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RUSH: Now, moving on to Mrs. Clinton.  Last night, The Lead with Jake Tapper.  He had an exclusive interview with Mrs. Clinton (not too many people get those), and he said, “Donald Trump today said that he raised at least $5.6 million for veterans charities.  He provided an accounting of those donations.  Your campaign says, ‘Nobody should be fooled by Trump’s stunt.’ What do you mean by that, Mrs. Clinton?”

HILLARY:  Well, I think the problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does.  He’s bragged for months about raising $6 million for veterans and donating a million dollars himself.  But it took a reporter to shame him into it making his contribution and getting the money to veterans.  So I… Look, I’m glad he finally did, but I don’t know that he should get much credit for that.

RUSH:  Right.  Okay, so that’s Mrs. Clinton.  Now, usually it would stop there.  But Jake Tapper said, “Well, he said that you haven’t given anything to veterans groups.  What’s your response to that, Mrs. Clinton?  What have you given to veterans charities — and, more broadly, what have you done for veterans?”

HILLARY:  Well, I, of course, have given money to veterans charities.  I’ve also worked starting as first lady to deal with some of the problems veterans have.  I worked as a senator on the Armed Services Committee on veterans things — for example, increasing death benefits for families of the fallen from just $12,000 to $100,000.  So much of the work that I’ve done has meant tens of millions of dollars in increased benefits!

RUSH:  This just makes me want to throw up.  You know what she’s saying?  She said, “Well, I’ve made sure that we in government have used a lot of other people’s money and directed it to the veterans.  I have increased veterans’ benefits.  I’ve seen to it that other people’s money has been increased from $12,000 to $100,000.  So much of the work I’ve done has meant tens of millions of dollars.  Not my own, of course, ’cause I don’t give anybody money.  I don’t donate to charity. 

“But I make sure that the force of law separates other people from their money so that it goes to places so that I don’t have to give it.”  That’s what her answer meant.  She may not like my translation, but that’s exactly what it is.  “Of course I’ve given money to veterans charities.  I’ve worked starting as first lady to deal with some of the problems.  I worked as a senator on the Armed Services Committee.  I have increased death benefits for families.” 

Yeah. 

Other people’s money. 

So they looked into it and they found that she’s donated 70 grand, $70,000.  But, of course, as a good liberal, Mrs. Clinton, “Ah, that’s chump change! I have arranged for much more than that.  I have used the force of law to increase the amount of the federal budget that comes from other people’s taxes.”  What a cheap cop-out.  That kind of stuff just… It sickens me and angers me at the same time. 

Claiming credit for having the courage to pass new legislation that directs the federal government to send even more, and then wanting credit for having a big heart and charitable intentions? One more from Jacob Tapper, Jake Tapper here on CNN, his Lead with Jake Tapper show.  He said in an editorial today, “USA Today called your private email server ‘a threat to national security, one that you repeatedly ignored despite multiple warnings,’ and they added that you were now going to have to convince voters that you can put the national security of the US above your own short term self-interest.

“Do you see this as a challenge that you have to face to convince voters that you’ll put national security ahead of your own interests?”  I want you to listen to this, because basically what Jake Tapper’s asking her — and you don’t hear this. You don’t see this much.  That’s why this interview stands out.  Anybody else doing this interview would have stopped after her first answer.  Nobody else, that I can think of, would have gone in and asked her what she’s done for vets.  But she’s basically being asked to answer a question on her honesty here.  And listen to the stumbling and the stuttering as she seeks and searches in vain to answer.

HILLARY:  Well, I… I think that is obvious.  I always have.  And the report, just to go back to the actual report, makes it clear that personal email use — the practice — under other secretaries of state — and that the rules that they’re now referencing — were not clarified until after I had left.

RUSH:  So she can’t answer the question, and then when she does she lies again.  The rules were crystal clear and she broke ’em.  She says, “The rules were not clarified ’til after I left.” That’s BS.  The rules are made clear to everybody walks in there for the first time.  The rules descend from the law.  The rules in the State Department on these emails and servers and so forth descend from federal law, statutory law.  That’s why it’s incorrect to say that all she did was violate some rules. 

