RUSH: Breaking news at CNN. They practically… They can’t keep their clothes on. Rex Tillerson has said that Putin denied meddling in the election. Apparently, Tillerson and Trump either accused Putin of it or asked him, and Putin denied it. Putin denied tampering or meddling in the election. Tillerson says that Trump brought it up more than once. I told you that they were talking about it. I told you that they were planning for the 2020 election. I told you that’s what was going on in there. My instinct, once again, has proven unassailable.

What’s the media gonna do now? Okay, since Tillerson is saying that Trump opened the meeting by expressing concerns about Russian meddling in the election and Putin denied it, is the media gonna say, “Trump was just faking everybody! Trump knows he colluded! Trump knows Putin. This is just Trump trying to hoodwink us. This is just Trump trying to divert us. Trump is trying to psych-op us. It’s a psychological opposition Trump knows it happened; so he goes out and accuses Putin…” This is what they’re gonna say.

‘Cause this otherwise deflates the balloon. Trump is supposed to be thankful. Trump is supposed to thank Putin for colluding. Trump is supposed to shake his hand and wink and nod and say, “Job well done.” Instead, Tillerson says that Trump really took it to Putin on this. That doesn’t fit the Drive-By narrative. But again, grab Jackie Calmes in a sound bite. I forget the number already. It might be number 21. Could it possibly…? I want you to listen to this. This happened right as this program was beginning, so six minutes after 12 noon Eastern Time. The theme of this program is beginning, and I have CNN on here and I’m watching it. There’s a panel discussion on the meeting between Trump and Putin.

Jackie Calmes at the Los Angeles Times observed this…

CALMES: I was struck that Putin didn’t project a more, umm, steely confidence at the beginning.

MAN: (whispers) Right.

CALMES: He looked down a lot, he didn’t make eye contact often, and President Trump was constantly making eye contact, or trying to, with him. So it was interesting. I just wondered what was — ’cause I’ve been in the room with Putin and when it was President Obama, and he’d usually be sitting back on the chair like that to just telegraphing disrespect. But it was a different Putin I saw there.

RUSH: Whoa! That’s not… I’m surprised they didn’t delete that, because what she’s saying is, “Yeah, when Putin got together with Obama, he didn’t show any respect. He sat back. You know, it didn’t seem like he was respecting Obama at all.” Remember, it was Obama who told Dmitry Medvedev — who at the time was one of Putin’s top aides. There was an open mic, and Obama said, “Tell Vladimir to be patient. I’ll have much more flexibility after the election.” It was in 2012, and he was talking about ramping down our nuclear weapons arsenal.

Putin wasn’t happy that we weren’t doing it quickly enough, and Obama told Medvedev, “Assure Vlad I’ll have a lot more flexibility, ’cause after I win election there’s nothing anybody can do. I’m not gonna have to run for election again, so I’ll have a lot more flexibility.” Obama was eating out of Putin’s hand, and here’s Jackie Calmes admitting that Putin had no steely confidence, was looking at the floor. Now on the heels of that, we hear that Trump stormed into the meeting (laughing) demanding that Putin fess up on colluding/meddling in the election — and that Putin denied it.

Here’s Mark in Greenville, Ohio, as we head back to the phones. Welcome, sir. I’m glad to hear from you.

CALLER: Hey, thanks, Rush. The whole narrative doesn’t fit the facts. Hillary could be bought and sold. She sold them our uranium reserves. Hillary was a front-runner. If the Russians had all those emails, why wouldn’t they just keep those and blackmail her with them?

RUSH: What narrative doesn’t fit? What specifically?

CALLER: Well, the narrative they’re telling about the Russian collusion. Why would the Russians clued with Trump to get him elected? They could blackmail Hillary. She was the front-runner.

