RUSH: Here\u2019s Josh on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Welcome, sir. Great to have you with us.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, Rush. Me and my two girls, we love your show.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you.<\/p>\n
CALLER: My point is Trump campaigned on draining the swamp, and the single best way to prevent that is by having investigations opened on him from the day he takes office. This is more about Democrat and Republican. This is about him wanting to clean up shop, and they\u2019re just having this investigation open from Day One to impede that effort of Trump.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Oh. You think these investigations are dual purpose. One, to destroy Trump. The other one, to keep him from following through on draining the swamp?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Correct. And you can\u2019t open up such investigation in the presidency. It has to be there from Day One. That way his hands are already tied. He can\u2019t do anything because, after all, he\u2019s already under investigation.<\/p>\n
RUSH: When you say you can\u2019t open an investigation in the presidency, what do you mean?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/650-061617-Drain-The-Swamp-Trump.jpg\")
CALLER: I mean that if he takes charge and there\u2019s no investigation, he can lay down the law. He can fire who he wants. He can show up there and say, “We mean business.” Once there\u2019s a cloud over him from Day One, that he\u2019s already under investigation, it\u2019s really hard to do anything.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Oh. Oh, oh. Yeah, yeah. Well, he has not been under investigation since Day One.<\/p>\n
CALLER: It doesn\u2019t have to necessarily be him, but there was always something about him, his campaign, and we didn\u2019t really know that he wasn\u2019t under investigation \u2019til Comey just confirmed that. So basically his hands were tied from Day One. There was always this cloud over him, he is under investigation; he isn\u2019t. And that was the effort of the Justice Department, as well as the FBI, to not allow him to drain the swamp \u2019cause that\u2019s the biggest problem. You know, Trump can deal with the Democrats, he can run rings around them, but once it\u2019s the Justice Department it\u2019s like you can\u2019t start up with them and they can open up investigations, so that\u2019s really —<\/p>\n
RUSH: I think he could. It\u2019s just a question of would it be wise to do it. Now, let\u2019s review some things. You are taking an expanded meaning here of being under investigation. We are assuming that after the election we had this investigation into Russian connections, collusion and the FBI was involved and the media was filled every day with supposed evidence that was nothing more than fake news and lies from sources in the Deep State about this or that person who had maybe talked to the Russians or this or that and Flynn and all this.<\/p>\n
And if you want to say that that constituted an investigation that impeded Trump, you could. But we didn\u2019t know at the time, of course, that Trump was not a suspect in this investigation; it was very strategic to keep that quiet. But that was largely media. Now, I\u2019m not saying it didn\u2019t have any effect on Trump. It could have ticked him off. It could have intimidated him.<\/p>\n
I do know, folks, because he told me in February that he was surprised that the country had not unified around the presidency by that time. He was genuinely surprised at the continued opposition. Well, that told me that in his mind he expected after he won and was inaugurated that the country would come together. I couldn\u2019t believe he told me that when he told me. My mouth fell open because how in the world could he not believe that this was going to continue, that they hated him, that they despised him winning.<\/p>\n
They were never gonna unify. It was never gonna be that which he thought was gonna happen. And I have told you countless times, I think it\u2019s because he doesn\u2019t see these people ideologically. He doesn\u2019t see them for who they really are. If you don\u2019t see liberals ideologically, you\u2019re never gonna see who they really, really are. And he apparently didn\u2019t have anybody in his close orbit that was telling him this.<\/p>\n
But I still submit, for example, right now, if he wanted to, he could fire Rosenstein, and he could fire Mueller. There\u2019s nothing stopping him from doing it, nothing legally. He could go to Rosenstein right now. He would be perfectly within his bounds to go to Rosenstein and say, “Look, this investigation can\u2019t be wide open for anything. You\u2019ve gotta limit what these people can look for. You\u2019ve gotta limit it to actual felonious crimes. You can\u2019t have them subpoenaing anybody they want financial records, text records, tax records. There has to be a limit.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/MuellerRobert-.jpg\")
He would be perfectly within his bounds to do that because he is the executive branch. And if he wanted to fire these people, he could. When you see in the media, “There\u2019s no way he can do it,” they\u2019re talking politically. But since the independent counsel, special counsel\u2019s been named, and now since they made sure to leak that Trump is under investigation, that is supposed to tie his hands, but it cannot tie his hands legally.<\/p>\n
If he wants to fire these people, he can. And if he wants to endure the excrement show that happens, he can. If he wants to drain the swamp, he could keep doing it. Now, the point is that once Trump\u2019s inaugurated, already under a cloud of suspicion that it limits his ability to drain the swamp because when he begins it taints what he\u2019s doing as rather than draining the swamp he\u2019s getting rid of people who could put him in trouble. That\u2019s what Josh here is saying.<\/p>\n
