RUSH: And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. I know what’s going on now. I have figured it out, and it’s a crying shame that so many people on our side are playing along with this, because this is just a rehash. It has a specific objective, but it’s a rehash of the Kavanaugh attempt. It’s a continuation of Trump-Russia collusion, and it ought to be so transparent by now.

Adam Schiff ought to be so disreputable. He ought to have been so discredited there would not be a single Republican that would even consider joining the Democrats in this so-called impeachment movement.

Let me tell you what the game plan is for the Democrats here and then work backwards from it. Everybody knows that they are not going to get a conviction in the Senate if there is an impeachment trial there. And Mitch McConnell assured everybody over the weekend in a video tweet or a video something. He said where impeachment goes is the Senate, where I am the majority leader and where it will be shut down.

Okay. So everybody knows this and we’ve been asking ourselves quite frequently in recent weeks, since everybody knows that this isn’t going anywhere in the Senate, even if they do officially vote impeachment, even if they do present articles of impeachment, even if they try to conduct a trial in the Senate, you don’t get a conviction. You end up with an acquittal.

So how does this help? The worst thing, the last thing would seem to be for the Democrats to put Trump on trial and have him acquitted in the Senate. Okay. Yet they’re still doing it. So what is the objective? Quite simply, it is: This is their 2020 campaign.

They are not gonna campaign on helping people. They are not gonna campaign on using government to help people. They’re not gonna campaign on drug prices or health care or illegal immigration or, you name it, they’re not gonna campaign on that. They’re gonna campaign totally on this.

What do they think they need? They need to be able to say even if there is an acquittal in the Senate, they need to be able to say that the impeachment was bipartisan. So if they can get a couple Republicans in the House to vote with them and if they can peel off a couple senators, like Romney or Susan Collins, then bingo, in their estimation they have won.

They have now created the campaign issue, the mother of all campaign issues, that a bipartisan effort was put together to impeach the president, but he was only saved because of the partisanship of Republican leaders in the Senate. That’s their campaign, folks.

So what they need to do to pull this off, they need to peel off Republicans. They need weak-kneed, wobbly kneed, linguini-spined Republicans — not very many — they need a couple in the House, a couple in the Senate, and the magic claim of bipartisanship, in their minds, will have been reached. And that will be the campaign. That’s it. Their campaign will come down to that. Trump has to go. He has been impeached by a bipartisan coalition of the United States Congress.

Impeachment is not conviction. Two different things. They’re not counting on a conviction. In fact, they’ve got Bob Woodward out there saying that impeachment’s gonna teach us so much that the effort to get Trump in jail will probably continue even after he loses in 2020.

So they are implying that they don’t even expect to get Trump removed. I mean, that would be the magic bullet if they could make that happen. But McConnell has assured everybody that it isn’t going to happen. This is why the effort to peel off Republicans is so intense and why it is so amazing to me that any Republicans anywhere would join this particular effort.

This effort is spearheaded by one of the least credible, one of the most dishonest and maybe even sickest members of the House of Representatives, Adam Pencil Neck Schiff. He’s simply lying about pretty much everything. They are all lying about much of everything and creating an illusion that they want people to buy.

In the sense that it’s like the Kavanaugh hearings, it’s the same strategy, it’s the same playbook. They went full hysteria, if you remember, to try to pick off four to five Republican senators. And they almost did because there was some Republican senators that hated Trump.

Jeff Flake, remember him? Remember, he was all prepared to vote with Kavanaugh until Chris Coons got hold of him backstage in the hallways where Coons persuaded Flake to join the effort for an expanded FBI background check of Kavanaugh, even after it had been done three times. And it was at that point finally that Lindsey Graham blew up at the Democrats and what they were trying.

Now, Mitt Romney is a very bitter guy. Mitt Romney is a Never Trumper extraordinaire, and Mitt Romney is fully aware of the dishonesty that is Adam Schiff. And it doesn’t matter to him. Romney has made noises about throwing his hat in the primary ring here to maybe compete against Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020. So they figure they can get Romney.

But I’m telling you, this effort to make sure they don’t get any Republicans is something that we need to join, ’cause we don’t want them to be able to say it’s bipartisan. Now, in the normal ebb and flow of things, there ought not be a single Republican that would join this. None of it is legit! None of it has been legit since Trump-Russia collusion.

