RUSH: Monday and Tuesday I spent considerable time here on the program advising you of the importance of the effort in the Jeff Sessions confirmation hearings and the importance of the inspector general investigation of the FBI related to Hillary and her emails and the election. And the point that I made was that there is an ongoing effort here — and you know it as well as I do. There’s an ongoing effort by the Democrats and the media to, as my friend Andy McCarthy described it, “engrave in the public mind what this election last November was all about.”

And that engraving is the Russians hacked, the Russians interfered, the Russians stole the election from Hillary. They’re working very hard to get that narrative established as the first thing everybody thinks. When the subject of the 2016 elections comes up, they want the knee-jerk reaction to be, “Oh, yeah, you mean the one the Russians stole? Oh, yeah, you mean the one where the Russians hacked Hillary’s campaign? Oh, you mean the ones where the Russians got all that stuff at WikiLeaks and put it in there and sabotaged Hillary?”

That’s reaction they want people to have. That effort continued. This is in addition to it. That effort continued. This whole effort to establish that narrative about the 2016 election in the ordeal and the effort to confirm the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. There is a Democrat attempt to force Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation of Russians meddling in the election. There’s no need for Sessions to recuse himself from any investigation of Russian meddling in the election, because there’s no Russian meddling in the voting.

There’s no Russian meddling in the casting of votes, the counting of votes. There wasn’t any Russian meddling. But what they are trying to do… Remember, the truth and the facts are irrelevant. The effort here — and this is piggybacked on their effort via the inspectors general investigation of the FBI — is to cast the entire 2016 election as illegitimate, as the result of cheating, the result of fraud. The desire, the effort to get Sessions to recuse himself from any such investigation of Russian meddling is nothing more than a trick to make him concede that there’s a conflict.

What they want to establish is, since Sessions is the AG because Trump won election — and since Trump won the election because the Russians meddled in it — therefore Sessions is conflicted. He cannot preside over such an investigation. He’s got a conflict of interest, and the conflict of interest is he wouldn’t be attorney general if the Russians hadn’t hacked the election. You see how this all gets set up? Now, you might say, “So what, Rush? So what! They lost. They’re just grasping at anything.” No, folks, this is about what kids born today are gonna learn beginning ten years from now, five years from now.

This is about what ends up in the history books.

This is about what ends up what you do a Google search some years ago from now, “2016 election.” This is what they’re trying to establish, that the whole thing was a fraud, that nothing about it was legitimate, that the Democrats didn’t lose, that the Republicans won because of Russian cheating. And they want this established as similar to how they have revised history of the 1980s. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work, that none of Reagan’s economic policies did anything but make the poor poorer and the rich richer. And you could think of countless other examples of history revisionism.

We sit here today and we ask ourselves, “Why do so many people believe things that aren’t true?” This is how it happens. So I’m trying to get out in front of it. Now, all that needs to happen to stop this… I’ll tell you who the targets are. You remember — this will be a good way to analogize it — Obama’s first meeting in the White House with congressional leaders of both parties, barely two weeks after he was inaugurated. This would be 2009. He brings the Republican leadership up there, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, and he says to them, “You gotta stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. That’s not how things get done in Washington. You can’t do that.”

And what Obama was hoping was that one of those two or somebody in the Republican leadership would agree with him, say, “It’s a new day! We’ve got the first African-American president. It’s a great historical achievement. America must change direction. America must move forward! America must this, that, and the other thing.” He was hoping some Republicans would go out and say that, and part and parcel of that is, “We really do have to stop being so influenced by talk radio.” That’s what Obama was trying to engender, create. It’s the same thing here.

By making the case that Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general, can’t investigate anything here because he has a conflict of interest, what they’re hoping is that somebody like Senator McCain or Senator Graham will agree with it on the basis, “Hey, so what if old Jeff has to recuse himself? It isn’t any big deal. Jeff, go ahead and recuse yourself, and it’ll show the nation how we’re willing to work with the Democrats and how we’re willing to work with them to get to the bottom of one of these most controversial things.”

