RUSH: The so-called impeachment hearings continue. I’m gonna try to reset the stage. When the program began an hour ago, I was desirous of sharing every impression I had in the first five minutes. And that, of course, is an impossible thing to do. One of the reasons is that I didn’t want to forget anything. I made some notes as we went along. I watched a little bit more of it during the break here, and I’ve now had the benefit of seeing the reaction of others to this. And it’s clear that there is, again, a bifurcation.

We have two completely different worlds of people watching this today. We have people watching this wanting it to work, hoping that there’s something that comes up that will send Donald Trump packing. That will get him convicted and sent out of Washington. And there’s another group of people — maybe three groups. There’s another group watching hoping that there is none of that. And then there’s another group that I’m in that knows full well what this is. That this is not really an impeachment hearing. It is a one-sided campaign event.

And what we are watching, you want to get down to brass tacks? With these two witnesses today, we are essentially watching a sponsored mutiny. These two guys, Ambassador Taylor and the bow tied guy, what’s his name? I can’t remember his name right off the bat now, the first witness. These guys — yeah, George Kent. Trust me when I tell you, believe me when I tell you that the only thing, the only gripe they’ve got is that they weren’t used. The only gripe they’ve got is that Trump set up a different channel for foreign policy with Ukraine, a channel that was outside theirs.

Their noses are out of joint that they were not used. They are the experts. Nobody else knows how to do this. Nobody else has the experience. Nobody else knows the people as well. Nobody else has proper interest in the United States, nobody, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They were not used. They are essentially attempting to conduct a mutiny with the help of the Democrat Party.

They’re essentially suggesting that the president has engaged in misconduct for not using them. And these hearings are designed for them to provide evidence of Trump’s incompetence. Not impeachable offense, but incompetence or misconduct or whatever.

Now, those two things are things the American voters render decisions on, not these people. These people don’t get to decide who the president is. And these people don’t get to decide what the president’s foreign policy is. And these people don’t get to decide to throw the president out of office if their foreign policy is not used and if they are not used. They are tools, they are willing tools of the Democrat Party in a pure political campaign event today that is being disguised as an impeachment inquiry or impeachment hearing.

There hasn’t been an impeachable offense mentioned. There hasn’t been a crime mentioned. None of these two witnesses have ever talked to Donald Trump. Everything that we’re hearing from them is exactly what we were told that their testimony behind closed doors was. Their opinion. Their opinion of what somebody told them Trump did, their opinion of what somebody told them Trump wanted to do, their opinion based on their own knowledge of what they think Trump is trying to do.

But their opinions do not constitute crimes. If they disagree with the president doesn’t mean he’s committed a crime. But in their world, it does, folks. This is the point. In their world, any deviation from their channel is considered to be un-American or irregular or so out of the norm as to be intolerable.

What these people are demonstrating is exactly what I was hoping for — the existence of this group of people that here before nobody ever heard of and nobody ever knew, nobody knew a thing about these people. And all of a sudden they show up and testify before Congress and give the opinion, give the impression that they run the show. That the foreign policy, particularly with Ukraine, is theirs. It isn’t the president, it isn’t anybody else, it’s theirs. And their testimony is designed to persuade people what a mistake as president Donald Trump is.

But the irony is that everything they claim Trump has done that’s wrong are things the Democrats have done, things that Obama has done. The big complaint here is that Trump supposedly withheld military aid that had been promised to Ukraine while Ukraine was engaged in a war with Russia. And so they’re trying to claim here that Trump is still sympathetic to Russia, that Trump is actually helping Putin deal with Ukraine. It’s an out-and-out lie.

It was the eight years of the Obama administration that Ukraine was denied all military aid. They didn’t get anything. The Ukrainians did get the aid they were promised under Donald Trump. It might not have arrived on the exact day, but it certainly was happening before the July 25th phone call. And Trump did not get a quid pro quo for it. He did not get a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens or of Burisma. And yet Ukraine got their aid.

So these people literally have nothing substantive to complain about. Their complaints are purely that Trump is not sophisticated enough, that he’s not wise enough to have used them, that he went outside the chain. You ought to hear these guys when they say Rudy Giuliani’s name, they practically spit it out. “Rudy Giuliani. Ew, yuk.” They just can’t believe that anybody would send a Neanderthal like Rudy Giuliani to talk to the president of Ukraine.

Now, the hearings are an absolute joke. And I’m telling you from the standpoint of the buildup, from the expectations, from what the American people were led to expect by cable news and newspapers all over the country and what we’ve got here in the most common, understandable sense, we’ve got a television show that is one of the most boring things on television that you can imagine. It just is.

