RUSH: Bill Hemmer and Bret Baier and some Fox people are out there at the Reagan library, some big event going on out there this week. So Hemmer decides he’s gonna play a sound bite of my appearance on Fox & Friends today for one of their reporters, Ed Henry, and we have these two bites. I just want you to hear them. Here they are.
HEMMER: Here’s Limbaugh from earlier today. Have a listen here.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I don’t have anything to run on. They literally have nothing. They have sacrificed every bit of concern for the American people. They’re making no bones about the fact they really don’t care.
RUSH: So then Hemmer says, “So there’s some political risk in there for the Democrats, like Limbaugh says. I don’t know what your sense is, Ed. They say Nancy Pelosi counts noses better than anybody. Is she at the number she needs for this vote or not?”
HENRY: I don’t think she’s at the number today because I think there’s gonna be some moderate Democrats in the House that are concerned this is gonna be expanding, that now, all of a sudden, the articles may include the Mueller report, the obstruction of justice charges there. I think there’s a political cost that Rush Limbaugh was referring to. You know where Rush is coming from. Obviously, he’s gonna be against Nancy Pelosi either way. But his point is valid that Pelosi hasn’t gotten anything done as speaker. I thought they were gonna focus on the economy and jobs and health care and all these wonderful things when they won the midterms. Instead, they focused on investigating the president.
RUSH: For nothing. They haven’t found anything. Nobody has. I want to go back to something he said. Jonathan Turley addressed this in a moment of sanity when they had those three law professors on there before the Round Mound of the Gavel’s hearing on Wednesday. You heard him say, “Some Democrats now are getting concerned that this is expanding, that all of a sudden, the article of impeachment may include the Mueller report.”
Pelosi said they would yesterday, in that press conference where she was asked by James Rosen, “Do you hate the president?” (impression) “I don’t hate the president. I don’t hate anybody. I’m a good Catholic except for abortion. I don’t hate anybody. I don’t hate the president. I pray. You understand me? I pray for the president! We don’t hate him!” They hate his guts. They hate you for electing him — and then she said, “t’s not about Ukraine. It’s about Russia.”
They are never gonna be able to let Russia go because that was the grand scheme. That’s where everybody in the deep state went to work on getting rid of Trump, and they just cannot accept that it’s failed yet. So they’re gonna keep going back to it. And then Ed Henry said, “Some Democrats are concerned about expanding the Mueller report and obstruction of justice charges.” Do you know what the obstruction of justice charges are that she mentioned? Get this.
She is going to put in an article of impeachment that Donald Trump obstructed Congress by going to court to prevent his administration having to turn over everything she wants. Executive privilege! Not to mention Adam Schiff got hold of the NSA and AT&T, and they together teamed up to give Schiff a bunch of phone data on the journalist John Solomon, on Congressman Devin Nunes. They want to say that Trump is overstepping?
For crying out loud, these people are off the rails in what they’re doing, and it’s a sign of their frustration. They can’t gain any ground on Trump at all. The idea that the president going to court represents obstruction of justice? That’s the kind of mentality you get from a totalitarian. Nancy Pelosi says, “I want those documents.” You say, “You can’t have ’em. I’m not gonna give ’em to you.” “You better give ’em to me or we’re gonna impeach you.” You say, “Screw you,” and you go to court to try to stop it.
You have just refused, Madam Speaker. That is a crime in her book and they’re gonna put that as an article of impeachment? There are three Democrats now who are openly expressing reservations, and there is a Republican out there from here in Florida. His name is Francis Rooney. Not too long ago, Francis Rooney was all-in on impeaching Trump — he’s a Republican — and then he heard this. He heard that Pelosi wants to put an obstruction of Congress article of impeachment in there based on Trump trying to go to court.
Ed Henry said she doesn’t have the votes now. Folks, if she doesn’t have the votes now, what’s gonna happen to get them? They’re not gonna turn up any evidence. There isn’t any. Then you’ve got these thirty-one Democrat districts that Trump won — and, remember, there have been polls taken in those districts. This has not gotten a lot of the coverage. We mentioned it here. Some Drive-By network polling units went out to some of these districts that Trump won in ’16 that then voted Democrat in ’18.
