Rush Transcripts...Jan. 6th 2020

[mystery-ak]

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/


Why the Left Sides with Iranian Terrorists Over America

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: Well, that was one heck of a Christmas break. And I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back here. I’ve had to revise my opinion of Twitter. Yes, I have. I’ll explain it in a minute.

So what happened? The president kills a well-known terrorist who is responsible for the death of hundreds of Americans, including uniformed military personnel, and the left melts down. The left has a breakdown. If anybody is puzzled by this, all you have to do is go back to when Trump came down the escalator on June 15th of 2016 and announced his slogan Make America Great Again. Remember how controversial that was?

Make America Great Again, what’s controversial about that? What in the world is controversial about America first? But it is to the American left. And therein lies the explanation for all this. Of course, I’m gonna break it down into many, many details for you.

Great to be back, folks. Happy to have you with us. The telephone number, 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.

Twitter, in my mind, has become useful. Now, Snerdly and the gang on the other side of the glass are looking perplexed and puzzled because it is well known that I think of sewer and Twitter as inseparable. But Twitter is highly useful right now. Twitter is allowing the left and today’s Democrats and the media to show normal people how freaking insane they are. Twitter has become worthwhile. It is incredible.

As I watch this display, as I watch the left melt down over the death of a genuine enemy of the people of this country and side with an enemy nation over their own country and president, I wonder how many Americans, independents, what have you, who are on the fence see this and are shocked and surprised by it. I do because you never know the depth that the mainstream media succeeds in achieving in terms of persuading people.

You might find this hard to believe, folks, but I have found over the course of my stellar, big broadcast career, I’ve said things about — just take your pick. I’ve said something and I’ve pounded it for 10, 15 years. And people have heard it for 10, 15 years. And they hear it from somebody else. “My God, Rush must be right.”

In other words, everybody needs verification, or a lot of people need verification. Well, one of the missions of this program since its interception has been the attempt and the objective to inform everybody ideologically who the left is, who liberals are, what liberalism is, how it becomes indistinguishable from socialism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, I mean, it’s unmistakable who these people are, and they are the ones making it well known.

Nobody has to tell anybody what the American left is or what the modern-day Democrat Party is because they are out there informing everybody. You see where Iran has announced it will no longer abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Obama? Kind of like Bill Clinton announcing he’s no longer gonna abide by his marriage vows. I mean, big deal. Anybody shocked, Iran — they never have abided by the — in fact, they may have because the terms of the deal freed them to go ahead and develop nuclear weapons, nuclear power and all of this.

Look. Let me take a stab. I’m late to this issue. The story’s been around since late last week. Let me take a stab at explaining this. Oh, and, by the way, folks, I need to tell you, I have some kind of — it’s a weird thing. I never had this before. A little respiratory cold. I don’t have a stuffed nose or throat or any of that. It’s kind of like asthma. I had asthma when I was a kid, shortness of breath. So if I speak a little slower, that’s why. Don’t be distracted by it. I’ll try to not make it distracting.

Why is the left being so blatant in their support for an enemy nation? Why is the left, why is the Democrat Party going out of its way to tell everybody that they actually prefer the mullahs in Iran and this dead terrorist, Qassem Soleimani. By the way, this guy — and I have the inside track on how they did it, which I will share with you — I mean, the military operation, I have the inside track on how this was done. It is amazing, and as ironic as it sounds, we may have to really, really praise the intelligence community for pulling this off.

I mean, the deep state IC. But this guy, the Revolutionary Guard that general Qassem Soleimani, his body is being flown back to Tehran in a cardboard box with his picture on it across three coach seats on an Iranian airline. The New York Post has the picture. He’s in a cardboard box. Of course there’s not much of him left, just his finger with the ring on it. That’s how he was identified. But still, and they’ve got his picture on the cardboard box. But he was a bad dude, folks.

Now, why is the left beside themselves? I think — and there are many reasons for this, by the way, and all of them I’ve discussed before, and in terms of what may be guiding this in a specific sense, I think as much as the case is the modern-day Democrats, it’s about protecting the legacy of the Obama administration and Obama himself and the Obama foreign policy.

To many conservatives and many Republicans, Reagan is the president of all time, the president of presidents and no matter what kind of assaults or attacks on him they’re going to be answered and defended. And I think to the left — you know, it used to be Clinton — I actually now think it’s Obama — that must be protected above all things, must be shielded against all attempts. It was the Obama administration that ran the coup on Trump, and it went all the way to the Oval Office. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind.

Pelosi, by the way, still hasn’t sent the articles of impeachment over. Josh Hawley, senator from Missouri, says he’s gonna offer a resolution to just dismiss the charges because she won’t send the articles over, and nobody knows when she’s gonna send ’em over. She’s trying to, again, persuade people to reopen the case in the Senate for more witnesses. But I think she may be waiting for Durham.

She may be waiting for the Durham report, even if that’s six months from now, and use the articles being sent to the Senate to blunt whatever bad news might be coming down the pike for the Democrats. Durham could be one thing predictable, could be something we don’t know about. But let me explain this Obama business as a way of explaining how the left is imploding on this. You know, it has been fashionable…

Actually, it’s not been fashionable to call them anti-American. But there’s a reason I asked the question, “What in the world is so controversial about Make America Great Again?” Do you realize that phrase sent them into apoplexy? Make America Great Again or America First sends them into a nosedive, into a tizzy. What in the world…? To normal, decent, common citizen Americans, what in the world is controversial about that: Make America Great Again?

The answer is very simple. There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party that don’t think America ever has been great, do not think America can be great (because of our founding), don’t believe America deserves to be great and, in fact, thinks America’s guilty — and they have now become the mainstream media of the Democrat Party. Madeleine Albright. Madeleine Albright is teaching at Georgetown University.

One of the things that she teaches students is that the United States is nothing but an accident of timing and events, that there’s nothing special about the United States, that there certainly is nothing exceptional about the United States, that it was just an accident. It just happened, a confluence of events. People fleeing the dictatorship of the king in Great Britain, any number of other things. Forces beyond anybody’s control brought these events together and a nation was created, but it’s just an accident.

And, therefore, there’s nothing really unique about it. There’s nothing special about it. There’s nothing noteworthy about it. Now, Madeleine Albright… You might also remember that when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union imploded, that Madeleine Albright was very alarmed that that left the United States as the only superpower in the world — and that was not good. Because, you see, the concept of America as the good guys does not exist in today’s Democrat Party and the worldwide left.

Do not doubt me on this. There is no concept of America as the good guys. That’s why Make America Great Again is so offensive to them. America is not the good guys. America needs to be cut down in size. America needs to be limited. America needs to be guarded against. So Madeleine Albright’s out there teaching young skulls full of mush there’s nothing special about America — it’s just a coincidence, just an accident — and that the United States as a singular superpower is a destabilizing element in the world.

Okay, that brings us forward. She was secretary of state, among other things, for Bill Clinton. She has views which are common in the modern-day left, and they are common in the American government. They’re common in the American establishment. That view, that America alone as a superpower is destabilizing is a view widely held in the civil service throughout the State Department. It’s not an obscure view. It’s not a minority view. It took me a long time to learn this, long time to believe it, long time to understand it, long time to accept it.

