RUSH:  You know, this is gonna be a good way to set this up.  We have an audio sound bite here from David “Rodham” Gergen, who is Washington conventional wisdom.  He’s a good liberal.  He’s a defining liberal.  David “Rodham” Gergen goes on CNN, and the reason he’s good is because he’s worked for every administration since George Washington.  He’s worked for Republicans, he’s worked for Democrats, he’s worked for everybody. 

Supposedly everybody he’s worked for thinks he’s the greatest thing that’s ever come down the pike.  He’s proposed solutions to numerous ideas on Nightline with Ted Koppel. So when Gergen speaks, the inside-the-Beltway people think, “This is the epitome of greatness! This is conventional wisdom.” So, CNN brought David “Rodham” Gergen on immediately after the Trump speech to give his thoughts.  Kate Bolduan talking to him said, “Okay, Mr. Gergen, what are your first thoughts on the Trump speech just now?”

GERGEN:  If you don’t look at the substance of what he said, you have to say it was one of his best speeches, one of his most effective speeches.  It was disciplined.  We actually got a text! That never before happened as far as I can remember —

BOLDUAN: (giggling)

GERGEN: — in a Trump campaign.  I thought he had one very effective line in it. He said, You know, her hashtag is, ‘I’m with her,'” and he said, “I’m with you.”  I do think in coming days we’re gonna hear an awful lot about a string of lies and exaggerations.  I mean, let’s go to the something fundamental, and that is I was really surprised that he leaned as heavily as he did upon the Schweizer book called the (sic) Clinton Cash.

BOLDUAN: Yeah!

GERGEN: That book has been basically discredited.  I’m sorry, at this level you can’t slander somebody — and this was a slanderous speech — without more proof.

RUSH:  Wait a minute.  Somebody help me out.  Has that book been discredited?  Has anybody seen the Schweitzer book being officially discredited?  I haven’t.  This is news to me.  I have not seen a single report from a fact checker or a newspaper anywhere.  I mean, I’ve seen stories from partisan media sources ripping it to shreds ’cause Schweizer’s a creep. But I’ve not seen anywhere where the book had been officially discredited.  That hasn’t happened.  And it’s rich here for Gergen to start saying, “You can’t slander people at this level.”  The Clintons and the Clinton war room wrote the book on how to do that!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I know this has been a speedy search.  I can’t find anywhere where the Peter Schweizer book Clinton Cash has been “discredited” like David “Rodham” Gergen said, and he just said it like everybody knows it’s been discredited.  Now, I think people in the Clinton camp like David “Rodham” Gergen — and I really believe this.

I think they are so in love, I think they are so hitched to the Clintons — I think they’re so attached; I think they are so, so, so devoted — that they don’t even know.  And because they’re so devoted and because they think so highly of themselves, they don’t think it’s possible.  “All this stuff in the Schweizer book, Clinton Cash, that’s gotta be,” the way they look at that, “discredited. That’s gotta be typical right-wing BS!  That’s gotta be more Gary Aldrich and the FBI agent and the book he writes. That’s gotta be more of what the American Spectator puts out.”

They just “discredited” it in their own minds.  “The Clintons aren’t that way. We know the Clintons,” and they’re so invested in the Clintons succeeding that they just reject it.  You know, it’s like Clinton, at some point… Here, this is a great question to ask.  We continue to get this. Like the latest is Dolly Kyle.  We continue to get women popping up all over this country describing affairs they’ve had with Bill Clinton.  Could somebody explain to me, why does Bill Clinton get the benefit of the doubt on that?

If there is anybody officially established as a horndog who has been president of the United States — if there ever is a man who has had numerous affairs in the Oval Office, outside the Oval Office, in the governor’s office in Arkansas, around the world, palling around with noted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein — why does Bill Clinton get the benefit of the doubt?  After all of these years, there ought to be a reaction. Common sense would say, “You know what?  This many allegations, there has to be something there.”  But they continue.

The Clinton side continues to suggest that all of this has been discredited, all these allegations of Clinton horn-dogging around are just partisan political operatives making things up.  Why in the world does this guy still get the benefit of the doubt on this stuff?  There is nobody under the sun in the world of common sense that the benefit of the doubt would ever be so extended. This guy can been accused of rape, and that doesn’t seem to bother them.  Now they come out and say — David Gergen today — that the Schweizer book’s been “discredited.”

It hasn’t.  In fact, you ought to know the Washington Post and New York Times have even quoted it.  The Washington Post and the New York Times have all made exclusive arrangements with Peter Schweizer to pursue the claims made in the book, and they did, and they never found any evidence that he was wrong.  Not only has Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash not been discredited, the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran excerpts from it. 

So the question is, did David “Rodham” Gergen know what he’s talking about, or does he know something we don’t know?  Because that book has not “been discredited.”  Let me give you a couple of other really laughable examples of how the Drive-Bys are dealing with Trump’s speech today.  And I know some of you haven’t heard it yet, but just sit tight.  Because we do the news as it breaks.  The New York Times, in a fact-check story after Trump’s speech, quote Trump as saying something that’s not true. 

Quote, “Hillary has spent her entire life making money for special interests, and I will tell you she’s made plenty of money for them, and she has been taking plenty of money out for herself.”  He’s basically accused her of getting rich by being in Washington, by getting rich supposedly helping all these charities.  And you want to hear the New York Times’ objection to that?  You want to hear the New York Times “fact-check” response to that?  “Well, that’s not entirely true.  Hillary Clinton worked for the Children’s Defense Fund, and she was on the Watergate committee.” 

I kid you not. 

So Trump says that Hillary has been so corrupt that all these charities that she’s been involved in, she’s taken a lot of money out, and they cite two things where Trump’s wrong: The Children’s Defense Fund (which was run by her buddy, Marian Wright Edelman) and the fact that she served on the Watergate committee.  Those are the only two things the New York Times, as of now, could come up with to show that Trump’s not accurate in what he said.  Well, I’m sorry, but that’s nothing. 

She’s not got the likability quotient.  She just doesn’t have a connection with people that make them naturally want to defend her. She does not have a connection with people that makes them want to disbelieve this kind of stuff, like her husband does.  And I think they know it, and I think they’re actually a little worried here.  They know that this speech, depending on what happens with it now, has the potential of doing really, really great damage. 

And so they have to go out and create this illusion that this book — Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer — has been discredited, when it hasn’t been.  But so far — and I’m sure we’re gonna get it, but I haven’t seen it yet.  I haven’t seen any fact-checkers in the Post or the New York Times reject Trump’s claims that she’s a world class liar, that she’s corrupt.  I haven’t seen any.  I’m sure that’s coming.  I’m sure Clinton defenders are assiduously and energetically working on replies to all this even as we speak. 

But the point is that in the moments afterwards there is not a readymade reply to anything Trump said that would nuke Trump.  They’re having to craft it.  They’re having to carefully assemble it and put it together.