RUSH: Neil Gorsuch gave a great, great, great performance today. He’s the first justice nominee — the very first — who has been able to “get away with,” quote/unquote, telling liberal senators that there are no little guys, there are no big guys, there are no rich guys, there are no poor guys in court. This guy is masterful. They’re trying to destroy Jimmy Stewart, essentially, and they’re going to fail.

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RUSH: It has been amusing, satisfying, pleasing to watch a little bit of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, because the man really is coming across as Jimmy Stewart — calm, kind, mannerly, brilliant, untrickable, and committed. And the Democrats on the committee have been reduced to simply reading questions, obviously written for them by their staff. I swear. I watched Senator Dianne Feinstein; I don’t think she understood half of what she was asking.

She’s mentioning all these Supreme Court precedents, and then she would ask whatever question it was, and Gorsuch would have an answer. For example, they’re asking political questions. “Um, y’know, President Bush tortured and President Trump has said that he likes torture and he thinks torture works.” And Gorsuch said, “Well, Senator, the law of our land currently proscribes of use of torture.” (stammering) “Y-y-yeah, I know, but — but do you think Trump’s right? Did — did — did — did — did you have to promise Trump anything? Did you have to promise anything before you were picked?”

“I didn’t speak to President Trump before I was chosen.” “Well, what about the circuit? What did the circuit…? Did you promise anybody?” “No, Senator, I was not asked anything prior to being selected to be on the circuit, appellate court, or the Supreme Court.” “What do you think about…? What do you think about Plessy v. Ferguson and the precedent of stare decisis?” “Senator, the law is my client. I do not do what you do. We on courts do not do what you do. We judges are not equipped to do what you do. We simply follow the law.”

“Okay. Okay. Fine. Uh, well, then let me ask you this…” So they’d ask another question, and Gorsuch would just knock it out of the park with brilliant simplicity — just common-sense, obviously brilliant legal simplicity. “Well, okay. All right. Let me ask you this…” Back to their page where the staffer had written the question and read the next one. And Gorsuch would laugh and smile, “Thank you, Senator! (chuckles) That reminds me of a story when I was,” blah, blah. He starts telling a story that led him to a particular life belief or legal belief or some such thing.

And these senators are so used to intimidating, like making Alito’s wife cry. They are so used to intimidating these nominees and forcing them to promise that they will not rule in certain ways, and Gorsuch isn’t getting even close to giving them what they want, and the answers that he’s giving are unassailable. They don’t know what to do with it ’cause I frankly don’t think… Now, I haven’t seen all these. I’ve just seen Leahy and Feinstein, so I haven’t seen them all. Like, Senator Durbin is now taking his turn, and again it’s during the program, so I’m unable to follow that.

But I watched a little bit of Feinstein and Leahy, and Leahy was reduced to once again talking about how he likes to spend time under his apple tree in the orchard in Vermont. His voice is a little bit more gravelly than it used to be. (impression) “Uh, well… Uh… Well, how about this?” Feinstein was the worst. Every question she’s bring up a case, Supreme Court precedent; he would answer it, and basically tell her he couldn’t. “I can’t answer that, other than to tell you what the law is.” “Okay. Well, let me try this,” and she’d have another question.

And he would nuke that. But it didn’t look like anything had been nuked. It made it look like these Democrats don’t know what they’re asking. And he’d give another brilliant, salient answer. “Okay. (shuffling papers) Okay, let me try this.” Then she reads another question. There’s no conversation taking place. The senators on the Democrat side are not discussing the law. They’re asking gotcha questions, and Gorsuch is at least two times as smart as any of these Democrats, at a minimum, on the committee.

For example, as I said the beginning of the program, he is the first nominee that I can remember who has, quote/unquote, “gotten away with” explaining that there are no little guys, big guys, rich guys, poor guys in court. Well, of course the Democrats, they don’t think that. They think when you’re a judge, you automatically rule against big corporations just because you do. And you automatically stand up and rule in favor of the minority, because that’s just what you do. And Gorsuch said, “No, I don’t even see that, Senator. I see a litigant.