It’s a tough thing to accept. You grow up in your own country, you take civics, you go to school when you’re a young kid. You’re taught about the founding of the country. You’re aware of how unique and exceptional America is. Then you discover that people in your own government don’t buy it, don’t believe it, don’t think it — in fact, think just the exact opposite? It’s a tough thing to believe. A lot of people don’t want to believe it.

A lot of people don’t want to accept that in our own government, there are people who do not believe in the goodness of the United States, the concept of America as the good guys. But you’re looking at it! In every bit of this opposition to what Trump has done, you’re seeing it. If you don’t want to believe me, do not deny what you’re seeing, do not deny what you’re reading. They hate that Trump did this for a host of reasons. They hate that Trump succeeded at it, in a political sense. They hate that Trump has done damage to the Obama foreign policy.

Now, the reason I mention Madeleine Albright was because Obama was of the same view. Do you know what Obama’s policy in Iran was? Aside from giving them nukes. But what was the motivation for it? Obama had the same view of the Middle East that he and Madeleine Albright and all the rest of them have of the United States. The Middle East was destabilized when only Israel was an economic and military power. One of the reasons the Obama — and there are many.

One of the reasons the Obama administration entered into the Iran deal, one of the reasons that they engaged Iran, one of the reasons that Obama dropped off $150 billion in cash on the tarmac in Tehran — and don’t think that some of it didn’t get to Qassem Soleimani. A lot of it did. They knew who the guy was! The Obama people knew who the guy was. They were making deals with this guy. They knew exactly who he was. Obama believed that empowering Iran would stabilize the Middle East, provide a counterbalance to Israel.

Because once again, the Israelis are not seen as the good guys, even though they are a United States ally. And, by the way, there many reasons why people like Obama, Susan Rice and Madeleine Albright and all the rest would not see Israel as the good guys. There are religious reasons. They are geopolitical reasons, strategic reasons, racial reasons. I mean, there’s all kinds of reasons for it. But regardless, Israel is the problem in the Middle East. The United States is the problem in the world at large.

So policies must be developed and implemented to blunt the bad-guy nature of the United States and the bad-guy nature of Israel. And so there’s Obama and his administration funneling money to the mullahs, enabling them to modernize, going through the motions of sanctions which were not really sanctions. It wasn’t until Trump came along that all of that changed and the American left looks at Donald Trump as many things.

But one of the things they see is an assault on Obama, an assault on Obama’s foreign policy, an effort and an attempt to unravel and unwind it — and they’re right. Trump is unwinding it, unraveling a horrible Middle Eastern policy from the Obama administration. I foretold this! I have a sound bite I want to play for you from the summer of 2018.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to go back to the audio sound bites. I’ve got just enough time to squeeze this in. Audio sound bite number 17, July 23, 2018. I told everybody way back then how Trump’s Iran policy was going to be different.

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: The Drive-Bys are now obsessed for the moment with Trump and his all-caps tweets to President Rouhani of Iran who is continuing to shout, “Death to America!” here and “Death to America!” there, and Trump’s had it. You know, Trump is not like other presidents who say, “Well, you know, that’s just Iran and that’s part of what we have to do being a superpower. And, you know, to show Iran we don’t intend ’em any harm, here’s $150 billion direct from the Obama administration,” along with a stupid deal to help them ratchet up their nuclear program.

Trump looks at this and is appalled by it, as anybody with any common sense would be. The only people not appalled by it are people working inside the Beltway in Washington who think this is somehow new diplomacy or maybe standard-practice diplomacy. But it’s part and parcel of being a superpower…

I mean, that kind of inane thinking is what guides America inside the Beltway. And so letting Iran run amok, letting Iran continue to be the state sponsor of terrorism, undermine Middle East peace, however they wish to — and become the No. 1 Middle Eastern ally of Russia — Donald Trump says, “No. You’re gonna start threatening us?” Trump caps-tweets back, ‘You keep doing this and you’re gonna suffer consequences the likes of which you have never even contemplated.’ Of course, they need the vapors inside the Beltway.

END ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: So what do we glean from this? This is July 2018. It’s January 2020 right now. It’s a year and a half ago. Trump has simply followed through with what he told the Iranians he was gonna do. This guy, Qassem Soleimani, hits the Saudi oil fields. Trump bides his time. He’s a man of his word. They don’t know how yet to react to that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I love it, all these leftist hand wringers out there, the think tank liberal scholars wringing their hands, saying, “Oh, I wish somebody had spent more time warning the president about the day after, and the day after the day after, because the president is reacting here very, very recklessly and I don’t think he had any idea of what the blowback would be” These people… Folks, if we ever end up with these people having absolute control and power over this country, they are gonna give it away.

They’re gonna give it away under the premise that America deserves to be chopped down hugely in size. I mean, it’s not hard to understand this at all. The concept that America is the good guys, they just don’t believe it. And that attitude and that view has been taught to way too many people now starting at the earliest ages, the earliest levels of formal education — and it stinks. It is pathetic. I also have a challenge here. We don’t…

Three hours goes back very quickly, and I’ve got an audio sound bite roster here of 40 sound bites, and the first 15 are about me. Now, you know I don’t like to make this program about me, but many of these sound bites were about me during the break — and, of course, I came in for lots and lots of criticism, improperly and unfairly influencing the president with “secret lunch meetings” that were not secret.

I was maligned and impugned by Chuck Todd, a blithering political idiot on NBC News, and then we have all of the news that’s been made in addition to stuff dealing with me. So it’s gonna be a challenge to get it all in. We also have — exactly two hours from now — the president himself will be here, President Trump at 2:33 Eastern Time this afternoon, barring something happening between now and then that would require him to have to cancel because his attention’s needed elsewhere.

So that is all coming up. Grab some of these sound bites. I want… Let’s see. Let’s do Petraeus. 18, 19, and 20 just to give a flavor to the things I mentioned in the opening two monologues. Here’s David Petraeus yesterday on Face the Nation talking about the death of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian Quds Force commander. Here’s what he said…

PETRAEUS: It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the attack that takes out Qassem Soleimani, and the number two militia leader in Iraq as well, who also never dared to set foot in Iraq during the surge after we missed him and he escaped. So this is bigger than bin Laden. It’s bigger than Baghdadi.

RUSH: “…bigger than bin Laden… bigger than Baghdadi.” Now, isn’t it interesting that when we went out and we got bin Laden, there was no liberal hand-wringing from the left and from all of their think tank scholars (sniveling), “Gee, I wish somebody had told President Obama about the day after, and the day after the day after. I’m so worried about the destabilizing effects of taking out bin Laden.” None of that. There was no concern whatsoever.

There was nothing but praise, and we got the pictures of Hillary Clinton and Obama sitting in The Situation Room in their official military jackets watching the operation take place. And we were told how brilliant they are and how brave they are, how courageous they are. How they stuck to it! They finally tracked down bin Laden and bin Laden was now histoire, room temperature. Now, this happens and, of course, it’s predictable.

You want all this talk about politics ending at the water’s edge? Politics ending at the water’s edge? Joe Lieberman has a piece in the Wall Street Journal reminding Democrats (paraphrased), “What the hell are you doing? You’re siding with enemies of this country,” and there’s nothing new about that. This is why I’m grateful Twitter exists… today. There’s nothing new about today’s left and the Democrat Party siding with America’s enemies, particularly with Donald Trump.

