RUSH: Sandra in Reno, Nevada. You’re next. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s a pleasure to talk with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I want to bring up the security clearances of Clapper, Brennan, and the rest of the cabal.
RUSH: Oh, yeah.
CALLER: Yeah. I really think they need to be revoked, if not yesterday, as soon as possible. And the reason for that is right now the Never Trumpers embedded inside our intelligence agencies are free to disseminate all the information they want to ’em because they own those clearances. I think if the clearances are revoked, feeding them information becomes a crime.
RUSH: Well, that’s accurate to say. My question is a little bit more basic: Why do they still have it? Now, I don’t know what standard operating procedure is. Like after the Bush administration left Washington to be replaced by the Obama administration, how many of the national security intelligence people in the Bush team held on to their security clearance? How long…? Once you get it, do you always have it? Is it revoked after a certain period of time? These are things that I don’t know.
But when you look at Brennan and Clapper and Comey and you look at how they have been behaving… You’re right. Clapper has been leaking like a sieve, and so has Brennan, and these people have access to information that is not supposed to be leaked. One of the biggest problems we’ve had since the election has been the intelligence community and the FBI/DOJ just leaking things left and right, things that they know because they have security clearances.
So common sense to me says revoke them! Because they have shown that they can’t be trusted with the information. It’s no more complicated than that, to me. Now, grab sound bite Nos. 12 and 13. We got Clapper reacting to this. Late yesterday afternoon on CNN’s Newsroom, Brooke Baldwin, “They would like to revoke your security clearance, Mr. Clapper. How do you feel about that?”
CLAPPER: For political reasons, uhhh, this is kind of a petty way of, uhhh, retribution, I suppose, for speaking out against the president, which I think on the part of the all of us, are born out of genuine concerns about President Trump.
RUSH: You don’t have “genuine concerns” about Trump. You have concerns that what you’ve done is gonna be exposed and uncovered. Then Dana Bash said, “Have you made any money since leaving the office using your security clearance?”
CLAPPER: Not directly the security clearance, but I guess, uhhh, you know, I have benefited from the 50 years of service both in the military and in civilian capacities in the intelligence community. I wrote a book about it, and, uhhh, I appear on, uh, this network, and it’s, you know, by virtue of that experience. Well, a part of that, of course, is, of course, the eligibility or access to classified information. And so in a sense, yes, I’ve benefited from that experience.
RUSH: I would say so. I’d say so. You ordered James Comey to tell Trump about the Trump dossier part with the golden showers, and Comey tells Trump. And then Comey comes out of the meeting, tells you that he told Trump, then you call CNN, and then CNN runs a story on it as though great shoe leather has uncovered some big secret and they get a big award for it. And all you guys did was leak it. You have profited handsomely from CNN alone. The guy’s on CNN every 20 minutes! He’s being paid as one of these analysts by CNN. I would think this is a no-brainer. Of course he’s earning money from his security clearance. But even before you get there, there are ample reasons to revoke it, if there’s any question about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Clapper has said in other interviews that he still has his security clearance as a courtesy. Well, I don’t know enough about security clearances to know whether that’s unusual or not. But I would think if you’ve got an outgoing administration that’s tried to spy on you, you just get rid of ’em, cancel everybody’s clearance and be done with ’em.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Michael in San Marcos, Texas. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here with us.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I wanted to call to say how grateful and thankful I am for what you do in helping us understand what these people, the left, the media and the Democrats, what their agenda is and how they’re going about it. You expose it so well. And I’ve often imagined you in a courtroom exposing these people. They wouldn’t have a chance.
I told your call screener that I wanted to comment on this release that Mr. Trump is contemplating revoking the clearances of these people. I don’t think he should announce that. I’ve been waiting since day one for him to go in there and just start firing these people. Why would somebody want to work with people who are trying to go against him? I don’t understand him.
I do support the man 111%. There’s nothing — and I heard you while on hold, I heard you talking about Trump supporters and how they’re trying to pull us away from him, pull us away from Trump. Listen, Mr. Trump could land his helicopter in my front yard and cut my trees down and I wouldn’t mind.
RUSH: Well, it saves you having to hire somebody to do it.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, Nancy Pelosi was asked, you know, what she thinks about these security clearances being pulled, and her only response was literally struggling for words, said, “Well, we need to find out what’s going on or what happened in the meeting in Helsinki.” Well, first of all, Ms. Pelosi, the meeting is private. You’re not entitled to that information.
And secondly, do you actually think that she comes out of a private meeting exposing what went on in the meeting? Of course not. These people are hypocritical, and I love how Trump is exposing these people for the eggheads that they are. Everything they touch they either bend it out of shape or break it. And I think the American people, we’re tired of it. We can’t tolerate this anymore.
RUSH: Well, look. That’s indisputable, much of what you say. But I want to thank you, too. You thanked me for exposing this and that and explaining this and that. I want to thank you for getting it. The greatest reward and the greatest feedback is realizing that people hear it. I mean, not hear it. Believe it and learn from it and are able to themselves then pass it on and repeat it. I cannot tell you what a reward that is. Don’t misunderstand, folks, I’m not asking for anything here. I’m just pointing out how I appreciate it ’cause you never hear much.
People say, “I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing.” I appreciate that, I really do, but I don’t get a whole lot of feedback on how much of it people actually accept, believe, act on, and so forth. So I appreciate that you get it. It makes it all the more worthwhile when I hear that. Now, I know you do. Do not misunderstand. I wanted to take some time here to thank him for saying it the way that he did, ’cause it’s highly and greatly appreciated.