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RUSH:  I thought I had adjusted to it, but I haven’t.  It just makes me sick.  It depresses me.  It makes me sick all over again.  This Benghazi thing, it’s so emblematic of what has happened to us as a country.  It is so enlightening as to what has happened to institutions that we need to be able to trust.  It exposes this administration as, gosh, I don’t know, incompetent, uncaring, self-focused.  It’s just, I don’t know, folks. 

Greetings.  Great to have you here.  Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB Microphone.  Telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882.  The email address is ElRushbo@eibnet.com

We have two reports.  We have the full-fledged 800-page report put together by the committee chairman, Trey Gowdy.  We have a couple other Republicans, Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Jim Jordan, Ohio, and they put together their own summary of the 800-page report, which is — well, as you might imagine, it’s pared down. It gets in, gets it, and gets out.  Both are really well done.

Even without a press conference today and even without the frustration of looking at the media trying to change the narrative of this thing, just the substance, the details of what went on and how we were all lied to over and over again about the cause being a video, and the end result being four dead Americans and not a finger lifted to help them. And then ongoing lies for weeks and months in order to protect the reelection chances of Barack Obama and everybody in his Regime.

To watch the media today after Gowdy and his committee went out there and they all made statements, announced the substance of their report, summary-wise, it was clear that the media is not interested in what’s in the report, which doesn’t surprise me.  I’m just telling you.  They don’t care what’s in the report.  They’re characterizing the report in two ways.  They’re saying, A, nothing new, and, B, Hillary had nothing to do with it.  The committee does not indict Hillary Clinton.  The committee does not lay blame at the feet of Hillary Clinton. 

So CNN, TIME Magazine, you name it, they’re all running with the conclusion from this report that Hillary Clinton’s innocent, she had nothing to do with it.  And the reason that happened is classic.  So after all the Republicans speak and shared with the media their various takes on the content of the report, here comes a Q&A.  And the Q&A is all about reestablishing a narrative away from the substance of the report and toward the motivations of the members of the committee, such as, “You keep saying that your report’s about what happened to four people, but isn’t it really about Hillary Clinton?” 

Trey Gowdy (paraphrasing), “No, no, no, no.  No, no, no, no.  I challenge you to read it.”  They’re not gonna read it.  They don’t care what’s in it.  They think they already know.  There’s nothing new in it.  That’s the second narrative.  But they’re not gonna read it.  Gowdy says, “Read it, read it.  You won’t find one name mentioned.  You’ll find four.”  And then he says, “Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan did not tell me to go out and find out who is ultimately responsible in terms of one name.  They asked me to find out why four Americans are dead.” 

So the effort was made — and look, I understand it, but it’s an illustration of how this stuff ends up happening the way it does.  The Republicans are taking the high road, and they are hell-bent on not being mischaracterized by falling into what they think is a trap of aiming all of this at Hillary Clinton.  She’s only the Democrat nominee for president.  But even today the effort was made to not focus on her, because, of course, we don’t want to taint the substance and content of our report by making it look like there was any partisanship in it.  So we go out of the way to say, “No, no, no, no, it was not about one name.  It wasn’t about two names,” meaning it wasn’t about Obama, it wasn’t about Hillary.  “It’s about four dead Americans.” 

Well, that gives the media a free and clear open road to write that Hillary is off the hook.  In fact, CNN’s banner headline says, “Panel found no wrongdoing by Clinton.”  No wrongdoing by Clinton.  She’s up to her knees, her hips in this.  No wrongdoing.  Now, I understand the committee, because I understand Republicans, and they start out on the defensive, and they believe that the media is going to target them as being partisan.  The guys that worked on this, the people that worked on this report are dead serious about it. It’s very substantive. They spent a lot of time on it, taken very seriously, and they should be applauded for that.  Don’t anybody misunderstand here. 

But the defensiveness is we don’t want our work here to be mischaracterized as nothing more than a political attack.  So to prevent that, we’ll go overboard, if necessary, to say it wasn’t about Hillary, it wasn’t about the Democrat presidential nominee, it wasn’t about Obama, when of course it’s about both of them. But they don’t want to admit that because then the report will be nothing more than “Republicans attack Hillary in disguised report on Benghazi, which contains nothing new.” And they don’t want that headline, either. 

