RUSH: To the phones! We start in Phoenix. This is Marty. Great to have you with us, sir. How are you?
CALLER: Hello, Rush. When Comey briefed Trump on the dossier, he claimed to do so because he wanted to let Trump know the type of information that was out there that could be used against Trump. Well, if you’re gonna tell Trump about that, why then would you not also tell him about the Russians trying to infiltrate his campaign as opposed to putting a spy in the campaign?
RUSH: That is an excellent question — or that you were gonna put a spy. Even if you’re gonna warn Trump and say, “Hey, we’re gonna put somebody in, don’t be alarmed. We’re gonna track this down.” Yeah. A great point. The answer to your question, which is a great, great brilliant question forged from a brilliant memory. He has remembered everything about this. Comey did say publicly — along with the rest of the intelligence community — “Well, you know, Trump was telling us he didn’t need a daily intelligence brief ’cause he has a good memory.
He said, “How much could it change day-to-day?” He didn’t need to talk to them every day. Trump was all — and that ticked them off, by the way. Because most presidents, the first thing they do every morning is get that brief with the intel people or the intel people put it together and then the representative — the CIA director, Director of National Intelligence, somebody — briefs the president. Jimmy Carter, for example had Zbigniew Brzezinski at 7:30 in the Oval Office. The first meeting Jimmy Carter had every day was with Brzezinski, his national security adviser.
And Trump’s out here saying, “I don’t need to talk to these guys every day. That ticked them off. I mean, that takes them down a peg or two on the ladder, rung of importance. So they used this dossier for two purposes, is the real answer to your question out here, Marty. They publicly said that they wanted to show Trump evidence from this dossier. Comey told Trump about the pee — you know, the golden showers — story. Because they needed to show Trump the kind of stuff that’s out there that he needs to know about every day. Even though this wasn’t true!
Even though this had not been verified or corroborated, Comey said they needed Trump to know the kind of stuff that’s out there so that he could be equipped and properly prepared and informed and all that. But that was not the reason Comey did this. Your question is quite logical, and Comey did say — and the intelligence people did say — publicly that they were trying to get Trump to understand the kind of despicable stuff that could be out there that he needs to be aware of. They wanted to warn him. They wanted to protect him.
So if that’s the case, then why not extend the protection and warn him that there might be Russians attempting to infiltrate his campaign? It’s a great question. But the answer is that that’s not really why Comey told Trump about the golden-showers story at all. There’s only one reason Comey took that story up there and that’s because he was ordered to by James Clapper, who probably was getting his orders from John Brennan. Not that Comey needed orders, but he accepted them. He referred to this in several interviews as his “assignment.”
He said, “My assignment was to tell the president about” the golden showers state. The reason for this was so that Comey could then tell Clapper, “Okay. Mission accomplished. My assignment has been accomplished. Trump knows!” That allowed Clapper to then call CNN and say, “Okay, we told the president. He knows about it.” That made it a news story, and that is what facilitated the reporting of the dossier as news every day thereafter. That is why Comey did this. He did not do this to protect Trump. They were trying to nail Trump.
They wanted that dossier to be true! They were running it down, hoping as much of it be true as possible, when in fact they haven’t been able to corroborate any of it. Even at this date, they haven’t been able to. So Comey tells Trump, Trump has it, Comey calls Clapper, “Mission accomplished,” Clapper calls CNN. “Okay. The president knows about the golden showers and the dossier.” CNN four days later runs this gigantic story on the dossier that’s been floating around Washington for many months. And a little over a year later, they got an award for this story for great journalism, when they were handed a scoop that they were complicit in by James Clapper.
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RUSH: Edward in Atlanta. Great to have you, sir. How are you doing?
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Let me just say, first of all, I want to say thank you, ’cause I have learned a lot from you. And one of the things that I always do when you say certain things, is “Let me go look it up, or let me go listen to what was said,” and I’ve learned a lot. Now, in regard to Trey Gowdy, I feel people should really trust him. That guy, he don’t always let his cards out, but he kind of moves in silence.
And then by the time you see him, it’s like, “Surprise!” Just like even for him to have retired, look at how it occurred. And I say… This also what I would say. My suggestion for Trump would be, once they come to the end of this investigation, what he should do is get on the bully pulpit, hold a one-hour — ’cause, you know, everyone else, they not gonna handle him failing. And he need to lay out what happened, what occurred, and what went wrong.
And because of this, what I think the left side now understand… They have given him eight years in the White House because of this. And what I would do is once I lay out that, I guess, like Ross Perot? Remember how he used to have those charts? I would lay out what occurred and I would post it to the actual White House page. So when he leave office (unintelligible) calm down. But the whole time, leave it there and I will reference anybody who wants to see what the findings were, including with the video clip and the people who said different things when they said it.
