RUSH: Lake Ronkonkoma, New York. Don. I’m glad you waited. I really appreciate it. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Merry Christmas, Rush, to you, your family and the EIB staff.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: It’s great to talk to you. What advice, Rush, would you give the Republican Party and the president, as Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party continue in their anti-constitutional extortions in this impeachment circus?

RUSH: Well, I know when people ask me this, advice questions, that you have your own thoughts. What do you think? You’re sitting out there; you’re an American voter, obviously a Trump supporter. What do you hope he does? What do you hope the Republicans do? What do you want to see out of ’em?

CALLER: I just have them… There’s two things: Sit on it and wait for things to happen, or you can just keep exposing them as frauds.

RUSH: Well, here’s the thing about this, and it really does present a couple of challenges, because they have to take it seriously. They can’t brush it off, because it is serious. He’s been impeached. There’s been a vote of impeachment. The next thing that should happen is the presentation of the articles and the trial. Now, in order to give advice that’s worth anything, you’d have to have an understanding of what the gambit is. So what is Pelosi doing by withholding the articles? What does she hope to gain by this?

Well, the first thing that she’s trying to do is what I suggested that she would do before they even had the final vote on the articles of impeachment because the theory was that she didn’t even really want to do this, that she was forced into doing it by the radical left of her party and by her desire to stay speaker. Now, don’t discount that. Some people say, “Rush, come on. She doesn’t have a concern about not being speaker.” Yes, she does.

The radical left as epitomized by The Squad, Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of them… Pelosi does have a legitimate fight on her hands if she doesn’t follow this through. She wants to remain speaker. She wants to remain leader of the Democrats. I am pretty certain that if she did not have these outside pressures that are very immediate… I don’t think she would have followed this through. I don’t think there would have actually been articles of impeachment. But she did it for… There’s a host of reasons, but among them is personal.

She wants to remain speaker, and she’s got to satisfy the fringe left that is becoming the base of the Democrat Party. There’s also the fact that she legitimately hates Trump and would love to see him gone like all the other Democrats as well. So she had to find a way to do this. But she’s got a big problem now because everybody knows that if it ever does come to a trial in the Senate there’s gonna be an acquittal, and that’s the last thing that she wants.

The last thing. In an election year for the president be able to run around and say, “Acquitted! Impeached and acquitted,” that’s the last thing she wants. So why do this in the first place? Well, because of the pressures that she was getting. So now what she’s doing is embarking on a strategy that is designed to weaken the impact and power of the acquittal that would happen in a Senate trial. How she doing that?

She is trying — with the help of Chuck You Schumer and some others — to portray the whole process as corrupt. She’s portraying the whole process as partisan and racist. You know, whatever labels they can throw out. By withholding the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is saying, “I’m not sending ’em over there because it isn’t gonna be a fair trial, and I’m not gonna throw my guys to the wolves here. They’ve worked hard. They’ve put together an impeachable case, and it’s gonna be tossed out? I’m not gonna do that.

“I’m not gonna let a corrupt, partisan process derail what is a legitimate impeachment.” So she’s trying to shift the blame here to McConnell. She’s saying, “Look, Mitch and these Republicans have already announced how they’re gonna vote,” and Mitch had the perfect reaction. “Oh, don’t give me that. You’re telling me Schumer isn’t partisan? You’re telling me Schumer hasn’t made up his mind already? Dick Durbin?”

So she’s doing the one thing that was clearly, obviously available to her before this all started, and that is tainting the process. She’s now claiming (impression), “Well, we need more witnesses. We just discovered a new email. We just discovered a new scandal. We need new witnesses.” The answer to it is, “Wait a minute. You could have called those witnesses.” “No, they wouldn’t show up.” “You go to court. It was because you were in a hurry, Madam Speaker. You had to get this done.

“You had to get it done to satisfy everybody. To keep the wolves away from your door, to keep Cortez and the rest of them away from your door, you had to get this done before the Congress ended. You had to get it done before the end of the year. So you didn’t play the process out. If you really wanted to talk to Mulvaney and Bolton and these other witnesses, you would have waited. You would have been patient. You would have fought Trump in court over it. But you didn’t. Now you don’t get to call these witnesses.”

