RUSH: Kirsten Powers with Anderson Cooper last night, and Anderson Cooper asked her whether the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Now, before we get to the answer, stop and think of this, now — and remember that at CNN you have across-the-board, 100% pure, raw hatred for Donald Trump. In fact, I know it exists. But, you know, there’s not a person that’s on CNN that does not have this personal, raw hatred.
“Trump’s Legal Perils Grow as Ex-Friends Flip on Him — Trump friends flipping. Trump friends abandoning him. Trump friends hate Trump,” this kind of thing. It’s just oppressive, and it doesn’t matter what guests they get, what guests they go to, they’ve got never-ending sources of pure, raw hatred! And I ask myself, “Is there nobody watching that network that is not bothered by this?”
I guess not. The audience is rather small other than the forced audience they have at airports. But, man, it’s just… It isn’t normal. So much of what we’re up against every day dealing with the left just flat-out is not normal, and the abnormality of it is celebrated and amplified. It’s just… It’s dismaying, is what it is.
Anyway, so the question: “Do you really think if after Trump survived the Access Hollywood video, that the news that he might have paid off a porn star helped him get elected?” The question again: Did the payments to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal affect the outcome of the election? Cooper says, “Was this baked in; people had kind of already heard or figured out who Trump is, they were willing to look the other way or just didn’t care?”
POWERS: I don’t believe that the average Trump voter actually knew a lot of this about Donald Trump. I don’t think they knew he was hanging out at the Playboy mansion, because that’s not covered on Fox News. And I’m not being sarcastic. That he really is where they get their information. Rush Limbaugh’s not talking about it. Fox News is not talking about it. Conservative blogs are not talking about it, and so I actually think to this day they probably don’t have a full picture of exactly who Donald Trump has been over his life.
RUSH: Kirsten Powers you once published a book, and her producer, publisher, whatever, sought an interview by me of her for The Limbaugh Letter to help push the book, which I did. It was okay, but there was nothing spectacular about it. It was good, bad. It was fine. We were nice to each other and all this stuff. Shortly after the interview — and I don’t remember the specifics of it. Shortly after the interview, she was on TV, and my name came up.
“I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh! I don’t know anything about Rush Limbaugh. That doesn’t… I don’t know. I just don’t know.” So here she is saying she doesn’t listen to me but she somehow knows what I haven’t talked about. That’s not possible. There’s nobody that knows what I haven’t talked about. You can’t be sure that I haven’t talked about it. But au contraire. You know, throw the Playboy Mansion thing out. We talked about the Access Hollywood video here I can’t tell you how often.
But she doesn’t know it. She just assumes I didn’t bring it up, and she clearly has no idea what I said about it. She would be flabbergasted if she knew. Fox News didn’t talk about the Access Hollywood video? Are you…? She really thinks that the so-called pro-Trump media didn’t talk about all this stuff? It’s just the exact opposite. And now the theory, “Well, a lot of Trump voters, they couldn’t possibly have known.”
Ms. Powers, I’m happy to inform all of you who don’t get this. You just don’t understand that the people who voted for Donald Trump did so because Hillary Clinton winning meant the furtherance of the Obama agenda, which meant the end of America as we know it. It meant the end of America and her founding as the governing principles. We were headed straight for globalist socialism. There would have been no debate on climate change. There would have been no debate on any of this stuff.
We would have a continued rotten, declining economy and we would have been told that it was the new norm. The people that voted for Donald Trump knew everything about him and judged it to be unimportant compared to the importance of having him elected to stop this. They could have elected 15 or any other Republicans they wanted who were perfectly morally fit and fine. They knew who Trump was! That’s the point. You people in the Drive-By Media told everybody who Trump is — and contrary to you, we watch you.
We watch CNN. We read this. We know what we’re up against. It’s you people on the left that don’t ever take the time to talk to or chat up or listen to anybody other than yourselves. This is not news. It’s always been the case. You sequester yourselves, you live in your little bubbles, and anything that’s not may as well not even exist. Yet you run around and you say, “Well, the people listen Rush Limbaugh and Fox, they never hear the bad stuff about Trump.”
