RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna shelve today — not shelve — I’m gonna move what everybody thinks is the primary topic today, the ongoing development of news and information about the shooter at the baseball practice yesterday, Mr. Hodgkinson. There’s a growing stack of information about this guy. And what is becoming clear is something that I sensed on the program yesterday.

This guy was a mainstream leftist. If you go to his Facebook page like I said yesterday, you go to his Facebook page, it reads exactly like the way a CNN panel discussion on Trump sounds. Everywhere you go and read what this guy has written, letters to the editor, Facebook posts, he sounds just like anybody you would hear on the media. He sounds like Rachel Maddow. He sounds like Jake Tapper. He sounds like F. Chuck Todd. Just as normal a leftist as you can be.

Now, my point of that is not to exonerate him; is to issue a warning. These people have been driven mad. I don’t have any doubt about that. But they’re able to hide. They’re able to hide in plain sight for the most part because they articulate what happens to be mainstream thought as expressed by the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party.

Now, this guy, as it’s been learned, or discovered, did have some erratic behavior too. He was very off-putting to barmaids and barkeepers at sports bars, and in general he could be a reprobate. But in terms of the things he talked about, the things he said, there’s not a leftist in the world that thought the guy was dangerous. Not a leftist in the world that thought he was odd. And yet he’s the epitome of it.

But I want to shift the discussion of that to what the Drive-By Media is using to replace that story. And that happens to be a gigantic leak to the Washington Post that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is magically and all of a sudden now under criminal investigation, after having been told by the FBI director James Comey that he was not under investigation, the counterintelligence investigation of collusion with Russia.

There was nothing there. There never has been anything there. So they’re pivoting now, and here we go, some leaks to the Washington Post claiming that Trump was now trying to obstruct Comey from doing his job. And this does not hold up. It simply doesn’t hold up. And this story leaked yesterday and the purpose of this story leaking is obviously twofold. But the primary purpose for leaking the story yesterday — they could have done it next week, at the Post, they could have waited until tomorrow and bury it on a Friday, except they don’t want to bury it.

What they wanted to do was get the shooting of Steve Scalise and the others off the front page. That’s the reason for the leak, and that’s why I’m gonna focus on this. I’m gonna demonstrate, with the help of a friend of mine, just how bogus this next charge is and how senseless it is and how legally it doesn’t even hold water.

How can Trump be exonerated? What was Trump exonerated for? What was Trump never under invest — He told Comey what? He said, “Can you let the Flynn thing go?” one time. He did not keep it up. He did not pressure Comey. He did not hound Comey. He mentioned it one time, way, way back, long before Comey went public and announced that Trump was never under investigation. Trump had asked Comey to let the Flynn thing go months before Comey said, for the last time, that Trump wasn’t under investigation.

So if Comey says — pick a date, March 30th — that Trump is not under investigation after Trump has supposedly obstructed or tried to obstruct the Comey investigation, then why wasn’t something done on obstruction then? How could Comey clear Trump if Comey thought he was being obstructed by Trump? It is a very sensible and logical question. And the answer to that question is also very easy. They went back to it after their whole collusion investigation blew up with nothing there.

And, believe me, they were gonna try to make it happen anyway, with evidence, without evidence, ’cause there isn’t any evidence of collusion. So they planted the Russian dossier, any number of things to try to create the illusion that there was evidence, but they couldn’t sell it. So they have shifted. And so now the Washington Post — and let me tell you, as of ten o’clock last night, ten o’clock last night the top five most-read articles at the Washington Post. Now, this is according to the Washington Post as well.

The Washington Post could publish a fake list, supposedly determined by computer hits, Washington Post readers clicking on stories. They’ve got a program that tabulates which stories are clicked on the most. They are considered to be, thus, read. So they have their top five most read articles. It’s actually top five most clicked on, but who’s splitting hairs? I want to read to you the top five as of ten o’clock last night.

Number one. “Special Counsel Investigating Trump for Possible Obstruction of Justice, Officials Say.”

Number two. “An Inferno Seemingly From Another Time or Place Kills 12 in London.” Do you believe that was the second most-read story as of ten o’clock last night in the Washington Post?

Number three. “ISIS Drones Are Attacking U.S. Troops and Disrupting Airstrikes in Raqqa, Officials Say.”

Number four. “University of Virginia Student Otto Warmbier, Said to Be in a Coma, Released From North Korea.” By the way, I haven’t heard his name pronounced. Has anybody heard how they’re pronouncing his name? Not a single person on my staff has heard this name? Well, we’ll get to it. W-a-r-m-b-i-e-r, could be Warmbier, Warmbier, could be Warmbier. I’ve never heard it pronounced. I have an excuse. I never have the volume up. I just look at closed-caption.

Number five. “The NSA Has Linked the WannaCry Computer Worm to North Korea.”