I don’t care how substantive the Washington insiders think it is. I don’t care how much like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite they claim that William Taylor sounds like. By the way, imagine that as a compliment. “This guy sounds like Cronkite. This guy sounds like Edward R. Murrow.” Yeah, well, there’s no smoking gun. There’s no quid pro quo. There’s no shocking revelation. There’s no, “Oh, my God. Trump did that?” There’s nothing anywhere approaching this.

It’s just a couple of guys with their blue-blood noses out of joint that they were side-stepped, that they weren’t utilized. In fact, Taylor — this is kind of interesting. Taylor told Pompeo — this is from his testimony today — Taylor told Pompeo that he would quit as ambassador Ukraine if the U.S. didn’t continue a strongly pro-Ukraine policy. Really?

So Taylor’s announcing that he’s gone rogue. Taylor’s going rogue. He’s demanding his own personal policy be implemented here or he’s gonna quit. He told Pompeo that he will quit if the U.S. didn’t continue a strongly pro-Ukraine policy. And yet we’re told that Donald Trump, the president, is not allowed to utilize his personal political preferences in the adjudication of American foreign policy when presidents do it all the time.

You think Obama wasn’t exercising personal political, ideological beliefs in the implementation of his foreign policy? Take Iran alone, take the Arab Spring, take whatever it was Obama was trying to do with Cuba, with the Middle East, you telling me that Obama’s liberalism, that his desired ideological outcomes had no impact on his foreign policy? What an absurd claim that is.

So now we’ve got two guys basically conducting a mutiny with the assistance of the Democrats on this committee. And the sole complaint is that Donald Trump is exhibiting misconduct because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he doesn’t know what he’s doing because he’s not using these guys. He’s not using their channel. He’s not using the interagency group, and he is not continuing the foreign policy of the Obama administration. That would be the smart thing, but he’s not doing it so Trump’s gotta go because we’re not getting what we expected to get with the Hillary presidency.

And it really is no more complicated than that. These people are expecting the continuation of the Obama foreign policy with the election of Hillary Clinton except something went wrong. Donald Trump was elected. He has his own foreign policy. These blue-blood, narcissistic, we’re smarter than everybody else in the world guys that nobody knew existed until all this, now pop up and say Trump has no right to sidestep us, Trump has no right to implement his own foreign policy, Trump has no right to win, Trump has no business being president. Which means that you the American should have no say in any of this.

It’s also obvious that Adam Schiff does not know how to run a committee. Every time the Republicans ask for a point of order, he appears to be lost and assumes sort of a dictatorial posture in order to cover for the fact that he has no substantive reason to deny their requests and the lines of questioning that they want to engage in.

But I’m just telling you, I don’t know how many people tuned in to watch this, but those who did, there will not be, for example, a spontaneous outgrowth, response outbreak of protests nationwide on the part of the American people demanding that Donald Trump go based on what was said or what was learned today. There wasn’t anything, there’s nothing so far that has been said by either of these witnesses that would convince anybody that Donald Trump’s done anything.

And if you put it in context, all the claims of what he did with Russia, Russia meddling, Russia collusion and all the other things he been accused of, it’s exactly what I said. When they start feeling their oats because of what they’re able to do with their media alliance using behind-closed-doors tactics like witnesses nobody can see, when they can line things up and have the media tell their story, then they start feeling their oats and then they go public.

And every time they have tried to go public with it, it has bombed on them like Mueller bombed and was a disaster. They thought the Mueller report, that Barr had somehow positioned it so that every in it was not revealed. That Mueller had actually found collusion and that Mueller had actually found obstruction, but that Barr was not letting Mueller say so. So they demanded that Mueller come testify. He didn’t want to testify. They dragged him out of the old folks’ home, wherever he was, made him come up there, and he goes up there, and he can’t even tell ’em what’s in his own report.

These guys have never even talked to Donald Trump. They have to be led by the Democrats’ MSNBC lawyer in questioning to have their so-called incriminating information put on the record. After a 30-minute opening statement which bored everybody to tears, the Democrats lawyer (doing impression), “What did you mean by ‘we’? And what happened after you sent that WhatsApp message and what was the reaction to that message, and why did you think this was such a bad thing? Do you think Zelensky really would like a White House meeting? Is that a big deal to a new president? Do you think Donald Trump’s a mean president?”

Leading question after leading question for which there was never any basis of fact that would then permit such questioning to be sensible. It was just a series of disconnected leading questions because the witness couldn’t get where the Democrats wanted him to go on his own. And yet this was gonna be, this was it, finally, folks, they were gonna get rid of Trump today. This was it, the first public hearings of impeachment, and finally the American people were gonna see what an absolute disaster Donald Trump is.

They haven’t seen that. They haven’t seen any evidence of anything the Democrats have been alleging. And they’re watching a couple of guys, some witnesses here they didn’t know existed, seemed very disturbed that they weren’t used and their counsel wasn’t taken, their advice wasn’t accepted. It’s exactly why Donald Trump was elected.

