RUSH: Oh, my. This is too good! “Email Reveals Effort to Give Trump Campaign WikiLeaks Documents.” It’s a “CNN exclusive.” CNN thinks they’re really on to something here. You know, Donald Trump Jr. wants to claim privilege, not have to tell investigators what he talked to his dad about after he met with the honeypot from Russia, that phony meeting. “CNN Exclusive: Email Reveals Effort to Give Trump Campaign WikiLeaks Documents.” So what? There’s no crime in the campaign at all!
The dossier is then used as the basis for this entire caca collusion investigation. For which there remains zilch, zero, nada, evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from poor Mrs. Pantsuit. Now somebody’s found an email that says there was “an effort to give Trump campaign WikiLeaks documents.” So what! These are the documents that WikiLeaks published! Even if the story is the Trump campaign wanted them, so what? “But Mr. Limbaugh! Mr. Limbaugh! They’re illegal. They came from a hack.”
Don’t talk to me about illegal. It’s the Trump dossier that was illegal. It’s the Trump dossier that’s phony. It’s the Trump dossier that’s tainted. It’s the Trump dossier that’s opposition research. The WikiLeaks documents have never been denied by John Podesta or the Democrat National Committee or the Clinton campaign. We still don’t know who hacked. This is being laid off on Russia, and I suspect that’s gonna be the connection here that CNN’s trying to draw. The story is that Russia hacked the DNC network and computers and then Podesta’s emails, which are a large part of the WikiLeaks files that ended up there during the campaign.
Those were not hacked. Those were the result… Well, it wasn’t a hack as you think of it. Podesta fell for a phishing scheme and he ended up opening up his computer to bad actors, as you will, and so the emails that he had sent and was sending and receiving ended up all over WikiLeaks. It was fascinating to me that not one email from Mrs. Clinton to or from was ever displayed on WikiLeaks. But that’s another side issue. So now what CNN is trying to say, I will bet you, is that the Trump campaign went to whoever hacked the DNC and asked for the documents, the WikiLeaks documents.
And with this, they’re gonna try to prove collusion that Trump was working with the Russians. It is becoming preposterous now how they will not let go of this. “Email Shows Effort to Give Trump Camp WikiLeaks Docs.” So they’re trying to create a brand-new scandal out of this. But the wording implies that the Trump camp was sitting there minding its own business and somebody approached them and to wanted give them these WikiLeaks documents. Not saying the Trump campaign accepted them. They’re just trying to prove that there’s the connection with Russia and agents and collusion.
And again, folks, the collusion that we know happened was between the Hillary campaign and Russia and the FBI and Russia, not the Trump campaign. Let me jump forward into a story that I had slated this for later after the tax cut news, but I’m gonna go ahead and get into this. Because we had what I think was a bombshell yesterday, and it didn’t get much play, but it’s starting to now. Byron York at the Washington Examiner has picked this up. “Dossier Author Was in Contact with Obama Justice Department.”
Alexander Butterfield was testifying one day during the Watergate hearings, and out of the blue, Alexander Butterfield revealed that there was a taping system in the White House, and it brought everything on the Watergate committee to a screeching halt. “You mean everything we’re lookin’ for” said [Senator] Sam Ervin, “is on tapes?” Butterfield said, “I believe so, sir.” It was a stunning bit of news, and right there you thought, “Whoa, this changes everything” when it was learned.
I say we have a similar moment. When it was learned that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democrat National Committee paid Fusion GPS to write that phony “golden showers” Trump dossier, that put a whole new light on things for me. Actually, I didn’t even need a new light on things because, folks — and you regular listeners know it — I’ve thought this collusion attack and allegation has been bogus from the get-go because I remember everything everybody was saying about Russian collusion all during the year 2016. I remember Obama pooh-poohing it.
I remember Obama saying it would be impossible for the Russians to hack our elections, federal elections. It’s not possible. I remember the book that was written about the Clinton campaign. Twenty-four hours after the election, the book says, the Clinton campaign decided to launch as a political operation the idea that she lost because Trump colluded with the Russians. I’ve known this was manufactured and bogus from the get-go. If Trump were actually colluding with the Russians for all of that time, it would have been found out and he would have been toast.
