http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/09/27/trump_changes_it_all_you_can_t_see_this_debate_through_the_traditional_prismTrump Changes It All! You Can't See This Debate Through the Traditional Prism
September 27, 2016
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, folks, let's just get straight to it. For people watching this debate last night through the usual prism, through the standard inside-the-Beltway, insider establishment elite circles, if you watched the debate with that as your life experience, with that defining your expectations and that defining your analysis and commentary, Hillary Clinton won this debate in a knockout. If that's how you watch these things.
And that's how the Drive-Bys see it. That's how party officials see it. That's how elected officials see it. That is how people inside the Beltway in the business of politics saw the debate last night overall. At the end of the night, most people don't want to say it, but Hillary Clinton won in a knockout. The Drive-Bys all think so, and so do many others. Why? Well, because, Hillary was a perfect insider Washington politician.
She spoke in robotic devotion to the meaningless political prattling, going on and on about her plan for this and her plan for that, and this plan over here. And all of the experts who've looked at her plan and say it's the best plan, and all the experts that have looked at his plan and say it's the worst plan. And then we got the obligatory takedown of trickle-down economics for about the gazillionth time in 30 years. We got the obligatory takedown of the rich aren't paying their fair share for I don't know how many umpteenth million times Democrat politicians have been preaching that in the last 30 years.
It was boring. It was robotic. It was almost, especially the first 20 minutes, Hillary Clinton was blindsided, she didn't know what had hit her, maybe the first 30 minutes. She looked out of it. She looked rattled. She looked like she wasn't prepared for the way Trump was behaving and what Trump had to say. She was totally programmed. She was programmed to wait for openings either provided by Trump or provided by Lester Holt. She was waiting for memorized zingers to be implemented and used.
She was exactly what people are fed up with. In terms of the insider nature of Washington politics, the professional politician aspect of Washington politics, insincere, say it because it sounds good. Don't say who you really are, by all means, don't announce what you're really for, never get into any specifics. All you do is try to character assassinate your opponent using the assistance of the moderator. We knew all of this going in. The question is, is that how people, voters, saw this last night?
I'll take you back to the Republican primaries. Donald Trump in the Republican primary debates was just like he was last night. And after every Republican primary debate all of these people in the establishment, the elites, the ruling class Inside Washington politics, the professional politicians, you name them, after every debate people were shocked and embarrassed and angry and thought Trump had just finally destroyed himself. And after each debate everybody was shocked to learn that Trump had not done that. That Trump was continuing to build his momentum, he was continuing to attract new voters, in defiance of everything the insiders considered to be common sense.
And last night Trump was who he was. There are many Trump supporters -- I don't know many -- some Trump supporters angry that he didn't seem to take it more seriously and to end up being more prepared. I'll get into pitch-by-pitch analysis of this in just a second. I mean, he swung and missed at a bunch of hanging curveballs last night. And it was frustrating to all kinds of people, particularly on his side, who really wanted him to take her out last night and just be done with this.
There were people hoping that she wouldn't be able to remain vertical for 90 minutes. The fact that they pulled that off disappointed people. I even had somebody say, "Man, they made her look like Margaret Thatcher! Can you believe it? They hate Margaret Thatcher, and look how they had her hair and her makeup!" The way people watch these things is fascinating to me. I was peppered, as you can imagine. I had the world emailing me with their thoughts.
And I can't described for you the overwhelming pessimism that I was greeted with last night by Trump supporters who thought, "Oh, my..." They were so hepped up, they were so jazzed, they were so ready, and then they said they ended up being so disappointed. And I think people are continuing to make what apparently is an unavoidable mistake. You cannot look at this debate as you would look at Romney versus Obama or Bush versus Kerry or Bush versus Gore or Hillary versus Bernie or Hillary versus Obama. Trump changes all of that.
Here you have 30 years in public life.
By the way, I was very honored last night that Trump used my point a couple of times, that she's been in public life 30 years, and what is there to show for it? She has been complaining and whining about the same things for 30 years. The rich are not paying their fair share, trickle-down economics doesn't work, you name it. This woman's been complaining about it for 30 years and promising to fix it for 30 years, and here we are 30 years later and it's like just like it is her first day in public life before she's announcing what she's gonna do.
