"Well, Donald, just because Limbaugh's been saying that for years doesn't make it true."

[certainot]

Hillary needs to put a big fat RUSH tattoo on Trump’s forehead for the next month.

“That’s what Limbaugh says,” or some variation of that should be a regular retort from Democrats in the media.

The reason Trump hasn’t needed to spend money is because he’s riding years of RW talk radio.

Here’s some simple math:

At a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 1200 stations, RW talk radio is worth 4.68 BIL$/ year or 390MIL$ /month FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro Republican Wall St think tank propaganda, free market deregulation bullshit, swiftboating, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote Republican.

There are a few local and national blowhards who don’t like Trump but they will all follow Limbaugh’s lead and make the excuses for his racism and ignorance and lies, and they will all attack and lie about Hillary and the other Democratic candidates.

On the local level all of those stations are attacking state Democratic candidates.

That’s why Trump is where he is today. And it is absurd that the polling organizations are not making the connection.

Talk radio is why Republicans are even close. And that is why they will be close and win most of their elections while Democrats rely on the same old get out the vote efforts.

From OPERATION TRUMP — Inside the most unorthodox campaign in political history, by Gabriel Sherman in the New York Magazine, 4/3/2016

Two years later, Trump briefly explored running for governor of New York as a springboard to the White House. “I have much bigger plans in mind — stay tuned,” he tweeted in March 2014.

Trump taped another season of The Apprentice that year, but he kept a political organization intact. His team at the time consisted of three advisers: Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg. Stone is a veteran operative, known for his gleeful use of dirty tricks and for ending Eliot Spitzer’s political career by leaking his patronage of prostitutes to the FBI. Cohen is Trump’s longtime in-house attorney. And Nunberg is a lawyer wired into right-wing politics who has long looked up to “Mr. Trump,” as he calls him. “I first met him at Wrestle­mania when I was like 5 years old,” Nunberg told me.

Throughout 2014, the three fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled.

Ignoring talk radio was the biggest political mistake in history and Democrats and progressive organizations are still doing it.

Those examples of Democratic candidates making ‘mistakes’ in campaigns and debates that are being repeated continuously now aren’t evaluated with 390MIL$ /month worth of free media buzz yelling about it afterwards.

It won’t make a lot of difference what Hillary fails or succeeds with in the debate. Or what Lester Holt does. And Trump could wear a Bolivian dictator’s cap and lie like Limbaugh. The talk radio factor will still be huge in spinning it for Trump and against Hillary.

The way to reduce that $5BIL/year RW talk radio disadvantage is to bring it out from under the rug so that media and politicians can’t use the crap without the stink. And Republicans need to be reminded why their party is in the state it is now.

[certainot]

1. there were a few times she could have said it!