RUSH: You know, folks, it’s just embarrassing. I mean, watching all of this, all these people on the left — including Comey now. This is so embarrassing to have this guy Benjamin Wittes go out there and talk for you, and the New York Times report. Why don’t they just give him a byline, because all of this is coming from Comey? (impression) “Yeah, Benjamin Wittes and I know Comey. Comey is a good friend of mine. He’s been speaking of Comey. Comey hid behind the curtains in the White House so Trump wouldn’t find him one night.” You hear about that? (interruption)
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: (interruption) You didn’t hear about that? They put that out. Comey hid behind the curtains. He wore a blue suit and hid behind the blue curtain! He was so embarrassed of Trump, he didn’t want Trump to spot him in the room, and then Trump did and Trump came up and gave him one of those handshakes where you grabbed someone and pull ’em to you and give them an embrace. Comey was emba
You know all that is? There’s a big-time businessman; he doesn’t know how to do a political handshake, which is one of these limp-wrist things. I tell you, this is the most amazing — and there still isn’t any evidence of anything that is propelling all of this. And I’ve been reading some things that the Trump people, Trump voters are not falling for it at all. In fact, more and more Trumpists are not even watching the news anymore.
And in fact, it’s anecdotal, but more and more people that voted for Trump are more supportive of him now than they were even during the election because of all of this that’s arrayed against him. You’re not gonna hear about it, because the Drive-Bys don’t care about it. So the Drive-Bys are never gonna find it — and if they did stumble into that sentiment, they would find a way to characterize it as minimalist and irrelevant.
Well, greetings, folks. Here we are to wrap up yet another busy broadcast day, and it has been busy — and today is gonna be busy because we are loaded. So we’ve got Comey sending his buddy out to speak for him, and he’s making it clear — the buddy speaking for Comey is making it clear — that Comey was so embarrassed of Trump and so embarrassed of the White House staff and so embarrassed not to be seen as friendly with them for fear of what it might do to Comey’s reputation or his image. I mean, it’s amazing.
I saw two stories last night and I sent them on to a friend of mine. I said, “This is embarrassing. This is just embarrassing that Trump is supposedly the punk in this relationship, and everybody else in Washington is representative of the high-mindedness of sophistication — and erudition and it’s just the exact opposite. The loony bin is in that group of people scared to death and opposed to Trump.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Daytona Beach, this is Linda. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Oh, thank you so much, Rush, for taking my call and getting me through the last crazy 10 years, anyway.
RUSH: I’m glad you’re out there and I’m glad you got through today.
CALLER: Thanks. I think Comey is one of or the biggest leaker this whole time. Look how quickly he released this, quote-unquote, “memo” of his supposed conversation with himself and President Trump, not to mention it’s taken how long to investigate this no-evidence Russian BS?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Either the FBI is incompetent, or Comey is incompetent and corrupt.
RUSH: I don’t know that there’s a lot of incompetence here. I know what you mean by that, but I think (sigh) this is all being fairly well executed by the people who have a strategy behind it. I mean, you have to have a lot of pieces in place to be able to carry out a story for which there’s no evidence for over a year. You have to have a… You want to talk about a conspiracy? I mean, people love conspiracy theories. How’s this happen?
How do we get no evidence of anything into five investigations on Capitol Hill, numerous media investigations, and the big investigation by the real pros: The CIA, the NSA, and the FBI? Those are the people that can survival and wiretap, and there’s nothing. There’s not a scintilla. There’s not a whit. There’s no evidence whatsoever. And yet theirs no end is in sight to this. That’s a pretty good trick, and it takes a conspiracy. It takes a lot of people conspiring together to make this happen. All it would take to unravel this is for one of these people on the left to say, “There isn’t any evidence.
“What are we doing here? We’re wasting our time. We need to look at something else. We’re not gonna find any evidence. There’s no evidence!” All it would take is one person in the media, in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA. All it would take would be one staffer somewhere of one Democrat. All it would take would be one renegade media member. And not a single leak, not a single betrayal of this. So I don’t think this is incompetence. I think it’s much worse.