What has she accomplished in these 30 years? Literally diddly-squat, other than goofing up and messing up for the most part what she touches. There were ample opportunities for that to be pointed out last night. Trump got some of them, and he missed others. If I had to offer a singular criticism of Trump -- and, by the way, let me say at the outset, I don't think that this changed anything last night in terms of stopping Trump's momentum.
He did not commit the giant gaffe or faux pas that would make his supporters rethink it. Nothing like that happened. He might have left them wanting more, but he didn't disappoint them. So there was no great shift in momentum last night, nothing of such magnitude that would cause anybody to rethink on Trump's side what he's doing. And in fact, to prove my point that people see this and are looking at this in totally different ways than the political professionals and even average Americans who pay attention to politics...
You can't avoid the way the Drive-Bys look at this. That's what the news is every day, and so it's easy to get caught up in this. But people don't see Trump the way they see insider politicians and they're not judging Trump that way. They're not judging Trump on debate points. They're not judging Trump on knowledge here, knowledge there. They're not judging Trump on the standard ways we measure traditional Washington politicians.
"How much have they got done? How much do they say they're gonna do? How much are their promises worth?" He's not judged that way. He represents something entirely different, especially in the eyes of his supporters. Do you realize how much shock there is...? By the way, this is almost a replica of Republican Party primaries. You can find stories all over this country where large and small news organizations assemble focus groups of anywhere from 12 to 42 people.
In the vast majority of them, Trump was judged to be the winner and even some Hillary voters said, "I can't vote for her after this." Trump -- in a lot of places in this country, in a lot of focus groups sponsored by Drive-By Media outlets -- actually appears to have gained support. Nobody watching that debate last night will possibly understand that. Nobody will be able to make sense of it because they don't know. They still haven't, after almost... Well, it's over a year now. They still haven't learned to analyze and judge Trump's support base, who they are and why they support him.
They continue to make the mistake of not studying it, not analyzing it, not figuring it out -- and, as such, plugging Trump into the system they are accustomed to and comfortable with and proclaiming him to be a failure in it. Well, he's not a 30-year career politician. He doesn't have a 30-year career political record. He doesn't have a 30-year experience of running for office and being in debates or any of that. And yet he's being judged the same way they would judge Hillary Clinton or anybody else who's been in that business for 30 years.
And they're making a very grave tactical error doing so because that's how they conclude that Trump got snookered. They conclude that Trump was embarrassingly defeated last night and it may have been the beginning of the end. And they couldn't be more wrong. And they're gonna be shocked and stunned more than likely when they find out the next series of polls come out that this did not hurt Trump and, in fact, did not stop his momentum.
They're gonna be scratching their heads like they have been scratching their heads about Trump since he got into the race. It's amazing how some of this is beginning to play out exactly as did it during the Republican primaries. Now, it was a given going in -- a lot of people's given going in -- that Hillary was gonna win in traditional debate points. And here's why it was a given. She's done it before. That's how she studies and prepares, and winning in debate points, in the business of politics, is a must. And that's how you study and prepare, and that's how you want to be judged when it's over.
Well, there's no question she was going to be judged the winner by people on her side in the Drive-By Media and from the moderator. They were going to proclaim her everything they want her to be -- more experienced, more knowledgeable, all of that -- which doesn't matter a hill of beans to a sizable portion of people in this country. The question is, we don't know how many, and it will be defined and determined for us on November 8th, on Election Day.
But I maintain to you a majority of people watching last night were not watching to see who won in traditional debate ways. The people interested in this presidential election are not judging what they saw last night the way media spinmeisters are going to judge this and spin it. I give you an example. One of the early themes of the post-debate analysis last night no matter where you went... Fox News, CNN, PMSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, wherever you went, one of the early narratives was, "Oh, my God, I can't believe how much Trump was on the defensive.
