RUSH: Here we are back at it, executing assigned host duties flawlessly, Rush Limbaugh, America’s Real Anchorman.  There is no fake news here.  Well, that’s not true.  We do satires and parody, but it’s obviously fake news.  We don’t do fake news.  We don’t lie.  We don’t make things up.  We don’t try to make you believe things that are not true.  And that is exactly what the mainstream media has become.  The mainstream media has become an enterprise designed to make you believe things which are not true. 

800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. 

If there’s any fake news out there, it is what they do now day in and day out.  The fake news stuff started because expert conservatives started doing satire and parody on Facebook that was effective.  It was satire and parody that exposed the lies and the fraud that is the left and their media. And leftists and media: “That’s fake news! You can’t write that, that’s fake news,” and then they started claiming that these idiots on Facebook started believing the fake news, when it wasn’t fake news.  It was effective satire, which was exposing the lying sacks of excrement that exist on Facebook and Twitter on the left. 

That’s where it started.  Who defines fake news?  The mainstream is defining fake news as anything that’s effective that busts up their attempt to lie to people.  That’s all fake news is.  Now, there are some people who actually practice in fake news, but it’s all satire and parody.  It’s all to one extent or another an attempt to be funny.  Sometimes it’s rooted in reciprocity.  The few instances of fake news that are there are a reaction to the Drive-By Media.  Everything is a reaction to them and how they are the ones lying to people.  Their business today is making you think things that are not true. 

The classic example is the mainstream media reporting of Trump’s interview with the New York Times.  What do you think of that meeting?  In that meeting with the New York Times Trump changed his mind on climate change, he changed his mind on going after Hillary.  And if you read the transcripts, he didn’t.  If you read the transcripts, he spoke like Trump always speaks.  He didn’t commit himself to anything, and some of his answers were innocuous. 

He’s talking to Thomas “Loopy” Friedman about climate change.  By the way, in the transcript of that meeting, you can see how important this is to these people.  I mean, even this Little Pinch, this Pinch Sulzberger is lecturing Trump (paraphrasing), “Hey, we live on an island here, and these storms are getting worse, Donald, they’re getting worse, straight up.  You can see it.”  And Trump says, “Arthur, there have always been storms.”  And that Little Pinch says, “Not like this.  Not like this.”  And then Friedman starts bopping in, “What do you think about it? What are you gonna do?” 

And Trump refuses to accept their premise. “Well, what about manmade?”  “Well, I’m looking at it.  It could be, there could be an effect, I don’t know, I’m looking at it.”  He doesn’t commit to anything.  So the meeting is over, and they report Trump changing, Trump waffling, and he’s not doing that.  All he’s doing is trying to satisfy these people, get in the meeting, get it, and get out.  He doesn’t have any more trust for the New York Times today or yesterday than before he went in the meeting. 

But this is classic what is happening.  And the rest of the media picks it up and that’s why you’re seeing stories about Trump waffling on things like climate change and prosecuting Hillary.  On the prosecuting Hillary thing, this could go one of any number of ways, but, folks, there’s something very important about this.  And this is what I hope it is, frankly.  I don’t know if this is the case, but I hope it is. 

Donald Trump has appointed Jeff Sessions to be the attorney general.  Jeff Sessions is gonna head up the Department of Justice.  Jeff Sessions is the guy you need to be asking whether there’s gonna be a prosecution of Hillary.  If Donald Trump comes out and says there will not be, or if Donald Trump comes out and says there will be, then immediately Jeff Sessions has been rendered a puppet.  And I don’t think Trump has any intention of doing that.  I think Trump knows the audience that he’s with.  He’s with a bunch of adversaries.  He’s with a bunch of people that he wished liked him — he’s a human being — but he doesn’t trust them. 

So he’ll say whatever he wants to say to them or whatever he thinks he has to say.  And the thing they want to hear is he’s not gonna prosecute Hillary and he’s not gonna pull out of the Paris accords. So they gleefully write: after meeting with us, Donald Trump saw the light.  That’s the tone of their stories, that they have the all- powerful mechanisms of making sure this Luddite Trump finds out what really is going on out there.  But for Donald Trump to come out and say one way or the other what’s gonna happen to Hillary Clinton totally undercuts his attorney general.  And I don’t think he would do that.  That’s one of the things we got mad at Obama for.  His attorney generals were puppets. 

Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch did whatever Obama wanted ’em to do.  It’s one of the reasons the Democrats were sent packing.  I think if there is an intention at the Trump campaign right now, or the transition, to prosecute Hillary, the last thing they’re gonna do is say so right now.  Here’s another consideration.  If they want to prosecute Hillary and they say so, you think Obama might pardon her?  And if Obama pardons her, bye-bye investigation.  So why telegraph you’re gonna investigate her if it would cause a pardon?  Wouldn’t the smart thing to do would be to say, “Ah, maybe not.  You know, they’ve suffered a lot.  I’d rather help her heal.” 

Then Obama might think he doesn’t have to pardon her and Obama may not really want to pardon her for the historical legacy of things.  Obama may want her investigated.  Obama, by the way, is already distancing himself from her by making snide comments about the incompetence of the campaign.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Now, here’s the first story that I was referring to moments ago.  Hill.com: “Trump Signals Softer Approach In Times Meeting — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday answered questions from The New York Times on his relationship to the ‘alt-right,’ his web of business entanglements and his relationship with the press in an extraordinary event live-tweeted by the Grey Lady’s reporters and editors. …

“Over the course of the unorthodox meeting, which took place on the 16th floor of The New York Times building in midtown Manhattan…” If I’d’a had my way, Trump would have demanded this meeting take place on the deck of the USS Missouri instead of at the Times headquarters.  If you’re gonna meet with ’em, if you’re gonna go meet with the vanquished, if you’re gonna go meet with the people that you’ve defeated, then do it on the deck of the USS Missouri. 

For those of you who are curious, that’s where the Japanese signed the surrender papers in World War II.  “Trump was by turns solicitous, argumentative, evasive, joking and defiant with the nation’s most important newspaper, which has been among Trump’s top targets,” and they go on to describe some of the things that Trump may have changed his mind on — and he didn’t.  If you read the transcripts, you can see clearly Trump spoke to them like he speaks to everybody. “Well, I’m looking into it.”  “It could be.”  “You know what?  I don’t want it to have bad effect on business.” 

“Look, you want to talk about climate change? How about all those emails from East Anglia?”  He mentioned this to ’em.  I know they’ve been faking the data.  The Times doesn’t publish that.  TheHill.com doesn’t publish them.  If you get the transcript of Trump’s interview, you find he threw it right back in their faces.  But you’re not seeing that.  You’re seeing, “Trump waffles,” “Trump caves on climate,” and climate change is big to them, folks.  Climate change… If they could force Trump to capitulate on climate change that would almost be the equivalent of them winning the election.

Because climate change has all the elements they believe in: Big Government, high taxes, limited liberty and freedom on the part of the people.  The United States is guilty, the United States is to blame, the United States must bear the brunt of punishment.  Everything that the left thinks about this country and everything they want to happen to this country is encapsulated in their beliefs and climate change.

This is why I knew it and have known this for 30 years.  It’s why I’ve been haranguing people for 30 years about it.  It’s why they are so hell-bent on Trump agreeing to poll the Paris Accords and the United Nations, because it contains elements of everything they want to happen in one issue.  That’s why I said yesterday, you know, Trump caving on climate change is a much, much bigger deal to me than whatever he decides to do or not do with Hillary Clinton prosecution.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Ladies and gentlemen, I really want you to try to do something, and that is to doubt everything that you see that has as its source the New York Times or NBC or CBS or ABC or CNN or the Los Angeles Times or USA Today.  I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve seen with the theme, the premise, the narrative, “Trump walks back X.” “Trump walks back views on Paris.” “Trump walks back views on prosecuting Hillary.”  Trump isn’t “walking back” anything yet.  They have not changed.  They tried to dispirit you during the campaign and depress you so that you wouldn’t vote. 

They’re trying to make you think Trump is selling you out now.  It is who they are, and you are much better off disbelieving everything.  If you end up being wrong, fine.  But if you believe this and start acting accordingly and you’re wrong, you may end up causing damage to things.  Do not believe them! They simply have gone over the edge.  Here’s some of what Trump said on climate change.  This is from the actual transcript of his meeting with the New York Times.  He said, “It’s a very complex subject.  I’m not sure anybody is ever gonna really know.

“I know they say they have science on one side, but then they have all those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists.  Where was that, Geneva or wherever, five years ago?  Terrible.  Where they got caught.  You know, so you see that and you say, ‘What’s that all about?’  I absolutely have an open mind.  I will tell you this.  Clean air, vitally important.  Clean water, crystal clean water, vitally important.  Safety, vitally important.” 

He’s talking about the email scandal at East Anglia University in the U.K. where they discovered — somebody leaked emails there — the scientists involved in this were openly admitting doctoring the historical report temperature data in order to make it look like it is warming now.  The whole issue is bogus!  The climate is always changing.  Humanity has to adapt.  It always has had to adapt.  We’ve done a marvelous job of adapting.  We’ve done a marvelous job of cleaning up the messes we make as we adapt. 