RUSH: That is a point that has been raised on several occasions. If the Russians really want a president they can dominate and control — and if they’ve got Hillary’s emails, and if they’ve done that — why not have somebody in there who they already have shown they can make a full of. That silly Russian reset move that she made and how she bungled Libya and any other number of foreign policy ventures that she took. My problem with this whole thing is that it’s gone so far out of proportion now that it’s become a joke. It’s become ridiculous, the idea that the Russians determine the winner of our election and were trying to.

I think this has been so overstated. This is something made up out of whole cloth! Do you realize this is something that would have never been of concern to anybody if Hillary Clinton had won. Nobody would have been bothered by it, and that is the truth. Why wouldn’t anybody have been bothered by it? Because it happens all the time. What they’ve done with this is to try to make it look… They want people to believe that the Russians had success in this election like they’ve never had before and that the Russians actually determined the outcome of our election. That’s what they want people to believe.

And they want people to believe that it was never, ever in the past happening to this degree. On the other hand, if Hillary Clinton had won, you would not have heard of this. There would not have been a single story about this. The Russian collusion in the election would have died. As it was during the campaign, it was being used for entirely different purposes. They all expected Hillary to win, and so they were tamping it down. They were trying… I’m gonna tell you something. The Washington Post, I will wager you, is regretting they ever ran that 8,000-word story that had the headline (summarized): Obama’s Brave Struggle to Punish or Deal with the Russians After Tampering with the Election.

Because that story after so much time, after the media had exhausted every possible angle here and had still failed to persuade anywhere near half the country that there was something to this. They’d gotten so deep into it that the Washington Post ends up publishing a story which — while they’re trying to give Obama credit for bravery and courage — actually blamed him! He knew it was happening, and he didn’t do anything to stop it. That’s the bottom line of that long story. So the attention now is focused on Obama, and Trump is not letting people forget it.

Why didn’t Obama stop it? If Obama knew it was happening, why didn’t he stop it? The reason that they didn’t stop it is because they knew there was nothing to it. They knew the Russians could not do what they were alleging. They knew, “knew,” Hillary was going to win. They did not want to taint her victory with anybody thinking it was illegitimate. Plain and simple.

This is a narrative that has outgrown its own ability to be grounded in anything firm like reality. Because if — I say it again — if Hillary had won, this story would never have seen the light of day on election night, the day after the election, the week after, or the month after. Republicans wouldn’t have made anything of it because nobody thought it had happened.

They didn’t want anything tainting Hillary, and if she had won — and the point is nobody really cared about this. Nobody was really concerned about this. Nobody was really worried about this from the standpoint of election integrity. Nobody. Nobody. As long as Hillary was gonna win, there wasn’t a story. It’s only after Hillary loses that this thing has to be rebirthed. And they have to grow it pretty fast, and it has to become a major thing. And they’ve succeeded in doing that to the point now that it is become an ongoing joke.

I gotta take a break. We’ll continue here in just a moment. Don’t go away.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I think it’s hilarious. I really do. And I think it’s brilliant. (interruption) No, that Tillerson comes out and says, “And Trump really took it to –” In fact, folks, there’s a couple other things. These are the subjects that Trump talked to Putin about: Syria, North Korea, and accusations Moscow meddled in the 2016 election, in their more than two-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin. This is what Tillerson says that Trump discussed.

Now, what do you have? You have the American left, the worldwide left, you have the American media, which leads the American left, you’ve got the Democrat Party, you’ve got who knows believing that there was collusion between Moscow and Trump. So what does Trump do? He has a two-hour meeting with Putin, and what does Tillerson say? Tillerson says that Trump went in there and he demanded that Putin admit it, he brought it up, and Putin denied it. Putin said they hadn’t meddled. But Trump took it right to him.

Now, what are they gonna do with this? Because they think Trump and Putin were partners. They think Trump and Putin colluded, and they probably think they were colluding again today on the 2020 reelection of Trump. And yet Tillerson comes out and says that Trump practically spanked Putin for doing this, and Putin denied it.

