RUSH: We have a couple bites of Trump in the White House today. Let’s see. Yeah, this is one of these press gaggles, met the press in the Oval Office with some other stuff going on. Two sound bites. Here’s number 1…

THE PRESIDENT: I have to watch with great interest as I see people talking about what we should be doing, and these are the same people that have been failing for the last 20 years, didn’t know what they were doing, especially when they went in and did what they did. They shouldn’t have been there. We’ll see if it works. It’s very fragile. It’s been fragile for years. They’ve been fighting each other for centuries. Literally for centuries they’ve been fighting each other. And years ago we injected ourselves right into the middle of it, and we won’t go into whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing. You know how I feel about it. But we’ve had tremendous success I think over the last couple of days, a little bit unconventional.

RUSH: He’s talking there about Syria. Now, I haven’t gotten to the Mulvaney — and I promised to do this; so I will. I haven’t yet parsed Mulvaney from the press conference yesterday. But the problem Mulvaney has is that he assumes the people in the media know what he knows, so he uses that as a starting point. They don’t know what he knows, and they’re not interested in knowing what he knows.

They’re in there to try to misconstrue anything he might say so that they can savage Trump. He’s trying to give them the honest lay of the land on things and how foreign policy works, how the presidency works. They’re not interested in any of it! Here’s Trump talking about it. I’ll clarify Mulvaney here before the program ends, don’t worry, but here’s Trump talking about it…

THE PRESIDENT: I think he clarified it. But what just happened is Ambassador Kent — who I have never had the privilege, I don’t believe, of meeting. I don’t know him, and they brought him in as a witness against me — even though I don’t know him. And he excoriated, from what they reported on the news — and, of course, maybe in this case it won’t be fake news. But he excoriated the Obama administration and Joe Biden and Joe Biden’s son saying that he has tremendous problems, tremendous problems with Joe Biden’s son and the Ukraine. So he’s got tremendous problems with Biden’s son and Ukraine and it’s inappropriate and all of the horrible things.

RUSH: This is Ambassador Kent. He’s making the point that he doesn’t know him, but apparently in testimony… You know, the Democrats are seeking testimony, making it look like they’re conducting impeachment and they are deposing and witnesses they’re issuing subpoenas and they’re gathering the evidence. And of course, they’re not releasing any of the transcripts of what any of these people are saying.

They’re just lying. They tell the media, “Yeah, this guy said Trump’s unfit!” and they run with it. “Ambassador throws Trump under the bus! That’s what just happened in here!” Of course it didn’t. So this guy apparently told some impeachment committee that Ukraine and Biden, it was a bad, bad deal here, and Trump had just heard about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Pencil Neck Adam Schiff says, “Well, Mick Mulvaney’s press conference yesterday made things very, very bad.” They didn’t change a thing because Schiff is not gonna impeach anybody. Now, we’ll get to parsing Mulvaney here in just a moment. He has a problem. It’s not a problem. It’s that he really assumes that the people in the press that he’s talking to are on his level — and by “on his level,” I mean have the same amount of information he has, have the same degree of understanding how Washington works and how politics works that he has.

So he doesn’t start with them where you open the instruction book and plug the device into the wall. He starts with them as though everybody’s been using the device for a year and knows how it operates, and they’re not anywhere near that level with him. And they’re not even there to get on that level. They are in there to hope he screws up so they can mischaracterize something he says to razzmatazz Trump — and you’re saying, “Well, he should know that.”

He does know that, but he’s like anybody. He makes the mistake everybody makes with the media. I made it when I first started out. I thought I could persuade ’em. I thought that I could change the way they were about me or things I was saying. You can’t. That’s not why they’re there. They’re not curious. They’re not there to have something actually explained to them. They are there to nail you if you are a Republican. That’s the only reason they show up.

You cannot reason with them — and, boy, nobody had any guidance for me. I’d never undergone anything like this kind of media scrutiny when this show took off. This is not a complaint. I’m just saying, there’s nobody I could turn to so I had to learn by doing, and I literally thought that when the media called and wanted to talk to me, that that was ’cause they’re genuinely curious about me, the new guy, what I’m doing. That they really wanted to find out what I thought.

That was not at all what they were interested in. They wanted to find a way to mischaracterize who I was and what I was doing. They weren’t the slightest bit interested in what I really thought. They could not have cared less, and nothing has changed. They don’t care what Mulvaney thinks. They don’t care to try to follow Mulvaney or Trump or anybody else. They’re simply looking for openings to destroy — and if you don’t ever learn that about ’em and even you know it…

Mulvaney knows it, but he is very confident guy, and he — I’m sure — was convinced he could walk them through this and make them understand it. Nope. They don’t want to understand it. That’s the last thing they want, in fact. They don’t even think they have to understand it. They already get it. “You, Mulvaney, are corrupt, and you’re working for a corrupt guy, and we hate you, as we hate him — and we’re here to make sure that whatever you’re doing doesn’t work!”

