RUSH: Okay, folks, there has to be a reason for all this. There has to be a reason for this delusional, out of control, deranged and yet unified reaction to Trump and Putin in the press conference yesterday. There has to be some explanation for it. And it’s not that Trump didn’t call Putin out. That’s not what these people are upset about. It’s what they’re trying to make you think they’re upset about.

But this over-the-top, genuinely insane and delusional meltdown that is being experienced throughout all of official Washington, there has to be a reason for it. And I am here to tell you, it is not what they are telling you it is. It is not that they think Trump acted treasonously. It is not that they think Trump didn’t call Putin out. It is not that Trump did not defend his own intelligence people.

It’s not none of that. That’s what they want you to believe. They want you to believe that Donald Trump is the scourge of humanity and that it was exemplified and it typified in that press conference yesterday. But that is not anywhere near the explanation, the real explanation for this almost impossible-to-characterize behavior. It was unified throughout the Washington, D.C., establishment, and with rare exceptions it is unified throughout both parties.

And I’m gonna attempt today to explain what might really be behind this. And I want to hear what you think about it. I didn’t get to nearly enough phone calls yesterday. And I’m gonna try to take a little bit more today, ’cause I have a theory about much of this that I will get into as the program unfolds.

I want to start by playing a sound bite of only one media outlet that played any of yesterday’s program. I think this is quite telling too. Now, folks, this is not ego. Please do not misunderstand. Yesterday we had a barn-burner of a unified media reaction to Donald Trump. You know it. I don’t need to go through it. It’s deranged. It really is frighteningly deranged.

These are the people that think they run the world. And these people have lost their grip. These people are having a reaction here that’s so out of proportion to what really happened with Trump and Putin, it’s inexplicable on the surface. Now, normally when there is an event like yesterday or an instance where I happen to be one of few people with a different take, then normally my take is featured all over cable news that night.

That didn’t happen yesterday. I think there’s a reason for that. Again, do not misunderstand. This is not ego. This is study. This is media study. Only one media outlet decided to air my take on events yesterday. And I’m gonna repeat that again during the program today, because I can tell you why Donald Trump does what he does, and I can tell you why Donald Trump doesn’t do what he doesn’t do.

I know Donald Trump. I trust Donald Trump implicitly. But after this reaction that we’ve had from the combined media-political complex in Washington, D.C., who in Washington would you trust now to tell you the truth, to do the right thing, to keep things in perspective, to not have an over-the-top panic attack reaction about something that is largely insignificant, particularly when measured against this response.

We go to Fox & Friends here today. This is Abby Huntsman. Her father is Trump’s ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, and she’s co-hosting the show today. They played a clip of me talking about Trump’s remarks on the Russians and meddling and the media yesterday.

HUNTSMAN: Rush Limbaugh had his own take on meddling. Here’s what he said.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The Russians have been meddling in America since before I was born, folks. It isn’t news. It isn’t worthy of a special counsel doing a counterintelligence investigation. None of this has been necessary. The media looked at this press conference as the day they’re gonna nail Trump. Instead, Trump’s turning the tables on ’em. He’s ripping the Democrats. He won this race. He did it himself. He outworked Hillary Clinton, he worked harder than any candidate in recent memory, and he doesn’t want that taken away from him. He won this thing and he wants everybody to realize that he won it, that it wasn’t stolen.

RUSH: I cannot tell you how important that is. Byron York, our old buddy Byron York has a piece today in the Washington Examiner, and he touches on this. But I think Byron York, with all due respect, only gets it half right here. He has a piece, “Why Trump Doesn’t Admit Russian Election Interference.” And his point is that Trump is unable to distinguish between the two parts of this whole Russian thing. There is the collusion part where Trump is alleged to have colluded with Putin to steal the election from the right and honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And then there is the meddling side where everybody is required to admit that the Russians meddled in the election. And if you don’t admit that, then you’re gonna get thrown out with the bathwater like everybody else in Washington. If you don’t sign on to this idea that the Russians meddled in this election, then you are in heap big trouble and you are gonna possibly be thrown out of the club.

Now, Byron York says in his opinion that Trump could bifurcate these and he could have, on that podium yesterday, he could have acknowledged that the Russians meddled in the election without putting his election and his presidency at risk. All he would have had to do was stood up to Putin and say, “We know you meddled and we’re not gonna let it happen anymore, and you’re on notice.” But I don’t think Trump could do that.

Now, Byron York says, and other people, Trump’s incapable. He’s not sophisticated enough, they say. Trump isn’t smart enough to know that there are two prongs to this Russia thing. The two prongs again are collusion, where Trump is guilty, they think, and then the meddling where the Russians do it and did it and everybody knows it. Even though nobody can produce the evidence of it yet, everybody says it happened.

Trump isn’t stupid. Trump is not ignorant. Trump is not incapable of nuance. Can we reset the table here? Ever since Donald Trump got in the race in 2015, there has been an aligned effort to destroy him. At first nobody took him seriously because what chance did he have, especially after his opening announcement after coming down the escalator. But then the polling data showed that a lot of people loved Donald Trump, and he went on to win the Republican primary, and the panic began to set in.

