RUSH: It’s 36 pages. It prints out on my printer (12-point font) to 36 pages. In a newspaper, 36 pages, and there’s nothing new in it! It’s incredible! It used to take me 25 minutes to mark this up. I finally, for the first time, used side by side on my laptop to do the markup instead of copy and paste. Well, I copied and pasted it but was side by side looking at… (interruption) No, the Washington Post has this incredible story: Obama’s Brave Struggle to Stop Russia from Tampering with Our Election. Not a thing new in it!
It’s just written to make it look like it’s new. And, I’ll tell you what: Obama people are leaking all over the media in order for this story to be written. Oh, by the way, everybody who saw pictures of Comey going into the New York Times building yesterday? People are panicking at that, and I said, “Why? The New York Times is spearheading the investigation. Why wouldn’t he go in there and testify? Isn’t that where under-oath testimony is taking place? Isn’t that where leakers and stuff go? What was so strange about Comey going to the New York Times yesterday?”
It turns out that he wasn’t going to the New York Times. Apparently, there’s a law firm that is headquartered in the Times building, and there was some charity event going on in there, and Comey showed up to that. I’m gonna get to this Washington Post story because the Drive-Bys… It’s almost been pornography to watch them deal with this today. They think they are dealing with something brand new. They are praising the reporting at the Washington Post as some of the most phenomenal work that has been done ever to try to get to the bottom of the Russians helping Trump and sabotage the Democrats.
But it’s really about Obama’s brave struggle to stop the Russians from doing it, because Obama and Brennan and Clapper and Rice all knew it was happening. By the way, this is a central point. Any of this Russian hacking, whatever you want to believe about it, had to be happening during the Obama administration. Trump was just a candidate. So all of this… I mean, if the Russians succeeded — and I’m not conceding that they did; I’m just saying as a talking point here.
If the Russians succeeded (sigh) in getting into our electoral system and hacking things and this, it must have happened under the Obama administration. This Washington Post story is all about the brave struggle and the decisions the Obama people had to make. Do they go public with it? Do they cloud the minds of the American people? Do they frighten the American people by telling them what they know, or do they just issue threatening warnings to Putin and then roll the dice? It’s a brave struggle Obama undertook here to save the American electoral process.
But this story is like every other story on this. Page 25. May I read it to you? Thirty-six pages it prints out. Page 25: “Despite the dire warnings, there were no meltdowns in the United States’ voting infrastructure on Nov. 8, no evidence of hacking-related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or manipulation of vote counts.” It’s 36 pages about how the Russians stole election, cheated, were doing all these things that Obama bravely trying to stop them.
Page 25: “Despite the dire warnings,” despite the meetings, despite the memos, despite the fears, “there were no meltdowns in the U.S. voting infrastructure. No evidence of hacking related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or manipulation of vote counts.” So you ask: Then why did you people write the story? Of course, we know the answer to this. This is all about the keys to the kingdom. An outsider has found his way inside! You know, Trump’s the kind of guy, even on his best day they would not extend membership to him.
Trump would never be permitted to be a member of the establishment. It would never happen. Yet he stormed the gates, he’s come in, and he has basically turned them upside down. And I’m telling you, folks, they feel that the keys to kingdom are theirs. They are entitled, and nothing is more important than getting them back — including the country. They will do whatever needs to be done in the short term to get the keys to the kingdom. And, at the same time, they’re sending a message to any other would-be Trumps:
Do not try this.