I think it has a purposeful, studied effort and outcome, which is a coup. We are watching a silent coup here to oust a duly elected president, and this coup is being mounted by career government people who can traffic anonymously and who are protected by people in the media and within the Democrat Party. Stop and think of it, folks. A year. How many…? Hasn’t the Washington Post at one time admitted that they have over 30 anonymous sources for all of this? That’s just one newspaper, 30 anonymous sources there.
How many anonymous people are talking New York Times? How much overlap? How many sources are talking to both places? All these deep state career government people, ex-Obama people that are civilians now? We don’t know. But it is a lot of people, and there isn’t any evidence. There’s none! And it’s gonna continue whether or not… Not only is there no evidence, there’s nothing to suggest the need of a special counsel. They can’t even find a cover-up to cover up the fact that there’s no evidence. What is the cover-up?
When you don’t have a crime, then what the hell is being covered up? But they’ve got people believing that there’s a scandal here, and you know what the scandal is? Firing Comey. That’s not a scandal. Firing Comey? The president can do that any time he wants for whatever reason he wants, and he doesn’t need anybody’s permission. But that is the supposed scandal. Now, about Comey, I mentioned earlier that I was reading some things last night about it and I said, “This is embarrassing. This is really a bit of desperation here.”
You have to balance what’s coming up here with another reputation that we’ve been presented with. In the case of James Comey — and this goes back to the Bush presidency when he was a deputy attorney general for John Ashcroft. That’s when I first became aware of the name of James Comey, and from that day forward James Comey has been presented as a lawyer beyond repute. He is a lawyer who exudes integrity. He is flawless. He has never slipped up.
This man is the epitome of honesty. This man is the epitome of courage. This man is the epitome of independence. This is the reputation of James Comey. This is why the Clinton campaign went through such conniptions when Comey was doing what he was doing, because he was doing all of that with the finest reputation anybody in Washington has ever had. Now that reputation’s beginning to crumble. That’s the dirty little secret.
That reputation’s starting to take some hits, and not because of anything Trump did. Because of things Comey has done. The July 5th press conference, the October 28th letter to Congress, the listing of charges but there’s not gonna be any prosecution. That just isn’t done. There’s all kinds of things being done. And now this guy with the impeccable reputation all of a sudden some people are whispering he’s got a power complex.
People are starting to whisper, “This man’s trying to make it all about himself. This man’s trying to figure out where the bright lights are in every story and end up right in them.” Well, those are serious, serious assaults if you have spent your life crafting and building this impeccable reputation for virtue and for honesty and for integrity. So it’s against all that that this now is beginning to happen. So here’s the first thing.
This is Washington Examiner: “Comey Hid Among White House Curtains to Avoid Trump.” I’m sorry. The only reason we know this is because Comey told somebody, and the fact that Comey’s telling people this so that they will then tell the media? I would be embarrassed, is what I’m saying. This is embarrassing. “Former FBI Director James Comey now says he tried to hide among the tall, blue curtains adorning a White House meeting room in an attempt to hide from President Trump at an Inauguration Day event.
“Comey said the incident was one example of what he believed were times Trump tried to create a public image that showed Comey was on his side.” So we have image protection going on here. (translated) “We have my independence is at stake here! I’ve got to do something! That’s bad. So now I’m gonna tell people I had to hide in the curtains. This guy Trump? This guy Trump was so eager to corrupt me, so eager to make it look like he and I were buds, I had to hide in the curtains!”
The FBI director is admitting that he hid from the president of the United States in the curtains on Inauguration Day. This is embarrassing! Benjamin Wittes, who runs a blog — Lawfare or some such thing — is said to be a good Comey friend. Quote, “Comey described really not wanting to go to that meeting” on Inauguration Day, “for the same reason he later did not want to go to the private dinner with Trump: the FBI director should be always at arm’s length from the president, in his view.
“There was an additional sensitivity here too,” Benjamin Wittes said, “because many Democrats blamed Comey for Trump’s election, so he didn’t want any shows of closeness between the two that might reinforce a perception that he had put a thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor.” This is so embarrassing. This is a window into the way Comey’s thinking, and all he’s thinking about is himself! He’s making all of this about him!
