RUSH: Donald Trump is taking continuing incoming. It has not stopped since the 16th of June in 2015, and every day Donald Trump is taking more incoming attacks and assaults than I have ever seen.
Today, the latest pile on is occurring in congressional hearings. James Comey and Admiral Rogers from the National Security Agency are answering questions from the Democrats. I’ll get into that in just a second, specific questions, because what’s really going on there I find fascinating.
Now, a lot of people, I’m getting emails saying a lot of people are down in the dumps, depressed, maybe not panicking, but a little bit concerned at all this. And I’m gonna try to rein everybody back in and explain what’s really going on. I can’t deny however, I’m not gonna try to sugarcoat the overall picture here, which is a president under constant assault as illegitimate and unjust.
I mean, that’s the picture that’s being painted. That is the narrative that will not go away, and they are attempting to intensify it each and every day. Now, to somebody like me, super informed, well aware, totally informed on the techniques of the left, to me this effort is flailing. But I’m not the average voter, and I’m not the average person paying attention that’s gonna see the headlines from this.
For example, the Never Trumpers are orgasmic today. The Never Trumpers on both sides of the aisle, Republican, conservative Never Trumpers, leftist Democrat Drive-By Media Never Trumpers are orgasmic over this. Comey admitted — big show-and-tell. In fact, let me quickly — yeah, grab audio sound bite number one. This statement by Comey at the beginning of the congressional hearings today, House Intelligence Committee hearings, this statement has the Never Trumpers in an unchecked bout of orgasmic happiness.
COMEY: As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters. But, in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interests, it may be appropriate to do so, as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances. I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.
RUSH: Now, this is something, I don’t know about you, but I have assumed that this has been going on all along. But this announcement today making it official, that there is an investigation, has these people just ecstatic. They cannot contain themselves. The Never Trumpers, wherever you find them, they think that is one nail in the coffin.
Comey just now, just prior to the program beginning — and I didn’t hear this. You know, at some point I have to jump out of this chair and go do stuff. And it just so happened when I came back all I saw was a crawl the bottom of the screen. Comey apparently said to somebody Russians wanted to hurt democracy, hurt Clinton, and help Trump.
That statement is a political statement, and it is made by the director of the FBI in the context of intelligence gathering? That is one heck of a statement: Russians wanted to hurt democracy, hurt Clinton, and help Trump. Then how did Hillary end up winning the popular vote?
Earlier on today, the Democrats — led by their chairman, Adam Schiff — asked… Well, no, the Democrats did not ask this. In fact, this was Devin Nunes: “Any evidence that the Russians tampered with the votes?” Comey: “No.” “Rogers, NSA?” “No.” “Any evidence the Russians tried to tamper with the outcome of the votes? Ballots?” “No. No.” “Any attempt made by the Russians?” “No, we’re not aware of any attempt.” That should have ended the hearings! But it didn’t. Both Comey and the director of the NSA have said there was no effort.
There is no evidence of any kind that the Russians had anything to do with the counting of votes or the casting of votes in the 2016 election. And if that’s the case, there’s no “there” there. But that’s not what this is about. This is not about the evidence. This is not about (certainly) any exculpatory evidence. This is about furthering the narrative that Trump’s election is illegitimate, and this is designed to move forward whatever efforts there are that we don’t know about yet to impeach Trump and to get rid of him.
That’s what this is all about today. And there’s a secondary thing that this is about, and I’ll give you detail on this as the program unfolds, but I’ve watched Adam Schiff, the Democrat chairman, and I’ve been unable to contain my laughter. Can I give you examples of his questions? He’s asking Comey; he’s asking the NSA guy, Admiral Rogers, “Do you know Paul Manafort?” (stammering) “Well, I…” “Do you know that Paul Manafort knows Roger Stone?” “Uh, well…” “Do you know that Roger Stone tweeted back on September the 13th that he was going to go to Russia and that he was going to sleep in a hotel?”
“Well, I, uh, uh, uh…” “Do you know that Manafort and Stone talked on the phone 10 times? Did the NSA analyze whether the hack of the DNC affected the way people voted?” “Well, uh, um, uhh… Sorry, Senator, I can’t comment on that. It’s beyond the scope of our investigation.” “Can you tell our Democrat voters that you investigation is still in the early phases and that you have a long way to go?” “Can’t comment on investigations.” Wait a minute. You did with Hillary. “How long are your investigations?” “Well, there’s no set time limit, Congresswoman.
