RUSH: We have the official vote in the House that happened about a half hour ago to formalize the inquiry. There still aren’t any articles of impeachment, and the Republicans have their way of dealing with this. Been studying it and watching it.

The thing that you have to keep in mind, folks, and flashbacks are relevant in one sense. Both Pelosi and Adam Schiff, within the past nine months, both vociferously said that they didn’t want to do impeachment. Now, I didn’t believe them when they said it. It doesn’t matter what I believe. They said it. I think they said it to set everybody up. I think they’re trying to set the table, “No, no, no, we don’t want to impeach, we have no desire to impeach.”

They’ve wanted to impeach since Trump was elected. They’ve wanted to get rid of him and that’s all this is since election night of 2016. You could say the reason why this is important, they won the House because of the Mueller witch hunt, folks. They won the House. A bunch of Republicans retired in fear or because they were gonna lose their committee chairmanships. Fifty-five Republicans retired in 2018 because they bought into the notion to one degree or another that all hell was gonna break loose, and they didn’t want to be in the minority, and so they had a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But you have to say that the Democrats won the House based on this whole manufactured nothing that was the Mueller investigation. And they’re trying to do it again with this Ukraine thing. Now they’re trying to win the presidency, all of it aimed at getting rid of Donald Trump with yet another hoax or witch hunt or what have you.

So the argument has now settled on how should the Republicans deal with this? Should they deal with it by criticizing the process? Should they deal with it on the substance? Should it be a combination of both? ‘Cause they’re gonna have to deal with it. You can’t beat this back by telling everybody what a nerd and an idiot and a dishonest guy Schiff is. It isn’t gonna work. You can’t beat this back by trying to tell everybody that Nancy Pelosi’s mean and is a partisan.

It’s Washington. The Democrats don’t like us. They don’t want us around. They won the House of Representatives. They get to determine what an impeachable offense is. If they want to impeach Trump for eating a ham sandwich on a Jewish holiday, they can do it. And it’s silly to try to beat it back on that basis. It can be part of the recipe, but it shouldn’t be the entire focus. I think too many people lose sight of what this is.

There’s a danger in suggesting that we need to respond on substance because responding on substance thereby validates their premise. It validates their allegations. But you have to do it to some extent. I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example of how to respond to this. Mike Pompeo did it last. He was on the Fox News Channel.

Now, what’s Trump supposedly in trouble for? Well, because he called the president of Ukraine, and the story is that he threatened to withhold aid unless the president of Ukraine dug up dirt on Biden and his kid. Forget, that’s not what happened on the call, but that’s what the story is and that’s what the media narrative is, and that’s what most people are gonna hear.

That’s not what happened on the phone call, and the bottom line is that no aid was denied. Ukraine got its aid, and there still has not been a Ukrainian investigation of Biden and his kid! So if that’s what Trump wanted, there could not have been a quid pro quo because Trump hasn’t gotten what he asked for. But Ukraine has. Ukraine got their money. Ukraine got their aid. Far as I know, they haven’t dug up any dirt on Biden and his kid.

Well, now, when did Ukraine not get its money? Well, the answer to that’s Barack Hussein Obama. You remember the United States has had a mutual defense treaty with Ukraine. One of the things that we did during the Obama years, we demanded Ukraine and Crimea — they’re kind of lumped in together — disarm. In exchange for that, we would defend them if Trump and the Russians ever attacked ’em. I’m being snarky, of course. I shouldn’t play around with this. People are gonna misunderstand. Trump had nothing to do attacking, okay? I’m just making a mockery of their allegation that Trump’s aligned with Russia.

So the Obama administration denied all aid to Ukraine! Yet Trump is on the verge of being impeached for having a so-called quid pro quo, but they got their aid. They got the military aid, they got the deals that we had made with ’em. They were honored. Who denied Ukraine aid? Barack Hussein Obama! All that Obama’s administration gave Ukraine was meals ready to eat, MREs, and a bunch of blankets and pillows. I mean, Obama didn’t even send ’em doctors and nurses and clean water.

