Is the Media Finally Realizing That They’ve Lost Their Political Power?

In an interesting segment on Wednesday, radio icon Rush Limbaugh played a clip from NBC, where Chuck Todd was lamenting the fact that the big IMPEACHMENT DAY…well, it just felt like any other day. Where was the pageantry? Where were the fireworks? Why did this huge day in Washington feel like just another rainy day of partisan fighting?

“I was struck both just last night and this morning how unremarkable today has suddenly felt — suddenly feels,” Todd said. “And I say that because it is remarkable what’s happening, it is historic what’s happening, and yet it feels like… let’s be honest, Lester. It feels like we’re coming on the air dealing with a government shutdown threat, not impeachment. And the reason I say it that way is because that is how numb I think our politics is to what we’re facing. I mean, this should be a moment where the whole country is basically having their own gut check, where we are having a national conversation trying to figure this out. The fact that we’re not having it just tells you how numb we are to the politics that we participate in.”

Limbaugh said that anyone with a lick of brains would realize what Todd’s “gee, what’s happening” tone was really getting at: It WAS a somber day…for the media, which still believed, up until very recently, that they had the power to control the lemmings.

“No, Chuck. No. It’s a testament to how ineffective your coup has been,” Limbaugh said.

Coming back from break, Limbaugh ran through several different polls that have shown that public opinion – which started low on impeachment to begin with – has dropped precipitously since the start of the hearings.

“They haven’t even been able to create the downward trend line for Trump,” he said. “And they’ve thrown everything they’ve got at him, every allegation — treason, stealing an election, colluding with a foreign — I think Chuck Todd’s worried that this isn’t remarkable. I think the American people are fully aware of how outrageously remarkable their charges have been, and the American people are very clear on the fact they haven’t seen any evidence for any of it, starting with the Mueller report, but even before that. There’s no evidence for anything. These charges are so outrageous and over the top, I don’t think anybody really believed them to begin with in a serious majority sense.”

On another channel – MSNBC or CNN or something – an analyst was lamenting that the American people simply didn’t “understand” the charges against Trump. We’re all too busy or too distracted or just too damn stupid. We can’t grasp the nuanced flavor of the impeachment charges, and that’s why the polls aren’t moving in the “right” direction. This is the kind of arrogance we’re dealing with.

The media probably should have realized that their power had been nullified on Election Day, 2016. Maybe this failed impeachment will be their wakeup call.

If not…well, we’ll wait for them to be shocked all over again next November.