Well … not really. But that’s the kind of statement Trump supporters make every day about every member of the media (and normal people) who fail to sufficiently praise Donald Trump. They use them as headlines on articles, they write it as tweets and Facebook statuses, the put it in subject lines of emails they send to non-Trump lover websites. They do this because they believe it, and also because they think it will make people shut up and stop opposing them.. They do it to win. And because of that, and because of the reasons that Rush Limbaugh lays out below, they and he should PRAISE me for that headline. It’s a slam dunk.

The truth is that until now I’ve held out on getting angry at Rush Limbaugh. Call it hope. Loyalty. I don’t know. I have this list in my head of people who have been Trump boosters but are still salvageable, or who deep down are truly conservative and by their long history of support have earned this … heresy. Rush was on that list. After all he’s done for the conservative movement, it would surely be ridiculous to throw him overboard for one bad year. Right? But …

But the fact is, you can’t do anything about it when they throw themselves overboard, and Rush Limbaugh has done just exactly that. If it wasn’t clear before, it absolutely must be considered totally blatant now, after the most ridiculous, farcical, intelligence-insulting defense of outright dishonesty I’ve ever seen committed to virtual ink. This is really atrocious. Shameful. Pandering, money-grubbing, off-putting, and many other -ings.

Trump knew about Colorado. You must understand that. He knew and he knows. He and his campaign know the rules, they know how it works. They are not and were not caught off guard. What they have been doing is lying about it. And what does Rush Limbaugh call that lie? That incitement? “Winning.” He calls taking advantage of Trump voters with disinformation in order to unleash them as an unholy weapon against fellow Republicans “winning.” I kid you not.

“On Saturday, April 9th,” Mr. Trump begins, in his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, “On Saturday, April 9, Colorado had an “election” without voters. Delegates were chosen on behalf of a presidential nominee, yet the people of Colorado were not able to cast their ballots to say which nominee they preferred.

“A planned vote had been canceled. And one million Republicans in Colorado were sidelined.”

Now I hate to do this, but that just isn’t correct. There was never going to be an election, a primary election in Colorado and this op-ed gives the impression that Colorado was gonna have a vote. There was gonna be a primary and people are gonna vote like they have in other states and at the last-minute changed their mind. There never was a plan to vote. There was never a plan to vote that was canceled in Colorado. Colorado was always, from last August, going to be what it was: a series of conventions where delegates would be chosen to the convention by Republican attendance at these various county conventions and at the big state convention, but there was never gonna be a vote.

“I hate to do this”? Why do you hate to tell the truth, Rush? Trump’s op-ed is indeed “not correct”. Another way to say that is that it’s an outright falsehood; a lie deliberately constructed to incite his base. But of course you know that, Rush. In fact, you say that exact thing.

And this op-ed — you know, I asked a question two days ago, and I asked it again yesterday. And that question was, why didn’t Trump call attention to Colorado not having an election beforehand? Why did he wait until Colorado’s process was complete to lodge a complaint about it? And this op-ed gives us the answer. You know what we have here? Trump and Colorado is a classic lesson in winning by losing. How to win by losing.

It is apparent to me now that the Trump campaign was fully aware that they were gonna lose Colorado this way and had found and discovered a way to turn that to their advantage by claiming that Colorado had cheated, by claiming that Colorado was disenfranchising people, by claiming that Colorado was gonna have a vote and then changed their mind. But their never was a plan to vote. So I’ve answered my question. Trump waited ’til after Colorado to exploit the fact that there was not an election there, and it helped his point if he lost.

So for those of you devising campaign strategies in the future, file this one under the category of winning by losing. And even in the next page of the op-ed he refers to it again. He said: “No one forced anyone to cancel the vote in Colorado. Political insiders made a choice to cancel it. And it was the wrong choice.” There was no vote ever intended to happen. So there was never in this cycle a cancellation of an election. But Trump’s op-ed makes it look like there was a scheduled vote and a last minute cancellation to disenfranchise people because they didn’t want Trump to win.

I can’t even with this. He is literally saying that Donald Trump, with malicious pre-planning, with intent, concocted a fake story to get his fan-base the maximum amount of angry by lying to them about their literal constitutional freedoms being taken away. If this were a nation instead of a party, that would be sedition.

