Rush Transcripts...Nov. 13th

[mystery-ak]

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/


Democrats Debut Boring Impeachment Show Starring Self-Important Deep State Nerds

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: All right. Has Nancy Pelosi started to panic yet? ‘Cause, folks, I have to tell you, based on the buildup and all morning today I was watching cable news, I’m going back and forth, and I’m hearing: The opening hour is gonna be a blockbuster. Schiff has got his two most powerful witnesses coming up, and it’s gonna be a blockbuster. You’re not gonna want to miss this.

And they lost the audience in the first 10 minutes of this thing after Schiff and Nunes finished their statements. I mean, it has been flat-out boring as a television show. Now, you may say, “Rush, that’s not the way to look at this.” But it is because that’s how it’s been promoted. It’s been promoted as a blockbuster hour, a blockbuster opening. And I’m telling you, folks, that’s not what this has been.

What we have here, what we really have here is exactly what I said yesterday. This is opening up for the American people to see exactly what this deep state is, whatever you want to call it. We have here a bunch of professional nerds who wear their bow ties and they have their proper diplospeak. And what are they upset about? They’re upset that Donald Trump used irregular channels on foreign policy, that he might have used — and they spit the name out — Rudy Giuliani, ew, yuk.

These guys are simply ticked off that they were not listened to. They are ticked off that they were not heard. I’ve been watching the questioning of Ambassador Taylor here. He is the big gun of the day. And the lawyer that Schiff hired to come in is actually an MSNBC contributor. This lead council, this Goldman guy, is from MSNBC, and he’s having to lead Taylor through every question. “Well, now, but then what did you say?”

“Well, I was…” (mumbling)

“But why did you say that?”

(mumbling)

“And then after you said that, what did you say next?

(mumbling)

“And then look at this text that you sent. What you mean by this text?”

(mumbling)

The guy cannot say on his own — there hasn’t been a single crime announced. There hasn’t been a single impeachable offense named. There hasn’t been anything but a bunch of self-important, narcissistic, “We run the world” kind of guys really ticked off that they were ignored, that they were not listened to. This is about nothing more than policy disagreements. This is about nothing more than Donald Trump doing exactly what he was elected to do.

Adam Schiff lied through his teeth shortly after this began by claiming he doesn’t know the name of the whistleblower. Stop and think of this. Schiff says he doesn’t know the name of the whistleblower, but if the Republicans say the name, Schiff is gonna deal with ’em harshly. If Schiff doesn’t know the name of the whistleblower, how will he know if the Republicans use it in order to punish them?

Now, I kept waiting for the Kavanaugh equivalent here. I kept waiting for the mention of high crimes and misdemeanors and the bribery and all the outrageous things Donald Trump has done. And you know what it is? These guys are complaining that Ukraine didn’t get their aid in a sufficient amount of time. They never got their aid under Obama! They did get their aid to fight the Russians under Trump, and they’re trying to impeach Trump for delaying the aid that Ukraine eventually got.

When you boil it all down, these witnesses are making the case that there are no high crimes or misdemeanors. I mean, we have the transcript of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Why do we need to hear from these bureaucrats confused about their roles in the execution of the president’s foreign policy? Their noses are out of joint because they weren’t listened to, because they were not used.

You know, I kept waiting in the first 20 minutes. Where was the “Trump told the president to get dirt on Biden or screw you” meeting? Where was all of this that we have been promised? Where was all this blockbuster stuff that we have been led to believe happened? It still hasn’t been mentioned.

This was destiny, folks. Self-important nerds who do not understand how they are seen, do not understand how their work is perceived by people. They are from a different world, and it’s a world where they think they are in charge. It’s a world they think they run. And Donald Trump was elected president, has his own way of doing things that ignores them and leaves them out and their noses are out of joint and they are ticked off about it and so they’re joining other Democrats who want to get rid of Trump because he is rending them irrelevant.

He doesn’t need them to execute foreign policy. He doesn’t listen to them executing foreign policy, and for this — see, they’re not elected. They don’t get to determine foreign policy. But in their world, they do. In their world, they are in charge of foreign policy. They believe in their own superiority. They believe in their own competence and importance with a complete cluelessness.

George Kent was one of the first guys, he’s got the bow tie. He was whining to us about his blue-blood lineage telling us how important he is, sermonizing to us on the greatness of the deep state. And he finished with a nothing burger. We’re watching practiced arrogance. But the most important thing that’s missing here is any impeachable offense. There isn’t any crime that has been accused. There isn’t any impeachable offense that has been accused.

You know how bad it is? Up until about a half hour ago, CNN had nothing to chyron. Nobody had said anything that they could take out of context and make a glaring television headline out of. This is simply a policy disagreement thing. That’s all it is. Well, I mean, it’s much more than that, the attempt the Democrats are engaging in here. But the riff, the impeachable offense is that Trump is not from the Washington establishment. And he’s not doing things the way the Washington establishment expects nor wants to be done, and because of this, he poses a great challenge and risk and danger and so forth.

To give you an idea of the irony here, John Harwood tweeted that, “Ambassador Taylor makes clear the effect of Trump’s actions was to strengthen Vladimir Putin Putin’s Russia in its war against Ukraine, a U.S. ally struggling to defend itself.” This is literally insane. Trump’s actions have been to benefit Ukraine! It was Trump who saw to it that Ukraine got the Javelin missiles, that got their defense techniques, that got the arms that they had purchased.

Obama denied Ukraine all military assistance for eight years. Russia was able to come in and annex Crimea, and Ukraine was believing that we were gonna come in and defend. That’s why Ukraine disarmed under Obama, because we made a deal with ’em that we would come to their defense. And when they were attacked, we didn’t. Obama never provided Ukraine anything.

Where were these guys then? Where was their concern for Ukraine then? Now their only beef is that Trump delayed the delivering of aid because Rudy Giuliani got himself involved in a rogue way. You know, as I watch this, folks, it’s become abundantly clear to me that these people, that these two witnesses represent — call it whatever you will — the deep state, the foreign policy association, the establishment, the interagency group, it is clear that they think of themselves as a separate branch of government. It’s clear that they, in their minds, set foreign policy. And they don’t.