Now the Democrats are all atwitter (no pun intended) because they’ve got a second whistleblower. Why do they have a second whistleblower? Well, because it’s been exposed that the first whistleblower’s a fraud! The first whistleblower went to meet Schiff first! Schiff didn’t tell anybody the truth about this! Schiff shepherded the first whistleblower. Schiff knew about whistleblower complaint in August and didn’t say a word about it. He sent the whistleblower off to some lawyers to help write up his complaint so it’d be really, really well written.

Then it came out that the whistleblower did not have firsthand knowledge. But then Trump gummed up their whole plan by releasing the transcript of his phone call with the president of Ukraine. That sent them scurrying to Plan B, because that was not supposed to happen. Presidents don’t release that kind of private stuff. They just don’t. They protect the presidency. They never thought Trump would release the transcript.

They thought they’d be able to get away with a secondhand whistleblower characterizing what Trump did. So the guy made some things up like Trump saying seven or nine times this or that, demanding that the president of Ukraine dig up/make up dirt. This is what the whistleblower’s saying; Schiff is advancing the lie. Then Trump releases a transcript — and the moment that happens, the first whistleblower is blown. Schiff is blown. None of what the first whistleblower says is true.

Then it came out, “Well, he only had secondhand knowledge. He really wasn’t in the room. He had been told what Trump said.” So now there’s a second whistleblower. Guess what? The second whistleblower is also from the “intelligence community” (i.e., CIA), and the second whistleblower has what? Firsthand knowledge! And guess what else about the second whistleblower? Why, it might be that he’s a Republican! The first whistleblower is obviously a Democrat. The lawyer for these whistleblowers is a left-wing Democrat activist from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the biggest anti-conservative hate group outside the Democrat Party in the country today.

But the whistleblower firsthand, secondhand, doesn’t matter!

Trump has already released the transcript! We don’t have any need for whistleblowers! They can’t offer anything more than what Trump has already released — unless they make it up. So we’re back now to the illusion. Second whistleblower. By the way, there is now an illusion that there might be many more whistleblowers. You could have 10 or 15 of ’em. There’s not a whistleblower out there that can add any more to the transcript of the Trump phone call with the president of Ukraine no matter what they say — unless they make it up!

But they’re gonna have a tough time doing that because the transcript of the call has been released. So the illusion is, “There are so many great American patriots in the intelligence community in the White House that are so troubled — so deeply troubled — by the actions of this reprobate president. They can no longer keep quiet, and so they’re all coming forth in unison.” This will be the play. It’s an illusion! They don’t know anything. They are saying things that the transcript doesn’t say. They’re putting words in Trump’s mouth.

It’s like Kurt Volker, who testified before Schiff’s committee last week. He absolutely verified everything Trump said with exclamation points! He did not contradict Trump in one way, and yet listen to Schiff’s characterization of his testimony. Schiff said — and the media then picks it up — that Volker came out and really did great damage against the president. “Text messages showing the president is lying! Nothing of the sort happened! Kurt Volker actually ended up confirming what Trump has said in that transcript. He was there. Everything here is a lie!

Yet here’s the Drive-By Media acting like all of it is the truth, and now the Drive-By Media’s blaming me for standing in the way of the truth being seen by you. Yep. Yep. NPR’s back. I’ve got the sound bites. I’m first up in today’s Cue Sheet roster. Do you want hear an example? May as well. If I delay this, I’ll delay it. Up first, audio sound bite number 1, Friday. NPR has a program called On Point. Its host is somebody named David Folkenflik, and David Folkenflik said this about the role of conservative media in impeachment inquiry…

FOLKENFLIK: Now comes a critical test for Trump and for his media allies. House Democrats have started the march toward impeaching the president over his push to enroll the leaders of Ukraine and other countries into his domestic political battles against leading Democrats. And some of his media backers are seeking to enforce the line. On Wednesday, radio host Rush Limbaugh called out an unlikely foe…

RUSH ARCHIVE: Fox really ought to change the name of the network from the Fox News Channel to the Fox Never Trumper Network, because that’s who’s getting the highlights.