Most people do.
Most people’s egos are such that everything ends up being about them. But this is not about James Comey, and yet he’s trying to make it about him, and this is about trying to save and protect his reputation. And then he goes on to say (paraphrased), “I didn’t want to shape Trump’s hand. You know, Trump when he shakes your hand he pulls you to him and he tries to make it look like you’re buddies and friends.” No, no, no, no. You people, you’ve been in politics so long, you don’t understand how people actually interact with each other in the real world.
But Comey thought that Trump was engaging… Everything Trump was doing was designed to create an image that he and Comey were buds. (scoffs) But Benjamin Wittes said, “Mr. Comey also felt he could not refuse a presidential invitation, particularly not one that went to a broad array of law enforcement leadership.” So it wasn’t just Comey? You’ve got all other kinds of law enforcement people there, and yet Comey admits to hiding in the curtains so that Trump will not notice him?
(scoffs) This is like my cat thinking I can’t see her when her head’s poking around the corner. How in the world do you hide in the curtains and think you’re not going to be seen in more importantly: Why would you then like this story? Because it feeds the lunatic left. (interruption) Why the what? (interruption) Well, that’s a… He didn’t want to go, but since all kinds of law enforcement were there, he had to. He had to go. We haven’t even got to the memo yet.
All of this is to follow up on this mysterious memo that nobody has yet seen that says Comey wrote Trump tried to exert pressure to get him to let the Flynn thing go. This next story is at The Politico: “Comey Had Concerns About Rosenstein.” Oh! So all of a sudden now we learn that Comey has had deep concerns about the number two guy at the DOJ behind Jeff Sessions, who also has maybe a reputation that’s even better than Comey’s with everybody. “Legal Blog Founder” that’s Wittes again “Details Conversations with FBI Director Trump Fired.”
They could have put “Comey” in there, but they had to put Trump fired the guy instead of his name. “The intrigue surrounding Donald Trump’s decision to fire director James Comey grew deeper Thursday as a friend said that Comey had expressed concerns about the independence of Rod Rosenstein, who played a controversial role in Comey’s dismissal.” Why doesn’t all of this stuff just show…? Just give Comey an op-ed so that he can put his name to these stories and be done with it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: James Comey is six feet eight inches tall. Did you know that? Six eight. And he’s gonna hide behind a White House curtain. (chuckling) I’m telling you, these guys do not understand how somebody like Trump works. These swamp people? There’s a code of behavior in the swamp. You know, there’s protocol. There’s proper way to shake hands, a proper way to step forward and address someone. There’s a proper way to know who to acknowledge and who to let acknowledge you.
It’s a caste system; everybody knows who ranks above them. You show respect accordingly. Trump comes in; he’s like a bull in china shop. He doesn’t know that stuff. I mean, he’s a businessman sizing people up. He wants to get the measure of Comey. “Who is this guy? This guy investigated someone. Who is this guy?” So he wants to get close to him, get to know him. Comey found that very suspicious, reportedly, according to Mr. Wittes.
Comey found it very, very odd that Trump wanted to get to know him. It was very weird, especially since he’s the FBI director. There’s supposed to be some distance there. But Trump knows the guy works for him — and he does, folks. It’s not a different branch of government. It’s the executive branch. And you can look it up, you lunatic leftists. There is no mention of the FBI director in the Constitution.
Here is Marcy in Bethesda, Maryland. I’m glad you waited. Welcome to Open Line Friday.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Any time. Any time.
CALLER: Greetings from the People’s Republic of Maryland.
RUSH: Yes, I know all… (chuckling) I feel for you.
CALLER: (chuckling) Yeah, I feel for me too. My friend Beverly and I are working here. We’ve been listening to you since, gosh, before the election. Thank you for everything that you do. But we have a question about this whole Rosenstein-Russian probe thing. Does he have to consult with Sessions? I mean, I know Sessions recused himself from the whole investigation —
RUSH: He cannot consult with Sessions because of that.