Rush is praising that. He thinks it’s “brilliant“.

And Trump supporters are more than happy to embrace that. I mean, every supporter loves it when their guy is the victim of some cheating or some dirty trick. So I’ve answered my question. Why didn’t Trump call attention to this before they caucused in Colorado? Because he was counting on losing and then exploiting it, which he’s done brilliantly, and here you have this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which carries the theme forward.

Seriously, remember when we talked about being able to even? I not only can’t, I’m permanently “even” disabled. My ability to even has been excised, amputated, crushed.

You would think that was it, but Rush really decided to lay it on. He wasn’t finished by a long-shot.

Oh, yeah, this Trump op-ed, it carries on the narrative that is fundamental to populism. You cannot have populism without the impression that the man is shafting the little guy. So the contretemps, the controversy in Colorado has actually buttressed Trump’s campaign theme, that the political system is rigged against the little guy, in this case Trump’s the little guy, he’s the outsider. So the political process is rigged against the little guy. He’s the champion of little guys, so they’re rigging it against him. And his op-ed today, making it look like Colorado had planned to have an election and canceled the plan, that didn’t happen. There was never going to be an election.

It doesn’t matter. As far as Trumpists are concerned, their guy got screwed and that’s the end of it. And not only did their guy get screwed, the American people got screwed because the establishment didn’t let people vote, even though there never was going to be a vote.

Again, normally this would be a criticism. But Rush is loving it. It’s brilliant!

Then to really drive the knife in, you have to see the below, from the transcript. This was in response to a caller and it is amazing.

I mean, it’s abundantly clear to me now that the Trump campaign knew a long time ago Colorado wasn’t gonna have an election. Not a standard, ordinary, typical primary election. It’s abundantly obvious to me now that the Trump campaign planned on exploiting it right along the lines of their entire campaign theme. Outsider, populism, deck stacked against the outsider, who represents the little guy. They knew there wasn’t gonna be a primary. They knew there wasn’t gonna be a primary vote.

So the objective, don’t mention this beforehand, ’cause what you want to do is lose this, to be able to then go forth and write your Wall Street Journal op-ed about how an election had been planned and canceled. I mean, the implied thing there is “They knew we were gonna win, they knew we were gonna win,” the Trump people say, “and so they canceled the election so we wouldn’t win.” Never mind there wasn’t an election. Never mind there never was gonna be an election. Never mind there was gonna be a primary. Therefore there wasn’t an election that could be canceled. Doesn’t matter.

In the world where perception is reality, this is another slam dunk score and I’m sure there’s some people upset about it who think that this ought to be all aboveboard and honest. Issues are very important, these are serious times, we don’t have time to monkey around here, we gotta in there, we gotta address these issues, we gotta educate people, they gotta vote as an informed electorate as possible. And one side is saying, to hell with that, we’re just gonna win. Whatever it takes to win, we’re gonna win. We can’t go forward without winning, that’s the objective, we’re gonna win. And that seems to be the guiding principle and philosophy here.

Not only does he heap even more praise, calling it a “slam dunk,” but he openly dismisses the idea of honesty as being some loser strategy-failure. Lie to win. Against other Republicans. Incite your base to the point that they are prepared for a civil war because they believe their actual right to vote has actually been stolen. That’s a “slam dunk” according to El Rushbo.

But since being a dittohead is so vital to our conservative economy, I’m jumping on board. Victory at all costs. Thus my winning headline. And also I would like to now allege that Rush Limbaugh probably buys clothes or other products on occasion that are made in China. Do you hear me Trumpers? CHINA! Please ask Roger Stone for Rush’s hotel room number. That’s a slam dunk strategy you see.

Winning! As a theme, that’s so 2011. Is that what we really want for the GOP? Is this?

PS: (With apologies to Moe for the post-script.) I’m still holding out hope, though. Rush was always there for us. I’m disappointed, not that my disappointment matters. But maybe next year things will be better. Not that Trumpism is going to just magically disappear after the election, something else media folks aren’t properly considering, and which we’ll read more about later this weekend here at RedState.