You get to that debate last night, ladies and gentlemen.
Romney drove a bunch of smart roads, well prepared roads, experienced roads, roads built on hard facts, but Obama.
Obama's road had too many bumps.
Unemployment over 8%.
And by the way, did you like the way Romney just took it right to him?
Obama tried to get away with acting like he hadn't been in office for four years, and Romney didn't let him get away with it.
8% unemployment for 44 months ever since you took office.
You've driven up the national debt five and a half trillion dollars.
You've done this.
You've caused economic slowdown.
It was great.
Absolutely fabulous.
By the way, when I call your attention to something.
There is a the RNC's put together about a minute and a half ad called Smirk.
And it doesn't do me any good.
You have to see this.
I can't.
I could play the audio for you, but it's just Romney scoring point after point after point.
But it's a split screen.
Romney looking right at Obama, making point after point after point.
On the right screen is Obama looking down and dejected and attentive and we've linked to it at YouTube at Rush Limbaugh.com.
I just told Coco to put it up there.
So if you want to take a quick trip to Rush Limbaugh.com and click on the YouTube link.
It's a it's a great summary of last night.
Great way if you if people didn't see it and you want to try to tell them what happened, show them this minute 37-second ad the RNC put together.
Here's Obama at a campaign rally.
This this illustrates many of the points I was making in the first hour about the Libs not knowing what happened to them last night.
They do not understand conservatism.
They reject it, they don't take it seriously.
It's uh the home for kooks and extremists and oddballs and very, very small number of people really are conservative, and then they're all you know hicks and that kind of stuff.
And uh Obama as such doesn't really know how to deal with conservatism when when he hits it.
They end up believing the caricatures of us that they manufacture.
You know what they think of me.
You've seen it for 25 years.
Racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, uh uh lie, uh purposely misstate facts, all these things.
They really think that.
They never listen to this program.
Up until my national radio show started, nobody ever thought I hated anybody.
And after a week on the radio, guess what?
I was a hater.
And this is because I was a conservative.
That's the cliche.
So they've done the same with Romney.
They created his caricature, and they've put this caricature in ads, and Romney's a felon, and Romney's a guy who lets a guy's wife die, and Romney's a guy that uh screws the country and has all of his money in the Cayman Islands, and uh he said to a bunch of donors, he doesn't care, but half the country, as far as he's concerned, they can die and and just wilt away and said they believe this.
See, that's the thing that people don't understand.
They believe these caricatures they create.
We understand liberalism.
I know it as well as they do.
I explain it more honestly than they do, before I nuke it each day numerous times on this program.
They can't explain conservatism.
They don't take it seriously.
They've never studied it.
It's not worth their time.
So last night, they ran up against, for the most part, 90 minutes of solid conservatism, and they don't know what hit them.
So what's Obama do?
He goes to a campaign rally today.
He says that wasn't a real Romney.
It's it's sort of like they believe the exit polls are not the real votes.
You know, 2004, the exit polls say John Kerry is gonna be elected.
Sort of running around at five o'clock in the afternoon, all the Democrats thinking Carrie's the president.
And Bob Schrum, his campaign guy's right, Mr. President, I'd be the first to call you, Mr. President.
Ah.
And Carrie's, you know, getting ready to accept and speech later that night.
Then the real votes start being counted.
And it's a blowout, and they can't believe it.
And they think there's fraud in the exit.
Uh, in the in the real in the uh real poll.
They believe the exit poll.
Okay, so they've created his caricature of Romney.
He's whatever they think he is.
The real Romney shows up last night.
And guess what Obama says today?
No, no, no.
That wasn't a real Romney.
Here, listen.
He doesn't even know that there are such laws that encourage outsourcing.
He's never heard of them.
Never heard of them.
Never heard of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs over since.
See, he said that if it's true, he must need a new accountant.
Now we know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney because he seems to be doing just fine with his current account.
So you see, the man on stage last night.
He does not want to be held accountable for the real Mitt Romney's decisions and what he's been saying for the last year.
Is that the best Obama's guy after last night?
See, outsourcing is another one of these cliches that they come up with that they automatically attack conservative business outsource.
They ship American jobs in the middle of an administration which is destroying American jobs.
There is no president any better than destroying American jobs than Barack Obama.
But all he's got is the liberal playbook cliche, which says Republicans equal outsourcing jobs.
Meaning big business hates workers.
Big oil hates workers.
Big pharmaceutical big tobacco want their customers to die.
Big business kills customers.
Big energy kills people.
