RUSH: It is fascinating to watch an entire industry disintegrate before our very eyes. So much of what we call the news business is literally eating itself alive and I guess they’re willing to do it. I have never in my life seen such a shocking abandonment of stated principles and objectives on the part of any group that I can recall.

Greetings, my friends, and welcome. Great to have you here. Broadcast excellence hosted by me at 800-282-2882. That’s the number if you want to call and be on the program. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

The worst offender of this is CNN, but practically everybody in the Drive-By Media is treating the shocking, the blockbuster, the smoking-gun story that Susan Rice was no doubt spying for President Obama on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition.

They are treating this — you know, it’s interesting. The way they’re covering this for the Drive-Bys, CNN is actually telling people to ignore it, that they are not going to cover it, that it is simply a distraction. And they’re not gonna fall for it, and they don’t want you to fall for it. This is a distraction being offered up by right-wing media.

The rest of the Drive-Bys, the only way they’re covering the story, if they’re covering it at all, is to call it a distraction. It’s a distraction. Notice they’re not calling it fake news. They’re not calling it untrue. They’re not labeling it made-up. They’re not saying that it isn’t accurate. They’re saying it’s unimportant. And, strictly speaking, their objectives being to get rid of Donald Trump, it is unimportant, and it is not helpful, and it is not useful. Those are three oftentimes, often used phrases by the Drive-Bys: not helpful, not useful.

So it’s being portrayed as a distraction, not even fake news. All the evidence seems to be there. So instead they’re saying it’s a distraction because Rice didn’t do anything illegal. Except she did if she asked for this information without it being part of an investigation. And here’s something very important to remember, folks. The White House cannot do investigations.

The White House does not do investigations. The FBI investigates. The CIA investigates. The NSA investigates. But the White House does not investigate. So if the White House is investigating, something’s already very wrong. All the White House does — and the FBI director James Comey even admitted this in the most recent round of congressional hearings. He said the White House is a consumer of what we do, meaning the White House would consume the results, the analysis, and the data of investigations they conduct.

The White House does not do investigations. And if the White House is doing investigations, it’s not because they’re looking into criminal things. It’s because they are engaged in political activity. The White House is not an investigative agency of the federal government. It is not. There are other elements of the executive branch that do investigations.

So if she was doing this on her own, which we doubt strenuously, she was doing this to provide information for her superiors. And only one of those matters, and that would be Barack Obama, who remains far away from any subpoena. He’s out there in Tahiti, 54 other guys, Marlon Brando’s estate in a month-long, all-male-only retreat, while the minions like Evelyn Farkas and Susan Rice are doing all of the dirty work here.

Now, Susan Rice can ask for the FBI to investigate. The White House can do that, but they gotta be very careful because if these investigations are political then they can do things to you like the Democrats did to Alberto Gonzales, got rid of him, the Bush administration, for politicizing things, ostensibly. So let’s get to the nub of this, and then the on-the-spot analysis.

“Former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce ‘detailed spreadsheets’ of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova. ‘What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,’ diGenova told The Daily Caller.”

Now, what this means is the surveillance was legal because, as we have been saying all week, all month, the surveillance was of foreign actors like the Russian ambassador. Trump administration, Trump transition, Trump campaign officials happened to be caught up in this surveillance as incidental contact. As such, they are masked. Their identity is hidden by the investigation agencies, in this case, the FBI, CIA, what have you.

What Susan Rice did was ask them to unmask and produce a spreadsheet for her, detailed spreadsheets of all of the phone calls involving Trump and his aides when he was running for president. Again, diGenova said, “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals.”

Meaning, the Trump people were not breaking the law talking to people they were talking to. There was nothing illegal about the conversations themselves. So Susan Rice took this data, the unmasked data combined with the spreadsheets, and thanks to Evelyn Farkas we know what happened to it. It was leaked all over the Drive-By Media, month after month after month after month after month. It sounds like diGenova either saw these spreadsheets or talked to somebody who has.

