RUSH: I’ve not changed my mind on this at all, folks. I’m telling you there’s one thing, and look, I mean, I’d be the first to admit that this whole Comey sideshow is loaded with stuff. But to me there is one thing in this that stands out above everything else, that demonstrates what’s going on here.

Greetings. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh behind the golden microphone here at the EIB Network. Eager to get started. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

I will refresh your memory on what that one thing is in due course. We’ve got Comey sound bites and people reacting to Comey. I mean, it’s out there. The TV ratings are in on his appearance with Stephanopoulos last night: 9.7 million people, the CMAs, the Country Music Awards had 12 million, and we don’t yet know what the Walking Dead finale was. That was last night too. We’ll supposedly get the numbers on Tuesday. I guess 9.7 million, 10 million’s not chump change. It’s not as large as CNN got for the Make America Horny Again Tour with Stormy Daniels.

And then of that 10 million, you cannot assume that all 10 million agree with and/or like Comey. In the meantime, Trump’s approval number continues to go up. In another poll, more and more people, including Democrats, are crediting Trump for the economy.

And in the generic ballot where the Democrats and the media think because of the generic ballot there’s gonna be this blue wave in November, the Democrats are gonna win. In fact, they already have, if you listen to them. They’re gonna win the House. They’re gonna win the Senate. They’re gonna impeach Trump and then they’re gonna somehow put a Democrat in the White House after they dispatch Trump and Pence and whoever else. I mean, they’re gonna own America after November. They’ve got it, they’re making book on it already.

The generic ballot continues to close. The Democrats now only have a like a three- or four-point lead in the generic ballot, down from 15 points or higher last December. So when you look — again, remember my side-by-side comparison. Over here the real America and the people who make it work, and over here the Drive-By Media and the swamp and everybody that is guided by, influenced by, pays attention to that. There’s not much overlap here.

While all of this is going on over here to destroy Trump and everybody with him, Trump’s numbers continue to improve, Trump’s approval and handling of the economy continues to improve, and the Democrats’ grasp on the generic ballot continues to slip. The two don’t make sense. Over here with the Drive-By Media it is nothing for the last year and a half, nothing but a full-fledged, never-stopping assault on Trump.

You would figure over here on the side where America gets up and goes to work every day, makes the country work, you would think that all of that negative attention, would be causing Trump to lose support. And you would think that James Comey would be loved and adored by everybody, when he goes on TV would have far and away the biggest ratings, the highest audience. It isn’t happening, just isn’t happening. And the Democrats and the media are counting a lot of chickens here before they’ve hatched.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you noticed how quickly, I mean, instantly the Drive-By Media has stopped reporting about Trump’s attack on Syria? You can’t find anything about it! You can’t find anything about anything other than Comey today. The attack began Friday evening, and by Saturday morning it was already pretty much disappeared from the headlines. I wonder why that is?

Do you have a theory, Mr. Snerdley? (interruption) Because it was so successful. But wait a minute, Mr. Snerdley. I thought, ’cause I got up, you know, I paid attention to it like everybody else. And the news media that I saw found all these so-called conservatives that were just livid at Trump for violating a major campaign promise, ’cause he wasn’t gonna do this. He wasn’t gonna go to Syria and drop bombs. He wasn’t gonna go anywhere in the Mideast and drop bombs.

He was gonna save the money on those bombs, spend it on America and fix immigration, build a wall and get rid of all of the trade deals that are bad. I mean, there were a couple of Republicans who were highlighted, conservatives, as saying, “This is it for me. I can’t have it anymore. Trump’s abandoned me. Trump’s violated a promise.” Did you see any of those stories? Yes, you did.

So you saw those stories about how, once again, Trump is becoming an endangered species even among his own supporters. Two or three people, “He promised he wasn’t gonna be like Obama. He promised he was gonna bomb the hell out of ISIS.” But, anyway, I mean, so you had two or three conservatives: “I don’t know what happened.” And that became the focus of the news. But that even has been abandoned. That didn’t go anywhere.

You know, the way the media works, they go out, they find a couple conservatives who throw Trump overboard and they think that’s gonna start a cascade of Trump supporters here, Fox News, elsewhere, throwing Trump overboard. They’re hoping that they can generate such action and thus a story about it. Didn’t happen. The Syria operation, whatever it was, no way to report that negatively about Trump. So they’ve dropped it. I mean, it’s just gone.

I think part of the disappointment in the media was that the Russians didn’t shoot down our missiles. The Russians didn’t attack the ships that launched like the media — well, I don’t want to say the media’s been hoping for, but the media wants Trump to lose no matter what he does. So Trump launches the attack on Syria, and they’re desperately hoping that Putin, who, in their perverted minds, has still got leverage on Trump, Putin is still able to blackmail Trump. And Comey is even out there alleging that, that he thinks Putin has leverage over Trump.

This whole thing, folks, it’s such a teachable moment. And I know you’re probably bored by all the Comey stuff, but bear with me on it today at least because there’s so much not only to learn, but to use as an exclamation point on things already mentioned that Comey and his supporters are proving.