Big business hates employees, outsources jobs.
They believe this.
They believe it.
So this is the best Obama's got.
That's the best retort to what happened last night until they live in a different world.
And it's a world, it's an alternate universe that they manufacture.
Let's go to the media sound bites.
This is fun to listen to them wring their hands and alternately be angry because they see what's happened, folks.
For four years, the media's covered for this guy.
For four years, they have protected him.
For four years, they haven't asked probing questions.
For four years, they haven't done any investigative journalism.
Haven't any journalism period.
For four years.
And then he shows up last night, phones it in, as far as they're concerned, and you know what?
After all we've done for you, after all we've done for you, and you don't even you don't even have enough respect for us to act like you care, and you make us look like a bunch of body orifices, you make us look like a bunch of.
How dare you?
We've given you everything we've got.
We love you.
We've tried to shield you and protect you.
And then you don't even care enough to show up.
Make us look like a bunch of chumps.
That's the media today.
That was the media last night.
Let's go listen to some of it.
The president didn't seem as nearly as happy to be there as did Mitt Romney.
The president seemed listless.
He seemed angry at times, seemed like he didn't want to be there.
He looked like he didn't want to be there.
He seemed just a little bit detached at times.
He didn't want to be there.
He seemed to kind of want to get this over with.
Seemed to me like he was enduring the debate more than engaging in the debate.
Obama seemed nervous, ill at ease, and very much off his game.
Obama just seemed a little bit sleepy.
The president just didn't seem like he wanted to debate Romney.
President Obama didn't want to be there.
Yeah, didn't want to be there.
Didn't want to be that chump.
We've been working our asses off.
We've been lying, we've been cheating, we've been stealing, we eat gumbo to spoil, we've been doing everything, and he don't even show up.
Tick me off.
Here's the 47%.
Isn't it a montage?
The drive by is angry.
He didn't mention the 47%.
Mitt Romney's controversial 47% comments?
Conspicuously absent tonight.
I was amazed that the 47% never came up.
Never heard him mention anything about the 47%.
Never mentioned 47%.
The president never invoked the 47% video.
Never mentioned 47%, meaning Mitt Romney's critical, awful remarks about Obama supporters.
I never heard 47%.
He should have done the 47%.
There was no mention of the 47%.
He didn't bring up the 47%.
That's right.
Because I haven't had time to eat.
You come out and you only mention a 47%.
Damn.
Now see, this this is this is fascinating to me.
I I could spend all day analyzing this for you, and I would be 150% right.
This 47%, why wasn't it used?
I'll tell you again, there are two reasons.
A the campaign knows that is suitable only for ads.
You don't dare say this to Romney in a in a place where he can respond to it because it's a lie.
It is a taken out of context lie.
The media either doesn't care about that or they don't think it's a lie.
They might really think that Romney doesn't care about 47% of the people.
If they had the slightest bit of curiosity, they would have understood that what Romney was telling his donors is you remember that woman who said, Obama boon!
She never gonna vote for me.
That's all he was saying.
And maybe 47% of people aren't gonna vote for me.
Who knows?
A donor might have said, why aren't you trying to reach out to Democrats?
Why aren't you trying to reach out to the Obama voters?
And Romney might have said, look, there's 47% of people just aren't gonna vote for me no matter what.
So I in the campaign, I can't worry about that.
A perfectly sensible, intelligent way to go about it.
Obama phone!
Romney, he's took.
Well, why waste a penny trying to get that woman to vote for you?
But these people, the media actually think that Romney doesn't care about 47%.
It's the liberals if you really get down and deep.
23 million people out of work, does Obama act like he gives a care in the world?
The country's going to hell.
The economy is being blown up.
His policies are doing where is all this so-called liberal compassion?
They want to try to make people believe Romney doesn't care.
So somebody in the campaign knows that 47% is only effective as an unanswered allegation.
But you put it out there in debate where Romney can explain it just as I did, and then say, and by the way, Mr. President, you want to talk about old tapes.
I just saw one of you the other day talking about how Reverend Jeremia Wright totally responsible for who you are.
That's what you said.
Are you people in media really this closed off from the truth and reality?
They are they set this 47% up.
They thought they were giving Obama the thing that would wipe Romney out with this debate.
You understand today it was supposed to be over.
Today there were gonna be swing state polls which showed Obama up 10 or 15 or what it was gonna be over, and at 47%, that was gonna be the one that did and Obama didn't use it, and they're running around pulling their hair out because they set it up and he didn't use it.
This is really fun to watch.
