RUSH: Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want to go back to Friday on this program, because the CNN story is that we were talking about for much of the last two hours of the program, we didn’t learn the full scope of what had happened until after the program was over. So let’s go back and let us relive that moment on Friday when we learned that CNN was reporting that the Trump administration had been offered WikiLeaks data about 10 days before it was posted on WikiLeaks.
CNN claimed to have an exclusive, and they reported it breathlessly, and they could not wait to make the connection that this was evidence. Remember we had David Gregory. We played the sound bite from David Gregory, “This is proof! This is collusion!” All of CNN was going nuts. Every panel discussion, every guest, they couldn’t wait — and, folks, everybody’s trying to understand how this happened. I am watching over the weekend as media analysts, media critics try to find out what happened.
What did happen is this: There was an email sent by somebody that nobody had ever heard of, a guy named Erickson. The email was to Mr. Trump, and it advised him that some WikiLeaks data — or some data — was on WikiLeaks, and there was a link to it for the recipient to click on and to be able to read what it was. The date of the email was September the 14th. The WikiLeaks data was posted on September 13th. It was made public on the 13th.
So this guy’s email didn’t reveal anything. All it did was call the recipient’s attention to what had already been posted on WikiLeaks the day before. It was nothing more than a fan. I get these kinds of emails all the time. I get ’em every day. I get emails from people who think I don’t read the paper/watch TV telling me what’s going on in the news. Every day! People who know me, who know I read the news and whatever, send me emails, “You may not know about this.” Everybody wants to get in on the act.
Well, this is what one of these emails were. Nobody knows who this guy was. It might have been a Trump fan, Trump supporter. He sent the email to Trump and Trump Jr. and advised them that WikiLeaks posted some stuff. But CNN totally lied about this. CNN changed the date to September the 4th. In their reporting, they said, two sources… They still will not name the sources. Two sources told them that this email was written on September 4th, nine or 10 days before this data was going to be posted on WikiLeaks.
This data supposedly was the result of the Russian hacking of the Democrat National Committee. I want to point something out. Let me take a little brief departure here for a second, ’cause this is really, really relevant. Do you know that even as we sit here today there has yet to be…? Now, you’re gonna think I’m repeating myself, and maybe so, but I want to put a different spin on this. Do you realize sitting here today, after over a year, there still is not a shred of evidence that the Russians hacked anything? There are suppositions. There are allegations. There are indications.
But there is not a single shred of evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC server, that the Russians had anything to do with the phishing attack on John Podesta resulting in his emails being made public. There isn’t a shred of evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians on anything. But that jumps the gun. Because, folks, if there is no evidence — and there isn’t yet. Everybody’s been operating on the come, so to speak. Everybody’s been operating here on the supposition that the Russians were hacking everything.
There is not a single shred of evidence anywhere, and the deep state has even admitted this in all of those various newspaper stories that ran all during the first three months of last year. In every one of those stories there was a little line buried there that despite all these leaks, despite the greatest guesses from our intelligence people, still no evidence. There isn’t any. Therefore, if there is no evidence — if we cannot say for certain in a legal sense that the Russians hacked anything — then it follows by way of logic that it is impossible for Trump to have colluded with this that did not happen.
Now, particularly from a court of law. Let’s talk about Mueller here for a minute. Mueller is out operating on what? Nothing! He was not given a crime to chase. Department of Justice regulations require that a special counsel be told of a crime that we know happened and then to investigate it. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who — to appease mad Democrats — named Mueller as independent counsel, did not name a crime. There isn’t a crime. Nobody knows what the crime was. So Mueller is investigating supposed collusion between Trump and Russia over something nobody can prove.
If Mueller had to take this case to court — if Mueller had to take this case to a grand jury or a real jury — he wouldn’t get an indictment or he wouldn’t get a conviction because he cannot prove, nobody can prove that the Russians hacked anything. Andy McCarthy has a big, protracted piece on this today at National Review Online. I was chatting with him back in March about this, and there was something about… I don’t remember what was going on then, but I got very frustrated. I sent him a note.
I said, “Would you tell me, what’s the hack?” We’re talking about this “Russian hack.” We were back in March, the Russian collusion. What was the hack? Everybody thinks the Russians hacked the DNC server network and tried to hack the Republicans’, but there isn’t any proof of it. And the Democrats will not let the FBI, never have let the FBI examine their server forensically, their computer. So we don’t know. Do you realize this news story for a year that you’ve been following breathlessly on a quotidian basis has no evidence behind it?
There isn’t a single shred of evidence that the Russians hacked anything.
