RUSH: Just a couple things I want to get here first. I can’t prove it, but my instincts — my intelligence guided by experience — tells me that there is a building, very deep concern that might be already bordering on panic on the Democrat side. And you begin to see very tiny indications of it after the announcement late yesterday that Trump accepted the invitation of the potbelly dictator in North Korea, Kim Jong-un, to go over there and have a chat. CNN was so overwhelmed by this last night that they blew it.

They had, for the briefest time, the most effusive praise for Donald Trump they have ever had and ever will have again, with Erin Burnett OutFront even admitting (paraphrased), “It looks like, if Trump gets this done, he’s gonna go down as a great president, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re not gonna be able to say otherwise!” Other CNN guests got close to echoing it — ditto MSNBC — for about an hour.

And then after that, it’s like they all got a memo and were threatened with being thrown out of the club if they didn’t shape up. After the first hour, they all began to talk about, “Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing! Kim Jong-un is playing Trump! Kim Jong-un, he… Oh, my God, this is gonna be a disaster. Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. Trump doesn’t study; Trump has no idea.

“The Obama team spent years, months, preparing for talks with North Korea and other despots, and Trump’s gonna go in there in a couple of months? Oh, no, it’s gonna be a disaster.” But that one hour where — for some reason — they were unable to do anything but praise this is what tells me real panic is setting. And, by the way, there’s other evidence of it, too, which we’ll get to as the program unfolds. Remember on Tuesday they were supposed to make, Texas blue.

The primary in Texas was supposed to spell the end of Ted Cruz and the end of Republicans, there’s gonna be a blue wave. Democrats — motivated, inspired by hatred and outrage — were gonna show up and they were just gonna smother the Republican turnout, and it didn’t happen. Republican turnout was a record high, much larger than the Democrat turnout. Disappointing, shocking, stunning. They create these fantasies that they then live in and then reality sets in like a cold truth, and they just can’t deal with it.

And then a poll that they all trust came out and showed the Democrats are trailing big time in five or six Senate races — Democrat incumbents — where Trump’s approval number in those states is even higher than the percentage of the vote he got in 2016. There is real panic over this, despite their ongoing confidence that they’re gonna be getting rid of Trump sometime this summer. Let me tell you something else, by the way, on this Russiagate thing.

I believe now… I can reliably tell you that I have learned — I believe — that the original objective of the Trump-Russia collusion was to get rid of Trump by July of 2017. I think that was the objective, and I think that’s what they all thought they were going to be able to do. This entirely made-up story that is perhaps one of the biggest political scandals of our lifetimes, ladies and gentlemen… I believe the people practicing it, the people engaged in it — which includes the intelligence community and the American media working hand in hand.

I believe they believed they were gonna get rid of Trump by last summer, and that hasn’t happened, obviously. And that whole thing has produced a big, fat zero. Now, they may believe they’re winning the day-to-day perception war with the Drive-By Media. But they are not causing Trump to lose any of his support. His support is growing. His approval numbers are growing. The frustration, anger, and hatred on the left is what’s growing. And it’s expanding. And that kind of poison is not helpful.

But it is growing. They are not meeting their expectations. They are not accomplishing what they set out to do. Remember, these are the people in the establishment. They run the show. They’re not used to not getting their way. They’re not used to accomplishing what they set out to accomplish, particularly within the boundaries of the ruling class. Trump is still there, and they’re beside themselves. They’re now throwing it up against the wall.

There’s nothing to this scandal, but they’re still trying to make it look like there is. Now this announcement on North Korea — and Trump’s not supposed to be able to do this! “Only really smart people like Obama and Madeleine Albright are supposed to be able to do this. Trump can’t do this. What the hell is happening?” they’re asking themselves. “Why didn’t Kim Jong-un ask to meet with Obama? That’s who he should have wanted to talk to.

