RUSH: There’s a big lack of a reveal in the New York Times tax story on Trump. The New York Times did a yearlong investigation of Trump’s taxes. Now, I don’t know where they got the returns. It’s illegal that they have them. Obviously, somebody at the IRS doesn’t care. I mean, the left has infiltrated everything, so obviously that’s how this happened. Doesn’t matter. Once the Times has them, that’s that. But it had ’em now for a year.

Note when the story runs. They ought not be trying to crowd out the Kavanaugh story, right? This is something, ideally, you’d want to wait until closer to the election. You want to maybe wait a couple of weeks. But, no, they ran this thing yesterday. And now there’s a companion Showtime network documentary on this. So there’s been some collaboration (you might even say some collusion) on this. Why cover up the Kavanaugh story with this?

This is providing a huge challenge for the cable news networks. “What to do? What to do? We got Trump out there…” They claim he’s mocking Blasey Ford. He wasn’t mocking her. Look, I understand Republican senators saying what they’re saying. “Oh, my God. This is unacceptable. I don’t know why the president did it!” He did it for some reason. Everybody’s pointing out that Trump, just last week, was saying she was very credible.

Yeah, he did, and we knew when he said that why he said it. He had to! Everybody has to. Before all this is investigated and put to bed, you can’t run out there and start ripping on her. Even if it’s deserved, even if it’s warranted, last week you could not rip on Christine Blasey Ford. There was nothing… There’s no upside to doing it, no matter if you were right. Even if she was lying through her teeth and you could demonstrate it, last week was not the time to do it.

So Trump joins the chorus, “I find her compelling. I find her very credible.” Well, now she’s not so credible. (She never was.) But now she’s not so credible. There’s all kinds of holes, and Trump just pointed ’em out. All Trump did is point out the flaws in her story, which should have happened during the hearings last Thursday. But the Republicans were not gonna go there. They were not gonna challenge her because it just wasn’t smart.

Especially with that voice that she was affecting, to go after her in any way that would seem like an attack or like you didn’t believe her, would have not been politically useful. But in a normal congressional hearing, committee hearing, her allegations would be challenged and tested. They were not. That’s all Trump did! Trump pointed out the mistakes or the lies or the differences, the prevarications.

She can’t remember where, when, who. The people she says were there say they weren’t. That’s all he did. Republican senators should have done that last week, but they couldn’t. So Trump’s given ’em cover, Trump’s providing shade for ’em, and let them go out and rip him for doing it if they want. He understands that. By this time, we have to assume Trump knows what he’s doing. When he goes off-script, he doesn’t step in it. It may look like it, but he doesn’t.

But that’s not the big take-away. The big take-away for me is this. One year, the New York Times has been investigating the Trumpster for 40 years. They’ve got tax returns going back who knows how long, and guess what’s not part of the story? Guess what is not part of any income tax story on Donald Trump? Guess what one word you do not see in the report?

Anybody want to take a guess? (interruption) What? “Payoff,” did you say? No. That’s not the word. What one word is not in this entire New York Times story? I’ll give you a hint. It was the sole reason the left wanted to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns. (interruption) Russia! 10-4! That’s it! They wanted Trump’s tax returns because their tax returns, they said, would prove Trump colluded because his money came from Russia, because his wealth was because and due to Russian connections.

That’s what everybody on the left was convinced was true, and now here’s the New York Times story. A yearlong investigation of Trump’s taxes going back more than 40 years, and they’re not able to find any Russian money? So now they didn’t find any Russian money, and I guarantee you they expected to. They’re the ones that said this! They’re the ones that said… I’m talking about everybody on MSNBC, CNN.

Go back a year, go back to the 2016 campaign when everybody was hell-bent on proving that Trump was a Putin stooge. Trump was a toady. Trump was compromised by Russia because it was Russia that enabled Trump to get rich — and his tax returns would prove it, they said! So I guarantee you when the New York Times got these documents, the first thing they did was make a beeline, keyword search, however they search it, looking for “Russia,” “Russian,” Russian names. Answer? Big, fat zilch, zero, nada.

So now they’re back to something else. Now they’re back to what’s always been said about Trump, that he got rich from his dad. Now they’re saying that all kinds of phony entities were created like shell corporations and other things for Trump and his siblings — not just Trump, Trump and his siblings — to hide money from the IRS. Which, of course, they say is fraud. During all of this time, 40 years, you don’t think Trump’s tax returns have been pored over with a fine-toothed comb by IRS auditors?