And from that moment the deep state that we call it has been attempting to undermine Donald Trump and his campaign and then his transition and then his presidency, and it continues to this day. And who is it that’s been doing this? Well, if you believe the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post, which have run as many as four stories a day for two years now, it is current and former intelligence officials in the United States government who, in every story, have alleged that there will be evidence found that Trump colluded with Russia.

Every one of these stories has a line or two buried in it acknowledging that no such evidence has yet been found. It’s there. You easily read over it. It’s never highlighted. It has never had a major point being made of it. Instead, it’s been two years now, folks, two years. They wrote a phony dossier. They created a phony intelligence document at the Hillary campaign with the Democrat National Committee. It’s called the Steele dossier.

Everybody involved knew that it’s not true. Yet everybody involved tried to pass it off as legitimate intel that Donald Trump was hiring prostitutes to urinate on beds in Moscow while he watched — all because Obama had slept in the bed — for two years! James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, James Clapper (all from the Obama administration) have made it plain they believed it was true, that Trump somehow had colluded with Russia or is friends with Putin or something. For two years, Trump has dealt with this!

The point of it all has been to delegitimize President Trump’s victory. The point of it all was to get rid of Trump inside the first six months, and Trump knows all of this. He is fully aware what this effort really is. It’s an effort to drive down his approval numbers into the high thirties or low thirties/high twenties so that he can be thrown out of office for lack of public service. They intended for that to happen in the first six months of this.

But Trump has confounded them in every single effort they have made and mounted against him. They’re at their wits’ end now. But the point is Donald Trump outworked everybody in this campaign. Donald Trump had a more cohesive, coherent message that related to a majority of Americans than anybody else — Republican, Democrat, independent, Green — running for the presidency. Donald Trump won the thing the old-fashioned way. He didn’t even do it with a lot of campaign money. He did it by outworking everybody. He was indefatigable.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton can’t even mount the energy to stand up two days in a row, so she can’t go campaign in various states that they’re considering are dead locks for her anyway so she doesn’t have to go. Nobody gave Trump a chance. Everybody thought Trump would implode. The entirety of the Washington establishment has been devoted to destroying Donald Trump via the dossier, via the never-ending stories in the media — all of them sourced to the, quote-unquote, “intelligence” and law enforcement community.

Now, if you’re Donald Trump (and you are Donald Trump) and you are very acutely aware of this ongoing effort to destroy you, to destroy your family — and if you know this ongoing effort centers around the fact that your election is illegitimate and invalid and deserves to be overthrown because you cheated. You, Donald Trump, cheated with the Russians! You cheated with Vladimir Putin. That has been the singular drumbeat from the Washington establishment, the D.C. media, the entire political complex.

And now we’re told that Donald Trump can go ahead and — in a press conference with Vladimir Putin — he can acknowledge that the Russians meddled while at the same time be protected from any allegation that he colluded. Sorry, folks. If Donald Trump had done what they wanted him to do yesterday — if Donald Trump had done what they were trying to force him to do — if Donald Trump had acknowledged to Vladimir Putin’s face that he had meddled in the 2016 presidential election?

Before that press conference was over, the New York Times would have a headline: “Trump Validates Mueller Investigation.” “Trump Acknowledges Russians Affected Election Outcome.” “Trump Acknowledges Russia May Have Played a Role in Thwarting American Democracy.” There is no doubt in my mind that if Donald Trump had acknowledged what everybody in the deep state is demanding that he acknowledge, that the Russians meddled — which, they meddle in everything, and they have been for 50 years.

You could even make the case they’ve taken over much of American education. The fact that they meddle and try to tamper with elections? None of what the Russians (and before them, the Soviets) have done is anything new. But in this case, the people of this country have been told that Donald Trump’s illegitimate, just like George Bush was illegitimate because of the Florida recount. His presidency was illegitimate, invalid. “We don’t have to listen to what George W. Bush wants or thinks.” Same thing with Trump.

They simply refuse to accept that they were defeated, and Trump — if he had acknowledged the meddling of the Russians — all you would be seeing today is that Trump acknowledges Putin may have or did affect the outcome of the election. Because that’s what they’ve wanted, just like… Remember those press conferences where the media demanded George W. Bush apologize, admit he had made mistakes, and Bush wouldn’t do it?

One press conference went on for over an hour and a half. Every other question, “Are you sure, Mr. President, that you haven’t made any mistakes?” This was before weapons of mass destruction, by the way. This is before that all happened. This was just in general. Bush knew what was going on. “No, haven’t made any mistakes. We’re doing our best here, having a great time. America’s the greatest place. I’m happy to be president. No mistakes.” They went nuts.

