RUSH: We will start with Bob in Omaha. Bob, glad you waited. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I was wondering if the Democrats are willing to push Franken and even Conyers out so that they, in their minds, think they can regain the high ground and come back at Trump because of the accusations that were made against him during the campaign.

RUSH: Well, yeah, I think there’s no question whether they’re trying to force Franken and Conyers out for that reason. Whether they’re going along with it or not, they’re gonna do that. I mean, since Franken and Conyers are resigning, yeah. In fact, I will predict to you that it won’t be long before we see a storyline in the Drive-By Media. I’m gonna shorten it for you, but the essence of the storyline, “DNC: Franken has to go. RNC: We love Roy Moore.” That’s gonna be the story.

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think they care at all about what went on. I think it’s just all calculation. I thought I’d get your thoughts. So, thanks, appreciate that.

RUSH: They’re not gonna get Trump with this.

CALLER: No. I don’t think so.

RUSH: If that’s what they’re thinking. I don’t deny that that’s their strategy, but they’re not gonna succeed with that. If that’s why they’re throwing these guys overboard — I don’t think that’s why they’re doing it. It may be a factor, but there’s no way with the positions they have taken on all of these issues from abortion to women’s rights to feminism, they can’t defend these people. It doesn’t matter whether they’re enabling themselves to get Trump or not. They can’t. This would finally expose them to charges of hypocrisy that would stick.

I mean, they’ve already got a problem. Look at what these journalists are doing now, saying, “Twenty years ago we really made a mistake. We should have demanded Bill Clinton resign.” Now, that, I think, that was for the media to be able to clear its decks of any hypocrisy and go after Trump on this basis, because, you know, hindsight, 20 years later, what harm can they possibly be doing? They saved Clinton and that’s all that matters.

You know, Gloria Steinem’s even got a piece now say, “You know what? I would have done it differently back then, but I was protecting the policies.” She’s actually written a piece here. But this stuff is out of control. Weinstein and 95, 99% of these perpetrators are liberal Democrats. And there’s no way they can defend them all. They simply can’t. They have a bigger problem with this than I think they know. I think they think they’re sweeping it under the rug, and I think they are taking solace in the fact that this is gonna enable them to go after Trump.

But, folks, when have they not gone after Trump for something? They go after Trump for something every day. This isn’t gonna change that calculus. The calculus change — I’ll tell you what’s happening is happening to them. The New York Times yesterday had the most incredible story. It was almost 9,000 words, and I think it was purposely written for — well, they had to publish it because it’s a story that’s unavoidable. But I think they gussied it up with a lot of words and a lot of confusion so that the average New York Times reader would be nothing but confused if he or she managed to read all the way through it.

But the point of the story was that Bill and Hillary Clinton were Harvey Weinstein’s celebrity shields. And what the story means, what the story indicates is that Bill and Hillary Clinton knew what Harvey Weinstein was. They were told by Lena Dunham that he was a rapist, and that he abused women. She warned them — and this was Hillary’s campaign, she warned them, I don’t care what you think of Lena Dunham, but on this she’s a loyalist to the Clintons and she was begging Hillary to cut Harvey Weinstein loose.

She was telling Hillary that this guy’s a rapist, that it’s gonna start coming out that women for 20 years have been mistreated and abused by this guy. The Clintons knew and they didn’t care and they didn’t get rid of Weinstein. They continued to use Weinstein. They used him as a fundraiser. They used him as the guy to host parties for fundraisers. They used him as a donor. They used him as a bundler knowing full well. This is their vulnerability. This isn’t Trump’s.

Two prominent women in media told the New York Times that they personally warned Hillary’s campaign staff and Hillary herself in 2008 and 2016 that Harvey Weinstein was a known sexual assaulter and that it was highly unwise to be so closely connected with him.

Lena Dunham, quote, “I just want to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.” The source here is Kristina Schake, Clinton campaign deputy communications director 2016. “I think it’s a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it’s an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.”

But Hillary didn’t care. They knew. This is the point, just like with Matt Lauer. These people are all claiming they didn’t know. They’re so shocked at Weinstein. The Clintons knew. For crying out loud, Bill Clinton’s on the airplane with the guy with Jeffrey Epstein, the Lolita Express I think they called the damn airplane. For crying out loud, this is screaming out. They knew everything going on. It didn’t matter.

People ask, “What would be the difference if Hillary won?” Harvey Weinstein would be sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom is what would be happening right now, and nobody would know. Those stories would not have run if Hillary had been elected.

Now, Lena Dunham never said anything publicly about any of this. Do you find that interesting? Instead, what was Lena Dunham doing? She’s out there campaigning for Hillary as hard as she could. She skipped the Golden Globes to campaign for Hillary Clinton, January 10, 2016.

Dunham says the Clinton staffer appeared to be shocked when told of Weinstein’s proclivities. She said she would immediately report it to the Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook. Mook told the New York Times he was never warned about Weinstein. So he’s throwing one of his own employees under the bus. So you got a couple liars here, you don’t know who to believe.

