RUSH: Now, Jerry Nadler has conducted a press conference where he said, “We can’t go any further now unless we see the grand jury materials from the Mueller investigation.” That’s a violation of the law. He’s asking for the law to be broken.
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RUSH: You know, I use metaphors, and I use real-life examples to illustrate in my ongoing efforts (which are largely successful) to persuade. Yesterday, I described the Democrats as being confounded by something they can’t change, and that is reality. The Democrats have become delusional. They’ve become so poisoned with delusion and hate — and it is hate — and it is hate for Donald Trump. It is hate for the fact that they lost. It’s hate for all of this. It’s hate that they don’t have power.
It’s hate that you have rejected ’em. It’s hate for everything. They are miserable, and they are angry. What they are attempting to do is, in their delusion, reset reality. They are trying to convince people that there was collusion with Russia and that Trump did it and that Putin has something on Trump and that that’s the reason the election went the way it did, but the problem they’re having is that they’re running up against the brick wall of reality. At every turn — every effort they make to recast reality, they hit the brick wall of reality.
They have been unable to alter it. They have been unable to plow through it. They are doing it again today. Everybody who watched the Mueller hearings and everybody who read or watched news about the Mueller hearings knows what happened, that it was a bomb, that there was nothing advanced. There was no ball advanced. There was no effort to impeach that was advanced. It blew up, and yet the Democrats are continuing to tell people that happened. That didn’t happen! Jerry Nadler, Judiciary Committee Chairman, was just in the middle of a press conference out there.
He just went out and said that Robert Mueller confirmed that Russia interfered with the election and that Trump colluded with Russia. He just said this! The report doesn’t say that, and Mueller didn’t say that yesterday or the day before, whenever it was. The report doesn’t say there wasn’t any collusion; the report doesn’t say that there was. The report doesn’t say that there could have been. The report doesn’t say the Russians wanted there to be.
The report doesn’t say that the election was illegitimate. In fact, the DOJ and everybody involved has said not a single vote was changed, no election outcome was altered. And yet the Democrats today persist, because now Nadler wants the grand jury material. Since Mueller bombed out, they want what they’re not legally permitted to see, and they’re gonna go to court to get it. Here is… We have a couple of bites of Nadler at his press conference today. Here’s the first one…
NADLER: We want to say a few words about Director Mueller, what we learned from his testimony and next steps in our work to hold President Trump accountable for his conduct. Robert Mueller is a man of honor and integrity. He has led a life defined by service to his country. Some have argued that because Director Mueller was reluctant to testify and seemed older than some remembered him, his work is somehow diminished. It is not.
RUSH: Now, wait. You might think, “I thought Mueller was gonna say…” He is in the next bite here.
NADLER: He showed that the Trump campaign both welcomed and benefited from this attack on our country, and he showed that the president repeatedly lied to cover it up. And if that were not enough, Director Mueller’s testimony removed all doubt. He told us that Donald Trump obstructed justice and abused his office by tampering with witnesses, attempt to block the investigation, and attempting to fire the special counsel.
RUSH: Right. So, of course, there wasn’t any collusion. None of this happened. The investigation was not impeded. The investigation was not shortened by any stretch of the imagination. So they just go out and continue to try to restate. Now, they’re able to do this, as we all know, because the Drive-By Media is gonna amplify it. The Drive-By Media is gonna echo it. The Drive-By Media is not gonna embarrass them. The Drive-By Media isn’t going to say, “What are you talking about, Jerry? We all watched this yesterday. You’re full of it!”
The Drive-By Media is not gonna do that. So they’ve got their narrative, and no matter what reality does to intercede, they are going to continue on it. In the process, folks, they look like fools. They may look like heroes to their base, but they look like abject fools — and they apparently have no compunction. Now, let me go back to yesterday’s program, ’cause I was watching cable news here during the breaks, and I saw yet another segment on all of the devastation the Russians committed in the 2016 election, all of the meddling, all of the tampering.
I’ve gotten fed up with this narrative. There wasn’t any Russian meddling in the election any more than Russia meddles in America every year, every day. There wasn’t anything that was a standout here. Every other nation is attempting to meddle, just like we try to meddle. Barack Obama tried to influence the outcome of Israeli elections! He didn’t want Netanyahu to win. None of this is out of the ordinary. It is the way an adversarial world works. The United States is a great nation at risk in a dangerous world.