And it would be a grievous error, ’cause there isn’t any conflict. It’d be one thing if there was a conflict here, but there isn’t. It’s totally manufactured and made up. Jeff Sessions will have no conflict whatsoever in whatever investigation Trump or the DOJ want to initiate, be it Russian hacking, be it the election, be it Comey, be it Hillary’s email, there won’t be… Well, maybe Hillary’s email because of things Sessions said. But all it would take would be for someone like Lindsey Graham or McCain to agree with the idea that Jeff Sessions is conflicted and then you could get Trump’s new attorney general basically aced out.

One of the primary reasons for Trump’s win is “draining the swamp,” and including the Department of Justice. You’d have his new nominee basically neutered, sitting around, not able to participate. So the hope here is that Lindsey… Now, you haven’t heard about any of this in the news. This is why you listen to this program. The news is not talking about any of this. This is stuff you haven’t seen anywhere precisely because it’s happening behind the scenes and it doesn’t involve the public.

It involves trying to intimidate and influence just a couple Republican senators to agree with the concept that Jeff Sessions has conflicts and therefore has to step aside and not participate in any forthcoming investigations about the Russians and the election or anything else, IG investigation into Hillary and so forth. So there’s no conflict, and I think — what I’m hoping is — that people like Lindsey Graham and McCain might resent being played here. There’s no conflict. If there were a genuine conflict, it’d be easier for them to side with the Democrats on this for the usual reasons they would.

“We must show that we can work together. We must show that we are cooperative. We must show that we want to be bipartisan and get to the real root of these things.” There’s no conflict here. But they still hate Trump. So this is still open as to what will happen which is why I’m spending some time on it. It’s one of these things that’s not prominent anywhere in the news. It’s way, way down in the priority list given this is inauguration week. But that’s precisely why I want to spend not much more time than I already have on it, by the way, so you’re fully briefed on it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me give you the next phase, which is analysis and opinion on this whole effort by the left to engrave this election as fraudulent and illegitimate because the Russians cheated, the Russians hacked.  I told you this has not been widely reported.  It isn’t big news, you haven’t heard about it, but this is what got the ball rolling.  The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering Trump’s nomination of Jeff Sessions.

On Tuesday ( this would be yesterday) all nine Democrats on the committee signed a letter demanding that, if confirmed, Sessions recuse himself from any investigation of efforts by Russia to interfere in the election.  Now, I want to step back and explain what’s going on here.  This is all tied to the inspectors general report that Obama announced the IG investigation in the Department of Justice of the FBI and Comey.  Because I think the reason why this… Well, maybe not the reason.  I think the Democrats would have done this anyway, but they nevertheless did it.

They signed this letter — all nine of them on the committee — demanding that Sessions say that he will recuse himself from any investigation of efforts by Russia to interfere in the election.  I think this results from (sad say) the first significant strategic error the Trump team has made.  That strategic error was having Senator Sessions say that he would recuse himself when it comes to any Hillary investigation.  Now, this all came about during his confirmation hearings, because during the campaign, Trump is out there saying that he would investigate Hillary, and she should be in jail, she shouldn’t be running.

And Sessions is one of Trump’s supporters and is showing up at the rallies and is, by association, thought to agree with Trump on this and may have even said things that gave people the opinion that he does agree with it.  And it was on that basis, “Well, obviously Senator Sessions cannot be fair in any investigation of Mrs. Clinton if he has already said that he thinks that she should be in jail,” or whatever it is.

So the Trump team and Sessions at his hearings had Sessions admit or acknowledge that he would recuse himself, ’cause the Democrats made a big deal of this in the hearings when they were interrogating Sessions.  “Beauregard,” they said, “would you recuse yourself if President Trump requires an investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails?” And he said, “Yes, I would.” “I will recuse myself, Senator,” he said.  And I think that’s the first big strategic error, and I’ll tell you why.  You do not give an inch with these people.  You never presume they have moral authority to tell you how to operate.

Never.

You never acknowledge that.

You never acknowledge that you have any kind of a problem compared to them. Never.  But they did, and I don’t know who was the adviser.  It may well have been Trump; don’t know.  It doesn’t matter now because it happened.  I think it was a rare sign of weakness.  And the Democrats have exploited it immediately by virtue… It was that admission by Sessions and the Trump team that Sessions would recuse himself from any investigation of Hillary that then prompted Obama and the Democrats to announce this inspector general investigation into Comey!

