RUSH: Let me ask you a question. Is it unreasonable, is it unreasonable that President Trump would suspect he’s being spied on? It’s not unreasonable, is it? Telephone calls that he’s made to presidents of other countries have been leaked, transcripts have been leaked.

Greetings, my friends, great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh, and broadcast excellence for three straight hours. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

So a lot to try to explain here today, and it all makes sense when it is explained in not just necessarily a timeline format, but just when you provide and when you learn the information of things that are going on, all of this makes sense. It all seems reasonable. It all seems like it could be happening.

We know, for example, that there has been an effort on the part of what I’ve been calling the deep state, this is embedded Obamaites that are in the bureaucracy that have been trying to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration ever since he was elected and through the transition into the inauguration and up to now. I mean, this is undeniable. These various leaks, many of them are criminal. How are people getting this information? How are people acquiring the information that they are disseminating?

I have here, ladies and gentlemen, I went and looked and I’ve got a copy here of the actual New York Times front page on January 20th of this year. And the primary story, the lead story, “Trump Arrives, Set to Assume Power.” But right next to it is this headline: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.” Well, the New York Times has a story back in January admitting that wiretapped data has been used in an inquiry of Trump aides. And this article goes on to say “intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.”

So it isn’t unreasonable at all for Donald Trump to suspect that he’s being tapped, that his aides are being tapped, at Trump Tower. We know that there were two FISA warrants that were issued starting last summer and then another one in October, and I want to walk you through those as the program unfolds today. It’s kind of unsettling. I mean, you don’t want to think things like this happen, but you know that they do, and so you have to face it. And we are in a polarized circumstance in our country. We are really divided, and the gap is wide.

The partisanship is profound and it’s worsening here, to the point that there isn’t any common ground and crossing the aisle and shaking hands and cooperating. This is a war that’s going to result in somebody winning and somebody losing, within a political context, of course. And what’s new about this one is we have a Republican president for the first time in my lifetime fighting back.

Well, I can’t exclude Ronald Reagan from that. And I actually think a part of this — and I can’t substantiate this, ’cause it goes to motive — but I think part of what President Trump is doing by tweeting out on Saturday that he believes the Obama administration’s wiretapping him, I think he’s not just tweeting to the American public and tweeting to the news media. I think Trump confounds these people because he is always a step or two ahead. Trump plays the long game.

And I think in addition to whatever else these tweets are intended to accomplish, it’s also a direct line to the Democrat Party and Obama and members of the Obama administration that Trump is signaling, “You don’t face the usual feckless bunch of opponents who never fight you back. You’ve got me here, and if you’re gonna start lying about me, if you’re gonna keep lying about me, I’m not gonna sit here and take it.”

Now, why might Trump think that he’s been bugged? Why might he believe that Trump Tower has been bugged? Well, folks, from the moment that Donald Trump won the election back in November, there have been leaks, illegal leaks that were no question damaging. There has been a sabotage effort to undermine Trump and his administration since the election. We’ve talked about it ever since it began. I’ve had various names for it, the deep state, Friday called it silent coup or whatever, but there isn’t any doubt in my mind that this is going on.

The media is complicit in it, that there is an effort to undermine the Trump administration. We have these bought-and-paid-for protests that come up out of nowhere, and they appear instantly. So I think it’s totally reasonable to believe that something like this could be happening. It would be unreasonable to think that this is crazy, unreasonable to think that this is absurd, unreasonable to think that this is nothing more than a big batch of conspiracy theories stitched together for whatever purpose.

We also know that the Obama administration and people in it have a tendency to not shoot straight when asked questions. We know they didn’t tell us the truth about what happened in Benghazi. We know that they lied about who was responsible for it. They knowingly lied. They knew that it was not some obscure video maker that made a movie that irritated Middle East Islamists.

We know that it was a terror attack. They knew that it was a terror attack. And yet for weeks and weeks and weeks Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and that entire apparatus lied to everybody about it. We know the reason why they lied. It was to protect Obama’s reelection effort in 2012. They lied with Lois Lerner and the IRS and her seizing on the opportunity to deny tax-exempt status to certain conservative fundraising organizations. Fast and Furious. I could go on and on and on here citing to you examples of the Obama administration lying.

We also have countless examples of the Obama administration wiretapping and surveilling people all over the world, including Angela Merkel and Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations. So it’s not unreasonable to think that this could be happening. If you add to it, who are these people? They are liberals, they are leftists, they have a birthright, in their minds, claim to power. They are still shocked and stunned that Trump won this and they can’t come to grips with it.

