RUSH: Here is Will in Alexandria, Virginia. Great to have you, Will. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, good to talk with you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Hey, I started listening in 2016 because of the presidential race. So it’s been very, very interesting since that time.

RUSH: What were you doing before 2016? How could you have missed this program all the way up through 2016?

CALLER: (laughing) Well, I didn’t miss you, I knew about you, but candidly I had a job that just kept me from, you know, participating during the day.

RUSH: Ahhh, I see. I see.

CALLER: And then I came back — I didn’t come back, as such, I came to it because I was just intrigued about this atypical Republican candidate, and I was intrigued about how you would deal with him, you know, where you’d put him. And, you know, I’m hooked.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that.

CALLER: Here’s my question.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Here’s my question. Is Robert Mueller reputable or not? And the reason I ask this is, this guy produced a report of 400 pages of basically gossip, has muddled and muddied everything up, particularly for Democrats. And why couldn’t he, why didn’t he — I think only you can answer this — but why didn’t he just put out a one-pager, two-pager and said, “Yes, this guy obstructed and colluded”? That’s the end of it. Everybody would have been foaming at the mouth and just gone ballistic on the crazy left side, and that would have been the end of it.

RUSH: Now, that is —

CALLER: We’d be at a different place.

RUSH: That is a fascinating question. Now, many people, I’m sure, thought you were gonna say, “Why didn’t he put out one or two pages and say, ‘No collusion, no obstruction,’ and be done with it because the report does not have any of that in it.” But your question is one of the best questions. I have been asking myself this question. All Mueller would have had to have done was draw one conclusion saying that —

CALLER: Yep.

RUSH: — he thinks there was collusion, and it would have been over! Why didn’t he? Believe me, there are a lot of people asking that question, Will. And I don’t mean just Democrats. I mean, you’ve got 448 pages there. You’ve got 15 to 16 Trump hating investigators. How hard would it have been? We’ve already established that integrity and honor are not big factors in this investigation. So why not just put in one little, maybe two assumptions of conclusion? Why didn’t Mueller do that?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Charles in Detroit, Michigan, you’re next as we stick with the phones. It’s great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: (garbled cell) Hi. Thank you, Professor Limbaugh, for my priceless 26-year education — which, for me, began in 1993. I, too, have a job. I joined Rush 24/7 because my kids could afford to skip a meal, and I taught them to refuse to live a day without freedom. Rush, today you prompted me to call when you said we’re dealing with the consequences of the Democrats taking back the House. Everyone seems to forget that a year ago, Mueller made it clear that he would wrap up by August or September at the latest so as not to affect the midterms.

Instead, the media’s saying at the top of their lungs in unison that Trump colluded and obstructed right up to Election Day, November 6, because Mueller’s investigation ran through the election to keep doubt planted in those voters unsure, who maybe thought oversight might not be a bad idea. That means Pelosi’s illegitimate and should be removed by Bill Barr for preventing the president from executing the laws that keep us safe. Because the media colluded with the special counsel, to sway the House back to the Democrats and Trey Gowdy, who never lost a case —

RUSH: Okay, look. Let me step in here because I have another way of going at this. If I understand correctly — and I had to read that call, just so you folks know. I understood maybe every fourth word that he said. So I’m reading it here. But I’ve got a general idea that he’s talking about Mueller and his intent. If Mueller had released this report before the election last November, when he clearly could have, that maybe the outcome would have been different.

So he’s asking or stating an opinion on Mueller’s integrity and so forth, and so when everybody… Look, Mueller knew the day he took the job that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Even if you don’t agree with that — and don’t doubt me on that. But certainly, this has now been confirmed. The last year and a half of the Mueller investigation… You can see this by reading the report. The last year and a half, he knew there was no collusion and sat on it, didn’t report it, kept the country roiled.

Kept the Democrats expecting that he was gonna return with a report that said there was collusion. That’s what they were expecting. That’s what they knew was gonna happen. That’s what they were hoping would happen. But Mueller knew — minimum a year and a half before he released it — that there wasn’t any collusion. I maintain he knew it the day he took the job. When Comey gives him the file, it’s empty. The only thing in it is the dossier. Folks, they never had anything but the dossier, and dossier — every word of it — is fake.