If you know going in that the attorney general, that the war horse, that the new head of the department is gonna take himself out of it, well, then you may as well start demanding all kinds of things he should recusing himself from, and that’s what they’re doing!  That’s why they signed that letter yesterday.  So now this investigation is another thing that they’re trying to engrave as untouchable sabotage, meaning the Russians engaged in untouchable sabotage, and the investigation has been judged as important and worthwhile to find out just what the Russians did.

And we’re talking here… If there needs to be an investigation of anything, it needs to be of Hillary Clinton, for crying out loud! It needs to be of Barack Obama and the Democrats and his the Department of Justice, not the FBI.  It needs to be of Loretta Lynch and what else was going on in there.  Why would she not convene a grand jury? Why were there no subpoenas? Why was Comey stonewalled.  That’s what needs to be investigated here! Why did the Democrat Party — and how did they do it — the Obama administration, circle the wagons to protect her during the campaign.

We know the answers, but it needs to be officially pursued. But Sessions recused himself.  The Democrats don’t see that as a sign of fairness, cooperation, bipartisanship. They see it as a sign of weakness.  It’s like dripping blood into a water tank with a great white shark in it. If you happen to be in the tank, too, you’re dead.  The shark gets a sense of the blood and if you can’t get back in the cage, it’s sayonara.  And that’s exactly what happened.  I think the Trump team made a strategic error here in acknowledging that Sessions would recuse himself.

And that is why the left is demanding even more Sessions recusals, and I think there’s a lesson here.  You know, I’m just a guy on the radio, but I’m gonna tell you: Never give an inch to the Democrats.  I know Trump is not ideological.  He doesn’t see them the way you and I do. He doesn’t see the left as a bunch of liberals, and then being liberals does not inform him of who they are.  He’s learning.  I mean, he’s being victimized by them every day.  They’re trying to destroy him.  He sees it.  And, for example, he sees what CNN’s doing running fake news and all that.  How much he associates that with an ideology, I don’t know.

I wish that he had more of an ideological awareness, understanding, and agreement with this.  But it’s not a fatal flaw here.  He still understands they’re bad people.  He still understands they’re out to destroy him.  He knows this.  And what’s he’s got to figure out — and maybe he knows it — is just don’t give an inch.  You cannot. They didn’t win, folks. They didn’t win anything.  They have been repudiated. They have been shellacked.  They’re running fake polls.  They ran some fake polls yesterday on Trump’s approval, and a new round of fake polls today on Obama’s approval.

And the polls on Obama’s approval that have been released today make it look like the American public actually now wish Obama was still president, not Trump.  It’s a full-fledged assault.  It is a massive assault. It’s Shock and Awe.  The left is mounting every lie they can to establish lying, false narratives that are part of the daily soap opera script or news cycle.  And you can’t give in.  They start making demands, “Well, we must remember; there is a power of the minority, minority rights and all.”  Screw that!  They didn’t win.

They’ve been repudiated.  The American people sent ’em packing.  And if you give an inch, if you try to cross the aisle, extent the fickle finger of friendship, whatever you tried to do to engage in the time-honored art of bipartisanship, you’re gonna get shafted.  And that would be my unsought advice.  The lesson for the Trump team:  Never give an inch or this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen.

Never admit that you were wrong, and don’t apologize.  Trump’s got that down pat.  He doubles down.  He’s got that down pat.  He’s got the tweets down.  He’s not gonna be intimidated out of that.  So I wanted to clarify that and not wait for later in the program for that addendum to the story.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, look at Loretta Lynch. During the campaign when the Hillary investigation was still ongoing, what does she do? She gets on Bill Clinton’s plane. Actually, he gets on hers. Bill Clinton lands in Phoenix, somebody says, “Loretta Lynch is here.” He says, “Hey, get me over to that plane! Get over to that tarmac. I got talk to Loretta.” She gets on the plane with Clinton and they talk about who knows what, supposedly “grandkids.” She doesn’t have any. And she didn’t recuse herself, did you notice? No, no, no, no!

