RUSH: (laughing) I have two stories here I can’t keep a straight face. (laughing) Are you ready for the first one? French News Agency. It’s called the AFP. It’s their version of the Associated Press. I’ll share with you the headline. There’s New York Times story about this today too. Macron, this is the French presidential candidate who’s married to the woman 25 years older than he is. He’s 39. “Emmanuel Macron Campaign Was Targeted by Russian Hackers.” (laughing)
Folks, they’re turning it into a joke! The Hillary campaign, the Trump campaign, Russians hacked this, the Russians did that. Now the Russians are scheming in the French — (laughing) And, of course, the Russians want Le Pen just like the Russians wanted Trump. So the Russians are trying to sabotage this young boy-child governor, president-in-waiting.
The New York Times story is, “Russian Hackers Who Targeted Clinton Appear to Attack France’s Macron — The campaign of the French –” (laughing) Ahem, pardon me. When I laugh, I get all kinds of chest congestion for some reason. I need to clear my throat a little bit more than usual. I apologize for that. “The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by what appear to be –” (laughing) We don’t know what we’re talking about, it just looks like it “– the same Russian operatives –” oh, it is operatives now? (laughing) Partisan political operatives “responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials,” according to a cyber security firm warning in a new report.
The cyber security firm warning “has heightened concerns that Russia may turn its playbook on France in an effort to harm Mr. Macron’s candidacy and bolster that of Mr. Macron’s rival.” You know what this means? What do you think this means? Tell me what you think it means. It means they’re scared to death Le Pen is gonna win despite all of the narratives. The election was on Sunday, and this clown got 23%, Le Pen got 21%.
The French establishment was shut out. They want us to believe the equivalent of neither a Republican or Democrat in America receiving a nomination to run for president. But that’s not true because this Macron guy is from the Socialist Party. He just broke away for an independent run. But he’s a socialist. The original reporting was it’s over for Le Pen now that this guy got 23% and the other candidates who didn’t make the runoff are gonna coalesce behind Macron so Le Pen’s finished.
But now all of a sudden we got a story where the same Russian operatives who undermined Mrs. Clinton all during that book, Shattered, on the Clinton campaign, there’s not one reference to the Russians about what went wrong with her campaign.
The French News Agency story: “The Pawn Storm group, which has been linked to several high-profile attacks in the West –” that would be the Russian operatives, the Pawn Storm group, “– used ‘phishing’ techniques to try to steal personal data from Macron and members of his En Marche! campaign, Japan-based Trend Micro said.
“Pawn Storm, also known as APT28, is also believed to be behind the attacks last summer on the US Democratic National Committee, thought to be aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.”
Folks, I don’t know how to characterize this other than to say it’s pure fantasy. That’s all it is, pure fantasy. It’s alternate reality stuff. The Democrats did not lose the election because the Russians tampered with it. The Russians did not hack Podesta’s email. He fell for a phishing scheme. And I’m glad to see that this story references that. They say that there was a phishing scheme that was planted for Macron to fall victim to but he apparently was too smart to fall for it.
But that’s not the same as a hack. A phishing scheme requires you to do something to let the hackers in. A legitimate hack is when they get into your machine and you don’t know they’re there and you haven’t done anything other than not have proper security or something. This myth, this pure fantasy that the Russians determined the outcome of elections here and are now trying to do it in France. You know, when you get down to it, this is dangerous, dangerous stuff.
This is utter and complete irresponsibility on the part of all of these news agencies all over the world reporting this. And they’re doing it — in France it could be two reasons. It could be that they already fear that this Macron guy is actually gonna lose, which is contrary to the conventional wisdom in the reporting. Or they are trying to actually sabotage Le Pen by accusing her of being allied with Russia so that she does not get sufficient votes. It’s one of those two things.
But regardless, because of what happened here, between Hillary and the Trumpster, they’re leaving nothing to chance. You know, they didn’t start on the Russian thing until 24 hours after Hillary’s — I mean, the Hillary camp got in on it 24 hours after the election.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I need to clarify something. I said in that Surrendered book there’s nothing about Russia impacting the election. That’s not entirely true. Twenty-four hours after the election is when Robby Mook and Podesta concocted the Russian excuse to cover up the absolutely horrible campaign they had run and that Hillary had participated. Shattered. Shattered, Surrendered it’s the same thing. No, they didn’t surrender, shattered, what am I thinking about? It’s Shattered. That’s the new Hillary book. Right. My mind is so active and fertile that one thought spawns countless others. Shattered. What’s the other word, shattered, surrendered? Same difference to me.
But anyway, it was Mook and Podesta that Russia is mentioned as an excuse that they came up with 24 hours after the election. My point was that all during the campaign, not once did anybody in the Hillary camp think the Russians were tampering with things because they thought they were gonna win! This to me is the single biggest evidentiary point you could make that the whole Russian thing has been concocted because all during the campaign they thought they were gonna win in a landslide, and not because of the Russians.
They weren’t worried about the Russians tampering with anything. They never thought they were gonna lose! It was only after they lost that they come up with this excuse. And then of course the Drive-Bys picked it up and ran with it because they’ve been planting seeds and the Russians had gotten into the DNC computer, and that’s how we learned that they shafted Crazy Bernie.