“Investigations can go on as long as we want them to go.” She smiled and said, “Good.” “Can you tell me…?” This is another question. “Can you tell me about the process to prove that Trump cheated?” “Uhhhh, no. I can’t tell you about our investigative process.” “Okay.” She didn’t actually say “the process to prove Trump cheated.” That’s implied. What is happening here is that the Democrats on this committee are servicing their base. Their base voters are insane. I have a story here about how they’re having nightmares, they’re unable to sleep, they’re seeking therapy.
The Democrat base, because of this irresponsible reporting that Trump and the Russians worked together to screw the election and screw Hillary. Figuratively speaking. That story has been out there since last summer. That story has been fueled and fueled and built and expanded to the point that the Democrat base believes it to be true. There isn’t any evidence. James Clapper worked for Clinton. Michael Morell — the CIA director/agent that worked for Hillary — came out last week and said there’s nothing there. There is no evidence of any kind of any collusion, and there isn’t because there wasn’t any.
And I can give you some questions. I can ask you some questions to kind of make the point, too, in a common sense way. But that’s not the point. The point is that the Democrats and the media have so stoked this story that their base believes it. And the Democrats on this committee and the Democrats in the Senate, the Democrats everywhere, are literally scared to death of the day when it will be officially announced that there was no collusion, when this Comey investigation ends and they can’t prove any collusion between Trump and the Russians.
They are scared to death of that day, of what their base is gonna do.
They need their base continuing to donate money. They need their base continuing to remain engaged, and they have used this story — that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election. They have used this story to excuse the fact that they lost. They have used this story to excuse the fact that they had a lousy candidate, to excuse the fact that she ran a lousy campaign, to excuse the fact that she’s very unlikable, to excuse the fact that they were so arrogant and condescending in assuming they were gonna win that they didn’t even really make a serious effort.
All of that has to be covered up. There is no way, in fact, that they could have lost unless the election was stolen from them. And so this narrative has been out there. And it has been fed. The New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN have fed it with stories of wiretapping and any number of things to indicate that Trump was under investigation and that evidence was being accrued and that evidence is being found. There isn’t any evidence! The Democrat Party base voter has essentially been told a humongous lie. I don’t think when this all started it ever was intended to get this big, but it kept feeding on itself.
And now they’ve got nowhere to go.
There’s even a story. Glenn Greenwald is friend of Snowden’s and worked with him on his story and is a left-wing journalist. He has a website called The Intercept, and he published a massive story yesterday about just this very fact, that there is no evidence and that the Democrats — elected Democrats — are scared to death over the fact this has gotten so big that expectations have been raised so high and that there isn’t any evidence for it. So these questions, such as, “Do you know Paul Manafort? Did you hear what Donald Trump tweeted on December 19th? Did you read what Donald Trump tweeted in January?”
All of these meaningless questions, they’re just simply reading Democrat talking points. They’re taking quotes from the New York Times and the Washington Post and asking these quotes as questions to Comey and the NSA guy. And Comey and the NSA guy say, ‘Well, I can’t comment. We never comment on things the media. We, blah, blah…” It doesn’t matter what the answers are. The questions are designed to have the Democrat rabid and lunatic base out there standing up and cheering. “Yeah! You tell ’em! You tell ’em.” Because there is a palpable fear on the Democrat side that there’s nothing here and that there won’t be anything found.
Not legitimately. The way this is going, though, I don’t know what you call legitimate and illegitimate anymore. You just don’t know where this is going. This has gotten so big and, folks, it’s so out of hand now. There are so many reputations tied up in this bogus theory that Trump and the Russians worked together to hack and steal the election. There are political careers hangin’ on this one, and when that’s the case, all bets are off as to who’s gonna end up saying and doing what, ’cause it’s gotten much, much bigger than anybody ever intended.
And that’s because the people behind this are completely and totally irresponsible. They have been gobsmacked. They simply cannot deal with the fact that they lost the election. And then you add that Trump won it, is just… It’s unacceptable. It’s a nightmare. It’s surreal. To them, none of this is happening. It’s impossible to lose an election to Donald Trump. It’s impossible. It’s impossible that Hillary Clinton could lose an election to anybody, but to Donald Trump? Oh, my God, it’s even worse! So there has to be something to explain it. And that’s what all this is about. James Comey also said something.
