RUSH: So President Trump went ahead and admitted his mistake, and all has been forgiven. Right? So now we’re back — (interruption) Wait. What? It hasn’t been forgiven, you say? You mean to tell me that, after President Trump walked it back, they’re still beating up on him over this? Why, you could have fooled me. Are you kidding me? The president gave them what they wanted, and they’re still riled up about it? How can that be?

Welcome, my friends. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, behind the Golden EIB Microphone, yet another three hours of broadcast excellence hosted by me. And if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882. If you want to send an email, it’s ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

Yeah, I thought for sure that if Trump just would say what they were telling him to say that all this would go away and we’d get back to destroying Kavanaugh — uh, wait. Wait. No. We’re not gonna get back to destroying Kavanaugh because that’s partly what this is all about!

I run the risk of creating friction with certain friends. But I need to ask a couple of questions. I have some people asking me, they’re not anti-Trump like the Never Trumpers are. They may not be enthusiastic Trump supporters, but they vastly prefer Trump to any of the Democrats. But they’re still deeply troubled by what happened or didn’t happen in Helsinki vis-a-vis Trump and Putin.

And I guess the way to generalize the question I’m being asked is, “Why can’t Trump just understand that he can bifurcate this? Why can’t Trump just understand that he can go ahead and admit that the Russians meddled in the election and understand that that is not conceding that the Russians had anything to do with his victory. Why can’t Trump admit that the Russians were actually trying to hurt Hillary because the Russians expected her to win, nobody thought Trump was gonna win, none of this was about Trump. Why can’t he go ahead and admit that?”

I tell you. Here’s my question. Whom are we trying to placate in having Trump admit this? What’s the objective? Is it the American people? By the way, Snopes — you know the fact check site? — this is how this propaganda spreads. Snopes has a page up: If the president is convicted of treason, does that mean we get to get rid of everybody in his administration. And the answer is sadly, no. But they’re already up and running with this.

But hang on, folks. It’s not as bad as you think out there. There are still two or three different Americas, and the deep state part of America really doesn’t have any idea what’s happening in much of the rest of the country, as I will demo in mere moments.

But, no, seriously. Who are we trying to placate? Or when I say “we,” who are we trying to calm down by having Trump just admit, just admit that the Russians meddled and that Putin was trying to hurt Hillary because he was trying to hurt who they thought was gonna win, why is it so important that Trump do this? I mean, whom is this aimed at? Who we trying to placate?

Well, the answer seems obvious to me: the media. Now, some people might say, “Well, no, not just the media, Rush. We got half the Republican leadership fit to be tied over this. Trump needs to calm down his own party.” Something about this — we can’t placate the media. There is literally no way, and today’s news — I’m just gonna go through part of the Stack today, just reading headlines, maybe first paragraph — there’s no placating media.

There’s no making this go away. There’s no, quote, unquote, fixing this because there’s no way to ratchet down the efforts underway by the American left to send President Trump back to New York out of office. There’s nothing he can do or say that’s gonna calm that down. So are we trying to placate Putin? Are we trying to placate world opinion? Are we trying to stave off World War III? What are we trying to do? What’s the point here?

Let me grab an audio sound bite. I think it’s Fran Townsend. Let me find Fran Townsend. Number 14, audio sound bite number 14. This is Fran Townsend. She was in the Bush administration, foreign policy something or other. She was on CBS This Morning with John Dickerson. She’s a counterterrorism adviser to George W. Bush.

The question: “You saw the president make his remarks yesterday. What do you believe he thinks about Russian interference in the election and current Russian –” See, “current.” Oh. Folks, you won’t — every sentence I utter reminds me of something I’ve got in the Stack. I’ve gotta be very disciplined here to stay focused.

There’s a gigantic piece on CNN today, on their website, some guy has written a piece. He’s just discovered the Russians have a gigantic bot program designed to cause American blacks to leave the Democrat Party. It’s the Russians. And this guy’s fit to be tied. He’s assuring CNN readers it isn’t gonna work. But the Russians are out there trying to separate Latino voters and African-American voters from the Democrat Party. It’s got a hashtag. Man, the Russians are just everywhere. The Russians are running America, if you didn’t know any better.

Anyway, here’s Fran Townsend. Question: “You saw the president making his remarks yesterday. What do you believe he thinks about Russian interference and the election and current Russian interference?”

TOWNSEND: He conflates collusion with meddling and the effect on the election. These are three separate things. The Russians interfered in the 2016 election and they continue meddling to this day. The intelligence community made no assessment of the effect of that meddling on the 2016 results, and Bob Mueller hasn’t opined yet about collusion. So these are separate things the president seemed to conflate. The intelligence folks are in there for like two hours a day talking to him. So I’m quite sure that he’s been briefed about it. It’s hard to understand why he always hedges here.

RUSH: You know, Fran Townsend worked for Bush, and as I say, I have to be very judicious about this, but this kind of thinking about the media, this kind of abject ignorance about the media is why they were able to drive her boss’s approval numbers down to the high twenties. I’m sorry, but I just have to say it. The president she worked for got knocked down to 28, 27% approval. It was worth nothing but a solid five hours of reporting on CNN when it happened.

And it’s all rooted in thinking you can placate the media. It’s all rooted in thinking that you can tame them. It’s all rooted in thinking you can make them like you! Which seems to me to be a Republican obsession now and then. There’s no evidence that it will ever work, no evidence that it ever has worked, and yet it seems to be a primary objective.