And they asked people in those districts, “Okay. So you voted for Trump, then you voted for a Democrat in the midterms. What are you gonna in 2020?” Well, 80% of them said they’re going back to Trump. That flipped them inside out, upside down. If that’s the case, then many of those thirty-one are gonna say, “Gee, am I gonna beaten here two years later after I’ve won this seat? If the people in my district still love Trump, how in the hell am I gonna help myself by voting to impeach the guy?”
She doesn’t have the votes right now. You know, something else they’re all saying to themselves, these Democrats? “Even if they vote for it, he’s going to be acquitted in the Senate. So what’s the point?” They’re trying to hurry. They want to beat Horowitz. Horowitz’s report comes Monday. So Pelosi has scheduled more hearings for Monday to try to make sure that the Horowitz reveal is not covered.
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RUSH: Lindsey in St. Louis. Hello. Great to have you with us on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Rush, let me get straight to the point. All this week, you talked about the left hating Trump and hating more the people who elected him — and that hatred is on show all this week with the impeachment hearings. Nothing would make Democrat lawmakers happier than making the people who voted for Donald Trump miserable through this whole process. They want the American voter discouraged and miserable hearing the media and the show trial. Not only do they hate us for electing him, they delight in making the American voter miserable. They can’t survive without misery. The left cannot survive. The Democrat Party cannot survive without miserable, oppressed Americans.
RUSH: Well, that’s true. So don’t let them make you miserable. We’ve purposely —
CALLER: Okay. I don’t.
RUSH: I refuse to get miserable. I refuse to get pessimistic. I refuse to join the crowd that says it’s over. You wouldn’t believe my friends. “Rush, it’s over. You know, you may as well enjoy whatever years you got left. Pack it in. You know, enjoy the profits and the good cheer you’ve earned. Go ahead.” (Snort!) The hell with that.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: This is what I love doing the most — and, you know, after the Fox & Friends appearance I got a bunch of notes. I have to tell you, I got a bunch of notes saying, “Thank you for being so positive. Thank you for being optimistic.” You know, it’s not natural. Pessimism is a natural thing. It’s much easier than optimism. You have to work at optimism. Pessimism seems natural. So you are very shrewd. You’re very perceptive. There’s no question. For all the anger they hear and all the fretting and all the people saying, “I’ve had it, I can’t handle it,” they love it. To them, that’s success.
CALLER: Right. They want people like my mom wringing her hands and saying, like, “What’s happening? It looks bad,” and it’s the job of listeners to your show to say, “No. This is an illusion. America is in great hands with Donald Trump. Trump is winning and the left is losing, and this is their delusion on trial, not our president.”
RUSH: You know what the greatest success is?
CALLER: What is it?
RUSH: Not revenge. Success itself is the best revenge you can have.
CALLER: Yes. And Americans want it.
RUSH: Being happy and knowing that you’re winning and acting like you know that you’re winning. The idea is to dispirit these people — and, folks, I’m here to tell you that they are. They’re at their wits’ end. I keep trying to remind everybody as often as I can. I’ve asked you I don’t know how many times put yourself in their shoes. Let’s do it very briefly. Who are these people? They think they run not just Washington. They think they run the world.
They run the Foreign Service, they run the State Department, they run everything about the deep state. They run it. It’s theirs. They run Washington. This guy comes along that they hate and despise, and he wins! He beats them. So they devise a plan to get rid of him. They marshal every brilliant person and every bit of power they think they’ve got, and they focus it on this guy every day — and they aim and they fire every day.
They have spent how many billions investigating? They have the media on their side. They’ve had free media. They’ve had journalism willing to destroy itself in pursuit of getting Donald Trump, and everything they’ve tried has literally blown up in their faces. The guy is still president, and he laughing and smiling every day, and he’s doing his job, and he’s tweeting about what a bunch of idiots they are. They are beside themselves with rage!
