RUSH: Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites ’cause this gets even better. Here’s James Clyburn. He is the father of “Steak” Clyburn, who is a commissioner at the FCC, I think. She’s still there? Yeah. Mignon Clyburn. This is on CNN Tonight. Don Lemon is talking to Clyburn. He is also a former grand pooh-bah of the Congressional Black Caucasians, the CBC, and Lemon says, “Sarah Sanders says the State of the Union was incredible, country’s doing great. How do you see the state of the union under President Trump?”

CLYBURN: I can only equate one period of time with what we are experiencing now, and that was what was going on in Germany around 1934 right after the 1932 elections when Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor. He began to do things to discredit the media, to disrupt the judicial system, and if you recall from your studies, they had swastikas hung in churches all over Germany. And when I see and hear and experience what’s going on in the country today, I think back to that time, and I really believe that we as Americans had better get a handle on things. If we don’t, we could very well see ourselves going the way of Germany.

RUSH: Now, you see, folks, we’re sitting here laughing. This is patently ridiculous. This is insane, this is unhinged, this is literally, literally absurd. They believe it. This is the manuscript. I don’t know if Clyburn does, but I’ll guarantee you his audience, the people he’s aiming that comment at, believe it. Trump is Hitler and Putin is Mussolini or vice-versa. And we’re gonna have swastikas in the churches if we’re not careful here. So here’s Don Lemon following up.

LEMON: People are going to say, “Well, he’s gonna compare him to Hitler and the Holocaust and all those things.”

CLYBURN: If I were making that comparison, then this president would be Mussolini and, uh, Putin would be Hitler.

RUSH: Okay. So Putin is Hitler, not Trump, and Trump is Mussolini. I mean, really, that clarifies things. That helps. That clarifies. That really helps us get a better handle on this. They believe this. We sit here, hear this, we laugh at it, we are incredulous. We joke about. They believe this stuff. And worse than that, so do their rank-and-file voters and supporters. (interruption) What are you confused about? What’s the confusion? (interruption) Hm-hm. Hmm. Well, Trump’s making the trains run on time. The economy’s going great, people are being fooled. That’s what he means.

Mussolini made Italians think their country was great, all the while he was creating a totalitarian, authoritarian regime and colluding with Hitler to do it. None of this is real. Trump is a carnival barker. He’s making you think things are going great when all he’s doing is getting ready to enslave you or whatever else he’s gonna do to you, send you to the camps, whatever Hitler and Mussolini did.

I’m telling you they are. I know you’re gonna say, “Rush, they can’t be. This has gotta be strategized sound bites to accomplish –” if you’re gonna say something like this, you better damn well mean it. You start joking around about Hitler and this kind of stuff? The thing is, turn this around too. Imagine if this was Trey Gowdy saying this about Obama. That he’s Hitler or compare him to a grand imam somewhere in a mosque, I don’t know, but take whatever comparison works.

And do you think Don Lemon would sit there, “Oh. Very interesting. Are you sure you got ’em right? Are you sure it’s not Putin that’s Hitler?” “Oh, right. Right.” You think there would be serious, studious analysis of this lunatic and his points? And this gets better. We next move on to David “Rodham” Gergen, CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront. She asked Gergen about the House Intelligence Committee decision to release the memo.

GERGEN: I think we’re seeing a breakdown of the democracy here. We’ve never had a situation in which the Congress has moved into a criminal investigation and turned it into a political circus. When Nixon was under investigation over the Watergate tapes, the taping system, he offered to the special counsel, “I’ll give you summaries of what’s in the tapes and that will be good enough.” And the special counsel said “absolutely not.”

RUSH: The frame of reference. Watergate, Watergate, Hitler, Watergate, Hitler, Hitler, Watergate, Mussolini. Throw him in to change course, Mussolini, Hitler, Watergate, Watergate, it’s all these people know, Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.

Trump hasn’t done anything! All Nunes is gonna do is release four pages of truth about what this investigation has been. That somehow is what Nixon did? I’m here to tell you, whoever has been running this sham investigation, we know the Clintons are deeply involved with the dossier. Whoever has been orchestrating the behavior of the FBI, the leadership of the FBI with these deep state administrative state sources leaking for a full year trying to convince people Trump colluded with Russia, that is what’s worse than Watergate.

That is what is tearing the fabric of our democracy apart. That’s what’s doing the greatest damage to law enforcement, is these people throwing the rule of law away and evidence and everything else to conduct a political witch hunt disguised as a serious criminal investigation resulting from serious intelligence collected by legitimate agents.

