RUSH: Okay. It’s Open Line Friday, and I’m gonna get to the phones in the next segment. There’s really not enough time here to be fair with anybody, and there’s nobody up there I want to be unfair with, so we will wait.
I just want to give you examples, again, of what I was just talking about. There isn’t a shred of evidence, there’s not a morsel of evidence for anything being alleged. Now, you might say, “Rush, there has to be. All this coverage.” I’m telling you, there isn’t. There isn’t a shred of evidence. They don’t have any evidence on Flynn.
By the way, after the break there’s some sound bites that go with this, and then we’ll get to the phones. Some excellent sound bites that go with this. So hang on. “Jared Kushner is Now a Focus in Russia Investigation.” What does that tell you? And then if you go look at the Washington Post top 20 stories, 18 of them are Jared Kushner or 15 of ’em.
And if you read story, listen to this: “Kushner is the only current White House official known to be considered a key person in the probe. The Post has not been told that Kushner is a target — or the central focus — of the investigation, and he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.”
Well, then what’s the story? Jared Kushner now a focus in Russia investigation? “The investigators are focusing on a series of meetings held by Jared Kushner, son-in-law,” blah, blah. And then you read, “Kushner is the only current White House official known to be considered a key person in the probe.” The Washington Post has not been told that Kushner’s a target or the central focus of the investigation, and he has not been accused of any wrong doing. Well, then there’s not a morsel of evidence. He’s not a key figure in this!
They’re just writing another story that served as the bombshell at 5:30 yesterday. NBC News did the same thing. “Jared Kushner, Trump’s Son-in-Law, Has Come Under FBI Scrutiny in the Russia Investigation.” And then later, “Investigators believe he has significant information. But that does not mean they suspect him of a crime or even intend to charge him.” Well, then what are you trying to do here, Washington Post, NBC? It’s obvious to us what you’re trying to do. Because there isn’t any news here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
But again a reminder, Washington Post: “Jared Kushner Now Focus in Russia Investigation — The Post has not been told that Kushner is a target or the central focus of the investigation, and he’s not been accused of any wrongdoing.” It’s not a criminal investigation anyway, folks. There is no such thing as a focus.
The story is entirely unnecessary, unless it is a part of a continuum that is a focused assassination attempt on Trump and the administration. NBC News does the same thing. “NBC News reporting that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, one of his senior advisers, has come under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation.”
Folks, there is not a morsel of evidence for any allegation. And after practically indicting Kushner here, NBC says, “But that does not mean they suspect him of a crime or even intend to charge him.” No reason to do the story. There’s no probative value, news value. There’s nothing new, nothing that wasn’t true yesterday that is true today or vice-versa. It’s unconscionable. It’s journalistic malpractice.
Backing this up, audio sound bites, last night, CNN, Anderson Cooper 95. He’s talking with the former attorney general, Michael Mukasey, about reports that Kushner has become a focus in the Russia election. Anderson Cooper says in his question, “Jared Kushner is not a suspect here. He is not a person of interest. He is just, we’re told, a focus. They want to speak to him because it seems like he was basically a witness. What do you make of this, Attorney General Mukasey?”
RUSH: Read back what you just said. You used to two terms unknown to any federal prosecutor. Person of interest, yep, might be the title of a TV show and you might see it on CNN every week, but it’s nothing we use, Mr. Cooper. And a focus? That just doesn’t happen. So it’s a very polite slapdown. Essentially, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have a story here. Everybody’s a witness in a national security investigation. Everybody’s trying to influence Washington. That’s what they do. It isn’t illegal nor is it surprising. Up next, Professor Dershowitz. Same show. After Mukasey says that it’s not surprising Kushner’s considered a witness, Dershowitz added —
DERSHOWITZ: Attorney General Mukasey is absolutely right. This is being done backwards. Usually you can point to a statute and say we’re investigating crime under this statute. There’s a great danger to civil liberties when you say let’s investigate and maybe we’ll find something, that we can find a statute to fit. That’s not the way it ought to happen.
RUSH: Dershowitz is even condemning this. And he’s exactly right here. They’ve got nothing. So they’re throwing everything up against the wall and hoping something they find violates the law. And they can’t find anything yet. That’s the story. They’re throwing — you’ve heard the proverbial phrase, “let’s just throw the excrement on the wall and see what sticks.” Well, this has been happening since before the election and intensely after it, since it, and nothing’s sticking. There is nothing to any of this. Dershowitz is right.