This is what I would tell her. I would take the time here to educate the American people. I would throw it right back on Pelosi, and I would illustrate the whole lack of legitimacy in this by virtue of the way she proceeded, pointing out that the Senate does not do investigations like McConnell has started to do. I simply would… I think it’s a great piece of advice no matter what you’re talking about where the Democrats are concerned: Reject the premise.

Do not accept the premise. Nuke the premise. Do not nuke impeachment. Do not make fun of impeachment. Do not claim that impeachment’s illegitimate. Make fun of the way they’re going about it, that they’re tainting it, that they are corrupting it, that they have turned it into something that it was never intended to be, that they are the ones deflowering the entire premise of a legitimate, innocent impeachment exercise.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Nathan in Lynchburg, Virginia. Great to have you, sir. Glad you waited.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Listening to you every day as I can —

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: — on 105.9 WLNI, and they just celebrated their 25th anniversary and we’re all big supporters down here in Lynchburg, Virginia.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: We want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let me get to the point. I think Mitch McConnell and Trump will be making a big mistake not to prolong this Senate hearing. I think they should prolong it ’til August, and I think they should uncover and use the system like the Democrats did to bring out all the truth and the lies and put forth. Bring all the witnesses and demand that they speak. Demand that they tell what they know. They can plead the Fifth, that’s their right. But besides that, if the Republicans don’t take advantage of what the Democrats did with impeachment, I think they’re making a humongous mistake.

RUSH: Well, I understand. You’re like a lot of people, and you want payback. You want these people to be exposed so that everybody can know incontrovertibly what they’ve done. That’s what the Durham-Barr investigation is doing and will reveal, a protracted Senate trial is going to devolve into a circus. And it’s gonna end up being that nobody’s gonna have any control over it, and that’s the last thing anybody should want.

You don’t go into something like that without any control over it, when you clearly have — you’re Mitch McConnell, you’re the Republicans, you run the Senate. The Constitution’s very clear on a Senate trial. To turn this over to the Democrats and their demands? That’s the only way it would be prolonged is that the Democrats get to start calling witnesses that they didn’t call in the House. It would never end. You couldn’t dictate an end to it like, say, in August or any of that.

I think the instincts to get this done as quickly as possible probably still make the most sense. I understand you think a Senate trial could be used to expose all of the things they’ve done in the Trump-Russia meddling hoax and all that, but that’s not the forum for it. And there’s nobody on the Democrat side to put on trial. Only Trump has been impeached. He would be the only one on trial in there.

And with so much partisanship in there, the longer it goes and the bigger circus it becomes, the more chaotic it looks, the more sensible it might look to some people to just end it by convicting the guy. “Okay, let’s just be done with this.” I understand, as I say, the desire for some vengeance on this, but I just don’t think the Senate trial is the place for it. I appreciate the call.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Turtle is exactly right. Mitch McConnell’s out there saying it’s time to stop the charade, quit the charade that Democrat Senators are impartial or that they would stay impartial. See, this is what they’re already attempting. I told you Pelosi is trying to corrupt this process. She’s trying to claim Republicans are partisan, that the Democrats are not gonna get a fair trial. It’s not the Democrats that a fair trial is awarded to. It’s the accused.

A fair trial is only within the context of does the president get one. He is who has been impeached. So you start talking about a fair trial, it’s whether or not Trump is gonna get one. But Pelosi’s running around complaining and Chuck You Schumer is running around complaining, Republicans have already made up their minds, Republicans are engaging in a partisan process here. The idea the Democrats are pristine, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. Oh, yeah, the Democrats only want a fair outcome.