They’re not gonna stop until they’ve extended every effort to destroy Donald Trump, to ruin Donald Trump. They’re not going to stop. There is a silent coup going on. Even David Stockman today in his libertarian rant… David Stockman’s turning into quite the conspiracy theorist, by the way. Did you know that? (interruption) Yeah, he’s a libertarian. You can’t call him a conservative. David Stockman’s piece… I saw it when I was tooling around there at Zero Hedge. That’s a noted conspiracy site, in some people’s opinion. I read Stockman’s piece and pshew! (laughing)
It’s all about the coup and it’s all about Mueller being the ringleader of the deep state, that it was Mueller who was there when this massive Homeland Security intelligence apparatus was established after 9/11. Mueller is the big enchilada of the deep state, and with him in charge of this and all of these Obama and Hillary donors, it’s just a matter of time before they successfully execute their coup. I didn’t print the Stockman thing out, but I did get some excerpts. So if I feel like going back to it, I will.
I want to read you some excerpts of the Washington Post piece because it’s fun and because, folks, it’s almost beyond my ability to describe this. Thirty-six pages! It is written like a novel, like a mystery novel with Obama being delivered a super-secret envelope for his and three other people’s sets of eyes only. Only! And it’s all about the intel! The Russians are plotting great deceit to steal the election for Trump.
From that moment on, the story is about the intricate secrecy and the meetings Obama had with the best and brightest of his administration to figure out what to do. Knowing all along, all last year — this story says that Obama knew what was going on. (laughing) Wait ’til you hear all about brave Obama trying to save American election, wait ’til you hear what Obama did, what this story says Obama did. Well, why should I wait? What did Obama do?
“A month later, Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what he was doing and (he) better stop or else.'” (laughing) Gee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Well, it… This is the second attempt. The first time is when Obama told him, “Cut it out!” This time in China (laughing), Obama said — by the way, “accompanied only by interpreters.” You know, the importance of that is there was nobody else there that could leak this. I mean, this comes directly from Obama.
“Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what [you’re] doing and [you] better stop or else,’ according to a senior aide who subsequently spoke with Obama. Putin responded by demanding proof and accusing the United States of interfering in Russia’s internal affairs.” That’s it! That’s Obama’s brave struggle to get the Russians to stop what we know you’re doing. The next paragraph reads like… (laughing) “Obama’s approach…” Let me read this like an NPR narrator. (impression) “Obama’s approach often seemed reducible to a single imperative: Don’t make things worse.
“As brazen as the Russian attacks on the election seemed, Obama and his top advisers feared that things could get far worse. They were concerned that any pre-election response could provoke an escalation from Putin. Moscow’s meddling to that point was seen as deeply concerning but unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the election. Far more worrisome to the Obama team was the prospect of a cyber-assault on voting systems before and on Election Day. They also worried that any action they took would be perceived as political interference in an already volatile campaign.
“By August, Trump was predicting that the election would be rigged. Obama officials feared providing fuel to such claims, playing into Russia’s efforts to discredit the outcome and potentially contaminating the expected Clinton triumph.” Folks, the buildup to this was that it was the worst thing that ever happened in American espionage. This was the crime of the century what the Russians were doing. Obama knew all about it brave struggle to stop it and decided not to do anything other than to tell Putin to “cut it out” because he was afraid that going public with this before the election would somehow be said to be interfering.
That’s not why they didn’t go public with it!
They didn’t go public with it because they thought Hillary was gonna win in a landslide and they didn’t want to taint that. Thirty-six pages.
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RUSH: You know, Fox News, by the way, has come back and just beaten PMSNBC (this is prime time) for the first time in a while. Now, let me tell you what I think that means. What’s the fundamental difference? I mean PMSNBC is still 100% devoted to the Russians-hacked-the-election narrative, which has as its ultimate objective impeaching or getting rid of Trump, and Fox is not wedded to that. Fox is doing who knows what, but they’re not singularly devoted to that. I think that MSNBC now beginning to leak ratings is an indication that people are getting tired of this, and I think this fatigue on this story has been building.
But it’s all they’ve got. The Washington Post and New York Times I think probably realize that if the Russian collusion story collapses, the obstruction story doesn’t make any sense. If there was never any collusion, if all it is is a pipe dream — and there wasn’t. It’s all a pipe dream. After all this time, they’re recirculating the same claims they’ve made. There’s nothing new here. The only thing new is the presentation.