CALLER: Seriously? I mean, technically, he is the guy’s boss.
RUSH: But not when it comes to the, quote-unquote, “Russian collusion investigation,” Sessions has recused and you cannot be consulted.
CALLER: Don’t even get me started on that.
RUSH: Yeah, I know.
CALLER: (chuckles)
RUSH: It was a big blunder. It was another one of these efforts that our party always makes to throw Democrats a bone to make ’em back down a little.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: It never works. It just is… It’s like blood in the water.
CALLER: They pitch a fit, and we give in.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: God, you’re kidding. So basically he can just do what he wants. He doesn’t have to tell him anything about what he was gonna do, he just did it?
RUSH: In terms of this investigation, yes.
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: But Sessions is still there for everything else at the department. He’s still the attorney general.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: It’s just in this investigation, he’s recused himself. He did so to Congress. I don’t know if he made it official with a letter, but he’s out. You can’t be involved in it.
CALLER: So he wouldn’t even just as like a courtesy say, “You know, general I’ve decided to do this and I’m going public with it tomorrow”?
RUSH: I don’t believe, no.
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: No, no, no. That would be very problematic.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Because that… All Sessions would have to do is raise an eyebrow he and somebody could say, “Well, Sessions didn’t look like he cared much for this,” and then you’d know. Recusal is recusal. You’re not even supposed to be physically around.
CALLER: Wow. That’s a little scary.
RUSH: Well, maybe. It is what it is. Are you worried about Rosenstein? Do you think Rosenstein’s a snake in the grass?
CALLER: No, not necessarily. I mean, I kind of like everything that he’s been doing. You know, he’s sticking to his guns with firing Comey. He sent out something, I guess, today that I really like. You know, he’s sticking to his guns. I do like that.
RUSH: Yeah, he went up to Capitol Hill and briefed the oversight committees on the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who — Hey! — is another guy with an impeccable reputation. Both sides love the guy. Isn’t it interesting how we always end up with these kinds when our people are in the crosshairs?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have another question about Comey. It is apparent now that Comey, through Benjamin Wittes… We got a couple of sound bites you can hear Benjamin Wittes describe what Comey wants said.
He was on the Newshour that used to be The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. At any rate, Comey is telling everybody everything now. He hid behind the curtains. He was very worried about Trump’s handshake. He didn’t want Democrats to get mad because they hated him anyway. They think he cost Hillary the election and all that. If Comey… And the memo. Somehow, somebody has told the Drive-Bys with memo that Comey wrote where Trump asked him to kind of just let go of the Flynn investigation. Let me ask you a question, folks.
If FBI Director Comey was so, so eager to keep Donald Trump as arm’s-length, why did he tell him three times he wasn’t the target of the FBI’s investigation? Remember, Trump has said that Comey told him that three times. Comey has not denied that, in all of this dumping that’s been going elsewhere. He’s talking about the memo, and he’s talked about hiding in the curtains, and he’s talked about being very leery of the Trump handshake.
But why hasn’t there been any Comey slapdown of Trump’s saying that Comey told him three times he’s not the target of the FBI’s probe? Comey has not denied that. He has not even addressed that even via his surrogates at the New York Times. Wonder why. Here is Benjamin Wittes. He runs a blog or works at a blog called Lawfare. He’s also a Brookings Institution senior fellow. That means he’s a big thinker, ’cause Brookings is a think tank.
And Benjamin Wittes, or Wittes (I think he pronounces it “WIT-iss) was on the Newshour on PBS last night, and they released clips of an interview. The Drive-Bys are playing some clips. But they’re not playing this, these two. I have referenced them already, but I want you to hear them. The host here is correspondent William Brangham at PBS. He said, “Mr. Wittes, you published an essay on your Lawfare blog yesterday about conversations you had with Comey. In that, you write about the famous hug that he was nervous of.”
WITTES: Comey really didn’t want to go to that meeting. There were a lot of Democrats who kind of blame him for Trump. If you watch the video of it, right at the end Trump singles him out in a fashion that he regarded as sort of calculated to maximally (sic) drive home the sensitivity among Democratic voters.