So we are watching an actual coup take place before our very eyes. We’re watching an attempt by the Democrats and Adam Schiff and all of their allies to create a case of incompetence and danger posed by President Trump because he avoids and doesn’t use the existing foreign policy interagency channels. And it’s all about policy differences.

But the thing that really struck me — let’s go back to this as a TV show. Forget the substance of it for a moment. The buildup to this was intense. I watched Fox. The Fox anchors and reporters today, of course they’re trying to stoke it. They want ratings for it. But every cable network was assuring us that Schiff was going to come out of the gate with the best he’s got. He’s gonna launch into Trump, it’s gonna be a blockbuster.

And, in fact, we put together a montage. Grab audio sound bite number 10. We put together a montage. We have been promised for weeks, just wait for the public hearings. Wait for the evidence to impeach Trump. It’s gonna be overwhelming. Here is that montage.

RO KHANNA: We will have the public hearings; the evidence will be overwhelming.

MARK WARNER: How overwhelming is the evidence?

JAMIE RASKIN: The evidence is absolutely overwhelming.

JOE BIDEN: There’s overwhelming evidence.

CHUCK TODD: …overwhelming evidence…

LAURENCE TRIBE: The evidence is overwhelming.

E.J. DIONNE: The evidence is too overwhelming.

LEON PANETTA: There is an overwhelming amount of evidence.

JONATHAN ALTER: The underlying evidence, it’s so overwhelming.

INDERJEET PARMAR: The overall evidence is overwhelming.

TERRY MCAULIFFE: There’s overwhelming evidence.

CHRISTINA GREER: There’s overwhelming evidence.

SEAN PATRICK MALONEY: The evidence is overwhelming.

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: The evidence, to date, is overwhelming.

MAX BOOT: The evidence is overwhelming.

WILLIE GEIST: The evidence is so overwhelming.

HEIDI PRZYBYLA: …an overwhelming volume of evidence.

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: …an overwhelming cascade of evidence.

VAL DEMINGS: The evidence against the president is overwhelming.

CARL BERNSTEIN: We have some overwhelming evidence.

JAMES CARVILLE: (echo) The evidence is comin’! It’s going to be totally overwhelming.

RUSH: There wasn’t any evidence. There still hasn’t been any evidence. And that’s the whole thing. This has been boring. These people lost the audience in the first 10 minutes. These two guys lost the audience in the first 10 minutes. I’m standing here, I’m literally asking, is Pelosi panicking?

I remember Harold Ford on TV earlier this week saying that if this thing’s not going right, if Pelosi judges by Friday this thing isn’t going right, she may pull it. I don’t know if that’s gonna happen, but I’m telling you, folks, this is not anywhere near what they led the American people to expect. The American people that tuned into this I guarantee you didn’t make it past the first half hour if they made it that long, it was that dull, it was that boring, it was that pretentious, it was that self-important.

It was dull, it was lifeless, and all of that was combined with an arrogance that was impossible to miss. Compare it to the Kavanaugh hearings. What did we get in the Kavanaugh hearings? We got Blasey Ford. (imitating Ford) “I was raped. I was left on the side of the road to die and Kavanaugh didn’t care and then there was a rape train and Michael Avenatti came along and said he spiked the punch and we were all gonna die and Kavanaugh’s a mean SOB.” What was the equivalent? Zilch, zero, nada.

We hear about the interagency group. We hear about alternate channels. We hear about text messages, these guys on trains from London to Paris talking to each other about how shocked they are at the things that Trump is doing, using Rudy Giuliani. But there’s not one crime that was mentioned, there wasn’t one impeachable offense that was laid out, and now under questioning these guys don’t know where to go.

Their lawyer is having to lead these witnesses with a “and what did you think then?” (mumbling) “And after you said that, what did you think? (mumbling) “I want to make it clear… (mumbling) Sondland, Sondland, Sondland said it.” “Okay, then after Sondland said it, then what did you do and who did you tell?” (mumbling)

They are unable to provide any eyewitness testimony to anything because, folks, they didn’t see anything. Taylor and Kent, neither of these two witnesses have any serious firsthand knowledge of any of the key events. They were not on the phone call. They don’t have firsthand knowledge. They are filled with nothing but their expert opinions and their expert reactions to the outrages of the Donald Trump presidency and these alternate channels, sidestepping the interagency group.

Do you know that Taylor, the star witness today, has never spoken to President Trump about any of this? The star witness has never said a word to Donald Trump. He’s never had a conversation with him. This lawyer was just asking Taylor, “How important is a White House meeting to the president of Ukraine?” (mumbling) “Was Zelensky a new president?” (mumbling) “So how important is a meeting in the White House to a new president?” (mumbling) “Sondland.” (mumbling) “Volker.”

“And if he didn’t get that meeting do you think it would upset him?” (mumbling) “So if Trump told him that he couldn’t have the meeting unless he investigated the Bidens, do you think that would be bad?” (mumbling) “I never heard that. I can only tell you what I heard other people say.”

So when we get to the moment of truth, when we get to the question that’s gonna have the slam dunk answer, these guys punt. And so the evidence is being provided by the staff lawyer and his questions. And he’s not getting the answers that he wants. The very fact he has to ask these questions leading his witness, these are the star witnesses, these are the best that Schiff has got.

By the way, the Republicans did something great. After the opening statements some Republicans started asking Schiff for points of order. They started talking about the whistleblower, and Schiff was taken off of his game. He had no expectation that the Republicans were gonna try to disrupt, and they succeeded. And he was stumbling and bumbling around as he tried to reassert order.

The Republicans were not rude, don’t misunderstand. They asked for points of order. They asked questions. For example, “Mr. Chairman, are you going to tell us which questions we can and can’t ask, like you did in the closed-door sessions?” (imitating Schiff) “I I I I (stumbling) didn’t happen. I don’t know who the whistleblower is, I don’t know the whistleblower’s name.” Schiff openly lied yet again. And I’ll tell you something else obvious. Schiff’s opening statement was a boring lie of lies. It was nothing more than a recitation of nothing, because when he can’t lie about what Trump said in that phone call, when he can’t make it up, he’s got nothing. They’ve got nothing.

