RUSH: Let’s get to the regular audio sound bite roster. I haven’t even gotten started on it today. Every audio sound bite we’ve used today has been something that’s happened since the program began. Well, other than we had an archival couple from previous programs. But here we are at audio sound bite No. 1. Remember I said this yesterday on this program…
RUSH ARCHIVE: Why do they want Trump to fire Mueller? Because they want their own Watergate. They’ve read about Woodward and Bernstein. … But the Drive-Bys, they can only dream. They can read about Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein taking down a president, but there hasn’t been an opportunity for them to do that, the newbies, until now. They hate Trump. They want Trump gone. They’ve gotten out of bed every day for the last year and a half believing that day, every day was gonna be the day that they would find the smoking gun, silver bullet that would take Trump out. And of course the whole world has been looking for that silver bullet.
RUSH: And now we have an audio montage of Drive-By Media people proving I’m right, thinking they are so close to it they can taste it…
MAUDE BEHAR: In Watergate —
SUNNY HOSTIN: The Saturday Night Massacre!
MAUDE BEHAR: — the Saturday Night Massacre and Nixon was out.
JIM CRAMER: ’73, remember the Saturday Night Massacre? It was bad for stocks.
DON LEMON: The question is: Are we closer to a Saturday Night Massacre than ever before?
DANA BASH: What it would mean would be huge. The Saturday Night Massacre…
RYAN LIZZA: …the way that Nixon did in the Saturday Night Massacre.
ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: We had the Saturday Night Massacre.
CHRIS CILLIZZA: That’s how we got the Saturday Night Massacre!
ABBY PHILLIP: …akin (crosstalk) to a Saturday Night Massacre.
NEAL KATYAL: (whispering) It is the Saturday Night Massacre.
HARRY LITMAN: …Saturday Night Massacre style.
DAVID GERGEN: …Saturday Night Massacre in slow motion.
ANDERSON COOPER: Do you feel like we are on the verge of a Saturday Night Massacre here? This is like a play. I mean, this is really just fascinating (snickering) alt-right Shakespeare.
RUSH: Unreal how this happens all of the time, from gravitas to this! There’s 15 different people here from a bunch of different networks. Does anybody even know what the Saturday Night Massacre is? (interruption) What is it? What was it? Hmm? (interruption) Right. Right. Well, no, Cox was the special prosecutor, and Nixon wanted him fired. So he went to the attorney general and the attorney general refused to do it. The next guy refused to do it. Nixon kept firing people. Robert Bork did it. But the point is, Bork was the solicitor general, and he fired Archibald Cox for Nixon, who was the special counsel back then.
There’s absolutely… The only way you could have a Saturday Night Massacre now is if Trump decides to fire Mueller or Rosenstein, say, tells Rosenstein, “You fire Mueller. I’ve had it.” Rosenstein refuses, and Trump would fire Rosenstein. Up next will be somebody else in the DOJ and if that person refused to do it they keep going until they got to somebody who would do it. That’s what they’re hoping for, and all of this is based on media speculation that Trump is gonna fire somebody. But everybody Trump is talking to — Dershowitz and others — say Trump isn’t gonna fire anybody.
I, of course, am suggesting that he not fire anybody, as are many other people. But look at this: “Saturday Night Massacre! Watergate! It led to getting rid of Nixon.” You see how everything ties back to these current journalists wishing for their own Watergate, which is their own forcing a president out of office. So they have an event that happened in 1973, and here we are 50-some-odd years later, and these people are desperately trying to shape events today to essentially repeat it. Yet you tell them that you think life was better in the seventies, “It’d be better if we could roll back the clock,” and they’ll call you an old-fashioned old man that wants to kick people off the front yard.
They’ll tell you, “You can’t go back! You can’t go back. What are you, an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy?” Yet that’s all they want to do. These people are so predictable. Now, remember yesterday, Carl Bernstein of Woodward and Bernstein, told everybody he was all excited about the raid on Michael Cohen because it was designed to scare the president. And that was a good thing, ’cause this Trump guy, he deserves to be scared. And Mueller and the U.S. attorney Southern District of New York, scaring Trump? That’s exactly what needs to happen, ’cause Trump doesn’t know how much danger he’s in, and he deserves to know.