“I see a person with a case — and my client, Senator, is the law. As a judge, my client is the law. And I owe my client the best deference and honesty I can provide.” And then he said — and this just shocked ’em. They were dead silent. There was not a Democrat that had a word to say for at least five seconds. He said, “Equality…” This rings true because this is… Folks, this is right out of my own heart, I have to tell you. “Equality before the law was the most radical thing in the world when it was incorporated here in the United States.”

Equality before the law. No big guys, no little guys, no rich guys, no poor guys, no more deserving than other guys, no less deserving than other guys. Women too. No gender representations is meant here. And I’ll tell you why that rang true with me. It’s because he mentioned, in his own words, the history of the world, human history prior to the United States… This is American exceptionalism, by the way. Human history is one of tyranny, bondage, misery, poverty, dungeons, prisons. Most people who’ve lived on this planet have no idea what it’s like to live as we Americans live.

And equality before the law? There was no such thing. The Brits, Magna Carta, first stages. But there were little guys, there were big guys, there were poor guys, there were rich guys — and many places around the world there still are, and if you’re a little guy, you’re screwed. If you’re poor, you’re screwed. But he made the point that equality before the law was the most radical thing in the world when incorporated here in the U.S., and the way he shut them down on judicial activism? He didn’t say, “Senator, it’s not our job to write the laws.

“We are simply to interpret the brilliant laws that you write. No, we’re…” Now, if you’re a Democrat nominee, you are permitted to say that precedent sucks if it can be improved upon in the effort to perfect the human condition, and that judges are entirely oriented toward doing that by offering deference to the little guy, to the minority guy, to the poor guy. But Gorsuch, rather than just say, “Look, our job is not to write law. Our job is to interpret law,” he said, “Our job as judges is not to do what you do. We’re not equipped to do what you do.

“We are not structured to do what you do. We can’t do what you do,” and thereby he made them appear to be superior. And there was no way that they could disagree with that without diminishing themselves. It was brilliant, folks. There was no way they could nuke Gorsuch, ’cause he had just told them, in effect, that he — for as brilliant as he is and all this PR — couldn’t begin to do what they do. Leahy and Feinstein said (impression), “Of course, that’s absolutely right! It’s great that you recognize that. I wish more people did,” blah, blah, blah.

That’s what they’re thinking. They didn’t say it, but you know that’s what they’re thinking. What is dawning… You know there was no coverage of this yesterday. There was very little coverage. The Democrats may have screwed up here in a way because they had the Comey hearings going on at the same time the Gorsuch first day was going on. But I think one of the reasons there wasn’t much coverage of Gorsuch yesterday — I mean live coverage like there was of Comey — is they have decided that Neil Gorsuch cannot be used to dissolve the Trump presidency.

He serves no purpose in destroying Trump right now. There’s no way that they can equate him to Trump other than to say Trump picked him. But they can’t say he’s Trump. They can’t say he’s going to do what Trump orders done because he denied that he’d even spoken to Trump about any of this kind of thing. And as such, he’s not newsworthy. The news media’s mission right now is to dissolve, to destroy, to nuke the Trump presidency, and anybody who cannot help that happen will not be covered in the news.

It’s another reason why the Trump rally last night was the first one to occur in a media vacuum. It had the usual things. It had people lined up for hours and hours outside the arena. It had a stuffed to-the-gills arena. It had a one hour primo performance by Trump where everybody in there was the happiest you’ve ever seen anybody. They were loving it, they were eating it up, and Trump was on fire. But it’s the first Trump rally that has not been ballyhooed by the media, not even been promoed, not even being referenced as happening.

You had to independently be able to find that. Other Trump rallies they’re ballyhooed, they are promoted, sometimes networks that are covering them will do little countdowns to when it starts. But since these rallies cannot be used to damage the Trump presidency ’cause he’s too good in them, they have abandoned even awareness of them, much less any coverage.