“Obama’s Mr. Wizard. Obama’s the Wizard of Smart. That’s who Kim Jong-un should have wanted to talk to.” I think he did, and Obama said no. Not sure which — I’m not sure which of that, but they’re offended! “None of this should be happening! The economy shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing under Trump, ’cause Trump’s an idiot, doesn’t know what he’s doing. Trump’s a bull in a china shop. Trump’s an embarrassment.”

Trump is literally blowing up so much of what they believe, so much of what they think they’ve established and etched in stone. He’s blowing up it up, and they are unable to deal with this. Byron York tweeted yesterday a reminder about one of the jokes Trump told at the Gridiron Dinner on Saturday night. Trump actually told a joke at the gridiron dinner about Kim Jong-un. “I won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong-un. I just won’t.

“As far as the risk of dealing with a madman’s concerned, that’s his problem, not mine.” Self-deprecating humor of the first order, comically fun and hilarious: Trump making fun of himself. But you know what makes great comedy: The truth. The element of truth is what makes comedy edgy and laughingly fun. So let’s go to this program, rewinding the hands of time. April 11th, 2017. I was asked my opinion on Trump’s approach to North Korea.

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH ARCHIVE: What’s everybody so concerned about here? This Little Kim guy had been launching his putrid little missiles trying to hit us for how many years now, and then his father prior to that. And they keep plunking in the Pacific Ocean someplace. Look, keep aiming, Little Kim. I think our message is, “Keep aiming, Little Kim — and if you get close to us, you’re gonna pay the price for it.” The North Koreans should have been taken out years ago.

Clinton should have taken them out. You remember Madeleine Albright and some of the ridiculous things she said about the North Koreans, and it then it continued with the Bush administration really just huffed and puffed. I think what Trump is employing — and you leftists ought to love this. I think Trump is employing the madman strategy. These are genuine madmen in North Korea.

These people are literally off-the-charts insane, and it might be something as simple as inbreeding. Who the hell knows. These people are odd. You have to admit it, folks. So Trump may be thinking, “You know what? I’m gonna make them think I’m unpredictable. I’m gonna make them think that I am a madman. I’m gonna reverse the table on ’em, and I’m gonna make them think I’m the one that’s unpredictable.” Because they have been able to launch their putrid little missiles here for decades with the knowledge that nobody’s gonna do anything about it.

END ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: Bingo. Bingo. And what’s Trump joke about Saturday night? “I won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong-un. I just won’t. As far as the risk of dealing with a madman’s concerned, that’s his problem, not mine.” I knew it! Folks, I knew it! That’s why I said it in April of last year, April of 2017. And what has happened? When Trump calls the guy “rocket man,” when Trump threatens to fire back, when Trump says his button is bigger than Kim Jong-un’s…

Remember, Kim Jong-un, after a couple of these episodes actually called some people in Washington, D.C., and asked them, “Who is this guy?” He asked them for help in understanding Donald Trump. Trump purposely portrayed himself as unpredictable and more maybe off the charts than Kim Jong-un even is. All Kim Jong-un knew prior to that was these buttoned-down, ruling class guys like Obama — fastidious, sophisticated, crease in the slacks, you know, that kind of stuff.

The striped pants crowd from the State Department. Madeleine Albright waddling around over there huffing and puffing and doing nothing, and then here comes somebody who’s firing it right back and says, “Hey, if you do it where you did it, you’re not gonna exist. I don’t care what China thinks.” “Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait, wait!” There’s no question in my mind it worked. So late yesterday afternoon outside the White House, the South Korean national security adviser, Chung Eui-Yong, spoke to reporters about his meeting with the Trumpster.

EUI-YONG: I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policies together with international solidarity brought us to this juncture. I expressed President Moon Jae-in’s personal gratitude for President Trump’s leadership. Kim Jong-un said he is committed to denuclearization. Kim pledged that North Korea would refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests. He understands that the routine joint military exercises between the Republic of Korea and the United States must continue, and he expressed his eagerness to meet Trump as soon as possible.