Just refer it on there. And not only that, I even took the time to go through the FBI.com, the frequently asked questions. It said, “What is your role in the investigation?” They said their role is to “vet information that is then sent to the attorney general or the Department of Justice,” and then then I go over to what’s the FISA application. They said come from that comes from between them and the NSA, once it’s vetted, it then go through the process. So I sit here, as I find it and as I talk with people I pull out my phone — and again, it’s not like left or right. It’s just the FBI and what is the FISA process. I just did Google and I read to them —
RUSH: Hang on. I lost there when you switched to the Clintons. I was expecting to hear you make a case and why we should trust Trey Gowdy. And I know you said the president when it’s all over needs to make a statement, a one-hour explanation to the country. Let me tell you what’s gonna happen here. However this ends, and whenever it ends, the report on this is gonna be written by Mueller. Mueller will submit his report to Rosenstein. Rosenstein will then decide what to do with it.
It will automatically go to Congress, the House and the Senate. But whether or not we ever see it or a summary of it will be up to Rosenstein. Now, at this point we have to ask, “Wait a minute. If Rosenstein decides nobody’s gonna see this or anything but an executive summary ’cause there’s classified data in it,” then can Trump order it released? He is Mr. Executive Branch, and constitutionally, I would default to the position that, yeah, he can demand that it be released. But the chain of command per se in the Justice Department regulations for special counsel means it goes to Rosenstein.
It would go Sessions, but Sessions had recused himself; so he’s got nothing to do with this. So in this case it will go to Rosenstein. Rosenstein will get the report. And we can make some educated guesses about it. We can safely conclude that the president won’t be indicted. Well, I don’t know about “safely.” I think these people are so off the rails that tradition and prior regulation may not even matter. But the Justice Department guidelines on this since 1973 are that a president cannot be indicted, and that is a constitutional judgment and assessment.
And the reason for it is it would be too easy to tie up a president, to distract him if you could constantly… If enemies of the president could indict him every day for something, then he wouldn’t have time to be president. So the remedy for getting rid of presidents is impeachment, and it’s right there in the Constitution — and you should know that no president has ever been forced from office after a two-thirds vote to convict in the Senate. It has never happened.
That’s the second phase of impeachment. Impeachment is the House brings charges, they conduct the trial in the Senate, and the Senate is the jury, and they vote. And not a single president has been forced from office by virtue of a two-thirds vote in the Senate. It’s never happened. Presidents have been forced to resign when it’s clear to them they would lose such a vote. They resign before they get to that point (i.e., Nixon). So the standard now and since 1973 is that presidents cannot be indicted.
Supposedly, Mueller has accepted that. Again, I don’t put anything past these people. But let’s just… Since we’re hypothetically looking at this, let’s assume that Mueller does not indict. There is going to be a massive report — and remember what this is. What it has always been is Get Trump 101. That’s what this started out as. It actually started out as an effort to prevent Trump from winning. And after Trump won, then it became get Trump. So Mueller is gonna write this report. It’s going to be extensive.
It’s gonna have detail here and there. It’s gonna make The Starr Report look like your first grade Weekly Reader. Now, after that, and if Rosenstein — and I guarantee you, the pressure to release this thing is going to be relentless, because the left is gonna think that Mueller has the goods, that Mueller is going to reveal that Trump colluded with Putin. Believe me, folks, they still think it. Do not doubt me. Everybody in the media — producers, assignment editors, talent — they all believe it. To this day, they believe it.
They believe Trump stole the election. They cannot explain Hillary losing! It does not compute with them, intellectually. They still haven’t come to grips with it. They still believe that Trump somehow rigged everything with the Russians. They believe it. That’s what’s guiding all of the coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and pretty much everywhere else in the media. They believe it. So when Mueller writes his report, it’s not up to him whether we see it.
It will be up to Rosenstein. And the left is going to be clamoring for it to be released, unless people leak to them, “No, you really don’t want us to. There’s not much here.” But intelligence guided by experience says this report that Mueller is gonna right is gonna get as close as he can to accusing Trump of all kinds of poor judgment, lackadaisical attention to detail. Whatever it is to make Trump look bad — and there won’t be any evidence Trump collusion.
Now, our caller says Trump needs to go on TV and present what really happened. He could do that. I don’t think it’s ever been done, which makes it a juicy prospect for Trump to do. Caller says he wants to see charts and graphs, NSA data here and all of that. You know, what did the FBI do? Who was involved in it? His point was the American people are gonna want to know what happened, put it to bed.