And McConnell is exactly right. The idea that they haven’t made up their minds, the idea that nobody knows how they’re gonna vote, the idea that nobody has any idea what the Democrats are thinking about this is total bunk. So this is exactly right. I think however long this thing plays out, McConnell has to hold firm on this. Whenever he’s accused of presiding over what would be a partisan process or already is partisan, therefore it’s already unfair, and that’s why Pelosi is withholding the articles, got to nuke that every chance he gets.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Some little news items here. The Republican leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, has suggested these three names to represent Trump during the Senate impeachment trial: Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and John Ratcliffe. Now, Pelosi hasn’t named any managers, nor has she sent the articles of impeachment over. What is this clown’s name in the Senate? Doug Jones, Democrat, Alabama, said that he’s not worried about losing his Senate seat if he votes against Trump in the Senate trial.

Now, this story is at TheHill.com. They left out that Jones, in talking about this, told ABC News he might not vote to convict Trump. They left that out. They just said if he votes no, he’s not worried about losing his seat — which means he is, and that he probably would, and what he told ABC News was that he may vote to acquit Trump if Democrats fail to connect any dots. They haven’t connected any dots!

They haven’t connected anything. Everything that they have attempted to link to Trump has blown up in their face. Let’s see. Oh, the latest Democrat debate. Do you know what the audience for it was? Six million. It collapsed! Nobody watched the thing. Two million viewers across PBS stations, four million on CNN. Hannity has more than that on an average night, and CNN is their sponsor of the debate. Four million! That’s the smallest audience yet.

So impeachment’s going the wrong way on ’em. Audiences for their debates are going the wrong way. Folks, everything is lining up, these people are gonna get spanked so badly, and the Drive-Bys, they know it, but they are covering that up. Jeff Flake. Do you remember Jeff Flake? Jeff Flake had an op-ed at TheHill.com yesterday telling Senate Republicans to put country over party in Senate trial.

And here’s how the story starts. “Former Republican Senator Jeff Flake –” Right there, the most important word in the story, “former.” Former senator. Who cares? Donald Trump drove Jeff Flake out of politics, drove his numbers down so low that Jeff Flake didn’t even run for his own reelection in a primary.

Here is Joe in Chicago. Joe, great to have you. Glad you waited, the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thank you very much for taking my call. This is the honor of my life. I really appreciate it.

RUSH: Wow. Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Thank you. And the only better honor would be to meet you in person someday. Thank you. Before I make my point, I actually wanted to tell you something that I remember a couple of Octobers ago there was a gentleman named Patrick who called into your show, and I remember he choked up as he was talking to because he was thinking about what would things be like if you were not on the radio.

And I want to tell you that I think most people who listen to you, if not all of them, probably feel the same way Patrick did and certainly I do, so I really appreciate it and thank you and I hope you stay on the radio forever. The point I wanted to make is, I think, you know, with all the things that they talk about the reasons for impeachment and how much they hate Trump and all that, I think all of that is a given.

I really believe, though, there’s an added element, and that is I think they want to even the record with Bill Clinton and they want our most beloved president, probably the most popular president in recent history, they want to have that sort of blemish on his record that they believe equates the record with their most beloved president that they had in history, which is Bill Clinton. And I can’t underscore how important I think it is for a lot of the leftists that this happens to Trump, and they waited for the opportunity to do that, regardless of the reason, I don’t think the reasons matter anymore, to them, at least. So that was my point.

RUSH: Well, I think the reasons are many, and a lot of them do matter, and they are the things that propel them to oppose Trump from the get-go. Then the shock win over Hillary, the hatred. But your point that there is an element of this that is reciprocity, payback for the blemish on the record of Bill Clinton is undeniably true. There is no question that they have been laying in wait to be able to do this. They thought that impeachment was bogus from the get-go.

And that impeachment, folks, there actually was a crime, and you know in that impeachment, the day the articles of impeachment were voted, they were transmitted to the Senate, and the managers were named the very day. Within hours of the articles of impeachment against Clinton, they were sent to the House, and the managers were there ready to go. Bill Clinton had lied under oath and had suborned perjury trying to keep people from telling the truth about some of the exploits he had engaged in. Anyway, Joe, thank you, really, really very much. I appreciate that more than you know.