And all that is true. But it need not stop him. What is being relied on, therefore, is conventional inside-the-Beltway thinking. Look, the Constitution has devised, for every branch of the government — the Founding Fathers were smart people, folks. They anticipated that there would be a never-ending quest to consolidate power. They understood human beings.<\/p>\n
They understood that the executive branch was gonna try to become dictator. They understood legislative branch was gonna be trying to overthrow the executive. They understood that the judges are gonna try to trample over everybody. And so they gave every branch defense mechanisms against various forms of attack in order maintain the separation of powers. And these are still in place today.<\/p>\n
These various mechanisms that the branches can constitutionally use to rein in, say, an overzealous executive. Or that a president can use to rein in overzealous members of the executive branch. The executive branch cannot run anything legislatively and vice-versa. Now, Obama was able to take over the legislative branch \u2019cause they ceded it to him. The Democrats ran it, and they said, “We\u2019re more than happy because we believe in centralized command-and-control, and since we love Obama, since he\u2019s God, since he\u2019s Mr. Perfection, we are happy to cede our power to him.” And they did.<\/p>\n
Republicans have no desire to cede their power to Trump. They\u2019re holding onto it so Trump\u2019s in a battle with his own party for power, and of course the DOJ is not equally powerful as the executive branch. It is part of the executive branch. It does not have independent powers. The built-in defense mechanisms are what are being employed now. Okay, we\u2019ve announced the special counsel and he\u2019s announced that the president\u2019s under investigation, and so the political reality, the political consequences of using his executive power to broom all these people out of there is designed as a deterrent.<\/p>\n
But he could still do it. It\u2019s not constitutional or legal prohibitions stopping him. It\u2019s pure politics. And it\u2019s the politics of the swamp, folks. The swamp has got Trump playing the swamp\u2019s game right now. And that\u2019s not what Trump was elected to do, and that\u2019s not what Trump wants. Trump does not want to play the swamp\u2019s game. I think the effort to get health care passed in the House was Trump playing the swamp game. And by swamp game, I mean the traditional way to get legislation passed.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/TrumpCrowdsC.jpg\")
Somebody in the House comes up with a bill working with the White House and you got people that are for it and against it. You bring the detractors up to the White House, you wine and dine \u2019em, you cajole \u2019em, you beat \u2019em on the head. You do whatever, you try to get the bill passed, exactly the way it\u2019s always been done in the swamp. That first health care bill that ended up not being voted on because it never had a chance, I never thought it was gonna have a chance because it was “all swamp all the time.”<\/p>\n
Now, you might say, “Well, I mean, Rush, the swamp\u2019s the swamp. There\u2019s no other way to get a bill passed. The president\u2019s not a dictator.” I understand that. But Trump has many more tools at his disposal than he is aware of. I shouldn\u2019t say that. He\u2019s got more tools at his disposal than he is using. The power vested in the president by the Constitution in the executive branch is awesome.<\/p>\n
Now, there are limits to it. Separation of powers. But he hasn\u2019t gotten close to utilizing it. It\u2019s just politics that is the obstacle to getting rid of Mueller since Mueller has now leaked that Trump is under investigation. You\u2019ve heard the media say if he gets rid of him now that takes us right back to Nixon. It takes us back to Nixon only because the media loved getting rid of Nixon. Nobody has any evidence Trump did anything yet. There isn\u2019t a shred of evidence even now, folks. If you read the Washington Post story on the latest examples of the independent counsel looking into financial — there\u2019s no evidence of anything. It\u2019s a wild good chase.<\/p>\n
Trump would not be throwing out any evidence if he fired these people and shut down this investigation. If Trump thought the investigation was needlessly harming the country and derailing us at a time we needed to be focused on real dangers and enemies, he could do it. There would be hell to pay in the media, don\u2019t misunderstand. I mean, it would dwarf what\u2019s happening. But he could do it, is the point. Now, he won\u2019t probably choose to do it because of the political ramifications of it.<\/p>\n
But the idea that he\u2019s been hamstrung since the beginning because he was inaugurated under investigation, and at that time we didn\u2019t even know what it was. It was just the FBI looking into Russia and collusion. Some of us have known that that was bogus from the get-go. Some of us have known that it was purely manufactured, invented by the Hillary campaign 24 hours after she lost. Some of us have never believed a single word of it and would have been happy if Trump acted that way as well.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t. Why? He\u2019s new. He wants to calm their fears. He wants to show them that the things they thought about him were not true, that the reasons they hated him were not grounded in any reality. He wanted to show them that he could work with them, be a good guy, we could all come together. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s what he wanted to do. And of course they want no part of that \u2019cause they don\u2019t want any part of Donald Trump succeeding in anything, anytime, anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RUSH: Now, you might say, "Well, I mean, Rush, the swamp's the swamp. There's no other way to get a bill passed. The president's not a dictator." I understand that. But Trump has more tools at his disposal than he is using. The power vested in the president by the Constitution in the executive branch is awesome. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n