"Oh, my God, did you see what happened? That's the last thing any of us ever expected. It's very tough to recover, Karl! It's very tough to recover, Brian." This is them talking to each other. "Being on the defensive, it was so easy. Hillary put him on defense the whole debate. After the first 20 minutes, she owned it. She was inside his head and had him twisting and reeling, and he was doing nothing but defending himself."
That's not what happened. Well, it may be what happened; it's not how it was seen. I don't expect to be listened to on this. But what the Drive-Bys and the people that create these narratives don't understand is Trump... When they see Trump on defense, when they see Trump in a defensive posture, his supporters see Trump attacking. His supporters see Trump defending in ways the Republican Party hasn't in a long time. They see Trump standing up for them. They see Trump standing up for himself.
They see Trump standing up against Hillary and throwing it right back at her. It may look like he's defensive to these inside-the-politics Beltway pros, but to Trump supporters he's on the attack. The first 20, 30 minutes of this debate last night she literally looked blindsided. First 20, 30 minutes, it's key. The whole debate matters, too, but the first 20, 30 minutes are key. She was blindsided. She looked totally deer-in-the-headlight eyes frequently.
She looked unprepared. She was speaking in robotic ways. Trump was criticizing her and attacking her in ways the Republican Party hasn't gone after a Democrat, particularly the Clintons, ever. And the reason there is frustration aimed at Trump today is because people wished he would have continued doing so throughout the entire debate. As I say, two or three hanging curveballs. Trump sent out a tweet the end of the debate complaining...
"Complaining." He was noticing no questions on Benghazi, on the Clinton Foundation, on speeches to the banks. That's right, Donald. You're supposed to bring that up yourself. You don't wait for the topic. You don't wait for the question to be asked. You bring it up. Benghazi? It was a hanging curveball. The Clinton Crime Family Foundation? A hanging curveball. Earning $20 million in two years doing speeches to banks at 250 grand a pop? It was hanging curveball. It was right there whether Lester Holt mentioned or not.
I also don't have a lot of patience for people complaining about Lester Holt 'cause they told you going in this was gonna happen. Everybody knew it. Lester was under pressure from the Drive-Bys to "fact check." That just means put his opinion in there. We had no doubt about it that
Lester Holt was gonna opinionate. We had no doubt. He was a Drive-By Media anchor. He's a Democrat Party hack in disguise as a journalist. They all are. Everybody from Trump to his team to everybody should have known that Lester Holt was gonna make it tougher on Trump than he was gonna do on Hillary.
There weren't any surprises last night. Nobody should have been blindsided by what happened at all. Get mad at it. Get frustrated. You shouldn't be surprised. The Drive-By Media is who they are. Lester Holt's who he is. Debate moderators do what they do in these circumstances. And there's two more. There are two more of these. Trump's only gonna get better at it. Mark my words. And Hillary still has to get through two more of these. Anyway, I have to take a break here, folks. That somewhat sets the table covering my original thoughts on this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: After practically every primary debate, after every Republican primary debate, there was an election. And Trump won after supposedly embarrassing himself, after supposedly demonstrating that he's not seriously studying issues, after demonstrating supposedly that he's phoning it in. After showing that he's uncouth and all this, he ends up winning practically every primary following those debates. Well, there isn't an election after these debates until November.
So the Drive-Bys are not going to have evidence other than their precious polling data, and they can gin that however they wish to in the way they ask the questions -- and, as we've learned, how they analyze the data. The one thing that stood out for me last night... As I was watching this, I was trying to watch this thing not falling into the trap of watching it within the confines and through the prism how we usually watch these.
Trump changes all of this. Every day of the campaign, Trump changes this. And you can say whatever you want about Trump missing golden opportunities, whiffing at hanging curveballs, letting Hillary off the hook, the rigged nature of the moderator and so forth. But one thing came through crystal clear last night: Donald Trump showed everybody and reminded many that he is not of the system.
He is not a Washington insider, and he is not responsible for any of the mess or messes that exist today. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton showed that that is exactly who she is. Hillary Clinton demonstrated she is the quintessential politician for life, in it for herself. The question is what it's always been: Are people tired of the system and want an outsider or do they want to stick with the system? And we not gonna know until November.
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