Now, that having been said — and I don’t want you to doubt me on this — when this is all over, the media is gonna take this and they’re gonna reshape it and recast it and they’re gonna try to make it look like it was one blockbuster after another. So later in the day when they get started doing that, don’t tell me you think I missed something. I’m telling you, folks, there was nothing. They’ve got nothing. They had nothing.

All they did was show their partisanship. All they did was expose the existence of the deep state to people. All they did was throw up a couple of boring guys who made it clear they were very unhappy to be left out of Trump’s foreign policy in Ukraine.

[mystery-ak]

Gigantic Disconnect! Drive-Bys Repackage Testimony to Fit Their Narrative

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: Okay. So I checked cable news during the break, and, ladies and gentlemen, there’s a gigantic disconnect. I just got through listening to a bunch of people talking about what an impressive witness Bill Taylor was. “Oh, my God, what a great voice. He took copious notes! He was able to put quote marks around everything. Ah, this guy was devastating to the president.” You know, I don’t want to lie to you people, and I don’t get caught up.

I make it a point not to share with you what I hope the reaction is. I tell you what I literally think. I was bored silly. I try to put myself in the position of people who are not immersed in this stuff every day, and they have been hyped, they have been primed. They have been told, “What’s coming here is going to be the coup de grace, the cherry on top, the final bomb.”

“Trump’s gone today!” And there wasn’t anything like that. In fact, these first two witnesses didn’t witness anything. George Kent says he “believed” there was a quid pro quo, and Taylor got it from Tim Morrison, who got it from Gordon Sondland! These two witnesses didn’t witness anything. “But, boy, they were very impressive people with great…” They bored the audience to tears, I’m telling you!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Some of the staff was in here watching with me before the program began, and they said, “You know, you really do need to JIP this and do some of this running play-by-play commentary,” because I got so animated at some of this, like the leading the witness with these questions. And, folks, I’m not surprised that there’s this gigantic disconnect. I turn on Fox; I listen to the people saying, “Ohhhh, this Taylor, he was impressive! Oh, man, that voice! Oh, he had copious notes. Oh, he just…”

I’m watching, and I’m watching as objectively as possible, and I know, by the way (and we all know) Schiff doesn’t have anything. There is no crime. There hasn’t been a crime since they first alleged Trump colluding with Russia, since they first alleged that Trump was a traitor. There hasn’t been any evidence of a crime. Everything here is an illusion, and so the real question here is, “Can Adam Schiff do it?

“Is Adam Schiff the guy to literally pull off the impeachment of a president without a crime?” That is the objective that they have undertaken here. Given that, I can’t forget what Harold Ford said earlier this week. Harold Ford is a former Democrat member of Congress from Tennessee. He is well connected throughout the Democrat Party. He’s not a radical leftist. He’s not from that new wing of the Democrat Party. I don’t know what he’s doing now.

He has been a Wall Street financier, stockbroker, this kind of thing, and he comes from a deeply rooted political family in Tennessee. He said with Bret Baier on Fox that if this doesn’t go well by the end of the week, that Pelosi will pull it. I’ve heard nobody else allege that or allude to that. Except just now I saw that Jonathan Turley at TheHill.com has a piece on this question: “Is impeachment…?” In fact, let me get the actual headline here. Let me scroll back here, folks. Sorry.

“Are Democrats Building a Collapsible Impeachment?” I haven’t had a chance to read it, so I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what “collapsible impeachment” means. But I’m gonna take a wild stab. Is a collapsible impeachment one that you can fold up and go away, or is a collapsible impeachment something else? I probably shouldn’t even allude to this yet because I haven’t had time to read the piece, so I don’t know what he means by “collapsible impeachment.”

All I’m telling you is impeachment is a political thing. You need public opinion to pull it off. These two guys today, I’m telling you, did not persuade an anthill. I don’t care how persuasive they might have sounded to people in Washington who book these kinds of dryballs on TV shows. This thing as a TV show today did not have any evidence. It did not have anything that people were led to believe it was going to have.

There wasn’t anything blockbuster. These two guys are not even personal witnesses to anything. Taylor has never even spoken to Trump. There was nothing here that even approached the kind of bombshell allegations there were in the Kavanaugh hearings. There was nothing here that even gets close to what were bombshell allegations in the Clinton impeachment. There we had perjury. We had suborning perjury. Prior to all that, we had the semen-stained blue dress.

There is nothing here except a bunch of Washington dryballs upset that they were left out of Trump’s foreign policy regarding and involving Ukraine, and it’s filled with so much hypocrisy. For example… (Snort!) I’m getting repetitive with this. These two guys claim to have been very, very alarmed — they were very concerned — that Trump withheld “assistance.” “Assistance” is aid. They have their own terminology: “The interagency group,” “the various foreign policy channels”… That’s another one.

Trump had his own channel. He didn’t use their channel. He didn’t use “regular channels.” “Regular channels” means using the established foreign policy establishment and people in it. And of course why would Trump? They’re undermining him. They are leaking his phone calls to foreign leaders. They’re attempting to link him to something with Russia that didn’t happen. Trump was brilliant to avoid these people.

He was right on the money to ignore these people and not let them have direct input into his policy. It was the only smart way Trump could go. So these guys are bent out of shape that he did this, and they’re trying to say this is impeachable. So these guys are very concerned that Trump withheld the aid, the Javelins, the missiles, the weapons of war that Ukraine could use to fend off the evil Russians.

Trump did not withhold the aid!

This is the irony here. Ukraine got the aid. They got aid and they didn’t investigate Biden. All of this is about nothing. Now, if you want to go back to the Obama administration, he did not provide them any aid. Ukraine went eight years without American aid and assistance. These guys then say, “Well, the reason Trump didn’t provide the aid immediately was that he had personal political preferences, and that’s just beyond the pale.

“That’s something intolerable for us in our bow ties and our proper diplospeak. You simply do not put your personal political preferences into foreign policy.” Really? You’re trying to tell me that Obama never had personal political preferences? Like, you think Obama wanted the Iranians to have nukes? How about Obama delivering $150 billion in cash to the airport in Tehran, for crying out loud?