So, the answer that we got was, “Read the report.  Read the report.  You’ll see.  Read the report.”  The media’s not gonna read the report.  The low-information voters are not gonna read the report.  The people that voted to leave the European Union in Great Britain are not gonna read the report.  It does have some new things in it.  It has some new context.  It has timelines.  Folks, it is really stunning. 

You go to page 30 of this baby. I’ve got the Jim Jordan, Mike Pompeo, I’ve got both versions, but I’ve got the 56-page, 60-page version here. And while there isn’t a whole lot new in it, this has been put together in a succinct narrative showing how systematically over and over they all lie.  You focus in on page 30 for the security assessment nine months before the attack.  The security assessment of the Benghazi compound, nine months before the attack a State Department witness called to testify before the committee, bluntly said (paraphrasing), “People are gonna die in Benghazi.  We don’t have any security.  We don’t have any protection.”

Nine months beforehand, a State Department guy predicted people were going to die in Benghazi.  Hillary Clinton not only left them there after receiving that advice, after being told: (summarized) “People are gonna die there, Madam Secretary; it’s not set up.  We have no business being there.”  But, of course, it’s about Hillary and Obama because Libya was supposed to be the diamond in the rough.  Libya was supposed to be the great illustration and example of Hillary Clinton’s mastermindful statecraft. 

We were going to use Libya to show how we had ousted a dictator.  We had gotten rid of a bad guy, and we had done it all without firing a shot, and we had converted Libyan population to supporters and allies of the United States.  And come hell or high water, nothing was going to change that narrative because it was setting up two different campaigns.  It was setting up Obama’s in 2012 and now Hillary’s in 2016.  And Libya was going to be the shining example of Mrs. Clinton’s eminent qualifications to be secretary of state.

So no amount of advice was gonna get her to shut down Benghazi.

No amount of advice was gonna get her to go add security.  You can’t go adding security and at the same time talk about what a great place you’ve got there and what a great job you’ve done and so forth.  It exposes the timeline of continuing with the lie that the video was responsible for this while lying to the parents of the four dead Americans, while telling the truth to foreign leaders and lying to us. While telling the truth to her daughter, telling the truth to foreign leaders that a video had nothing to do with it, and it was a planned terror attack.

They knew it.  Now, all of you think you know, and you do. But to see it in this timeline is sickening.  It’s infuriating.  It is sickening.  And it makes me regret that any of these people have ever ended up in power.  And it sickens me that one of them stands a good chance of being elected president this year. Hillary Clinton is an absolute, unqualified disaster: Incapable of telling the truth, never putting the country first, never putting the people who offer their lives in defense of this country first.

Always putting herself first, always putting her party first, always putting her political calculations and desires — requests, dreams, what have you — first. And in order to preserve that, anything goes. And then you have a willing accomplice media right along with them, doing everything they can to shift the narrative of this thing.  So we’ve got two narratives.  A. “Hey, you know what?  This Republicans found no wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton! No evidence of any wrongdoing in a report that contains no new information.”

And that’s the news.  That’s the way they’re covering it.  It’s sickening.  It is infuriating.  And it’s also a sitting duck.  It is a sitting duck.  I mean, it’s waiting for the right people to come along and run with this ball all the way to the goal line.  Whether or not people like that exist on our side, time will tell.  But if you had watched the press conference — we’ve got some audio sound bites.  Jim Jordan was fabulous, and he’s coming up in just a second here.

His sound bite pretty much explains all this.  He was just fabulous in this press conference today.  But watching the media trying to switch the narrative, knowing full well they don’t care about… Gowdy was so intent that they know the substance. So intent. “Please read it. Just read it, and you’ll find out your questions are baseless. Read it and find out your questions have no point.  Read it, and you’ll find out your premise is inaccurate.  Read it!  Just read it.  You won’t find anything in it like you have just asked me.” 