But then I think she stepped in it again when she said if she had it to do all over again, she wouldn’t do it the way she did, if she knew.  What does that mean?  “Yeah, I made some mistakes. I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.” What does that mean?  And I referenced this earlier, so I want to play the bite.  This is number 15.  I mentioned that I had heard some Drive-By say they’d loved to be insulted by Hillary.  It’s Nancy Cordes on CBS This Morning. 

Norah O’Donnell was speaking with the CBS congressional correspondent about Trump’s press conference yesterday.  She said, “It wasn’t until the Washington Post reported last week that Trump had not yet donated to an organization $1 million, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation.  A day later he makes the donation, including the Associated Press saying last week after the checks were donated.  How is Hillary Clinton’s campaign responded?  What do you think they’ll do?”

CORDES:  Those of us who cover the Hillary Clinton campaign would love to have a press conference even if she insulted us.  She hasn’t done one for months and months.

O’DONNELL:  And why not?

CORDES:  She’s just, you know, not that comfortable in that setting.  Last week, for example, when this big, new report came out from the State Department’s inspector general, there were a lot of us on the campaign trail who were going to ask her questions about it and she avoided all of us.  She’s just not interested in getting the kinds of tough questions out there on the trail lots of people shouting at her.  That’s not her milieu — while Donald Trump, of course, is very comfortable with that.

RUSH:  You know, did you hear, it’s almost like, “Yeah, we understand, she doesn’t like these, so we’re not gonna push her on it.  I mean, we’d love it if she’d show up, but we’re not gonna make a big deal because she’s not comfortable, you know. Mrs. Clinton is not comfortable having all kinds of people shout things at her, makes her nervous, and we understand that. 

“You know, Trump happens to love that, he just gets off on that, but Mrs. Clinton… we’d love her to show up, God we love her to death, oh, my God, do we love Hillary, oh.  But she just doesn’t like a gaggle of us hanging around asking questions and shouting them.  We understand that.  She’s not interested in getting tough questions out there, and we wouldn’t, either, you know, we wouldn’t like to get those questions. So we understand that she doesn’t want to answer them so we don’t ask ’em.” 

Of course, the myth there is that they ask her tough questions.  Maybe I’m missing examples of it, but I don’t recall a lot of tough questions.  Now, Hillary, given the number of lies, everything may qualify as a tough question, I don’t know. 

Now, here’s Doug Schoen and his piece in the Wall Street Journal today: “Clinton Might Not Be the Nominee.” I want to remind you of a couple things I said the top of the program.  You know, this sentiment is gaining credibility that she might not be the nominee.  It’s gaining credibility on the Democrat side.  Look, throw out the rules here, throw out the conventional wisdom, throw out the ages-old playbook and look at something as it is happening. 

On the Trump side, you have a candidate who is a pop culture hero, a pop culture star.  You have somebody who is becoming a political and pop culture star.  It’s not many politicians that can do that crossover.  You know, politics is showbiz for the ugly, and that’s why politics has its own Oscars and has its own stuff like the White House Correspondents Dinner where they invite real celebrities to show up and give them credibility.  But, you know, there aren’t too many politicians that cross over and are legitimate political stars and pop culture stars. 

And Trump is.  Whether you like it or not. And I’m not opining on it; I’m just saying it’s what it is.  There is enthusiasm on the Trump side like there isn’t anywhere else in this entire campaign.  No other candidate, Republican, Democrat, independent, has anything like this going on.  Trump, I read this morning, has achieved 100% name recognition, meaning he’s the most famous person on the planet right now. 

Do you remember one of the arguments that the establishment people were making back last summer and into early fall is that the fact that Trump was already so well known was what was going to eventually doom his prospects, ’cause he had no room to grow, they said.  He’s already got high name recognition.  He’s got a very high Q factor.  There’s nowhere to go but down for Donald Trump.  They’ve been wrong on every level of analysis. 

So now you have Trump and this unmistakable, the Trump support is more than just political support for a candidate.  And you compare that, the Democrats see it, and everybody sees it, you can’t miss it, it equals excitement, it equals buzz.  People are having a good time.  The candidate is having a good time.  The candidate may be having the best time of his life.  Everybody involved in this is soaking it up and eating it up, and they’re making the most of it, they’re laughing, enjoying, they’re having a great time. 