The same thing with Donald Trump here. He cannot bifurcate this. He cannot acknowledge that Putin meddled, because if he did — and if he ever does — then the media is going to include and write that Trump has finally acknowledged that there was tampering in the election and that his victory may now be in question and that Donald Trump knows it. That’s what they want to write. He’s not giving them a chance to write it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is really important. You know Donald Trump. Winning the presidency of the United States is one of the greatest achievements any human being can have. It is one of the hardest things in life to do. In Donald Trump’s case, it was doubly hard because he had the entirety of Washington power and money totally arrayed against him, including many in his own party, the Republican Party. The drumbeat, the efforts to destroy Donald Trump and his family were daily, multiple times a day.

There is… I dare say there are none of us alive who can relate to what Donald Trump has experienced. We haven’t gone through it. We haven’t been that big a target. We haven’t ever posed this great a threat to the people who think they run this country. What Donald Trump did is sensational and overwhelming, and he knows it, and he is not — he is not — going to let anybody take it away from him. He’s not gonna let the media take it away from him.

He’s not gonna let Russia take it away from him. He’s not gonna let the Republican Party or the Democrat Party take it away from him. His singular achievement was the result of a focused, energetic-beyond-comprehension, indefatigable effort to retake this country and send it back in a direction different from that which it had been taken the previous eight years and maybe even years prior to that. It was simply an effort born of Donald Trump’s love for this country.

Now all these people shouting, “Trump was treasonous! Trump needs to be thrown out!” Donald Trump has openly demonstrated his passionate, patriotic love for this country and his belief that it is singularly the greatest hope for humanity in the world today. He wants it rebuilt and reestablished and transformed back to this greatness. Winning the presidency against impossible-to-imagine odds was immediately challenged by the Washington establishment he beat, complete with fake dossiers, fake intelligence reports.

The intelligence community — which now he’s supposed to praise? The intelligence community which single-handedly tried to take him out, he’s now supposed praise them? The FBI and the DOJ, people in which single-handedly tried to destroy him, he’s now supposed to praise them? Donald Trump knows he won this thing as legitimately as anybody has ever won the presidency. He didn’t even raise a whole lot of money from people he now has to pay back with ideas and policy and any of that. He’s not gonna sit there and let any of these people tarnish his victory or take it away from him with an imaginary allegation that he cheated or that the Russians made it happen, when he knows they didn’t and nobody but him won this.

This is entirely rational and understandable to me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It is said that Donald Trump is miscalculating. All he would have to do is acknowledge that the House and the Senate have had investigative committees and they’ve concluded the Russians meddled and that Mueller has concluded. All Trump would have to do is acknowledge that, and man, he could get rid of the issue.

Let me ask you all a question. When you watch media report on Russia and the election, how many of you are aware, how many of you believe, how many of you see evidence that the media’s separating this into two elements. That the collusion is one side and that meddling is another and there’s very little crossover? None of you. Because the truth of the matter is when the media reports on Russia, it’s always with collusion in mind!

The only reason they care about Russia is as a way of getting rid of Donald Trump! The Russians, ladies and gentlemen, were accused of tampering in the Obama campaign, May 2017, Newsweek: “Exclusive: Russian Hackers Attacked the 2008 Obama Campaign — Russian hackers targeted the 2008 Barack Obama campaign and U.S. government officials as far back as 2007 and have continued to attack them since they left their government jobs.”

Well, why was there no investigation, and why hasn’t there been any attention paid to that? If you didn’t know any better, if you just landed here from Mars, Russia is this brand-new country and all of a sudden it’s trying to destroy the United States, and it did so by trying to get Donald Trump elected!

The only reason that there is a Russian meddling story is because the members of the media and the Washington political class have arisen each day hoping and praying that that day provides the evidence of collusion and that, therefore and thereby, they can get rid of Donald Trump.

So Donald Trump is supposed to see this as two sides of the same thing — meddling and collusion. And he’s supposed to be able to acknowledge the meddling while not committing to acknowledging the collusion. Wrong. The media doesn’t even make that distinction. As far as the media and the Washington establishment is concerned, it’s all the same thing. Donald Trump knows it. And this is why he’s never going to.

Why in the world should Donald Trump stand up for the intelligence community of Barack Obama that has single-handedly tried to wipe him out of office, to destroy his presidency and his career? Why? Why is anybody supposed to do that? Why is Donald Trump supposed to sit by and promote members of the FBI and the DOJ who have single-handedly tried to screw him out of the presidency?

“Well, Rush, because politics ends at the water’s edge, and when you’re meeting with Russian leaders, you’re not supposed –” The whole thing, folks, is a setup! Trump knows all of this. There’s no way that he’s gonna have this victory taken away from him. There’s no way ’cause he knows it didn’t happen. He won this thing legitimately. He won this thing by outworking people. I can’t tell you how important that is. He outworked everybody.

He worked at a pace that people in Washington are not used to working, folks. And he still does. He’s outworking everybody each and every day. He’s got more energy and he puts in more substantive time doing his job than anybody else in that town has for a long, long time.

He’s not supposed to have succeeded. He’s an outsider. He’s a dunce. He doesn’t know how to speak correctly. He doesn’t have the pedigree, the educational pedigree. He’s a mutt! He’s not a pedigree! He’s a mutt! He has no business winning this office. He has no business even running for it. He has no business outsmarting these people.