RUSH: “New White House communications director [Tom Hagen] on Wednesday blamed…” (interruption) Scaramucci. You know who Tom Hagen was? (interruption) The Godfather movies? The consiglieri to Don Corleone. He wasn’t a member of the family, but may as well have been. Robert Duvall in one of the greatest roles ever. I once had a chance to meet Robert Duvall; it didn’t happen. But, anyway.
So if I occasionally slip up and call Scaramucci “Tom Hagen,” it’s on purpose. (interruption) No, I never met Pacino. I never met either of those guys. I’ve met Francis Ford Coppola. In fact, he hosted one of our Big Cigar dinners at his winery estate in Napa. We had dinner upstairs where he has all of the memorabilia and artifacts from the movies that he’s produced. There was a lot of Godfather stuff up there, and I sat at his table. He said, “You have Hollywood good looks.” (laughing) I know this is an evening of BS. He says, “I listen to you when I’m in Costa Rica. I have a home in Costa Rica; I listen to you on shortwave.”
There was a… At the time, there was a pirate station off the coast of Louisiana that was transmitting the program on shortwave around the world, and that’s how he said he listened to it. Anyway, Scaramucci was on Fox. TheHill.com has the story, but he was on Fox News today. Scaramucci said Obama holdovers are responsible for the leaks. I’m telling you, folks, this is what I think this is. I don’t want to be too repetitive here but you have to keep in mind that people are tuning in for the first time at every moment of the program.
So those of you who have heard this riff, I’ll make it brief so please indulge me. This public disrespect of Sessions by Trump has never made sense to me in any away. It hasn’t made sense in common sense. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t think Trump is off his rocker. I’m not like the media who think Trump is unbalanced and deranged. I think Trump is a masterful user/manipulator of the media. You take Sessions, whose incomparable value is advancing the Trump immigration agenda, and that’s why Trump was elected.
If he gets rid of Sessions, there’s nobody he’s gonna find that, A, could get confirmed, and, B, would continue what Sessions has started on implementing and enforcing the Trump immigration agenda. And that’s his value; not, you know, running defense on this Russia business. I think it’s all been a diversion. I go back to the time Sessions endorsed, through the campaign, through the transition, and then Sessions being nominated to be AG, the confirmation hearings. What’d they do? They savaged the guy as a typical Southern plantation-owner racist.
They said despicable things about him, making fun of his middle name: Beauregard. But this week he has found new acclaim. He has been attacked by Trump, and the media and his fellow colleagues — the Democrats in the Senate who wanted to destroy him — have come to his defense. They’re speaking of his integrity, of his honor, and how it’s unseemly that some pig from Queens would ever treat somebody this way. Trump says (summarized), “He’s not doing a good job getting rid of the Russian thing. He’s not going on a good job investigating this. He’s not doing a good job. He’s disappointed me. He shouldn’t have recused himself.”
By the way, on that, don’t you think it’s still a little odd to still be carrying a torch for something that happened six months ago? I mean, get real. Sessions recused himself six months ago, and Trump’s acting like he’s still not over it? Come on, folks. So yesterday, Trump savages Sessions again. “Where’s the investigation into the leaks? That’s what’s really important here! We need the leaks investigated,” and today we get news that Sessions is on the verge of announcing just such an investigation, and this investigation will be of these Obama embeds and these people in the deep state, who they are and what they’ve been.
‘Cause real felonies have been committed there, and Comey wasn’t interested in it. We don’t know how many other people the FBI may or may not have been. Comey was not interested and didn’t do diddly-squat. So Trump sends out a call last night and the announcement Sessions is doing that, and Scaramucci is on Fox News today saying Obama holdovers are responsible for all of these leaks. I think that’s what this is all about. They know who the leakers are. ‘Cause there’s so many of them.
There’s so many leaks, so many leakers, they have to know who it is, at least some of them. So with Scaramucci today blaming Obama holdovers for a series of damaging leaks that have rocked the White House, distracted the White House, whatever, these leaks and these Obama holdovers are not helping, and he hinted that more staff changes could be on the way. He said: Listen, we have to crack down on leaks on a number of different fronts. What’s happened now in this past week, all these Sessions distractors are now saying what a great guy he is.
How much integrity he has and how it’s just unseemly for Trump to be treating him this way. I myself have joined that particular complaint. So now Sessions announces this investigation, and what are they gonna say about Sessions? Well, they’re gonna have to go back and say he’s a tool. “He’s a coward. He couldn’t take it! Trump starts ripping him publicly, and what does Sessions do? He bows town and says, ‘Okay, what can I do to get back…?'” So they’re gonna savage him again, but it’s gonna be funny to watch because they don’t have the credibility to do it anymore because they’ve just spent a week or more praising the guy.
You know, this happened in the Bush White House. They did it with Cheney. I don’t remember any specific times, but this same kind of ploy was used. They would send Cheney out to say something critical of George W. Bush on whatever it was — maybe an aspect of the Iraq war, a particular strategy, something — because they hatred Cheney. They hated Cheney. It was irrational, the hatred they had for Cheney. I’d literally never understood it. Dick Cheney is so soft-spoken, you have to request silence to hear what he’s saying.
Yet the level of just intense, raw hatred they had for him never made any sense. But it was real. They just despised the guy. One of the… They thought he was the architect of all the wars. They thought he was the warmonger. He was Darth Vader. He’s out there, and George W. Bush was this idiot from Texas puppet, and Cheney was actually the marionette. He was pulling the strings, is a puppet master. Isn’t it interesting that every Republican president, according to the left and the Drive-Bys, is a dunce? Reagan was a dunce and an idiot. George W. Bush all of us hick Texas that didn’t know which way was up.
George H.W. Bush, he wasn’t a dunce; he just didn’t pay attention. And then we got Trump and we’re back to, “He’s a dunce, he’s an idiot, he’s deranged,” and every Democrat president is the equivalent of Albert Einstein, and every Democrat candidate is the equivalent of Albert Einstein. John Kerry. Hillary Clinton — smartest woman in the room, in the world — Michelle Obama, the same thing. Barack Obama? “Obama’s so smart we can’t even look at him when we’re in the same room!
“We’d be blinded by the intelligence, it’s so beautiful and intense.” He was the smartest guy but never said anything. He had all the correct inflections and pauses. You know, intellectuals have their own language and their own speech techniques, and Obama had it down pat. “And, uhhh… Well, uhhhhhhh,” and, you know, he’d say a bunch of things that never made sense, but, boy, does it sound like it makes sense ’cause it’s got big words.
Jimmy Carter, smartest guy, he ended up not doing too well, but smart, smart focused guy. All these Democrats are brainiacs, John Kerry, and every Republican is an idiot. And so now here we have what appears to be a bit of media manipulation, a little bit of a feint. You put this all together, I think this is what they’re doing. I think it makes some sense because what’s apparent doesn’t.