Even knowing that, there are some people who still accept the challenge of trying to meet the media head on and change them.

Sorry, it isn’t gonna happen.

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RUSH: The news media, ladies and gentlemen, are trying to twist Mulvaney’s words into the opposite of what he actually said yesterday. Mulvaney did nothing other than merely repeat what the White House has been saying from day one, and that is that the Trump administration initially withheld funding from Ukraine for a number of reasons, including the fact that Europe was not providing enough aid and because of the overwhelming corruption in Ukraine, including Ukraine’s interference in the 2016 election!

This is an undeniable thing that happened. We’ve even shared with you stories from January of 2017 of how the Ukrainians were in a panic because they had worked with Clinton to try to sabotage the Trump campaign and then they had to go do a 180 after Trump won. We ran the stories. I shared with you the story a couple of weeks dragging it out of the archives. Ukraine was up to their elbows in attempting to sabotage Trump in 2016. Mulvaney knows it. Everybody knows it.

That’s one of the reasons that Trump was initially holding out on Ukraine. “Look, you guys were in there, and you were not working in my best interest.” So, yeah, all of these things, Mulvaney is acknowledging this. Of course, the Drive-Bys scream, “Quid pro quo! Quid pro quo!” Mulvaney totally lost them. He’s talking about the 2016 election. They think that he’s talking about the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president and Biden.

Now, because of the overwhelming corruption in Ukraine, we had to have this mutual treaty that Clinton signed in ’99, 1999 pledging mutual cooperation between the United States and Ukrainian governments to root out corruption by each nation’s representatives in each country. I have mentioned that to you too. Mulvaney said there was no quid pro quo involving investigating the Bidens. A reporter then claimed that it was still quid pro quo to ask Ukraine to investigate corruption.

Mulvaney said that this kind of quid pro quo goes on all the time. He said quid pro quos in foreign policy are the way Washington works, and then he cited how Trump withheld aid to the Northern Triangle countries until they agreed to try to stop their citizens from coming to the U.S. illegally. The United States withholds aid or threatens to as a matter of foreign policy routinely! Mulvaney was simply acknowledging this.

He was attempting to tell them, the people in the media, “There’s nothing to see here, gang. Sorry, but this is the way Washington works.” But they were not interested in anything other than getting any two or three words they could get that they could then take out of context and lump ’em into what the agenda they came there to conclude was or is — and all of this is true. You have to ask a question: How come it was perfectly fine for Joe Biden to threaten Ukraine to hold back money because of a prosecutor?

Has nobody realized here? Joe Biden is bragging at a little conference he’s having at the Council on Foreign Relations when he’s vice president. He’s bragging about telling the Ukrainians they have six hours to change prosecutors. (paraphrased) “Get rid of this prosecutor chasing after my son! Get rid of that guy or we’re withholding aid,” and then he dropped the F-bomb and said, “and they F-ing did it, and they changed the prosecutor.” And then Biden said, “If you think I’m going rogue here, you call Obama. He’ll tell you.”

So here’s Joe Biden admitting and bragging about it, that he was trying to root out corruption in Ukraine demanding a prosecutor get fired. Nobody thought that was quid pro quo. In fact, they’re trying to cover that up. So let’s go to the audio sound bite here. This is Mulvaney’s quid pro quo answer in context. Let me just set this up. Everybody jumped all over Mulvaney for this, including people on our side. It was the same damn thing.

Rather than try to find out what he was saying, rather than instinctively defending, people on our side ran — just like they did on the Syria business — to condemn and criticize. It was a long answer because Mulvaney is a smarter guy. He makes layered points. He assumes these people in the media are smart enough to follow him.

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RUSH: Okay. So here’s the sound bite. The question comes from Jonathan Karl (impression): “Was the president serious when he said that he would also like to see the China investigate the Bidens? And — and — and — and — and then you were directly involved in the decision to withhold funding from Ukraine. Can you explain to us now definitely why funding was withheld from Ukraine? Can you tell us how you engage a criminal activity? Just right now, do it!”

MULVANEY: President Trump is not a big fan of foreign aid. Never has been; still isn’t. Doesn’t like spending money overseas, especially when it’s poorly spent. And that is exactly what drove this decision. He said, “Look, Mick, this is a corrupt place. Everybody knows it’s a corrupt place. I don’t want to send them a bunch of money and have them waste it, have them spend it, have them use to line their own pockets. Plus I’m not sure that the other European countries are helping them out either.”