You think Obama doesn’t want the United States part of the whole climate change imbroglio that’s a fiasco? You think Obama didn’t input his own personal policy preferences? How about George W. Bush. What’s one of the reasons we went to Iraq? George W. Bush had a vision that if we spread democracy into one Middle Eastern country it would spread. Is that a personal political belief? Hell, yes, it is. The idea that presidents do not?

Why the hell do they run for office if they don’t have personal political beliefs? That’s the whole reason you run for office. You believe in your beliefs. You believe in what I want to accomplish. They’re trying to disqualify Donald Trump because he had personal political ambitions in his foreign policy with Ukraine. They’ve got nothing here, folks. They are attempting to approach the American people as though you are a bunch of idiots and ignoramuses and don’t know how the world works.

And they’re trying to tell you that the way Donald Trump is being president is so out of regular channels that it is impeachable. It isn’t! It’s exactly why elections choose the president and not these people. None of these people are elected. None of these people are accountable. But of course, Washington is gonna think these guys are brilliant and wonderful because they are part of the entire Washington establishment that everybody in Washington is part of. Trump is not.

But no matter how you strip it away, the American people that tuned in to watch this today had to be bored silly. “Rush, that’s very, very dangerous of you to say. These men had substantive things to say, Rush. They had very important things. They had very, very learned, uh, educated things to say, and it’s not a question of whether or not they were boring. It’s whether or not they were informative.” Oh, I beg to disagree. We may lament the pop culture as it is, but it is what it is.

And you simply cannot tell people that they’re gonna get one bombshell after another and then not provide it — and Schiff didn’t. There’s no way public opinion was moved an iota. If what they’ve done up to now with all the lies and distortions and allegations, if that hasn’t moved the needle on impeachment, this certainly wasn’t going to today. Now, again, I will admit that the media, by the time this is over, can repackage this thing, and they can make it look like it was one bombshell after another.

But as it happened live, it wasn’t. We don’t know how many people watched it live versus how many people are gonna watch the repackaging. So don’t misunderstand. I don’t think it bombed out yet. I don’t think it’s over with yet. But I’m telling you this did not go the way Schiff and Pelosi were planning it. It did not go the way Schiff told Pelosi it was gonna go. It couldn’t have! There’s nobody that would have put on this show, this hour and a half today, on purpose.

Nobody would have said, “Man, we got it! We’re loaded for bear. We’re gonna get Trump today. Watch us!”

This is not that. So I’m up against it on time again.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Devin Nunes has destroyed Adam Schiff this morning in his opening statement and response to Schiff, and he’s doing it again right now. He’s destroying the entire premise of what’s happening today on the substance of it. He’s already begun. It’s underway. We’ll have audio sound bites of it as the program unfolds. In fact, I want to play for you as soon as I can get to it portions of Schiff’s opening statement today followed by Nunes. It’s a stark contrast.

Nunes literally blows Schiff out of the water. Don’t know if Schiff knows it or not. And he’s doing it again right now. He just made the point that one of Schiff’s star witnesses, Alexandra Chalupa, admitted to Politico that she was collecting dirt on Trump during the 2016 campaign. And she’s one of Schiff’s star witnesses.

The problem for Schiff and the Democrats, they have no evidence. There’s nothing. They don’t have an impeachable offense or a high crime, bribery, or any of that. Adam Schiff is literally running an effort, an impeachment of Donald Trump, trying to get him thrown out of office without one crime having occurred. This would be a very difficult challenge for anybody to do, and I’m telling you Schiff can’t do it.

I had a chance also to check on Turley’s piece. And my interpretation of the headline, as I knew, was correct. Turley is saying that the Democrats’ charges here, their so-called impeachment offenses are so narrow that the architecture of the case is collapsible. He’s making the point that if you want to go for impeachment, impeachment is a big damn deal, and you better have a very strong and wide berth, foundation for it.

And they don’t. They don’t have a foundation for it. This is a wing and a prayer. As Democrat congressman Al Green said (doing impression), “We have to impeach the SOB, otherwise he gonna be reelected.” That’s exactly how they’re looking at. We gotta impeach him, otherwise he’s gonna be reelected, gonna win reelection. We can’t stop it, so we gotta impeach him.

Their foundation is so narrow that it practically doesn’t exist. It’s not built on anything substantive, and so Turley’s point is that anything built on a very flimsy, narrow, maybe even nonexistent foundation will collapse. So I put that together with what I heard Harold Ford say, and I may be attaching too much weight to what Harold Ford said, but the reason, he was the only guy who said it, the only Democrat who has ever spoken of any concern about this.

And I know that he knows Pelosi, probably still has a relationship with her, and for him to come out and say that if this thing doesn’t have legs by Friday, she’ll pull it, I think they’ve known from the get-go they’re rolling the dice on this. They are counting so much on the media to be able to take big nothing burgers like today and turn them into shocking breaking news events.

[mystery-ak]

The Democrat Lawyer Led Taylor on Every Question

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: Now, we put together a montage. I wanted you to hear this too. I asked Cookie, “Give me a montage of this lawyer, this MSNBC guy that Schiff hired as the lead counsel today, I want the audience to hear how this guy was extracting information from Bill Taylor.” It’s audio sound bite number 22. And it runs two minutes. I may not be able to play the whole thing, but I want you to get a flavor for this because this is instructive and informative as well.

DANIEL GOLDMAN: On September 9th of this year, you texted Ambassador Sondland and Volker, and the text message should be on the screen in front of you. And if you could read what you wrote. What did you mean when you said you thought it was crazy? When you say all of what we were trying to do, what do you mean by “we”? When you reference help with a political campaign in this text message, what did you mean? That investigation at the very least was mentioned by President Trump in the July 25th phone call with President Zelensky, is that right?


Ambassador Taylor in your decades of military service and diplomatic service representing the United States around the world, have you ever seen another example of foreign aid conditioned on the personal or political interests of the president of the United States? Ambassador Taylor, now that we’ve established that you ultimately did understand that President Trump was withholding the security assistance, and a White House meeting from Ukraine until they announced these investigations to benefit his re-election campaign –

RUSH: Stop the tape a minute. Taylor hasn’t said diddly-squat here. The lawyer’s testifying, The lawyer is putting words in his mouth, the lawyer is telling him where he wants to go because Taylor doesn’t know where to go. Taylor is a tool here. Oh, he may look respectful, and he may have service medals and he may have a great voice, and he may make a great impression, but they’re having to lead him by a leash to where they want him to end up because he won’t end up there on his own even after coaching, even after meetings, private testimony, they’re still having to lead this guy down the primrose path because that’s the only way they can be guaranteed to get there. Here, let’s resume and play just a little bit more of this.

