RUSH: So I just checked the emails during the break. “Rush, why are you spending so much time on this?” Because the Drive-Bys have dropped this. You would think after a 36-page story on Friday in the Washington Post, that story was dropped to dominate the Sunday shows, which was then intended to create news to start into this week, to further the whole notion that Trump colluded with Russia. This Washington Post story, in some ways, may have even backfired, because I don’t know whether they intended this or not, but this does not help the Democrats. It makes Obama look bad.

That headline, “Obama’s Secret Struggle,” clearly the people that wrote this thing had a different idea of its interpretation or its impact. They thought people would end up praising and celebrating and loving Obama and understanding the tough choice. They do not understand how the Democrats and their base have been driven to near insanity over this. And to then learn that Obama knew about it and didn’t stop it? This is not good. So they’ve basically dropped it. They’re talking about health care and the Senate vote coming. They’re talking about the Supreme Court decision today.

They’re not mentioning this at all, which is why I am. The reason they are not mentioning it, the reason they didn’t take this and run with it is because it didn’t end up the way it was intended. The Deep State had all these people feloniously leaking, telling this great, great story of courage and bravery inside the Obama White House. About how they knew what the Russians were doing and it was a brave struggle to figure out how to stop it, if to stop it, what to do if you’re gonna punish them. It makes them look impotent and pathetic. And that’s why I don’t want anybody to forget this.

Now we are gonna start on the phones. People been waiting patiently. We’ll start in Rochester, New York. Gene, great to have you, sir. How are you doing today?

CALLER: Hey, Rush, I’m doing great. You are fantastic. I’ve been a fan for decades. Just wanted to let you know that.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.

CALLER: My question has to do with the House looking into the Russia thing, the Senate looking into it, finding nothing, how on earth does it get to a special counsel chosen by the Trump administration? I mean, they had to know that this was gonna be a mess, that it could go on for years, that it could cost the taxpayers all kinds of money, and nothing ever comes good out of it. So I don’t quite understand if it was the Trump administration’s choice, why they wouldn’t just say we already got the House and Senate looking into it?

RUSH: Well, on the surface you have to blame a lot of this on the inertia of public perception. And at the time the special counsel was named, Comey and Trump were in the headlines, Comey alleging, or the story was anyway, that Trump may have attempted to obstruct Comey and the Democrats were riding that horse as far as they could take it. They were gonna go from collusion to the attempt to obstruct, and that took a whole new direction with new energy. And then you had the number two at the FBI, Rosenstein say, “You know what? I can’t be involved in this.”

So he named a special prosecutor to ostensibly take himself out of the equation in response to the Democrats, in response to the Democrats raising hell. I’m like you; I don’t understand it, either. I don’t think it was necessary. It isn’t called for. And now there literally are no limits on Mueller. There are no limits on where he can go, on who he can investigate.

CALLER: That’s so scary, I can’t tell you.

RUSH: It is scary. Newt Gingrich has a great piece on this today, which I might spend some time excerpting things from. It is gonna come down to public opinion, believe it or not on this. That’ll be important.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is John in Alcoa, Tennessee. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. How are you doing today?

CALLER: I’m doing well. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet, sir.

CALLER: I appreciate it.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: You know, most of us, we understand, and we’ve heard you talk about it, that the left in the midterms really doesn’t have a chance without some type of trophy of an obstruction of justice or collusion charge to hold up to their base. With that in mind, what do you think the consequences or the repercussions or the ramifications would be for President Trump if he does decide to fire Mueller and just restrict the investigation to only, you know, intelligence matters or even finding the leakers —

RUSH: Well, now, wait. That last thing you just mentioned is where all of this is tied up. What did you just say? Intelligence matters or even finding the leakers, which means that a lot of this up to now — but before we get to Mueller, now — I’m gonna get to that in just a second — but a lot of this we’ve been told is a counterintelligence investigation, not criminal. And what that means, we’re supposed to have deduced from that that if there were FISA warrants, for example, that they were of a foreign power or of an agent working for a foreign power like the Russian ambassador. Then the Russian ambassador is being surveilled and all of a sudden he’s on the phone with Michael Flynn.