BS! We tell people the bad stuff about Trump in order to help refute some of it and to explain why it’s happening and who’s responsible for it! The Donald Trump voter is so much more informed about this country in general than the Democrat voter that it’s not even a contest. The people who voted for Hillary Clinton don’t know 40% what the average Donald Trump voter knows. I’m talking about being aware of things that are happening.
That’s, I don’t even think, arguable. But in her world (impression), “People who voted for Trump didn’t know that we went to the Playboy mansion and they didn’t know that porn stars were around!” What do people know now? Guess what? Stormy Daniels has been ordered to pay Trump 200-some-odd thousand dollars. You know why? ‘Cause her lawsuit was considered frivolous by a judge. She sued Trump trying to get out of the NDA.
She sued Trump for — what is the term? — humiliation or personal insults or whatever. I forget what the legal term is. The judge said, “This case is meritless” and threw it out. Now she’s gotta pay Trump and his legal fees! She’s gotta do a lot of pole dances here, folks, and she’s a gotta have a lot of porn star roles in order to get the money to pay Trump off. Kirsten, are you telling your audience that? Does your audience know that the Stormy Daniels character has had her lawsuit thrown out because it had no merit?
I doubt CNN viewers have the slightest idea. So Anderson Cooper says, “Wow. Wow. This is really big stuff.” So she continued.
POWERS: If it came out that he had had these affairs — you know, one of them, at least, while his wife just had a baby — maybe it would make a difference. But if it wouldn’t make a difference, then we just get back to the fact of w-what’s up with these voters, y’know, that these things don’t matter to them, but they were obsessed with Bill Clinton’s sex life.
COOPER: Mmph.
RUSH: Okay, so gets this. She wonders why Trump voters cared about Clinton’s sex life but not Trump’s. I’ll tell you why, Kirsten. You want to know why? Because you people told us it didn’t matter. Oh, yeah, starting back in 1998, it’s people like you that told us that Clinton didn’t do anything wrong. “It’s just sex and it’s none of your business, even, and it didn’t get in the way of the way he did his job. It’s tawdry, but it’s none of our business, and it ought to not have to be any factor whatsoever.”
You told us that sex lives of presidents don’t matter! So when you spring this October Surprise on Trump with the NBC Access Hollywood video, we said, “We don’t care, because you told us it doesn’t matter.” Isn’t this wonderful? They tell us it doesn’t matter when Clinton does it, and now they’re sitting there stunned and shocked that Trump voters didn’t care, when that’s exactly what we were told to do! Now to Cal Thomas’ piece. He has a really good column today.
It’s entitled, “The Fury of the Establishment — Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but scorning the Washington Establishment produces even greater anger. The Establishment’s full fury has been unleashed against Donald Trump and is not about to subside until its goal is reached: the removal of [Trump] from office, either through impeachment or defeat in the 2020 election. If there were more than the kitchen sink to throw at Trump, the Establishment would be throwing it.
“The latest is the hyping of private money paid to two women by Trump’s disgraced lawyer, Michael Cohen. The women claim it was money to keep them quiet over alleged affairs with him. Behavior that was tolerated, or overlooked, by previous presidents is now grounds for indictment and impeachment, says the Establishment,” the very establishment that told us it didn’t matter back in 1998.
“Members of Congress who claim Trump violated campaign finance laws by making personal payments to these [babes] are mostly silent about a $17 million congressional fund out of which have come payments in unknown amounts to settle sexual harassment cases. Rep. John Conyers (Democrat-Michigan) used ‘office money’ (translation, taxpayer dollars) to settle a sexual harassment case against him.” He was eventually forced to resign.
“Beyond the sideshow that has rapidly become center stage in Washington is the question of where the country is headed. There is a school of thought which claims Trump is the ‘last man standing’ against a wave of socialism that would be sweeping the nation were it not for him.” Now, his next two paragraphs are about me but that’s not why I’m saying that this is a great piece. It’s because of what follows. But it’s necessary to share with you what Cal Thomas wrote about me to set up what comes.
