RUSH: We’re gonna start in Morgantown, West Virginia. This is David. David, it’s great to have you up first today on the program. It’s nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, mega Millennial West Virginia dittos, Rush!
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Where coal is still America’s ace-in-the-hole.
RUSH: And, by the way, it’s coming back. That was from yesterday. The oil industry is coming back. The coal industry is coming back. The steel industry is coming back. Jobs are coming back. There’s all kinds of great news out there that nobody’s hearing about, ’cause the Drive-Bys are obsessed with destroying Trump.
CALLER: Yes, sir. Hey, my question, Rush, is this.
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: Every single story… Every single story — I don’t care where you hear it, where you read it — there’s always an anonymous unnamed source.
RUSH: Yeah. In many cases, only one.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Not even two or three!
CALLER: How do we, the public — how does anybody — know that Glenn Thrush, who sends his paperwork for the Clinton campaign for them to check over…? How do we know these reporters aren’t just making it up, dreaming this stuff up just to get at Trump?
RUSH: I think we know that they are. I think we know that they are. Well, I think one of two things are happening. Either they’re making it up, or people are leaking lies to them that they are publishing because they want the lies to be true.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: We know of three instances. We know for a fact that Comey has not asked for more money for the investigation. We know that Rosenstein did not threaten to quit over the White House narrative on how Comey was fired. Yeah! Rosenstein has denied it. He wasn’t threatening to quit. McCabe said that the FBI has not asked for more money, that this is not how they get money. They don’t go to the DOJ and ask for additional money. They come to Congress for their appropriations. There hasn’t been any request.
And the other thing is that the investigation’s going on. There hasn’t been any attempt by the White House to stop it. There are just three things right there that we’ve been lied to about just this week alone! Grab audio sound bite number four. This is Cokie Roberts on ABC’s Nightline last… (interruption) Well, that’s how she says it, “Co-KEE Raaaah-BERTS, ABC News, Washington.” She said last night… She’s asked a question by the correspondent, David Wright.
“Would Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have had the same impact in the era of Twitter and so-called fake news?” Now, before you…? Don’t hit the sound bite. Stop and think of that question. These young cub reporters, they love Woodward and Bernstein. You know why? Because they destroyed Nixon! That’s one of the great objectives of journalism: Take out a president of the party you oppose. This guy wants to know if Woodward and Bernstein would have had the same impact in the era of Twitter.
And what he’s really asking is, “Could we be Woodward and Bernstein if there’s Twitter? Woodward and Bernstein didn’t have Twitter to compete with, but now there’s Twitter to compete with! Could we become Woodward and Bernstein with Twitter?” He’s asking Cokie Roberts. “Could Woodward and Bernstein have been what they have been if there was so much fake news then like there is now?” The guy wants to be Woodward and Bernstein but there are too many competitors out there. And here is the answer that we got from Cokie Roberts, ABC News.
ROBERTS: We know there’s no such thing as fake news. We live in a time when people don’t believe facts — and if we can’t, uh, convince people that facts are facts, that’s a very difficult situation.
RUSH: You heard her say it. “We know there’s no such thing as fake news.” I’m holding in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a story from February 14, 1994. (shuffling paper) Many of you will not remember this. “ABC World News Tonight executive producer Rick Kaplan and correspondent Cokie Roberts received an official reprimand for staging a Capitol Hill news report on Jan. 26.” Cokie Roberts says, “[T]here’s no such thing as fake news.” Yet she staged an entire report!
It was really cold on January 26th in Washington — really, really cold — and Cokie Roberts didn’t want to go outside. So they created a set in the ABC broadcast studios on DeSales Street in Washington, D.C., to make it look like she was standing outside at the Capitol Building when she was in the warmth of the ABC broadcast studios. “In a memo distributed throughout the news division, ABC News senior VP Richard C. Wald called the incident ‘a mistake,’ adding:
“‘Even though it had no editorial effect, the action was serious because it misled our audience. A series of ill-considered actions resulted in the deception.'” Cokie Roberts says there’s no such thing as fake news. Mr. Wald, ABC News senior VP, “also wrote in the memo, ‘The people involved bear responsibility for this incident. They have been reprimanded and have expressed regrets to me. They know this is not acceptable conduct. This statement is being sent to everyone on our staff so it does not happen again.'”
Here are the details: “The incident … occurred the day after President Clinton’s State of the Union” Show in 1994. “Kaplan had wanted Roberts to do a live report, including crosstalk with ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, from the Hill. But Roberts had a speaking engagement that evening and didn’t have time to make the trip across town. Kaplan then instructed her to put on her [official journalist trench] coat and do the report from the ABC News Washington bureau in front of a projection of the Capitol Building, leaving viewers with the impression that she was” there and reporting from on the scene.
“According to ABC News insiders, Roberts knew she had made a serious error in judgment right after the report and regretted going along with the gambit.” Yeah, it’s somebody else’s fault! She had a meeting; she didn’t want to go to Capitol Hill. She had an engagement and somebody made her stay in the studio. “On Friday, Roberts and Kaplan released a statement saying that faking the background for the report was ‘a stupid thing to have done.'” Play audio sound bite number four again.
ROBERTS: We know there’s no such thing as fake news. We live in a time when people don’t believe facts — and if we can’t, uh, convince people that facts are facts, that’s a very difficult situation.
RUSH: Moving on to CBS News This Morning. Co-host Charlie Rose spoke with Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal. He’s the Washington bureau chief about the firing of Comey (who has been warned not to leak because Trump may have tapes). Charlie Rose says, “The acting FBI director Andrew McCabe says that the investigation’s highly significant. Do you sense from that that they have something going on there that leads them to believe that something happened?”
SEIB: I don’t know what’s believed, but that Director Comey was taking this seriously. He was devoting increasing amount of time to the investigation. He had sought additional resources for it. So that tells you they’re seeing something there that is worth pursuing. This is not going away. I think the key people to watch in Washington now are a small group of, uh, moderate and independent-minded senators on the Republican side — maybe 10, maybe fewer than 10 — whose support, I think, is really crucial to the president.
RUSH: You hear Gerald Seib. “I don’t know what’s believed, but that Director Comey was taking this seriously. He was devoting increasing amount of time to the investigation. He had sought additional resources for it.” No. McCabe said yesterday hadn’t sought any additional money. In fact, here is local Washington news, WJLA-TV Eyewitness News, correspondent Michelle Macaluso speaking with the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein about reports that he had threatened to quit over the handling of Comey’s firing. This is how it went…
MACALUSO: Mr. Rosenstein, did you threat to quit over Comey fallout? Can you say as to why you —
ROSENSTEIN: No, I’m not quitting.
MACALUSO: Did you threaten to quit?
ROSENSTEIN: No.
RUSH: No. I didn’t threaten to quit.” Comey didn’t ask for be additional money; I didn’t threaten to quit. The investigation has not been tampered with by the Trump administration despite Rosenstein’s denial, Jon Karl still reports, “He was gonna quit!” Despite Rosenstein denying it, Jon Karl, ABC News…
KARL: This came close to escalating into an even bigger crisis! George, I am told that that deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein was so upset with the White House for saying that the firing of Comey was his idea, that he was on the verge (dramatic pause) of resigning!
RUSH: No. He just said that he wasn’t, and he said it during the local news last night versus whenever this was. This is Good Morning America today, he said it yesterday, and Karl is pretending that Rosenstein said it. He never said it. Fake news, Cokie!