And so Pompeo was asked, “Why didn’t the Obama administration send Ukraine the money that was promised?” He said, “I don’t know. Maybe because of Hunter Biden.” Wait. Wait. Maybe because of Hunter Biden? What? So I’m guessing Pompeo didn’t want to go on the record with the “why” but the fact of the matter is if you go with this on substance, there isn’t any. Trump didn’t withhold any aid. And Trump has not gotten whatever these whistleblowers were so upset about. As far as I know there hasn’t been any information from Ukraine to Trump on Biden and his kid.

Yet Ukraine has got its money. Obama didn’t give Ukraine aid as contractually agreed to. Pompeo said, “Well, I’m guessing it might be because of Hunter Biden.” Hunter Biden? So you know what that means? What Pompeo’s saying without saying it is that any aid from the United States to Ukraine, some of it would have ended up with Hunter Biden and that company Burisma. For some reason, Obama didn’t want to go there because he didn’t want to red flag it. So there wasn’t any aid sent, which means that the Bidens were in on the back end of any aid.

Well, there’s the substance — and on the substance, there’s nothing impeachable here.

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RUSH: And as long as there remains a reluctance to defend Trump, the longer this thing is gonna go on.  And, you know, there are starting to be cracks in the dike.  I’m reading things where people are saying, “Well, you know what?  Republicans are gonna have to make up their minds whether they’re gonna fish or cut bait.”  They’re already…

People are suggesting that Republicans better make plans for the future and arrive at a theoretical point in the future where they abandon Trump.  This is some of the advice that’s coming now, because one of the popular bits of conventional wisdom is: The reason why Pelosi and Schiff, who they said months ago were not in favor of impeachment, now are… Pelosi didn’t want to vote for impeachment because of the new members of her caucus that were elected in Trump districts.  She didn’t want to put them at risk.

She didn’t want to put her House majority at risk. So she didn’t want to go for impeachment.  Now all of that’s out the window.  So something has changed to make Pelosi go ahead and do this today, and it’s one of two things — and maybe there are other options. It’s either she’s lost control to the mad demands of her fringe base, or they think they have something else. Remember, we never know everything.  So it’s entirely possible that Schiff and Pelosi have what they think is another bombshell that’s gonna destroy Trump just waiting for the right time for them to announce it or unload it.

And that the fact that they think they have this has given them confidence to go ahead and call for the official inquiry vote today, because they now no longer fear losing elections in Trump districts.  Now, I think that is something that Pelosi and her leadership are trying to push with the media.  I think all of this continues to be an illusion.  There isn’t an impeachable offense as people would think of it.  Now, again, the Democrats who run the House can say anything is an impeachable offense.  They can go for this for any reason they want.

And I’m not exaggerating.  “High crimes and misdemeanors” is a wide-open, waiting-to-be-defined claim by any House in any year.  This is a total House of Representatives move, as an institution.  So the Republicans in the House have decided that one of the ways to beat this back is to complain that they’re not being treated fairly, that they’re not being allowed in the committee hearings, that they’re not being allowed to ask questions, and that Schiff is telling witnesses not to answer various questions — which nobody’s seeing.

Nobody is seeing that happen.  Nobody is seeing this unfairness of Adam Schiff.  What they are seeing is Republicans complain about it.  I don’t know about you, folks, but how do you respond to whining?  Does it compel you?  Does it infuriate you?  Does it make you want to join forces with whoever it is that’s whining?  Or is your reaction, “Grow up!”  Because after all, elections have consequences.  This is what happens when you elect Democrats.  This ought to be the message.  Why is it so hard to defend Donald Trump?

It’s not hard to defend Donald Trump because, in the process, we’re defending ourselves. We’re defending ourselves. We’re defending everybody that voted for him because that’s who’s really under attack.  Trump is a transient figure.  He’s only gonna be here, maximum, eight years.  People that voted for him are gonna go on and on and on and hopefully grow and grow and grow.  The attack on Donald Trump… He’s a surrogate for their hatred for us. And our unwillingness — not mine, of course.