My only point is, I never believed it. Just like I was able to tell you when we found out that Brian Ross was the guy behind this story that Trump, as a candidate, had instructed somebody to call the Russians and they had to correct it? I told you before ABC corrected it to ignore this story, that it’s Brian Ross, and there’s nothing to it. And the following Monday you were calling, “How do you know? How did you know?” The same way I know and knew this Russia collusion story has never been reality. Not about Trump and Russia.
He served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016, Ohr’s office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump’s initial travel ban executive order and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department. Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, [Bruce] Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier.”
This puts a connection between the author of the dossier and the Obama DOJ!
This equals collusion.
Now, we don’t know what was said. We have to be up front and candid about this. We don’t yet know what was said. But what in the world is the number three in command, essentially, at the Department of Justice doing talking to the former MI6 agent who has been paid to write this phony Trump dossier by the Clinton campaign, after the election? After the election. “Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier.”
So instead of Trump fingerprints all over this, it’s Obama fingerprints! It’s Obama’s DOJ, it’s Obama’s FBI — after the election — working with the people who put together this dossier. Remember, it wasn’t until sometime after the election the dossier became the basis of the investigation of Trump collusion, at the CIA with Clapper as the Director National Intelligence, Comey. And remember, McCain’s fingerprints are on this.
“Shortly after learning it, they demoted Ohr,” he’s still there at the DOJ, “taking away his associate deputy attorney general title and moving him full time to another position running the department’s organized crime drug enforcement task forces.” Why is he still there? “The news also stunned some of those who had been investigating the matter. Yes, they knew that knowledge of the dossier extended to some officials in the FBI. That was bad enough; how could the FBI endorse and consider underwriting one campaign’s dirt-digging operation in the middle of a hotly contested election?”
Which is what happened here. This dossier was a phony-baloney, created document that had no basis in fact that was passed off as serious intelligence. It was accepted by all of these parties as serious intelligence. I’m here to tell you… I’ll go out on a limb. I think every one of these people from Brennan at the CIA to Clapper to everybody else in this loop, knew this dossier was bogus and phony and not one word of truth was in it from the get-go. And they didn’t care. They thought they had the ability to make and portray this as legitimate, serious intelligence.
They’d already set the table for Trump-Russia collusion. It was a story that had been out there for months. They controlled the media. They controlled the deep state. In their minds, I’m sure they thought they’d have no problem selling this. And now as time has dragged on and the dossier has failed… It was Comey that got fired, not Trump. It was Hillary that lost the election, not Trump. Everything they’ve done designed to get Trump has actually taken out some of these guys, and now we’re learning that there was contact between the Obama Department of Justice and the Obama FBI and the people who wrote and paid for the dossier.
CNN’s making a fool of itself, but their audience is gonna lap it up. You know, all 200,000 that watch ’em are gonna lap this up. The other thing, I saw right before the hour began. You know, George Papadopoulos, the other guy that’s been pursued here, that Mueller was chasing, and… (interruption) Well, not Flynn. I want to lump him with Manafort, but it’s not Manafort, either. He was a low-level campaign player, and they’ve indicted him or done something. Anyway, his fiancée. CNN just had a tape, an interview with his fiancee dropping the dime on the guy!
She can barely speak English. I guess she’s Latvian, Estonian, or Russian. And the CNN infobabe doing the interview asks, “So, in your opinion, your fiancee was not the low-level campaign player the campaign says he was?” (impression) “Oh, no, he was not… He was not, no. No way low. No, not low. Unh-uh. Totem pole? No.” “How do you know?” “Because my fiance told him he was not low on totem pole.” “Oh, jeez. Okay.” CNN has tried to pull out all the stops. They haven’t stopped; they’re gonna keep on. It now becoming hilarious.
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He went public with it, and he didn’t share it with the Democrats on the committee, so they said that he’s tainted. So there’s been an investigation. Devin Nunes was entirely exonerated. He’s not guilty of anything. So now he’s back, and he says that he’s going to be issuing subpoena today for Bruce Ohr. Bruce Ohr is the guy we told you about yesterday, the right hand of Sally Yates during the Obama administration, who was chatting up Christopher Steele about the Trump dossier prior to the election.
Ohr met with Chris Steele, who wrote the Trump dossier, before the election. He might have assisted in funding the dirty dossier, or met with Chris Steele prior to the election to fund the dirty dossier. How the deep state operates is being uncovered here hit by hit, how the administrative state operates. This is a bombshell. Meanwhile, we have an audio sound bite. I’m sorry. The fiancee of Papadopoulos is not Estonian, Latvian, or Russian. She’s Italian.