I don’t know if they’re part of the evidence that Devin Nunes says is on display at the Old Executive Office Building, which again, Adam Schiff, old Pencil Neck, he was so excited. Folks, he was so excited because he went out last week and he actually said there’s evidence of collusion. Then he went and looked at the evidence that Nunes looked at and he’s now gone suspiciously silent. And he’s had to walk back this claim, not by name, but he’s now saying, “Yeah, we really don’t have any evidence. That’s why we need to keep the investigation going.”

The former U.S. attorney diGenova said: “The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with. In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.” Something we’ve been maintaining from the get-go. The only crime that’s been committed here has been by those people who unmasked the people in these phone calls and then criminally, feloniously leaked their names and details. That’s where criminality has occurred.

The Trump people were not committing any crimes. Believe me, in the case of Michael Flynn, how many months has this been going on? How many months has this been reported? How many months has this investigation been pursued? The transcript of the calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador, I’m sure Susan Rice has them now. I’m sure countless Obama embeds have them. I’m sure countless media people have them.

If there was a quid pro quo, in other words, if Flynn promised the Russian ambassador to lift Obama sanctions once Trump was inaugurated, you know damn well we’d a known this months ago. And Flynn would have been frog-marched out of whatever building he was in into the nearest courthouse where he would have been thrown into an Obama dungeon. But none of that’s happened because Flynn didn’t do that.

So all they have is the ability to create innuendo and to make low-information news consumers think that it happened — convince insane, lunatic leftists and Democrat base voters that it did happen. But it didn’t. And we can safely say that it didn’t because if it had, that would have been part of the leak. That would have been the reason Flynn had to go. And none of that happens to have been the case. Again: ‘”The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,’ diGenova said.

“‘In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the [Trump] people in the calls.’ Other official sources with direct knowledge and who requested anonymity confirmed to [the Daily Caller] diGenova’s description of surveillance reports Rice ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election.” So diGenova has backup. There are additional sources that say that Rice ordered all of this a year before. Can we say October 2015, like three months after Trump announces his candidacy, three months after all the smart people figured Trump would be gone?

Trump comes down elevator in June of 2015, right? He says what he says. Everybody expects Trump to implode. Everybody thinks Hillary’s gonna win in a landslide. Everybody thinks that Trump’s gonna step in it and he’s not even serious. He’s doing this for other reasons, to promote ratings for his TV show The Apprentice or what have you. By October, Trump is still there, and he’s running rings around people in the polls and he’s doing well in Republican debates and his popularity is soaring — and that’s when surveillance begins, October of 2015.

“Also on Monday, Fox News and Bloomberg News … said the unmasked names of Trump aides were given to officials at the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Defense, James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director. Joining Rice in the alleged White House operations was her deputy Ben Rhodes, according to Fox,” whose brother runs CBS News. By the way, it’s the same Ben Rhodes who bragged about how he got the mainstream media to promulgate his lies about the Iran deal. Remember that?

It’s the same guy bragging about how he convinced the media to spread his lies about the Iran deal and how well it was going and how meaningful it was going to be. So that basically is a thumbnail sketch of what happened. You add this to what Evelyn Farkas divulged back on March 2nd… You know, this story features many opportunities. We could go back all the way to 2006 with Obama quotes on spying domestically and how he opposes it, how it shouldn’t happen. We go back to the past, earlier in the month of March — which we’re gonna do — and Susan Rice was on TV claiming she knew nothing about this

The one thing we know about Susan Rice: This woman is a full-fledged frontal liar. She lied on five separate TV shows about the Benghazi incident, blaming it on that poor video maker. You know what’s becoming patently obvious, ladies and gentlemen, is the Democrats… Two things. It’s interesting phenomenon. The Democrats are embracing… There’s even a story in the Stack here today about this. The Democrats are embracing all their former enemies. They’re embracing Julian Assange, who they wanted to frog march into prison for violating people’s privacy. They’re turning on former friends.