When you understand what's really going on, as I do, this is really fun to watch because they feel really insulted.
They, I'm telling you, they think they set Obama up to wipe Romney out for good last night, and Obama didn't use it.
So they're thinking he doesn't respect him, or he's not even worse.
They're even maybe they're they're starting to ask, is he really that smart?
I think some of the media, hey, maybe he's not that smart.
You don't think that's it?
I don't.
Don't don't kid yourself.
Don't kid yourself.
I'm telling you, there are some of them out there in the media, the left wing thinkers are starting to ask them.
Maybe this guy just remember again.
Obama is not who he really is.
Obama is what they have manufactured him to be based on what they have always wanted him to be.
Smartest first black president.
This is getting even with all those racist good old boys for a hundred years to have Barack Obama be president.
And not only is he the first black president, he's the smartest president we've ever had.
He's the most brilliant president we've ever had.
And he's the best president we've ever had.
And take that, you conservatives.
And it's all falling apart.
And the reason it's falling apart is it was never real.
Obama isn't the best president we've ever had.
He's not that smart.
He is a total creature of media manufacture.
He's not real.
Except last night he was.
And there was no teleprompter to protect him.
There was no prop.
There were no speech written by somebody else.
There was no guardrail.
There was no cadre of media collaborators to shield him and protect him.
Not even Michelle could come in out of the audience to save him.
He was winging it all alone.
And this kind of stuff is not going to happen in a debate, say with Hillary, because the party's not going to eat itself alive.
It's not going to happen.
This is the first time he's probably really faced anything like this.
Direct challenges to who he is, direct challenges to his thinking, direct challenges to his policies, direct challenges to his brilliant accomplishments, direct challenges to him, Barack Hussein Obama.
Mm-mm.
How dare they?
Okay, I'm going to take a timeout, and we're going to come back with a squeeze more of your phone calls in here, and we'll we'll also pepper in more media reaction.
We got it all, so don't go away.
Snodley just asked me, uh I wish the audience could show response at this.
I don't know.
I didn't I didn't miss it last night that I think about it.
Um I think it would have uh might have interrupted.
See, but here I'm different.
If there's applause, I stop hearing what anybody's saying.
I I need one voice at a time.
If I'm in a room with two people and they're both talking, I will not understand.
I I if if Catherine wants to say something to me while we're I have to hit the mute.
I will not understand her or what's on TV.
So no, that applause for me just I didn't miss it at uh at all.
But look up, folks, last night there he look at look at all the cliches, the winkaboom last night.
No longer can they say Mitt Romney's stupid.
They can't say he's a felon, they can't say he's a murderer, can't say he's a hater, and can't say he's a bigot, they can't say he's a racist.
I mean, they can, but it wouldn't be believable.
That there's there's no all of these cliches that they have built and attached, none of them stick.
Racist sex is big and homophobia.
None of it.
Uncaring.
Only cares about the rich, doesn't care about the poor.
There was one guy on stage last night that came across as caring about jobs or people.
Only one was Mitt Romney.
I know a lot of you are cynic.
Well, they're gonna call him racist anyway.
Let him.
There's folks, I'm telling you, with the way you get the audience in, this is one of the record high audiences for first night debates.
I don't have the exact number, but it's gonna be over 50 million.
For what it's like two and a half times the Republican convention.
Yeah, it was big.
It was big.
I don't have the whole thing in yet.
But uh it was it was par excellence.
Here, where are we going next on the phones?
Uh give me a uh give me a green light or tell me where we're San Antonio, Texas, John.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
I just wanted to make a point that uh all this talk about you know all this talk by the media about uh Obama being rusty because he hasn't had a debate in four years, isn't that just a blatant admission that they haven't been doing their job for four years?
I mean, they're supposed to be asking the tough question.
Not only that, not only that, this whole business uh he wasn't prepared.
He uh remember the story was that he really he said debate prep was was a drag.
Excuse me, he is president of the United States.
Just what the hell does he have to prep?
What what what the hell is going on that he doesn't know about that he has to quickly cram and learn?
He'd been president now for three and three quarter years, just exactly what's in a debate briefing book.
Romney tendencies.
The things Romney says the way he might say things the way to go after Romney.
Okay, maybe I'll acknowledge that, but for crying out loud, what kind of prep does the president of the United States need wasn't prepared?
See, this is my point from the get-go.
He's not prepared to be president.
He was never qualified to be president.
And had there been an adequate vetting of this man, as there is for everybody else who seeks this office, he would never have had a chance to get elected.
It would not have happened.