FOLKENFLIK: A defining moment for the president’s crucial relationship with the conservative media.

RUSH: Yeah. See? So you see, if I hadn’t said that, then they’d be sailing away here. They continue to even lie about the purpose of the phone call. Trump… How many times has Trump tweeted and said this to the media…? Just since last week, how many times has he told them that he was not asking them to dig up dirt on a political opponent, he didn’t even expect Biden’s gonna be his opponent? He’s pursuing corruption about American government officials in foreign countries as required by law!

What he’s really doing is asking Ukraine to help the investigation that he’s conducting into the investigation of him supposedly colluding with Russia. That’s what he was talking about. That’s what he was soliciting. He’s not seeking “dirt” on Biden. I don’t think Trump thinks he needs any dirt to beat Biden. That doesn’t matter, because the illusion continues, and it’s fed with one lie after another. Here’s another example.

Saturday on CNN, the infobabe Ana Cabrera was speaking to a senior media report named Oliver Darcy about why Republicans are sticking with Trump. I’m telling you, folks — do not doubt me — this is all about picking off just a couple of Republicans. It doesn’t matter if they get an acquittal in the Senate. They want to be able to say that the impeachment of Donald Trump was a bipartisan effort by both parties in the United States Congress. It’s a campaign issue.

They don’t even think they’ve got enough time to get Trump thrown out of office. They know McConnell is gonna stonewall anything other than an acquittal. So it has to be that they’re seeking a campaign issue. “Trump is unfit. Why, a bipartisan coalition impeached him!” That’s what they’re aiming for. So here’s a question from the infobabe to the media reporter: “Do you think conservative media plays a role in why Republicans stick with Trump?”

DARCY: It is a mirror image of the real world. It’s not Trump that’s guilty; it’s Biden that’s guilty of crimes. It’s not the pro-Trump media that’s spreading conspiracy theories. It’s the mainstream media that’s spreading conspiracy theories. It’s not Trump that’s a liar; he’s a truth-teller. It’s Democrats that are lying to you. It is the mirror image of reality. And so, uh, I think that, um, i-i-it’s a large reason why Republicans are still sticking with this president. They’re not really consuming the news like everyone else is. They’re relying on outlets like Fox, talk radio, hosts like Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: There you have it. So there’s two bites blaming me for this, that if I was not doing what I’m doing Trump, would already be toast because the Republicans would have had the guts to join the Democrats. Let me tell you something: Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, there might be some of this, but Republicans don’t fear me. They fear the Drive-By Media in Washington! Well, maybe they fear me a little, but that’s not a factor here.

I think what you saw is this really is a full-court press on these Republicans to join the effort, and, “Don’t be hoodwinked by these people like Limbaugh and Fox News!” Make no mistake. This is the battle. You might think, “Rush, don’t these people have minds of their own, these Republicans in the Senate? Can they not see what’s going on here? Why do they need to hear from you or anybody else?” That’s a great question.

Did you see what happened to Mark Sanford? Do you know who Mark Sanford is? Mark Sanford got lost in the Appalachian Trail while in Argentina with his lover. That’s about the best way to categorize what happened. So he had to resign his position as governor. He comes back and is now a member of Congress. A couple weeks ago, he said (summarized), “Trump’s gotta go! Trump’s a pig; Trump’s a reprobate. I can’t vote for the guy! I’m gonna seek the Republican nomination in 2020,” and then he went home for a town hall meeting.

Today he says, “I’m voting for Trump. I’m standing with Trump against Democrats.”

What musta happened at his town hall meeting, I wonder?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Don’t you just love the way the media operates? Here’s NPR out there saying that I am a Trump backer, and because of my running interference for Trump, Republicans don’t have the courage to join Democrats in their efforts to undermine and get rid of Trump.

What is NPR? Does anybody to want to talk about how Democrat backed NPR is? Who was it that backed up Barack Obama every day of the year for two presidential terms? Not just NPR, but the entirety of the mainstream media. Why are they not characterized as Obama backing media? ‘Cause that’s exactly what they are, and it doesn’t stop at Obama backing media. They are Democrat backing media.