And, by the way, he also has his share of detractors in the swamp who are not happy about this because, like I told you on Friday, a lot of these people, and particularly in the media, thought Comey had a bombshell, thought that he had a smoking gun, thought that he had a silver bullet that he was waiting to reveal it in the book, because they think that somebody is gonna find the smoking gun: Russian collusion.

They think somebody’s gonna find the silver bullet. They think somebody’s gonna find it. They thought Comey was gonna reveal it. Comey’s book has nothing in it that he hasn’t already said. In fact, Comey… If he were Scooter Libby or Michael Flynn or Manafort, Comey would have his own set of problems, because Comey has essentially published a 300-page dossier on an ongoing investigation. There is an ongoing investigation.

Whether it’s bogus or not, it is ongoing, and Comey has just vomited all over it by revealing a bunch of it. Much of this is in violation of Justice Department and FBI guidelines. So since Putin didn’t shoot down our missiles, since Putin didn’t fire back at Trump, since Putin didn’t escalate things, the media is disappointed again and let down. I suspect one of the reasons is that for anybody sitting up and taking notice, this completely undercuts the entire Trump-Russia collusion story yet again, is what this Syria attack does.

If Putin had colluded with Trump to secure the election and Putin has the proof, then there is no way any of all of this is happening. There is no way Putin sits there and lets this happen in Syria. There is no way that it even gets to that point, because Putin… If he’s got the goods, if there was collusion and he can prove it, then Putin would reveal it, could reveal it at any time. Trump would know that Putin could reveal it at any time; Trump, therefore, would not want to provoke Putin in any way. Therefore we would not be provoking Russia.

None of this makes any sense whatsoever if indeed there was Trump-Putin collusion on the election. And that is why the Syria story, among many other reasons, dropped as though it never even happened. Because to anybody sitting up and taking notice, this completely undercuts the entire Trump-Russia collusion story yet again. As I so humbly noted last week, “How can anyone…? How can anyone explain Putin allowing his favorite client state, Syria, to be bombed — probably even some of his own soldiers killed — without retaliating?

And what better way to retaliate than to announce to the world that, yes, he and Trump really did collude to defeat Hillary and here’s the proof. Why not do that, if he’s got it? That’d be the end of Trump. That would be the end. Pfft! I mean, Vladimir Putin would be the Man of the Year for the next 10. In fact, they would probably give Vladimir Putin TIME magazine and say, “Here, Dude! You own it. Write about whatever you want. We’re so happy with you that we’ll give you TIME magazine, and you can be Man of the Year for as many years as you want to be.”

And Putin wouldn’t even have to break a sweat to do any of that. So any rational person has to ask themselves, “Why would Putin allow himself and his country to be quasi-humiliated like this if the Russians have something on Trump as Comey is claiming?” Comey’s still out there claiming that he thinks that, oh, yeah, that Putin’s got some stuff! They’re still exercising leverage over Trump. Any rational person has to reply, “It’s because there never was any Trump-Russia collusion.

“It’s all one big, gigantic, destructive tissue of lies,” and one of the new lines of thinking — one of the new narratives about the dossier — is that it can’t be proven or disproven. Yes. In fact, that may be, and it is by design. This whole thing is a gigantic political operation. And it is designed to have a life span for as long as the Democrats want it to have a life span. It’s designed so that it really can’t be proven and, as Comey’s running around saying, “Mr. President, you can’t prove that didn’t happen. It’s very difficult to prove something that didn’t happen.”

But he did with Hillary! He exonerated Hillary. He said she didn’t do it, even before he interviewed her on the email scandal. So our heroic media have decided that they are not gonna be distracted by Trump’s Wag the Dog scenario. That’s another narrative about Syria. “It’s Wag the Dog! Trump is simply trying to distract from this killer book by James Comey,” and so the media instead is gonna go full throttle, 24/7 coverage of the courageous revelations of St. Comey.

Even though these revelations, I think, are gonna backfire when this is all said and done. It’s starting to even now in certain places. It’s gonna harm Comey in ways that I don’t think dreamed of. I think Comey has fallen prey to what a lot of people get sucked in by. McCain, for example, thought the media loved him, and because McCain thought the media loved him, McCain thought he was untouchable. McCain thought that meant that a majority of the American people would love him.

So many people on our side crave the approval of the media, crave puff pieces from the media, crave respect from the media — and if they get some, then they think everybody who reads it is gonna agree with it and they think the majority of people consume Drive-By Media. I think Comey is a classic example of somebody who’s bought totally into his press clippings, and I think he believes that the American people look at him as a singular hero on a mission to save the nation and the Constitution from Donald Trump, and I think he believes that everybody looks at him that way.

And I think he believes that outside of his description of what would be fringe players, he thinks the vast majority of the American people are very appreciative of what he’s doing, that they understand his supreme intellect. I think he’s bought hook, line, and sinker into it. And when that happens to you, you automatically block reality. And that’s when you learn the biggest lessons. If you create these false, secure enclaves in which you live and thrive based on media coverage or external, outside approval?

You make the mistake of assuming it’s representative of a vast majority of people either in your town, at your office or in your country? That’s where Comey is right now. He’s going to be shocked at some point to find out just how unimportant a whole bunch of people end up thinking he is.