They’re not interested in the substance.  This is all about changing the narrative from the substance.  The whole point of the media covering this today is to provide cover for Hillary Clinton.  And they were given a boost by the fact that the Republicans didn’t want to appear as though they were focusing on or aiming at Clinton. So now the Drive-Bys are able to say that the Republican committee gave her a pass, which they didn’t do.  If you read the report, they didn’t do that.

But that’s the narrative. 

So I want to take a time-out here.  We’re gonna come back and I’ve got some sound bites of Jim Jordan, who put together a summary report of this with bullet-point highlights and paragraph explanations.  Jim Jordan from Ohio (I said Illinois; he’s from Ohio), and Mike Pompeo of Kansas.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  And there’s the CNN banner headline again:  “GOP-Led Panel Finds No New Clinton Wrongdoing.”  Jim Jordan went after Hillary Clinton, according to others in the Drive-By Media.  By the way, there’s a third report.  The Democrats — trying to preempt this today — issued their own report yesterday, and they gave up something.  They revealed the relationship between Hillary and Sidney Blumenthal, that he was advising her, and being paid 200 grand for it.  And do you know this? 

The Democrats’ report on Benghazi mentions Donald Trump 23 times. (interruption) Well, you laugh.  He had absolutely nothing to do with Benghazi, but they mention him 23 times.  And, of course, since he’s mentioned 23 times, the Drive-Bys are gonna focus on what Donald Trump had to do with Benghazi.  And probably what it’s gonna be is how Trump, once again, was out of his mind making mindless, insane accusations about our brave Democrats in the administration trying to save American lives, and Trump once again illustrating his lack of temperament. 

That’s why they put Trump in the report, to give the media free reign in going after Trump.  We of course say, “No, no, no, no!  We will not do anything of the sort.”  You want to know how bad this is?  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Jim Jordan.  Here we have exactly what I didn’t want to happen has happened, but I ran into that third story on the report by the Democrats.  So we’ll use this as a setup for what’s coming.  Jim Jordan this morning on Capitol Hill, House select committee on Benghazi, held a press conference to detail exactly what happened here.

JORDAN:  At 10:08 that night, with Tyrone Woods still on the roof of the annex fighting for his life, Secretary Clinton issues this statement, the official statement on Benghazi, the official statement of our government that evening: “Some have sought to justify is this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material on the internet.”  We know that statement was misleading because an hour later she told her daughter, “Terrorists killed two of our people today.”  The next day she tells the Egyptian prime minister, “We know the film had nothing to do with it.  It was a planned attack, not a protest.” And this public-private contrast continues for days, publicly telling the American people it was a video-inspired protest, privately telling the truth that it was a terrorist attack.

RUSH:  Right! After hearing that, you see a headline on CNN that says, “GOP Exonerates Hillary.”  That’s how it works.  Yep.  There’s more.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do it again.  I’m gonna play it again.  I’m gonna keep ’em in order here. It’s very powerful stuff.  I want to set it up here again.  I’m gonna play the sound bite from Jim Jordan again.  Just to give you an idea, the minute I saw him testifying, I said, “Cookie, I want this. Jim Jordan right now is awesome.”  We’ve got three of him, we got Mike Pompeo, we got a montage from the old days to put all this in perspective.

You gotta keep in mind now, they go out and they think the members of this committee, particularly Jordan and Pompeo, their summary’s 51 pages.  I just told Koko to link to it up there at RushLimbaugh.com.  It’s not hard to read this thing.  It’s a PDF, it’s a Word file, however you want to download it.  It’s not legalese.  It’s pointed and direct.  The Gowdy report is 800 pages.  You just need to read this 51 page job by Jordan and Pompeo. 

But to put it in perspective, they come out today and they’ve got maybe not new information, although I think there is some new stuff in here, but they really assembled this in timelines and contextual ways that just nail this administration, just nail ’em as incompetent, uncaring, lying. I mean, purposely strategically lying. From Susan Rice on those five Sundays shows saying it was the video, to Hillary Clinton saying it was the video, to Barack Obama saying it was the video when they all knew that it wasn’t.