The Russians! They used to be in bed with the Russians and with the Soviet Union. Now they’re turning… In other words, this scandal — and Donald Trump — is forcing the left and the Democrat Party to turn itself inside out. They are so discombobulated that they are abandoning lifelong allies and embracing lifelong enemies because the only objective here is to get rid of Trump, and I think at this stage… I say this as a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t think they even know specifically why Trump has to be gotten away, other than he won the election. But when you… It’s gotten so far out of control that they can’t even tell you why now.

I mean, they might say, “Well, Trump lies all the time! Trump’s a misogynist! Trump’s a pig,” but they can’t give you specific reasons. They can make them up on the fly, I think. But I think the inertia of this — my point is — has so overtaken them that the objective has become the purpose, and the purpose is the objective. The reason is the objective. It’s all encapsulated, and they’re insane. They have literally been rendered mentally unstable by all of this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So it turns out there was a government interfering in the presidential election. It was ours. It was the United States government, at the time being run by Barack Hussein O and his minions. George Neumayr, the American Spectator: “For months and months, the Obama administration was spying on Trump and leaking hints of its investigation to the press in the hopes of helping Hillary, who, by the way, colluded in the effort. Yet even the ruthless partisan Adam Schiff can’t ‘definitively’ cite a single proof of collusion on Trump’s part, as he reluctantly acknowledged on Sunday.

“Given all the spying and leaking on Trump, wouldn’t we know by now if they had any evidence of collusion?” It’s fascinating. They have no evidence he have collusion between Trump and the Russians, but look at the evidence of collusion between elements of the United States government and the Democrat Party. It’s overwhelming! And the collusion of elements of the United States government trace all the way to the White House. This is bigger than Watergate. Certainly, it’s Watergate style. It’s in that league.

Elements of the White House are colluding with the Democrat Party and the nominee to undermine the candidacy and then the transition and then the presidency of Donald Trump. We have a new sound bite from Evelyn Farkas, October 26, 2016, before the election, a couple of weeks before the election. She’s in Warsaw… Remember, she’s an assistant secretary of defense. There is the Warsaw Security Forum taking place, and Evelyn Farkas is part of the United States delegation. Again, on October 26th, 2016, a couple of weeks before the election…

FARKAS: Even if we have the wrong result from my perspective, America is resilient. We have a lot of presidential historians who have put forward very coherently their argument. They’ve given us examples of all of our horrible presidents (snickers) in the past and the fact that we’ve endured, and we do have a strong system of checks and balances — and actually, if Donald Trump were elected, I believe he’d be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. And I’m not even joking.

RUSH: Evelyn Farkas two weeks before the election, assuring Europeans that they’re worried about Trump’s gonna win. They know it! They’re worried sick, and they’re trying to assure attendees that “we do have a strong system of checks and balances — and actually, if Donald Trump were elected, I believe he’d be impeached pretty quickly or somebody else would have to take over government. And I’m not even joking.” They were already contemplating it. We knew that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No, we did not find out about this from the mainstream media. That’s the thing. Susan Rice didn’t come from the mainstream media. This is another thing. Folks, journalism is changing right before our very eyes. The Drive-Bys, the mainstream media, they’re not who they used to be. Well, take that back. They’re always who they used to be, but they are not the arbiters any longer.

Do you realize if the Drive-Bys were still it, if they were the only thing going, we wouldn’t even know this Susan Rice story. Their reaction to it is to circle the wagons and protect her, protect Obama. Mike Cernovich, 60 Minutes, tried to destroy him. You know, he’s a pro-Trump blogger, and they tried to destroy him in a profile on Sunday night.

He said not only was Susan Rice doing all this, but the New York Times has known about it for 48 hours. That Maggie Haberman, a reporter for the New York Times, formerly of The Politico, has sat on it for 48 hours, knowingly didn’t run it. He refers to her as an employee of the Democrat National Committee, for all intents and purposes.

