RUSH: Folks, there’s so much fake news out there that we couldn’t get to the real news if all I do is focus on the fake news. We got so much fake news out there today that I couldn’t get it all in today if I tried. But I’m gonna try.

JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH: Open Line Friday. Happy to have you with us as we wrap up another busy broadcast week, El Rushbo firmly ensconced here, the distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Anti-Leftist Studies. It’s Open Line Friday, meaning anything you want to talk about is fine, does not have to be anything that interests me. It could be off-the-wall questions or comments, could be insults. You can call here and just try to make yourself sound like a camera shutter, if you want to. Snerdley will let you on. (laughing)

There’s some babe on CNN, some analyst, I just heard this literally in the last 30 seconds as the theme was playing. They’re analyzing — the Trump-Putin meeting is going on longer than — why is anybody surprised what’s going on in this meeting? Isn’t it obvious, Trump and Putin are already plotting the 2020 election, probably doing some things on the 2018 midterms. What else could be going on? What in the world else is there?

Russia is a-third-rate, Third World nation. What else is there to talk about but Russia colluding with future elections? (interruption) North Korea? The Russians have nothing to do with that. The Russians have nothing to do with the ChiComs. (interruption) Syria? Well, maybe Syria, but Trump’s gonna ace ’em out on energy delivery to nations like Poland, Latvia, Slovenia, and so forth.

Anyway, this business with Russia has been so overblown. They’re no different now than we were in the Soviet Union. They still are a Third World economy with a First World military and a KGB agent that runs the country with his oligarch buddies and their giant mega yachts all over the world throwing parties for models. That’s pretty much what Russia is. There’s a little bit of exaggeration in there.

I don’t know who this woman is, I’ve never seen her before. She’s on a CNN panel right now, and you know what she said? (imitating reporter) “I was really surprised when I saw Putin and Trump get together. I expected a steely confidence from Putin, and I didn’t see that. I saw Putin not confident at all. He was looking down. He couldn’t look Trump in the eye.” Of course the truth is Putin would have to stare at the sky to look Trump in the eye because Putin is a shrimp compared to Trump. What is Putin, 5’5? People don’t know this but he could slither into a tank here with no problem whatsoever. He’s a tiny guy.

But how about that? “I was expecting Putin to be looking at Trump with steely confidence, and I didn’t see that, and I’m very worried. Trump seemed to tower over Putin and then Putin was looking down like he was not confident.” What in the world? Did they expect Putin as this dynamic world leader that’s gonna come in and stare down Trump and expose Trump for the pretender that he is?

I’ll tell you, to have an attitude like that, you have to have literally no concept of your own country. You have no knowledge, you have no belief, you have no sense of your own country’s superpower status. You have no sense of how our country is viewed by everybody else in the world. Yeah, we may be everybody else’s enemy but they look upon us with envy like you can’t believe. And in some cases, that envy leads to jealousy and from envy and jealousy you can have some very bad things, characteristics.

But the idea that in these people’s minds the United States is the problem in the world and people like Vladimir Putin offer the solutions or the ChiCom leaders offer the solutions or Hugo Chavez? It is just striking to me. And I guess it shouldn’t be. I’ll never forget, during the Gulf War, Bernard Shaw, who was then a prime time news anchor at CNN, he ended up in the al-Rashid Hotel during the first bombing run.

This is not 2003. This is back in the nineties. This is George H. W. Bush. We were kicking Iraq out of Kuwait. Some of you may not even have been born then. The assault started and Bernard Shaw was in a hotel that was in an area of Baghdad that was being assaulted, being attacked by us, and he had a producer and so forth.