In fact, the truth is they are not media. They are Democrats in media. And they have the gall to come out here and say that people that don’t see it their way happen to be partisans, and of course they are not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Southern Utah, Brian, you’re next. It’s great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Good, good, good. Glad you called.

CALLER: Mega Southern Utah non-Mitt Romney dittos.

RUSH: Great to have you, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: So I totally agree with your premise. I totally completely agree with your theory about what’s going on. I’ve learned that usually when you say something, even if it seems like it’s way out there, it’s sort of like Trump, it turns out to be true. But this is not way out there. I think it’s exactly what the Democrats are doing because they don’t have anything of substance.

But what they’re doing, like with these clips that you’ve been playing and everything that’s been going on in the media, and the reason that they’re blocking people like Ron Johnson when he doesn’t give the right answer and whatnot, the first two clips that you played today, one of them was from CNN. Don’t remember who she was.

But her comment about what the problem is, she said that it was people listening to right-wing radio and Rush Limbaugh, but what she said right before that is the problem is people are not consuming the media. And it’s remarkable how eventually they will let leak out exactly what it is they want to have happen. They want people to consume the media because they know they’re trying to control the narrative.

RUSH: All right. I’m looking for that bite. I have played two media bites.

CALLER: One was from NPR and one was from CNN. I believe it was a CNN one, and she said the problem is people are not consuming the media. They’re listening to right-wing radio. She admitted —

RUSH: Let’s listen to this. What you’re talking about is sound bite number 2. And the voice in the media is actually a guy named Oliver Darcy. If he sounds female to you, then somebody has a problem. But he was being asked by an infobabe, Ana Cabrera. Now, her question: “Do you think conservative media plays a role in why Republicans stick with him?” Now, here is his answer.

DARCY: It is a mirror image of the real world. It’s not Trump that’s guilty; it’s Biden that’s guilty of crimes. It’s not the pro-Trump media that’s spreading conspiracy theories. It’s the mainstream media that’s spreading conspiracy theories. It’s not Trump that’s a liar; he’s a truth-teller. It’s Democrats that are lying to you.

It is the mirror image of reality. And so I think that it’s a large reason why Republicans are still sticking with this president. They’re not really consuming the news like everyone else is. They’re relying on outlets like Fox, talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh.

RUSH: So that’s what you’re talking about, right there, they’re not consuming the news like everybody else is?

CALLER: Yeah. And that’s what they want. They want people to consume the news. I mean, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but this is — this is — it is so what the focus is of the media. They obviously get their talking points from the Democratic Party and vice-versa —

RUSH: No, they give them to the Democrat Party. The media gives Democrat Party talking points.

CALLER: True.

RUSH: That’s the pecking order today.

CALLER: True. True.

RUSH: Now, the other bite, the other bite that got me, they basically said that what happens here is that Republicans hide behind me. That Rush Limbaugh is trying to make Fox hold the line, trying to make sure Republicans don’t abandon Trump. Making me the problem, obviously in their mind, the bites are related with the use of fake news. But how does this bite that I played, how does that relate to my theory of how it all came together for you?

CALLER: Well, because I think your theory, it’s not so much how it relates to your theory but how they’re trying to put their theory out there. You know, they want to go out there and they want to push narrative of nothing but anti-Trump, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, and they call a Republican out, like you say, they want to bring a Republican out that seems to be in favor of what they’re saying —

RUSH: Exactly and Johnson didn’t go along with it, so F. Chuck Todd has to talk over him and cover him up so that he sounds like a lunatic or whatever. But you’re right. The problem is that people are not consuming our version of the news.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have some media example sound bites today on the cue sheet that I have been playing, one from NPR blaming me for making sure that conservative media doesn’t abandon Trump. The sound bite claimed that: Rush Limbaugh called Fox News out the other day when he said they should be renamed the Fox Never Trumper network. That’s to keep Fox in line. Damn it.

They are hoping Fox turns all the way, blaming me for forestalling that. Then the bite you just heard, Oliver Darcy at CNN claiming that we here in fake conservative news present alternative scenarios that are not at all related the truth. They are doing the truth. Right, like Trump colluded with Russia. I mean, this is what’s really confounding.