But they did it when Bush was in the White House as well. You remember when Bush was running the War on Terror and the Iraqi war, they were out talking about the “atrocities” being committed by the American Marines — Abu Ghraib and Haditha — and it was horrible. These people just couldn’t wait to savage the United States and the United States military, and they are so misreading this situation. Biden’s out making an abject fool of himself.

You know what he said? Before this even happened, Biden goes into I guess it was western Pennsylvania, some coal mining region (which he admits, like Obama, that he’s gonna destroy all to save the planet). He says to these people (summarized), “Look, if you can go 30,000 feet down in a mine and bring back some of this ugly coal stuff, then, for crying out loud, you can learn to code, for God’s sake.” You notice Biden always ends statements with “for God’s sake,” God this, God that? “Oh, my God,” he says.

God figures in everything Biden says, either at the beginning or end of the sentence. Learn to code? That’s his solution to the miners? These guys, I’m telling you, have no idea. The Democrats have no idea the damage they’re doing to themselves in the very areas that Trump won in 2016. They are so insistent that Democrat voters adopt the same anti-American views that they hold as a way of getting elected president.

I don’t care what you say. We have not reached the point in America yet where a majority of the voters hates their country and wants to elect people who think and feel the same way. And yet that’s what the Democrats are doing. Why? Very simple. Because they think on the day they do win, they want that mandate. They want to be elected on the premise that America’s got problems, big problems.

America’s problems are America’s fault, America’s problems are because of America, and they want the mandate to be able to deal with country on this basis — and they’re creating a growing base of people filled with hate for any number of things including for their own country. We put together a montage of Democrats and the Drive-By Media siding with Iran over Trump from last Thursday and Friday.

GERALDO RIVERA: These folks — proud Persians. What we have done here is unleash the tiger.

MARIE HARF: This escalatory cycle right now is a direct result of President Trump.

BEN RHODES: …a very dangerous and escalatory moment.

CHRIS MURPHY: …very, very dangerous…

MAX ROSE: How dangerous of an escalation…?

JEFFREY SACHS: …escalation to war. It’s very dangerous. It makes no sense.

JAMES STAVRIDIS: …big escalation…

WESLEY CLARK: How do we get off the escalation ramp?

WENDY SHERMAN: There will be terrible, terrible reprisals.

FAREED ZAKARIA: …escalate against Iran. So, they started lashing out.

ANDREA MITCHELL: …a reckless act that could lead to dangerous reprisals.

MAX BOOT: This administration has a massive credibility gap because the president lies so much.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: This was the pride of Islam, and we have to avenge his death.

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD: All American citizens are now walking, prime targets.

MIKE MORRELL: There will be dead Americans — dead civilian Americans — as a result.

TULSI GABBARD: …this act of war without congressional authorization…

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is an act of war! That is why past presidents have stopped short of it.

RUSH: All right. Now, I’m not gonna give the names of the people there. Doesn’t matter. You can guess them yourselves. Have you noticed? Whenever the United States of America takes proactive action to defend itself or takes action to punish those who have committed atrocities against us, notice the reaction (sputtering), “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! This is escalation! Oh, my God. We’re all… We’re all in danger. Oh, my God. We…”

These are the appeasers. These are the people that will let atrocities continue. These are the people that will allow beheadings and terrorist acts to continue against Americans on the basis that reacting to it is somehow escalating things. Escalating? This guy blew up an oil depot in Saudi Arabia. Happens to be one of our allies. This guy has been responsible — I have a list of his atrocities that I’ll share with you as the program unfolds.

This guy has had a personal hand in the death of over 600 American soldiers, conducting IED attacks, ordering them, structuring them in Iraq and in Afghanistan as long as we have been in both places. He’s not innocent. He wasn’t minding his own business one day and Donald Trump decided to take him out. This guy asked for it. In the days of Obama he’d get away with it. In the days of Bush he might not have gotten away with it.

What I found interesting one of these voices here was Max Boot. Max Boot is part of the Never Trumper crowd that wants us in all these places conducting military operations. But just like the rest of the Never Trumpers here comes Trump doing what these people advocate, and they can’t even support that. They’ve got to sit here and talk about how Trump has a credibility gap because he lies so much.

But if you let these people run things, there will never be any serious defense of Americans or American interests because they believe to do so is to escalate. I’ll give you an example, I’ll give you an analogy. The first Gulf War with Saddam to liberate Kuwait. George H. W. Bush was the president. I will never forget Sam Donaldson on ABC News warning Americans that the end was near, that we had no business conducting a desert war because we were not qualified, we didn’t know how to win, how to conduct a desert war. Saddam, that’s his lair, that’s his natural habitat. Saddam was gonna wipe us out.

Sam Donaldson did a feature on the number of body bags that would be needed. The war was over in 18 hours with the vaunted desert rat army of Saddam Hussein surrendering and waving the white flag in a matter of six hours. And so these people haven’t changed. The U.S. is not able to win. All we’re doing is escalating. And the bad guys are far superior. And the bad guys are far smarter. And the bad guys are far more capable. And the bad guys are not gonna take this.

We have destroyed a fundamental war-making element of the Iranian government by taking this guy out. You’re not gonna see it anywhere in the news, but Iran has been leveled in a sense here strategically with the assuming of room temperature of Qassem Soleimani.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So during the break Mr. Snerdley said to me, “What about this guy replacing Qassem Soleimani, the guy that’s room temperature? Should we be afraid of this guy?” Should we be afraid of this guy? This guy is the guy who’s afraid to show his face. This new guy, you think he likes this gig? He’s the next target. You think this guy doesn’t know that we are tracking this guy in every which way we know?

Let me go through, by the way, how we did this. And we have two new kinds of bombs. Remember the old neutron bomb? The left hated the neutron bomb because it killed people but left buildings. It left real estate so billionaires would not lose anything. The left hated the neutron bomb.

We’ve got a bomb that digs down 200 feet deep to get bad guys in caves. We have a bomb that will take out a single mullah that we can aim through a window in the mullah’s office building that he can’t hear coming and can’t see coming and he never knows it’s there. We’ve got ways. This was a precision, surgical attack on this guy’s SUV. He got off the plane, he gets in the SUV, we identified before he even gets to the off ramp at Baghdad International. He’s room temperature. The only thing left is the guy’s hand with an identifying ring on it.

“Mr. Limbaugh, you shouldn’t sound so happy.” Who says happy? I’m just responding to, “Do we think we need to be afraid the new guy?” They are afraid of us right now. And that’s the way it ought to be. It’s not hard to understand this stuff. Here, let me run through this. We were tracking Soleimani’s jet via an AWACS, an E-3 AWACS plane and vehicles on the ground.

Soleimani and the other guy, Muhandis, had landed at Baghdad International. They’d just pulled off the ramp. They were in two vehicles. On a street right next to the airport, a Special Forces team with a joint terminal attack controller, JTAC, positively identified Soleimani and Muhandis in the cars.

The JTAC controls the release of weapons on targets communicating with all the shooters. An armed Apache helicopter was involved a few miles away receiving the feed from the Reaper drone overhead. It’s the MQ-9. It’s an Air Force Reaper. The Reaper, the drone, and the Apache helicopter carried Hellfire missiles with explosive warheads. These are not the foldout swords that have been in the news lately.