We stand for freedom. What’s a gigantic threat to tyrants, communists, socialists, dictators, you name it. We’ve always been a target. There have always been enemy nations that have wanted to do us great harm, to take us out. They’ve always tried infiltration. They’ve succeeded in our education system, they’ve succeeded in our pop culture, I’m sure way beyond even their wildest dreams. The idea that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election to the point that Trump should not have won when he did, didn’t happen.
In fact, if there was any meddling with Russians, it was done by Hillary Clinton and her campaign and the DNC. So yesterday I grabbed sound bites from the past. I grabbed a sound bite from Rod Rosenstein when Mueller announced the indictments of 13 Russian troll farms. They were PR indictments to be sure, because there was no way these Russians were ever gonna face the charges. They weren’t gonna be extradited. Mueller got a free pass.
He could have charged these Russians with anything, and the public relations announcement of that could go a long way into making the case that the Russians tampered, that the Russians interfered. They were bogus charges, and they were never intended to be heard in court. They were strictly PR indictments. But in the announcements of the indictments, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, made it clear (I played the sound bite yesterday): These indictments do not allege that a single American was involved and not a single vote or election outcome was altered. Thereby, undercutting the whole purpose of the indictments!
Now, the media ignored what Rosenstein said. Everybody else ignored it. By the time he said it, people had tuned out of his press conference. They saved it for the last thing. But I didn’t miss it, because to me it was the bombshell. Here you’re indicting 13 Russian troll farms and you say not a single American was involved, which would include Donald Trump — not a single American was involved! Not even Donald Trump Jr. Not even Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian honeypot. None. No involvement by an American, AND no votes were changed, AND no election outcome of altered.
Then I went and got a sound bite Barack Hussein O from October 2018 where he pooh-poohed the idea of being able to rig a presidential election in the United States! He basically said, “It’s impossible. You couldn’t do it. It’s too complex. There are 50 presidential elections. There’s not one. There’s one in every state. We have 50 different elections. It would be impossible to rig it.” Of course, that sound bite has been allowed to drift off to never-never land, and it doesn’t exist except when we revive it. So last night I’m at home taking a breather from all this.
I’m minding my own business. We had a massive thunderstorm move through here late yesterday afternoon, last night, and it played hell with the power grid. It played hell. I mean, we almost lost four surge protectors last night with practically direct hits with lightning strikes. And it was a busy time monitoring all this and making sure we took the steps necessary. So I was taking time away from all this.
When that’s over and we are relatively assured the worst is past, I happened to look at my Apple Watch. I’ve got an alert on there from the news app, and the alert on my Apple Watch says that the Senate Intelligence Committee has just released a report alleging an unprecedented level of activity by Russia in the 2016 election. I said, “What? What the hell is this? What a coincidence this is! I spend 30 minutes on this yesterday, and a Senate Intelligence Committee issues a report that the Russian involvement in the 2016 election was ‘unprecedented.’ Never seen it before.”
So the Apple Watch being too small to actually read a story, I picked up my trusty iPad and I found the story and I read it, and I want to read you the first paragraph. The headline actually is “Russia Targeted 2016 State Elections…” I mean, minutes after I point out that the presidential election is 50 state elections! “Russia Targeted 2016 State Elections with ‘Unprecedented Level of Activity.'” Okay. That’s the headline. Here’s the story, first ‘graph: A report released Thursday by the Senate Intelligence…”
By the way, the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the most corrupt committees and institutions in all of Washington, and it’s not I saying this. It is not me saying this. It is acknowledged that the Senate Intelligence Committee, contrary to what you would think (impression) “The Senate, the august Senate Intelligence Committee! Why, everything coming out of there would be pro-America and would certainly be trustworthy.” It turns out it isn’t. More on that later. I don’t want that to sidetrack you.
I want to get to the first paragraph here. “A report released…” Remember the headline: “unprecedented level of activity,” all 50 states, folks! All 50 states! The Russians were tampering in all 50 states. That’s what this report says. Got that? Okay. “A report released Thursday by the Senate Intelligence Committee offered new details on the breadth and intensity of what it said was “unprecedented” Russian cyber activity targeting U.S. election infrastructure ahead of the 2016 presidential election…” Ready for the next?
“[T]hough it echoed a previous, preliminary finding that no votes were changed and no voting machines were manipulated.” Therefore, it is a nonstory! It’s the recycling of a previously existing, panic-riddled, panic-filled, breathless story about the Russians. But here it is again, and this is an NBC report: “”[T]hough it echoed a previous, preliminary finding that no votes were changed and no voting machines were manipulated.” Now, you might be saying, “Well, but, Rush, can’t both be true? Can’t the Russians have tried, and can it be that they failed?”