The very same day it was happening, members of the administration from Obama and Hillary on down were characterizing it as a terrorist attack, not a protest.  They even lied about a protest in Cairo earlier the same day spawning this, and the root of both was that video.  They knew it wasn’t.  They were lying through the teeth.  The report proves conclusively they were lying.  If that’s not new, I don’t know what is.  Then they’ve got the context and the timelines in inarguable presentations.  There’s no way out of this. 

But because in the Q&A when the reporters demanded of Trey Gowdy that he admit that this was all about getting Hillary.  “No, no, no.”  Now the Drive-By reports are, “GOP panel finds no new evidence involving Mrs. Clinton. No wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.”  And so that is the narrative out of this.  Nobody’s gonna read it.  None of the people we need to read it are gonna read it.  None of the people who need to find out what a bunch of lying skunks this Regime has in it.  None of the people that need to find out that they can’t trust these people that they’re entrusting their entire lives to.  They can’t do it.  It would be the absolute biggest mistake we could all make, to elect Hillary Clinton. 

This document is just one bit of evidence that could lead anybody with an open mind to that conclusion.  But because it’s reported that the panel found nothing here to be concerned about, Mrs. Clinton, it’s gonna be a ho-hum yawner.  So, once again it’s up to us here in the alternative media to ring the bells and sound the alarms and plead and cajole and encourage and try to inspire people to go out and read this. 

And in that vein, here are the Jim Jordan sound bites.  And again, we’re gonna play number one just to have ’em all three run as one, ’cause he just went on it on.  We had to divvy this up into three different bites and there’s still more that we don’t have here, but this is the nut of it.  And in this first sound bite he is explaining inarguably how Hillary Clinton knowingly lied about the video and about the knowledge of what happened and who was behind it and why it happened. 

And when you get down to that level and you find out that not a single finger was lifted to save four Americans who thought help was coming, and then you realize, you read page 30 of the Jordan-Pompeo report, and you will see a State Department official warning the State Department and Hillary Clinton, somebody’s gonna die in this place, Benghazi, somebody is gonna die ’cause you don’t have any security set up. 

Remember, Libya was the crown jewel.  Libya was Mrs. Clinton’s foreign policy, and it was going to set the stage for her campaign to show how qualified she is.  So here we go.  Jim Jordan, number one.

JORDAN:  At 10:08 that night, with Tyrone Woods still on the roof of the annex fighting for his life, Secretary Clinton issues this statement, the official statement on Benghazi, the official statement of our government that evening: “Some have sought to justify is this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material on the internet.”  We know that statement was misleading because an hour later she told her daughter, “Terrorists killed two of our people today.”  The next day she tells the Egyptian prime minister, “We know the film had nothing to do with it.  It was a planned attack, not a protest.” And this public-private contrast continues for days, publicly telling the American people it was a video-inspired protest, privately telling the truth that it was a terrorist attack.

RUSH:  Now, let me address something.  You in this audience, because you’re in this audience, know that this excuse that all this happened because of the video, you know it’s bogus.  You know it is a lie, and you know that everybody who told the lie knew it was a lie.  You know that Obama knowingly lied.  You know that Hillary knowingly lied.  You know that Susan Rice knowingly lied on five separate occasions.  You know that it went on for two or more weeks.  And all this time you might think, “Well, it’s so obvious, everybody know.”  No, they don’t, folks. 

See, that’s the rub.  The people that consume only the Drive-By Media or only what they get on Facebook or Twitter or at Yahoo News, the president it says it was about a video, that’s what they think.  Hillary says it was about the video, that’s what they think.  They don’t know that they’re lying about it and they don’t ever assume their president lies to them unless he’s a Republican.  They never assume it.  And if they find out their president’s lied to them, he had to do it in order to beat back the Republicans.  And that’s how it becomes justified. 

This is the epitome of the frustration.  You and I and a certain number of millions of Americans know full well what a gigantic lie all of this is, never mind four Americans died, the Regime in charge of guaranteeing their safety and trying to protect them didn’t lift a finger.  You know that, and the frustrating thing is millions and millions of Americans still have no idea.  They believe it was a video.  They believe that Hillary and Obama did everything they could to save these people.  They have no idea that Hillary lied to the parents. When the bodies were flown back to the United States they were draped, coffins draped with the American flag, and Hillary is lying to their parents that they were gonna get the guy that did that video, and he’s gonna pay for what he did. 