The presentation is made to look like brand-new sources are coming forward with information nobody’s had. But that’s not the case, particularly when you get to the substance. But if there is no collusion, then why would there have been any obstruction? What would the need be to obstruct an investigation in there was no collusion? That’s why they’re so desperately holding onto this. Now, this Washington Post story — and I’m gonna spend just a few more minutes on this, ’cause it’s huge.
Although, you know, when I got in to work today, it’s all CNN could talk about. I mean, they were wall to wall; they were wedded to it. And now it’s kind of fading. I’m not sure why. I don’t think there’s anything bigger. There’s nothing bigger news-wise that has popped up since. But I still want to spend a few more minutes on it because the presentation is just choice, the way the Washington Post… Thirty-six pages! Nobody’s gonna read this whole thing, other than the, you know, Upper West Siders in Manhattan. But this story tries to paint Barack Obama as one of the bravest and most courageous and at-risk presidents ever.
Here is this giant behemoth trying to interfere in the democracy. The leader of the democracy of the world, the United States, sees an outright threat to our great democracy. And Obama knows it, he knows it, and he’s got to be very careful about telling people, because he doesn’t want to appear to be tampering. The real reason is he didn’t want Hillary’s election to be tainted like they’re trying to taint Trump’s. Barack Obama did not stop Russia from hacking anything. Barack Obama didn’t stop the Chinese from hacking anything.
Don’t forget, the ChiComs hacked the Office of Personnel Management. Twenty-two million employees’ personal identification details were hacked by the ChiComs during the Obama administration. Obama did not… This story in the Washington Post says Obama never told the American people. Obama told the American people the exact opposite. He told ’em, “Ah, we told Putin to cut it out. It ain’t gonna happen! There’s nothing they can do. Our elections are tamper-proof. They can’t tamper with the votes.” Obama did everything to tamp this down.
Again, look, I don’t think the truth… I don’t think Obama and Brennan and these guys were worried at all about the Russians hacking the election! And the evidence for that is the way they were behaving during the campaign. They weren’t worried about it at all. All of this concern and fear has been drummed up since Trump won. But these guys know full well what the Russians can or can’t do, and they know full well what we can prevent if we know it’s being tried. And it wasn’t the first time the Russians did this.
All of this is just a gigantic, made-up 50% piece-of-fiction creation to try to keep people interested, but I think it’s starting to fade. Obama did not stop Russia. He did not tell anybody. He didn’t tell the American people what was going on because he had things to hide. Hillary had things to hide. Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz had things to hide about what she was doing at the Democratic National Committee.
If Mueller wants to do this country a favor, what he would do is investigate the Democrats on this. He would investigate whatever happened to their servers. He would investigate Obama. Of course, it’s not gonna happen. But that’s where we’d get to the bottom of what really happened here is if the Democrats came under the microscope, because this affected everything Obama did and he will never be honest about it because he can’t.
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RUSH: I’m not through with this Washington Post story, folks. I just it’s 36 pages and I’m not gonna remain totally devoted to this thing at the expense of all else. But there are excerpts from it you have to hear just for the hilarity of it.
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RUSH: I want to get this Washington Post story ’cause there’s a couple things beyond this I want to do as well. I don’t have the title of it handy, but it’s about Obama’s brave struggle to stop Putin from tampering with our election. That’s the theory, the headline, the premise of the story is how brave Obama was and the terrible conflicts he had in detailing what he knew to the American people. It turns out, according to the story, Obama knew everything Russians were doing and was terribly conflicted.
It was a terrific struggle as to whether or not to go public with it, because going public with it before the election could be seen (this is administration people talking) as trying to affect or interfere the election. Now, to that point they’re being honest. The Russian tampering is BS. It’s bogus! There’s no evidence of it, and this story says so on page 25. The reason they didn’t say anything about it, the reason they didn’t bring this up as a cause, the reason they didn’t use this before the election — and it’s fundamentally important. You cannot ever forget this.
