RUSH: Well, here we go again, folks, back into surreal territory. We’ve got a breaking story that the Drive-By Media thinks finally closes the loop on Trump-Russia collusion. They can barely contain themselves. But it’s as though the previous two years never happened. If what is the big news is today, the previous two years never happened. So in trying to unpack this and explain it to you, I want to begin with a question.

Greetings. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh here. Fastest week in media. We’re already at Thursday, and it’s 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.

I’m serious about this. When you hear the term “Russian collusion” or “Trump collusion with Russia on the election,” when you hear any reference to the story — and I want to you to think back the entire two years. I want you to remember how your mind has been shaped on this, because this is the purpose of this exercise.

I want you to go back and remember shortly after the election when the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN every day had at least one story and maybe more featuring unnamed sources from the intelligence community. And they were leaking, they were implying that there was deep collusion between the Trump campaign, maybe Trump himself personally and Russia, for the purposes of what? Stealing an election, for the purposes of sabotaging Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, for the purposes of winning the presidency.

And it went like this for months every day. There were multiple stories featuring sources unnamed in the intelligence community! And every story buried a line somewhere in it, usually beyond the halfway point, “To this point there’s no evidence to suggest any of these allegations, but we continue to investigate.” They threw that line in there because there was never any evidence of anything.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When you hear the term “collusion” or “Russian collusion” or “Trump collusion,” “Trump campaign collusion,” what do you think of? I’m not suggesting you’re falling for it, don’t know misunderstand. I’m trying to get you to recall how the news affected you. What did you think they were trying to make you think, with all of these stories that now mount up to two years and counting?

Many of these stories started before the election in the summer of 2016, and they continue. So we’re beyond two years of this crap now. And I think this is key to understanding what is the so-called breaking news today, which I will get to in a mere moment. So what happened? What have they tried to make you think happened? Correct me if I’m wrong. Let me take a stab.

The purpose of the news reports the last two years has been to convince as many people as possible that Trump had an ongoing secret relationship with the Russians — could have been with Putin, could have been anybody — and the purpose of this ongoing relationship was to win the 2016 election using sabotage from the Russians to harm the campaign of Mrs. Clinton. Is this basically not what they tried to make us all think happened? Is that not what collusion was said to mean?

The point is, it was an ongoing project, that Trump had a long relationship with Russians, that his wealth may have been tied to the Russians, and, therefore, he was a Putin puppet. And Putin didn’t like Hillary, and Hillary looked like she was gonna win. And because Trump owed the Russians, the Russians helped Trump get elected by sabotaging Mrs. Clinton or somehow rigging the election. Is this not a summation of what they tried to make everybody think happened?

And this required a lot of subterfuge, did it not? This wouldn’t have been just one meeting. This would have been an ongoing program, an ongoing sabotage effort. It would have required multiple meetings. It would have required a lot of strategy, a lot of secrecy. And it would have required a lot of people.

Now, to prove to you that my take on this is correct, I simply point you to the latest polling data from The Economist-YouGov poll which showed 42% of the American people believe Russians tampered with votes! That is what collusion with Russia has come to mean to the American people, precisely because that is how the story was reported.

That is the attempt the media was making to shape public opinion, to shape thinking on this, that Trump had an ongoing relationship with the Russians and that the Russian collusion involved WikiLeaks, and it involved hacking the DNC server, and it involved who knows what all.

That’s what all those anonymous leaks in the New York Times and Washington Post was about. This was so deep, it was so deeply woven into the fabric of American society that it would take a brilliant guy like Robert Mueller to unravel it all, right? Stick with me on this, because this is important. I think it’s important in terms of making a judgment of what the big breaking news today is.

Forty-two percent of the American people, over 60% of Democrats, by the way, believe in that poll that Russians tampered with votes! That wouldn’t have happened in just one meeting. That wouldn’t have happened in a meeting at all. The Russians would have had to have access to polling places. How could that have happened?

Well, that’s what the collusion was. And the Russians were hacking the DNC server and the Russians were hacking Podesta’s emails and the Russians were hacking this and hacking that, and yet nobody has yet to prove the Russians hacked anything. The Democrats wouldn’t let the FBI see their server that they said had been hacked.

So what’s the news today? The news today is that Michael Cohen is expected to plead guilty to lying to Congress in collusion probe. Gave 70 hours of interviews to special counsel. That would be Robert Mueller. You know what this is about? One meeting. The Trump Tower meeting, Donald Trump Jr., the Russian honeypot, Valerie Veselnitskaya or some good Russian spy female name like that.