So all of these excuses that they want to put out there.
Well, a 47% wasn't used.
Well, he wasn't prepared.
Well, he was a little rusty.
Well, you know, he didn't take Romney seriously enough.
Uh they're just excuses.
Because what we need to do is measure all of this against the way he was presented to us in 2008.
And he was unlike any human being ever in American politics.
Smartest you remember all of those superlatives used to describe him.
And now he's just a base human being.
Folks, it's all been so phony it's unreal.
What did New Jersey Governor Chris Christie know that the rest of us didn't?
Because Christie called this.
Governor Christie predicted this.
Remember they went out raised the expectation bar way up high.
Oh, God, no, don't do that.
Oh, geez.
And you know, after each of these debates, but before they start, tell me if I'm right.
Are all of you scared to death that our guy's gonna freeze up and blow it?
And the next day, all you do is spend time saying, damn, I wish he would have said it.
He should have said that.
He should have said that when Obama said he should have already have you saying anything that is is he it should Romney say anything?
Or did he not say anything you think he should have?
Maybe, but it's it it didn't work out the way it normally does.
The left is out there today.
Why didn't he use a boy 7%?
Why did he say that Romney hates kids?
What happened to war on women?
What happened to Feder Romney wants every woman to get pregnant and then have to get aborted?
Why did he say that?
They're out there, you know, asking themselves, why did Obama say all that stuff?
They're the ones.
You know, they they can sit there and wring their hands and they say, gee, what could have Obama done?
There's nothing.
Folks.
When we show up with conservatism and we have substance, and this is amazing.
This debate was about substance.
It wasn't about style or image or any of that.
Substance ideas, and when that happens, they don't have a prayer.
They can't keep up.
He didn't lose because he didn't show up.
He didn't lose because he didn't use the 47%.
He didn't lose because of the altitude, like Al Gore saying.
He didn't lose because he didn't prep.
He lost because his ideas don't cut it.
There's nothing they could have done.
Not a thing.
And they, even now, still do not know what hit them last night.
They don't know why.
You can listen to the excuses they're making.
You can listen to the laments that they're offering.
To know that they do not understand what hit them last night.
They don't know what happened.
They don't know why.
Obama looked so bad.
All they know is he did.
Altitude 47%.
Because their ideas don't cut it and can't compete.
Pure and simple.
Back to the media.
We have a there was there was another theme that ran through the post-debate coverage last night that the Liberals try to tell themselves to make themselves feel better about what had happened.
Other presidents have gone on to win after less than stellar first debate performances.
George W. Bush in 2004.
It also reminded me of 2004 when President Bush was the incumbent president and had a terrible performance.
Incumbents often have problems in their very first debate.
It is not unusual.
George W. Bush back in 2004.
John Kerry came in to the debates behind, took it to the president.
I was immediately taken back to the first Kerry Bush debate.
Striking analogy, but guess what?
John Kerry lost by the same amount he was trailing before that debate.
So that gets to the question of whether debates really matter that much.
Yeah, well, let me tell you something.
If you guys had used the 47%, and if you guys had cleaned Romney's clock, guess what?
The first debate would have been all you needed.
And you would be proclaiming the day that it is over.
Here's Stephanie Cutter, campaign spokesbabe.
She's on CNN last night, post-debate spin coverage.
Jessica Yellen, the reporter at Infobabe at CNN said, you know, the president, he seemed to get testy at one point when he was interrupted by Jim O'Lara, and he sort of bristled.
So I wonder, will the president do a little bit more debate prep before the next debate make us look better?
What are you doing?
We're doing everything we can to make him look smart and brilliant and he comes out and turns into performance like this, making us look like a bunch of buffoons.
Is he gonna prepare a little bit better?
Is he?
We feel pretty good about the president's performance here tonight.
Again, he wasn't speaking to the people in this room.
He wasn't speaking to the pundit class.
He's speaking to people at home.
I sometimes wondered if we'd even needed a moderator because we admit Ronnie.
Oh we didn't even need a moderator.
Admit Romney out there.
Yeah, Jim Lara lost control.
Obama was speaking to people at home.
If that's true, that's a worse thing could have happened.
The media says, No, he's supposed to speak to us and then we tell the people what he said.
Here's Jim Lara.
There were numerous times last night that I I thought Lara's trying to bail Romney or bail bail bail Obama out.
I really did.
It was going so bad as a Jim O'Reara is throwing Obama lifelines.
Time after time in the debate.
Uh Lara tried to lead it's Larer, by the way.