Well, that allows us to hear what Flynn’s saying because he’s talking to a guy that’s under surveillance, CI. Then Flynn supposedly gets unmasked illegally, what Flynn says is not part of the FISA warrant, not part of the purview. What if this whole counterintelligence investigation has been nothing more than a cover for an actual surveillance operation of Donald Trump and his campaign and his transition people? I have long wondered, because the idea it’s been a counterintelligence investigation, we’re supposed to be somewhat comforted by that. Well, it’s not criminal. That means you’re looking at things here, and that would make it, of course, relevant that Trump was never a target, never a suspect. And, by the way, we’ve learned more about that, folks. Hang on here just a second.

Chuck Grassley has come out and accused Schumer of lying. Remember, Schumer wanted to temporarily delay debate on the nomination of Gorsuch because of this Russian investigation thing, and because of what Comey had said. And Schumer said that, Schumer proposed that already aware that Trump was not a suspect. This is the sole reason that Comey got fired, I’m now convinced. That Comey had told everybody Trump was not a suspect but wouldn’t go public with it for flimsy excuses and flimsy reasons.

And I think when Comey goes back up and testifies and makes it clear that Trump still might be under suspicion, I think that was the last straw, I think Trump canned the guy because he wouldn’t go public with what he had told everybody. He had told congressional investigators. He controlled members of the House and Senate, told ’em that Trump was not a target three different times. Trump had to mention it in his firing letter for the public to find out about it.

But what if, from the get-go, what if these supposed counterintelligence investigations that the Obama administration was running were actually nothing more than surveillance operations on Trump? It wouldn’t be hard to do. You go to the FISA court, you’ve already got a foreign country like Russia, you’ve already got FISA warrants for them, FISA procedures because they are a foreign government.

So then you say we want to surveil, pick an agent, like the Soviet Ambassador Kislyak, so we want to surveil him and find out what’s going on. Then we hear that the phone call happens between him and Mike Flynn, for example. And what if the Obama administration decided that what they really wanted to do was surveil Trump, and what they applied for or what they actually ended up doing was making people think they were running a counterintelligence operation as opposed to a criminal investigation, which was cover for actual surveillance of the Trump campaign or the Trump transition?

See, I wouldn’t put it past any of these people. And you know we would find out. If we ever had access to these FISA warrants, we would find out. Nobody has even admitted that they exist. Nobody has admitted that they actually happened. It’s the stuff of myth right now. Now, as to Mueller and your question about firing Mueller, Trump could do a lot of things before firing Mueller. He could limit the scope of what Mueller can look at very easily.

He could command, “Look, okay, you’re gonna do an investigation. You’ve gotta limit it to felonious criminal activity. You’re not gonna be looking at people’s tax returns. You’re not gonna be looking at people’s finances. You’re not gonna be going off this half-baked here in any direction you want to go.” What it all is gonna come down to, I mentioned earlier, is public opinion.

And you might think, “Well, Rush that’s crazy, public opinion isn’t gonna stop the guy.” But it might, when you consider the ultimate aim for this. The ultimate aim of this is a coup d’etat, getting rid of Trump. There aren’t a lot of people on our side who doubt that that’s what Mueller’s objective is. There are some who don’t. There are some who think that Mueller actually is trying to set up an exoneration of Trump and selling it by having all of these leftist Obama and Hillary people on his staff to quell whatever anger there would be on the left if Trump is exonerated.

That’s a bit of a stretch, but it remains a possibility. But this is just too obvious. Look, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. And if this guy is lining up all these people that hate Trump, and all of these Never Trumpers who love Hillary and love Obama and are mad at the way the election happened, and now they’re on this gigantic, expanding investigative team that has no financial limits and no territorial limits, it looks pretty clear here that this is a fishing expedition. As Newt Gingrich calls it, a hunt.