DANIEL GOLDMAN: — let’s go back a little bit in time to when you first learned about this conditionality. And on September 1st, so a little more than a week before that text we just read, you sent another text to Ambassador Sondland and Volker, which should also be on the screen in front of you. And if you could read what you wrote to them. What information had you learned that prompted you to write this text message?

RUSH: All right, stop. Now, this is after the guy’s endless opening statement. The guy’s just taken 30 minutes to explain everything, but he had to be asked, “What did you mean by that? Who is ‘we’?” and blah, blah, blah. And keep in mind this guy has never spoken to President Trump. Never met him. May have met him, he’s never spoken to him.

[mystery-ak]

We’re Watching a Political Campaign Disguised as a Hearing

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: The so-called impeachment hearings continue. I’m gonna try to reset the stage. When the program began an hour ago, I was desirous of sharing every impression I had in the first five minutes. And that, of course, is an impossible thing to do. One of the reasons is that I didn’t want to forget anything. I made some notes as we went along. I watched a little bit more of it during the break here, and I’ve now had the benefit of seeing the reaction of others to this. And it’s clear that there is, again, a bifurcation.

We have two completely different worlds of people watching this today. We have people watching this wanting it to work, hoping that there’s something that comes up that will send Donald Trump packing. That will get him convicted and sent out of Washington. And there’s another group of people — maybe three groups. There’s another group watching hoping that there is none of that. And then there’s another group that I’m in that knows full well what this is. That this is not really an impeachment hearing. It is a one-sided campaign event.

And what we are watching, you want to get down to brass tacks? With these two witnesses today, we are essentially watching a sponsored mutiny. These two guys, Ambassador Taylor and the bow tied guy, what’s his name? I can’t remember his name right off the bat now, the first witness. These guys — yeah, George Kent. Trust me when I tell you, believe me when I tell you that the only thing, the only gripe they’ve got is that they weren’t used. The only gripe they’ve got is that Trump set up a different channel for foreign policy with Ukraine, a channel that was outside theirs.

Their noses are out of joint that they were not used. They are the experts. Nobody else knows how to do this. Nobody else has the experience. Nobody else knows the people as well. Nobody else has proper interest in the United States, nobody, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They were not used. They are essentially attempting to conduct a mutiny with the help of the Democrat Party.

They’re essentially suggesting that the president has engaged in misconduct for not using them. And these hearings are designed for them to provide evidence of Trump’s incompetence. Not impeachable offense, but incompetence or misconduct or whatever.

Now, those two things are things the American voters render decisions on, not these people. These people don’t get to decide who the president is. And these people don’t get to decide what the president’s foreign policy is. And these people don’t get to decide to throw the president out of office if their foreign policy is not used and if they are not used. They are tools, they are willing tools of the Democrat Party in a pure political campaign event today that is being disguised as an impeachment inquiry or impeachment hearing.

There hasn’t been an impeachable offense mentioned. There hasn’t been a crime mentioned. None of these two witnesses have ever talked to Donald Trump. Everything that we’re hearing from them is exactly what we were told that their testimony behind closed doors was. Their opinion. Their opinion of what somebody told them Trump did, their opinion of what somebody told them Trump wanted to do, their opinion based on their own knowledge of what they think Trump is trying to do.

But their opinions do not constitute crimes. If they disagree with the president doesn’t mean he’s committed a crime. But in their world, it does, folks. This is the point. In their world, any deviation from their channel is considered to be un-American or irregular or so out of the norm as to be intolerable.

What these people are demonstrating is exactly what I was hoping for — the existence of this group of people that here before nobody ever heard of and nobody ever knew, nobody knew a thing about these people. And all of a sudden they show up and testify before Congress and give the opinion, give the impression that they run the show. That the foreign policy, particularly with Ukraine, is theirs. It isn’t the president, it isn’t anybody else, it’s theirs. And their testimony is designed to persuade people what a mistake as president Donald Trump is.

But the irony is that everything they claim Trump has done that’s wrong are things the Democrats have done, things that Obama has done. The big complaint here is that Trump supposedly withheld military aid that had been promised to Ukraine while Ukraine was engaged in a war with Russia. And so they’re trying to claim here that Trump is still sympathetic to Russia, that Trump is actually helping Putin deal with Ukraine. It’s an out-and-out lie.

It was the eight years of the Obama administration that Ukraine was denied all military aid. They didn’t get anything. The Ukrainians did get the aid they were promised under Donald Trump. It might not have arrived on the exact day, but it certainly was happening before the July 25th phone call. And Trump did not get a quid pro quo for it. He did not get a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens or of Burisma. And yet Ukraine got their aid.

So these people literally have nothing substantive to complain about. Their complaints are purely that Trump is not sophisticated enough, that he’s not wise enough to have used them, that he went outside the chain. You ought to hear these guys when they say Rudy Giuliani’s name, they practically spit it out. “Rudy Giuliani. Ew, yuk.” They just can’t believe that anybody would send a Neanderthal like Rudy Giuliani to talk to the president of Ukraine.

Now, the hearings are an absolute joke. And I’m telling you from the standpoint of the buildup, from the expectations, from what the American people were led to expect by cable news and newspapers all over the country and what we’ve got here in the most common, understandable sense, we’ve got a television show that is one of the most boring things on television that you can imagine. It just is.

I don’t care how substantive the Washington insiders think it is. I don’t care how much like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite they claim that William Taylor sounds like. By the way, imagine that as a compliment. “This guy sounds like Cronkite. This guy sounds like Edward R. Murrow.” Yeah, well, there’s no smoking gun. There’s no quid pro quo. There’s no shocking revelation. There’s no, “Oh, my God. Trump did that?” There’s nothing anywhere approaching this.