These are the people who are miserable. They’re the ones who know that they have failed and are failing. They’ve got no solution. They don’t know how to beat the guy, even with the deck as stacked as it is in their favor. You want to talk about frustration? You want to talk about misery, you want to talk about uncontrolled, out-of-proportion rage and anger? It’s today’s Democrats and the American left — and I can’t tell you how happy I am to point all of that out to you.
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RUSH: Last night, CNN was all excited. They had a 9 p.m. town hall with Nancy Pelosi. Oh, were they all so excited — and a half hour in, Pelosi said, “I’m tired of impeachment questions, Jake Tapper. Make them stop asking me impeachment questions. I don’t want anymore.” I wonder why.
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RUSH: Why do you think Pelosi got tired of impeachment questions last night on CNN during the impeachment town hall? They scheduled a 9 p.m. town hall with Pelosi. They were floating it all day yesterday, promoting it; then she gets there and after 20/30 minutes she tells Jake Tapper, “Stop it. You make ’em stop. You make ’em stop asking that. Can somebody ask…? Can somebody ask questions about the recession? Can somebody ask question about the economy? I don’t want to talk about impeachment. There’s more than impeachment.”
Well, we’ve got the audios coming up. Well, since I’ve talked about it, let me find it. Hang on just a second. Let me… Yes, audio sound bite number 14. Let me make sure 13’s not… (muttering) Ah, now… Okay. Look, I’m not gonna do 13. Well, I may. What the hell. Start with number 12. Let’s just get going. This is the CNN special town hall with Nancy Pelosi promoting it all day. Everybody knew. CNN’s promoting it: Town hall on impeachment with the speaker of the House.
PELOSI: Ukraine is all about Russia because withholding or granting military assistance to Ukraine was all to the benefit of Russia. The Russian disrupted or Election Day in 2016. They are 24/7 doing it all the time. Under assault from Russia by Russia aggression. Putin makes a joke of it. He says, “Oh, they’re blaming on Ukraine,” but all roads lead to Putin. This is about Putin right from Putin in Russia, in Moscow, Putin’s desk, the disruption of our elections playing right to Putin’s success.
RUSH: Folks, they’ve got this on the brain. They’re literally, I think, losing their sanity. There wasn’t any collusion with Russia. Ah, everybody says because I guess you have to say it that the Russians meddled, but the Russians meddle in everything and try to. And before them, the Soviets did. And if you ask me, the greatest evidence the Soviets have in fact infiltrated the education system was those three law professors. Let me say that again.
The greatest evidence of Soviet infiltration into the American education system was the three law professors that the Democrats called up that the other day. So the Russians are constantly meddling. But they can’t let go of this! The Mueller report said no collusion. They can’t let go. She even said it again: Ukraine is all about Russia. I’m telling you, there’s some Democrats in the House who think that’s a dead horse now and to try to go back to that. ..
It’s already bombed out. Look, all people were Mueller report, two years, Mueller report, two years, Mueller report: Trump did it, Trump’s guilty, Trump’s a traitor. Mueller report released, no collusion. That’s it. End of story. People forgot about Russia. Trump didn’t do it. They want to go back to it and keep going back to it. They’ve got nothing but their hatred. They’re so, so ticked off that didn’t work. Their coup did not work.
They can’t believe it didn’t work. Stuff like this always works when they do it. They always succeed. When they want to target anybody, Republican, anybody, target them to ruin them, they can do it. They can’t touch Trump; they can’t get over it. There’s Pelosi talking about the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which took place in the late 1990s.
PELOSI: They had impeached Bill Clinton for personal indiscretion and misrepresenting about it. Impeached him. Some of these same people who are saying, “Oh, this doesn’t rise to impeachment,” were right there impeaching Bill Clinton for being stupid in terms of something like that.
CROWD: (laughing)
PELOSI: I mean, I love him. I think he was a great president. But being stupid in terms of that, what would somebody do not to embarrass their family?