RUSH: Yeah.

EUI-YONG: President Trump officiated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.

RUSH: “I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy together with international solidarity brought us to this juncture.” It’ll yet another thing that would not have happened had Hillary Clinton won or any of the other Republicans running against Trump. This probably wouldn’t happen. Now, again, we can’t say how it’s gonna end up. We don’t know what’s gonna happen here. But the left is panicky and upset and totally discombobulated by this. None of this was supposed to even be possible. None of it. And there’s much more to this. And, of course, there’s even more, and it’s fabulous as we begin to chalk up and note the Democrat reactions to this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Erin Burnett last night on CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront during discussion about the, “Oh, my God. Trump’s gonna meet with Kim Jong-un? How the hell is that happening?”

BURNETT: Just an extraordinary evening and, of course, opening the door to the big question. If President Trump can truly solve this problem, that would be going down as a great president, and there’s no way around that. That is the reality here.

RUSH: Oh, my… Oh, no! I mean, there was panic behind the scenes at CNN. “She didn’t say that, did she?” So they spent the rest of the night basically unsaying it and then they unsaid it over the night. Even at MSNBC, they had a slip and started talking about potential greatness here, until somebody sent them, I’m sure, a fax or an email or something, a minimum wage went out.

When these people are left to their own devices without whoever they hear from in central headquarters, you know, you do get a wide disparity of thought. But when the memo goes out the way they’re all gonna treat it, then it all changes and they all start sounding the same, and it took about a half hour for that to happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To the audio sound bites. We left off here with… Ooh. What did I do with…? What did I do with…? Ooh. Yeah, keep No. 22 standing by. We’ll get to it in order. I want to resume here at audio sound bite No. 4. We just finished with Erin Burnett, CNN OutFront last night.

This is after Trump’s announced acceptance of invitation from Kim Jong-un of North Korea to have a sit-down powwow in May. The media freaking out over this. Their initial reaction was, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If Trump pulls this off, why, he could go down as a really great president! There’s no way around that. That’s the reality here.” That’s what Erin Burnett said. Even some people over at PMSNBC said that.

But that was before the memo instructing them all what to say had gone out. Later the memo went out and we now have a montage of various sophisticated experts who decided to weigh in on this whole thing. We have presidential historian Michael Beschloss, somebody named Will Ripley at CNN; James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence for Obama; some CNN reporters; Leon Panetta. There’s a whole bunch of people here, and here’s how this montage sounds…

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: For Kim, this is a dream come true. He’s going to be dealing with a neophyte president.

WILL RIPLEY: Kim Jong-un has been studying President Trump.

JAMES CLAPPER: Kim Jong-un sees an opportunity here.

ELISE LABOTT: If President Trump were to sit down with Kim Jong-un tomorrow, what would he say?

JIM ACOSTA: Reality TV-style meeting between very different and in some ways, very similar leaders.

ANDERSON COOPER: Would Kim Jong-un view this as a major victory?

LEON PANETTA: He’s kinda figured out Donald Trump and, duh, what makes him tick.

NICHOLAS BURNS: (newsroom noise) This president doesn’t read and he doesn’t study and he doesn’t prepare.

JEREMY BASH: The president kind of got boxed in here.

JOHN KIRBY: (newsroom noise) He’s going into this with a bit of an upper hand. To some degree, he’s kinda running the table here.

PAULA HANCOCKS: Is the U.S. president walking into a massive trap?

RUSH: (impression) “Is the U.S. president walking into a massive trap?” That’s an Australian accent if I ever heard one. Okay. So you get the general drift. Now, let’s go back, play number 3. This is before they all got the memo. This is Erin Burnett about a half hour before this montage began.

BURNETT: It’s an extraordinary evening — and, of course, opening the door to the big question. President Trump can truly solve this problem. That would be going down as a great president. And there’s no way around that. That is the reality here.