None of that is true! And the fact that it’s on the verge of being exposed now exposes people like “Steak” Clyburn’s dad and Gergen here. They’ve got nothing else to say but than to compare it to what people will immediately recognize as horrible periods in world history, Watergate and Hitler. They believe it. We laugh. They believe it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, folks, I had fun with “Steak” Clyburn’s dad and Gergen. But I want to get serious about what they said here because, sadly, it’s no laughing matter. David Gergen, you just heard him, has lost his mind. He says we’ve never been this close to destroying our democracy. And he was not talking about the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ using the power and tools of the entire justice and intelligence apparatus to spy on a presidential candidate and campaign and then a president-elect and then a president.

He wasn’t talking about the previous administration spying on a political candidate from the other party and a duly elected president. No, no. That to him is not at all anything that threatens democracy. No, David Gergen, who’s losing his mind, thinks democracy’s in peril because the House Intelligence Committee voted to release a four-page memo detailing the Obama administration’s abuse and corruption and democracy-threatening actions in corrupting and politicizing the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The House Intelligence Committee in a four page memo detailing how the Obama administration threw out the law to investigate Donald Trump. That is the problem, in Gergen’s mind, and Clyburn is even worse.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, one more thing about this memo. One more? Who am I kidding? I got 10 more things about this memo, but another thing about the memo. How come it hasn’t leaked? Now, let me ask you a question, now. All of Congress has had the chance to see this memo. There has been a room — a secure, private room — where anybody in Congress can go. They can’t take it out of there with them, but they can go in there and read it. It was kind of like the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that was a thousand-million pages.

You could go in there and read it but you couldn’t take notes. You could take… This is four pages. You have to go into a secure area. No media, no cameras, no nothing allowed in there, but you can go in there and read it. Many members of Congress have. It has not leaked. Now, this guy, Adam Schiff, Pencil Neck… You may not know this. This guy would leak information during House Intelligence Committee hearings while they were going on! He would excuse himself, he would go to the bathroom, and he would leak while taking a leak.

He would call people in the media to report what was going on in closed session while testimony was taking place, and he’d do it during a bathroom break. But he hasn’t leaked anything from this four-page Nunes memo. Why is that? All he’s done is, “You know what? I have my own memo. I’m Adam Schiff, and I’m important, and I have my own memo!” And nobody cares about his little memo. Why hasn’t the Nunes memo leaked?

(interruption) Of course, I have the answer! The answer is there’s nothing in it that damages the Republicans. The only stuff that leaks is stuff that damages Trump. It’s stuff that damages Republicans. That’s all that’s ever leaked in the last 12 to 18 months. There haven’t been favorable leaks for Trump. Even the stuff coming out of Trump’s own White House has been negative to him. But this memo has not leaked, and what that tells me is there’s nothing in this memo that the Democrats think is beneficial to them.

That’s why it hasn’t been leaked.

Now, before we go back to the phones here, back to Steak Clyburn’s dad, James Clyburn, Congressional Black Caucasians. He’s out there with that rant comparing times in America to World War II and Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy, and he said in his comparison that Putin is Hitler and Trump is Mussolini. Now, let’s examine this because I guarantee you the people that listen to Steak Clyburn’s dad don’t know up from down. So they listen to this and say, “Yeah, man. You tell ’em! Exactly right. Trump is Mussolini! Exactly. Authoritarian. Exactly.”

Mussolini was a fascist. Fascism is a form… This is not debatable. It is not arguable. Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism. Fascism is characterized by dictatorial power, the forcible suppression of opposition, and the control of industry and commerce. And it in fact came to prominence in early twentieth century Europe. And Steak Clyburn’s dad is trying to convince people that Trump is that, that Trump is what Mussolini was: A fascist. Well, let me ask you this:

Who is it that took over one-sixth of the U.S. economy and said they were better at running it, and then placed authoritarian demands on the American people: “You must buy it or face a fine. You must buy it or possibly face going to jail. You must sign up”? Who took over one-sixth of the U.S. economy, the health care industry, not knowing a single thing about how to run it? It wasn’t Donald Trump.