And even though the family members are out saying, “No, Hillary lied to us,” the sad reality is that millions and millions of Americans, however you want to characterize it, had no idea.  They believe whatever comes out of Obama’s mouth or Hillary’s mouth, with one caveat:  If Obama or Hillary lie in order to thwart Republicans, then it’s okay, then it’s fine.  In fact, we applaud that.  In the next bite, this is Jordan talking about how Libya was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Clinton State Department, that they did everything they did to guarantee the legacy of Hillary and Obama and that they found emails from Sidney Blumenthal admitting that.

JORDAN:  Libya was supposed to be the crowning jewel of the Clinton State Department foreign policy and the Obama administration foreign policy.  This was their example of how it works.  No boots on the ground, ousted dictator, help the Arab Spring.  This was supposed to be how it works.  Sidney Blumenthal, few days after Khadafy has been removed, he sends an email to the secretary, and he says: “This is a big moment, you should do a press event, even if it’s in the driveway of your vacation home.” And he finishes the email with this statement: “This is a big moment.  You are vindicated.  Don’t wait.  Help Clio now.”  Clio, of course, is the goddess of history.  So they were committed to this.  They were invested in this.  This was it.

RUSH:  He’s talking about things that happened before Benghazi here.  The Blumenthal email was sent to Hillary after Khadafy was vanquished and that was where they were supposed to make the case that this is how smart diplomacy works.  This is how smart foreign policy works.  We got rid of Khadafy with no boots on the ground, meaning to weapons. We didn’t fire any guns. There was nobody killed.  We ousted a dictator. We helped move along the Arab Spring.  That’s how it can happen.  

We don’t need to have boots on the ground everywhere to get done what we want to get done, and Blumenthal was advising her to go out take credit for it right now. Help Clio, the goddess of history.  And so Jordan’s point here is that Blumenthal was, in hindsight, admitting what this was all about, and that was establishing Hillary’s legacy as the greatest secretary of state that we may have ever seen, and that’s why when Benghazi came along, they had to lie through their teeth, because Benghazi blew up every notion of Hillary Clinton’s greatness.

Benghazi blew up every notion of Hillary Clinton’s competency.  Benghazi blew up every supposition about our foreign policy in Libya and how brilliant it was.  Benghazi blew it all high sky.  But to protect the legacy… And you might say, “Well, but, Rush, Republicans would do the same thing.”  Yeah.  Maybe.  The point is, they wouldn’t get away with it.  There would be investigative forces all over Washington trying to get to the bottom of this, and they wouldn’t dare let any Republicans get away with legacy building on the backs of four dead Americans. 

But with Democrats involved?

Hell, yes! We’ll do that. No big deal.  Not even a question.  Hillary Clinton’s legacy as great secretary of state versus four dead Americans? Sorry, the Americans are dead. What difference it make now?  And that’s exactly what Hillary’s attitude was: What difference does it make now why they died, what caused it?  I tell you, it’s sickening.  I’m sickeningly frustrated to relive this all.  So Romney blew up his chance to go after them on this.  And because of our desire to avoid appearing partisan, the media’s able to run stories today that Hillary Clinton’s off the hook, despite Jim Jordan. 

He’s the next sound bite from Congressman Jordan…

JORDAN:  It’s a terrorist attack, and it’s a terrorist attack on September 11th, 2012. Days before Vice President Biden had said, “GM’s alive, bin Laden’s dead.” The president had this narrative that “Al-Qaeda’s on the run,” but now they got a terrorist attack, and they have to mislead the American people because it’s 56 days before an election, their legacy’s on the line, and she has the goddess of history lookin’ over her shoulder.  So they mislead the American people.  You look at every step of this, and I am convinced just as sure as I’m standing here, it happened because of political concerns this administration had.