Dunham also says that she told Adrienne Elrod, a spokeswoman for Hillary, about Weinstein. Lena Dunham told the New York Times the Clinton campaign never did anything about her complaints or her warnings and Weinstein helped organize star-studded fundraisers for Hillary weeks after she warned the campaign about Weinstein.

Along with Dunham’s warnings, Tina Brown says that she told a member of Clinton’s team in 2008 to look out for Weinstein and to distance the campaign from him. “I was hearing that Harvey’s sleaziness with women had escalated since I left Talk in –”

See, she did a magazine that he paid for in 2002. It was called Talk magazine. It bombed out. And people have asked Tina Brown, ’cause she’s the doyenne, she’s the Sally Quinn of New York, social architect of dinners parties, cocktail parties, all that pizzazz. And they asked her, “How the hell could you have gone into business with that scuz bucket?”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I wasn’t Harvey’s type.” You weren’t Harvey’s type? So you knew enough to know what kind of type he had and that you weren’t it. As long as they can get Harvey’s money, they were fine with it. And Harvey used them. Harvey Weinstein was a shield for them and they were a shield for him.

They gave Harvey stature. Harvey Weinstein and the Clintons were inseparably close. I have told you, I have reminded you, at the official unveiling of the Bill and Hillary Clinton portraits in the White House, it was a ceremony presided over by George W. Bush, by the way. That’s when the portraits were unveiled when Bush was president and Harvey Weinstein’s there in the front row.

And it’s not a big crowd. It’s intimate friends and family of the Clintons. There’s Harvey Weinstein sitting there and he’s got this look on his face like, “What am I doing here? But I’m gonna act like I belong.” They were inseparable. So Weinstein gave them cover in Hollywood and (as far as they’re concerned) stature, but the Clintons did the same thing for Harvey. They gave him stature. They shielded him.

So, you know, all this talk about are these Democrats quitting to pave the way for Democrats to go after Trump? Look, the Democrats are gonna do that regardless of whether Franken, Conyers and these people quit. But I do think that they’re gonna try to set up a storyline in the Drive-By Media where the Democrats are now gonna try to paint themselves as ethically pure by demanding that members in their own party quit and get out of there, and contrast this with the Republicans who seem to be welcoming Roy Moore to the United States Senate.

I know they’re gonna do that. But whether they do any damage to Trump on this stuff? I’m not yet convinced that this stuff is damaging Trump. Not at all. Some people may disagree with me. If you’re a Trumpster out there and you’re looking at the constant, everyday hit — and you can’t deny that it’s a hit on the image. In terms slowing Trump down, Trump himself? I mean, he’s still getting four hours of sleep a night. He’s getting up; he’s moving his agenda. He’s doing what he can do. He’s not slowing down, giving, tapering off, any of that.

Whatever they’re doing is not affecting him and it’s not affecting his approval numbers with his base. So I think these clowns have much more explaining to do than Trump ever will on any of this stuff. ‘Cause I guarantee… You know what’s happening here, folks? There’s another way to look at this, and it’s perhaps a bull’s-eye way of looking at it. It’s kind of funny. Somebody in the swamp, somebody in the establishment, the Democrat Party, starts this crap in Alabama.

Well, they actually started this stuff with Trump and the Access Hollywood video but it intensifies in Alabama with Roy Moore. Out of the blue, we got two 40-year-old allegations. That was to get Trump. There’s no question it’s to get Trump, and it’s to keep Trump from having a Republican and their number in the Senate. So we have 40-year-old allegations against Moore, and the Democrats are ridin’ high, and Bill Clinton’s still ridin’ dirty according to Reverend Wright. They’re out there and having the grandest old time, ’cause they think with Roy Moore they’re gonna nail Trump, and they’re gonna finally come up with something that’s gonna stick to Trump.

In addition to that, they were making sure that no avowed Christian conservative ever got into their club. They hate Ted Cruz. They despise Cruz. They despise Mike Pence. They’re not gonna have another avowed Christian in there. “No siree! Not Roy Moore.” Okay, fine. That’s all politics. But now look. The Democrats are the ones dropping like flies: Franken, Conyers, Weinstein, all these Hollywood people — many more than we can name here. These people, it’s like they fired a gun but forgot and aimed the nozzle right back at themselves.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah. Actually, I don’t think… Lena Dunham, if you’re out there, or if there are any of Lena Dunham’s friends listening, I want to be helpful here. I don’t think Hillary Clinton needed to be told that Harvey Weinstein was a sexual pervert. She knew that Harvey ran with her husband. That’s all she would have had to know. She didn’t need to be told. You think she needed to be told? You think when the word was passed on, “By the way, Lena Dunham says, be wary of Harvey ’cause this guy is a rapist, sexual abuser,” Hillary was surprised? She didn’t stop using him, did she? She probably said, “Tell me something I don’t know.” She probably might have even have said to the aide, “Yeah, you know. My husband runs with the guy.”