But if that happens, I guarantee you, whatever Trump says when it comes to the Drive-Bys is gonna be ignored. The Mueller Report is going to become a bible, and anything Trump says that is in opposition to it or disagrees, they’re gonna rake Trump over the coals and demand a new investigation! “Look at how Trump is lying! Look at how Trump is insulting Mueller! Trump is just… This man is despicable! We need a new investigation to find out why Trump thinks what he thinks.”
Do not… Folks, do not doubt me. They believe all of this happened. They believe Trump hired the prostitutes to urinate on the bed. They believe Trump and Putin are best friends. They believe that everything the FBI is doing here is more than justified ’cause they think Trump did it. And they are always going to think Trump did it because they are incapable of accepting or acknowledging that they were beaten in an election.
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RUSH: Now, our last caller also said that we need to trust Trey Gowdy. I had a problem yesterday, as those of you who were here recall, because I do trust Gowdy. I have. I like him, and I respect him. I think he has a brilliant mind. And I know a lot of people who know him well, sing his praises. And I was caught so off guard by his appearances.
He was on Fox on Tuesday night, then CBS early Wednesday morning. And he was basically taking the side of the FBI. Says (paraphrasing), “Look. The FBI behaved exactly as every citizen would want them to behave. Once they learned that there were a couple peripheral people in the Trump campaign that might have been in contact with the Russians.” I said, “Wait a second.”
That’s when I spent some time going through how Papadopoulos was set up! Papadopoulos is the guy he’s talking about! The FBI’s running around saying, “Yeah, there’s a Trump campaign guy talking about Hillary emails that the Russians have.” Well, Papadopoulos didn’t know any of that until FBI employees, informants, whatever, told him!
And the first guy that told him is a guy named Joseph Mifsud. And this is a mysterious character. And he’s gone into hiding. Nobody knows where he is. He was the first to tell Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary emails. He’s referred to as a Maltese academic. So he’s a professor from Malta. And at this stage, the brightest minds still don’t know what he was. There is a thought that he is a deeply embedded Russian spy. And if he is — I was reading Lee Smith at RealClearInvestigations yesterday, did a piece on Mifsud, M-i-f-s-u-d.
And if he is indeed a deep-cover Russian spy, then, man, this is one of the deepest Russian penetrations into our FBI and CIA there’s ever been, because he’s in bed with these people. Some of his best friends are CIA, FBI, Stefan Halper. And there are people who think that he is a deep-cover Russian spy. If he is, he knows everything that the FBI’s been trying to do here and may have even been steering it. But then there are others, “No, no, no, he’s not a Russian spy. In fact, this guy is very sympathetic. He’s close to the FBI.”
People don’t know, but he’s the guy that first informed Papadopoulos of this wives’ tale that the Russians have thousands of Hillary emails. I can’t figure out why Gowdy doesn’t know this! The FBI clearly wants people to think that they were minding their own business one day and somebody told them that Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign person, was running around bragging to the Australian ambassador that they, the Trump campaign, know that the Russians have Hillary emails.
He only knows it because the FBI planted it in him. But Gowdy is acting like he believes the FBI side of this, that they didn’t have anything to do with it and just discovered it and they got scared and thought, “Oh, my God, there might be a spy, this Papadopoulos kid, we need to be on the lookout.” It just didn’t make any sense. Gowdy is smarter than that. Andy McCarthy’s written about this.
He writes, “Gowdy’s fire truck pulled into Fox News Tuesday night for an interview. An able lawyer, the congressman suddenly on a mission to protect the DOJ and the FBI from further criticism. So when a question was posed about the FBI spying on the Trump campaign, Gowdy changed the subject. Rather than address the campaign, he repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump personally was never the target.”
This is what Clapper’s been trying to do. They’re changing the subject. They’re moving the goalposts. Trump was never the target. Well, folks, in counterintelligence investigations, there are not targets! You only have targets and subjects in criminal investigations! And that’s not what this is! Gowdy maintained the only target was Russia. But there aren’t any targets in this!
This is where everybody is being purposely confused by the media and by the FBI. The second thing is what’s the difference in the campaign and Trump? There wouldn’t be a campaign without Trump. Anybody thinks this is not about getting Trump needs to wake up. And that’s another thing. Does Gowdy really think it’s not about getting Trump? That doesn’t compute with me.
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RUSH: By the way, think about this. If the Russians actually had thousands of those Hillary emails, don’t you think they would want her to win, all of that data they could blackmail her with. Why would they want Trump to win if they actually had all of Hillary’s emails?
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RUSH: Walkerton, Indiana. You’re Steve. Great to have you with us, sir. Really glad you waited. Thank you.
CALLER: G550 dittos, Rush!