Some audio sound bites here from the Gorsuch hearings from yesterday. Let’s start, just to give you an example here of Pat “Leaky” Leahy, the senator of Vermont, his opening remarks.

LEAHY: It has gained some popularity within conservative circles, originalism, I believe, remains outside the mainstream of modern constitutional jurisprudence. It’s been 25 years since an originalist has been nominated to the Supreme Court. Given what we’ve seen from Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas and Judge Gorsuch on record, I worry that it goes beyond being a philosophy and it becomes an agenda.

RUSH: You need me to translate that? Okay. He said, “(muttering)” He was ripping originalism, the concept of original intent, the concept of, “What did the framers mean when they wrote the Constitution?” because to people like Leahy and the Democrats, the Constitution is not a static thing. It’s subjective. It grows and expands to fit the political agenda of the Democrat Party. It shrinks and ceases to exist when the conservative Republican agenda is attached to it.

So they believe the court is a living, breathing document, they say. They also believe it’s a charter of negative liberties because it only says what government cannot do. It doesn’t say what government can do. And that’s not the mainstream. They are the mainstream, don’t you know. They define what’s mainstream, all the perversion they believe in and all the sickness they believe in and all the uprisings they support, that’s what they claim is the mainstream.

If they haven’t learned from last November that they aren’t the mainstream, then we are standing in good stead here, folks. If they still believe that they’re ruling the roost, if they still believe that the sick stuff they believe is what dominates American culture as the majority of American thinking, then they’re still fooling themselves.

Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner a couple of days ago, anti-Trump media — by the way, this actually comes from Senator Lamar Smith. He did a study. Senator Lamar Smith did a study of media. He’s chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. He said, “How can the media be considered ‘mainstream’ when it doesn’t represent a majority of the American people? It’s more accurate to use the term ‘liberal,’” which of course we all agree with.

“In an interview, he cited the media’s ills: 91 percent of Trump campaign coverage was negative, 96 percent of media campaign contributions went to Democrat Hillary Clinton, and 55 percent of the public is weary of the anti-Trump tone in coverage. ‘It’s the most biased media I’ve seen in my lifetime,’ Smith said. He blamed that for keeping Trump’s approval ratings low.”

But his point is, how can the media, 91% opposed to Trump, 96% donating to Hillary, how in the world can that be mainstream? Hillary lost. Hillary actually lost embarrassingly. Throw California out and Hillary Clinton barely shows up. They are not mainstream. But they run around acting, thinking, legislating as though they are. And they have this added benefit: They do control the media so the media’s able to shape opinion, shape image, and it does make it look like they’re the majority and that everybody agrees with them.

But, of course, the Democrats are losing elections left and right, folks. It’s not just 2016. The Democrats are losing elections in droves! How can they be considered mainstream? But they think that they are.

Here’s Neil Gorsuch, just a sample of him before we go to the break. This was yesterday. This was from his opening remarks.

GORSUCH: Mr. Chairman, these days we sometimes hear judges cynically described as politicians in robes seeking to enforce their own politics rather than striving to apply the law impartially. If I thought that were true, I’d hang up the robe. The truth is, I just don’t think that’s what a life in the law is about. Sometimes the answers we reach aren’t the ones we personally prefer. Sometimes the answers follow us home at night and keep us up. But the answers we reach are always the ones we believe the law requires. And for all its imperfections, I believe that the rule of law in this nation truly is a wonder, and that it’s no wonder that it’s the envy of the world.

RUSH: Brief time-out. We will continue right after this.

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RUSH: One of Leahy’s questions to Gorsuch, he read an opinion that Scalia wrote about something. (paraphrasing) “Do you agree with what Scalia said?” “Oh, Senator, most impertinent commenting on the work of a colleague, certainly my old boss. I don’t think that would be fitting. I don’t think that would be proper.” “Well, you like Scalia huh?” “Well, I don’t think it would be –” “Okay. Well, how about this?” It’s a comedy, in a way, the pure political partisanship and the ineptness at the same time of the Democrat senators is on full display.