We got them out. We brought Bernard Shaw home and he refused to share intel with the American military because he said, as a journalist, I can’t choose sides. As an American journalist, I can’t help the U.S. military because that would be compromising my sacred journalistic principles and standards. Meaning, I don’t have a stake in the outcome here.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when a panelist at CNN thinks that Putin is the strongman, that Putin is the alpha male, that Putin is the dominant figure, and that Trump’s the one that ought to be weaseling up there and asking for permission to be in Putin’s presence. How in the world can you look at this and be disappointed that Putin did not have steely confidence and that Putin was looking down?

And I maintain that these people do not look at the United States the way you and I do, folks. They don’t revere it. They don’t hold it in awe, nothing close to it. They take whatever freedoms they enjoy for granted and then focus on what they believe are the problems in the world caused by the United States.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Did you see what Mikhail Gorbachev said? Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the last president of the Soviet Union. He was president of the Soviet Union when it imploded. He was president of the Soviet Union when the Berlin Wall came down. Mikhail Gorbachev said, “It was good! It’s good that Trump and Putin are getting together. It’s good that Trump and Putin are speaking, because these two people need to get together and jointly solve the problems of the world.” I said, “Wait a minute. If Gorbachev is saying it’s good that Putin and Trump get together and meet, it must mean that they have haven’t gotten together and met before.

“And if they haven’t gotten together and met before, then maybe they didn’t collude to keep Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office.” I wonder in Gorbachev realizes he put his foot in another sack of manure that we’re stacking here in front of leftists and they just keep stepping in it? Snerdley, how many people do you think will believe me when I said that the meeting between Putin and Trump is going long because they’re obviously plotting the 2020 presidential election? (interruption) It was Jackie Calmes. That’s who.

Jackie Calmes at the LA Times said she was saddened to see Putin not looking confident when he met Trump. She expected a steely confidence from Putin, and she didn’t see it, and she was distressed. She said she was surprised. Putin kept looking at the ground; he was looking down. She was expecting a dominant Putin. I don’t know what she thought Putin was gonna do, but she was very distressed that Putin came off as the second-tier leader in the meeting. (interruption) No, I won’t be surprised. You know, I was toying with them.

But I won’t be surprised if at some point later today, tomorrow or over the weekend, that it shows up on some media site that I suggested that the reason the meeting between Trump and Putin went long is ’cause they’re plotting the ’20. Because these people believe it! These people like at CNN? They literally… They have immersed themselves in it for so long now; they literally believe that’s the explanation for the election last November.

And if you have that, if that’s your foundational belief, then somebody like me comes along that they are inclined to hate… But when it serves their purposes, they will give me credit as brilliant and a strategist. “Limbaugh knows. Limbaugh knows what’s going on. Limbaugh let the cat out of the bag! Trump and Putin got together and they’re plotting 2020 or maybe even the 2018 midterms — and maybe, maybe, maybe Trump was asking Putin if he found Hillary’s 33,000 emails. And if he did, would he let Trump see them? That’s probably on the agenda.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s the Jackie Calmes sound bite from CNN. I saw this literally as the theme for this program was playing a little after noon today, like 12:06. It’s the Inside Politics, LA Times “White House editor” (White House editor? Whatever) Jackie Calmes, and she’s discussing her disappointment at the way Vladimir Putin projected in his meeting with the Trumpster.

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: A-ha! I wonder why? (laughing) Does she realize what she just said? She said that (summarized), “When Putin was in a room with Obama, he sat back; he had not a care in the world. It was almost like he was disrespecting Obama! He was just telegraphing disrespect. But it was a different Putin that I saw with Trump. He looked down a lot. There was no steely confidence.” Can I tell you the truth about something here? Drive-Bys are breathlessly — their tongues are on the floor (panting) — waiting for the news that they crave, and that is that Putin told Trump that he thinks it’s a mistake that he helped him get elected and he’s gonna destroy him. They think something like that’s gonna come out of the meeting.

The truth is the Russian economy is a disaster.

It is terrible.