I’m being a little scattershot here, and then we’ll come back in the break and I’m gonna go through this in order. But I want to get it out all on the table before I forget it. Comey said something interesting today that nobody’s picked up on yet because they’re so distracted by this other stuff, which I can understand. He was asked specifically if WikiLeaks was furnished their information on Podesta and the phone calls by the Russians, and Comey said no. Well, now, everybody on the Democrat side believes that the Russians gave Assange and WikiLeaks everything they hacked.
Again, I want to remind everybody — the truth of this has not been mentioned yet — Podesta was not hacked. Podesta fell for a phishing scam. Now, you might, on a loose definition, call it a hack. But it’s not a hack in the sense that you and I think of hacks. Nobody got into Podesta’s computer. He let them in. He invited them in, unknowingly. Russia did not deal directly with WikiLeaks, Comey said. They had a cut-out, which is an intermediary. Well, who was that? WikiLeaks has insisted that they didn’t get anything from Russia, that Russia was not their source, and Comey confirmed that today.
I expect later on today somebody will realize Comey said this and they’ll mention it, make something of it. But it is astounding to me to watch this, ’cause it’s now gotten… When I say “out of control,” it means the story has gone beyond anybody’s ability to control it now, and it has its own inertia, and it has an outcome that has to happen in order to save some political careers. And that outcome is that Trump and Russia colluded. They have built these expectations up so high, and there isn’t any evidence, and there never has been any evidence. But I’d like to know: Who initiated the FBI’s investigation of Trump?
We’ve been hearing all along that there is one. Who initiated that, and why? When did it begin? Any Obama holdovers involved in this? Any Obama embeds in the bureaucracy involved in this? What about Clinton campaign members meeting with Russians? Is any of that being investigated? We know that a lot of people that work for the Democrats met with Russians. We know that Bill Clinton worked with a guy in Canada to basically give — well, sell to the point where the Clintons profited — a great portion of the U.S. uranium supply.
What about coordination between CNN and Hillary Clinton? What about the Democrat National Committee rigging their primary against Bernie Sanders? Is there any investigation of that? What about the investigation of the Clinton Foundation? We’re told that there was one. Well, we don’t know; nobody’s officially said so. Influence peddling to foreign countries? Obama’s ransom payments to Iran?
The one-sidedness of this is striking. Now, it’s early on in the hearings, and I’m gonna say something here that may be a little bit premature, and it’s only based on what I have seen. But there hasn’t been… Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Snerdley. There hasn’t been… Aside from Trey Gowdy, there hasn’t been a whole lot of push-back on much of this from the Republicans. There’s been some, but not as much as you would expect.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Senator Grassley of Iowa has just tweeted in the last few minutes the following: “FBI Director Comey needs to be transparent and tell the public what he told me about whether he is or is not investigating the president.” What does that mean? Grassley just tweeted this within the last half hour, and apparently, if I’m judging this the way a normal person would, Grassley’s watching Comey and thinks Comey’s saying something different than what he told him.
Apparently Grassley says that Comey told him something about whether or not the FBI’s investigating the president that differs from what Comey said today. Comey also says — get this — that he launched the FBI investigation of Trump and Russia in July. July? That’s before Trump even had the nomination. Why were the Russians helping Trump when he might not even be the nominee? This is getting even screwier by the minute as things continue to unfold here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Another sound bite from the FBI director James Comey under questioning from Republican Mike Conaway from Texas. “As of early December 2016 the FBI assessed that the active measures conducted against Secretary Clinton were to denigrate her, were to hurt her, her campaign, and undermine her presidency.” Again, he’s reminding Comey that the FBI assessed in December of 2016, after the election, that active measures conducted against Hillary Clinton were to denigrate her, to hurt her campaign and undermine her presidency. “And the conclusion that active measures were taken specifically to help Trump’s campaign, you had that by early December, you had that conclusion. Is that correct?”
COMEY: Correct. They wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her, help him. I think all three we were confident in at least as early as December. Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.
RUSH: This is an incredible bit of news from the FBI director. Now, there’s an ongoing investigation. I’m just trying to put these pieces together. There’s an ongoing investigation and there has been now since July. Comey told lawmakers today that his agency’s been investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian officials since last July. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, who’s running the FBI and the Department of Justice last July? It’d be the Obama administration doing this. But James Clapper, Obama administration, and a couple of others have said they’ve seen no evidence whatsoever of any collusion.
And yet Comey knows all this? That Putin hated Clinton so much, the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much. So Russia wanted to hurt our democracy and Hillary and help Trump.