So I said yesterday that the American people were going to see finally what a raw, partisan sham this is. And those who have been able to survive and live through the boredom have, in fact, seen that that’s exactly what this is, a partisan sham that, as Jonathan Turley says today, has no foundation supporting it whatsoever.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. We’re gonna get to the phones here. I know that. I know I owe everybody on hold that’s been patient to get to the phones, but I want to try to make this connection here to why this is boring. Remember what this is, folks. This is impeachment. It’s not a congressional hearing. This is not a hearing on tax policy or Medicare for All or the Ways and Means Committee debating the farm bill. This is impeachment.

This is the president of the United States committing crimes for which he needs to be thrown out of office. People have been told, “You’ve gotta tune in! You can’t miss this. Schiff is opening up with blockbuster testimony, inescapable evidence that Trump is an absolute reprobate who needs to be thrown out of office tonight.” There hasn’t been anything that even approaches — I mean, that gets within miles of — the way people were led to believe and set up expectation-wise.

But let’s go back and let’s relive previous impeachments. Watergate. Watergate was a three-act proceeding. Act 1: “There was a burglary of the Democrat National Committee by people with connections to the White House.” That’s gonna get your attention. “You mean the White House sent people to break in to the DNC?” “Damn right they did!” Act 2: “The president knew about it and covered it up, and we want to know what he knew and when.”

Coupled with the revelation of the White House taping system, with missing 18 minutes that might have incriminated Nixon in the whole thing. Now, that’s gonna grab your attention. Act 3: “The president knew about everything from Day One and didn’t want anybody to know about it.” Let’s go to the Clinton impeachment. Act 1: (impression) “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Whatever Her Name Is — Lewinsky — not a single time. Not ever! Now, leave me alone. I gotta get back to work for the American people.”

Act 2: “A semen-stained blue dress he was found in possession of Monica Lewinsky.” Act 3: “The president lied under oath during a deposition in the Paula Jones case, and it was learned that he had asked other people to lie under oath.” Now, that’s gonna grab your attention. What do we have here? What do we have here? “Donald Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to tell them that they should investigate Hunter Biden for something Hunter Biden did and that his dad did!”

They haven’t even said that yet, folks.

They haven’t even gotten there yet.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, to the phones we go. Dave, Phoenix, Arizona. Glad you waited. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, there. I think this really is gonna reenergize Trump’s base because this trial, it’s reminding us why we voted for him. Trump gets things done. It’s called negotiation. Like any strong business leader, he’ll negotiate. Unlike Obama, who on the world stage folded like a lawn chair. I mean, the Iran deal? Really? All of this is just a waste of time and tax dollars. It’s a dog-and-pony show, and it shows why Americans can’t stand politicians. Rush, correct me if I’m wrong, I thought impeachment was for high crimes and treason. All of this helps Trump get reelected.

RUSH: Well, here’s the thing. The impeachment proceedings are something over which the House of Representatives has plenary power, meaning absolutely — and I’m not trying to be fast and loose here. I’m telling you that any House of Representatives, whether the Democrats control it or the Republicans, can attempt to impeach a president for anything.

“High crimes and misdemeanors” is whatever the House says it is. That’s what Schiff is trying to do here. They’re literally trying to impeach a president where there haven’t been any crimes committed. They’re trying to define them and convince the American people that Trump’s existence is a crime, essentially. So you say that this is gonna rally Trump’s base. I take that you mean these hearings today?

CALLER: Oh, yeah. It’s gonna reenergize the base because this trial —

RUSH: Why? What’s happening in these hearings that’s gonna rejuvenate the base, revive the base?

CALLER: Well, it’s reminding us why we voted for Trump, ’cause he gets things done. He doesn’t play by the rules of the establishment. He negotiates with these countries. He gets deals done — and just ’cause it’s not on their specific terms… You know, that’s what they want, is they want to play by their rules.

RUSH: No, no. I’m being specific. This is what you take away from watching this today, that Trump gets things done and these guys don’t?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: What…? (sigh) Okay. What is Trump getting done today that you recognize watching this today?

CALLER: Negotiation. Just in general, with other world leaders, with trade, with —

RUSH: Why, because you think they’re…? (sigh) What I’m getting at is, this has not been about what Trump’s gotten done. This is all about crimes and stuff that Trump’s committed. Irregularities, misconduct. Trump hasn’t been praised at all here.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: So what are you seeing that’s gonna rally the base?

CALLER: What I’m seeing is that there’s an obvoius… Anyone who’s objective can see what’s going on here. (unintelligible)

RUSH: Okay. Okay. So you’re telling me that what you’re seeing is abject bias, partisanship, and unfairness and a bunch of people whose noses are out of joint because Donald Trump is succeeding?

CALLER: Of course! They can’t win so they’re trying to rewrite rules.

RUSH: All right. All right. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear about your observations. That’s how you lead a witness.