So they never had evidence. That’s what makes this so outrageous. What Mueller did was not investigate. There could not have been an investigation. There wasn’t in evidence. Something else happened. So if you talk about Mueller’s integrity, he’s presented to us at the time he is chosen as special counsel as Mr. Integrity. “There’s nobody more honorable in all of Washington than Robert Mueller III,” blah, blah, blah, and then they cite his resume. “He’s a former FBI director.

“He’s a former CIA director! He’s a former janitor in the White House. He’s a former custodian. He’s everything, Robert Mueller III!” They set it up so that whatever he comes back with cannot be questioned because he is Mr. Honorable and he is Mr. Integrity. Now, I, in my outside-of-Washington naivete — ’cause I’m not an inside-Washington player, person, or any of that. I’m not a member of any establishment. I’m not a member of any elite organization at all.

I look at this and I say to myself, “Well, how honorable and filled with integrity could anybody be if they knew from the day they took the job that there was no evidence, and didn’t report it, and then spent two years on it? Where’s the integrity here? Where’s the honor? What was this really all about?” Then you have to start concluding, “Well, there has to be something else going on here, because there wasn’t any evidence of collusion.” So here come the midterms, and Mueller knew at the time of the midterms that there had not been any collusion.

But the American public has not been told this yet. And the Democrats are running for office as they do, as any out-of-power party does on how the president screwed up, the president colluded, he was illegitimate, the president shouldn’t be president, blah, blah, blah. A bunch of Republicans resigned. We would not have lost the House, despite Mueller, we would not have lost the House if all those Republicans hadn’t resigned. And you know why they resigned?

Well, we were told because they’re losing their committee chairmanships and once you’re a chairman and you’re term limited out of the chairmanship, you don’t want to go back as being a regular day in and day out member. The return incumbency rate for members of the House is 95%. Ninety-five percent of incumbents win, and we had 30 or more Republicans retire.

Now, some of them retired because they hate Trump and they didn’t want to be there when Trump was president, and many of those thought that Trump was gonna get convicted of something and sent packing. They wanted to get out of town before it all happened. There’s still some Republicans, as you well know, who think that Trump is a rotten guy, deserves to be impeached, Mitt Romney among them in the Senate. But if those resignations hadn’t happened, we might not have lost the House.

Now, as to Mueller’s role in this, Mueller was under no obligation to report this before the elections. We were told he will not, Robert Mueller does not want to impact the election. Robert Mueller, Mr. Integrity, Mr. Honorable, does not want to have any impact on the election. So he will withhold his findings, blah, blah. Well, by already knowing there was no collusion and withholding that had to have an impact on the election.

But this takes me back to the previous caller, because it is a dilemma, some might say dichotomy. Mueller held on to this for a minimum year and a half knowing there was no collusion, didn’t report it. During that year and a half, this country is roiled like crazy. This country is in the throes of controversy, political divisions are ratcheting up, tensions are high, maybe higher than they’ve ever been since the Civil War, and there’s one guy who could have ended it all, and he didn’t. Robert Mueller.

Then he issues the report, and as our previous caller said, this guy has really done the Democrats so much damage, his first question to me was, just how honorable is this guy, or how reliable is he because what he’s done is really screwed up the Democrats. And in a sense he did, because the Democrats were allowed to think for two years that Mueller had the goods. I mean, it was all stacked. Fifteen anti-Trump investigators, many of them Hillary donors.

The New York Times, the Bible, the Washington Post, the New Testament, they’re all out there every day convinced that Trump did it, telling everybody that reads them Trump did it, it’s only a matter of time. CNN, MSNBC — by the way, speaking of which, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow numbers are in the tank. They have dropped. I’ll give you the numbers here. I’ve gotta take a break here. But CNN’s audience, I didn’t know they had any more to lose. But their audience is way down.

When this whole collusion story died, the primetime audience at MSNBC is now down 50% and falling. CNN ditto. That means the only reason those people were watching — they weren’t watching for the personalities. They weren’t watching because of loyalty to any host. They were watching to get their daily dose of confirmation that Trump was history.

They were watching every night to be reassured and reassured that Trump did it and he was gonna get caught and he was gonna get impeached, he was gonna go to jail, he was gonna be frog-marched out of there. They watched every night to be reassured every night that was gonna happen.