We actually did an analysis of what other countries were doing in terms of supporting Ukraine. What we found out was that — and I can’t remember if it’s zero or near zero dollars from any European countries for lethal aid. You’ve heard the president say this, that we give them tanks and the other countries give them pillows. That’s absolutely right. As vocal as the Europeans are about supporting Ukraine, they are really, really stingy when it comes to lethal aid. And they weren’t helping Ukraine, and they still to this day are not. And the president didn’t like that. I know it’s a long answer to your question, but I’m still going.

RUSH: Right. Go ahead and play number 12. This is the continuation of it.

MULVANEY: So that was… Those are the driving factors. Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. That’s why we held up the money.

RUSH: Aaaand there it was! That it. (impression) “…the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that’s it. That’s why we held up the money,” and the media had what they wanted: “That’s why we held up the money,” the DNC server. See, the root of this is that everybody in Washington — from Mueller to Christopher Steele to the entire Hillary apparatus — wants everybody to believe that the Russians hacked the DNC server. We still don’t know.

We only “know that,” quote-unquote, because they hired a firm called CrowdStrike to analyze it. They never let the FBI analyze it. There is a theory that Ukraine was the actual bad actor, and that’s what Mulvaney is referring to here. So the media see a twofer. They can get Mulvaney here for admitting there was a quid pro quo. “That’s why we held up the money.” He wasn’t even talking about the phone call with the Ukrainian president over the Bidens! He was talking about the corruption and the fact that we couldn’t determine how they were gonna spend it. This is so much ado about nothing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One more Mulvaney bite, ’cause the media now is… Oh, they can’t help themselves! They’re so excited! He just admitted a quid pro quo! So Jonathan Karl could barely contain himself. He says, “To be clear, to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo! It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well!”

MULVANEY: We do that all the time with foreign policy. We were holding up money at the same time for — what was it — the Northern Triangle countries. We’re holding up aid to the Northern Triangle countries so that they would change their policies on immigration — and I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.

RUSH: This is classic. This is Mulvaney thinking, “Look, they know what goes on here.” This is Mulvaney saying, “There’s no way that we were withholding money unless they investigated Biden,” and they weren’t because that money was already flowing at the time Trump made the phone call to the president of Ukraine about Biden! Mulvaney thinks everybody knows this. That Trump phone call happens in August. The money started flowing a month prior to the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president.

There’s no way Trump could have said we’re withholding the money. It was already on its way, and Mulvaney knows this. He thinks everybody else knows it. He’s saying, “Look, we dangle money to foreign governments all the time. Obama did it. George W. Bush. Every president. It’s the way it works! We want people to do our bidding in the U.S. national interests. This is how it happens.” But the mistake he made was assuming they were genuinely interested in learning how something happened.

They weren’t, and they aren’t. “So it’s a quid pro quo! You just said that it is! You said funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well!” Did anybody…? If you heard this, did any of you start asking, “What the hell is this about the Democrat server? I thought this was about the phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine over investigating Biden. What’s the Democrat server got to do with it? What does that…? Is this something new?”

I mean, if you’re paying attention, that would have been something you ask. “Democrat server? Why’s Jon Karl asking about the Democrat server?” Well, this is about the so-called server that was so-called hacked by so-called Russia. Now, that’s the conventional wisdom. CrowdStrike, which examined the DNC server — not the FBI — said Russia hacked it. But CrowdStrike is owned by a Russia-hating ex-Russian who hates Putin! The guy that owns CrowdStrike hired by the Democrats is now a Ukraine citizen.

He’s one of the richest guys in Ukraine, and there is some speculation out there that the Ukraine government might know where the DNC server actually is. What has really been acknowledged here is what I told you from day one when the transcript of that call was released: Trump is actually asking for Ukraine’s assistance in the Barr investigation to find out what the hell happened in this Russia investigation. We want to find out who started it at the FBI. Get Ukraine’s help.

But everybody thinks that this is about Trump asking the Ukraine president to investigate Biden! Does anybody wonder how we made that leap? Schiff and the Democrats want to impeach Trump because he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden! Now, the question Mulvaney got yesterday was, ‘Wait a minute. That’s a quid pro quo with a Democrat server!” What Democrat server? So the dirty little secret reveals itself. This isn’t even about Trump’s phone call asking them to look into Biden. The Democrats have moved off of that.

You know why?

‘Cause the whistleblower doesn’t have anything to blow the whistle on. The transcript of the call has been released. The whistleblowers are now irrelevant, and may as well have zilch zero nada. So they’ve had to move on now, Jon Karl and the media. They don’t want Trump to get to the bottom of the investigation into him by the FBI and the Obama DOJ, and Mulvaney thought he could talk them through this and make them understand it. The only mistake he made was granting them integrity, treating them as equally informed adults.

That’s not the way you should ever — if you are a Republican — deal with the media.

Never, ever.