RUSH: “G550 dittos.” Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: It’s an honor and a pleasure to speak about you, sir. Something that has bothered me for quite a while has been the fact that if the FBI had a spy within the Trump campaign, wouldn’t you think they would already have evidence of collusion or Russian involvement?
RUSH: Let me see if I understand what you’re saying. Okay. So a year and a half ago, we get the Steele dossier, which they know that Hillary Clinton wrote. They know it’s bogus, but they’re operating as though it’s actual intel. So we get the stories for a year and a half that intel sources say that the Russian government was attempting to influence the outcome of the election, and there may have been some involvement with Donald Trump and the Russians and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so then we come to the point in time where the FBI inserts the spy in the campaign, and if that’s the case… If they’ve got a spy in there, if they’ve got eyeballs watching this campaign, then why the hell do they need to investigate anything? Because they’re spotting it as it’s happening, right?
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: And this spy, by the way, was in the campaign… The campaign is way before Trump gets elected. They had a spy in that campaign… His point is they had a spy in the campaign at the same time, even before they began the Mueller investigation. Actually, it’s a good question. Why would you need a special counsel to look into all this stuff if they’ve had a spy in there since April of 2016? So what…? How would you answer it? Let’s say somebody had asked you that question and you think, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” What would your answer be?
CALLER: Well, the only thing that I can come up to is this is all part of the agenda to destroy the Trump presidency and Donald Trump, to distract and derail the American people.
RUSH: To overturn their preference, their election.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I don’t disagree with you. I think that’s what this has been about, because I have recently had it confirmed/learned… Folks, all of these people you watch on TV — on CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, New York Times — they believe Trump colluded with Russia. They believe Russia swung the election for Trump, and they think Trump was in on it, and I’m not exaggerating it. And so if that’s their starting point, everything they are doing is oriented to finding the proof.
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RUSH: Tim in Detroit, back to the phones we go, great to have you, and thank you for waiting too. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, mega dittos from the scrap halls of metro Detroit. And I know Mr. President loves to listen to you. And I’d like to say to him, we are not tired of winning. Keep up the good work.
RUSH: Ha-ha-ha-ha. Good for you, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Regarding Trey Gowdy, I’m like you, I think he’s a good guy. You know, he was a Bush supporter in the beginning there. I think he has a little bit of an establishment thing going on there. But I think he’s a good man. He’s a smart, smart lawyer. And when he said what he said it threw me for a loop. I think he’s leaving some bread crumbs down there, kind of like what this spy Harper did. Or, you know, Obama, all the spying he did on, what, that Sharyl Attkisson and James Rosen and Dianne Feinstein. You know, maybe they had the goods on all of their enemies. I don’t know what’s what here, but Nunes hasn’t come out and said a word. But I think you’re right. I think they’re gonna be coming out with something real big here, ’cause that’s not Trey Gowdy, the Trey Gowdy I know. And he’s telling us something, Rush.
RUSH: Yeah. You want to go into the analytical on this. The way I would do it — you’re relying on the fact that Gowdy is a good man, solid guy, so therefore this reversal has to mean something useful or helpful. I would look at it this way. I agree with you Gowdy’s a good man, and people that I know who know him swear by him. And these people that I know are solid, A-citizens. So okay.
But he’s also a government guy. He’s a prosecutor. He is a prosecutor. He is a government, “I’m gonna put you away” kind of guy. And he’s very good at it. You didn’t want him prosecuting you if you were in trouble in South Carolina. Now, that kind of guy is gonna be very loyal to investigators, fellow prosecutors, i.e., the DOJ and the FBI.
And I think he’s looking at this in the long haul because he’s gonna be around long after Donald Trump’s out of the White House, and he’s got a career long beyond any of that. And he’s decided he’s gonna throw in with his people. He’s already one of them. He’s a prosecutor. Some people have told me, “No, no, no, no, Rush. He’s angling for a Fox News gig.” Ah, maybe, but I take him at his word.
Trey Gowdy has said he loves prosecuting. I think he’s one of these people that loves getting bad people off the streets, putting them in jail. And maybe he wants to be an attorney general down the line. If you’re one of these guys, what are you betting right now? Even if Trump serves two terms, at some point Trump ends and the bet is the establishment’s gonna regain control of that town. And you don’t want to tick ’em off.
I mean, what are the odds that there’s another Trump out there? They’re getting better as the days go by. We may have a semi-another Trump running for governor in California, this Cox guy. This guy could upend things out there on the Republican side. But how many Trumps are there? There aren’t any other Trumps.
I mean, Trump’s the first to come along in our lifetimes. You might say Perot was an outsider, but Perot really wasn’t. He had it in for Bush. But he did not have it in for the system. Ah, he did on the spending side. Trump is a fairly unique figure. And the establishment is not planning on losing forever here. Don’t doubt me on that.