Now what are they gonna do? They have to say now that Trump was faking it, making it up. That Trump was just running a psych ops on us because everybody knows Trump and Putin colluded. So Trump’s trying to divert, he’s trying to distract, he’s trying to deflect by making it look like he’s upset by it when he actually is happy about it and benefited. Because that’s all they can say.

They have been after Trump in press conference after press conference to admit that Putin colluded to benefit Trump, and Trump said, “Maybe they did. We don’t really know what happened.” That ticked ’em off. Now he goes out and accuses Putin of it, and Putin denies it. Where do they take the story? They’ll have a place, don’t misunderstand.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, folks, what really happened, I guarantee you that Trump and Putin laughed their asses off over this collusion thing, and they’re just saying that there were deep discussions about it. You can’t convince me otherwise.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It’s getting even better. Tillerson says that Putin demanded proof of the meddling in the election, that Trump brings it up a couple times and Putin demanded proof. Well, there’s a problem. There’s a big problem, because there isn’t any. There is zero, zilch, nada — unless the Democrats want to say that the Russians hacked their server and hacked Podesta’s emails. But we know that that’s not what happened. We know that Podesta goofed up and fell for a phishing scam that anybody could have been behind. Well, Putin’s demanding proof. Ha! Snerdley said to me during the break, “Do you really think these media people…?”

I say, “Yeah. The stories are all over.” I’ve checked the New York Post, the New York Daily News, French News Agency, AP, New York Times, you name it, and the top story it all these places is: “Putin Denies Meddling in Election.” I’m asking myself: Do these media people expect Putin to admit it? Do they really? Snerdley said, “Nah, Rush. They don’t.” And I’m saying, “You people don’t understand. They are so deep into this; they have lost all grounding and reality. They have made fools of themselves.”

I guarantee you, ladies and gentlemen, CNN — I don’t know how many people — New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, they are all hoping. They all get up every day hoping, praying, thinking, believing, that the bombshell that will prove all of this will be revealed that day. And they get up every day hoping that happens. They get up every day hoping they find it. They get up every day hoping that somebody has a big reveal that will put this all together in an undeniable story of truth, that Putin and Trump colluded to screw Hillary Clinton out of the presidency.

They are going to think this for the rest of their lives and they’re gonna be hunting for the proof of this for the rest of their lives. They are so deeply invested in this that I don’t think average, ordinary people can understand the emotional (I don’t know what to call it) connection, the investment, the desire. I think that they have lost all perspective on this. What started as a total hoax has been going on for so long that they now firmly believe that this actually happened. I believe when they first ran the story they knew that they were running something bogus here.

But I think got so deep into it now that they have just totally, completely distorted their own perception of it, and every day… (interruption) Snerdley’s in there shaking his head, but I’m telling you — do not doubt me on this — every day they wake up thinking, “This day, today, is gonna be the day we get Trump!” They’re thinking Pulitzer, they’re thinking Nobel Peace Prize, they’re thinking Universe Prize, whatever. Here is Tillerson himself. We have a little audio. He’s doing a press conference or press gaggle after the meeting between Trump and Putin, and it’s audio only, and here is a portion of what he said about Trump confronting Putin on the meddling.

TILLERSON: The president opened the meeting with President Putin by raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject. The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement.

RUSH: And then demanded proof. (chuckling) Putin demanded proof. You think Trump has proof? Can you imagine ’em salivating over that? “Putin asked for proof. Did Trump give it to him?” You know reporters are trying to track this down. “Was proof offered?” Putin denies it. You notice the language? “They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject.” Don’t you love the lingo that’s used to describe these meetings? They “had a robust and lengthy exchange.” That could mean anything. It could mean it was a knock-down, drag-out.

It could mean they were laughing themselves silly over this. It could that they discussed it perfunctorily just to be able to say that they did. It’s just… I don’t know. At one point, you know, in the past this story really ticked me off. It was such an offense to my sensibilities. It was so obviously fake, so obviously a hoax. But now watching these media people and their heads explode he takes, to me, it’s enjoyable fun.