RUSH: Can’t have that! So here we go with all these people. Now, what is predictable is these people. Substitute Ronald Reagan for Trump and Mikhail Gorbachev for Kim Jong-un and you have the same attitude. “Reagan’s a dunce. Reagan’s an idiot. Reagan doesn’t read. Reagan doesn’t even stay awake! Reagan doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, my God, Reagan might nuke the world! Gorbachev is brilliant, sophisticated, the adult in the room.

“He’s gonna run rings around Reagan, and Reagan’s not even gonna know what happened when the meeting is over! Thank goodness we can trust Gorbachev to not blow up the world. Gorbachev gets it.” It’s just… You people in the media are pathetic! You are pathetic! You are predictable. You are the same. You are boring! You aren’t even interesting or entertaining anymore, because you have become utterly predictable — and you’re nothing more than a bunch of sour grapes, spoilsports, dullards. “For Kim, this is a dream come true!”

All of a sudden, Kim Jong-un is a major statesman? Kim Jong-un — a mass-murdering autocrat presiding over a country that is a slum — somehow is more worldly, is more intelligent, is more advanced, is a greater statesman and is much smarter than Donald Trump. You people wonder why you are not trusted? Do you wonder why you are hated? Do you wonder why people question your patriotism? Do you wonder why people want to have to nothing more to do with you?

Do you wonder, CNN, why your audience is shrinking to the point you can’t even fit it in a thimble? This is simply atrocious! “Kim Jong-un has been studying President…” Kim Jong-un is scared to death of Donald Trump! Kim Jong-un knew he could make a fool out of Barack Obama. He knew he could make a fool out of George Bush — and out of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright — and his dad before him. They knew that nobody before Trump was gonna do anything!

The real idiots are previous presidents who gave North Korea money and know-how to develop nuclear weapons under the guise that we were only giving them nuclear power equipment so that we could show we liked them. It’s the previous presidents that put this country at risk by assuming they were so much smarter than Kim Jong-un, by assuming he’s nothing more than a back-alley thug. It’s every other administration that’s been manipulated and embarrassed, including the media by the North Korean leadership.

James Clapper: “Kim Jong-un sees an opportunity here.” Kim Jong-un sees an opportunity! For what? What’s he gonna get out of this that you haven’t already given him! What’s Kim Jong-un gonna get? “Oh, he’s going to get… He’s going to get fame. He’s going to get stature. Trump willing to meet him means that he is going to gain credibility as a world leader.” No. That would only happen if you guys did it. Kim Jong-un is doing this because he doesn’t know what Donald Trump’s gonna do and is a little frightened, not because he’s confident!

Anderson Cooper: “Would Kim Jong-un view this as a major victory?” Leon Panetta: “He’s kind of figured out Donald Trump and what makes him tick.” You haven’t figured out Trump yet, Leon! None of you people have figured out Trump! None of you yet know what you’re dealing with! You’re so damned arrogant and condescending, you think you know who Trump is and how he operates because you think he’s an idiot and stupid and unable to compete in your league, and you haven’t…

Because of this arrogance, you haven’t even begun to understand who Donald Trump is, how he thinks, or how he does things. And you’re not even willing to look at Donald Trump’s immense success in the private sector and acknowledge that he knows what he’s doing. This is… It’s embarrassing to have this kind of shallowness and genuine ignorance, and I’ll tell you why. It’s ’cause these people have been poisoned by hatred.

Their hatred for Trump because he beat them, hatred for Trump because he’s continuing to outsmart them and succeed in spite of them, hatred because they haven’t been able to get rid of him. Nicholas Burns: “This president doesn’t read, and he doesn’t study, and he doesn’t prepare.” Oh, and you guys do, and that’s gotten us what? Enmeshed in a bunch of hoaxes and things that are gonna damage this country like this stupid climate change garbage? Wind power? Solar power?