RUSH: Right. What was the stupid thing that Clinton did? She’s talking about the affair of Lewinsky, the intern. But that’s not why Clinton was impeached. I realize we’re talking 20 years ago for some of you — well, for everybody, but 20 years ago you might have been five. Twenty years ago, you might have been 10, and you may not have been old enough to pay attention. So what you know about it is the revisionist history of the Drive-By Media.
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath to a federal grand jury about the Paula Jones case. He was not impeached for having an affair with an intern. He was not impeached for leaving a semen stain on a blue dress. All of that happened, but that’s not why. He was not impeached for sex. He lied, and he tried to get other people to lie. That is suborning perjury and committing perjury, and it’s not… What did she say? It is not “being stupid.”
If they had Trump on the same goods of Clinton, it would have happened already. If they had Trump committing perjury under oath, believe you me, there wouldn’t have been any show needed to drum up support. He would have been impeached already. Bill Clinton lost his license to practice law for a year. Perjury, federal perjury is a serious thing. She’s trying to make you believe, “He did the honorable thing. He was trying to protect Hillary and Chelsea from the embarrassment of his own stupid actions.”
He perjured himself under oath! Even at that, the Senate did not want to move ahead and convict ’cause they didn’t want any part of this. Clinton’s approval numbers were in the sixties. The American people didn’t want to go through any of this, so the Senate got rid of it as fast as they could. Now, here’s the bite. A half hour into this thing, blow us had had it. She’d had her fill. She was fed up. She told Jake Tapper to ask about something other than impeachment.
Now, if this impeachment was the slam-dunk winner that it was, there’s no way she could get her fill of it. There’s no way she could get tired of it. There’s no way she’d get frustrated and tell Jake Tapper to shut up and ask her something else. And, by the way, only on CNN could somebody tell a journalist, “Shut up and ask something else,” and the journalist say, “Oh, okay. Can you imagine somebody saying, “Cronkite, shut up and ask me something else! I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” or Dan Rather?
Well, I can, actually, if it were Democrats asking.
But even that would have been a stretch, because back in those days the journalists were less obvious about the fact that they loved and adored and slept with Democrat politicians. So here’s the bite. Jake Tapper said, “President Trump has said that if there’s a Senate trial — which there likely will be if the president is impeached — that he would like you and Chairman Schiff to testify, to have to give testimony. Would you be willing to testify if it meant that people you want to hear from like Mick Mulvaney or John Bolton also have to testify? Would you do it?”
PELOSI: They have been asked to testify by Congress. It isn’t a deal. It’s about a system of checks and balances. Can we not have any more questions about impeachment? We have so many… Let me tell you about Spain and the Top 25 —
TAPPER: We do have a question about the environment.
PELOSI: — and the young people who were there, uh, i-impatient about what comes next.
TAPPER: We’re gonna get… (sputtering) I have one last question on impeachment for you —
PELSOI: (snort)
CROWD: (laughing)
TAPPER — and, uh, and then… No, I promise you I have an environmental question. I promise. We have other —
PELOSI: I don’t mind a question about it, but to ask me questions through the prism of the White House is like, what?
RUSH: Did you catch that? His question is, “If it meant that you get Bolton and Mulvaney, would you testify?” And she’s telling him, “You think I’m gonna answer your stupid questions when you’re gonna phrase them through the prism of the White House? Who do you think I am? Do you know who you’re talking to? You don’t get to ask questions that way when I am the askee. You don’t get to do that.
“What? You think we’re gonna let you get away with that, Tapper?” (sputtering) “Oh, I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise! We’ll get to an environmental question, I promise. I promise. But I have one more impeachment.” “Screw your impeachment! I’ve had enough of it.” “Okay. I just have one more. (sputtering) I want to ask it. I promise, I promise I’ll get to the environment.” Can you believe this? Yes. Yeah. We can. The state of American journalism where inmates run the asylum.