That meeting happened on June 9th, 2016, Trump Tower. Do you remember the purpose of this meeting? Donald Trump Jr. took the meeting because Russian contacts and a British PR agent called ’em up and said, “Hey, we’ve got some people that have some dirt on Hillary.”

“Really? Dirt on Hillary? Okay. We’ll take the meeting.” So Trump Jr.’s in the meeting, Jared Kushner’s in the meeting, couple other people in the meeting. When the meeting convenes in Trump Tower, it turns out the Russians don’t have any dirt on Hillary. They’re trying to get the Trump campaign influenced on an adoption piece of legislation, The Magnitsky Act, that somehow negatively affects Russians.

So they’re trying to lay the groundwork, and, see, they’re trying to influence Trump because they knew Trump was gonna win because they’re colluding. That’s all this Cohen story is about today is one meeting, which Jared Kushner got up and walked out of the minute he found out that the whole reason for this meeting was made up.

Now we’ve got Cohen pleading guilty to lying to Congress, 70 hours of testimony. The only problem is that every witness Mueller has is a liar! That’s all Mueller’s got. Everybody he’s got is a liar, and he’s gonna put these people up for what purpose? How can we trust anything these people are saying when we have learned from both Manafort and Jerome Corsi that the Mueller prosecutors are asking them to lie, putting them in an untenable situation.

So where is the collusion? Where is the tampering with the votes? Where is the tampering with ballot boxes and polling places? Where is all of this two years of Trump strategizing? And don’t forget Trump hired a bunch of prostitutes to urinate on Obama’s bed in Moscow. Where is all of this stuff?

We’re down now to a collusion charge essentially over one meeting, and Cohen claims Trump knew about it, Trump claims he didn’t know about it. Even if he did know about it, where is the collusion that they have tried to make all of us think happened? Where is any evidence that this election was illegitimate? Where is it? There isn’t any evidence that this election was illegitimate because there wasn’t any attempt to tamper with it.

We have been lied to ourselves. We have been misled. We have been misdirected by a willing accomplice Drive-By Media working with Robert Mueller and his staff of anti-Trump lawyers and the entire Democrat Party combined with the Washington establishment to create in the minds of the American people a story that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, nobody can ever prove did happen.

Where is the tampering of votes? Where is the meetings? Where is the strategy? Where is the evidence that Trump got together with Russians to sabotage the Hillary campaign? Which is what everybody has been led to believe happened here. And now we’re down to a disagreement over a meeting in Trump Tower on June the 9th of 2016. That’s all this is about today.

When you get home, when you turn on the news, when you start watching cable news reporters breathlessly talking about Michael Cohen and the big news that he had today with Robert Mueller and admitting that he lied to Congress, and now he’s telling Mueller the truth. Everybody, apparently, has been lying to Mueller, and Mueller apparently wants him to keep lying so that he can say when they’re talking to him they’re not lying.

We haven’t found an honest perp anywhere in this whole sordid tale. We haven’t found anybody that has anything to do with Russian collusion. We haven’t found anything on anybody who had anything to do with rigging an election. We haven’t found anybody, there is nobody who had anything involvement with tampering with votes in the 2016 election — zilch, zero, nada.

Robert Mueller has nothing because there is nothing on what everybody in this country has been misled to believe for the past two years, that the election of 2016 was illegitimate, because Trump cheated with help from the Russians. Mueller doesn’t have that evidence because it doesn’t exist. Mueller hasn’t even tried to find somebody to lie and say they did do all that, because there’s no supporting evidence for somebody who would make up such a lie.

Now, what this is about is that Trump did have a desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. In the Trump Tower meeting, the guy who was behind that meeting on the Russia side — you know all this because you’ve been treated to the information as it happened on this program, but this will serve to refresh memories. The guy behind the meeting on the Russian side, the Trump Tower meeting on June 9th, is a real estate oligarch.

Everybody in Russia that has money is an oligarch. It’s another attempt to impugn individuals who have a lot of money. “Oligarch. Oligarch. Some kind of massively powerful government figure who’s benefited from government connections for his wealth. He’s not a real rich guy. He’s a phony and he mistreats people. He’s an oligarch.” Have you noticed that oligarchs only exist in Russia and only in the Trump-Russia collusion story?

