By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

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I didn’t catch Ted Cruz’s speech in New York last week at a candidate’s forum. But Rush Limbaugh listened to it and was shocked with what he heard, or didn’t hear as the case may be. He said it was literally the best dirty trick he’d ever seen. Limbaugh has been in this game a long time, so that’s saying something. First Trump spoke and there were no issues… then Kasich came on and that went smoothly… finally, Cruz spoke and it started out fine. But after a few minutes, his audio went loud and then was drowned out by people eating and clinking silverware.

The dinner was a New York Republican black-tie event. Rush was watching Fox News where this happened. According to other listeners, the audio was fine on CNN. It took Limbaugh about 30 seconds to figure out what was going on. Cruz’s microphone had been cut at the podium and they had replaced it with what sounded like microphones at five or six tables. All you could hear were people eating and the clinking of knives and forks on plates. People were drinking and chatting. You could even hear them smacking their lips while eating. That wasn’t a technical glitch… that was on purpose.

At first Limbaugh thought it was an audio glitch and waited for Fox News to fix it. But that didn’t happen. Rush waited and waited and it never got fixed. Finally there was silence and then the same noise came back. Ted Cruz had no idea all this was going on. He sounded normal to the audience and from what I heard, they were riveted by him. All that could be heard was normal eating and waiters bustling around.

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Enter Sean Hannity, who said, “Sorry. Audio problems.” Then he just cut Cruz off and turned to Eric Bolling to discuss the virtues of Trump and Lewandowski. Rush then said, “Well, hot damn. This is one of the best damn tricks I have ever seen. They just sabotaged Cruz at this thing.” There’s no way to know who for sure did it, but it was a collaborative event. Limbuagh thought that conservatives on their web sites and social media would blow up at that point. Not so much.

What did happen was mind blowing. When he did see a thread concerning the whole setup, it was the exact opposite of what he expected. The theme was Cruz was so boring, Cruz was so bad, Cruz is so hated that nobody listened to him. The media on site as witnesses were tweeting and reporting that nobody listened to Cruz, that the crowd was getting up and walking around and milling around and being rude, that the whole room had tuned Cruz out. Which was not true. This was a smear job… a hit job… Cruz got mugged in New York. So much for New York values.

What was Limbaugh’s reaction? He just smiled and said, “Whoever put this together is a genius.” He believes they coordinated every bit of the incident. First, they sabotaged Cruz, then they got the media to make it look like what happened was totally natural… that Cruz is hated, despised, everybody started ignoring him. Tweets were percolating that said, “Wow, this crowd is not digging Cruz’s speech. A lot of people talking amongst themselves as Cruz speaks at New York GOP gala. So far the most enthusiastic crowd reaction to Cruz has been a couple of moments of tepid applause. It’s legitimately loud in here, people talking and eating and ignoring Cruz.”

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This only happened on Fox News and that was the message that was being put out via pundits such as Sean Hannity. Even the next day, they kept up the same mantra on Fox, “Wow, just terrible last night for Ted Cruz. Nobody cared what he had to say. I mean, you should see it, people getting up and milling around and walking around, it was rude, people didn’t care. It was really a big problem for Ted Cruz.”

Kellyanne Conway got up on Fox News and furthered the lie. She went on about how disrespectful and unfortunate it was to treat Ted Cruz that way. Rush pointed out that the whole attack was pulled off perfectly and brilliantly. It was a brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed slam on Ted Cruz. How’s that for media bias? The event took place in a property that once belonged to Donald Trump, if I’m not mistaken. The event took place at the Commodore Hotel. It was obviously planned for weeks in advance with Cruz as the target. They definitely gave Cruz a taste of New York values.

Somebody turned the podium mic off and turned on all the other microphones in the room to pick up all the room noise. Then the tweets started: “It’s sort of painful to watch someone speak passionately to a crowd who wouldn’t even notice if he killed himself on stage.” The media had to be in on this.

Each of the speeches went 15 minutes max. There were a number of pre-speeches as well. Typically at these events, you don’t eat until the speaking is done, so that was prearranged as well. Just as Cruz started to speak, magically, dinner was served.

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You just know that this was payback for Cruz’s New York values comment which was taken out of context. Later that night and into the next day, the media and all of Fox News were reporting what a dull, dry speech Cruz made. It was so bad, it was so boring that everybody ignored him, started walking around, talking to themselves, making noise. They went out of their way to embarrass him.

If this could happen once, it can happen again. It makes you start to wonder about a number of things and just how much the media and politicos are manipulating what we hear and see. Cruz gave a fantastic speech and was loudly applauded at that dinner. But you would never know it if you watched Fox News during the event. I don’t know if Fox had a hand in it, or if it involved other parties who set the whole thing up. But one thing is for sure… Cruz was the victim of a political hit job at that dinner and they tried to silence and smear him. Can’t have a constitutional conservative speaking freely in New York. That doesn’t reflect their values after all. As Rush put it, this was aimed at Cruz and it hit bull’s-eye, whoever did it.

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