It was Barack Hussein Obama and his fascist Democrat buddies who did it. Who is it that imposed more regulations on private industry than any president in our lifetimes? And that, again, would be — dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! — Barack Hussein Obama. Forcible suppression of the opposition? Is that Trump? Trump talks to these guys in the media more than any president ever has in our lifetimes. The press has more access…

He may call ’em fake news, but he talks to ’em. And it wasn’t Donald Trump that tried to arrest a Fox News reporter. That was Barack Hussein Obama. And who was it that we now know survived their political enemies using warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court? That would be Barack Obama. Donald Trump a fascist? Donald Trump is a deregulator! Donald Trump is killing and swiping away regulations faster than Obama could create them.

That’s not what fascists do. So you combine Clyburn and now David Gergen with this losing-his-mind insanity that democracy is threatened. You know what he’s really saying? Democracy is threatened when the American people learn what the Obama the Department of Justice has been doing. Democracy is threatened when the American people learn what the Clinton campaign did in collusion with Obama to spy on the Trump campaign and Trump personally.

That’s threatening democracy. The Nunes memo simply details it — and in David “Rodham” Gergen’s world, that threatens democracy? No. That threatens authoritarianism. That challenges dictatorial premises. Let me get to the phones, ’cause if I don’t it’s gonna be a long time before I do. We’re gonna start with Lynn in Pennsylvania. Great to have you and I really appreciate your patience. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. This is such an honor to talk to you. I can check this off my bucket list. I can’t believe I’m talking to you.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad you made it through. Thank you very much.

CALLER: Thank you for everything you put out there. I listen, I understand you, and I only wish other people would listen to you, ’cause it would bring such clarity to things. I wanted to say this memo… I think if it gets out there to the American people, I think the Republicans will be outraged. The Democrats, I don’t even think they’re gonna believe it. I think they’ve been brainwashed, and they’re gonna somehow twist this. It’s all gonna be on Trump. “It’s not true. Trump made it up.” They’re just not gonna believe it.

RUSH: You’re probably right when you discuss, you know, a majority of Democrats who have been ill-educated, propagandized, and brainwashed, probably will not believe it. You’re probably right.

CALLER: Yeah. I always… I compare the Democrats to that movie, The Truman Show. I believe they live like in a bubble and they’re fed what they want to be fed by, you know, the upper echelon, and they believe it. And like we’re sitting out here watching all this happen. I get so frustrated.

RUSH: This is… You’re right. This is why I… This is my point: They have to be defeated. We’re not gonna gain any ground by trying to educate these people and persuade them to drop what they believe and join. That’ll happen, but it’s gonna be in a trickle. You know, people that listen to this program. There are leftists and liberals 29 years been listening to this program, some of them have converted. They call here and admit it. Doesn’t happen in mass numbers.

And, you know, arguing people, persuading people out of their ideological core — but in this case we’re not even talking about that. We’re talking about what people have become emotionally attached to. They’ve become emotionally attached to the idea that Republicans don’t like people, that corporations don’t like people, that Republicans like corporations. Republicans are literally happy with making customers and people sick and dying and corporations destroying the planet.

The Democrats have succeeded in educating a certain percentage of America that literally believes that. And so in their minds the Republican Party is illegitimate. So whatever negative word you want to come up with — even if it was a fact. If the mainstream media told them, if the mainstream media reads the Nunes memo and signs on to it — this will never happen, by the way — but if the mainstream media took this and said, “You know what? What the Obama administration was doing, colluding with the Clinton campaign to destroy Trump, is something we’ve not seen before, this is outrageous,” that still would not fly with a whole lot of the people you’re talking with.

Because they construct this Truman Show existence, as you describe it, a little safe cocoon where nothing that challenges what makes them comfortable is allowed to penetrate. That’s how you get snowflakes, snowflake students on college campus. Look, it would be wonderful if all of these people could be made to see the light. It’d be wonderful if we could persuade these people. It’s worth the effort, but it’s not gonna result in massive success. That’s why the agenda or the purpose has to be to defeat them and everything that they want.

Because the things that they want, the things they believe in are destructive or they are corruptive or they pervert. And that’s why they have to be resisted. You know, by the way, the choice of that word to describe the Never Trumpers and the anti-Trumpers, the resistance, you know where that originates? That originates with the French resistance after the Nazis had occupied France. There were a few in France who wanted to fight back against the Nazis, and they became known as the resistance. And so it’s not a casually, accidentally chosen name. Resistance is resisting the Nazis.

And so here, resisting Trump, the resistance has a connection to elements in the past that help people like Clyburn make this comparison that he made, Trump is Mussolini and Putin is Hitler, and they’re working together to somehow conquer and ruin the United States. Anyway, I have to take a break. I appreciate the call very much.