RUSH: Fort Pierce, Florida. Jerry, great to have you on the program today, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Hey, I watched that Mueller hearing yesterday, and I discovered that there definitely was clearly discovered obstruction yesterday, and that was by the Mueller team in itself. And I want to know — and you mentioned it a little bit briefly earlier — who made the decisions to not investigate the FISA warrants, the Steele dossier, Fusion GPS, the culpability of the Obama administration and who, what and where with them while all this was going on?

Somebody made the conscious decision to not investigate that. Now, if this was truly about Russian interference in our election rather than just get Trump, they wouldn’t have done that. So it showed they weren’t into that at all. It was completely “Go after Trump.” And I think they absolutely made the case that they proved that yesterday.

RUSH: I think that’s exactly right. Whoever it was that made the decision, it’s probably not one person. I’m sure that Comey was involved, Obama — look, you can’t talk about all that happened here without going to the very top levels of the Obama administration. All of these people that were engaged in this are not freelancers. Most of them have life experiences of taking orders, be it in the chain of command in the FBI, be it an agent in the CIA, be it the military. They’re in the business of taking orders. And there are a lot of people in this chain whose experience is giving orders.

So, yeah, you’re absolutely right. The aspect of Russian interference in the election was itself just a distraction. That’s not what was being investigated. If it was, you would have to have included Steele, the Steele dossier, Fusion GPS, and the Hillary campaign. But there was no interest. This was pure and simple a silent coup that was executed, the objective being to get rid of President Trump.

Here’s Lucy in McKinney, Texas. It’s great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask you if Mueller was such a doddering old guy, wasn’t quite all there and everybody knew it from the get-go, why do you think everybody was gushing over him when he was appointed by Rosenstein?

RUSH: ‘Cause of his reputation. His reputation of integrity and Mr. Honor gave the whole enterprise an aura of nonpartisanship, of honesty, of integrity, and of honor. That was his role. His role was to have his CV, his resume and his reputation transferred to the investigation while the true partisans, Weissmann and the other 14 Hillary lawyers, worked cloaked in secrecy. From the American people, anyway.

I mean, Strzok Smirk and Page. They were hired. Mueller hired ’em all. In fact, we think Mueller hired ’em all, but we don’t even know that. They may have hired themselves. Look, this is a cabal. These people, Weissmann and all of his cohorts have involvement in many DOJ cases. They have involvement in the Enron cases, the Ted Stevens case. They may have appointed themselves or somebody in the DOJ.

There’s a cabal. And Mueller, you know, gets away with the reputation he hired them, but that may not even be the case. But he was there to provide the veneer of integrity and honesty and unassailability.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have gone back to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites yet again, ladies and gentlemen. You remember what you’ve heard now the past, oh, almost 24 hours. (summarized) “Gee, what happened to Bob? Oh, my God! Mueller blew it. Aw, gee, Mueller, he wasn’t even there. He didn’t even… Oh, this poor, doddering old guy. Oh, my God. This is horrible. That was a disaster for the Democrats. Oh, my…” You’ve heard all of that, right? Well, let’s go back May 17th and 18th. We have a montage of everybody we could find in the Drive-By Media on the day Mueller’s appointment was announced…

PHIL MUDD: If you have a kid and you’ve despaired that there’s not a hero in America, Robert Mueller’s it.

BARNEY FRANK: Bob Mueller was a wonderful appointment.

GLORIA BORGER: Mueller is an impeccable choice.

JEFFREY TOOBIN: There is literally no more respected person in American law enforcement than Bob Mueller.

SCOTT PELLEY: (noise) Mueller is a well-respected former FBI director.

DAN ABRAMS: …well respected, well regarded…

BOB BECKEL: The guy’s got an enormous amount of strength among Democrats.

LEONARD LANCE: (noise) Mr. Mueller will be thorough in his investigation.

JOHN GARAMENDI: (noise) Mueller is highly competent, highly capable.

MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT: Bob Mueller is a man that’s respected by both parties.

MIKE BARNICLE: Bob Mueller is the definition of honesty, integrity, character, discipline.

JASON CHAFFETZ: He has impeccable credentials.

STEPHEN HADLEY: He’s a by-the-book-kind of guy. Very reassuring to the public.

NICOLLE WALLACE: Bob Mueller is a national treasure!

TIM NAFTALI: Mueller understands the law.

MOHAMAD ELLEITHEE: Mueller is the right choice ’cause he will take it where it leads him.