The top five stories, as of ten o’clock last night in the Washington Post. Not a single story about the shooting of Steve Scalise and the other members of the congressional team practicing baseball in Alexandria, Virginia. Do you believe that? Well, I didn’t look at the Washington Post last night so I don’t know how many stories there were in the Washington Post about the shooting.

What I do know is that the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN and everybody else want to move on. They want to sweep this shooting story under the rug as quickly as they can until they can figure out a way to blame it on Scalise, which they’re trying to do.

People have forgotten. The Obama administration, as recently as 2015, was attacking Scalise as a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan because of a personal appearance he made 20 years ago with David Duke. The Obama administration, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, was continuing to impugn Scalise as a sympathizer for the KKK.

This wacko, who was a mainstream liberal Democrat, Hodgkinson, believed it, and he was out there tweeting about it and Facebook posting about it. And posting cartoons of Scalise addressing can hooded Klansmen. And it was the Obama administration pushing it. The New York Times today has a story blaming Sarah Palin for Hodgkinson shooting Scalise. Editorial story, I don’t know, but what it is is an attempt to hearken back — well, it’s a lie. The New York Times has openly lied. They have dredged up a proven lie and published it again.

The proven lie is that Jared Loughner, the shooter of Gabby Giffords, read Sarah Palin’s website and saw a graphic of crosshairs on there as she was mentioning congressional districts Republicans need to target for political victory, and he got the idea to shoot Gabby Giffords. We learned at the time that Loughner was insane. He was not politically oriented. To the extent that he paid any attention it was to left-wing politics. But he was simply insane.

The New York Times, in my estimation, this is actionable, what they have done today. To dredge up a proven lie, republish it as the reason Scalise was shot, the reason. Sarah Palin got all of this going by causing the shooting of Gabby Giffords and this led to people like Hodgkinson doing what he did. None of this is in the top five most-clicked-on stories in the Washington Post, as of ten o’clock last night.

How many of you would just believe that the Washington Post, their website yesterday, all day yesterday, if they had stories on the shooting, that that story would not be widely read by Washington Post readers?

Well, that’s what they want us to believe. They want us to believe they had more people interested in the London tower inferno, which is a days old story. More people interested in ISIS drones attacking U.S. troops and disrupting air strikes in Raqqa, and that the NSA has linked the WannaCry ransomware computer worm to North Korea. All of those were far more interesting to Washington Post readers.

See, I don’t buy it. I think it’s the Washington Post number one most read story, the special counsel investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice. I think the Post wants to broom this whole shooting story, and the reason for publishing their special counsel investigating Trump for obstruction is the way they’re doing it.

I want to now go to the audio sound bites. We’re gonna start with me on this program yesterday talking about the purpose and the objective of special counsel Robert Mueller.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The idea that the independent counsel’s fair and open-minded and the scales of justice will be equally balanced, what a crock! These are prosecutors! What is the objective of a prosecutor? To send somebody to jail. That’s the objective. They’re not in there, they’re not in these jobs to let people go! They’re not in these jobs to let people off! An independent counsel or any prosecutor is there to get convictions! And if they don’t think they can get convictions then they try to get plea deals on guilty pleas.

RUSH: Right. We next go to CNN and Jeffrey Toobin last night on Anderson Cooper’s show talking about Mueller and this leak, and they’re so excited they can’t contain themselves.

TOOBIN: It’s worth remembering, what a personal nightmare is to be under criminal investigation, what it’s like to wake up every morning knowing that there’s a team of skilled lawyers, FBI agents who are looking at the possibility of trying to put you in prison. That is what it means to be under criminal investigation, and now the president of the United States, who is a sensitive soul, is gonna have to deal with that.

RUSH: Yeah, so they’re so excited, put Trump in prison. Exactly what I told you yesterday. They’re salivating over Trump going to prison. David “Rodham” Gergen has chimed in. Get this. David “Rodham” Gergen (paraphrasing), “You know what? This is so much bigger than the collusion case. Oh, yeah. This is gigantic. Collusion case, not much. This is big.” Anderson Cooper: “David, we’re judicious with the Watergate comparisons. You worked for Nixon. It wasn’t the burglary that brought him down. It was the cover-up, right?”

GERGEN: There’s now a three pronged investigation of Donald Trump and the people around him. This has taken a major turn. It’s actually much more dangerous to Donald Trump than what they started with and that is the Russian issue. What we’ve been talking about forever has just come true, and I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous I think this is for the president.

RUSH: Exactly right. Investigation of obstruction of justice and the IC, the special counsel’s not there to say he didn’t do it. The fact is he didn’t do it. This is as bogus as the collusion charge. The timeline alone makes that point. Details of that coming up. But you see now, “Oh, yeah, the collusion thing, ah, that pales in comparison.” Really? For the last seven months that’s the only thing that mattered to any of you people. And now that pales?