But the people I’m referring to, their unwillingness to defend Trump is the same as being unable to defend their voters.  Steve Scalise was responding. “He said this is Soviet-style…” He had a poster out there when he was speaking on the floor of the House: “Soviet-style tactics.”  You know, I know how rotten the Soviet Union was, and that didn’t play with me — and I’m thinking of the polls: 30% of Millennials want communism.

Seventy percent of Millennials think socialism’s okay. So you throw a poster at ’em saying “Soviet style” and you may get some supporting the movement, because Soviet style may not be that bad a deal to some of these young people.  But who knows what Soviet style is? We had the… It took us 30 years to educate people on what Soviet style was, and it still took the Berlin Wall falling to defeat them.  Their own implosion is what defeated them, not our persuasive rhetoric.

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RUSH: Everybody knows who the whistleblower is. Everybody’s known in Washington for a long time. Here’s a quote from Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, national security adviser to Trump. “Everybody knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is.”

Nobody revealed it. Paul Sperry, Real Clear Investigations came along and revealed the guy’s name. Now everything in the world is known about him. So as soon as we find out who the guy is all of a sudden Pelosi pulls the trigger on her vote. The theory is that this may be the high-water mark, this may be peak impeachment, in their view.

It’s also possible that they’re holding something else. I’ve learned from watching these people that you never know. In fact, this is a truism about all of politics. You never know everything. Whoever’s involved in reporting news or making news, you never know everything. Somebody’s always holding something back. Like the October Surprise has become a predictable feature of presidential campaigns. But it is undeniable that Pelosi and Schiff have both protested vociferously that they were not in favor of impeachment, they didn’t want to do it.

Now, I don’t believe a thing any of these people ever say. And I could never work in network news and be an on camera analyst ’cause I refuse to fall into any of these premises, because I don’t think the narratives or the premises is — this is about something very simple. It is not complicated at all. We have a bunch of people who don’t like the way 63 million people voted! They don’t like the result and they want to reverse it.

Now, the reasons for that, that’s where it gets interesting and can appear to be complicated and be a little bit of a tough sell, but aside from all that, that’s what’s happening here. It isn’t any more complicated than that and anybody paying attention ought to be able to see right through what this is.

You have a three-year, two-year investigation on whether Trump colluded with Russia when he never did, when there was never any evidence. And the big coup de grace was gonna be the Mueller report. It comes up a dud. And so right after it comes up a dud, guess what? We got a phone call! It isn’t complicated what’s happening here. The way to deal with this I don’t think is complicated, either.

But when you have people immersed in it, by definition, close to it — and remember we talked yesterday and we’ve talked often, how do you deal with criticism, how do you respond to it? And there’s as many different theories as there are people who have them. And one of the theories is you gotta respond to every allegation. You can’t let one allegation stick.

Well, by responding, you establish the premise. You acknowledge it. You legitimize it by choosing to respond to it. And that has always been problematic for me, because getting the premise on the table is 90% of the battle for the people who are trying to aggressively accomplish something. So if the premise is Donald Trump’s unqualified because Donald Trump’s corrupt or whatever else, the minute you start defending those particular allegations, then that’s on the table.

My preference is to not even accept the premise and start challenging the honesty and the veracity of the people making the charge. Who the hell do they think they are? Where does it say in the Constitution that if Washington’s establishment doesn’t like the results of a presidential election, they get to do whatever they want to do to overturn them?

The normal procedure, you wait ’til the next election, you throw the guy out if you don’t like him. They’re not doing that. They have been trying to get rid of Donald Trump under false, lying premises since election night. And they’re using a coordinated effort by invisible people that most Americans still do not even know. John Brennan, James Clapper, we all know them because they’re on the news all the time, and we watch it, we’re wonks.

You think the people at risk of losing their homes in California give a rat’s rear end about John Brennan today, for example?

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RUSH:  Now, folks, there’s another reason why Pelosi and Schiff may have done their big reversal and gone ahead and started their official inquiry today.  We mentioned this a couple times earlier in the week.  I think Barr and Durham and the investigation they’re conducting has got everybody on the Pelosi side as worried as they can be, and I think this is an effort to discredit that.  It’s an effort to slow that down.  Remember, we’re in a race.  Barr and Durham are in a race against these people — and can you just now see it?