PAUL BEGALA: Mr. Mueller (snickers) is a credible law enforcement official. He [Trump] may be perfectly, pristinely innocent, and I will accept that if that’s what we find.

RUSH: Ah! That was The Forehead, Paul Begala. They haven’t accepted it, have they? They haven’t accepted what Mueller found because Mueller didn’t find anything. But this is two years ago. This is May 17th and 18th of 2017, a montage of people after Mueller’s appointment had been made, and you hear what it was. (summarized) “He’s impeccable, definition of a patriot. He’s a real hero in America, an impeccable choice — well respected, well regarded, enormous amount of strength! He’ll be thorough. He’s a man respected by both parties, the definition of honesty, integrity, character, and discipline.”

Where’s all this stuff today? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Where did all of this go? (laughing) This is why Mueller was appointed, ladies and gentlemen, and I love The Forhead’s comments: “Mr. Mueller’s a credible law enforcement official. [Trump] may be perfectly, pristinely innocent, and I will accept that if that’s what” Mueller finds. Ahhhh. Sometimes, folks, it’s like going to the carnival and having a rigged gun shooting the apples, hoping you can take home the teddy bear as a prize.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There’s a new poll out from The Politico and Morning Consult today. Forty-two percent of voters say that the Mueller investigation was conducted “not too fairly” or “fairly at all.” Only 37% of all voters say the “investigation was carried out ‘very’ or ‘somewhat fairly.'” Well, now, that is a gigantic hit to the reputation of Bob Mueller, who shows up with impeccable honor, impeccable integrity, unassailable dignity, and now only 37% say that it was conducted fairly.

Now, the headline for this: “Voter Skepticism About Mueller Investigation Grows, Says Politico Poll.” Now, how does this happen? Because the Drive-By Media… I’ll tell you how it happens. Let me just cut to the quick. I’ll tell you how it happens, and I’m surprised that it’s as high as 37% who think it was fair. But you have to allow for practically all those are gonna be Democrats. Everything in context. For 2-1/2 years, the American people heard multiple times a day, no matter where they went for news…

If they got their news at the Washington Post or the New York Times, or ABC/CBS/NBC, or MSNBC or USA Today or the Los Angeles Times, you take your pick. For 2-1/2 years — and I’m not exaggerating. There were as many as four stories a day in the first year with the New York Times, the Washington Post. For 2-1/2 years, the American people heard how Trump had colluded with Russia. They heard variations of Trump is a traitor. They heard the election was illegitimate. They heard that Hillary actually won.

They heard that the Russians cheated and Trump helped them. He worked with them, and he won, and he shouldn’t have — and any and all sundry variations of this — for 2-1/2 years, and then during those 2-1/2 years, the Mueller investigation begins, and along with the assurances that Trump had cheated… Now, the assurances at that point were in the form of anonymous sources quoted by these newspapers. “Current and former U.S. government officials… Current and former members of the U.S. intelligence community…”

Blah, blah. Such citations. Every “unnamed source” was automatically given credibility. These stories were not presented as possibilities. They were presented as truth, factual truth. The president colluded, the Russians colluded, Trump colluded with them. Then the Mueller investigation starts, and then it gets added onto, and now, “This guy’s gonna find it! Now we’re gonna get the proof. We’re not gonna have just anonymous sources in newspapers and cable news. We’re gonna get the actual proof.”

For two years, Mueller investigates and investigates and invest — and for two years, the media keeps hyping it and hyping it — and then the report comes out, and what does it say? “No collusion, and we can’t reach a decision on obstruction of justice.” Can you imagine the gigantic thud that that hit with the American people? Forget the media. Forget the Washington establishment. Imagine yourself as John and Susie Q. Citizen, and you’re not particularly politically involved. You vote, you care, but you’re not a wonk.

You don’t follow this stuff first and last every day. You watch the news 10 or 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, but you’re living your life. In the process, you cannot escape that Trump colluded. You cannot escape, for 2-1/2 years, “Trump stole the election and might even be a traitor,” and then the evidence that you, John Q. Citizen, have been expecting (because it’s been hyped) comes out and it’s zero. Can you imagine the thud? This is what the Democrats are never gonna be able to overcome.

No matter how many committees they convene, no matter how many witnesses they bring up there, no matter how many times they try to pump Mueller full with air and get him back up there for five or six hours, they’re never going to be able to change the reality that there was no collusion. But measured against the assuredness that there was… Folks, all of this that’s happened since the Mueller? Most of it has been met with a yawn, ’cause as far as John and Susie Q. Citizen are concerned, there wasn’t any collusion. So they’ve lost a little faith in the media and are scratching their heads over it.