“Yeah, yeah, ’cause obstruction, we can get the guy on that, absolutely. We can make it up and we can make it stick, yeah, yeah, we got him, Trump’s toast. And then we’re gonna get his tax returns and we’re gonna expose of all the fraudulent business things. And we’re gonna destroy Trump financially and we’re gonna destroy Trump’s businesses. We’re gonna destroy Trump’s family,” which is the objective in all of this. CNN was so excited, they brought the Washington Post writer on, who published the story filled with leaks about the creation of the investigation of obstruction of justice.

ADAM ENTOUS: I do want to caution here that this is obviously something that may never result in accusations being brought in terms of charges by —

RUSH: What?

ADAM ENTOUS: — the special counsel.

RUSH: What?

ADAM ENTOUS: He may take a look at Comey’s testimony. He may interview Comey. He may interview these other people and decide that there is no obstruction or certainly no case that he can bring on obstruction. So it’s really — this is a preliminary moment. We’re seeing effectively a file being opened here within the FBI —

RUSH: Wait a second. Stop the tape. Stop, stop, I gotta take a break. Did you hear this? The Washington Post reporter, “Wait, I gotta caution you, there may not be anything here.” Really? That’s not what your story says. By the way, if anybody ought to recuse himself from something, Mueller damn well. Comey’s his best buddy. Comey’s gonna end up being a central figure in this. If anybody should be recusing, it’s Mueller.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’re gonna get into some detail here about why this obstruction investigation is cockeyed and why it looks to me to be not something that is the result of a natural progression of events. This, to me, looks like a construct, just like the collusion story was a construct. Meaning, there weren’t any events that took place that warranted an investigation. They had to construct them. And they had to take bogus documents such as that dossier, the golden showers dossier, and pretend that it was real.

And it looks like much the same thing is happening here in this obstruction investigation coming so on the heels of the flat-out admission that there’s nothing to the collusion story, but proving that investigators can’t let something go. Trump essentially has been exonerated on the collusion story, but they can’t let it go. There’s an investigation, don’t you know.

The investigation’s gotta turn up something, so they’ve moved from collusion to obstruction. And I want to reemphasize, you know, Sessions has recused himself, but if there’s anybody that really needs to it’s the special counsel himself, Robert Mueller, just based on public statements, how close he and Comey are, how BFF they are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, a little side note. President Trump’s approval numbers at 47%. Do you realize that’s no change? Some pollsters in the Drive-Bys tell you he’s in the thirties, but 47%. No change. You would think that in the normal ebb and flow and the tradition of American politics approval ratings and news, you would think that this never ending assault on Donald Trump would take that number down, and it’s holding steady at 47%, which means many things. Among the things it means is that Trump’s base is holding.

And make no mistake, these assaults on Trump, they have multifaceted objectives. One of them is to finally separate Trump’s supporters from Trump. It’s to irritate them to the point of having them drive away. That’s not working yet.

Also, Donald Trump tweeted a couple things. He went to see Steve Scalise in the hospital last night, and he came out and tweeted that he had been there and that he had talked to people and that it was very, very touch and go. Shortly thereafter, there was a tweet from Jim Acosta of fake news at CNN. And the Jim Acosta fake news CNN tweet said: “White House official on hospital visit: President Trump did not meet with Scalise and did not go into the room where Scalise is being treated.”

That’s a lie. And Acosta is saying that a White House official told him. A White House, not a hospital official, not a hospital worker. A White House official told him that Trump is lying. Trump didn’t meet with Scalise. He didn’t meet with Scalise’ family. He didn’t go into the room where Scalise is being treated, and it turns out to have been proven fake. Acosta deleted the tweet after it received nearly 2,000 retweets. He has not apologized.

Now, what about this White House official on hospital visit? “President Trump did not meet with Scalise.” Did somebody purposefully leak this to see who would run with it and who didn’t? Or did somebody leak this in the White House staff, did a White House official leak this to try to damage Trump? In other words, did somebody in Trump’s administration tell this reporter for fake news CNN that Trump’s lying in his tweet. He didn’t go there. He didn’t see anybody. He didn’t talk to anybody. He’s making it up.

Was this internal sabotage at the White House, or was it an attempt to identify and expose or embarrass a Drive-By Media reporter? We don’t know. But it’s typical. Acosta didn’t even run it down. He just accepted whatever was said by this leaker, because of course Trump lies. It’s in their mind, Trump lies, makes everything up. Of course Trump didn’t go. He’s bragging about it. He’s lying about it, but he didn’t go. Every one of these instances Trump turns out to be the one telling the truth, such as when he said that Comey told him three times that he wasn’t under investigation. You remember the excrement storm after that.

Everybody in legal think tanks and the media, “Comey would never do that. Trump’s lying. In his dreams. Trump is making it up. Comey is a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant prosecutor and brilliant, brilliant lawyer, and brilliant, brilliant FBI director. He would never tell anybody they are not under –” And yet Trump was telling the truth. And Comey had told everybody for three, four months that Trump wasn’t under investigation.