But you can tell by the videos of the vehicles struck by the Hellfires that they were obliterated. The Israelis have perfected this type of engagement out of necessity with their helicopters and their drones as they have hunted Hamas and Hezbollah people. There was no doubt who was in the car. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser. We even know that.

Toyota is the official vehicle of Middle East terrorists, by the way. I don’t care where they are, either flatbed pickups, SUVs, they get ’em cheap in the open market, don’t know where, but you can see it in the movies. Toyota is the approved favorite — ought to get an endorsement out of ’em. So he’s in a Toyota Land Cruiser, it was his normal ride. As soon as he stepped off his jet, Special Ops and the drone identified him. The drone feed — I’ll bet you the drone feed was going to the Pentagon and wherever Trump — I’ll bet Trump was watching at Mar-a-Lago just as the bin Laden raid was being transmitted to the White House Situation Room.

So they identified and they launched the Hellfire missiles and that was that. The last thing they expected. Their most recent experience with any of this was Obama, an appeaser. They gotta have a little concern about Trump. He’s an unknown quantity, and they think of Trump as somebody that wants to pull the American military out of the Middle East. And then this happens. Iranian TV is showing video of the vehicles and the bodies. It’s a massive operation with incredible intelligence. And, see, people are asking, “Do we think we need to be afraid of Soleimani’s replacement?” It’s the other way around.

[mystery-ak]

How We Got Qassem Soleimani

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: So during the break Mr. Snerdley said to me, “What about this guy replacing Qassem Soleimani, the guy that’s room temperature? Should we be afraid of this guy?” Should we be afraid of this guy? This guy is the guy who’s afraid to show his face. This new guy, you think he likes this gig? He’s the next target. You think this guy doesn’t know that we are tracking this guy in every which way we know?

Let me go through, by the way, how we did this. And we have two new kinds of bombs. Remember the old neutron bomb? The left hated the neutron bomb because it killed people but left buildings. It left real estate so billionaires would not lose anything. The left hated the neutron bomb.

We’ve got a bomb that digs down 200 feet deep to get bad guys in caves. We have a bomb that will take out a single mullah that we can aim through a window in the mullah’s office building that he can’t hear coming and can’t see coming and he never knows it’s there. We’ve got ways. This was a precision, surgical attack on this guy’s SUV. He got off the plane, he gets in the SUV, we identified before he even gets to the off ramp at Baghdad International. He’s room temperature. The only thing left is the guy’s hand with an identifying ring on it.

“Mr. Limbaugh, you shouldn’t sound so happy.” Who says happy? I’m just responding to, “Do we think we need to be afraid the new guy?” They are afraid of us right now. And that’s the way it ought to be. It’s not hard to understand this stuff. Here, let me run through this. We were tracking Soleimani’s jet via an AWACS, an E-3 AWACS plane and vehicles on the ground.

Soleimani and the other guy, Muhandis, had landed at Baghdad International. They’d just pulled off the ramp. They were in two vehicles. On a street right next to the airport, a Special Forces team with a joint terminal attack controller, JTAC, positively identified Soleimani and Muhandis in the cars.

The JTAC controls the release of weapons on targets communicating with all the shooters. An armed Apache helicopter was involved a few miles away receiving the feed from the Reaper drone overhead. It’s the MQ-9. It’s an Air Force Reaper. The Reaper, the drone, and the Apache helicopter carried Hellfire missiles with explosive warheads. These are not the foldout swords that have been in the news lately.

But you can tell by the videos of the vehicles struck by the Hellfires that they were obliterated. The Israelis have perfected this type of engagement out of necessity with their helicopters and their drones as they have hunted Hamas and Hezbollah people. There was no doubt who was in the car. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser. We even know that.

Toyota is the official vehicle of Middle East terrorists, by the way. I don’t care where they are, either flatbed pickups, SUVs, they get ’em cheap in the open market, don’t know where, but you can see it in the movies. Toyota is the approved favorite — ought to get an endorsement out of ’em. So he’s in a Toyota Land Cruiser, it was his normal ride. As soon as he stepped off his jet, Special Ops and the drone identified him. The drone feed — I’ll bet you the drone feed was going to the Pentagon and wherever Trump — I’ll bet Trump was watching at Mar-a-Lago just as the bin Laden raid was being transmitted to the White House Situation Room.

So they identified and they launched the Hellfire missiles and that was that. The last thing they expected. Their most recent experience with any of this was Obama, an appeaser. They gotta have a little concern about Trump. He’s an unknown quantity, and they think of Trump as somebody that wants to pull the American military out of the Middle East. And then this happens. Iranian TV is showing video of the vehicles and the bodies. It’s a massive operation with incredible intelligence. And, see, people are asking, “Do we think we need to be afraid of Soleimani’s replacement?” It’s the other way around.

[mystery-ak]

CNN Mourns the Death of “Living Legend”

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: CNN’s “New Day” Friday morning, the co-host infobabe is Poppy Harlow, and she’s speaking to the CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward about the death, the sad death of the Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.

Question: “I don’t think it can be overstated who he was, how powerful Soleimani has been, and for how long. This is not just taking out a terrorist. This is much more significant than al-Baghdadi or Osama Bin Laden.” Stop and think of that for a minute. Petraeus said it and that’s probably who she’s echoing. This is bigger than taking out bin Laden? You believe these people admitting Trump did something bigger than Obama did? Bin Laden? This is bigger than bin Laden? Just to give it perspective. So here is the response from the CNN chief international correspondent.

WARD: He’s almost something of a living legend in Iran. And when I spent time in the capital just last year, you could see that clearly. We visited the Museum of Holy Defense. The entire gift store is full of souvenirs bearing his image. You turn on the television, look online, you see people sharing videos of him reciting poetry —

RUSH: Ah, come on.

WARD: — he’s attending the funerals of fighters who have been killed.

RUSH: Poetry?

WARD: Not only that, he is the architect of Iran’s so-called access of resistance. This cannot be underestimated.

RUSH: The people of Iran are not free. If they’re in that museum, it’s because they’ve been required to go to that museum. If they are attending a gigantic mourning ceremony, it’s because they’ve been told to show up. They’re not free like the citizens of China are not free, like the citizens of the old Soviet Union were not free, like the citizens of Cuba were not free.

I don’t doubt that propaganda has been used to make the guy a hero. Poetry? Come on. Give me a break. But, anyway, this is the flavor of it all from CNN. That was Friday. “Trump took out such a wonderful guy. He was such a hero to the Iranian citizens. Oh, it’s so bad.” This is the accuse stuff it just drives people crazy. And the Democrats have no idea how many, how many Americans that they are isolating and angering with this take and all of this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: As promised, we’ll start on the phones in Hermosa Beach, California. Scott, welcome, sir. It’s great to have you here with us.

CALLER: (garbled cell) Oh, Rush, mega dittos from sunny Southern California. Rush, I wanted to ask you: If Iran retaliates and kills a bunch of innocent Americans, do you think that will give Trump and the United States just cause and a good enough reason to take out and destroy Iran’s nuclear capability?