It may not be an active suspicion they have, but they can’t help but now wonder what else they’re being told isn’t true. So now we get a poll from the Morning Consult and Politico that only 37% think it was fair. It’s actually a very high number. It ought to be (chuckles) 10 or 20. But we have to figure the 37% are Democrats. Most of them are. It is striking. “Former FBI director Robert Mueller said he doesn’t know who or what Fusion GPS is.” How can you not? In fact, I’m gonna go back to David “Rodham” Gergen. We played a sound bite from David “Rodham” Gergen a moment ago on CNN.

In the sound bite, he is crediting the Republicans for being far better prepared, far more prepared. He couldn’t understand it, could not understand it! (impression) “Republicans were talking about a lot of things that we don’t talk about here at CNN. We don’t cover those things. Those are things on the right. We don’t cover ’em.” Republicans were more prepared. They rehearsed. They had mock hearings. They spent a lot of time pretending to interview Mueller. But if you’re David “Rodham” Gergen and CNN, how can you not cover what we cover?

Okay. The dossier is it. That’s what everybody’s relying on. How can you not cover where it came from? And the Washington Post reported that it was Hillary Clinton opposition research! So if you’re David Gergen and CNN, how do you ignore that? How come that is something, even though it’s revealed in the Washington Post, that becomes something that the right talks about — and, therefore, if the right talks about it, we at CNN will not? How do you not talk about Christopher Steele?

Once the dossier is illustrated to be totally made up and political opposition research, how do you, as CNN, continue to ignore it and to treat it as though it’s a nonfactor or irrelevant? I mean, they’re positioning themselves here as a genuine news organization! They do not present themselves as partisans. If they were openly, admittedly partisan, then this would make sense. But these people trying to tell us that they are straight-down-the-middle, objective journalists.

So they’ve got a new rule: If the right wing talks about it, conservative media talks about it, they don’t. If conservative media talks about it, it isn’t news. Well, how can it not be news? How can the FISA warrant process not be news? How can the Steele dossier not be news? In fact, CNN got a Pulitzer Prize for supposedly uncovering the fact that Trump had been told about the dossier, and yet the dossier is something they ignore because the right wing talks about it!

But if you listen to Mueller, he doesn’t know about Fusion GPS. He didn’t know about Christopher Steele. He didn’t know about the dossier, didn’t know who paid for the dossier, didn’t know that the dossier was used to get FISA warrants. It’s all adds up to never-ending dis-believability. Here’s a tweet, ladies and gentlemen, from one of the famous Never Trumpers. This is Jonah Goldberg at National Review. I don’t know if he’s still at National Review or if he’s left. I think he’s left.

I think he’s joined some cruise company called Bulwark. I don’t know. Some such thing. Anyway, here is his tweet: “Look, I think Mueller had a bad day. I think his performance bolstered the case that his staff ran the show. But Mueller also demonstrated that he is a vastly better man than Trump.” (repeats) Mueller “demonstrated that he is a vastly better man than Trump.” You know how? “Trump heaps gross scorn on him for two years and Mueller refused a single ad hominem.”

So in this calculation, Mueller is the far better man ’cause Trump’s out there trashing him and Mueller didn’t take the bait, Mueller report didn’t respond. Now, the reason this is interesting to me is that this is the basis on which the Never Trumpers hate Trump. They think he’s rude, that he is brusque, that he’s a coarse, unsophisticated animal. And Robert Mueller is the real deal.

These are the guys that believe that not fighting back and not joining the fray is the key to winning. It actually isn’t. It’s the key to losing with honor. But forget the substance. Forget the fact that Robert Mueller has ruined people’s lives, from people kept in jail in Boston for 23 years while Mueller knew they were not guilty, ruining lives, Manafort, Michael Flynn, people that did not commit any crimes until Mueller’s investigation began.

How can Mueller be an even better man when he doesn’t even do the work and farms it out to a bunch of Hillary Clinton donors? You see how this stuff works? You see how you gain the reputation of a better man than Donald Trump? You can do all of these horrible things to other people using your powers as a law enforcement official, you can ruin lives, you can imprison the innocent, and you can get away with it and have an impeccable reputation because of how you speak and when you speak and when you choose not to speak, how.

And so the substance of Robert Mueller is ignored here for the sake of being able to draw an unfavorable comparison in the case of Donald Trump.