Anybody else pronounce it Larer, but he's on television, he's on PBS, he's from the South, and so that means that Jim Lara.
L-E-R-A-H.
But if you lived on Maple Street in any town, USA, it would be Lerar.
I'm just pronouncing it, spelling it, it was Jim Lerar.
I don't want you to think I can't say the word.
I'm just pronouncing it the way he lives, a Jim O'Lara.
I at uh at PBS.
Here's a there's a montage of of a moderator trying to bail Obama out.
Mr. President, uh please respond directly to what the governor just said about trickle down, his trickle-down approach, as he said yours is.
Do you challenge what the governor just said about his his own plan?
Mr. President.
Sorry.
Mr. President.
Well, we've had this discussion before.
Now, Ben, about the idea that in order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.
There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.
But Mr. President, you're saying in order to get it the job done, it's got to be balanced.
If we're serious, we've got to take a balanced responsible approach.
Mr. President, uh, do you see a major difference between the two of you on social security?
You know, I suspect that on Social Security uh we've got a somewhat similar position.
And you don't support that.
I don't.
And and let me explain why.
I'm not going to grade the two of you and say you your answers have been too long or or I've done a poor job.
You've done a great job.
Yeah.
I there are a couple of times in there where Lara is he's wearing an earpiece.
Lara is wearing an earpiece.
He's got he's got to be in touch with producers and directors, give him time and so what?
What?
Yeah, and and and uh so he's got m uh wait a minute.
Um you gotta be it has to revenue in addition to cuts, right, Mr. President.
Oh, that's right.
Uh there's me.
Revenue addition to cuts.
This wasn't this is this is fabulous.
I I uh I love it.
There has to be revenue in addition to cuts.
Um Mr. President, you you're saying in order to get the job done, it's got to be balanced, you gotta have if we're there, we gotta take a balanced responsible approach.
It was walking him through the woods.
I don't know who was talking to Lara.
I I don't even know if he was talking to Lara.
I don't know if they're I don't know, I don't know.
I'm just it's just funny.
Just funny.
But it did sound, if you're in a courtroom, it sounded like Jim Lara was leading the witness.
Here James Carville, not happy last night on CNN.
I don't think that President Obama did what this other campaign wanted to do.
President Obama came in.
He wanted to have a conversation.
Romney came there with a chainsaw.
He was trying to talk to the chainsaw.
Obama didn't want to have a conversation.
Obama wanted to have, he didn't want to have a debate.
A. He has to do them because of tradition.
He didn't want to have a debate.
He didn't want to have a conversation.
He didn't want to be there.
Now we have, I told Cookie.
I said cookie and no he was either last night or this morning.
So we're gonna have a one-day exemption of our ban on MSNBC.
There was too much.
It was too rich.
It was it was a smorgasbord for us to choose from.
So take a brief time out here in obscene about the holy profit timeout.
We'll come back and let you hear what the loons at MSNBC were saying about it.
Folks, I got the numbers in here, and this is unbelievably huge.
The TV numbers.
Minimum 65 million before we count the telemundos and univisions.
Here are the numbers.
The Fox News channel, by the way, had the highest audience of any network, cable to broadcast, for the hour and a half from 9 to 1030 last night.
Fox had uh 10.4 million.
They had nearly three million in the demo, 2554.
Let's just stick with the total viewers.
CNN six million, MSNBC 4.7 million.
Broadcast network, CBS 10 million, ABC 10 million, uh, both at 10.1, Fox was at 10.4.
Uh NBC 9.9, and Fox Broadcast 6.9.
So basically over 65 million people watch this thing.
Fox News channel with 10.4 million viewers, CBS and ABC at 10.1 million each.
But if you add all that up, it's a little bit north of 65 million.
And, as I say, before you count the Spanish language networks and what they throw in.
Now, what does it tell you with Fox News channel has the highest audience of any network?
What does that tell you about Republican voter enthusiasm?
Hmm.
I think it tells us quite a bit.
Okay, our ban on MSNBC was lifted temporarily just for a day, so that we could let you hear Chris Matthews, who when we last heard from him was talking about the tingle up his leg.
And he got every time he listened to Barack Obama speak or saw him speak.
Well, it didn't go that well last night.
Two bites from Matthews.
Here's the first.
Tonight wasn't an MSNBC debate, was it?
It just wasn't.
It didn't mention all the key fighting points of this campaign.
I don't know what he was doing out there.
He had his head down.
He was enduring the debate rather than fighting it.
Here's my question for Obama.