Loretta Lynch said she was stepping aside and she was going to defer to Comey, which we now know was also strategic. They were dumping it all on Comey. They were making Comey the focus all of the fraudulent investigation that they are now investigating. She did not recuse herself, and Sessions had no need to recuse himself, either. Now, look, the reason why this bugs me is that there’s no reason to help the Democrats back to power. There’s no reason to give them a voice here. The Democrats are stepping… Look, we put bags of excrement in front of them, and they keep stepping in them.

WikiLeaks is a great example, this Chelsea Manning thing. Look what’s happened here. When Chelsea Manning leaked all these documents giving away American secrets, military and national security, they cheered! And they cheered Assange. And they cheered WikiLeaks! The Democrat Party — your Democrats, your American left — thought it was the greatest thing on earth, and they cheered this Manning character, and they thought he was brave and courageous because, in their minds, the United States is the problem in the world.

And so this guy giving away American secrets and committing treason? That’s an act of courage. They liked Snowden when he did what he did. Well, they’re gonna come back and rue the day, ladies and gentlemen. They might regret having made WikiLeaks so famous. It may have cost them Hillary’s presidency. They build WikiLeaks up. They make WikiLeaks out to be something super-secret great thing. WikiLeaks inviolate! WikiLeaks infallible! If WikiLeaks had the documents, they loved Manning.

And now all of a sudden after that, they have to now run around and start saying that WikiLeaks is a bunch of frauds tied to Putin. And all we need is somebody pointing this out. They’re the biggest phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ rollers around. They’re frauds, the left, the Democrats. There’s no reason to give them a moist rag when they step in a pile of excrement! There’s no reason to give them what they want. They lost! They need to continue to pay the price for the damage that they have done to this country the past eight years.

And part of paying the price is for the things they broke to get fixed and for the American people to discover a newfound prosperity, a renewed sense of freedom and liberty, and an upbeat optimism, which should be part of the American existence that they destroyed (on purpose). They broadcast pessimism. They create pessimism. They create pessimism in every walk of life that they can and set themselves up in government as the solution and the answer to your pessimism. That and your doctor.

They have wrought great, great damage to one institution after another. They have destroyed the American health care system. They have done great damage to the American economy with Obamacare and with other economic policies. They have created the notion that the United States is guilty in various spots around the world and that we need to apologize, we need to roll ourselves back, cut ourselves down to size. They need to pay for this. And they’re not gonna pay for it if Trump’s team continues to acknowledge, “Yeah, we need to recuse Sessions. We need to get him out of there.”

I know it’s just one thing. But look, Trump’s not even in office yet, and look how they’re behaving. They’re just beside themselves. Success is the greatest revenge, folks. Happiness, success, are the greatest revenge.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Heidi in Philadelphia.  Great to have you on the EIB Network.  Hello.

CALLER:  Hey, Rush.  Thanks for taking my call.  I kind of want to go back to the beginning of your show.  I think it’s the Democrats who really need to recuse themselves from any investigation of this supposed Russian interference with the election.  It’s the truth about their shenanigans that will be revealed in this investigation, so they have conflict of interest in any investigation.

RUSH:  Why?

CALLER:  Well, because I think they would not want any further information revealed about what they had been up to and may still be up to.

RUSH:  A-ha!

CALLER: (chuckles)

RUSH: I thought you were going to say, “Why should they investigate?  It was their servers that got hacked.”  It was the DNC, it was Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz’s servers that got hacked.  By the way, everything that showed up from these so-called hacks, none of it was ever denied.

REPORTER:  Right.

RUSH:  Everything that was put out there was never denied. Podesta’s emails and all, it was all true.  I can see your point.  If they’re still engaged in chicanery, they should recuse themselves because of what might be found and how they could impede it or what have you.

CALLER:  Well, there may be more information that WikiLeaks never revealed that even if they’re not still —

RUSH:  Well, the whole thing is cockeyed.

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  A investigation to find out what Putin…? I’m telling you, folks. You know, there are people out there saying, “Rush, you gotta very careful.  The Russians did hack us.”  The Russians hack everything all the time.  So do the ChiComs.  They’re trying to make a specific allegations that this election turned on what the Russians did, and it did not.