RUSH: Oh!
WITTES: He extends his hand kind of preemptively, and Trump grabs the hand and kind of pulls him into a hug.
RUSH: Yuk!
WITTES: The hug is entirely one sided.
RUSH: Yuk.
WITTES: Um, Comey was just completely disgusted by — disgusted by the episode. He thought it was an intentional attempt to compromise him in public and emphasized concerns that half of the electorate had about him.
RUSH: All right, so this is studied. You realize now that this is purposeful, that it is desired by Comey and the Comey camp that Wittes go out there and say these things. (interruption) Okay. The Game of Thrones family’s getting on the helicopter out there to head off to Saudi Arabia. Game of Thrones! (laughing) We’ve had the king and queen — Donald and Melania — have gotten on Air Force One. The prince and princess come along next, be Ivanka and Jared.
Now here come the bodyguards and the nuclear codes and some luggage getting on Marine One. They’re in helicopter here at the White House. They’re gonna be leaving Westeros, and they’re going across the sea to wherever it they’re going. (chuckling) Nah, some people are referring to this as a Game of Thrones. At any rate, this is the foreign trip that tier worried that Trump is not gonna be able to handle. He’s got a short attention span and they’re taking away from the sandbox and they don’t know if he’s gonna be able to last the whole nine days. (interruption)
The steak and ketchup? They didn’t say anything about the ice cream. Just the Saudis are aware that he likes steak and ketchup. So whatever else they serve — fried goat’s eyes or whatever else is on the menu — he’s gonna get steak and ketchup. Falafel, rice, fried goat’s eyes, whatever else it is. But Trump, of course, is such a child, I do not even have the immaturity to eat what the hosts offer! But the hosts are well aware of the fact that a child is coming. That’s the AP story.
So, anyway, here you have the hug, now. So hiding in the curtains and wary of the hug. ‘Cause why? “Well, he regarded that as sort of calculated to drive home the sensitivity among Democrats…” He’s political! We’re told the FBI is outside the bounds of politics. We’re told, “The FBI doesn’t deal with politics. They just look at the law, and they look at whether anybody’s violated the law; the politics don’t matter.” We’re finding out here the FBI director is totally governed by political perceptions of him and his reputation.
Here’s the next bite, question from the PBS anchor: “What gives you the sense that he did not think these Trump people were honorable people?”
WITTES: (whispering) It was written on every line in his face. It was, uh, evident in the, uh, disapproving tone, uh, that he took when he described them.
BRANGHAM: Including the president?
WITTES: Oh, very much so! You know, he said repeatedly it’s gonna be a very long few years. The color of the wallpaper was that these were not honorable people and that protecting the FBI from them was his day job.
RUSH: Holy cow. So Comey authorizes his buddy to go out there and say on PBS, “The president? Oh, very much so! It’s gonna be a long few years, and the color of the wallpaper was that these were not honorable people, and protecting the FBI from them was his day job.” I think it’s… Mr. Wittes is making it look like Comey didn’t like Trump at all, doesn’t it? He thought Trump was dishonorable and untrustworthy, and the FBI needed to protect everybody from Trump?
Does this not tell us that maybe Trump had a bunch of validate reasons for firing this guy?
And doesn’t it make sense that Trump would want to size up this guy to find out where he’s coming from? Investigation or no investigation! Comey has just indicated that he doesn’t consider Trump honorable, that he doesn’t like Trump, and he’s running an investigation against him? These… I don’t know what these people expect to accomplish with this, but, to me, all it does is validate Trump’s decision to fire Comey!
Because it’s obvious Trump was trying to learn if any of this was actually true by sizing Comey up and getting to know him, which is what somebody like Trump does every day in his life anyway, that these people in the swamp don’t understand. They really do lead insular lives with their own behavioral codes, their own status codes, their own handshakes, all that stuff. And Trump comes in and is not of their world. It’s becoming apparent to me that Trump at some point learned all this stuff.