The media coverage following President Trump’s Oval Office address on Tuesday night seemed to be missing something. As expected, the Democrats criticized Trump and continued to blame him for the partial government shutdown. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called it “a degradation of the Oval Office.” The subsequent Chuck and Nancy show became the target of bipartisan derision. One liberal pundit said it looked as if Speaker Pelosi had been embalmed. Still, it was remarkable that no poll results were reported in the mainstream media coverage of the President’s first primetime address to the nation. Nowhere to be found were Frank Luntz and his traditional panel of independent voters.

It is customary for media outlets to poll viewers after a President delivers a major speech to gain a sense of how his message was received by voters. Politicians and media outlets conduct polls regularly to gage public sentiment on everything from the issues of the day to Melania Trump’s latest dress. Why, then, was polling data absent from the reporting?

Very likely, polls were taken, but the mainstream media chose not to publish the results because they reflected positively on the President. Trump hit a home run on Tuesday night. He came across as concerned, compassionate, decisive and presidential. Schumer and Pelosi appeared wooden, defiant, resentful and well – old, out of touch and completely in denial of a problem which has plagued our nation for decades. Their “sad” performance was confirmed by the hilarious images which immediately went viral on social media portraying them as the farmers in Grant Wood’s iconic “American Gothic” painting, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as they appeared on “Green Acres,” zombies and devils. My personal favorite was one which placed Pelosi’s face on Schumer’s body and vice versa.

Rush Limbaugh was asked about the lack of polling by one of his listeners. “Have you noticed that there has been very little polling — almost no polling — since Trump’s Oval Office address to the nation earlier this week? And there was none of the usual stuff they do for presidential speeches. There was no ‘snap poll’ on CNN or any other network right after the speech. There was no online quickie, ‘What do you think?’ poll anywhere.”

Limbaugh replied,  “Doesn’t the question kind of answer itself, folks? Well, the short answer is it’s because they… I’m sure they did do a couple of polls. I’m sure they did, in a flash way, sample public opinion. They didn’t get the negative reaction to Trump they hoped for. But there’s more.”

He then played a clip of Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, speaking to Fox News’ Martha MacCallum. (The full interview can be heard on the video above.) MacCallum asked Parscale about the Trump campaign’s internal polling data which, apparently, shows Trump at his highest levels ever. Parscale replied:

We’ve been monitoring him over the entire two-year period and prior to that. But we kind of started it over when he became president and he got into office. And watching the data, you know, I started to see this rise as he started making this fight. And I’m not surprised by it. Because if you go back and you look… You look at the people that are kind of these swing voters, these people who may possibly not like him for personality or different reasons, the No. 1 reason they will vote for him is because of his stance on border security.

Limbaugh responded:

Bingo. So here you have the Trump campaign manager saying that their data, their internal data — and it makes no sense for them to lie to themselves. Internal polling data campaign to campaign, candidate to candidate, politician to politician, that’s the one result they don’t lie to themselves about. They have to take that seriously. It’s theirs. And their internal data shows Trump’s at his highest level since this fight began. It makes perfect sense why the Drive-By Media would not be reporting a single public opinion reaction to Trump’s Oval Office speech or even on the subject…

The public polling data that we do have is 93% of the American people think it’s a major problem; 70% of the people support a national emergency declaration to solve this.

Democrats are not fools. They must be conducting some polling of their own and are very aware of Trump’s growing support on this issue. Trump is fighting for the American people. The Democrats are fighting for power.

They accuse Trump of  trying to fulfill a campaign promise as if that’s a bad thing. All politicians should try to fulfill their campaign promises. But the reality is that, once elected, most promises are quickly forgotten. Why do Democrats denigrate Trump for trying to do what he said he would do? And why is this very notion so foreign to Democrats? Is it possible that Americans see what’s really happening here politically…finally?

The truth is that, for Democrats, political goals, i.e. the quest for power, take priority over the interests of the American people. Voters have been slow to realize this, but some are starting to see it. And perhaps Democrats are gradually realizing that their strategy is becoming transparent and that they must take action.

I posted here that several Democrats appear to be softening their rhetoric somewhat about the border wall signaling they just may be open to a compromise. Although they are not enthusiastically embracing the idea of a border wall, Democrats are beginning to show signs of resigned submission.

Limbaugh also spoke about this shift on Friday’s radio show:

And in fact there are some Democrats now — there’s a break in the Democrat wall around their party. There are five or six Democrats, elected Democrats in Washington who are now publicly expressing their thinking that we need fencing here, maybe a wall here, not the whole border, but there’s some breakdown here. You know, the Democrats won the House in 2016, but a lot of Democrats won in districts where Trump was elected. And those Democrats I think are hearing from their constituents on this.

If Trump remains steadfast in this fight (and he is in so deeply, I can’t imagine he would surrender now), he will win. Limbaugh believes Trump is winning “big time.” On Friday, he told his listeners:

Do any of you have the sense that President Trump is winning this shutdown battle with Chuck and Nancy? I do. I have the sense that he’s winning this thing big time. By winning it big time I’m talking about with the American people. And I think Chuck and Nancy and the Democrats are beginning to look the way we see them to a lot of people.