The headline over there at The New York Times was this:
Obama Unleashes on Trump Privately as He Raises $24 Million for Biden
Along with the standard left-wing drivel that the President was pushing – the usual “Republicans are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic” business that they wheel out every election cycle – the ex-president said this in speaking to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. The Times reported:
“During his conversation with Mr. Pritzker, Mr. Obama spoke about how Mr. Trump has a core base that ‘filters out any contradictory information.’
‘It’s just glued to Fox News and Breitbart and Limbaugh and just this conservative echo chamber — and so, they’re going to turn out to vote,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘What he has unleashed and what he continues to try to tap into is the fears and anger and resentment of people who, in some cases, really are having a tough time and have seen their prospects or communities where they left, declining. And Trump tries to tap into that and redirect in nativist, racist, sexist ways.’”
Stop right there. Catch this line? The Trump conservative base is “just glued to Fox News and Breitbart and Limbaugh and just this conservative echo chamber — and so, they’re going to turn out to vote.”
Now conservative media is everywhere, and as Rush has said it is massive – and I would add massively powerful.
I’ll say this for Obama. He has gotten it right – millions of Americans are listening to conservative media. No less than Rush Limbaugh touched on this subject on Friday – when he celebrated his 32nd year on radio. Here is part of what Rush said:
“We talk about it a lot. In 1988, there was a media monopoly. You had the three networks and the two newspapers, and that was it — in 1988 and years prior — and they owned everything. They owned what was news and what didn’t get reported. They owned commentary. They literally owned the concept of what the American people were told in the form of news; then 1988 comes. This program debuts.
Now, the purpose of this program was not to bust up the Drive-By Media monopoly. The purpose of this program was to be a financial success. And to do that, it had to be a ratings success. So it had to be genuinely successful. This program’s objective was to acquire the largest audience possible and to hold that audience for as long as possible so as to be able to charge confiscatory advertising rates. That was the business plan.
…For four years, ’92 to ’96, we’re on television and radio, and two books that sold eight million copies total — ten million, actually, if you count the hardcover. Then national conservative talk shows hosted by Hannity (who was one of my first guest hosts), and then it just explodes with Fox News in 1996-1997….
…The success of conservative media all… By the way, let’s not forget the websites and the blogs. I mean, it’s massive, this… Call it “conservative media,” “alternative,” whatever. I mean, it’s massive now. Compared to what existed in 1988, it is massive…”
Rush was also saying that with all this conservative media there are people wondering why so many kids are essentially pro-communist as in these “protests” – riots – around the country. Indeed.
But the point here is that Barack Obama is right to be alarmed. Millions of Americans are in fact tuning into conservative media in all its various incarnations. He understands exactly what headlines like these mean.
Fox News dominates May, trounces CNN as ‘Hannity’ finishes atop cable news
Tucker Carlson Has Highest-Rated Program In Cable News History
For those with historical memory, conservatives are a long, long way from the day in 1955 when a young William F. Buckley Jr. launched the conservative National Review, followed twelve years later when a young R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. launched The American Spectator, the magazine where I now hang my hat.
Now conservative media is everywhere, and as Rush has said it is massive – and I would add massively powerful. This is what explains why conservatives in the spotlight are the target of everything from advertiser boycotts to lawsuits to firings from this or that liberal network – all of which and more have one objective: To silence us.
And as may be observed with the celebration of Rush’s 32nd year on the air, with Fox ratings and more – it won’t work. We are here to stay.
And that is exactly what has Barack Obama worried.
He should be.