RUSH: Well, I mean, the short answer to the question is “yes.” But I don’t think it’s as… (sigh) Look, Iran right now does not have… I know what you mean by their nuclear capability. Right now, best of my knowledge they haven’t yet literally fortified a warhead on a missile with a nuclear warhead. They’re working toward it. The Iran deal enabled that and accelerated it. But, yeah, Trump has told ’em! (chuckles) Folks, this is classic.

The Iranians respond, “Okay. There are 21 targets that we’re looking at!” Trump tweets, “Well, I’m got 52 of yours.” I don’t know how to say this other than to say it: The Iranians have not dealt with an American president like this. Whatever you think, if that’s good or a bad, they have not dealt with this. The Middle East is used to the current — well, is used to the Obama foreign policy establishment, and it’s typified by that sound bite I played, that montage.

They are aware, they are used to dealing with Americans who accept casualties, like those handed out by Soleimani. They expect to deal with an America that is accustomed and okay with being abused and taken advantage of by the United Nations. They’re used to dealing with a country that does not retaliate. I mean, this guy, Soleimani, has single-handedly been responsible for over 600 U.S. military deaths. There was no attempt to retaliate against him.

They are accustomed to that! I don’t know if they think the United States is a paper tiger, if they think the United States… They have to take us seriously. Our war… Our ability to project power is unlike any other nation on earth. I mean, don’t misunderstand me. They take that seriously. But in terms of dealing with somebody like Trump, he’s a foreign object to them. I mean, look who the Iranians are.

“Death to America! Death to America! Death to America!” And the Democrat Party picks up the chant, in one way or the other! Remember the old, the former president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? This guy, criticizing the United States, sounded exactly like any Democrat in a presidential campaign! So I think that it is the Iranians who are gonna be careful about what they do in response to this, in consideration for what Trump might do next — and that, I think, is something they haven’t had to factor as seriously before.

[mystery-ak]

Democrats Try to Protect the Obama Legacy on Iran

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: Folks, I’m gonna go back and do some just quick hits on some flashbacks here because remember a lot of – it’s not the sole explanation, but much of the reason for the Democrats and the left just jumping all over Trump for doing this and making it look like they feel bad for Iran. They’re literally siding with a genuine enemy of the United States, all because they hate Trump. But don’t forget, one of the driving reasons here is protection of the Obama legacy. Do not discount this.

You know, much like a lot of conservatives will come to Reagan’s defense every time he’s assaulted, maligned, impugned, it’s the same thing with Democrats and Obama. One of Obama’s signature policies was this deal with Iran which, remember, one of Obama’s purposes here was to make Iran an even bigger power in the Middle East because Obama and his type believe that Israel, as the dominant power in the Middle East, is a destabilizing force because, once again, the United States is not the good guys, our allies are not the good guys, Israel’s not the good guys.

As a superpower, what are we? We are discriminating bigots. We’re discriminating racists. We’re discriminating homophobes or whatever the cliches are. As the gigantic superpower, we cannot be good. We cannot be benevolent. Everybody smaller than we is a victim. So the Iranians are victims, and Obama wanted to build ’em back up in his convoluted view of stabilizing the region.

Victor Davis Hanson as a great piece that came out, it’s either today or over the break, that because we have become oil independent, we’ve become energy independent, the Middle East is no longer this giant necessity that it once was, at least to us in a strategic sense. It remains so in an allied sense. But we don’t need to play nice, and we don’t need to bend over, grab the ankles because we need their oil anymore is the point. It’s a big point.

So just a couple of things here. First off from a website called Arab News: “Soleimani’s Death Leaves Iran’s Strategy in Tatters.” Now, this goes back to the last hour, Snerdley asked me, “Hey, this guy that’s replacing the dead guy, do we need to be worried about him?” No, this guy is who’s worried about us. This guy knows he’s being tracked by every tracking device our government has. This guy knows he is under constant surveillance. He knows that any act he takes that causes any harm to Americans puts a mark on him. This guy knows that he cannot run around in secret, in private like Qassem Soleimani could not. Let me give you a couple of pull quotes from the story.

“The killing of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu-Mahdi Al-Muhandis changes everything. With one fell blow Trump has taken out the two dominant figures exporting Iranian militancy across the region.”

What about the mullahs, Rush? Of course, the mullahs are the figureheads here, they give the ultimate orders, but the mullahs remain hidden, protected, shielded. These guys were out actually leading and formulating strategery and all this. It’s a big, big deal. And look at any team. Take out the head of the team, the rest of the snake dies. It’s true here.

Another pull quote. “It was Soleimani who forcefully advocated and spearheaded the policy of bogging the US down in the bloody Iraqi quagmire by building a new generation of paramilitary forces which staged thousands of attacks against coalition troops, killing around 600.

“When the US unsuccessfully sought to arrest Soleimani by attacking his convoy in Kurdistan in early 2007, he responded days later with one of the most audacious militant operations of the conflict, penetrating the coalition’s Karbala headquarters in broad daylight, and abducting and killing several US soldiers.”

Yeah, that’s right, we wanted to arrest him. Following that we were gonna indict him. Like we had an arrest warrant out for Osama. It’s not the way you deal with these people.

Another pull quote. “As arguably the second-most powerful Iranian after Khamenei –” that’s one of the mullahs “– nobody can fit into Soleimani’s outsized shoes. His designated successor as commander of the Quds Force, Esmael Ghani, is a much lower-profile figure who will lack his late boss’ encyclopedic network of personal contacts and knowledge of a generation of Iranian militancy.”

This is like the practice squad quarterback being thrown into the game, folks. “Should we be afraid of the guy, Mr. Limbaugh?” No. I don’t mean you ignore, but there’s no reason to be on defense here. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We’re feeling so — We attacked, we attacked. Oh, my God. We’re gonna get wiped out.” It’s not the attitude that we have.

Final pull quote. “By killing Soleimani, the US has decapitated the principal agent of Tehran’s strategy for regional hegemony, bringing an end to a long phase of Tehran-branded militancy dominated by the Quds Force commander personally. No other global terrorist boasts Soleimani’s longevity in overseeing thousands of paramilitary and terrorist attacks over at least four decades.

“He lived by the sword and died a fitting death. His passing should not be mourned. We are in uncharted territory. How Tehran’s regime chooses to respond in the coming days … will have reverberations in the region for years to come.” That’s Arab News.

Now let’s do some flashbacks, shall we? I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a story from the Hudson Institute, Hudson.org. July 14, 2015. It’s by Lee Smith. Do you know who Lee Smith is? Lee Smith wrote one of the definitive books that broke down the coup run against Donald Trump — Steele dossier, the Trump-Russia coup, all of it. Lee Smith is one of the… He worked very closely with Devin Nunes. There’s a bunch of people — Chuck Ross, a bunch of people — who did a lot of great work.

Lee Smith was among the top of the tier here in discovering what had happened with the FBI informants, the tricks they had played against Papadopoulos and so forth, the way they had spied on the Trump administration. That’s the author of this piece. Headline: “Obama Strikes a Deal with Qassem Soleimani — According to the terms of the Iran deal announced in Vienna on Tuesday, U.N. Security Council sanctions regarding nuclear-related issues will be lifted on a number of entities and individuals — from Iranian banks to Lebanese assassins…

“The name that most sticks out is IRGC-Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani. Administration officials counsel calm, and explain that Suleimani is still on the U.S. terror list and will remain on the terror list. But that’s irrelevant. The reality is that Suleimani is the key to the” Iranian nuclear deal. “t soon became apparent that the White House wasn’t really balancing at all, but had rather chosen one team over the others, Iran.