And over on the Democrat side, there isn’t even a speck of anything like that.  It is sheer boredom.  It is sheer dryball.  It is dull, it is gray, it is scandal racked, there’s no excitement.  Mrs. Clinton is not only not a political star, she has no hope of being a pop culture crossover star.  Even the people that are gonna vote for her hold their nose to do it in many cases.  They’re doing it because there’s a D next to her name.  Not because they’re attached or connected to her in any way.  We know that that doesn’t exist. 

The Democrat Party ought to be scared to death, just like the Republican Party was back in ’92 when this was happening in a much more limited way, but still happening with Perot.  But, I mean, what happened with Perot pales in comparison to this thing with Trump.  You can’t create this.  And that’s another thing that bugs ’em.  This is totally genuine.  When the Tea Party popped up, they could go out and manufacture its counterpart, Occupy Wall Street, and they could use the media to make it look like that it was a natural effervescence of legitimate Democrat socialist thought. 

But Occupy Wall Street was bought and paid for.  They can’t go out and buy.  They can’t create.  There is no Hollywood star.  There is no Hollywood agent.  There is no Hollywood image maker that can go out and create for Hillary Clinton what is happening legitimately on the Trump side.  Do you know what I read today?  Ari Emanuel — do you know who he is?  He’s Rahm Emanuel’s brother.  Not a surgeon.  He’s an agent. 

He is one of the biggest, most successful Hollywood agents. I mean, he’s the agent to agents.  He runs agents.  He’s the new, and has been for a long time, Michael Ovitz.  He’s the guy, nothing happens in town without going through him.  He wants to script Trump’s convention.  He’s an avowed Democrat.  I know the guy.  One year at the AT&T celebrity classic they seated me next to him thinking there would be fireworks like CBS sat me next to Camille Paglia.  They thought there’d be fisticuffs. 

But he was a great guy, is nice, invited me to his house to watch the Oscars.  He’s a good guy.  Still, he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat liberal, don’t misunderstand.  The point, he wants to script Trump’s convention.  People want to be part of whatever is happening with Trump, and showbiz people especially. 

My point is, there’s nothing that can even get close to this on the Democrat side.  They think Hollywood and that kind of stardom is theirs, that they own that, that they are the Hollywood left and all that is big with the Democrats.  So my point is, there’s all kinds of panic and fear that she’s not gonna be the nominee.  There’s all kinds of panic and fear that she ought not be, that they need to pull her, ’cause there’s far more excitement for dull and crazy Bernie.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Doug Schoen’s piece in the Wall Street Journal today.  “Clinton Might Not Be the Nominee — A Sanders win in California would turbocharge the mounting Democratic unease about her viability.” 

And he begins the piece this way.  “There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president.” This guy’s a former Clinton pollster.  He’s a regular on Fox News.  He’s one of the ranking probably top five or top 10 Democrat analysts, strategists, pollsters, or what have you. 

He writes” “How could that happen, given that her nomination has been considered a sure thing by virtually everyone in the media and in the party.”  Notice he included the media in that.  It’s been a foregone conclusion that Hillary’s gonna be the nominee, in the media and in the party, ’cause there’s no difference.  The media is the party and versa-vice. 

“The inevitability behind Mrs. Clinton’s nomination will be in large measure eviscerated if she loses the June 7 California primary to Bernie Sanders. That could well happen.”

Now, the point of this piece — I’m gonna get some pull quotes here — point of this piece is holding out Plugs Biden and Elizabeth Warren as replacement options.  Check out this pull quote from the Doug Schoen piece.

“Mr. Biden would be cast as the white knight rescuing the party, and the nation, from a possible Trump presidency. To win over Sanders supporters, he would likely choose as his running mate someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren who is respected by the party’s left wing.”

Now, I don’t know Doug Schoen, I’ve not met him, but I’m guessing here if he’s writing this, they’re already talking about this.  He’s just not openly speculating here for the sake of having column material.  What this means is that this is being discussed, which ought not surprise people, but it will some. 

“Where is President Obama in all of this,” asks Mr. Schoen?  “So far he has largely stayed out of the campaign, other than to say that he doesn’t believe Mrs. Clinton compromised national security with her home-brew email server.” Yeah yada yada.  Obama is in charge of the drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, that continues to happen here.  I wouldn’t be surprised. My own thinking, I think Obama would be fine if she’s not the nominee, but he doesn’t want his fingerprints on it like he doesn’t want his fingerprints on much else. 