Anyway, I digress. The guy behind the meeting, Trump Tower meeting from the Russia side, a real estate oligarch, his name is Aras Agalarov. A-g-a-l-a-r-o-v. His name is not mentioned in the Cohen criminal information. There’s a two-page summary of what Mueller thinks he’s got here, a two-page summary of 70 hours of testimony from the estimable, the honest, the above-any-doubt Michael Cohen? A case is going to be built on the veracity of Michael Cohen. The Russian oligarch’s name is not mentioned in this two-page summary, but he is Trump’s real estate partner in a project to build a Trump Tower Moscow.

And this guy, Agalarov, happens to be tight with Putin. And this is the guy who sent the Russian lawyer, the Russian honeypot, Natalia Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower on June 9th to the meeting with what he said was dirt on Hillary! And that’s it. That alone is supposed to show the Russian government support for Trump’s candidacy. That’s it folks! That’s it!

They didn’t even have any dirt on Hillary when the meeting convened. It was about the Magnitsky Act and adoption. For two years we were told there was massive collusion, Trump was working tirelessly. Trump and Jared and Don Jr. and Ivanka and who knows who else were all working with the Russians to sabotage poor Hillary, who at the time couldn’t even stand up she was so sick, she couldn’t get on a bus, she had coughing fits. Poor Hillary, she had the election snatched right from one meeting where a guy set the meeting up on the basis that he had dirt on Hillary. Who needs dirt on Hillary? Hillary is walking dirt! Who in the world needed anymore? We’re talking about the Clintons here!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. I think I might need to clarify something. We’ve got a call up there who says, “The Cohen lie isn’t about the meeting at Trump Tower. It’s about the timeline the building of Trump Tower, Rush.” I’m not talking about whether Cohen lied about the meeting. Let me stress this again. This is still… I’m in the stage of setup here. What I’m trying to do is nuke the whole premise that we have been presented the past two years, that there was an ongoing effort with Trump and Russia to sabotage an election!

This is what this is all about, and there’s no evidence of this whatsoever. This investigation should never have been undertaken because it never had a scintilla of truth or evidence about it! The reason I’m talking about the Trump Tower meeting is because that’s where Mueller is going. After all of these two years, he’s focusing on a meeting at Trump Tower. And I’m gonna tell you what it’s about. It isn’t about hacking. It’s not about hacking the DNC servers.

It’s not about hacking the Podesta emails. It’s not about any of that. That’s not where Mueller is going. The original rationale for the investigation was what? That the DNC’s computers had been hacked, that Podesta’s computer had been hacked, that Hillary’s computer had been hacked and that the Russians and Trump did it together — and there’s nothing of that in whatever is happening today!

Mueller isn’t even going there! You know why? Because it didn’t happen! There wasn’t any attempt to tamper with votes or their counting or their outcome. The Trump Tower meeting we now know… We can see where Mueller is going with this. He is setting this up to be the collusion smoking gun. This is it! After all of these two years of all of these clandestine meetings and hacking and tampering, this is it! The smoking gun involving the meeting at Trump Tower.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. So here’s where I think our esteemed special counsel is going with this. You can forget two years of secret meetings, Trump and Russia colluding to hack a computer here, a network there, a server over there. There wasn’t any hacking of Podesta’s emails. At least Mueller’s not going there. No hacking of the DNC computers. No relationship between Trump and WikiLeaks. None of that.

Except they’re trying to get Jerome Corsi to say there was. Yeah, they are. They’re trying to get Jerome Corsi — you’ll hear the sound bites coming up — trying to get him to say that he knew WikiLeaks was gonna do in advance of them doing it ’cause he was in touch with ’em. He’s denying it. They want him to admit that he was in touch with WikiLeaks.

What’s going on here, it’s not about the hacking it’s not about anything that you thought this was about is my point. Mueller doesn’t have anything related to anything you have thought for two years this might be about and that the left still does believe it’s about.

The original rationale for this investigation was hacking, hacking of Podesta’s emails, hacking of the Democrat server, hacking of Hillary Clinton’s who-knows-what. The Russians were doing it. Trump knew about it. Trump was helping them. It was all to help Hillary lose, to help Trump win. That’s not here.

This Trump Tower meeting asked for by the Russians on the premise they had dirt on Hillary, then the meeting happens, they don’t offer any dirt on Hillary. They ask for some consideration in the Magnitsky Act. This is the smoking gun. Mueller is gonna pretend the last two years have never happened, that none of what’s been leaked and reported in the Drive-By Media has ever been leaked or reported.

Nope. We’re starting at day one now. And Mueller has just discovered the collusion smoking gun because finally he got somebody close to Trump to be honest with him, this Cohen fellow. The Cohen plea, in other words, Cohen finally saying what Mueller wants him to say, the Cohen plea is to highlight that at the time of the Trump Tower meeting, Trump had much more close ties to the Kremlin than he has admitted to because he wanted to build a Trump Tower building there.