They all thought Hillary was gonna win and win in a landslide. So even if there had been evidence of Russian tampering, they didn’t think it was gonna matter. They didn’t think it was gonna have any impact because she was gonna win and it was gonna be big. So, of course, they wouldn’t mention anything about it because that would taint her win. So they… (sigh) This is such a hoax, and now after the fact they’re putting this story together: All these people that got together with secret memos, learning secret things the Russians were doing and agonizing over what to do about it.
CNN goes out and find this nameless Obama official who thinks they choked. Obama’s Secret Struggle to Punish Russia for Putin’s Election Assault — Early last August…” This is how the story begins: “Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried ‘eyes only’ instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. The White House debated various options…”
This is not continuous. I’m reading to you the things that I’ve marked up and excerpted here. “The White House debated various options to punish Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, [the White House] ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for its election interference.” Right here, this story, 36 pages, is about the extent to which the Russians went to cheat, and the agony of the Obama in dealing with it and whether or not to go public with it. It’s portrayed here as one of the greatest political crimes in human history — and I’m not exaggerating.
It is one of the worst political crimes, and yet: “The White House debated various options to punish Russia, but facing obstacles and potential risks, it ultimately failed to exact a heavy toll on the Kremlin for its election interference.” Well, then they must not have really thought it was that big a deal if they couldn’t do anything about it. “Inside [that envelope] was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.”
This is August, we’re now learning. “But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.” Do you realize how asinine this is that after the fact, the Washington Post is saying that Obama got a super-secret memo and the memo contained details about how Putin was personally ordering his agents to defeat Hillary or at least damage her? They are that hard up for anything of substance.
They now claim to have a memo that details all of this from Putin. They’re leaving nothing to chance now. This is fake news extraordinaire. We will never see this memo. It’s too top secret. Only four people have, and only one of them is allowed to speak about it: Barack Hussein O. They’ve leaked elements of it to the Washington Post. “Over that five-month interval, the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure,” which we do every day, “the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could ‘crater’ the Russian economy.”
“But in the end, in late December, Obama approved a modest package combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues,” and this is the famous “expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds.” You talk about…? I mean, foreplay! Hours and hours, days of foreplay, and here we come! It’s the big orgasmic payoff… and it’s nothing. “[I]n late December, Obama approved a modest package…” The story portrays this stuff as the biggest political crime in human history and that Obama eventually did nothing.
He did nothing.
It’s a brave struggle, but he did nothing.
“In political terms,” here we go, “Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy.” That’s just flat-out fake. That’s just flat-out full of excrement, folks. “Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy.” That’s page 2. Let me read to you from page 25. “Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy.”
Page 25: “Despite the dire warnings, there were no meltdowns in the United States’ voting infrastructure on Nov. 8, no evidence of hacking-related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or manipulation of vote counts.” Well, now, how do you go from “an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy” to “[T]here were no meltdowns in the United States’ voting infrastructure on Nov. 8, no evidence of hacking-related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or manipulation of vote counts”?
How do you…? How do you get from one place to the other? You can’t! But by the time people reach page 25 here and come across it, they’re not gonna remember what they read on page 3, which is why I marked it up this way. “It was a case that took almost no time to solve, traced to the Kremlin through cyber-forensics and intelligence on Putin’s involvement. And yet, because of the divergent ways Obama and Trump have handled the matter, Moscow appears unlikely to face proportionate consequences.” Well, how does that happen?
How in the name of Sam Hill does Russia commit “the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy,” that had no impact whatsoever on the vote, and all Obama did was send 35 diplomats home? How in the world do you then say, “Moscow appears unlikely to face proportionate consequences”? Why, if they did all this but then it didn’t work? Now, the AP and CNN, they’re just raving about this story. They’re raving about the journalism. They’re raving about the reporting.