So no, we don’t know this because the Drive-Bys, CNN has got an active campaign going to tell their viewers to ignore this. There’s nothing to see. This is totally a distraction. They’re not calling it fake news. They’re saying it’s a distraction created by right-wing media, and that’s automatically supposed to convey to viewers that you can’t trust them.

Now, my buddy Andy McCarthy has weighed in on this, a piece at National Review Online. And there’s a reiteration here. The thing to remember in all of this is that the White House does not do investigations. They do not do criminal investigations. They do not do intelligence investigations. “Yes, they do, Rush.” No, they don’t. They have to ask for them to be done. They are not an investigatory agency, and there is not an investigatory agency at the White House. They don’t do criminal investigations.

Now, if they get involved in things like this, it’s because of politics. I’ll tell you why that is so important. Why is that so important in the context of these revelations that Susan Rice called for the unmasking of Trump campaign and transition officials? It’s because we have been told for weeks that any unmasking of people in Trump’s circle was for one of two innocent reasons.

One, the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling in the election. And the second innocent explanation was, the need to know for purposes of understanding the communications of foreign intelligence targets, the identities of Americans incidentally intercepted. The unmasking, say the Obama apologists, has nothing to do with targeting Trump or his people. And that won’t do, folks, that won’t suffice, because it’s a way of finding out, it’s a way of surveilling Trump people.

This is precisely what has happened here. Chosen surveillance targets, foreign actors, foreign agents, foreign individuals were chosen because of the likelihood they were going to be talking with Trump officials. When people say that it was all legal, it was legal because it was the foreigners targeted, it was the foreigners for whom warrants to surveil were sought. The Americans caught up in this were incidental, they weren’t targets. And in that sense, nothing was illegal.

It’s a very fine line here. So the Obama administration defense is, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’re not doing anything here. We’re surveilling legitimate bad guys, we’re surveilling potential bad guys. The fact that Trump people got caught up here, nothing to do with us.” Oh, but it was, is the whole point.

“It is the FBI that conducts investigations that bear on American citizens suspected of committing crimes or of acting as agents of foreign powers. In the matter of alleged Russian meddling, the investigative camp also includes the CIA and the NSA. All three agencies conducted a probe and issued a joint report in January.
That was after Obama … suddenly made a great show of ordering an inquiry and issuing sanctions.” 35 Russian diplomats sent packing, sanctions imposed.

This is after Obama had said over and over again that any Russian collusion, activity, trying to affect the election was inconsequential, they couldn’t do it, Obama said it over and over again. And I’ll remind you again leading up to the U.S. election when they all thought Hillary was gonna win, there was no talk of Russia subverting the election. The talk back then was how horrible Trump was for not saying he would accept the results of the election, you remember.

So because those are the three agencies that do investigations, FBI, CIA, NSA, if any unmasking was relevant to Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies, not by Susan Rice, not by the White House. The fact the White House is involved is the big stink.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Mark in Virginia. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Thanks for taking my call. I appreciate it, Mr. Limbaugh.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: I just wanted to make an observation. I’d like your input. I think sometimes people are making the ex-president out not as smart as he might be. I think this containing information about Trump was actually going on with Clinton as well, and he was gonna use it to his advantage to make sure he protected his legacy no matter who won the election.

RUSH: Well, I wouldn’t categorically reject that, but who is it that is not properly estimating Obama?

CALLER: Well, I think if you listen to the way the press is handling it and the way the Senate investigations are going, they’re only categorizing the investigations on the Russian attempts with the Trump administration. They’re not saying let’s study and let’s investigate Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign of 2016. Then it could be both unilaterally used against Clinton and Trump —

RUSH: No, no. No, no. I get that. My question was, who do you know that thinks Obama’s not smart? I should have phrased it that way. I think, speaking for myself, I’m very wary. I think we know that the Obama administration — well, we don’t know for sure. Look, this is a good point. I’m rug out of time to get into it in detail, but there’s evidence that you’re right is my point