{"id":266201,"date":"2018-03-01T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T20:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=266201"},"modified":"2018-03-02T16:25:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T21:25:55","slug":"the-hope-hicks-soap-opera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/03\/01\/the-hope-hicks-soap-opera\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hope Hicks Soap Opera"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Let\u2019s move on to Hope Hicks. We\u2019ll get back to your phone calls here in a jiffy. The Hope Hicks situation. A lot of people (she announced her resignation yesterday) began to say, “Oh, it must have really gone bad in her congressional committee hearing.” Nine hours of testimony up there, and it was in this nine hours of testimony where she admitted to telling white lies for the president after conferring with her lawyer for 10 minutes. Now, the U.K. Daily Mail has a summary of what happened.<\/p>\n

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“Revealed: How Hope Hicks Was ‘Trapped\u2019 into Admitting She Told ‘White Lies\u2019 for Trump — After Conferring for 10 Minutes with Her Lawyer,<\/a>” and let\u2019s see. That would be… Grab audio sound bite 15, because we\u2019ll go from there on this. Hope Hicks is 29. She originally started with Ivanka and Ivanka\u2019s businesses, and from there she matriculated upwards to a position within the entire Trump organization and ended up being one of the closest confidantes of Donald Trump himself, and she traveled with him during the campaign and then to the White House.<\/p>\n

Her desk is the first desk outside the Oval Office. So she would be the last person you have to clear getting into the Oval Office. She\u2019s the first person that you will see leaving the Oval Office, and that denotes a position of great prominence, importance, and some would say even power. So shortly after the congressional hearing ended, she announced her resignation. Maggie Haberman of the left-wing New York Times…<\/p>\n

The very archliberal Maggie Haberman, writer for the New York Times, assured everybody that she had sources telling her that Hope Hicks\u2019 resignation nothing to do with the congressional testimony<\/a>. It had nothing to do with what she had said or not said about President Trump, that she had been planning to resign for months, that she wants to move on and do something else with her life. So the case was being established that whatever happened in the congressional testimony had nothing to do with her resignation.<\/p>\n

However, the Daily Mail seems to indicate that there could be an alternative theory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hope “Hicks spent nine hours testifying Tuesday to the House Intelligence Committee and admitted to telling ‘white lies\u2019 for Trump. She got asked if Trump ever asked her to lie, and conferred with her lawyer” for 10 minutes, and then she said yes,” white lies.” She specified, “I have never been asked to lie with respect to the Russia investigation.” It\u2019s just, you know, an occasional lie that he was in a meeting when he wasn\u2019t. It\u2019s just stuff that every secretary, every aide fudges here and there. The curiosity is, you know, you confer with your lawyer for 10 minutes after such a question and come up with that answer.<\/p>\n

Representative Tom Rooney on the committee thinks the whole thing was a setup. Sources close to the president have told the media that Trump was irate when he heard that she had told them that she had engaged in white lies, and apparently the Daily Mail here says — I don\u2019t know if this is true or not — the Daily Mail says that she was berated by Trump tremendously when she got back, such things as, “How could you be so stupid?” This is what\u2019s in the media. Trump reportedly asked Hicks after she got back, “How could you be so stupid?”<\/p>\n

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The white lies comment emerged in the hours after Hicks got grilled for nine hours and reports about it reportedly caused Trump to give her a tongue lashing. Now, a pair of Republican and Democrat panel members are now clashing over the questioning in general that brought about the comment. Tom Rooney of Florida said the whole thing was a trap. He admits he wasn\u2019t there at the beginning of the session, but he says they sent her down a rabbit hole she couldn\u2019t get out of, completely unfair.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s audio sound bite 15. This is Tom Rooney himself on Erin Burnett OutFront last night<\/a>. Question: “You were in the room. Do you think her testimony has anything to do with her sudden departure from the White House?”<\/p>\n

ROONEY: I wouldn\u2019t blame her. And that\u2019s why tonight I\u2019ve asked our Chairman Conaway that we need to end this investigation. It\u2019s been going on for a year. We\u2019ve interviewed scores of witnesses, and now we\u2019ve gotten to the point now where we\u2019re literally bringing people in for nine hours just so the Democrats can leak to the press something as ridiculous as white lies, not having anything to do with the Russia investigation, but that that drives the whole story for the whole next day.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So the next question from Erin Burnett was, “Obviously white lies is a term being put out everywhere, Congressman. Do you remember what terms that she actually used? Did she even use those words and how exactly did she phrase it?”<\/p>\n

ROONEY: The question was, “Have you ever lied for the president?” An extremely broad question. That could be like me telling a staffer to tell somebody that\u2019s calling me on the phone that I\u2019m not here. That would be asking my staffer to lie for me. I actually chimed in at that moment and said, “Can we please specify as to whether or not you\u2019re asking her if she\u2019s ever lied for the president with regard to the Russia investigation, her testimony here, or anything that she said during this testimony?” And of course to that she said that she has not lied with regard to any of those things.<\/p>\n

BURNETT: So someone else used the word. She did then repeat it.<\/p>\n

ROONEY: Right.<\/p>\n

BURNETT: But what you\u2019re saying is she was — make sure I understand. She was explicitly —<\/p>\n

ROONEY: It was a trap, Erin. It was a trap.<\/p>\n