Now, mind you, folks, all of this is being said, and there isn’t any evidence of it. So it’s clear to me what’s going on here. Look at what has actually happened. We have Donald Trump on the phone with foreign leaders after he becomes president, and even during the transition, classified phone calls. Those are leaked. The transcripts of his phone calls are leaked, and they’re lied about. In the case of his phone call with the president of Mexico, it was said to be an abomination of a call, a disaster. It turns out not to be true.
Same thing with the prime minister of Australia, said to be so bad that somebody hung up on somebody in the call. Turns out neither was the case. Now Trump’s private taxes have been leaked. The New York Times and the Washington Post have run story after story after story using the word “wiretaps.” There have been nameless sources in the intelligence community all over the past two months of last year leaking various elements of things, but no evidence of any of it.
The New York Times, on January 20th, said there were wiretaps in which Trump and his team were being investigated. And yet with all that there’s no evidence of collusion, and yet Trump’s the subject of the investigation, when his taxes have been leaked, when his phone calls are being monitored, Trump is the subject of an FBI investigation.
Some of the reason why this doesn’t makes sense to me, in the first place, folks, if you’re the Russians, and you want to affect the outcome of the election, you don’t have to get in touch with one of the candidates. You can do that on your own. You don’t need anybody’s permission. Let’s say the Russians wanted to help Hillary. They don’t need to call her and get her permission to help her undermine Trump, or vice-versa. They just do it.
The next thing. There hasn’t been any kind of a quid pro quo here. And by that I mean, Trump has not lifted the sanctions that Obama placed on the Russians. Trump has not let the 35 ambassadors or diplomats that Obama sent back to Moscow, he’s not let them back in. There hasn’t been one, not one indication of Trump going soft on Russia, not one. Nikki Haley at the U.N. speaks out against Russia in no uncertain terms.
And if there were collusion, let me ask you this. If there were collusion, let’s say if Trump and the Russians were actually working together, don’t you think Trump, rather than acting all buddy-buddy with Putin and all friendly, would have been scorching Putin all this time to throw everybody off the scent? If there were actual collusion, if Trump and Putin were big buddies and working together to somehow undermine the election, which even today it was stated didn’t happen.
The big news of these hearings is not even being reported! The big news of these hearings is that the Russians did not, could not, would not, have not, don’t know how to tamper with votes. They didn’t do it. I mean, there wasn’t even any hemming or hawing in the answers. Both Comey and Admiral Rogers definitively said in one-word answers “no” to all kinds of questions about whether or not the Russians had anything to do with votes, either the way they were cast or the way they were counted. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We even know that this Jill Stein babe, the Democrat, the Green Party candidate, whatever, she did this recount, Trump ended up getting more votes in some of these states than what he ended up with in the official count.
There is no evidence. That, to me, is the news of these hearings. But that’s not what’s being reported. That’s in fact being ignored. So if you’re Trump and you’re working with the Russians anyway, even though there’s no way to sabotage the vote, wouldn’t you go out of your way in public to scorch Putin every chance you got, scorch the Russians, instead of talking about how much you admire Putin, what a great guy Putin is, and how much you appreciate Putin complimenting you, which Trump did?
So much of this is simple violation of common sense and human nature. And as far as the Russians are concerned, okay, so they hack the Democrat National Committee network and they leave evidence that it was them. And yet what did we learn recently? We learned in another WikiLeaks Treasury trove of documents released from the CIA that the CIA has software that can hack computers and leave fingerprints of other nations. (interruption) You were not here that day. That’s why you’re frowning, but that is big news.
Well, it is big news, but it’s not being reported, not being talked about. But the CIA has numerous hacking tools that allows them to hack any computer network and make it look like the Russians did it or the Chinese or the Japanese or the Norks. Why would the Russians leave evidence that it was them? If they were serious about hacking the DNC and they wanted to really make it work, and they wanted to remain in the shadows, have nobody know it, why would they leave fingerprints that trail right back to them?
Now, if you want to play the double psychology move, okay, “Well, they wanted to do that precisely, Rush, because people would ask questions like you. And so they left their fingerprints so that people would say just what you said. ‘Why would the Russians — it couldn’t be the Russians. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave their own evidence.'” Well, you gotta be too cute by half to come up with answers to this that violate common sense.
