pelosi. He just folds when women take him on.

RUSH: (chuckles) When did he fold to Hillary Clinton? Can somebody explain to me when that happened? When did Donald Trump fold to Hillary Clinton? By the way, Trump’s holding steady 45%. Harvard-Harris poll, 45%. I don’t know what Wolf Blitzed is talking about 37%. Probably one of their doctored CNN polls. When did Trump ever fold to Pelosi? When did Trump ever fold to Clinton? Anyway, they continue this myth that Trump was all ready to sign this until I went bonkers on the radio.

It’s the exact opposite. He wasn’t gonna sign it. He wasn’t in the process of signing it. There were news stories to the effect that he was, and I was reacting to them, and that’s when I got the message, “Don’t worry. The president’s not signing this thing,” and the media’s off and running with the counter-story. Here’s Senator Sherrod Brown last night on a comedy show on NBC. Seth Meyers: “You can’t give in to the president on what he’s asking for because he’ll continue to do it if you cave and give him money for this,” meaning for the wall.

BROWN: We passed a bill unanimously in the Senate to keep the government open. After the sort of Rush Limbaugh types came out against it, the president changed his mind off promising to sign it, and the government closed fundamentally. And this is probably a 25 to 30 billion project to build the wall. We vote five billion, now the president six months from now will shut the government down again to get the next five billion.

RUSH: (laughing) You see how they’re moving the goalposts and changing the essence of the story. One more. Joe Lockhart. This was CNN this morning with Alisyn Camerota. “What do you hear, Joe…?” He’s a former Clinton spokesman. I think Clinton. Obama? Hell, I can’t remember. I know he was a spokesman for the NFL, and he left the NFL once the kneeling and the protests ended up and he rented a house to Obama in the Kalorama section of Washington. But I can’t remember who he worked for. It doesn’t matter. Alisyn Camerota said, “What do you here in the fact that the president is the person who conceded this point?”

LOCKHART: I think it was just a concession to reality. I think they’re looking very closely at the numbers. Uhh, and when the president falls below 39, 38% in job approval, which he has now, that means his base is starting to leave. Uh, so I think it was a tactical retreat.

RUSH: Oh, so the reason Trump caved on the State of the Union is because you are abandoning him out there. That’s right. You want Trump to get this government back up and running. You think Trump’s been making a big blunder here, big mistake. So you are leaving. You are abandoning Trump and Trump’s finally seen the evidence of that, and so he had no choice but than to relent on the State of the Union otherwise he would lose you. That’s the media story. That’s what they’re sticking to.