You’re willing to wreck this nation’s economy for your own stupid, feel-good connecting idealistic, stupid ideas? You read? You study? Well, you don’t learn anything. Jeremy Bash: “The president kind of got boxed in here.” The president got boxed in? The president got bo? So you see the theme here. Kim Jong-un is brilliant, the smartest man in the world now, outsmarting Donald Trump — which isn’t very hard to do because Trump is a walking idiot. Here’s Jimmy Kimmel. This was last night on his show.

KIMMEL: By May!

AUDIENCE: (chortling)

KIMMEL: He’s not still gonna be president by May!

AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)

KIMMEL: We need to get that…

AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)

KIMMEL: That needs to happen by Wednesday!

RUSH: “This needs to happen by Wednesday.” This is also… Going back to CNN Erin Burnett OutFront, she had a guest on later in the program called Samantha Vinograd. Is that how she pronounces it? Vinograd? Vinograd? Venovenoveno? Just whatever. Former Obama senior adviser on national security, Samantha Vinograd, I guess. Anyway, she’s talking about the meeting between Trump, Kim Jong-un. Erin Burnett says, “You were part of whatever conversations with President Obama. Does this feel different with you, the meeting here? Does Trump meeting with this, does it seem different from your experience?”

VINOGRAD: We would spent months preparing for most basic meetings that President Obama used to have. Talk to intelligence communities, talk to diplomats. There is no way that President Trump can be ready by May to have a high-stakes negotiation on denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. Guess what? You can’t wing it. Kim Jong-un is gonna be fully prepared. I think he’s playing to the president’s ego and the president’s weaknesses by flattering him and by inviting him to Pyongyang.

RUSH: It is so predictable! Every damned one of you people sounds identical! “There’s no way Trump can be ready in May. Trump doesn’t read; he doesn’t study. Kim Jong-un’s brilliant. He’s ready to run rings around Trump. This guy Trump, he doesn’t study, he doesn’t read, he doesn’t remember. Kim Jong-un’s gonna be fully prepared, and Trump’s not gonna know what hit him, and it’s gonna be a disaster because you can’t do this,” and look what she’s discussing.

“You can’t meet guys like this unless you have hours and hours and months and months of meetings with a bunch of dullard, dryball bureaucrats who are afraid of their own shadows still don’t get Trump! They still can’t get off of this poisoned hatred that they’ve got — and of course, it would not be complete unless we hatted Marie Harf to this. Course, she was the State Department spokesbabe when John Kerry was secretary of state. This was just this afternoon on the Fox News Channel.

HARF: This is high-stakes diplomacy. What the Trump administration needs to do now before they meet is put together a diplomatic strategy: What are the tactical specifics you want out of these negotiations? What does an agreement look like. We know the broad strokes. What are the details? And that will be a lot of legwork that’s been in the coming weeks and months before they meet. This is the biggest stage. This is gonna be the biggest and most important meeting President Trump has had overseas.

RUSH: (impression) “High-stakes diplomacy. What the Trump adminish-shtration needs to do now before they meet is to put together a diplomatic sh’tragegy: What are the tactical spe-shifics that you want out of these nego-shia-shons.” So you see, Trump’s inept. He doesn’t even know what should happen at these meetings.

He doesn’t know the difference between strategic and tactical! Trump doesn’t know anything. This is an embarrassment before it even happens. “Oh, my God, this is gonna… We’re gonna be even more embarrassed to be Americans than we are now after this meeting when Trump probably will give away every nuclear weapon we’ve got to Kim Jong-un, if Kim Jong-un flatters him.” That’s what they think.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The hits just keep on coming. Here’s David Axelrod, who was one of Obama’s chief campaign architects in 2008. he was on Anderson Cooper 99 last night, and the question: “Are you surprised that this tariff announcement was a dialed-back, more flexible version of what the president originally promised?” Now, look. Folks, I hate… I told you this was gonna be the case. How many times have I said it? I’m gonna say it again, and you people in the Drive-Bys, you know what? If you really want to understand Donald Trump, call me.