Yeah, but, folks, the Russians try every day. The Russians try all the time. The news is that they didn’t succeed! And yet the Democrat Party and the media every day are still trying to claim — as in Mueller did moments ago — that Trump colluded with them! And that’s why he won! They still want you to believe the 2016 election was fraudulent and illegitimate, that Hillary Clinton should have won but lost because Trump stole it.
Yet every official comment on this acknowledges no votes were changed, no election results were altered. So it’s a nothing burger! It’s another nothing story that’s made to look like a brand-new release, filled with just-discovered intelligence that breathlessly had to be released to the American people. What timing! The very day after Bob Mueller bombs out, the Senate Intel Committee “drops” what they’ve already reported. There was a preliminary report already stated all of this. The timing here is just too coincidental to be coincidental.
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RUSH: I don’t think a court is gonna listen to Nadler demanding grand jury material. Any good judge would tell him that the restriction on grand jury material is statutory, meaning Congress made it! Congress must change this law if Nadler is to get grand jury material. The first question any good judge would ask Nadler is, “Have you proposed any legislation to change grand jury rules so that material can be disclosed to Congress?”
“Uh, no, your Honor.”
“Well, then why should the court get involved when you can do it yourself?”
Now, I said, “No good judge will listen to Nadler.” No good judge. But of course, we’ve been expecting the FISA court judges to express outrage over how they were lied to in the spying-on-Carter Page warrants using the dossier and media reports as evidence. But the FISA court doesn’t seem upset about anything. So I’ll believe this doesn’t happen… There are too many Obama judges out there that will give Nadler what he wants, maybe.
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RUSH: So Jerry Nadler had his little press conference, Judiciary Committee chairman, and CNN can’t contain themselves. So excited! So excited! “Democrats Take Big Step Forward Toward Possible Impeachment!” They just can’t keep their pants on about this! There isn’t a big step! What Nadler has said is that the committee he runs needs grand jury material from the Mueller report. They’ve got 448 pages. They got no collusion. They’ve got no obstruction.
Yet they are telling themselves (and everybody) that the report says that Trump colluded, that Russia affected the election, and that Trump try to stop the investigation into finding that out. There’s a Fox News poll out. Forty-eight percent of the American people want the Democrats to drop this. Forty-eight percent are tired of hearing about it. You might say, “It ought to be more than that.” It’s a big number, folks. When you’re talking about electoral politics, 48% disapproving what you’re doing is a big number.
But they are tone-deaf. Nadler is insistent on getting grand jury material. Now by virtue of a law passed by Congress, grand jury material cannot be released. It is private. The only people that can release grand jury material are the witnesses, the people that are called to testify. The prosecutor can’t. The grand jurors can’t. Nobody. Now, stuff’s leaked all the time, but Nadler wants an official release of all of it.
Now, in an American justice system that still functions as a justice system, Nadler won’t have a prayer. There isn’t a judge in the world who will give Nadler what he wants if the rule of law is intact. But if Nadler can find an Obama-appointed judge, then all bets are off. But the answer to Nadler when he goes to court to get the grand jury material, any judge — any decent judge — would say, “You’re from Congress, aren’t you, sir?”
“That’s right! I run the Judiciary Committee.”
“Well, your body passed a law saying that this stuff is secret and private, and I can’t let you see it. You wrote that. You wrote the law!”
“I don’t care, Judge. I need an exception. I need you to let me see it.”
The judge would say, “Congressman, have you gone back and tried to change the law so that you could see it?”
“Uh, yeah, we have, but the Republicans won’t let us (muttering) and Republicans are racists and sexists and bigots, and they won’t let us.”
“Well, until Congress changes the law, Congressman, I can’t help you.”
That’s the answer.
That’s the answer if our U.S. justice system is not two-tiered. If there’s one system for everybody, then that’s what Nadler is gonna face. But CNN is all excited, because they think if Nadler wins this it will open the floodgates to enforcing subpoenas of the Trump family. Oh, and they can barely contain themselves. They’ve already had two panel discussions on this today. “Oh, my God. This is so great! If Nadler can get this material, it means… It means that the subpoenas will have to be released as well and we’ll be able to interview the Trump people and they will have to show up.”