Then Mueller releases his report, there’s no more reason to tune in to MSNBC to be reassured that Trump’s going to jail because Trump isn’t going to jail. So there’s no other reason to watch. The same thing has happened to CNN.

On the Democrat Party side, everything they had planned has been blown to smithereens because Robert Mueller found no collusion. So now they’re harping on obstruction, and they can’t find any obstruction; so now they’re saying that Trump covered up! What did he cover up? There isn’t any crime of collusion. There’s no crime of obstruction. What did he cover up?

Their worlds have been turned upside down, and Mueller did this! And everybody thought that Mueller was on their side because of all of his investigators. And now back to that really intriguing question: Why didn’t Mueller, in two of those 448 pages, acknowledge that there could have been collusion between Trump and Russia?

Now, before you start shouting, “Well, Rush, there wasn’t. He wasn’t gonna lie.” Don’t give me that. All of this has been a lie. Every bit of this has been a lie. Everything in the dossier is a lie. Everything descends from the dossier. Everything in this is a lie. So why stop lying when the report comes out?

I’ll guarantee you there are people reading that report. It’s in two sections. The first section’s collusion. The second section is obstruction. You read the first section, some people are convinced that it explains collusion, that it clearly indicates it happened. But then there’s Mueller in his report saying, “Nope, didn’t happen.” Yet there’s the Papadopoulos story and all these other stories are in there.

If Mueller had just in one or two instances claimed that there had been collusion, do you realize what this country would have been since that day? Do you realize how close this got? So our caller, why didn’t he do it? Is he reliable? ‘Cause what he’s done here, forget what it’s done to the country, which you can’t. But what he’s done to the Democrat Party is astounding in terms of screwing them up. It may not look like it to you because the media covers for ’em.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, look. The answer to why Mueller did not allege or claim to have found collusion is that — it’s very simple — he would have to lie. But then everything about this has been a lie, so why not just continue the lie? What was anybody gonna do about it?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I remain fascinated by this question here that the caller mentioned a little over a half hour ago. “Why didn’t Mueller just say there had been some collusion?” Everything else in this is a lie. Even though he knew there was no collusion from the moment he took the job, and for the last 18 months of it for certain, what stopped him? Now, there’s any number of possibilities. You can say, “Mueller didn’t dare lie because whatever he claimed would be knocked down.” Well, yeah, but by who? Who’s gonna undercut him?

If Mueller claims collusion, the media’s gonna be all over it. The media’s gonna be promoting it. They’re gonna be amplifying it. Trump’s gonna be denying it, but that would be expected. The United States and worldwide media would be… It would be a tsunami. It would be a worldwide tsunami news story: “Trump Illegitimate! ‘Trump and Russia Colluded,’ Says Robert Mueller,” and it would be, “Says Robert Mueller.” It wouldn’t be, “Says Robert Weissmann” or any of the other investigators. It would be “Says Robert Mueller.”

“Robert Mueller Says Trump and Russia Colluded to Steal 2016 Election.” If he had reported that, the media worldwide would be dwarfing everything, and how do you push back against that? Now you got Barr as the attorney general, and Barr could look at the report and say, “Wait, I don’t see any collusion in here,” but the cat would be out of the bag. See, I’m thinking that it would have been easy to pull off. But something prevented Mueller from doing it. I have heard, by the way…

I should tell you something. I have heard that there was dissension in the Mueller team, that there were some early resignations because some of his investigators thought they had proved collusion and wanted the report to say so. When either a vote was taken or a decree was given that there would not be any collusion found in the report, that some of these people decided to resign from the Mueller team. Now, I can’t prove any of that. There’s scuttlebutt. I’ve heard it from a couple of different sources.

But that’s really neither here nor there. If you just… If you stop and think of what a gigantic story it would have been, how could it have been pushed back against? Now, if Mueller lied — and this is all “if.” If Mueller had lied, he would have known he’d lied. If it had been established, then there would have gone his reputation. Mr. Honorable and Mr. Integrity would be forever sullied if it would have ever been establishment that there wasn’t any collusion despite his findings. I think the purpose here remains, even with this report, to get rid of Trump.