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RUSH: This is Papadopoulos’ fiancee on Good Morning America today with Stephanopoulos. And the question is: “From what you know, will the president be happy with the story your fiance, George Papadopoulos, tells in this investigation?”
FIANCEE: (heavily accented) I… Sssss! I don… I mean, I think, uh, he try to dismiss George as a coffee boy. So I’m sure not to be happy to read that. There are consistent evidences that he was not a coffee boy.
STEPHANOPOULOS: From what you know about his story, what do you think the title of that — that story is?
FIANCEE: Don’t want to spoil this, uhhh, premiere. (nervous laugh) But I think he has been sort of the first domino in the Russiangate. (laughs)
RUSH: (impression) “First domino in the Russiangate.” When she was on CNN just now, she said she knows that he wasn’t the coffee boy or “a low totem pole player” because he told her that he wasn’t. Now, grab sound bite number 1. CNN is breathless again. They think — and they’re like a parody. They don’t even understand. They think they’ve got Trump. Now they think they’ve got him again this WikiLeaks business that the Trump campaign was “offered” WikiLeaks documents. Here’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon setting this all up…
RUSH: So what if he did? So what if he did? They weren’t false! You guys are the ones trafficking in phony, made-up opposition research and treating it as though it was legitimate intel. I wish I weren’t, but I’m out of time.
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RUSH: David Gregory followed Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “This proves collusion! This proves collusion! The Russians or somebody offered the Trump campaign the WikiLeaks documents!” Collusion? I’m enjoying watching these people dig their own graves, especially they don’t know what’s happening. They think they are triumphing here.
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RUSH: Okay, David Gregory. This sound bite kind of sums up the hopes and dreams and the thinking of the Drive-By Media and the Democrats, ’cause I’m telling you — do not doubt me on this — these people… I don’t care if it’s CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC. When they wake up every day, all of these people — producers, assignment editors, reporters on-camera talent, scriptwriters. They all wake up every day — and this is what gets ’em out of bed — with the hope, with the belief that that day is going to be the day that the evidence linking Trump to Putin to steal the election is going to surface.
That is what has gotten them out of bed every day since about a week after the election. It intensifies every day. They are so lost in their own lie — a lie they’ve created, a scenario that we have created. They’re now immersed in it. The lie has become a reality, and each and every day they wake up — every one of them individually competing against everybody else and at the same time organized as a fraternity — saying they’re gonna get it. Somebody’s gonna get it, hopefully them. Somebody’s gonna get the smoking-gun evidence:
An email from Vladimir Putin after the election to Trump saying, “Attaboy. I knew working together we could make it happen.” They think it exists. So when news hits that the WikiLeaks documents — which were the result of a hack — were offered to the Trump campaign, it’s near-orgasm time. Most recently at CNN. Wolf Blitzer just was breathlessly promoting it. Here’s the news analyst, former host of Meet the Depressed over at NBC, David Gregory at CNN speaking with Blitzer analyzing this, saying that this proves collusion.
RUSH: It does not! There isn’t a nexus. That’s the whole point here. There wasn’t any collusion. Not like these people mean. And this is the flimsy evidence to support it? I’m gonna parse and I’m gonna go through it, but I’m going to ask a question. Okay, so supposedly the Trump campaign, somebody there was offered information from the WikiLeaks or information of the WikiLeaks hack. We don’t know if they took it. We don’t know if somebody accepted the offer of information. How can a perhaps totally random email…?
How do we know that the Russians weren’t shopping this to everybody? But that’s not even the way to do this. Gregory says, “This really gets to the point — if it’s accurate…” So, once again they’re reporting something they don’t know and can’t confirm. “[I]f it’s accurate, if it’s really borne out, if that connection is borne out — because we asked the question, ‘Why is it that this administration was so willing, as a campaign, to cozy up to Putin specifically and Russia generally?'” Were they? No, seriously.
Maybe I’ve missed something and maybe I’ve forgotten something and maybe I saw something that didn’t register. But I’m serious. Is there a documented series of events or occurrences that show the Trump campaign “cozying up” to Russia? Is there? Gregory is asking the question: “Why is it that this administration was so willing, as a campaign, to cozy up to Putin specifically…?” When did that happen? Did I miss something here? (interruption) Snerdley is yelling in my IFB that it didn’t happen, and I don’t… (interruption)
Well, I’m getting to that. I’m getting to that. That’s a joke, and they still don’t get that that’s a joke. They’ll never get it. These people do not have a sense of humor. It’s amazing that comedians on the left have television shows, ’cause they are not funny. They really do not have a sense of humor. I’m not just using the cliched phrase. They do not recognize humor. They’re so lost in political correctness and so waiting to be offended that they do not recognize humor.