It’s just a couple of guys with their blue-blood noses out of joint that they were side-stepped, that they weren’t utilized. In fact, Taylor — this is kind of interesting. Taylor told Pompeo — this is from his testimony today — Taylor told Pompeo that he would quit as ambassador Ukraine if the U.S. didn’t continue a strongly pro-Ukraine policy. Really?

So Taylor’s announcing that he’s gone rogue. Taylor’s going rogue. He’s demanding his own personal policy be implemented here or he’s gonna quit. He told Pompeo that he will quit if the U.S. didn’t continue a strongly pro-Ukraine policy. And yet we’re told that Donald Trump, the president, is not allowed to utilize his personal political preferences in the adjudication of American foreign policy when presidents do it all the time.

You think Obama wasn’t exercising personal political, ideological beliefs in the implementation of his foreign policy? Take Iran alone, take the Arab Spring, take whatever it was Obama was trying to do with Cuba, with the Middle East, you telling me that Obama’s liberalism, that his desired ideological outcomes had no impact on his foreign policy? What an absurd claim that is.

So now we’ve got two guys basically conducting a mutiny with the assistance of the Democrats on this committee. And the sole complaint is that Donald Trump is exhibiting misconduct because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he doesn’t know what he’s doing because he’s not using these guys. He’s not using their channel. He’s not using the interagency group, and he is not continuing the foreign policy of the Obama administration. That would be the smart thing, but he’s not doing it so Trump’s gotta go because we’re not getting what we expected to get with the Hillary presidency.

And it really is no more complicated than that. These people are expecting the continuation of the Obama foreign policy with the election of Hillary Clinton except something went wrong. Donald Trump was elected. He has his own foreign policy. These blue-blood, narcissistic, we’re smarter than everybody else in the world guys that nobody knew existed until all this, now pop up and say Trump has no right to sidestep us, Trump has no right to implement his own foreign policy, Trump has no right to win, Trump has no business being president. Which means that you the American should have no say in any of this.

It’s also obvious that Adam Schiff does not know how to run a committee. Every time the Republicans ask for a point of order, he appears to be lost and assumes sort of a dictatorial posture in order to cover for the fact that he has no substantive reason to deny their requests and the lines of questioning that they want to engage in.

But I’m just telling you, I don’t know how many people tuned in to watch this, but those who did, there will not be, for example, a spontaneous outgrowth, response outbreak of protests nationwide on the part of the American people demanding that Donald Trump go based on what was said or what was learned today. There wasn’t anything, there’s nothing so far that has been said by either of these witnesses that would convince anybody that Donald Trump’s done anything.

And if you put it in context, all the claims of what he did with Russia, Russia meddling, Russia collusion and all the other things he been accused of, it’s exactly what I said. When they start feeling their oats because of what they’re able to do with their media alliance using behind-closed-doors tactics like witnesses nobody can see, when they can line things up and have the media tell their story, then they start feeling their oats and then they go public.

And every time they have tried to go public with it, it has bombed on them like Mueller bombed and was a disaster. They thought the Mueller report, that Barr had somehow positioned it so that every in it was not revealed. That Mueller had actually found collusion and that Mueller had actually found obstruction, but that Barr was not letting Mueller say so. So they demanded that Mueller come testify. He didn’t want to testify. They dragged him out of the old folks’ home, wherever he was, made him come up there, and he goes up there, and he can’t even tell ’em what’s in his own report.

These guys have never even talked to Donald Trump. They have to be led by the Democrats’ MSNBC lawyer in questioning to have their so-called incriminating information put on the record. After a 30-minute opening statement which bored everybody to tears, the Democrats lawyer (doing impression), “What did you mean by ‘we’? And what happened after you sent that WhatsApp message and what was the reaction to that message, and why did you think this was such a bad thing? Do you think Zelensky really would like a White House meeting? Is that a big deal to a new president? Do you think Donald Trump’s a mean president?”

Leading question after leading question for which there was never any basis of fact that would then permit such questioning to be sensible. It was just a series of disconnected leading questions because the witness couldn’t get where the Democrats wanted him to go on his own. And yet this was gonna be, this was it, finally, folks, they were gonna get rid of Trump today. This was it, the first public hearings of impeachment, and finally the American people were gonna see what an absolute disaster Donald Trump is.

They haven’t seen that. They haven’t seen any evidence of anything the Democrats have been alleging. And they’re watching a couple of guys, some witnesses here they didn’t know existed, seemed very disturbed that they weren’t used and their counsel wasn’t taken, their advice wasn’t accepted. It’s exactly why Donald Trump was elected.

So I said yesterday that the American people were going to see finally what a raw, partisan sham this is. And those who have been able to survive and live through the boredom have, in fact, seen that that’s exactly what this is, a partisan sham that, as Jonathan Turley says today, has no foundation supporting it whatsoever.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. We’re gonna get to the phones here. I know that. I know I owe everybody on hold that’s been patient to get to the phones, but I want to try to make this connection here to why this is boring. Remember what this is, folks. This is impeachment. It’s not a congressional hearing. This is not a hearing on tax policy or Medicare for All or the Ways and Means Committee debating the farm bill. This is impeachment.

This is the president of the United States committing crimes for which he needs to be thrown out of office. People have been told, “You’ve gotta tune in! You can’t miss this. Schiff is opening up with blockbuster testimony, inescapable evidence that Trump is an absolute reprobate who needs to be thrown out of office tonight.” There hasn’t been anything that even approaches — I mean, that gets within miles of — the way people were led to believe and set up expectation-wise.

But let’s go back and let’s relive previous impeachments. Watergate. Watergate was a three-act proceeding. Act 1: “There was a burglary of the Democrat National Committee by people with connections to the White House.” That’s gonna get your attention. “You mean the White House sent people to break in to the DNC?” “Damn right they did!” Act 2: “The president knew about it and covered it up, and we want to know what he knew and when.”

Coupled with the revelation of the White House taping system, with missing 18 minutes that might have incriminated Nixon in the whole thing. Now, that’s gonna grab your attention. Act 3: “The president knew about everything from Day One and didn’t want anybody to know about it.” Let’s go to the Clinton impeachment. Act 1: (impression) “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Whatever Her Name Is — Lewinsky — not a single time. Not ever! Now, leave me alone. I gotta get back to work for the American people.”