The Trump administration is being tried and convicted without a trial. And it’s been intense and steady, let’s just call it since the election, since last November. It actually predates that. But that’s what this really is. There’s nothing news here. There’s no reporting going on. There isn’t a scandal that has happened that they are desperately trying to uncover. There is no cover-up going on.
Nothing has happened regarding that which has been alleged: collusion between the Russians and Trump to affect the outcome of the election. It just hasn’t happened. And it didn’t happen, and they’re not gonna find anything. They don’t care. Their objective is to destroy Trump and his presidency before the 2018 midterms.
Now, Jeffrey Toobin — we have one more bite — Jeffrey Toobin was also on CNN, same show. Jeffrey Toobin had just heard Mukasey basically tell Cooper: You don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s nothing to see here. They just heard Dershowitz say that they’re going about this ass backwards. These people don’t have a violation. They don’t have a crime. They don’t have anything. So they’re just throwing everything up against the wall and hoping one day they’re gonna find a violation of a crime.
Well, Toobin can’t let this stand. Toobin understands that Mukasey is doing well and that the usually dependable Dershowitz has thrown in with the other side, so Toobin has to bravely fight back. Toobin has to get in there, roll up the sleeves and defend the media and its cause, and that’s how this went.
DERSHOWITZ: You have to show evidence. You’re just making that up. You have to show evidence not only that they knew about the hacking, but they worked hand-in-glove with them. You’re just making it up.
RUSH: Dershowitz to Toobin: You’re just making it up. Toobin valiantly fighting back there, trying to defend the honor not only of CNN about the media at large by repeating the baseless claim that the Russians hacked. There isn’t any hack. Don’t tell me Podesta’s emails. That’s a phishing scheme. There isn’t any hack. Toobin says, “It’s a crime, aiding and abetting, hacking, it’s a crime.” Dershowitz: Come on, Jeffrey. This is like a student he’s getting ready to flunk. Come on, Jeffrey, you have to show some evidence. You’re just making it up. Toobin: I’m not making it up, I’m not.
Yes, you are. You have to show evidence. Not only that they knew about the hacking but they worked hand-in-glove with ’em, meaning the Trump people. You’re just making it up. Which is true. They’re making it up knowingly and purposefully for the express purpose of the destruction of Trump and his character, his administration, his career, and anybody working with him, simply because he had the audacity to beat them and is an outsider.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Oh, look at this! Look at this! CNN: “Sources Say Comey Acted on Russian Intel He Knew Was Fake.” Ah, ah, ah, ah. No way. Not true. The original version of this story was two nights ago. The original version of the story was that Comey was tricked by a fake Russian memo or piece of intel that led him to essentially cast Loretta Lynch aside. She had been corrupted by the investigation, so he had to go out and he had to do that July 5th press conference.
Go look it up, folks. Two days ago the story was that Comey was tricked by something the Russians did. Now it’s two days later, and the CNN updated version: “Comey Acted on Russian Intel He Knew Was Fake.” This is a bit different from Comey was tricked. See, when it says that Comey was tricked, that doesn’t make Comey look good, does it? And remember, they’ve got a lot of eggs in the Comey basket. Comey was gonna come testify. Comey’s got the memos. Comey memorialized all the memos of the dinners that he had with Trump.
That means that Comey has all the truth, that Comey has every bit of indictable news about Trump, because that’s why Trump tried to impede the investigation, that’s why Trump tried to get in the way, that’s why Trump tried to talk Comey out of investigating. Comey’s got the memos. Except now the memos may not exist. Jason Chaffetz is wondering where the hell they are. The FBI will not release those memos of Comey’s.
Why not? Congress has legitimate investigations going. Well, the reason why not is that the new special counsel, Robert Mueller, has basically told Congress to go pound sand. That his is the only investigation that matters, and they’ve gotta turn over everything they’ve uncovered to him, and then he will systematically inform them at the right time.
But Comey, who was hated and reviled and then loved and then hated again and then ultimately loved has the memos, and the memos have all the dirt on Trump. The memos are like secret tapes. Comey memorialized everything. Except nobody’s seen the memos. Comey’s not spoken publicly about them. Comey was supposed to go testify.
Now, if news surfaces that the Russians did something that made the FBI make a mistake, which led to Comey doing the July 5th press conference, and that story was out two nights ago — I forget the specific details, but the upshot of it was that — it’s a Washington Post story. It’s two days ago: “How a Dubious Russian Document Influenced the FBI’s Handling of the Clinton Probe.” And it clearly stated that Comey was tricked.
