RUSH: Okay. I’m about to run out of time; so here’s Mudd. Here’s Phil Mudd Friday night on CNN, and he’s with Paris Dennard, who’s the former Director of Black Outreach for George W. Bush. So he’s a conservative Republican, and the question. Jim Sciutto, CNN, says, “Why is he doing it? Why is he taking the clearance away from Brennan?”

DENNARD: A lot of these people that have these security clearances — and this is the secret in swampy Washington, D.C. — they have them, and they keep them because it’s profitable for them after they leave government. Because if you have a security clearance — especially high-level security clearances — their contract and consulting gigs pay you a lot more money because of the access that you have. I hope the president continues to do this.

MUDD: “Profitable,” Paris? When I am requested to sit on an advisory board, let me ask you one question: How much do you think I’m paid to do that at the request of the U.S. government? Give me one answer — and you got 10 seconds. How much?

DENNARD: I’ll ask you a question. How much are you paid for your consulting contracts?

MUDD: Answer the question!

RUSH: You see, what happened here is that Paris Dennard nailed it. Phil Mudd has just been called out. The security clearance does mean money, and it means potentially a lot of money, and it means status. That’s among the reasons they are so valuable, and this guy had the audacity, Paris Dennard, to call Phil Mudd out. Phil Mudd is not a host; he’s just another guest. “I’ll ask you a question: How much are you paid for consulting…?” “You got 10 seconds! You give me one answer. You got 10 seconds.” But Paris Dennard was unflappable, and the bite then continues…

DENNARD: You get more money when having a security clearance.

MUDD: That is incorrect!

DENNARD: Stop acting like that doesn’t happen! That’s the truth!

MUDD: I have zero consulting relationships to the U.S. government.

DENNARD: I’m not talking —

MUDD: Zero!

DENNARD: Phil, that’s a good talking point. I’m not talking about relationship with the government. I’m talking about in the private sector. When you have a security clearance and you keep it —

MUDD: I have zero relationships with the private sector that involve my security clearance! Zero.

DENNARD: Well —

MUDD: I get zero dollars from consulting companies that deal with U.S. government. Are we clear?

DENNARD: Well, I will be clear in saying that everybody in Washington, D.C. knows, if you don’t want to be honest about it, that’s on you. But if you have a security clearance and you keep it, you get more money to have it.

MUDD: We’re done, Jim! We’re done! Get out.

DENNARD: It’s not your show, so I’m staying right here.

MUDD: (screaming over Dennard) Twenty-five years in the service and this is the (bleep) I get?

DENNARD: Don’t be defensive about this.

MUDD: GET OUT!

RUSH: “Get out!” “It’s not your show, so I’m staying right here.” “Get out!” This guy, Mudd, I’m telling you: He’s arrogant, he’s condescending, he’s not a nice guy, and he’s one of these people that thinks he’s super special — and he’s playing word games here. These people parlay their security clearances into all kinds of benefits, including financial, such as being paid by CNN to be a regular-appearing analyst, for crying out loud!

He’s saying, “Well, I’m not paid by government or in any relationship I have with government.” Dennard was correct. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the private jobs.”

The guy got called out and could not deal with it.

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RUSH: In the meantime, La Grange, California. Patrick, you’re next. Great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Yeah. Mega dittos from the mother lode, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’ll get right to the point right here because I promised Snerdley I would. I think anybody who goes into media that has a security clearance should have it yanked just by going into media.

RUSH: I agree.

CALLER: I live in the red, eastern portion of California, and I’m a deplorable and a bitter clinger, but I think Jason Chaffetz, I don’t know if he still has his. He’s on Fox.

RUSH: Yeah, of course I know who he is. Absolutely.

CALLER: Yeah. So he’s out there — I don’t know if he still has his, anybody who goes in the media and has a security clearance, yank it. They still have their contacts. My thing about Brennan is he still has his right to free speech. I just wish he’d exercise his right to remain silent.

RUSH: (laughing) I don’t. As I said earlier, I want Brennan to keep talking. I want him to keep losing his mind. I want him to behave as he really is. Same thing with Phil Mudd. I want all of these arrogant, condescending superiorists to act out. That’s another reason I love Trump. He forces them out.

Donald Trump has this knack of exposing people as they actually are. We know that Brennan has been a phony all these years. We’re learning who John Brennan really is. And we’re learning who Phil Mudd is, and all of these people. We’re learning who they really are.

Now, your point about the security clearance is so right on the money. What is a security clearance? It means that you have been cleared, that you have passed a number of background checks, that you are good, that you’re okay, that we can trust you, that the nation can trust you with some level of our national security secrets! That’s what a security clearance is.

But that’s not what it is anymore, folks. Not inside the Beltway. A security clearance is a badge. It is a sign that you are a ranking member of the upper tier of the organization. But more than anything else now, it’s a resume enhancement. It is worth money! It gets you hired on boards of directors. It gets you hired on media, cable, and broadcast networks to do analysis and commentary. It opens all kinds of doors in the private sector, corporations.