And the economic news of the United States, which I’m gonna get to quickly, is booming, contrary to New York Times expectations just yesterday. Here’s the truth: The Russian economy is half the size of France’s economy. India, at present, has a stronger economy than Russia. The second thing is: Putin knows damn well he did not collude to ensure Trump’s victory. Putin knows damn well he had nothing to do with the outcome of our election, and he knows that he needs Trump. He knows that he needs a good relationship with the United States as his country sputters from high energy costs, sanctions, low employment. You’ve been so lied to (we all have) about this.

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RUSH: Here’s Donald Trump back in January — January 11th, 2017 — President-Elect Trump at Trump Tower. A reporter says, “If you believe that Russia was behind the hacking, what is your message to Vladimir Putin right now?”

THE PRESIDENT: Russia will have far greater respect for our country when I’m leading it. And I believe, and I hope. Maybe it won’t happen; it’s possible.

RUSH: “Russia will have far greater respect for our country when I’m leading it.” Jackie Calmes today, “I was surprised to see Putin didn’t have that steely-eyed confidence. He was looking down not at Trump.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I could never do this. I could never do what… Now they gotta go to this dinner. The last thing I would want to do is go to the G20 dinner. After a full day sitting around smoking these guys and BS-ing these guys and having to sit there and put up with all this, to have to go to dinner and sit there for three hours? Man, I am so glad I am not in that. It’s the last thing I would want to do. I’m watching Trump and Melania roll up to dinner in a limousine and I’m saying, “I am so, so happy.” I couldn’t do it. I need time to myself. I can’t. A whole day with these people, and then dinner with them?

But that’s just me.

The Trump-Putin meeting went over two hours. The Drive-Bys thought it would be 20 minutes, 20 to 25 minutes. It went over two hours, and they are desperate to find out what happened. They just can’t… They just (hyperventilating). “Putin wasn’t supposed to want to spend that much time with Trump! Putin was supposed to walk out in at least a half hour. Putin was supposed to…” It just isn’t going the way they had it planned. It’s just not going the way they envisioned it. I don’t know, folks. It’s so comical to watch this.

Now they’ve got analysts from the Middle East think tanks coming in to talk about it. (interruption) How long before the transcript of the meeting is leaked? (laughing) Well, I’ll tell you, the only people in the meeting were Trump and Tillerson and Putin and Sergey Lavrov, who’s the foreign minister, and a couple translators. That was it. In diplomatic terms, this is called “a very intimate setting.” There were not a lot of hangers-on in there. There were not a lot of schlubs. There were not a lot of second-, third-tier deputy assistant first stringers or any of that in there.

It was just Trump and Tillerson and Putin and his foreign minister and whatever translators. And I think… Let me check something. I see here that U.S. and Russia have reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria, which is to take effect Sunday at noon in Damascus. Now, the Drive-Bys think there was nothing that was gonna happen in the meeting. I want to make sure I’m reading this right. I need to double-check this, ’cause I haven’t… I just got a flash note here that I have to double check.

Anyway, let me tell you the reality of these kind of summits. All of the agreements, if there are any, happen long before the summit happens, or you don’t do the summit. You don’t do the deal, and that’s why all this stuff is… Like if there is in fact an agreement on a ceasefire in Damascus, that happened long before Trump got off the plane. That did not happen in the meeting today. They want to make it look like it happened in the meeting today. There’s some exceptions to that. I mean, Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik.

Gorbachev tried to pull a couple fast ones in that one, and Reagan failed to go along with it. Reagan didn’t fail. I mean, Reagan held Gorbachev off, and that got George Shultz who was secretary of state at the time had to go out and say, “I have never been prouder of my president than today.” ‘Cause Gorbachev attempted to come up with a deal where we would get rid of all of our nukes and they would say they would get rid of all of theirs, and Reagan didn’t fall for it.