So Pelosi officializes her inquiry here, and they have a vote, and let’s just say that in the next week or two Barr and Durham announce some things that they’re getting close to making arrests or what have you. I mean, take your pick of whatever it might be.  And then what is Pelosi’s response?  “They’re only trying to stop our impeachment investigation! The president and the attorney general are working in tandem in a partisan purpose to discredit our legitimate impeachment inquiry.”

That probably is as big a factor as anything else in the timing of this, ’cause make no mistake about it.  If just one of these people — take your pick: McCabe, Strzok Smirk. If just one of these people flips, if just one of them flips in an interview or having been indicted, that starts a whole house of cards.  In other words, these people are gonna have to ask themselves (James Baker at the FBI, McCabe, Strzok Smirk, Page), “Do I want to go to jail for James Comey?  Do I want to go to jail for John Brennan?”

Don’t doubt me.  The people on the Pelosi side of this are scared to death of this investigation, and I think what Barr is doing has sped up their process and now makes them appear to be contradicting their previous statements that they were only gonna do this if it was bipartisan.  By the way, no Republicans joined Pelosi’s vote today.  Two Democrats did not vote with her.  So it’s a party-line vote, but the only defections were from the Democrat side, not the Republican side.

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RUSH: This is Dave in Gurnee, Illinois.  Welcome, sir.  I’m really glad you waited.  Hi.

CALLER:  Yeah, Rush. With all the talk of a Democrat impeachment process — and people making comparisons to Watergate back in 1972-73 — there’s one glaring similarity that I haven’t heard anybody make, and that is there’s talk that the Democrats want to eliminate representation for Donald Trump.  Now, this was proposed back in Watergate by one Hillary Clinton who was working for Jerry Zeifman, who was the chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee at the time.  And it’s one of the reasons that he terminated her.

RUSH:  Yeah, she was thrown off the Watergate legal team because — you’re right — she wanted to deny Nixon legal representation.  Now, I just saw Pencil Neck.  He just went out and had a press conference. He said (summarized), “All this is crazy.  We’re allowing Republicans to come in.  We’re letting ’em ask questions.  What you don’t know is that most of the Republicans we’re letting come in are not even showing up.”  So Schiff’s out there telling an entirely different story. But here’s the point: He doesn’t have to let anybody ask questions right now.

This is not an official impeachment inquiry.  Even with this vote, nothing has really changed, folks.  This does not authorize anybody to start writing articles of impeachment.  That will be done by Nadler and his crew, and that won’t happen (if it happens) until December.  This vote is purely symbolic.  It’s designed to make people think the Democrats are moving closer.  If you listen carefully to people like Steny Hoyer and even Pelosi herself, they will concede that this vote today doesn’t change anything.  It doesn’t give any more weight to what they’re already doing or have done.

It doesn’t move them any closer to impeachment because nothing has changed after this. Schiff is still gonna be running his committee the way he runs it.  All they’ve done is commit the rules that Schiff is using to paper.  But look, this is my point.  I don’t want to hear the whining and complaining about the way Republicans are being treated.  They lost the election, and the Democrats are who they are.  It should have been expected.  Things like this happen when Democrats win.  Things like this happen when Democrats run cities with no balance or no check!

Schiff can make up whatever rules he wants.

It’s not until they have the actual articles of impeachment and a trial in the Senate that it is mandatory that the president’s legal team gets to participate.  All of this is a sham.  To go after this on the unfairness of it is to complain about losing an election!  So I… (sigh) That doesn’t move the ball for me, complaining about the way Schiff’s operating.  As I said in the opening comment of the program, I’ve never had anybody whine to me and it made me want to pick up their cause and start supporting them.  I’m offended by the whining more than anything else ’cause it doesn’t ever really accomplish anything.

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RUSH:  Something to chew on, folks.  Every bit of testimony before Schiff’s committee has been what?  Opinion.  Opinion.