So here we go. He said, “That view was expressed Monday by Rush Limbaugh on his radio program, which is a go-to source for many conservatives. Limbaugh responded to an email he received from a listener: ‘[The emailer’s] point is, this is all worth it. The alternative to Donald Trump was unacceptable — Hillary Clinton and the continuation of the Obama agenda and the dilution of the United States of America as a sovereign nation and a continuation of it’s becoming a member of the global conglomerate — where there wouldn’t be any debate about climate change; we would just pay up.
“‘Where there wouldn’t be any debate about open borders; we would just keep them open. Where there wouldn’t be any debate about whatever American culture or society is. It would be whatever the socialists said it was going to be.'” That was the email I shared. “Limbaugh’s concern is that Trump voters might ‘go wobbly’ and that if the president’s approval numbers dip into the 30% range we might see a replay of what happened to Richard Nixon when a delegation of Republican members of Congress visited the White House and told Nixon his support had evaporated, subjecting him to likely impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate.
“Some congressional Democrats have said impeachment may not be their priority come January. Forty-six incoming House Democrats have sent a letter to their leadership asking that the focus be on legislation,” blah, blah, blah. “The key…” This is the nut here: “The key for conservatives, and especially Trump’s loyal base of evangelical Christians, is how much more of this are they willing to take before Trump becomes an embarrassment to them, to their agenda and even their faith?
“Evangelicals, especially, are paying a price for their dismissal of Trump’s past behavior and present tweets, which are becoming increasingly nasty. A little humility would be especially helpful to Trump, but that might appear insincere and beyond his capabilities. One thing is certain: the establishment won’t give up in their daily pursuit of his destruction.”
That’s absolutely right. But the point that I wanted to focus on here is that Cal Thomas — himself an evangelical and himself a spokesman for them — is openly asking, “How much more will they put up with?” We don’t know that. We can only hazard guesses. It’s not one thing. I don’t… The revelations about Stormy Daniels?
At this point, Trump supporters still think that most of this is an orchestrated attempt to get Trump and get rid of him for things that other politicians have long been excused for and given a pass. But he’s specifically asking about evangelicals and how much more of this not only will they put up with, but are they willing to publicly defend Trump over, ’cause everybody realizes the objective of the Drive-Bys and what they’re doing is to break up that coalition.
If they could, they would whittle away at the Trump base. That’s what the objective of this has been from the get-go, and it’s gonna continue. So that’s Mr. Thomas’ question: How much longer can people continue to defend Trump over not what he did or didn’t do, just the daily onslaught. Remember that dinner party I had in my house and I had people wanting to throw Sarah Palin overboard simply because they were tired of defending her ’cause the media never stopped? They said to me, “We gotta get somebody else, Rush. The media’s destroyed her.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, there’s another thing to point out here about Trump. Trump’s payments — these payments made to these women — are more than 10 years old. These payments go back way before Trump ever thought about entering politics — I mean, seriously — and way before Trump ran for president. Even if Trump had a couple one-night stands, it all happened before he was president. Bill Clinton was doing all this stuff in the Oval Office! We don’t have those allegations about Trump.
We don’t have stories and allegations about Trump soiling the Oval Office, diminishing the respect. Trump wears that coat and tie daily. Bill Clinton shows up in the Oval Office sweating after a 10-mile jog in T-shirts and shorts! Donald Trump has not brought disrespect on the office like Clinton and others have. Trump believed in abortion ten years ago too. He’s been forgiven that. But the left now hates him! He changed his mind on that.
There’s a big difference: Trump has not been a politician for most of his life. For 70 years, Trump has not been a politician. He didn’t live under political expectations. Bill Clinton was always a politician. So are all these other clowns, even these people in the media. They’re essentially politicians as well. They’re all part of the cabal, and they do what they do in office. Trump is particularly appreciated because he isn’t a politician, and they don’t think he’s a fraud or a phony in any way like that.