Act 2: “A semen-stained blue dress he was found in possession of Monica Lewinsky.” Act 3: “The president lied under oath during a deposition in the Paula Jones case, and it was learned that he had asked other people to lie under oath.” Now, that’s gonna grab your attention. What do we have here? What do we have here? “Donald Trump sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to tell them that they should investigate Hunter Biden for something Hunter Biden did and that his dad did!”

They haven’t even said that yet, folks.

They haven’t even gotten there yet.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, to the phones we go. Dave, Phoenix, Arizona. Glad you waited. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, there. I think this really is gonna reenergize Trump’s base because this trial, it’s reminding us why we voted for him. Trump gets things done. It’s called negotiation. Like any strong business leader, he’ll negotiate. Unlike Obama, who on the world stage folded like a lawn chair. I mean, the Iran deal? Really? All of this is just a waste of time and tax dollars. It’s a dog-and-pony show, and it shows why Americans can’t stand politicians. Rush, correct me if I’m wrong, I thought impeachment was for high crimes and treason. All of this helps Trump get reelected.

RUSH: Well, here’s the thing. The impeachment proceedings are something over which the House of Representatives has plenary power, meaning absolutely — and I’m not trying to be fast and loose here. I’m telling you that any House of Representatives, whether the Democrats control it or the Republicans, can attempt to impeach a president for anything.

“High crimes and misdemeanors” is whatever the House says it is. That’s what Schiff is trying to do here. They’re literally trying to impeach a president where there haven’t been any crimes committed. They’re trying to define them and convince the American people that Trump’s existence is a crime, essentially. So you say that this is gonna rally Trump’s base. I take that you mean these hearings today?

CALLER: Oh, yeah. It’s gonna reenergize the base because this trial —

RUSH: Why? What’s happening in these hearings that’s gonna rejuvenate the base, revive the base?

CALLER: Well, it’s reminding us why we voted for Trump, ’cause he gets things done. He doesn’t play by the rules of the establishment. He negotiates with these countries. He gets deals done — and just ’cause it’s not on their specific terms… You know, that’s what they want, is they want to play by their rules.

RUSH: No, no. I’m being specific. This is what you take away from watching this today, that Trump gets things done and these guys don’t?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: What…? (sigh) Okay. What is Trump getting done today that you recognize watching this today?

CALLER: Negotiation. Just in general, with other world leaders, with trade, with —

RUSH: Why, because you think they’re…? (sigh) What I’m getting at is, this has not been about what Trump’s gotten done. This is all about crimes and stuff that Trump’s committed. Irregularities, misconduct. Trump hasn’t been praised at all here.

CALLER: That’s right.

RUSH: So what are you seeing that’s gonna rally the base?

CALLER: What I’m seeing is that there’s an obvoius… Anyone who’s objective can see what’s going on here. (unintelligible)

RUSH: Okay. Okay. So you’re telling me that what you’re seeing is abject bias, partisanship, and unfairness and a bunch of people whose noses are out of joint because Donald Trump is succeeding?

CALLER: Of course! They can’t win so they’re trying to rewrite rules.

RUSH: All right. All right. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear about your observations. That’s how you lead a witness.

[mystery-ak]

Obama Holdovers Are Ticked Off Trump Went Around Them on Ukraine

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: Mrs. Pelosi, I really think you ought to begin thinking about finding a way out of this. I really do, Mrs. Pelosi. Can I tell you what CNN just put up as their highlight, breaking news, ground-breaking, “My God, this is gonna shock the hell out of you” little chyron headline? In other words, this is it. “Sondland said…” This is Taylor. “Sondland told me that Trump cared more about investigating Biden than he cared about Ukraine.”

That is it! “Sondland told me everything — including security aid — depended on Zelensky announcing investigations.” “Trump cared more about investigating the Bidens than he cares about Ukraine! (sobbing) And we… We love Ukraine! (wailing) We have devoted our lives to Ukraine foreign policy! (Gasp!) Trump doesn’t care. Trump doesn’t care.” Folks, that’s all they’ve got. That’s the bombshell. Of all the stuff that has been said today, that’s what CNN has extracted as their headline take-away chyron graphic. It’s hearsay!

Taylor said, “Sondland told me that cared more about investigating the Bidens than he cares about Ukraine.” (wailing) But Taylor never talked to Trump. Taylor never spoke to Trump. Taylor doesn’t know what Trump thought. Taylor doesn’t know what Trump feels, Taylor doesn’t know what Trump wants! Taylor has never spoken to Trump. A take-away from these hearings on CNN is a hearsay reference to Gordon Sondland, who is a pro-Trumper.

“Well, Gordon Sondland told me that Trump cares more about investigating the Bidens!” Let me tell you something, folks. Ukraine got their aid. Trump never got his Biden investigation. Ukraine never started that investigation, and Ukraine got their aid. I’m telling you, there’s nothing here. In fact, it’s even worse. Before we go to the phones, let me give you this little side-by-side. This Taylor guy — this guy who’s filled with hearsay, in my opinion.

The guy that sounds like Walter Cronkite, the guy that sounds like Edward R. Murrow (impression) “The, uhhh, impeccable foreign policy Ukraine specialist.” This guy, his beef, his total beef — my opinion, by the way. His total beef is that he disagrees with Trump’s foreign policy. That’s it. That’s all this is. It’s not that Trump’s committed crimes. It’s not that Trump engaged in bribery or extortion or quid pro quos. This guy Taylor’s beef is that he disagrees with Trump’s foreign policy.

He claimed in his testimony today that Trump is pro-Russian. But what did Trump do? Trump has armed Ukraine with aid the Obama administration denied. Trump has beefed up sanctions against Russia. Trump has removed the U.S. from a warped Russian missile treaty that Obama established. Remember Obama on the open mic (impression), “Uh, hey, Dmitry, you tell, um… Tell — tell — tell Vladimir I’ll have, uh, much more flexibility after the election.”