Even though they’ve reported it, I don’t think they remember it, I don’t think it registers. If I’m wrong and if it does then they’re willfully, purposely ignoring it. The collusion… I’m sorry, folks. I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me say this, but it needs to be repeated and shouted into these people’s eardrums. The collusion with Russia occurred in the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat and the Obama Department of Justice. It was the Hillary campaign that bought — commissioned as a piece of art — the Trump dossier as a campaign opposition research document that everybody passed off as legitimate, serious intelligence.
How do you even…? How do you even cast aspersions and suspicion on Trump when you have no doubt of the collusion between Hillary and her campaign and Christopher Steele, the guy that wrote the dossier, the Fusion GPS company, the middlemen that paid for it and that law firm that ran the money and the Russian government, the agents helping Steele write that dossier? How do you ignore that in reporting this basically meaningless story about an email offering the Trump campaign WikiLeaks documents? The WikiLeaks documents didn’t need to get to Trump in order to be publicized. They ended up at WikiLeaks!
And nobody denied a single contention in them. And nobody denied, no Democrat ever said that what was in the Podesta emails was not true. They never denied any of it. So while they ignore legitimate collusion, legitimate payments, while they ignore the latest news that the right hand aide of Sally Yates at the Obama Department of Justice was talking to the author of the Trump dossier after the election. I mean, there’s no doubt they were talking about it. We don’t know what they were talking about, but clearly they had to be talking about its use, its implementation, elements of it, you know, how to use it.
Everybody knew it was bogus. I mean, knew it was made up. It was oppo research they passed off as intel. So they ignore all of that while they have near orgasm over this, which is nothing. And then he says, “This provides the potential to get some answers.” Meaning: “We’re on the cusp here, Wolf! We’re on the cusp of nailing Trump colluding with Putin! We’re on it! We’re on the cusp. It’s only moments away from now, Wolf!” That “maybe there was something of value in this case, dirt on Hillary provided in the form of hacked emails.”
So Trump says, “I love WikiLeaks.” He’s sticking you. He’s simply toying with you. He’s got the laser point and you’re the cat and he’s running you into walls and the furniture and you can’t stop chasing it even though you’ll never catch it. And then Gregory said, “He was encouraging Russia to hack, to find missing e-mails from the server!” Did you come how dull it must be to be at a party with these people? So just to refresh your memory on this, Hillary Clinton had 60,000 emails on her server. Everybody learns of it. The server is illegal.
She has classified documents going back and forth, everybody’s concerned. So Hillary says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll go through them and I’ll give you what’s relevant.” Okay, fine. Which, not okay. The perp doesn’t get to examine the evidence and throw out what the perp wants to throw out. But Hillary was allowed to, and so of the 60,000 emails on her server she turned over 30,000 and said she deleted the other 30,000. But this led to computer hackers saying, “No, no, no, no. She didn’t delete them. I have them.”
One hacker named Kim Dotcom said, “I have them.” Other people said, “No, no, no! I have them.” Another hacker said, “I know where they are and I can get ’em.” Hillary kept saying, “I don’t know where they are.” The Democrat Party said, “I don’t know where they are.” So in the midst of all of this, Trump is doing a press conference and they’re asking him questions about it, and he said, “Hey, Russia! Hey, Russia! Maybe you can find the missing emails! And if you do, turn ’em over to the American media. They might be interested.” Ha-ha.
This was another poke in the eye, because the cover-up of the missing 30,000 emails was on. The media didn’t care where they were. That Hillary had deleted them or hidden them was fine with them. They were not interested in any of this becoming a Hillary scandal. So Trump makes this joke. It is… If I must tell you, this is my sense of humor to a T. It’s exactly how I would have done it. I would have mocked ’em, and I would have made fun of their so-called concern.
But every damned one of these Drive-By people took it exactly that way and then they got righteously offended and indignant. “Did you see what he just did? Trump just… He advocated hacking! Trump just told the Russians to go ahead and hack Hillary’s email.” I don’t know how you get there, but you must have zero sense of humor in order to think that Donald Trump was actually advocating political crime. He was trying to mock the phony premise of the Hillary campaign and the media. He was ramming it right down their throats.