I know he likes to say he doesn't watch cable television, but maybe he should start.
Maybe should start.
I don't know how he let Romney get away with the crap he threw out tonight.
About about social security.
How do you get a Romney get away with a crap?
Maybe he needs to start watching us.
That's the ticket.
That's the ticket.
That's what he needs to do.
He needs to be watching more MSNBC.
That wasn't MSNBC to me.
It wasn't looked like he cared out there.
Head down.
It was enduring debate rather than fighting it.
Chris, there was nothing he could do.
There wasn't any crap in the debate last night, other than on yours.
There was nothing he could do.
His ideas don't cut it.
Romney handed his head to him in a silver platter.
You lost 23 million jobs.
You ran up five trillion dollars of debt.
You did this, you did that, you did it.
You're incompetent.
You're killing this economy.
In so many words.
There's no answer to that, Chris.
It's the truth.
You can't slough it up on somebody else.
They say it's Bush.
Wonder why he didn't say it was Bush.
See, they can't do things in a debate they can do in a in a campaign ad.
And Matthews in the next bite says, We got our knives out on MSNBC, but Obama went in there unarmed.
See, this is my point.
They're out there thinking they set him up.
They set him up for the 47%.
They've been covering for him.
They've been protecting him and working hard.
They've been building this guy up.
They've been carrying the water.
They've been making sure that people don't know who he really is.
We are busting our rear ends to help you.
And you show up and you don't even care.
Make us look like a bunch of buffoons, like a bunch of bozos.
That's what this bite means.
Where was Obama tonight?
He should watch, well, not just hardball racers should watch you.
It should watch the Rapper now.
He should watch Lawrence.
There's a hot debate going on in this country.
You know where it's being held?
Here on this network.
It's where we're having the debate.
We have our knives out.
We go after the people and the facts.
What was he doing tonight?
He went in there disarmed.
Obama should watch MSNBC.
He will learn something every night.
The stuff we're watching, this is like first grade to most of us.
We know all this stuff.
They can't believe it either.
They can't believe it either.
Chris, I'm serious.
You ever asked yourself why you think Obama's the great man that he is?
Has he ever done anything?
To warrant greatness?
He's got a Nobel Peace Prize on the cum for crying out loud.
He didn't do anything.
He's only great because you've convinced yourself he's great and you've told everybody else he's great.
What's he ever done?
You guys have manufactured a cartoon character here.
These are the same people, by the way, that fought the West Wing.
The TV show on NBC.
That was the real presidency during Bush.
That was the real Oval Office.
That was the real White House.
The West Wing, the TV show.
And now they think the real debate in American politics is on their dumb network?
That nobody watches most of the time.
There's no debate on their network.
There's no debate on their network.
There's no conservatism on their network.
It's laughable.
Here's Al Gore.
Al Gore was on his network, current TV.
I didn't know it was possible to have a smaller audience than MSNBC, but Al Gore has pulled it off.
His own network, and he anchored the debate coverage, the post-debate coverage.
was his excuse.
I'm going to say something controversial here.
Obama arrived in Denver at 2 p.m.
today.
just a few hours before the debate romney did his debate prep in denver when you go to 5 000 feet And you only have a few hours to adjust.
Yeah, what happens?
What what what what what do you need what what uh where are you gonna be there?
Honestly, he said it.
He didn't get to Denver early enough.
He wasn't there.
He didn't Romney was he was ready for the altitude, the 5,000 feet.
Here's Savannah Guthrie.
We move on now to the uh today show.
Savannah Guthrie talking to David Axelrod uh and the 47%.
Was he satisfied with that performance?
It sounds like you're acknowledging that the president was out debated and less prepared than Mitt Romney.
Why is that?
I didn't say he was uh out debated.
I think he treated the American people like adults, and he told them the truth, which was a fundamental distinction between him and Governor Romney.
You know, David, a lot of your supporters were dismayed and frankly mystified to not hear the president go after Romney on things like his remarks about the forty-seven percent of America.
He didn't repeat Bain capital attacks, attacks about the tax return.
These are staples of your campaign.
Has he abandoned those attacks, or did he make a strategic decision to not be aggressive in this debate?
No, he made a decision to discuss fundamental issues facing this country.
You know, Axelrod sitting there saying, do I have to explain everything to you people?
What's her name?
Savannah Guthrie.
When she says, you know, a lot of your supporters were dismayed, what she means is, we in the media can't believe.
A lot of your supporters were dismayed.
You didn't go, David, we who are carrying this guy's water set him up on the 47%.