But again, all of this, see, this is the frustrating thing, folks. The big news of the day is, no evidence whatsoever that the Russians hacked voting. No evidence whatsoever. It’s not possible. They’re not investigating whether any of that happened. It just didn’t because it couldn’t. Obama has said so. Any number of people before all this heated up the way it is said so. But that’s not the news. Because the purpose of all of this is to permanently damage Donald Trump and make it impossible for him to govern.
That’s all this is about. There’s a secondary aspect of it with the Democrats on the committee having to service their lunatic base, which has been led to believe that Russia did hack the election and that Trump was part of it. That story has been around for so long, it’s been added to for so long and it’s been amplified, they believe it now. The expectations have been raised to the point here that the truth, the Democrats are scared to death of the day their base learns that none of this happened.
So that day has to be kicked down the road. That day has to be delayed as long as it can, and that’s what the purpose of these hearings is, to make it look like there’s something there there, to make it look like the ongoing investigation’s getting close. But it is to overall paint Donald Trump’s presidency as illegitimate and therefore his agenda illegitimate and things that he wants, his budget, health care revisions, tax cuts, whatever, is to make it all illegitimate and subject to reversal should they be able to get rid of Trump because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That’s what this is about.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a message from somebody who’s shocked at all of this incoming at Donald Trump, who just can’t believe it, who thought there would be some support and some unity by now. This person believes that what Trump wants to do is what’s exactly needed in this country and thought that there would be — after a certain passage of time — at least some support for doing the right thing, for changing the direction of the country. To bring it back economically. To help people do better. To make health care more affordable.
This person is just shocked at what he’s seeing today and is asking me if I… Folks, look, I… (sigh) I’m not. I hate playing the “I told you so” game — y’know, the nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah — but I just want to go on record: None of this surprises me. And I’m sure that if we search the archives of this program I can come up with countless examples where I predicted something like this. I mean, obviously not specifically. But, you know, this isn’t left versus right. This isn’t Democrat versus Republican. This is establishment versus outsider or whatever term that you want to attach to Donald Trump here. And what we’re seeing, what all of this is…
These hearings today, what happened last week and the week before that, what happened during the transition period… What all of this is can be explained simply by saying, “Look at how terrified they are in the Washington-New York establishment, of Donald Trump and draining the swamp.” The Never Trumpers on both sides of the aisle. There are conservative Never Trumpers today celebrating over the fact that Comey made it official that there’s an investigation of Trump and colluding with the Russians.
These people know that there isn’t any evidence of this, but that doesn’t matter. What everybody in Washington supports is the smearing, the slander, and the libel of Donald Trump. And these hearings today? The FBI director, James Comey, is trying to save the jobs of a lot of people. He’s trying to save the careers of a whole lot of people — his included — in, I think, an inappropriate way. And the Republicans in this committee? Look folks, I’ve been waiting. I’ve been patiently waiting. I’ve been trying to hold it, keep the powder dry. But the Republicans on this committee…
I know it’s early, and they’re gonna go on all day. But so far, outside of Trey Gowdy and a question from Peter King and Devin Nunes the chairman, there just hasn’t been much. For example, “Are you still investigating the Clinton Foundation, Director Comey?” “I can’t say.” By the way, Comey said he got special permission to reveal this investigation. Who gave him that special permission? He said he went to the Department of Justice. Who’s over there? Who runs that? That it would be Jeff Sessions.
The Trump administration itself granted permission for Comey to announce this today. (interruption) Well, no. My point there is that there’s no attempted cover-up of anything going on there. The Trump administration could very well have said, Jeff Sessions could have said, “Comey, look, it’s just like you said last summer about Hillary: We don’t detail ongoing investigations.” But he today was given permission to do just that, and he’s running with it. And the whole point of this today — and, by the way, it doesn’t mean I’m not gonna go through this and give you what the real news of these hearings is today and what the backdrop of all this is.
Because there’s a really salient factor that’s driving this from the Democrat side that is never going to be reported or commented on, which I’m going to touch on myself today. But, as I say, the purpose of this is to further the narrative that Trump is illegitimate, that he should not be president, that his election was the result of tampering by the Russians. So the objective is that Trump either stops this reform business he’s got, stops this drain-the-swamp stuff, and starts letting the Washington Republicans run the town again, or they’re gonna impeach him.
That’s the message being sent today: “You either straighten up and fly right or you’re gone.”
“We’re coming for you,” is the message of these hearings today.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: James Comey says the Russians are trying to undermine faith in our elections. Maybe. But I’ll tell you what’s happening today on Capitol Hill is doing more to undermine faith in our elections than anything the Russians have done.