So what Cohen has done with this plea is to say, “Yeah, Trump had an ongoing relationship with the Russians. He wanted to build a Trump Tower.” From that we’re supposed to now go back and infer that all this other two year stuff may actually have happened because Trump had a relationship with some Russians to build a building.

The point is none of this is a crime. Donald Trump can build buildings where every make deals to build buildings! None of this is about a crime. None of this is about anything you’ve been told it’s about for the past two years. This is exclusively about impeachment. This is about being able to write a report saying Donald Trump is dishonest, is unethical, cannot be trusted, is unqualified, is out of his loop, is out of his element, poses a grave danger to the United States, and the report is gonna cast doubt on everything Trump does and has done and wants to do.

And it’s gonna use this incident as the primary illustration why? That Trump is so reckless and so dangerous, he took a meeting with Russians at the time everybody was worried he was colluding with them, and he didn’t care because he doesn’t care a whit about appearances because Donald Trump is too stupid or dumb or incompetent or what have you.

This is what this report is gonna say, and it’s gonna lead to impeachment discussions. It’s not going to lead to criminal indictment because the Justice Department doesn’t indict sitting presidents anyway. It’s never been about that. So they’re honed in now on whether Donald Trump Jr. told his dad about the Trump Tower meeting before it happened. Trump claims he didn’t know about the Trump Tower meeting before it happened.

Again, the Trump Tower meeting was with Don Jr. and Jared Kushner and some others. And again, it was because the Russians had indicated they had some dirt on Hillary, but they didn’t. It was a misdirection play to get this honeypot to make a case for the Magnitsky Act. By the way, the honeypot was reporting to Fusion GPS before and after the meeting. Fusion GPS is responsible for the Steele dossier being paid for by Hillary Clinton. This whole meeting at Trump Tower could in fact have been a Fusion GPS setup!

This whole meeting could have been a Democrat Party setup for the express purposes of trying to make it look like Trump was colluding just like the dossier was written to make it look like Trump was colluding and had a deep relationship with Russia. Everything in that dossier is bogus. Not a single element of it is true. But since Fusion GPS had a relationship with the Russian honeypot, and she met with them before the Trump Tower meeting and right after the Trump Tower meeting. Trump claims that his son didn’t tell him about the meeting before it happened. Cohen says, “That’s BS! I told Trump about it before. He’s lying!”

Now Trump is saying, “Cohen is lying, I didn’t know anything.” And Mueller is saying, “No, Cohen’s not lying. He’s finally telling the truth. I made him tell the truth because I threatened to send him to Mars with Elon Musk for the rest of his life” or some such thing. My point is, with what we’ve learned from Manafort and Corsi about how the special counsel team is asking people to lie to them, to give them what they want. And Manafort is refusing, and apparently so did Jerome Corsi.

We don’t know who to believe about anything here. So we have to fall back on common sense. And the common sense has been that there has not been a shred of anything we have been led to believe by the Drive-By Media, the Democrat Party, and now the special counsel’s office for the past two years. Especially tampering with votes or having some interaction with the election in a way that would steal it from Hillary Clinton.

The people pushing collusion all this time have meant Trump and Russia plotted, like in the Steele dossier, and executed a deep conspiracy for months, including colluding on techniques and strategies to screw with Hillary’s votes in her campaign. It’s what everybody was led to believe.

Now it’s all been reduced to a meeting in Trump Tower where Trump’s people were misled into taking a meeting thinking Hillary dirt was gonna be presented and whether Trump knew about it in advance. And if they can prove that Trump knew about it and is lying about it, “A-ha! A-ha! See? Trump was colluding with Russia!”

The purpose of the exercise here is to understand what Mueller is doing so that we can get a read on where they are going with this. This Cohen thing, for as sleazy a character as he is, this is not an idle, random guilty plea. There is a strategy here. And since they cannot prove what they have alleged the past two years — they can’t prove hacking, they can’t prove Trump colluded, they can’t prove the Russians stole the election from Hillary, they can’t prove anything they led us to believe was happening.

Now they have to try to establish collusion in some other way, and this Trump Tower meeting and its timeline is the one example, the one and only example of collusion. Even if Trump met with somebody in Moscow to build a building, even if the meeting in Trump Tower, he knew about it or didn’t know about it, the fact the meeting happened has nothing to do with collusion and affecting the outcome of an election. Collusion isn’t a crime.