They’re not fishing. They’re loaded for bear. And they are hunting. And they’re gonna look until they find something on somebody. People I’ve spoken to about this tell me they don’t think that Mueller is gonna get anything on Trump, because if there were anything on Trump, by golly, by God, it would have been found by now with as many people looking, as many people making it up, as many people trying to find the bombshell, it would have been found. And nobody has a bombshell. So if there’s nothing on Trump, they’re gonna keep hunting until they find somebody.

Now, where does public opinion come into play? Well, impeachment, when you get down to it, impeachment is a political procedure. And it cannot happen without public support, political public support. Even though it’s ostensibly a legal issue, high crimes and misdemeanors, if you’re gonna impeach a sitting president to get rid of him, you had better have a lot of public opinion on your side or it’s going to bomb out, because it is elected representatives of the people that have to carry all this out.

House comes up with articles of impeachment, and they conduct a trial, and the Senate is where the trial is heard. And, you know, you have the 2018 midterms coming up, and I have this poll for you. I’ve cited it twice already, but here it is again. Harvard University poll has found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the FBI’s Russia investigations are hurting the country, and a majority believe that it’s time for Congress and the establishment media to move on to other issues.

According to the Harvard-Harris poll, who is Mark Penn, by the way, a former Hillary pollster, and he’s been trying to warn Democrats that they’re heading down the wrong path for quite a while now. And he’s doing it again with these poll results. Published here at TheHill.com, by the way. “Sixty-four percent of voters said the investigations into President Trump and Russia are hurting the country. Fifty-six percent of voters said it’s time for Congress and the media to move on to other issues, compared to 44 percent who said the focus should stay on Russia.”

In addition, 73% — we’re almost here at three-quarters — said “they’re concerned that the Russia probes have caused Congress to lose focus on the issues important to them. That figure encompasses 81 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats.” That comes out to 73% are concerned the Russia investigations have caused Congress to lose focus.

This poll comes on the heels of an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey that found that half of Americans believed the media’s Russia coverage has been irresponsible and overdramatized. To me, these are earthquake results. This is a smack in the face to the media. The exact opposite was supposed to happen. But you and I both knew this is what was gonna happen. They were making people sick of it. They couldn’t let it go. They come across as obsessed. You can’t turn on CNN, until today. That’s what is noteworthy about today.

You can’t turn on CNN without hearing about this Russia-Trump collusion story. And you haven’t been able to turn on CNN and hear anything about that for seven or eight months now, and in seven or eight months nobody has a morsel of evidence that Trump did anything. For seven or eight months, innuendo, unnamed sources, former officials and current officials, high sources, in deep in the intelligence, nothing, zilch, zero, nada. There is nothing but a promise, nothing more than a promise that we’re gonna get Trump ’cause we knew he’s done something, and if we can’t prove it, we’re gonna make it up, we’re gonna get Trump. And there’s nothing.

This is such a slap in the face of the Democrats, these poll results from Harvard, from Mark Penn, a Democrat pollster, 73% say they’re concerned that the investigations and the media coverage is causing everybody to lose focus on other important issues. Two-thirds say it’s hurting the country. The media has failed to marshal public support for their coup d’etat, is the point, folks. You can’t have, unless you want the military involved, you’re not gonna have a coup d’etat if you don’t have a tremendous amount of public support for it.

Now, I know some of you think, “The Democrats don’t care about that. Media wouldn’t care about that. Get rid of Trump, they’ll deal with whatever happens.” No, at some point the public opinion is gonna matter in this. That’s why they’re doing all this. They’re doing this to create public opinion against Trump. They’re trying to marshal opposition to Trump in the polls. They’re trying to create, just like they did with Nixon, just like they did with Katrina, just like they’ve done with the Iraq war, they’re trying to create an anger within the American public over the election of Trump, over the Trump presidency, his honesty, integrity, and they’re failing. They’re failing at their primary mission.