Let’s say that there’s a big defense contractor. Boeing, Lockheed Martin. Let’s say they want to hire somebody that has knowledge that is equivalent to what the United States intelligence community knows about volatile situations all over the world. That’d be a very valuable hire! So John Brennan leaves the CIA, he’s got one of these clearances, he’s up for grabs at any one of these corporations, defense contractors, you name it, want to hire him on, he still has access to all of that classified data!

So the point is, why would you put these people on media? Why would you put ’em on TV with what they know? A security clearance, among other things, means you can keep a secret! Does it not? In fact, isn’t that essentially what it really means? That you have been investigated and you have passed a number of examinations and tests and that your background has appeared safe to grant you access to the nation’s secrets. Meaning, you’re not gonna start blabbing ’em all over the place. You’re not gonna become a security risk!

So why would somebody who goes on television or appears in the media not have their clearance yanked? It would be logical to presume that those people would no longer be allowed access to the nation’s secrets. Because they have just taken jobs where, by virtue of being hired, they are to offer expertise and analysis that only they know because of their security clearance!

So I totally agree with this. I think this whole security clearance thing is yet another eye opening reality for the American people who may not have given any of this much thought. By the way, would you like to know how many people have them? 4.1 million people. And is not automatic that when you leave government you give up your clearance. It should be. That’s another thing. Common sense tells me you leave government, you give it up. But that’s not the way it is.

And I’m telling you, having one of these things inside the Washington establishment, inside the Beltway, that is one of the markers. That’s how you can tell other people you’re better than they are, that you rank higher, that you’re more important. And it is used in that way. It is valuable financially as a resume enhancement and so forth.

And these people are demonstrating that they are not fit to have a security clearance. And I think they’ve demonstrated that long before this. You know, Brennan running around accusing Trump of being a traitor because of Trump’s press conference asking the Russians to try to find Hillary’s emails. He did it a second time, by the way.

Brennan said that that press conference that Trump had with Putin, that was selling the United States out. That was a treasonous act what Trump did, it was unconscionable. These people are losing their minds right in front of us every day and on TV. And I do think that has political —

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Look. I have a bunch of stories here from 2013, 2014 on security clearances, Drive-By Media thinking people like Clapper and Brennan should lose theirs. This is back during the Obama years.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, it has come out how close Mueller and Comey are. That they have known each other for many, many years, and they’ve actually been kind of a tag-team duo. One of them working in government, one of them working in the private sector, and each of them arranging things so that the other profits handsomely while in the private sector.

They are very tight, very close. And Comey has admitted that he kept all of those memos of the conversations he had with Trump and that he leaked them so that a special counsel would be named, and he wanted it to be Mueller. Look, folks, the trick is in here. I mean, there’s a gigantic trick that’s been played on everybody here that Comey and Mueller both have engineered, with the help of Rod Rosenstein.

They are truly conspiratorial, thick blood brothers in affairs like this. And they have been long before Trump came along. I mean, it’s been a mutual beneficial relationship, power for one, profits in the private sector for the other, then they reverse roles. For example, Comey at Lockheed could have work steered to Lockheed where he would be bonused, profit in the private sector in a way you never could on a government salary.

And then Mueller would end up at a law firm as either a rainmaker or a high profile case handler with a large client paying incomparable billable hours as a standard business practice. But this apparently is the arrangement that these two have had. Now, one other thing before I go to the break here. I want to just backtrack a bit to this White House or government security business, the security clearance Brennan has had rescinded. Trump is talking about rescinding Bruce Ohr’s and maybe James Clapper’s.

I have here The Politico, November 21, 2013. “White House Looks to Scrub Clearance List.” This is the Obama years now, 2013. “The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.”

It’s preposterous that five million people need national security clearance in this country. It’s absolutely preposterous. It cannot be justified. Five million. “In a directive obtained by POLITICO, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper questioned the booming rolls of security-clearance holders. At last count, more than 4.9 million people held clearances, of whom over 1.4 million were cleared for access at the ‘Top Secret’ level.”

Clapper wrote in the three-page memo dated Halloween, “I write to express my concern about threats to national security resulting from the increasing number of people with eligibility for access.” Clapper five years ago was worried that so many people having security clearances was itself a security threat.

And from Katie Pavlich at the Town Hall published yesterday: “When Democrats Demanded John Brennan Resign.” This was when Brennan was caught spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in specific, the staff of Dianne Feinstein. New York Times, July 31st, 2014, “The CIA’s Reckless Breach of Trust.” It’s about John Brennan and spying on Dianne Feinstein’s staff, where he lied under oath about it.

You can go back to Drive-By Media archives four and five years ago and find that they wanted to get rid of Brennan then and take away his clearance then and take away the clearance of a lot of people they didn’t think should have them. But that was then, and this is now, and so back then may as well have never happened.