They are members of a political power that is losing its grip and losing its electoral hold, and they’re in a full-fledged panic, if you ask me. And their total inability to accept their rejection and their repudiation is causing them to lash out in all kinds of ways to try to destroy what they can’t beat at the ballot box.

As I say, it’s unsettling to know that this kind of thing is happening or could happen, but you have to face it. You don’t want to lie to yourself. You know, it’s easy to say, “Wait, even that’s too far out for me.” Some people might say, “I don’t want to –” I know it’s a very uncomfortable place to go, to accept this.

This is one of the ways in which the left gets away with a lot. Much it is so outrageous, people don’t even feel comfortable believing it. ‘Cause once you believe it and once you accept it then there’s almost a call to action to oppose it, to resist it and so forth. So a lot of people just pooh-pooh it away, allegations like Trump’s that Obama or agents of his Regime have wiretapped him or Trump Tower.

Now, it’s interesting, too, if you look at the leftists who have weighed in on this, say, on Twitter, there’s a shift. There’s a shift starting from Saturday to the present on Twitter. Originally it was, “You’re never, ever gonna prove Obama ordered the wiretapping of Trump or Trump Tower. You’re never gonna prove that. You’re never gonna prove anybody did that.” But it started out with the whole thing was false. It was all false; it was a conspiracy theory. It was the ravings of a lunatic, Donald Trump. But now it’s gotten more refined, and now it’s, “You won’t prove Obama did it.”

It started out, “Are you crazy? This is absurd. You guys are sick. You guys are insane. Trump’s an idiot,” and now if you watch the Twitter timeline, it’s, no one will ever prove Obama ordered the wiretapping. Jon Favreau, former Obama administration, warned people in a tweet (summarized), “Hey, be careful about this. Be careful. It’s not a slam dunk to say that Obama didn’t order it. Just because Obama didn’t order it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” meaning the wiretapping of the Trump Tower, Trump administration.

Oh, did you see what Nicholas Kristof has tweeted out today, the New York Times? If you doubt the… The Times is fascinating. The whole media is fascinating. The media is saying they are duty-bound to shut Trump’s story down. They are duty-bound to expose it as a fraudulent story. The same people who can’t find any evidence that Trump or his people colluded with the Russians to hack the election, to affect the election1 They can’t find any evidence. They don’t have any duty to slap that down. No, no, no, no, no.

They owe everything they’ve got to try to find something that isn’t there on that. But this, they’re claiming it’s their duty to shut it down. Not investigate it. Not take it seriously. Their duty is to shut it down. Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times tweets, “If you’re in the IRS and if you have a certain president’s tax return that you’d like to leak, my address is,” and he gives the New York Times address. So you have a reporter actually asking for Trump’s tax return to be leaked to him from the IRS. James Comey.

I also find this fascinating. James Comey, the director of the FBI, is said to have asked the Department of Justice to refute Trump’s unproven wiretapping claim. Now, do you remember when a story leaked that Reince Priebus, the chief of staff in the Trump White House…? Remember this headline on CNN? CNN had this gigantic, exclusive story that Reince Priebus called the FBI and asked them to tamp down all these Trump and the Russians and election stories. That was supposedly beyond the pale. “The White House can’t do that!

“You can’t call the Department of Justice and ask them or the FBI and ask them to tell the media to stop this. You can’t call the FBI and have them talk to the Department of Justice and say, ‘Stop leaking,'” and when the truth came out, Reince Priebus didn’t call anybody. Was minding his own business, and the number two at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, came up and told him, “By the way, Reince, there’s nothing to these stories. We’ve looked at ’em.” And Priebus said, “Well, now what do I do with it?” The real news in that story was there is no evidence of any collusion between Trump and his aides and the Russians in affecting the election. That was the news.

Instead, CNN made up something totally out of whole cloth that Reince Priebus was trying to stop an embarrassing story, and had called the FBI to solicit their assistance. Well, why is it okay for Comey to ask the Department of Justice to refute Trump’s claim on wiretapping, why is that perfectly fine? Why is nobody suggesting that this is really beyond the pale for Comey to do this? Why didn’t Comey do it himself? So apparently it’s perfectly fine for Comey to ask the Department of Justice to refute all of these things Trump is saying.

But it was never okay for Reince Priebus to be told by the FBI that there’s nothing to the Russian hacking story and then supposedly ask the FBI to do something about it, which he didn’t do. There’s so many double standards here and there is so much hypocrisy and there’s so much lying. There is so much lying. There is so much going on, so much illegal leaking, so much of an effort to damage, unseat, render, paralyze the Trump presidency.