So raiding a lawyer’s office and piercing attorney-client privilege to Carl Bernstein is fine and dandy because it scared Donald Trump. But then last night on CNN with Don Lemon, Bernstein — I don’t know — sort of pulled back on this a little. Don Lemon said, “What is the difference? Do you see any difference between Trump and Nixon?” See, Don Lemon was one of the guys in our montage a moment ago. “Saturday Night Massacre! Saturday Night Massacre! It got rid of Nixon! Get rid of Trump. We want it to happen again.” Well, Bernstein was there. So as an expert, Don Lemon said, “What’s the difference, Carl? You see any differences between Trump and Nixon?”
BERNSTEIN: Apples and oranges. I think, one, Nixon had a great intellect. Uhhhh, I don’t think we’d ever accuse Donald Trump of having a great intellect. And at the same time I would never underestimate Trump’s brilliance at reading the country in a demagogic way and his political skills which are extraordinary.
RUSH: Whoa! Wait a minute! I thought Trump was so idiotic he could be scared by this. So apples and oranges. Nixon had a great intellect. I don’t think we’d ever accuse Trump of having a great the intellect. See, these guys have a definition of what is smart. And I think in many ways these guys are some of the most closed-minded dumb asses that we have. They’re not open to anything other than what they believe in, and they’re not curious about anything. The things they believe are often just stupid. It just defies common sense. And yet Trump’s the idiot.
You think Carl Bernstein could run for office, get elected? You think Carl Bernstein could do one thing Donald Trump has done in his life? You think Carl Bernstein could have a worldwide real estate empire? You think Carl Bernstein could have married Melania? You think Carl Bernstein could have had an affair with Marla Maples? Do you think Carl Bernstein could have built Bernstein Tower?
He couldn’t do anything Trump has done. And yet who’s the idiot? (interruption) Well, I think Carl could come up with 130 grand to pay a hooker, yeah. That may be one thing. Well, okay, so you found an area of commonality. All right, I stand corrected. There is something Carl Bernstein could do that Trump has allegedly done. Trump doesn’t remember doing it. In Trump world, $130,000 is chump change. I still want to know if Stormy reported the 130 grand.
You know, gift tax law, a lot of people don’t understand gift tax law because most people don’t have enough money to give money away, but there would have been a way to get Stormy 130 grand without her having to report any tax on it. You could have given it to her as a gift.
Now, people think, “No, no, Rush, the gift limit back then would have been $10,000 or 12.” That’s true but, you know, every individual has a gift tax exemption. And at the time we’re talking about — and allow me some flexibility here to be slightly incorrect on the numbers, but it wasn’t that long ago the gift tax exemption was a million-dollar for your life, meaning the single limit you could give any person back in this era, $12,000 tax-free.
If you’re married, it meant you could give somebody $24,000 tax-free. They wouldn’t have to report it as income and you wouldn’t have to report it as a gift. But if you gave somebody $15,000, let’s say, instead of 12, okay, you’re $3,000 over the individual limit, but you still wouldn’t pay tax on it because the $3,000 would be subtracted from your $1 million gift exemption that you have over the course of your life.
So it’s entirely possible, based on how much money Trump had given away or Cohen, that they could have given her $130,000 as a gift. Now, it would have had been reported over the $12,000 whatever it was limit at the time. The giver would have had to report it on his gift tax return. Did you know what the annual gift tax exemption is now, after tax reform? Five-and-a-half million dollars. That’s the lifetime exemption, meaning over the course of your life, you can give away five-and-a-half million dollars tax-free.
And that’s important ’cause the gift tax rate is like around 48%. And the giver pays it. This is how the government dissuades people from giving people a salary rather than paying a salary on which they have to pay taxes, of course. A married couple now has a $11 million gift exemption over the course of their life. Most people aren’t gonna give away — and to your spouse there’s no limit. It doesn’t even count if you give it to your spouse. It does on your kids.
But, anyway, Bernstein: Never underestimate Trump’s brilliance, he said here, at reading the country in a demagogic way, political skills extraordinary. So Carl’s admitting something got Trump elected, and it wasn’t just chance. It’s that Trump is a great demagogue, and he knows how to reach the stupid people in America.