We’re not destroying the planet.  We couldn’t if somebody ordered us to!  They want you to believe that you are doing it by virtue of living a life of progress.  They want you to believe you are culpable, that you are responsible for destroying the planet.  And they’ve convinced every kid under 35, it looks like. It looks like every kid under 35 believes that their parents have destroyed the planet, and that it may not be habitable by the time a 25-year-old reaches 65.  They honestly believe this.

And yet, if Donald Trump convened his cabinet and ordered his interior secretary to take action that would warm the earth’s surface temperature by two degrees, there’s nobody who would know what to do.  And if he ordered it done… You notice that all these predictions are for 30 years and 40 years down the road when nobody’s gonna be around to know whether they were right or wrong? It’s not about 30 or 40 years.  It’s about affecting the way people live and vote now.  It’s about accepting Big Government, big global government to run the world under the auspices of saving it. 

These are the people destroying things. 

These are the people this election just sent packing. 

Trump isn’t walking back anything. 

This Hillary thing? We can’t yet say that he’s walking it back.  Again, folks, if Donald Trump announces that he’s gonna prosecute Hillary, I guarantee you he’s done two things:  He’s undermined his own attorney general as a puppet and he’s guaranteed that Obama’s gonna pardon her.  And if Obama pardons her, there’s not gonna be an investigation anyway.  So when Trump or Kellyanne Conway go out there and say, “Well, you know, they’ve gone through enough; Trump would rather help them heal,” they’re smart people here on the Trump side.  And he’s smart. 

They’re not gonna telegraph their plans.  How many times during the debate did you hear Trump whine and moan about Obama announcing military strategy against ISIS?  He got into a knock-down, drag-out argument one of the debate moderators about this, Martha Raddatz, who tried to tell Trump he was an idiot.  “Sometimes there’s psycho-strategery, Mr. Trump! Sometimes you tell your… It’s a head fake.” Trump said, “Why in the world would you ever tell your enemy what you’re gonna do before you do it!  It’s silly!”

I don’t believe Trump’s changed on that.  If he has plans, he’s not gonna telegraph it to the New York Times or to the media or to his targets.  But they want you doubting Trump and they want you think Trump’s abandoning you and they want you thinking Trump’s no different than any person that’s ever been elected.  They want you to think you’ve just fallen for the biggest trick in the history of tricks.  They want you thinking Trump’s no different than your average, ordinary politician that you meet.  That’s what they want — and I’m telling you, do not believe them. 

Do not let them even get to first base with you on this.  Be patient.  You’ll know soon enough.  Trump’s not even been inaugurated yet.  Wait ’til that happens.  Wait ’til they start doing stuff.  I can tell you, you look at Trump’s appointments? The only one that concerns me is Romney, and I don’t even know if that’s gonna happen.  He’s got advisers who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get into fistfights every day if they have to with the opposition.  He does not have a bunch of milquetoasts around him.  He doesn’t have a bunch of traditional insider establishment politicians around him.

He’s got some, but his primary advisers are no-holds-barred kind of people.  These nominee for these cabinet posts, a charter school expert, Betsy DeVos? Nikki Haley at the U.N.? Jeff Sessions at AG?  You couldn’t come up with anybody better to run the Department of Justice, and I guarantee you Trump’s not gonna undercut him.  Whether there’s gonna be an investigation of what went on at the DOJ, that’s up to Jeff Sessions.  And you’ve gonna be very careful about demanding a special prosecutor. 

The last time that happened it was George W. Bush that buckled to pressure to nominate one and what did we end up with? Scooter Libby going to jail for supposedly leaking the name of an operative we already knew, Valerie Plame.  Independent prosecutors are the only ones that are truly independent.  Trump’s gonna put an attorney general in there and he can express his desires or so forth, but that gig is supposed to be independent.  That’s the purpose!  It’s in the executive branch. 

But one of the reasons the Democrats are in trouble is ’cause everybody knows that Eric Holder and what’s-her-face, Loretta Lynch, were just rubber-stamping what Obama wanted.  The place became a lawless institution designed to advance the Democrat Party agenda.  You couldn’t have anybody better at DOJ to root out what you consider to be the swamp than Jeff Sessions, and Trump is gonna let him do his job.  But he’s not gonna undercut him right now, and he’s not gonna convert him into a puppet.  He’s not gonna turn him into somebody useless. 

Presidents, when you get right down to it, don’t decide these kinds of things anyway.  Not really.  They’re not supposed to.  Otherwise, we wouldn’t have an attorney general.