Do you think the New York Times has found something the IRS didn’t know? I mean, after looking at Trump’s tax returns. I think no Russia means gigantic letdown, which we’re not gonna see any evidence of because they’re not gonna write that. But I’m telling you, they were so sure that that’s how they’re gonna get Trump and that’s how they’re gonna make Mueller’s investigation pay off: Get Trump’s tax returns. If you just think about, you’ll remember this.

Now this big, long story in the upcoming Showtime documentary with no mention of Russia or Russians finances as part of Trump’s wealth. When they saw that it had to just devastate them. So now they have to go looking for other things in this that will supposedly knock Trump. But I’ll tell you this. Angus King, who’s a senator from Maine (he’s an independent) was telling a couple of journalists (summarized), “You know, you people… If you think that this is gonna hurt Trump, you have got to learn something.

“You people on the left…” This is Angus King. He’s an independent; he goes with the Democrats. “You gotta learn something: Every time the New York Times or CNN or the Washington Post attacks Donald Trump, you just glue Trump’s supporters even tighter to him. You think that Trump supporters are gonna be talked out of supporting Trump because of the New York Times? It’s never gonna happen.”

Angus King said, “This isn’t going to hurt Trump with his base. It’s not gonna cause to happen what you all want to happen. You want to separate Trump from his voters, but this isn’t gonna do it. This is gonna make them stick to him even tighter, because this because this is what they’re expecting you all to do. They’re expecting you to try to destroy him. They expect the media to be joined at the hip with the Democrat Party to take out the guy they voted for and elected.

“Trump’s voters admire him. Trump’s voters celebrate him. Trump’s voters back him ’cause he’s the only person like him out there in politics today that they can support.” That’s Angus King. Only time will tell if this is gonna have some deleterious effect. But, folks, look at all the things that the media’s dredged up since the 2016 campaign that they thought was gonna be the silver bullet.

Every one of these things they came up with was going to be the final nail in the coffin. The NBC Access Hollywood video.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I think this whole thing has been a deep state setup job against both Trump and Kavanaugh, that this whole Christine Blasey Ford thing is a setup. I think the whole thing is a setup, and I’m gonna tell you when I thought that, folks — and I’m not at the point where I can go into details right now. It would not be productive. The minute I saw Dianne Feinstein hold up that letter and talk about having got it? Nah. It just started to smell right there, ’cause I know these people, and the evidence of this is right in front of our faces.

All we need to see is the DOJ-FBI silent coup that was run against Trump on this bogus Russia collusion. Look at all of the allegations against Donald Trump that have turned out to be nothing. Nothing can be proven, established, nothing can be made of them. And they have been never ending, from the moment Trump got in the campaign. The really big things like Trump colluding with Russia. Remember, that’s what finding the tax returns was all about.

I have to make this point again. The left wanted Trump’s tax returns ’cause that was gonna be the end. They were gonna be able to prove it! That’s why Trump wouldn’t release them, remember? They said it would prove that Trump’s wealth comes from Russia. And that’s why Trump is a Putin stooge, that Trump would be nothing if it weren’t for Putin and the Russians. Trump would have gone broke long ago.

But Putin and the Russians bailed him out, and that’s why Putin wanted Trump elected and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now we get news the New York Times has had Trump’s tax returns for a year, and they’re poring through them. At the same time, Showtime network is doing a documentary on the New York Times story and reporting in Trump’s taxes. And would you believe it? They’ve had these documents on Trump’s taxes for a year.

They ran the big story today, yesterday. There’s not a word about Russia anywhere in the Trump tax return story, and I’ll guarantee you this. When the New York Times got whatever they have of Trump’s tax returns, I will guarantee you the first thing they zeroed in on was trying to find evidence that Trump was doing business — shady business — with somebody or a series of people (oligarchs, don’t you know) in Russia.

I’m here to tell you that the let join that they experienced when they didn’t find Russia in there nearly destroyed them. So they’ve been look at these things for a year now trying to find an alternate way of destroying Trump with his tax records ’cause the Russian angle bombed out. That’s the big take-away on Trump’s taxes, to me: What isn’t there versus what they thought was going to be there. Virtually every one of these attempts to get Trump has been concocted.

Every one of them has been the result of a created and organized strategic plan, be it the silent coup on Trump-Russia collusion, be it Comey trying to set Trump up with Comey’s being fired. It has been, since Trump was inaugurated — even during the transition it’s been — a series of steps or efforts to get rid of Donald Trump, to overthrow the election results of 2016.

I think Christine Blasey Ford is an element of that whole movement or that whole desire. The Democrat Party is in on it. They are as much a part of the deep state as the FBI, DOJ people that were doing this. And I think the objective of Christine Blasey Ford — this whole thing; not her specifically. Look, I think she’s an activist and in on it. But that’s neither here nor there.