“Obama made his preference for Iran and its allies clear — in Lebanon, Syria, and most obviously in Iraq where the White House ordered air strikes on ISIS positions that allowed various Iranian-backed outfits, under the leadership of Qassem Suleimani, to take Tikrit,” which is the hometown of Saddam Hussein, by the way. His name was Saddam Hussein al-Tikrit. It’s “from Tikrit.”

“The [Iran] deal is with the hard men of the regime, the extremists — the deal is with Qassem Suleimani. … [T]here can be no similar argument about buying and selling and smuggling arms since ending the embargo can only help the hardliners.” In other words, Lee Smith’s piece here from July 14, 2015, spells out the Obama nuclear deal was with this guy, that he was one of the leading Iranian officials in the deal who benefited both personally and professionally.

From the UK Telegraph. The date of this story is July 15, 2015. “Obama’s Iran Deal Has Just Granted an Amnesty to the World’s Leading Terrorist Mastermind,” Qassem Soleimani. The Obama administration and this guy were thick. They were associates. He was the central figure in the Iran deal. “As head of the Quds Force in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Suleimani is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading terrorists. Now Barack Obama has effectively granted him an amnesty,” by doing the Iran deal.

That’s who the guy is. Look, get mad at me all you want. This is who he was, and this is how the Obama administration dealt with it. Do not doubt me. The Obama administration looked at Iran as needing to be built up in order to stabilize the region because in their view Israel, as the dominant power, destabilized the Middle East just as in their view the United States — as a lone superpower — destabilized the world.

Look, folks, you can doubt me all you want, but it was Obama himself that began talking about how the United States was in a necessary era of decline, economically and otherwise. It was time to pay the piper, time to pay dues. We had benefited, become a superpower — maybe in some unjust ways. And that’s what the Democrats and the American left of today have now decided they have to protect.

If they let the Obama legacy get properly defined and if it ends up in tatters, what have they got? They’ve got very little as it is now because the Obama legacy as far as average Americans are concerned is blowing up and destroying health care, a putrid economy, and a promise that it was not gonna get better.

[mystery-ak]

I’m Thankful for Twitter Today

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: Okay. I just got another glaring example of what I have been talking about all morning, why I am thankful for Twitter today. I want to put something up on the Dittocam. I can adequately describe this for those of you who are not watching on the Dittocam and can’t see this. It looks like the national security reporter for the Washington Post, a woman by the name of Missy Ryan, has posted two pictures in a tweet.

On the left is a picture of Tehran today, people mourning the death of Qassem Soleimani. On the right is a picture of an empty Washington Mall during Trump’s inauguration. And the quote that she has typed, “Tehran today vs. Trump’s inauguration crowd.” Rachael Bade (who is a colleague) tweeted out the photo that looked like they were celebrating Trump’s impeachment with the caption “Merry impeachment.” Well, this is the same dynamic duo.

So what they’re doing here, they’ve got this on the left is supposedly Tehran today, which — I just said — that crowd is there because they’ve been commanded to be there. The people of Tehran, the people of Iran are not free. For crying out loud, the Islamic Republic? This is a country where you get beheaded if you are given orders by the government and don’t do it! This is a country that beheads transgenders.

It beheads homosexuals when it finds them, and the American left is coming out in support of this regime. This is how convoluted, sick they’ve become. This is a regime that kills every type of lifestyle that the American left wants to promote and celebrate in this country. They get murdered, they get hunted down, they get imprisoned, they are beheaded in Iran — and that’s who the left thinks is preferable to Donald Trump.

So they’ve got these two side-by-side pictures of the Trump inauguration with the entire Washington mall there, it looks like about half full, and then the similar place in Tehran teeming with an overflow crowd in honor of the man Trump killed. “PERSPECTIVE: Tehran today vs. Trump’s inauguration crowd.” So the conclusion is, “See? This guy was more popular than Trump is. This guy… Trump took out somebody! Trump’s jealous. Trump took this guy out.

The Iranians are much, much more sympathetic for their dead leader,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s a side-by-side comparison of Iran good, United States bad. Mullahs good, Trump bad. Mullah terrorist popular, Trump unpopular. I mean… Now, we’ll post the picture at RushLimbaugh.com for those of you not watching the Dittocam, but that’s the description.

[mystery-ak]

America’s Anchorman Interviews President Trump

Jan 6, 2020



RUSH: Welcome back the EIB Network, and Rush Limbaugh back at it after a couple of weeks off for Christmas. Not much happening. We are happy to have here with us the president of the United States, Donald Trump. It’s so great to have you back here, sir. Thank you for joining us.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, Rush, very much.

RUSH: Okay. I have had a lot of people say to me — they’re reacting to the media reaction of the action we took, that you took against the Quds Force commander in Iran. Mr. President, people are being scared to death, their kids are being scared to death out of their minds that somehow this is gonna start World War III, that we are now more unsafe than we have ever been. Could you explain to people why what you’ve done here makes us safer, why it was necessary, and why what we did was right.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, this should have been done for the last 15 to 20 years, him in particular. He was their real military leader. He’s a terrorist. He was designated a terrorist by President Obama, and then Obama did nothing about it except give them $150 billion and — even more incredibly — $1.8 billion in cash. You hear me talking about that all the time, and you talk about it all the time. He gave them all this money. He never wanted to do anything about it. President Bush should have taken him out. He’s responsible for the IEDs.

Those are the roadside bombs and the bombs that blow up all over the place — and then the sister, which is the big one, the big version, that actually knocks out tanks and kills everybody within earshot. A really horrible weapon. He’s responsible for all those incredible young people over at Walter Reed — where they do such a great job, by the way — where they lose their arms and their legs and all. He gave so much of that technology. Much of that stuff was made in Iran. And he should have been taken out a long time ago. And we had a shot at it, and we took him out. And we’re a lot safer now because of it. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the response is, if any. But you’ve seen what I said our response will be.

RUSH: Well, yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: Our country is a lot safer, Rush.

RUSH: They said they’ve got 21 target they’re looking at, and you came back and said, “Fine. I’ve got 52 of yours.” I don’t think that they are accustomed to a president like you, sir. I mean, you just mentioned it. Obama basically appeased them. Obama worked with this guy on the Iranian nuclear deal. What…? A lot of things had to surprise you when you assumed office and found out some things that had been done previously in policy. What was the purpose of American policy with Iran prior to your presidency?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t think they had a purpose. I don’t think they knew what was happening. Why did he give them $150 billion, much of it going back into terror? If you look at what’s happening… When I first came into office, I went to the Pentagon, and they showed me 18 “sites of confliction,” meaning conflict, over there. And every one of them was started by Iran, either their soldiers or they paid for soldiers, soldiers for hire. I have no idea what they tried to do with appeasement.