In truth, what he was doing was mocking their jobs. There’s 30,000 missing emails, and they didn’t seem to care about them. They’re asking him about it and everybody else says they know where they are. But the Democrats are not interested, the media’s not interested, the Obama administration’s not interested in where they are. So Trump asks Russia to find ’em. I mean, it was actually one of the funniest things, and when I saw the way these people reacted to this, I was in stunned disbelief for five minutes or so, ’til I remembered who these people are.
And they’re still living it. They’re still living it. This Gregory sound bite proves they still think that Trump asked the Russians to hack. Because he was already colluding with them, don’t you know? He had already cheated election, the cheated Hillary and working with the Russians, so he just asking them to keep doing what they had already been doing. The fact that they believe this — and I don’t think they’re acting.
I know some of you say, “No, Rush, they’re just posturing politically to advance the agenda.” Maybe some of them. But I’m telling you, they believe it. Don’t doubt me on this. Folks, they’re not… They don’t live in the same universe, the same world we do, and they don’t think anything like you do — and they all think alike. They are all… I mean, it’s groupthink. You want to know how to define it? Watch the Drive-By Media, and that’s what it is.
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RUSH: Julian Assange has denied forever that Russia was the source of the documents WikiLeaks posted. Julian Assange, I don’t care what you think of him. I’m just telling you what he said. From the beginning he has denied that Russia was their source. He’s got two tweets out there today. Here is the first one: “This is fake news, CBS, you pathetic excuse for a media organization. I challenge your controlling oligarchs, the Redstone family, to a $100,000 bet that providing access through WikiLeaks to our unpublished information is false.”
You know what this really is? This is another trap. The WikiLeaks documents were already public. They were already posted. Now we’ve got a story out of nowhere, out of the ether that WikiLeaks or somebody offered the Trump campaign fodder against Hillary, when it’s already published and already public? It would have been worthless! The Trump campaign wouldn’t have needed it. They wouldn’t have sought it. It was already all over WikiLeaks.
So I think we have a manufactured story here, and this is akin… This is what I think Assange means with the Brian Ross reference. What did Brian Ross do? Brian Ross reported that “as a candidate,” Trump had ordered somebody to get hold of the Russians to do X, Y, and Z and then had the correct it. “Sorry! (stammering) It was after the election that he told Flynn to call the Russians,” which is perfectly permissible. Transition team operation. So here documents are already posted at WikiLeaks. Somebody sneaks out a report that there was an effort to leak them to Trump.
This is manufactured, made up to create the opportunity CNN is using to make everybody think something brand-new that we never knew before has just today been discovered, and it proves collusion, as David Gregory said. I’ve run out of words to describe these people. Shameless, journalistic malpractice, near criminal. It’s dangerous, way beyond the constitutional mandate. I don’t know how you describe this. But it is dangerous that these people have the ability to do this.
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RUSH: Now, folks, the interesting thing about this Washington Post story that I just shared with you is, CNN made up the major part of this story. CNN misreported the date of the WikiLeaks email that Donald Trump Jr. received. This is all part of that phony meeting that the Russian honeypot set up. Remember, they called the campaign and they said they had some dirt on Hillary and Trump Jr. said, “Hell, yes, we’ll take that.” When they had the meeting, it wasn’t about Hillary. It was about some piece of legislation the honeypot had been charged with Russia and her clients…
The campaign did not get advance warning of what was gonna be on WikiLeaks! CNN is trying to say that before it ended up on WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign was offered it by the Russians. So the bottom line is there is no story here. Julian Assange is exactly right. This is another Brian Ross moment. CNN either made it up or just got the date wrong because they get up every day hoping and praying that day is the day they prove President Trump colluded with Putin. Do not pooh-pooh that. That’s their reason for getting out of bed every day.
And now they’ve gotten caught up in it to the point they believe it. It’s gone beyond the fact that they know they’re pushing a sham. It has now swallowed them, and they’ve become part of it. This is a major, major journalistic error that they’re gonna try to sweep over and ignore. They got the date wrong because they thought they had Trump nailed on collusion, and what they did was actually overlook the fact that the data being offered was already on WikiLeaks. There was nothing secret, premature, early, private about it.
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