Now CNN has people working there who know this is steadfastly illegal. Jerry Nadler cannot get grand jury material. Nobody can! So let’s see what happens. The fact that they’re still going down this road — and by the way, it’s not just the Fox poll. There are two or three others that indicate American people have had it. Look at the audience, the ratings for the Mueller hearing. You would think they’d be through the roof. They were smaller than the audience for Michael Cohen!
It was something like 13 million people, which — in a comparison of other audiences for other congressional hearings and similar Washington government functions — was a nonstarter. So the public demand for impeachment just isn’t there. The public desire for it isn’t there. Pelosi doesn’t want to do it. The last thing in the world they want… In fact, do you know who Charles Blow is? Charles Blow is a columnist for the New York Times, and he wrote… I don’t know if it was a full-fledged column or if it was just a tweet.
But he said that the Democrats have to either pee or leave the toilet because the longer this goes on that Trump is not impeached, he’s becoming a folk hero! The longer the bad guy… Now, this is Blow’s view of it. The more the bad guy gets away with it, the more popular he becomes with the public at large, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or any other movie hero. The bad guys became the heroes because the hapless law enforcement clowns kept trippin’ over themselves try to get ’em. He said the Democrats are looking like Inspector Clouseau here.
They’re looking like Wile E. Coyote, and with every time they try and fail, Trump is becoming more popular. He thinks they ought to just shelve this effort and stop it. Well, I guarantee you there’s some fatigue with it. The Democrat base may be fired up and want it, but this is not something that has broad appeal. The worst thing that could happen is to impeach Trump. This is something that the Democrats know. They’re never gonna get a conviction in the Senate. They’re never even gonna finish the trial before the election.
Do you think the Democrat candidates for president want to run for president while impeachment proceedings are going on in the House? There’s no way! They don’t want the attention off of them, and they don’t want to have to be addressing impeachment every day during the campaign. They want to be the focus of the campaign. Not what Congress is doing. Not on some schlub who’s not even running for president, Jerry Nadler. They don’t want any part of that. So Nadler is doing this for the strict appeal to the Democrat base, probably for some fundraising and additional things.
Now, along the same lines, there is another committee that conducted hearings with Mueller, and that’s Pencil Neck’s, Adam Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chair, and they went in the afternoon. By the way, a little statistic here from The Daily Caller: Adam “Schiff Has Done 419 TV Interviews Pushing the Russian Collusion Conspiracy.” Fifty hours! Pencil Neck has [been on TV for “almost 50 hours of media time conducting 419 television interviews on why he believes President Donald Trump colluded with the Russians.”
Most of that is with CNN and PMSNBC. Some of it with ABC, CBS, NBC. Very little of it’s been on Fox. But here’s a guy who’s done 419 TV interviews for 50 hours of claiming he’s got evidence Trump colluded with Russia. Despite that, nearly 50% of the American people want them to drop this. The American people look at Congress and think Congress is what makes life better. I don’t want to argue that. You and I think that’s crock, but a lot of people think Congress is where laws get passed and taxes are raised or whatever.
All that’s true. But the more Congress is not, quote-unquote, “working for the people,” then the less tolerance for it the American people have. Now, Adam Schiff yesterday, in a direct contravention of Nadler today, was on CNN’s New Day. He lamented that impeachment is not an option. He’s very upset. “I would be delighted if we had a prospect of removing him through impeachment, but we don’t,” said Pencil Neck. He’s very distressed, very sad, very depressed over this, that he can’t get rid of Trump. Now, that flies in the face of Nadler, who says (impression) “We’re moving full-speed ahead on grand jury material!”
CNN can barely contain themselves.
They’re as excited as they can be over this.
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RUSH: You know, I was at home yesterday trying to avoid all the power surges we were getting, and I got this notification on the watch: Senate Intelligence Committee, a breathless new report! (summarized) “The level of Russian interference in the 2016 election was ‘unprecedented’! Fifty different states were affected by Russian interference!” I said, “This is too coincidental. I spent so much time today trying to tell people that there wasn’t any, that not a single vote was changed, not a single election outcome of altered. Here comes this report, which is a regurgitation. They’ve already put out a preliminary report.
Here, again, is the last sentence of the first paragraph: “[T]hough it echoed a previous, preliminary finding that no votes were changed and no voting machines were manipulated.” This is the big Senate intel report yesterday, which attempted to say, “We’ve just recently discovered that the Russians were more involved than we ever knew. The Russians were meddling in all 50 states. The Russians were meddling with voting machines,” and then you read and you read and you find out not one vote was changed.