“A secret document that officials say played a key role in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake. … Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over.”
Now, we’re finding out the FBI was not unified behind what Comey was doing in that July 5th press conference and that there was a fake document that he relied on. The original story was that he was tricked by it. So now, with everybody on the left invested so heavily in Comey, they can’t have him look like an idiot. I mean, the guy they’re relying on to nail Trump for, like, the fourth or fifth time here is coming off a news story where it stated he was tricked by the Russians? No, no, no. We can’t have that.
So two days later, today, the story is, “No, no, no. Comey wasn’t tricked. Comey knew it was fake. Nobody gets anything by James Comey. He knew he was fake. He did it anyway.” Now, see, folks, I don’t watch this stuff. This way I can laugh at it, instead of getting ticked off by it. Great example here. I find this hilarious. What they are trying to do. They are twisting themselves into so many different pretzel shapes here. They don’t have any evidence. And Dershowitz is right.
Sally Yates testified, they hope, “Oh, my God, please, let Sally Yates have something, please.” She had nothing. They’re hoping Comey’s gonna have a bombshell or two. He doesn’t. We would know about it if he did. There’s all these damn leaks. If there were transcripts of memos we would already know it ’cause everything else is being leaked, even stuff that’s been made up. So now they got all their eggs in the Comey basket and they can’t have Comey going up there making it look like he was duped by the very people that Trump worked with to steal the election. So they have to change the narrative a bit. “No, no, no, he knew it was a fake batch of stuff from the Russians. You don’t get things past James Comey.”
Now, let’s see. Grab sound bite number nine, CNN. I want to cite this as another example here of the benefits of not watching this stuff live and not being irritated by it and negatively affected by it. This is a montage of people from the Washington Post and CNN talking about the Washington Post revelation that Jared Kushner is a person of interest.
If they had read that, they wouldn’t have had to do an entire segment on Kushner. But they wanted to do a segment on Kushner. They wanted to join the Post and NBC, they wanted to get on the train heading down the tracks of innuendo and character assassination, so they had to talk about it. And that’s what we have here. A montage here of a bunch of mindless twaddle on CNN last night about the supposed investigation of Jared Kushner. Listen to this.
ZAPOTOSKY: This is big news. Now, I should sort of clarify that we’re not saying that he is gonna be charged with a crime. We’re not saying he is the target of the investigation.
BORGER: He may be the focus of it to a degree, but nobody is saying that he’s a target of the investigation.
PEREZ: He’s not a target of this investigation.
BROWN: We should point out and emphasize he is not the target.
GERGEN: He is not a target and we have to keep stressing that. He’s not a target.
COOPER: He’s a focus, not the focus, not a target, not a suspect.
RUSH: Why are you even talking about it at all if he’s not a target, if he’s not a focus, if he’s not a suspect, then what are you doing? See, if I had watched this live, I’d have been so ticked off, I’d gotten mad. I would have started channel surfing, but it would have made me mad. I didn’t see it live. I come in here, I learn about it this way, and I’m laughing about it. And that’s what we have to do, folks. It works for me to start laughing at the utter futility of this. (interruption) No, do not say that. I am not not taking it seriously. I’ve spent 30 years taking it seriously.
I’ve spent 30 years looking at television and having to talk about it the next day is like an oral final exam. Don’t accuse me of backing out of anything. I’m telling you you need a different attitude about this. And I am acquiring a much healthier and humorous attitude about it all by not watching it and learning about it after the fact. Learning about it after the fact, in this case, you learn how just way off the reality reservation these people are. It is funny to watch them flail away here. They’ve got nothing and their talking about having nothing.
“We gotta make sure we don’t say, let’s make it clear that he’s not. Well, we must not make anybody confused here. He is not.” What a big panel that was. What an exciting bunch of television to watch a bunch of people tell everybody after they had just made them breathless with the latest bombshell that there’s no news here! And I want to go back and replay the sound bite of the former attorney general Michael Mukasey which happened on CNN shortly after this little montage that you heard.
RUSH: So, person of interest, no such thing, we don’t call anybody focus, there’s no focus. It was mindless twaddle. These people, I’ll tell you who they were. Matt Zapotosky, Gloria Borger, Evan Perez, Pamela Brown, David “Rodham” Gergen, and Anderson Cooper, and they spent a whole segment just talking to hear their heads rattle.
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