“But with her poll numbers dropping, her legal headaches increasing, the Sanders candidacy showing renewed vigor, and Donald Trump looming as a wrecking ball for the president’s legacy, Mr. Obama and adviser Valerie Jarrett might begin sending signals to the Democratic National Committee and to the vice president that a Biden rescue operation wouldn’t displease the White House.”

So Schoen’s saying, “Hey, look, Obama, Valerie, whoever, you better start the smoke signals, and you better let everybody know that you’d be perfectly fine with Biden taking over.”  ‘Cause if Obama’s not down with it, it won’t happen, supposedly. 

Now, Mr. Schoen writes: “All of these remain merely possibilities. But it is easier now than ever to imagine a scenario in which Hillary Clinton … is not the Democratic presidential nominee.”

Folks, they are scared.  You have to put this in context.  For months, for years, 2016 was gonna be a Democrat coronation.  They were gonna be coming off a popular, overwhelmingly, undefeatably popular Barack Obama.  Hillary was gonna step in there and maybe even expand the popularity and the vibes and the image and all that.  It was gonna be a coronation.  Whoever the Republicans nominated were gonna get creamed in a landslide, and this has been the operating theory for years, last two or three years. 

Now it’s up a upside down and they are scared.  The Trump phenomenon’s unnerving everybody, everybody in politics.  It’s unnerving a lot of people in talk radio.  It’s unnerving a lot of people in conservatism, in the media.  You know why?  Well, there’s all kinds of reasons.  There’s all kinds of reasons, including anger, jealousy, envy, and things that are more personal, like someone’s position in the establishment being so upended they’re no longer in it.  There’s all kinds of reasons why the Trump phenomenon is unnerving a lot of people. 

The Democrats know that Hillary Clinton is outclassed as a star, as a candidate, as a person that people want to be with and hang around with, want to be able to call a friend or whatever.  She’s just been totally exposed as a fraud, dull, nothing burger in the middle of all this light shining on the Trumpster.  They know that Hillary Clinton can never have this kind of enthusiasm behind her.  She could never have this kind of adoration, this kind of appreciation, even in her own party, and especially in her own party. 

So what to do?  Well, there are many problems they face here.  If they want Biden, there is the problem of Crazy Bernie and his supporters.  And if the effort to take Hillary out happens before their convention and they don’t throw it to Bernie, they’ve got Chicago 1968 times five on their hands.  So that tells us — using intelligence guided by experience — that if there is a forthcoming move made on Hillary, it’ll happen after the convention, after which Bernie supporters will have been dealt with. 

They will maybe have been brought on board — somehow, some way.  The typical unity attempts will be made at the convention to bring Bernie Sanders people on board.  They don’t want Bernie’s people going to Trump.  So they’ll make whatever efforts they can.  If they can get through the convention — and a lot depends on California.  If they get through the convention with Hillary as the nominee and then the FBI drops what they’ve got and DOJ looks at it and says, “You know, this is too much. We can’t cover this up. This is too much.”

So they indict, and she loses the FBI primary, and then they plug in Plugs.  And they will ameliorate the Bernie Sanders supporters, who will suspect that all of this was planned to ace him out.  They will try to buy Bernie’s voters with Elizabeth Warren as the veep, to keep them, keep Bernie’s voters on board.  That’s what they’re all thinking here.  But just the fact that they’re writing about this…  And then, folks, if that happens — if any of this happens that I just described — then whatever Bill Kristol is planning is guaranteed to happen. 

I mean, that’s gonna be a go signal for Kristol and whoever he’s got, David French, and then Gary Johnson over there on the Libertarian side. You could end up — we could end up, if all this happens — with a four person race.  Now, we have to understand: Bill Kristol, no matter what you think, is not thinking David French is gonna be elected president.  That won’t be the purpose.  The purpose is to deny Trump and save Kristol’s position and others in the establishment. 

The independent guy, the Libertarian guys, they’ve got their own agenda and so forth. But they’ve got money woes, big time money woes.  All of this is a real, real long shot.  And if Hillary wins California, it kind of aces all of it out. But that’s the first place it starts.  But if they decide they have to take Hillary Clinton out, I can see where that is a “go” signal for these third-party people, because that means the whole thing’s been turned upside down — and in that scenario, who knows what’s possible? Who knows what can happen?

So, as always, we’ll be here explaining, defining, analyzing, predicting, and being right all along.

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