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RUSH: I want to go back to audio sound bite number 12. This is the montage from Pelosi last night from the town hall on impeachment with Jake Tapper. Give this… I’m not gonna play the whole thing. It’s 37 seconds. I don’t need the whole thing. I just need a couple maybe 15 seconds here for you to get the drift.
PELOSI: Ukraine is all about Russia, because withholding or granting military assistance to Ukraine was all to the benefit of Russia. The Russians disrupted our election in 2016.
RUSH: They did not! They did not. They did not “disrupt the election.” There is no evidence that happened. It’s certainly whatever happened had no impact on the outcome. But that’s not the point. Pelosi is claiming Trump withheld aid to Ukraine to what? To help Russia? I thought that this was all about doing it to get dirt on Biden. Is she really changing directions midstream here? Is this really…?
You Democrats on the committee, somebody… I know you’re not listening. Somebody’s gotta get to ’em. Do you realize how off the reservation your speaker is? You just had three weeks of hearings with an endless parade of witnesses who don’t know what they’re talking about because none of them were on the phone call, trying to make the case. You had Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see — trying to say (sobbing) “That call was scary.
“It was terrifying, it was frightening, that Trump was trying to dig up dirt on a political opponent. He was using money to dig up dirt on a political opponent,” and last night, Pelosi says that Ukraine is all about Russia? You Democrats, do you understand what’s happening here? There’s no conductor on this train. You guys are heading down the track and whatever diversions somebody feels like taking from minute to minute, they’re taking.
For three weeks, “We are here because Donald Trump was trying to effect the 2020 elections by having Ukraine dig up dirt on his political opponent,” and now last night Pelosi — and yesterday during her presser — said this is all about Russia, that Ukraine is not even about Ukraine; it’s all about Russia? Schiff, you aware of this? Schiff, you just spent two weeks making the case here, and now Pelosi’s thrown you overboard.
Hey, Nadler, the Round Mound of the Gavel, do you understand what’s happened here? You just had three learned, left-wing hacks talk about how impeachable it is that a president would want to dig up dirt from a foreign government on his political opponent, and your speaker is now saying it’s not even about that, it’s about Russia? This is more than a misspeak. This is more than a contradiction. These people don’t know what they’re doing. Well, they do.
They’re throwing anything up against the wall hoping it sticks. Do you know what this means? It means that Trump “digging up dirt on his opponent” isn’t polling well. It means that it isn’t taking. It isn’t sticking. It isn’t working. They’ve reached their wits’ end. They’ve gotta go back to Russia now, after getting everybody all hepped up and revved up that Trump was trying to dig up dirt on poor old Joe by mistreating the angelic Ukrainians.
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RUSH: Headline: “Senate Confirms Eight More Trump Court Picks in Three Days.” Nobody’s talking about it, but these votes bring the total number judicial confirmations for Trump to 170 since taking office in January 2017. These are lifetime appointments that are gonna go a long way toward saving our country — and remember, the Democrats are looking forward to 2020, and they’re scared to death. Trump wins, and that means by the end of 2024, we might have a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court.
Of course, folks, if it gets to that point, if you think we have seen unrest and protests and crime and all of that, you haven’t seen — we haven’t seen — anything yet. In fact, there are a couple of — aw, sad to say — aging Democrats who, when they are called home to their maker, one of them is going to cause a degree of panic and unrest unlike many of us have seen, as exhibited by the left.
And then if there are more retirements on the Supreme Court after that, with Trump in his second term being able to choose the replacement? (Snort!) This is why they’ve got to do what they’re doing, in their minds. Trump’s second term, Hillary Clinton gets investigated. Trump second term, a border wall gets built and we shut down illegal immigration. We get the Supreme Court remade. Utter panic! It’s 170 Trump confirmations just in these three years that he has been president.
Now, the economic news. I began this little expose an hour ago. I’m gonna wrap it up this time. I’m gonna finish it. We have new job numbers: 266,000 new jobs. Expectations, predictions by the experts, were for 180,000. We are breaking records. We have a 50-year record low unemployment, 3.5%. African-American unemployment is at an all-time low. There are more African-Americans and Hispanics working today — either expressed as a percentage or per capita — than ever before.