All of this is completely manufactured. Now, there’s some people who know this and say this, but they have to be deferential to the intelligence community, and so they follow up with the caveat, “I’m sure there’s something to this. I have no doubt the Russians are indeed trying to impact our elections. So are the ChiComs and so are the North Koreans.” There isn’t any evidence. There is none. Mueller could not get any evidence that the hack even happened before a jury. There isn’t any. Therefore, how could Trump have colluded with something that didn’t happen?
Therefore what Mueller is doing is not the investigation of a crime. What Mueller is doing is pursuing an impeachment. There is no two ways about it now. I didn’t have any doubt about it last week, but this perspective on this. So this brings us back to CNN. There is no evidence. You know what else? If we’re gonna suppose that there was collusion, that the Russians hacked or whatever — and that’s all it is — let me tell you what you get when there is no evidence of Russian hackery, when there is no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion in this mythical hackery.
You know what you get? You get fake news. You get Brian Ross lying in a report about General Flynn’s plea bargain. Brian Ross lied through his teeth when he said that Trump, as a candidate, made Flynn call the Russians. Reuters and Bloomberg published a false report about a subpoena for Trump’s financial dealings with a German bank. That didn’t happen. CNN lies about Donald Trump Jr. getting early notice of emails posted on WikiLeaks with the encryption key to open the file.
That didn’t happen! Donald Trump Jr. got nothing in advance of anything that was made public. And then Dave Weigel of the Washington Post posted a phony photo of the Trump rally in Pensacola on Friday before people were even let in, pictures of empty seats. Weigel wanted people to believe that nobody cared about the Trump rally. That’s what you get. You get lying, fake news when there isn’t any collusion and when there isn’t any evidence of any collusion.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a quick question for CNN and all the rest of you Drive-By Media types. You’re telling us these mistakes you’re making are honest. Yeah, you’re just trying so hard to be good journalists. Let me ask you: How many totally lying, erroneous, false, damaging, defamatory stories about Barack Obama ran in eight years? Hmm? How many times in your quest to be over-the-top fair and to get it right did you run defamatory stories that did damage to Barack Obama? Answer: Zero.
How many erroneous, lying-through-your-teeth, defamatory, damaging stories have you run on Trump in under two years? The answer is too many to count on two hands. It simply is untrue. David Frum was on CNN yesterday. Do you know what he said about this? David Frum said that CNN’s errors on the story they reported Friday were due to its CNN trying too hard to be fair to Trump. He said, “The worst mistakes the press organizations have made in the coverage of Trump has precisely occurred in their effort to be fair to the president.”
And then he said that erroneous, lying, BS stories like the one CNN ran Friday are exactly why you should trust the Drive-By Media. What in the world has happened to David Frum? This guy used to be a so-called conservative, used to be a speechwriter for George W. Bush. Now he’s carrying water for outright liars in the Drive-By Media. Trump Derangement Syndrome is what’s going on here. How in the world can you say that CNN getting this wrong — purposefully so with no effort to really confirm it — is a reason to trust them because they’re trying so hard to be fair to Trump.
How does that work?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: How much fake news appeared about Barack Obama from anybody in the Drive-By Media over eight years? The answer is zero. You can’t think of one. You can’t think of a single episode such as the four I just mentioned. Bloomberg CNN, the ABC Brian Ross, never once was there fake news about Barack Obama.
Let’s do it another way. How much news, how many reports have the Drive-By Media done on Donald Trump where they made a mistake that helps him? Never.
Now, the problem with what CNN did on Friday is that it went around the world and was absorbed by low-information voters all over the world before any kind of an admission or correction was made. As far as CNN’s concerned, mission accomplished.
It really is professional malpractice, what CNN and ABC and all of the rest of them are engaging in. Brian Stelter had his show on Sunday, CNN Reliable Sources, and said (imitating Stelter), “Yeah, yeah, it’s a black eye for CNN, but we’ll get over it, we’re trying real hard. This is something where we believed sources who had not lied to us in the past.” Well, who are these sources that couldn’t read the date on an email correctly?
There were two wild guesses about this. One is that CNN was set up by a bunch of Republicans. That somebody wanted to make CNN look bad and purposely gave them an incorrect date. That theory was quickly discarded, because it looks like the two sources are either congressional staffers on House committees, you know, committees in the House of Representatives or the actual members of Congress themselves. CNN will not say. They don’t want to out their sources and few journalists ever do. But they had to be Democrats, and they were either members of the Intelligence Committee or staffers on the Intelligence Committee.