Meaning: “Tell Vladimir I’ll have a lot more leeway in getting rid of American nukes after I win reelection 2012.” Trump got out of that deal. Trump ended up killing Russians in Syria. Trump has increased oil production in the United States that has hurt Russian dependence on oil-export money. Trump hasn’t done anything to help Russia. Trump has taken on Russia. Trump is not pro-Russian. Trump has upped military defense of the United States to stave off Russia.

Trump has invested in and increased NATO readiness — and also, Trump has gotten rid of the last vestiges of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s “reset” with Russia. Now, Obama, in contrast, stopped arms aid to Ukraine. Obama canceled the missile defense against Russia in Eastern Europe. Obama did nothing about Crimea and Ukraine. He did not stop Russia from annexing Crimea from Ukraine while Crimea was defenseless because Ukraine did not get any American aid because Obama had denied it.

Obama invited Putin into the Middle East after 40 years of the Russians not having an invited American presence there. There isn’t any comparison. If you want to look at the two sets of foreign policy, the Barack Obama foreign policy basically sold out Ukraine in favor of Russia. That is what Trump has been resetting! That’s what Trump has been redoing, and these guys are bent out of shape about it. They had implemented the Obama foreign policy where Ukraine is concerned. They expected Hillary’s election to continue it.

Trump has come in and said, “You guys are nuts! Ukraine is our ally, not Russia,” and he has totally reversed what Obama the Obama foreign policy was — and that’s the rub. That’s all this is, and they’re trying to disguise this as bribery and extortion and quid pro quos. It’s nothing more than a bunch of Obamaites literally ticked off that Trump did an end run around ’em on Ukraine foreign policy. That’s it!

Pardon me for yelling. It makes me mad, and everything happening to Trump here is a result of Obama holdovers trying to sabotage him because he’s undoing a bunch of the rotten things Obama did. That’s what’s happening to Donald Trump. Everything happening to him has been sponsored by Obama holdovers (including here) who were expecting Hillary Clinton to be elected and to continue this charade — and Trump has undone much of it.

He continues to undo more of it, and they don’t know how to stop him. That’s all it is. There’s no impeachable offense. There’s no blockbuster here. The blockbuster… There is a blockbuster: What is being revealed about the Obama administration and the Washington, D.C., shadow government that thinks it runs things and attempts to sabotage presidents elected by the American people who do not do its bidding.

That’s the bombshell here. The Democrats have all kinds of evidence. It’s just none of it’s against Trump. The Democrats have reams of evidence against Obama and Hillary and the entirety of what we call the deep state. They’ve got overflowing evidence. They’re trying to suppress it, while they now create and try to manufacture evidence against Trump when there is.

[mystery-ak]

Taylor Admits All His Testimony Is Hearsay

Nov 13, 2019



RUSH: I have just been told that the vast, vast, vast majority of them are carrying the program today rather than carrying the hearings. I know it’s a tough call for certain programmers to make in determining the degree of importance and so forth, and their decision to stick with this program, I just want all of you to know in all of our markets out there, how deeply appreciative of that I am.

And it’s because of that that I’m trying to make the most of this that I can as it’s happening and commenting on it as it’s happening. So thank you again. I need to make that acknowledgment.

And I just heard a couple things here that, for me, just say everything. Now, they would probably be things that most viewers would not even take notice of. This not an insult, by the way, of anybody.

But I’m watching Jim Jordan question Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador Cronkite, rather, Ambassador Edward R. Murrow. And he’s questioning his knowledge of things. And Ambassador Taylor said, “My understanding is only coming from people I talk to.” Folks, do you realize what he just admitted to here? He’s not a fact witness. He’s not an eyewitnesses and he’s not an earwitness. He hasn’t had one ounce of direct contact with Donald Trump.

He’s admitted just five minutes ago that everything he says comes from his understanding from talking to other people. “My understanding of these events is only from people I’ve spoken to.” Well, fine and dandy, but what does that get us? He’s not even there.

Then the second thing, some Democrat member of Congress from Connecticut takes over the questioning. (paraphrasing) “You know, the Republicans, my colleagues on the Republican side, they’re not even refuting the evidence against the president. They’re just simply talking about dossiers and some guy named Steele and some mystical thing about Russians and so forth.”

Some thing called the dossier? So he makes this observation trying to characterize the entire Mueller investigation as somebody’s imagination, that the Republicans are a bunch of kooks to keep talking about that. And then he turned to George Kent. Kent started (doing impression), “My family has been in service to the country, my blue-blooded family service to the country since before George Washington was born,” blah, blah, blah, blah. That’s how deep, deep state we are.

And the Democrat from Connecticut said, “Now, you are an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law, right?” And this guy, George Kent, said, “Yes, Congressman, I am, specializing as an expert anti-corruption, the rule of law for 16 years.” Really? You’re an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law in the State Department. Now, I would love to then be able to ask, what the hell do you do? What is an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law?

He was proud of this. “Yes, yes, Congressman, I am an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law, and I have been for 16 years.” Well, what have you done? What have you done in anti-corruption? “I have been involved in anti-corruption and the rule of law in the State Department for 16 years.” What have you done? What does an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law do? He wasn’t asked that. Nobody knows what he does. That was simply meant as a qualification for assessing Donald Trump.

See how this works? “I am an expert in anti-corruption and the rule of law, and I have been for 16 years.” Yeah, well, okay, you get up, you have breakfast with the family, and your wife says what? “Have a good day at anti-corruption”? “Thank you, Honey,” and you go off to the office, and the sign on your door says, “Anti-corruption and rule of law”?

What do you do? “Well, I’m an expert in recognizing it, expert at stamping it out, an expert in dealing with it.” We don’t know what he does with it. He’s just an expert in it. And was allowed to proclaim himself an expert in anti-corruption, the rule of law, all for the purposes of being able to pass judgment on Donald Trump.

Can you get a degree from Harvard in anti-corruption and the rule of law? Does the Kennedy School of Government offer — can you get a doctorate in it? What about Yale? What about Brown? What about Dartmouth? Can you get a doctorate or a degree in anti-corruption or rule of law? And when you’re an expert in it, do you learn how to prevent it? Do you learn how to weed it out? Do you learn how to stop it? Do you learn how to tell corrupt people not to be corrupt? And if so, what’s your success rate, Mr. Kent?