And I can tell you, the Logan Act… If there was ever an act that should have been used, they should look at the Obama administration and John Kerry, the Logan Act, because what he was doing with Iran and the relationship that they built up and the things that he said, I would certainly love to see that be looked at because I think John Kerry was… Personally, I think he was advising them. I think that the Obama administration was just letting them get away with murder — in the true sense murder.

And, you know, right after they made the deal, it wasn’t like they were respected. They treated the United States worse than ever before. In fact, I said, “At least give him a little respect,” because they treated… They got worse. They actually got more hostile. They took the $150 billion and they took the $1.8 billion in cash, and they got worse. And if you remember, right before the payment was made, they took 10 sailors.

And they humiliated those sailors, and they humiliated our country with the sailors down on their knees. And the only reason they released them was they wanted their first payment. It was just before the payment. If they had taken them after they got the money, they would have never released them. They’d be there now. Well, they would be there now with me. But they would be there for a long period of time. But you remember the 10 sailors that were —

RUSH: Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: — 15 feet across the line, probably they weren’t. They don’t even know if they were in Iranian waters. But they said they were slightly in Iranian waters. So they humiliated them. But they released them because the money was due the following day, and they said, “Oh, we don’t want to…” Hey, why should they turn down $150 billion over the 10 sailors? But they humiliated those sailors and our country.

RUSH: Well, he also lifted sanctions on Soleimani as part of the Iran deal. And it looks like, to me, anyway, that Obama looked and that administration looked at building Iran up as some way stabilizing the region. As though Israel’s not the good guys, as though we’re not the good guys, that Iran needs to be made stronger — this is what they believed — otherwise that whole region is kind of a tinderbox. But the thing that really is true about this is the Middle East has changed in priority. Because of the massive improvements made in domestic energy in the United States, we’re no longer dependent on that region.

THE PRESIDENT: Right. Right. Well, it’s right, and one of the things that changed… I know you talk about it. If you go back 10 years or eight years or maybe even five years, Israel was the king of the Congress, right? Our Congress protected Israel and fought for Israel. Now you look at the way the Democrats in Congress are treating them, where you have AOC and you have Tlaib and you have Omar, and they are actually, you know, anti-Semitic. They are totally against Israel. The things that they’ve said…

You go back to the past and you look at the things that they’ve said about Israel and Jewish people, it’s incredible. Ten years ago, that would have been unacceptable. It would have been… It would have been… Nobody could have even believed it. I still can’t believe it! You know, I’m a little bit old-fashioned, right, in that sense, ’cause I’ve grown up and there was always great protection and reverence for Israel, and now it’s the opposite. In the Democrats, it’s almost… It’s almost a negative. They’re going out and what they do for Tlaib and what they do for Omar — Representative Omar, Minnesota — and AOC, I think it’s incredible the way they talk about Israel. It just was unthinkable to do that 10 years ago and sooner.

RUSH: I actually think that you’ve had a role in driving them even more insane than they were. Let me give you some evidence. Let’s go back to the day you came down the escalator and announced your candidacy. You announced the slogan Make America Great Again, and all of a sudden, Make America Great Again becomes some wildly controversial prospect. And I’m asking myself, “What in the world is controversial at all? How can anybody disagree with America being great, becoming great, remaining great?” and yet it was. How do you explain that?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, politics has changed a lot over the last couple of years. For instance, I want low taxes. They want to raise your taxes. How do you think that works? I couldn’t win as a politician. I don’t think Abe Lincoln could win as a politician. Borders. They want open borders. When you see the people that we’re sending back and we’re capturing now at record levels, in many cases they’re murderers and they’re people, they’re drug dealers, and it’s incredible. They want open borders. That means all of these people are gonna be pouring in.

And, of course, good ones will come in too. But you have tremendous numbers of really bad people, including murderers and rapists and others. They want open borders. They want sanctuary cities. They don’t want a strong military based on everything — I mean, we have to fight like crazy to get the strong military, and we have to give up things that we wouldn’t give up if we had the House, as an example, if we were able to have enough. You know, we’ve always needed their vote because it was always very close.

In fact, the first two years we had a very, you know, tiny majority, so we always needed their votes. But when you see they want higher taxes, right? They want much more regulation. You know, I cut regulations more than any president in history by far, even though they were there for four and eight years and in one case more than that, we’ve got the all-time record, that was probably as important or more important as the tax cuts, the biggest — including Ronald Reagan, the biggest tax cut we’ve ever had.

And we’re actually taking in more revenue now than we did when we had the higher taxes because the economy’s doing so well. But, you know, when you see them with open borders, Rush, you say — and sanctuary cities and all of these other things, you say, “Where are they coming from?” Well, Israel is sort of the same. I put that in that same category. As far as I’m concerned, they’re anti-Israel, totally anti-Israel.

RUSH: Well, it’s always perplexed me that you have drawn them out. They have now — with Twitter in the past two or three days since the attack on Soleimani, you literally have the Democrat Party and elements of that party openly supporting Iran, an enemy of the United States, openly supporting the terrorist actions of that country, and this is a country that beheads homosexuals and transgenders –

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

RUSH: — and has no human rights for the very constituency the Democrat Party claims to represent. Yet here they are tweeting their support for these people –

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

RUSH: — simply in opposition to you.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s amazing. Like, as an example, take the wall. They were always for the wall. And then I wanted it, and they went against it. In fact, I said if I had it to do again, I would have come out totally against the wall and I would have gotten their votes. Okay? All I had to do was come out against the wall. “I am opposed to building the wall.” And we would have gotten all the votes we needed.

No, it’s almost like they’ll try and do whatever is the opposite. I think they’ve lost their minds, you want to know the truth. I really do. It’s a terrible thing to say. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Like even impeachment hoax, you take a look at that, and they have nothing, they have nothing. With one of the biggest investigations in history, they found nothing, the Mueller report, they found absolutely — think of it — they spent $45 million, two years, it’s a hoax.

They spent all of that time, all of that money, had brilliant people that happened to be, you know, very, very — they were crazed — they were crazed. I mean, these people were dying to find something on Trump. They found nothing. I think there’s very few people that you’ve ever met who could have had that. They had so many investigators, they were calling people that I haven’t seen in years, and they got nothing.

Think of that, nothing. Very few people — and, by the way, I’m sure they looked at my taxes, they looked at everything you had to look at, they looked at everything. And $45 million, and much more than that in the true sense, you know, the real sense, it was much more than that. And they had 18 — I used to call them 13 angry Democrats, but they increased it to 18 angry Democrats –

RUSH: Full party.

THE PRESIDENT: — and very smart. Many were tied up with Clinton. They were involved with Clinton. But these people couldn’t find anything on Trump. They would have loved — if I had a parking ticket, it would have been a major story. They found nothing. Even I was very impressed with how clean I am, Rush.