There is nobody in American media who understands Donald Trump better than I do, how he won, why he wanted to win, what he’s doing, what he means when he says what he says. I understand him better than anybody. I don’t have to talk to him. I don’t have to be in his inner circle. I just do, and I can tell you that you are all as far away from correct as you could be if you were trying to be.

You couldn’t be any further from the truth about who this guy is and how he operates if you were trying to get it wrong. This was so easy to see, this tariff business. Just follow what Trump has done prior to this announcement on anything else. And it was clear, even in the immigration meeting, where he told Dianne Feinstein, “Hey, I’ll sign whatever you give me.” She said, “Well, we want DACA, standalone DACA, and then we want a comprehensive bill.”

“Hey,” Trump said, “we can do that.” Didn’t happen, did it? And then the same thing happened on another issue up at the White House when they’re having a meeting: Guns, where Trump basically said, “What do you want, Dianne Feinstein?” “Well, we want assault weapons ban.” “I can do that.” Didn’t happen, did it? Now, you think Trump’s an idiot. Does he remember who he promises what? If you think Trump’s a liar, you haven’t the slightest…

All you gotta do is read what Trump has said (laughing) about how he likes to operate. He loves doing deals. He’s three steps ahead of people, three or four, and likes being there. So this tariff deal was easy to see. It was easy if you take the time to know who the guy is. To me, it appeared that what Trump was doing was trying to so often everybody up, to renegotiate for NAFTA, when it came to Canada and Mexico — and bingo, that’s exactly what happened. And so now… This is why I didn’t join this anti-Trump, anti-tariff hysteria when it began.

It’s why I don’t join any of the panicked or anti-Trump hysteria when he announces something because I know what he’s doing, but everybody else jumps on it every time. “Oh, my God! Trump’s tariffs? It’s gonna be a trade war. Oh, my God. It’s horrible.” So now Trump’s dialed it back to where it actually makes all kinds of imminent sense, and now Axelrod’s being asked if Trump knows what he’s doing. What is…? Is he flexible or is he just flying by the seat of his pants, Mr. Axelrod? How do you explain that?

AXELROD: The president got what he wanted out of this: That picture with the steel and aluminum workers. He does view these things from the standpoint of someone who’s producing a reality show. He got this picture. He changed the story from the porn star and from guns. The details I don’t think matter that much, and just the same way, to agree to, uh, uh, a summit with — the first ever summit between a president of the United States and the dictator of North Korea within an hour of being presented with the proposal without consulting with your national security team in a significant way, y’know, I think he thinks about these things in terms of how it’s gonna play.

RUSH: The truth is, that’s how you guys operate. You guys are the kings of the phony photo-op. You’re the kings of using people as pawns, like Obama bringing a bunch of actors into the Rose Garden wearing lab coats disguised as doctors to make it look like they will all were endorsing Obamacare. You people are the champions of astroturfing. You are the champions of using photo-ops to fool people into not seeing what you’re really doing.

Those guys that were with Trump are actual beneficiaries of something they’ve been promised for 30 years by your party, Mr. Axelrod, that you never delivered on. Trump is running rings around these people, if you want to know the truth, and they know it — and this is the best they can do to try to keep other people from seeing it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I hope when Trump meets with Kim Jong-un he can do something besides stare at that bad haircut. If I met with the guy, I wouldn’t be able to stop staring at that bad haircut. At any rate… (interruption) What? (interruption) Nah, Trump’s is a… No. Not… Nah. Trump’s… Well, Trump has a bad comb-over. This guy is a bad haircut. This is just… Look at that. You realize he wants to look that way? That’s what… People that wore two-tone green leisure suits is in the seventies from Kmart, they thought they looked cool.

This guy things he looks good!