Wages are increasing. Manufacturing jobs and the like are coming back. The Democrats have nothing to do with it. Their fingerprints are on none of it. They literally have participated not one iota in the economic rebirth of the nation. They have participated in nothing. All they have done since November of 2016 is try to reverse the election result of November 2016. That’s it. They have failed spectacularly. They have failed miserably.
In fact, something I think is actually big news: If somebody would get on this train and call her out on it, for the last… Well, actually you know when this whole thing began is August when the whistleblower called Adam Schiff and they literally got this latest impeachment effort, this sham going. And what was it about? Well, the whistleblower said (impression), “It was shocking, it was scary, it was terrifying what he had heard on that phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine!
“Oh, my God! This is horrible,” and then others began to chime in like Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and all the ambassadors and all the civil servants. (sobbing) “It was horrible. My God. This is so bad.” Then Trump releases the transcript of the call, screwing up every plan they had. We find out there was nothing that happened out of the ordinary on the call, certainly nothing terrifying. But Schiff was committed. He was committed to the fact that Trump had asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
I pronounce it Biden, but people say Biden. It kind of irritates me. It’s Biden. Joe Biden. Okay, Joe Biden. Anyway, Schiff and the Democrats, the media goes to town, “Trump’s interfering again in the next election this time. He’s asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on his preliminary opponent, Joe Biden.” We get two weeks of witnesses that never heard the call, were not on the call, have never met Trump — two weeks of witnesses who when asked, “Do you know of an impeachable offense of the phone call?” none could raise their hands.
Then we moved over to the Round Mound of the Gavel, Jerry Nadler. We got more of the same. We got three university experts coming out saying, “That call is so bad! That all… That’s so terrible. Trump’s digging up dirt. This is a constitutional violation, impeachable offense. He’s asking Ukraine to actually dig up dirt on a political opponent,” and then last night and yesterday, Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s not about that!”
Pelosi said, “It’s not about Ukraine. It’s about Russia. Trump withheld aid from Ukraine to benefit Russia. Trump did not give Ukraine the aid they wanted so that Putin would have an easier way to manipulate and insert himself in Ukrainian affairs.” Say what? What happened to asking Ukraine to investigate Biden being an impeachable offense? Seriously. This is not a minor thing.
You Democrats — or those of you listening who know how to get hold of them, somebody needs to tell ’em that — you are not on the same page, and your speaker is off on tangents here and making it up as she goes. Now, I know why. The whole story of Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Biden is not working. Polling data, Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post: Impeachment is not catching on. The American people don’t want it. The TV ratings for the networks going wall-to-wall with it are collapsing.
CNN is down to barely half a million viewers in prime time. It didn’t work. They tried focus-grouping quid pro quo. That didn’t work, so they changed to bribery. That didn’t work. So now they’re on to “obstruction” and claiming the president’s trying to obstruct Congress by going to court — and now it’s not even about Ukraine! Now it’s about Russia. We’re back to Russia, where there has already been an investigation and no collusion was found, because there wasn’t any and there’s no evidence.
But to me, folks, this is a huge deal. Because they’ve put this country through three weeks of crap here about the president trying to dig up dirt on Biden and it’s an impeachable offense and now Pelosi’s saying, “It’s not about that. It’s about Russia. Trump withheld aid from Ukraine so that Putin would be benefited.” How do you Democrats stick with this? Well, the answer is they all know that this is manufactured anyway, that none of this is real.
There aren’t any impeachable offenses. There wasn’t anything extraordinary or out of the ordinary on the phone call. There wasn’t any Russian collusion — between Trump and the Russians, anyway. There was between (chuckles) Hillary Clinton and the Russians. That remains true prepare and there was Joe Biden interfering in domestic Ukraine politics by having a prosecutor fired. But none of this that they’re putting the country through regarding Trump’s even happened.