Let’s go to the audio. Everybody’s commenting on this because of the camera shutters, and you really can’t hear too much of what’s said. But I have the transcript and I’ll be able to share with you. First up Trump at the G20 summit, as he and Putin meet. It’s the long-awaited meeting where Putin and Trump will discuss the Russians’ collusion on the election in 2016. They’re speaking with reporters about the meeting, and here’s a little of what Trump said…

THE PRESIDENT: (camera shutters throughout) President Putin and I have been discussing various things, and I think it’s going very well. We’ve had some very, very good talks. We’re gonna have a talk now, and obviously that will continue. But we look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, the United States, and for everybody concerned. And it’s an honor to be with you.

RUSH: “And it’s an honor to be with you.” Trump said to Putin, “It’s an honor to be with you.” This didn’t… Grab sound bite number three. Norah O’Donnell at CBS did not like that.

O’DONNELL: There you hear from President Trump and the Russian President Putin with some short statements to the press before they begin a more extended meeting with the foreign minister and the secretary of state also there as part of the those meetings. But Trump beginning by saying, “It’s an honor to be with you.”

MAN: Mmm-hmpf!

RUSH: Right. Happy about that. It’s an honor to be with you? But why wouldn’t it be, Norah? I mean, he’s meeting with the guy that stole the election for him. Why wouldn’t it be an honor to meet with Putin? This is just so much fun. (interruption) You should see the people on the other side of the glass. “You better stop this. You’re gonna get quoted. You’re gonna become part of the story. You’re gonna be tagged as one of the people believes that Putin colluded, if you’re not careful.” I hope that happens, because you people in this audience will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what a bunch of absolute jokes the media is.

If they take — and they probably will, because, as I say, they have no sense of humor. I mean that in this way: They cannot sense it. When there is humor, it just sails right by them. And particularly if they are the targets, if they are the object of the humor, and if they do happen to get it, and they get livid and they get mad.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: “Gorbachev Urges Trump and Putin to ‘Rebuild Trust‘ — The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, on Thursday urged Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to restore trust between the United States and Russia a day ahead of their first meeting in Hamburg. ‘Above all it is good that this meeting is finally happening, but a shame that it is only coming now,’ Gorbachev told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. ‘A lot of time has been lost that they need to make up for.'”

Which means — may I translate this for you? — this means that Mikhail Gorbachev does not believe that Trump and Putin colluded on the election. They’ve never spoken. They’ve never met, and Gorbachev thinks that’s not good. They need to speak sooner. They need to have met sooner.

So why isn’t the media trumpeting this? Why isn’t the media drawing a conclusion. “Well, if Gorbachev says they need to get together ’cause they haven’t got together and they should have gotten together long ago but they didn’t –” Well, I could see how the media would slither out of this. “Well, we never said that Putin actually colluded with Trump. Could be Trump officials or whatever.”

“Ties between Moscow and Washington are at their lowest point since Gorbachev helped drag them out of the deep freeze in the 1980s.” That’s the French News Agency. Gorbachev didn’t drag the Soviet Union out of the deep freeze. This is history revisionism par excellence. Mikhail Gorbachev knew that the Soviet Union’s days were numbered. What Gorbachev tried to do was to introduce market economic reforms while maintaining a communist government. And it had no chance. There was no prayer. He wanted to retain the privileges for himself and the Politburo, and he wanted to maintain a steely-eyed vision and control over the population.

But their department stores were empty. Their grocery stores were empty. People were starving. They’d been told the U.S. was a hellhole and then they began to see videotapes of the TV show Dallas and soap operas, and they realized they had been lied to by the Soviet Union and the leadership for long. Gorbachev got credit for Glasnost, for Perestroika, and Gorbachev was being given credit for making sure Reagan didn’t nuke the world, and it was the exact opposite.

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RUSH: Okay. We were correctamente. The United States and Russia agreed on a ceasefire in southwest Syria. That would be Trump and Putin have agreed on a ceasefire. The deal comes as Putin and Trump meet for the first time in Germany on the sidelines of the Group of 20 Summit. Ceasefire set to take effect at noon Sunday, Damascus time.