They’re raving about the brilliance. This is convoluted. It’s disjointed. It’s not connected in any way. “Those closest to Obama defend his administration’s response to Russian’s meddling…” Whoa, whoa! “Meddling”? I thought it was “an unprecedented and largely successfully destabilizing attack on our democracy”? But now, in the next paragraph, it’s “meddling”? “Those closest to Obama defend the administration’s response to Russia’s meddling.
They note that by August it was too late [sobbing] to prevent the transfer to WikiLeaks and other groups of the troves of emails that would spill out in the ensuing months. They believe that a series of warnings — including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September — prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression…” I have to take a break, but I cannot let this go. “They believe that a series of warnings…” This is in August, before the election November. They thought that “a series of warnings,” including one from Obama to Putin, had made Moscow stop.
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RUSH: Okay. So here you go: “They note that by August it was too late [sobbing] to prevent the transfer to WikiLeaks and other groups of the troves of emails that would spill out in the ensuing months.” So whatever Russians had hacked, which this was not a Russian hack. This is Podesta’s goof-up with his phishing. The Obama people “believe that a series of warnings — including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September — prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression, such as sabotage of U.S. voting systems.”
Okay, so what did Obama do? What Obama do that scared the Russians into stopping? Well, later in this — like many, many pages you have to read to get to what Obama did. “A month later, Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what [you’re] doing and [you] better stop or else.'” Before that, Obama had told Putin to “cut it out.” This warning was: “[You] better stop or else,” and they believed that Putin was practically wetting his pants in fear over that.
After Obama told Putin “[W]e knew what [you’re] doing and [you] better stop or else,” the Obama administration felt confident that Russia’s attempts to sabotage the election would go no further. But of course they did. Russia’s efforts continued, and how does Obama know? (chuckles) Hillary lost. This piece — contrary to its purported purpose, to portray Obama as a brave president struggling with how to punish, how to stop Russia, this story — portrays Obama as a spineless, linguini wimp who was unable to do what was necessary to stop the Russians from cheating for Trump. If you read this, that’s what you would come away with, if you could forget the headline that you saw.
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RUSH: This Washington Post story, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s nothing more than a really, really serious attempt to salvage Obama’s legacy, because what can’t be denied is that all of this Russian meddling that… You see how easy it is to fall into this trap. The Russians are constantly hacking, probing, meddling. Everybody is! The Chinese, the Japanese, the Israelis, everybody is every day. But the inescapable conclusion is that all of this so-called Russian tampering and hackery occurred during the Obama administration while they knew about it!
Stop and think of that.
How in the world is Trump being blamed for this?
All of this happened under the nose of Obama, who knew it! That’s what this story concludes. The Obama administration — Brennan, Clapper, McDonough, the chief of staff — they all knew it. Again, this is mythical. This is made up, fake news, but the story is they knew and struggled with how to stop it, and they thought when Obama told Putin, “We know what you’re doing. Stop or else,” they thought that would scare Putin into stopping, but he didn’t stop. He kept going. And Hillary lost.
How in the world is any of this Trump’s problem? These people have created a narrative. They have manufactured a novel, which is what this has turned out to be. The Russians stole the election, attacked our election. Except on page 25 it failed. But they did it and they did it and they stole the election and Hillary lost all while Obama and everybody of note in his Regime knew, and Obama didn’t intercede publicly. He didn’t tell the American voter this was happening. You know why?
Because Obama didn’t want to be accused of collusion. He didn’t want to be accused of interfering in an election. He so, so, so appreciates the sacred sanctity of our elections that Obama wouldn’t even warn the American people the Russians were trying to steal our election for fear of interfering in it. It was a gamble, and that’s why you’ve got Obama people on CNN today saying, “Yeah, we choked.” It’s made up! This is the most mind-boggling thing to have to mention each and every day.