And one of the reasons is there hasn’t been anything backing any of this up. There’s not a morsel of evidence. There’s not a shred of evidence for anything they’ve alleged, accused Trump of doing, other than being somebody they don’t understand and having a personality type that they don’t like. And beside the fact they don’t know how to beat him. But those are not impeachable things and you really can’t build anti-, hateful public opinion on them.

But it’s backfiring on them, folks. So when it comes to Mueller, if the public continues to tire on this, and if the public continues to think that all of this is distracting everybody from things that really matter to the American people that live outside of Washington, it doesn’t matter what Mueller comes up with; he’s just gonna be seen as a continuation of all of this. Well, unless he comes up with the golden bullet, but I don’t think it exists. It would have been heard of by now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know Mueller? I’m sitting here thinking about Robert Mueller. We had a call earlier ask, “What could Trump do about Mueller?” There is something Trump could do, and you’re gonna laugh and you’re gonna think this is outrageous; this is crazy. But I like the idea. You know Trump could appoint another independent counsel to investigate Mueller? Now, before you start snickering, there is a period of time where Mueller may have been colluding with Comey before Mueller was named the independent counsel. Who knows? Mueller may have been involved in Comey in leaking certain things.

We don’t know.

But we know that Mueller and Comey are best buds. They’re BFFs, supposedly. It is entirely within the president’s purview. If he wants to investigate the investigator, he can. Politically the reaction would be, “Oh, my God, that’d be crazy! It’d be suicidal!” But if you believe — if anybody believes — that Mueller is not on the up and up here for whatever reason (best friends with Comey, doesn’t like Trump, member of the establishment and wants to protect it), who knows? And if you think that Mueller is conflicted because he knows all these players — best buddies with Comey and whoever — you could theoretically do it.

Trump could name an independent counsel to investigate Mueller for any and everything he might have done, colluding with whoever. Might he have had some contacts with the Clintons, with Loretta Lynch, with Comey, because Comey was involved in all of these other things? And might those discussions then complicate with Mueller’s special counsel charge? If you think there’s bias or prejudice going in, you could certainly find out if Mueller has a clean slate at the start. I imagine a lot of legal beagles hearing me say this are shrinking away and shouting.

“No! No! Outrageous! One special counsel’s bad enough.”

I’m just telling you the president could do it. Whether it’s politically advisable? That’s another thing. But the stakes are pretty high here because the Democrats… Folks, like I said at the beginning of the program: I’m just sensing that there’s a shift in momentum here, and it could be temporary. The media’s a very powerful thing and can help the Democrats recover from whatever mess they get involved in. But you’ll notice, there’s a new wave of Democrats coming up, kind of like the Millennial chapter. This guy from Ohio — Ryan is his name — going after Pelosi. I mean, this wasn’t done!

Pelosi and Steny Hoyer and any of the House leadership? You never made a move on them. It was like making a move on the Godfather; you just don’t do it. But now it’s happening. And there are little things like the Democrats being told to stop this talk of impeachment, Democrats being told, “Back off this Russia thing. There are other things you guys need to talk about. You’re gonna have to start focusing on things that real-world people care, about like their jobs, the economy, and this kind of thing.” The Harvard poll. All of the little things. The scrutiny here… This Washington Post story on Friday?

Believe me, that does not move the ball forward for the Democrats or for Obama. It provides problems. So there’s been a blip here in the momentum, and when you add all this together, the Democrats realize they have some problems. Mueller might be the lone thing they have left to succeed in this coup d’etat against Trump. So if it’s that serious and if you think Mueller’s conflicted — if you’re Trump and you think he’s really conflicted — you can call for a special counsel into Mueller. (chuckles) I would love it. I think, just keep adding special counsels just to show how ridiculous the whole thing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m not jiving ya! Trump could do it! If you think Mueller has been involved… Look, if Comey was colluding with Loretta Lynch and Hillary and all this and told Mueller about it and Mueller knew about it? Comey and Mueller best buds? If you’ve got any suspicions, you can investigate the investigator to make sure he’s not conflicted. I think… (laughing) Can you imagine another special counsel? You want to drain the swamp? Drain ’em all!