Not one machine was tampered with. Not one election outcome was changed. It’s a gigantic nothing. These people cannot let this go, and I’m telling you, I reject the narrative that the Russians are unstoppable. This is the picture that’s being painted. The Russians are everywhere. The Russians are hiding in our election machines, voting machines! They’re hiding in the precincts. The Russians are everywhere. Remember, all of this happened, if it did happen, when Obama was in the White House. All this happened in 2016. The election was November 2016.
Trump had nothing to do with any of it, other than their allegation that he was colluding with Russia, but that’s all bogus. What these people have done… I failed to mention yesterday that what they’ve done, folks, is they have forever destroyed the integrity of every election going forward now. They have made everybody think that no election result is gonna be legitimate because the Russians are picking who they want to win. I detest these people and what they will do and what they are doing, and they will not let this go.
We’re being confronted every day by almost insanity, certainly delusional behavior by the Democrat Party at large. So what I wanted to add to it… I hear this sound bite from James Clapper on CNN yesterday, and when I hear this, I think, “For crying out loud, first the Senate Intel Committee with its report the same day I basically destroy the whole premise that the Russians are determining who wins elections.” They aren’t, folks. The Russians aren’t; you are. The American people are determining who wins American elections.
Not Russia.
Not Facebook.
Not Google.
I’m not denying those people are attempting to affect the outcome. Everybody does. Lobbyists do. Everybody attempts to influence the outcome of elections. It’s not something unusual. Everybody does it. When you vote, you’re trying to determine the outcome of an election. There’s all kinds of effort underway every election to try to steer it. It isn’t any mystery. The fact is that most elections are not tarnished. Some of them are. There’s obviously vote fraud going on out there.
But the premise that I reject is that we have lost control and the Russians are determining who wins the presidency, and this is something the Democrats and the media want to keep promoting and keep alive. So they went and got Clapper, CNN did this morning, and Jim Sciutto, the host, says, “There were bills earlier this week on the same day as the Mueller testimony to require people to report foreign offers of interference to the FBI, and it was blocked in the Senate. In your view, is McConnell choosing party over country?”
CLAPPER: I will just posit, uhhh, the reaction of then President-Elect Trump in January of ’16 [sic] who was very skeptical about our reporting. Uhhh, very difficult for him to acknowledge that the Russians meddling — and successfully so — in the election of 2016 because obviously that cast doubt on the legitimacy of that election. And I think that is what is inhibiting, uhh, Republicans who don’t want to incur the wrath of the president by casting doubt on the — on the legitimacy of that — of that election.
RUSH: Now, I really… This makes me want to explode. The Department of Justice acknowledged when the Russian troll farms were indicted not a single vote was changed, not a single election or outcome was altered, and these guys persist. These guys persist in irresponsibly lying to the American people. (impression) “Well, I will just posit the reaction of then President-Elect Trump in January of ’16.” He means ’17. Trump was still a candidate in January ’16.
(sputtering) “Uh, president Trump was very skeptical of our reporting the Russians were cheating, very difficult for him to acknowledge that the Russians meddled and successfully so, uh, because obviously that cast doubt on the legitimacy, uh, of his election. I think that’s, uh, what’s prohibiting the Republicans who don’t want to incur…” So these guys are out lying through their teeth that the Russians chose the election winner in 2016. I haven’t seen the evidence of this! You know, we start out with, “Trump colluded with Russia.” That went nowhere.
Then we started out with, “Trump obstructed justice.” That went nowhere. Now we’re back to, “Russia meddled and chose the election winner, whether Trump was involved or not.” It didn’t happen., ad these people just continue to blatantly lie to you and to everybody else every chance they get. And they do it on a day where Mueller has bombed out, where everything they’ve tried to convince the American people that Trump is not legitimate failed. They just double down and triple down and continue on this course.
It’s irresponsible, because they are tarnishing the reputations and the integrity of every election going forward, which I guess they don’t care about. Because in this way, if they lose — if they keep losing — why, they can continue to blame it on Russia and on Trump. But you wait! What happens when they win an election? What they’ll probably say then is, “All of this vigilance and all of this attention to Russian meddling paid off. We were able to identify how the Russians were cheating and we were able to beat them back, unlike Donald Trump,” or some such garbage as that.