They fed this to CNN. They describe this email. They think they’re sitting on — what did I tell you? Do not discount this. If you want to understand these people. Remember, I am the guy, I say with no ego here, I’m the guy who told you that day when Brian Ross reported that Trump, as a candidate, had told Michael Flynn to call the Russians, I told you to disregard it, that it couldn’t be true, that it was Brian Ross. And a few short hours later it was demonstrated that that was exactly what had happened. Brian Ross lied and then fostered it off on his source misleading him, and then the source corrected him- or herself.
You blame a source? There’s no way you blame a source. You’re supposed to confirm what the source says. You’re supposed to track it down. I don’t care how reliable a source is. You don’t run it, if you’re responsible, until you’ve confirmed what the source is saying, and not just once, but hopefully two or three times and then independently.
There wasn’t any confirmation. There wasn’t an attempt to confirm. CNN just blindly accepted whatever these two lackeys told them because these people are probably in daily communication with CNN, providing Democrat talking points, evidence of what’s being said in the Intelligence Committee hearings and so forth.
What did I tell you? Folks, do not discount this. If you’re looking for a reason to explain why news organizations could be this bad, it’s purposeful. They aren’t this bad, in terms of lack of talent, ability, or — they know exactly what they’re doing. And they don’t care. They know full well that it’s a success if they get a lie out there all over the world for seven hours before they correct it, because the agenda is to get Trump.
And so anything that is done to further that agenda is justified. But I believe that they have been swallowed whole by the entire effort here. It’s been going on for so long now. Remember, it’s all about Trump stealing the election from Hillary. It’s all about Trump not really winning. It’s all about Trump cheating. It’s all about the Russians hating Hillary and wanting Trump to win. It’s all about their candidate losing. It’s all about Obama’s agenda losing. It’s all about that. None of it was supposed to happen. They thought they had beat Trump easily with the Access Hollywood video, thought it was over. Trump wins, they haven’t been able to accept it.
So here comes this new narrative that the whole thing was rigged when the only thing that was rigged was the Democrat primary. And where we are now is that every day — pick a name. Chuck Todd, Brian Stelter, pick a name, anybody you want, Wolf Blitzer. Pick a name. John Roberts. I don’t care who. They get up every day dreaming, hoping, believing that that day is going to be the day that the bombshell report is discovered and learned, that Trump colluded with Putin and that they cheated Hillary and stole the election.
They have been immersed in this for so long now that intellectually I think they believe it did happen. They are unable to separate fact from fiction. They have become the fiction. And they are embarked now on a course, a task to convert fiction into reality. It consumes them. They’re in competition with one another to be the person that finds the evidence that Trump colluded with Russia and that they stole the election from Hillary. Mind you, there isn’t any evidence and there won’t be because it didn’t happen. There isn’t any evidence now that the Russians are even the ones that did all the hacking that everybody’s talking about, and that’s not an insignificant thing, folks. That is a boldly significant fact. It’s a tremendously important thing to remember.
There isn’t a shred of evidence. We’ve been talking about something that everybody assuming the Russians did it, the Russians hacked this or that and that they continue to hack this or that, and the whole thing is manufactured. There isn’t any evidence. Intelligence people may have solid indications, but they couldn’t go to court to prove it, they couldn’t get a grand jury to get an indictment. They couldn’t prove this because there isn’t any evidence of it.
Yet these people get up — I’m sorry to repeat myself, but it’s necessary. They get up every day. It’s what gets them out of bed. It’s what gets their adrenaline going. It’s what keeps them going throughout the day. This is why CNN was able to do what they did Friday. They get up every day thinking that day is going to be the day when the bombshell news is discovered and Friday CNN thought they had it.
What did they think they had? They think somebody was able to prove that the Trump organization was given 10 days advance notice of what WikiLeaks was gonna post, and since WikiLeaks, according to the media, got all of its data from Russia, that’s not been proven, either, and Julian Assange has denied this every time he’s opened his mouth about this. It’s your choice to believe who. But there isn’t any evidence the Russians gave anything to WikiLeaks. There’s no evidence for anything that we’ve been operating under here.
But CNN thought, because they get up thinking every day’s gonna be the day, they get up hoping, they get up dreaming, they go to bed dreaming, they go to bed hoping that the next day is gonna be the day that they get Trump. And they’re gonna get a Pulitzer, and they’re gonna get a Nobel, and they’re gonna get a Kennedy Center honor, and they’re gonna be loved and adored. They’re gonna be the next Woodward and Bernstein.
They get up, they go to bed, and they dream of that happening each and every day, and they’ve done it for a year — 365 days and counting. So when somebody they trust (a staffer or member of the House Intelligence Committee) says, “Look at this email! Here’s an email from September 4th to Donald Trump Jr.! It’s from some guy we’ve never heard of, and he’s got the encryption key to unlock WikiLeaks data before WikiLeaks has it. This proves it!” Except the date was wrong. The date on the email was September 14th, one day after WikiLeaks made everything public.