You’ll notice how the issuance of the report finding no collusion did not stop anything. It didn’t bring the investigation to a screeching halt. It just launched brand-new ones, because of how much the Democrats have tied up in this. So one theory: Mueller didn’t dare lie, didn’t dare find collusion when there wasn’t any, because it would have been knocked down and would have undercut everything he’s ever said. So it was just safer to say that there were many examples of obstruction, but that none of them were prosecutable because you can’t indict a sitting president.

That was the safer route to go. Oh, I am sure some on that team wanted that report to say collusion, but somebody in there said, “We can’t. There wasn’t any! So let’s go at this from the obstruction angle. We can complain that we can’t indict and leave it up to Barr, but we’re gonna issue 200-some-odd pages on obstruction, and we’re gonna let the media run with it, plant some bread crumbs in there and let it just develop that Trump obstructed…”

Wait a minute. Obstructed what? There wasn’t any collusion. The first half of the report says no collusion. What was there to instruct?

“Ahhh, he tried! He wanted me fired. He called it a witch hunt” or whatever. In other words, if Mueller had said there was collusion or obstruction, he would have had to lie — and eventually, eventually the lie would be exposed. He had to be thinking this way, and then if that has happened, his entire report would be completely untrusted. So I’m sure that what happened here was (impression), “Okay, there’s no collusion, but that’s not gonna stop us. We’re still gonna get this guy!

“We’re still gonna make life miserable for this guy, and we’re gonna do it on the obstruction angle, and we’re gonna leave it wide open for all kinds of interpretation. ‘He’s obstructed this case a thousand times, minimum!’ and we’ll let the Democrats and the media run with it.” And that is exactly what has happened. They obviously concluded they would get more mileage just implying that there were all kinds of obstruction crimes and then leave that up to Barr, leave it up to the attorney general.

When the attorney general says, “No collusion,” that’s a wide-open door for the Democrats to say, “Well, he’s Trump’s handpicked attorney general! You can’t trust Barr,” and guess what? That’s exactly the path this whole thing has taken. Now, Barr’s the attorney general. If Mueller had lied, if he had said that there was collusion, you don’t think Barr would have uncovered it? Barr would have uncovered it before the ink on the report or whatever was dry. Think about this. If Barr wasn’t the AG when the report came out, if it was still Sessions (chuckles), would Mueller have found collusion?

It’s all if. And, you know, I know. It’s just a fun exercise here. “If” is for children. Ifs don’t happen. But it still is a fascinating thing to me only because all of this has been a lie. So why all of a sudden, at the very end of this, start relying on the truth? And why delay for a minimum 18 months the revelation of the truth? Well, the bottom line of the effort here is the eternal, lasting damage to Donald Trump. There was never any intention that this report clear or exonerate or un-muddy the waters.

And you see. This report has provided the fuel for the Democrats to keep this going and to claim that.. You know, they want to talk to Mueller. Why doesn’t Mueller want to testify, by the way? That’s another thing. Mueller does not want to testify, and the Drive-Bys and the Democrats — I mean, they’re so let down! They’re disappointed. They can’t believe it , because they think they’re all on Mueller’s team! They think they’re asking the coach to come up and give ’em a pep talk. They want Mueller to come testify. (impression) “Barr has mischaracterized what Mueller said.

“We’ll get Mueller up here to testify. Mueller will tell us there was collusion! Mueller will tell us what we want to hear.” Mueller doesn’t want to go talk to ’em.” Why not? “Well, Rush, you know, he’s getting old. He doesn’t do well in these settings.” Oh, really? I haven’t heard that. “And another thing, Rush: He’s a recluse now. He doesn’t want that! (muttering) No, no, doesn’t want that. Doesn’t… (muttering).” But there’s some reason why he doesn’t want to go, and the Democrats are so disappointed, and the media is so disappointed about this.

But then again, you stop and realize nothing about any of this has been factual.

None of it has been truthful.

There was never any collusion except between Hillary Clinton and the Russians. I mean, this thing is still so outrageous to me that if I do pause and really take some time again to think about this, I get livid to the point I can’t describe it. The fact that this is still going on and the Democrats are now claiming Trump is so mentally damaged that he needs the family to intervene? He needs to be sent off to an asylum somewhere, that the president is losing control and stuff? When it’s the Democrats clearly balanced precariously on the edge of the cliff?