RUSH:  Yeah.  And he again implored the members of the members of the media, “Read it! Just read our report! Just read it.”  Not gonna happen.  They’re not gonna read it.  They don’t want to read it.  They don’t want to find out anything other than how can they get Hillary off the hook, which they are in the process of doing.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Let me give an example of what I’m talking about.  Press conference, Q&A with reporters.  Dana Bash is asking a question to Trey Gowdy, who is the chairman of this subcommittee.  She says, “Mr. Gowdy, because you chose not to draw conclusions, does that suggest that you don’t have the goods on placing any blame on the administration, specifically the woman who wants to be the next president of the United States?”  Let me repeat her question, ’cause this is designed to create the narrative for the rest of the day on CNN. 

“Mr. Gowdy, because you chose not to draw conclusions…” ‘Cause he’d previously said, “I’m not into drawing conclusions here.  I don’t do the ‘why.’  I do the ‘who, what, when.'”  That’s what he said., “I do the ‘who, what, when.’ Just the facts, ma’am.  The conclusion, you can draw your own after you read the report.” So he said that couple, three times.  So her question, “Mr. Gowdy, because you chose not to draw a conclusion, does that suggest that you don’t have the goods placing any blame on the administration, specifically…” If you had read the report, if you had the modicum of knowledge of what goes on, you couldn’t ask this question.

Of course, everything that happened here is “the goods placing blame on this administration.”  Here’s Gowdy’s answer…

GOWDY:  Dana, shockingly, that was not what the House asked me to do.  Look at the resolution.  The resolution doesn’t mention Secretary Clinton.  Speaker Boehner nor Speaker Ryan has ever asked me to do anything about 2016 presidential politics.  Speaker Boehner asked me to find out what happened to four of our fellow citizens, and I believe that that is what I have done.  You are welcome to read the report.  I hope you will; I know you will.  If you, at the end of reading that report, can conclude that it is about one person instead of about four people, I will be shocked.

RUSH:  So the answer is, “What, us?  No, no, no!  No, no!  This isn’t by political.  No, no, no, no.  We’re dead serious.  We want to get to the bottom what happened here.  No, no, no.  This is not about going after Hillary Clinton.”  Oh, really?  You’re not going after Hillary?  Okay, fine.  Because you didn’t find anything wrongdoing with her anyway, right?  No, because we didn’t draw any conclusions.  Okay, so Hillary gets a pass.  The panel found no wrongdoing.  Then there was an unidentified reporter got in on this and here’s how that sounded…

REPORTER:  There are bumper stickers and T-shirts all over this country that say, “Hillary Clinton Lied. People died.”  Is that true?

GOWDY:  Uh, you don’t see that T-shirt on me, and you’ve never seen that bumper sticker on any of my vehicles, and you’ve never heard me comment on that.  I’m asking you to read it.  I’m not… I’m not gonna tell you what to be on the lookout for.  I actually trust you to read the report for yourself.

RUSH:  They’re not gonna read it!  They don’t care what’s in it.  All they want out of this press conference is to be able to walk out of there saying that they have no goods on Mrs. Clinton.  Like this there are bumper stickers and T-shirts all over the country, Hillary.  You ever hear them worry about that when that was true of George W. Bush?  And Gowdy, you know, wasn’t gonna go there. “No, no, no! I’m not saying she lied.  I’m not…” The report says she lied from beginning to end.  Finally Mike Pompeo, he worked on the summary report with Jim Jordan.  He had a Q&A. The reporter said, “Mr. Pompeo, is Hillary Clinton’s leadership morally reprehensible?”

POMPEO:  Yes.

REPORTER:  It is?

POMPEO:  Absolutely.  We worked our tails off to develop every fact we could, to tell the American people everything we could possibly glean, and we have been obstructed every step along the way in that effort, including by the very Democrats today who are calling us political.  With respect to my statements about Secretary Clinton, I believe them in my heart.

RUSH:  Meaning she’s reprehensible, morally reprehensible.  Why would she be characterized as morally reprehensible if they found no wrongdoing?  But that’s their story.  That’s their narrative, and they’re sticking to it.

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