These people participate in a two-year lie, it’s impossible to give the benefit of the doubt to them, folks, because they were all all-in. They repeated every lie that any source told the New York Times. They all jumped aboard. Anything that CNN was told, then they all got on board. It’s uncanny. No matter where you went with the Drive-By Media, identical stories, identical quotes from the same anonymous sources.

To me it remains a mind-boggling reality that out of however many journalists and editors and producers and all that that are behind the scenes in newsrooms that you have, among the thousands of those people, not a single went off message. Not a single one of them doubted anything. Even when the Mueller report came out, there was no shame, there was no embarrassment, there was no sense that they need to apologize to their readers and viewers for misleading them for two years. It was just on to the next thing, the next event that they could use to get rid of Trump. But all under the guise of journalism.

There’s a huge story out there to be told, and there’s only one guy trying to find it, and that’s William Barr and whoever his investigators are, and of course Trump. And we’re all invested in that. But there is a gigantic career waiting to be made for one journalist. The truth is it would destroy that career if that one journalist decided to write the truth about this. Isn’t that amazing? That it would destroy their career to write the truth about this.

So they all band together like the political activists they are. They aren’t journalists. And they stay completely attuned and united and on message no matter what paper, no matter what news network for now approaching three years. It’s not Trump that’s guilty, it’s Biden. It’s not the pro-Trump media that’s spreading conspiracy theories. It’s the mainstream media.

What would you call Trump-Russia collusion if not a conspiracy theory? What would you call it if not as a made up, manufactured thing that has been exposed as having no truth to it? And a two-year story at that, and yet they claim we are creating conspiracy theories. What we’re doing is blowing them to smithereens. And they don’t like it.

So Sunday Bloomberg radio’s Bloomberg Opinion. It’s the name of the program. The host is June Grasso and she spoke to Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein about Trump and impeachment. And the hostette, June Grasso, said, “The president is associated with Fox News and seems to be taking direction at times from Fox News.”

BERSTEIN: There’s actually sort of two problems. One is this long-term problem that goes back to even before Fox News when Rush Limbaugh’s show became very popular about the place of Republican-aligned media within the Republican Party network. But then there’s this specific problem with Trump is that he gets most of his information from junk news, and Fox News in particular, and, you know, normal presidents don’t do that. They get briefings from people who actually know something.

RUSH: Yeah, see how that works? “So there’s really two problems. One is this long-term problem that goes back to even before Fox. It all stems from Rush Limbaugh becoming popular 30 years ago.” That’s what really started this mess. And this guy, by the way, is right. That’s when their monopoly was blown sky-high. And now the Republican Party, specific problem with Trump, he gets most of his information from junk news.

Jonathan, I have to tell you, you guys are the fake news. You are the bogus news, you are the junk news. What do you call this last three years? Nothing but junk. I don’t know, folks, I honestly don’t know how else to explain or describe my incredulity over what happened here. Forget the substance of it for a minute. It’s not even about that. It is that for two and a half, now three years, virtually everybody in mainstream media reported and promoted, doubled down on, and participated in a series of now provable lies.

It wasn’t that anybody was wrong. It wasn’t that they honestly thought Trump had colluded and just can’t find the evidence. It was that Trump didn’t collude. Hillary did. They know it. They participate in this for three years. It could be about anything, is my point. It could be about the sum of two and two being five. They could have done that for three years. Whatever, the fact is every one of them got it wrong. Every one of them spread BS conspiracy theories, and now look. What is their reaction? To accuse me of it! For not joining them and for stopping their success beginning 30 years ago.

It’s not that long ago doing something like this would have ended a year because reporters like this would have exposed their publications and their networks to, at bare minimum, humongous embarrassment. The New York Times should be feeling biggest degree of embarrassment ever at having gotten something so demonstrably, terribly wrong. But there isn’t any embarrassment, there isn’t any shame, there was not even any apology. In fact, they’re still acting like it was all true.

They’re now out there saying that there are impeachable offenses in the Mueller report. There is collusion in there, and there is obstruction in there. And that’s only because of the way it was written. There’s nothing fact based in the Mueller report that proved anything impeachment or they wouldn’t be having to go through this whistleblower malarkey in order to get something impeachable on Trump. If there was really something that devastating on Trump in the Mueller report like they’re now saying, that’s all they would need!