RUSH: You ought to be. You may be cleaner than any previous president that we could think of. Anyway, I gotta take a quick time-out. We have President Trump with us for the remaining part of the program, the last of the half hour, and we’ll continue with him right after this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: And we are back with President Trump. You mentioned the impeachment hoax. Nancy Pelosi has not delivered these two articles of impeachment that are, frankly, both of them are jokes. What do you suspect is happening here with this? What is the politics of this? What are they trying to achieve here? I mean, I know throw you out of office and all, but what’s the point here, not sending these articles over?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think what they’re trying to do is affect the election illegally. That’s what they’re trying to do. But the reason that they’re not sending it because they’re — they are a joke. They are not crimes. There is nothing there. They found nothing. We went through two years of a Mueller report, you know that better than anybody, nobody covered it better. And we went through two years —

RUSH: I think I’m more frustrated by it than you are. You’ve had to deal with it. But it makes a lot of us livid —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

RUSH: — because there’s nothing, everything to this has been made up. It’s worse than a hoax, the first part of it was a coup, and this is just the continuation of it.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, it’s so sad for our country. I mean, think of it. We’re fighting with Iran, we’re fighting with all of these different places, and in many cases doing great, making trade deals, doing so good, our country is doing so good, but I have to spend and my team has to spend time on this stuff. They found nothing. Just think of that. For two years an unlimited budget, unlimited talent and they found nothing, and they came up with two articles that aren’t even a crime.

RUSH: Well, there was nothing to find. It was all made up. I mean, that’s the frustrating thing here. It was all made up. There was nothing to find. There was nothing to investigate.

THE PRESIDENT: They created a situation that was false, that was fraudulent, and then they investigated the false, fraudulent situation, and they found nothing. It’s hard to believe. The whole thing’s hard to believe. And now on top of it, they come up with two articles and they put it before — now, what happened is she doesn’t want to get a vote because how can anybody possibly — it’s totally partisan. You know, this is not what they had in mind as they call them the founders, right, they keep saying the founders, founders, but the founders didn’t have this in mind. You understand, it’s like I’ve never heard the word “founders” so much in my life.

RUSH: They don’t have anything in common with the founders anyway.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. We got I guess 196 or 197 to nothing with the Republican Party, plus we had three Democrat votes, and one person actually left the Democratic — the Democrat Party over it and joined the Republican Party, as you know.

RUSH: Speaking of which, the Republican Party hasn’t been this unified in I don’t know how long.

THE PRESIDENT: Never. It’s never — they say maybe never. And one thing I gave the Democrats credit for, they’ve always been very vicious, and they — and that’s not necessarily a good thing, but what is a good thing is they always stuck together. And here the Republicans stuck together even better than the Democrats. So we had, like, 196 or 197 to nothing. It’s unheard of. You know that because they’re always breaking off and — I don’t know — and this is really for 70 years, 80 years, you know, for some reason it’s in the DNA, they just don’t seem — and in this case they have been so good. And I think the Senate will be the same way ’cause the Senate knows it’s a hoax. Everybody knows it’s a hoax.

RUSH: The Republican Party’s now the party of Trump, I mean, there’s no question about it.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I just think it’s the party of common sense. You know, I view it — somebody said, “Are you conservative?” Well, I’m conservative, but I think it’s common sense. It was — like what we did two days ago with this horrible terrorist. He was a terrorist, you know, they don’t want to call him a terrorist. Now the Democrats are trying to make him sound like he was this wonderful human being.

RUSH: He was a poet. Yeah, he was a poet.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, he’s a poet.

RUSH: He’s reading poetry out there.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, when you read the New York Times and you read the Washington Post, that are totally fake newspapers, by the way, that would have both been out of business except I won, I wonder what happens in — hopefully in five years, right? Hopefully in five years. But I wonder what happens to those newspapers. Who knows. But they do well now, although if you look at the unfunded liability probably they don’t do so well.

But you look at what they write, it’s so fake, it’s so phony, and now they’re trying to build him just like they did al-Baghdadi. Al-Baghdadi was the number one terrorist in the world. We got him. They wrote very little about it, relatively speaking. That story disappeared very quickly, as you know. But they tried to build him up into a relatively wonderful man. He was a total bad guy –

RUSH: Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: He founded ISIS. He was doing it again. He was trying to do it again. You know, I wiped out ISIS. During our administration, we wiped out the entire caliphate — a hundred percent of the caliphate — and we wiped him out and, you know, got little credit. But our people know that we did it, Rush, because of people like you and Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and so many others. Your friends at Fox & Friends in the morning are so good. You know, people are getting it. They really get it. And because of social media and my Twitter. Without Twitter, I think we’d be lost. We wouldn’t be able to get the truth out.

RUSH: Yeah, that’s a good point. People still say to me, “You need to ask him to stop tweeting so much.” I tell ’em, “Look, it’s the only way he can get his message out, and it’s not a negative at all.” People say, “He needs to dial back the drama, needs to dial back the chaos.” I disagree with that talk.

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

RUSH: I think you’re doing exactly what you have to do, given the circumstances presented to you.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I wish I didn’t have to do it. I wish we had legitimate newspapers and legitimate media. We don’t. I mean, it’s… Much of it is really… I call it corrupt. It’s the corrupt media. It’s — and, you know, it’s very interesting. You understand this better than anybody. If they do a story on me, I immediately know if it’s false or not false — and I don’t mind a bad story if it’s right. But I know. A person reading the story doesn’t know that it’s false, so I’m able to tell ’em through social media.

RUSH: Right.

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t even call it Twitter. I call it social media, ’cause it goes to everything. You know, it goes to Facebook, it goes to Instagram, and we have hundreds of millions of people. You know, we have a tremendous amount of people. Just on one site I’m up to, I guess, close to 70 million people.

RUSH: Yeah, they’re jealous as they can be of that too.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, for Facebook, I had dinner —

RUSH: Of course they want you to stop.

THE PRESIDENT: I had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg the other day, and he said, “I’d like to congratulate you,” in front of a large group of people. So I’m not… (chuckles) But he said, “I’d like to congratulate you, you’re number one on Facebook,” and, you know, it’s incredible, and that’s —

RUSH: Wait a minute! Wait a minute. You had dinner with Zuckerberg?

THE PRESIDENT: I did. I did. I had dinner with him.

RUSH: Oh-ho! Wait ’til the world finds out about that.

THE PRESDIENT: Oh, I know.

RUSH: I guess they just did.

THE PRESIDENT: You have semi-breaking news. I guess a couple of people might have reported it but they’re not like you. So I just got a list, the TSL Power 50. The number one show on radio has a guy named Rush Limbaugh. Did you ever hear of him, Rush Limbaugh?

RUSH: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: Number 1. Have you? This is the 50 “most influential and listened to streaming talk show in the country,” Rush Limbaugh number 1. So I hope you saw that. But now we’ve just made your interview.

RUSH: (laughing)

THE PRESIDENT: But your viewers have to know that. Your listeners have to know that. Number 1. Great job.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. You know, your timing is impeccable. You’re a broadcast specialist from The Apprentice and so forth, and you’ve gotten right up to the break here. I can’t thank you enough for this. I wish we had even more time. People love you, sir —

THE PRESIDENT: Well —

RUSH: — and they are grateful, and they know that you still are focused on them —

THE PRESIDENT: I love ’em.

RUSH: — that you’re still implementing the agenda that you ran on.

THE PRESIDENT: I love ’em. I love ’em, Rush.

RUSH: They know that too. Thank you so much for your time and have a great, great rest of this day and year.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you. Thank you.

RUSH: I hope it’s the greatest year of your life, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much, Rush, and thank you for everything, and congratulations on your incredible success. I really… It’s so important for this country what you do. Thank you very much, Rush.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks. Bye.