By the time the Trumps got this letter, the stuff on WikiLeaks was already public for a day. This is more than “there is no ‘there’ there.” And as we sit here, CNN has not done anything other than issue a minor correction. They have said the reporter that reported this is under no duress, he’s not under any penalty, because the sources got it wrong. How easy is that to blame it on the sources! What is journalism but confirming what the sources tell you? They didn’t want to confirm it because they didn’t think they had to because they have come to believe what they have been lying about for over a year.
But again, strip it all away, and there still is no evidence that of all the hacking that supposedly went on, the Russians did it. None. Absolutely none. In fact, that email I sent to my buddy Andy McCarthy back in March asking where’s the hack, Andy? It must have been in reaction to a piece that he had just written. “Where’s the hack? What are we really talking about here?” And his response to me was, “It’s a great question,” because you realize we didn’t hear anything about this during the campaign. We heard that Trump might have been colluding, but we’ve never…
During the entire campaign, we never heard the Russians were trying to steal the election. We never heard that. You know why? Because the Clintons fully expected to win. The media fully expected to win. There was no way that they were gonna taint Hillary’s victory by suggesting it was the result of Russians hacking or meddling in the election. That did not surface as a narrative or media agenda until 24 hours after the election. Where was the hack? What is the hack?
All we have, the incontrovertible proof that we have is that the United States media is suffering embarrassing debacle after embarrassing debacle after embarrassing debacle. That’s the evidence we have. The evidence we have is that the Drive-By Media is lying, is making it up, is reporting indeed fake news. And now apologists are saying, yes… Here’s David Frum’s actual quote. “These mistakes,” meaning CNN’s error on Friday, getting that date wrong on the email, “are precisely the reason people should trust the media.”
Frum told Little Brian Stelter on CNN, “Astronomers make mistakes all the time, because science is a process of discovery and truth.” Frum said, “Faced with wrongdoing, circled by lies, the process of piercing lies to uncover the truth about the wrongdoing is inherently not only difficult, but adversarial because the people trying to find the truth are operating against bad-faith actors engaged in concealment.” This is Trump’s fault? CNN made its mistake because of working so hard to be fair but Trump’s making it impossible to be fair as journalists?
So because the CNN boldly lied about the news story they have and still will not come clean about what happened, this is why we’re supposed to trust the media? We’re supposed to trust them because we see them working so hard to put together pieces that the Trump administration is trying to keep secret? CNN got the date wrong on the email because Trump lies! Reuters got it wrong about Mueller subpoenaing Trump’s Deutsche Bank records because Trump lies. ABC Brian Ross got it wrong about candidate Trump ordering Flynn to call the Russkie ambassador because Trump lies. You see how this works?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, Trump has called Don Lemon of CNN the dumbest man on television and refuted a New York Times story that he drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day and watches eight hours of TV. And CNN, by the way, has had to walk back a story from last May on Jeff Sessions and illegal contact with the Russians. They’re just walking that story back today. Since May they had the grandest old time reporting that Sessions had illicit contact with Russians, part of his recusal from this investigation and all that rot.
Let me get back to the phones. Patty in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. I’m glad you called. Great to have you with us today. How are you?
CALLER: I’m doing fabulous, Rush. How about you?
RUSH: Fine and dandy. Thank you, ma’am.
CALLER: So the reason I’m calling is, you know, you were talking at the beginning of your show about the pictures that they had of the Trump rally in Pensacola.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: And wow, what fake news is that? Absolutely craziness. That place was packed to the gills, to the gills.
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you what it was. Are you seriously asking me what it was?
CALLER: No. It’s just ridiculous is what it is.
RUSH: It is. There’s a reporter for the Washington Post named Dave Weigel, a huge Never Trumper, hates Trump with a passion. So he took a picture. In fact, I don’t think it was his. I think it was somebody else, it was a picture of the place where Trump’s rally was to take place in Pensacola, before they’d opened the place up. It was a snapshot of a bunch of empty seats. And this guy tweeted it out as though it was from the rally, and nobody was there, and that nobody cared.
And of course the objective was to say that Trump’s popularity is fading, that he can’t draw a crowd anymore. And it was made up. It was a pre-rally photo. It was the same day, but it was before they let the people in. Trump called him out on it and Weigel had to do a tail-between-the-legs correction and so forth and blame it on a source or some such thing. Folks, they so desperately want all their lies to be true. That’s what’s driving it all.