RUSH: I’m struggling for words to describe what is happening in the media, and I’m just gonna repeat something I’ve been making the point about saying for the past two years. There isn’t media anymore. They operate under the premise that they are journalists tracking down events that we are not present to see and so they tell us about. That’s what journalism is. Journalists tell us things that happen where we aren’t. That’s the news. That’s not what this is anymore.

There isn’t any news that comes out of journalism anymore, not really. Maybe locally there is. There is with the lost pet reports and the various closings because of weather. But, I mean, this is pure Democrat Party politics that is occurring under the umbrella of journalism. So called. And every bit of it, every bit of it is designed to get rid of Donald Trump. Every bit of it is designed to make the American people dislike, distrust, or even hate Donald Trump. It’s a singular mission. That’s all they’ve got. That’s all they are doing.

And it has gotten to the point now where they are shameless in it, and they don’t even care when they are caught making things up, because they realize they get away with the lie for hours and hours until somebody figures out that they were lying. But as you know, the truth never catches up with the lie. Well, it catches up, but it can take days; it can takes months. In some cases, it can take years. But what CNN did on Friday is just highly illustrative and indicative of what media has become. You know, Glenn Greenwald is a hard-core leftist.

He is a, shall we say… For the lack of a better term, he’s buddy-buddy with Edward Snowden. And he became a Snowden champion after Snowden did what he did. Greenwald works at this website called The Intercept, and he had a piece over the weekend that just blew CNN out of the water. I mean, it just excoriated CNN. I have never seen leftist-on-leftist crime like this. Greenwald just blew them up. He just undressed them and exposed them for the world. And it was well done. And it was a slice and dice.

And he did it under the auspices, “If this stuff keeps up, nobody’s gonna believe anything anybody says in the media.” And I said, “Mr. Greenwald, that’s already happened. There are already a slew of people that don’t believe a thing that is reported in the Drive-By Media.” Now, Greenwald in his piece put together “just a sample of incredibly inflammatory claims that traveled all over the internet before having to be corrected, walked back, or retracted — often long after the initial false claims spread, and where the corrections receive only a tiny fraction of the attention with which the initial false stories are lavished.”

And, by the way, we could fill three or four pages with these items. But he has this list of inflammatory claims that were disguised as news stories that were totally false and wrong and were very quietly corrected much later. “Russia Hacked into the U.S. Electric Grid to Deprive Americans of Heat During Winter.” This was a Washington Post story. “Russia Hacked into the U.S. Electric Grid” this was last year “to Deprive Americans of Heat During Winter.” They later had to correct it. There had not been any evidence the Russians hacked anything.

And, by the way, there still isn’t. Let me revisit that. For those of you that missed the first hour, this is fundamentally important. There is no evidence that the Russians hacked anything. All there is: Good guess, supposition, informed guess, but there is no incontrovertible evidence. There is no proof. There’s not a single shred of evidence, folks, that the Russians have hacked anything, including the DNC server, including Podesta’s email. There’s no evidence. I know you’re sitting there saying, “Rush, that’s not true. That’s not.”

You think I’m making it up because you’ve been following it for a year, and most everybody has succumbed to this. Everybody’s been roped into thinking, “Oh, there’s gotta be some. They wouldn’t be spending this much time…” There’s none. It means that what Robert Mueller is pursuing is absolutely irrelevant and unnecessary and unchartered. There isn’t a crime! This could be shut down today. It is not justified, this entire thing that Mueller is doing. There is no crime underlying his investigation. There is no crime that he’s pursuing. He’s the looking for crimes and creating process crimes.

He’s creating crimes out of people testifying falsely or incorrectly to his investigators. He hasn’t found a substantive crime about anything that we have been told have gone on here. This investigation is wholly manufactured and unwarranted and unnecessary. And it proves that what really is going on here is Mueller looking for a case for which Trump could be impeached if the Democrats win the House in 2018, which means that Mueller is not gonna stop. All of this that Mueller is doing is predicated on the House switching control to the Democrats in 2018.

Mueller is preparing to turn over whatever if the Democrats win. How could there be collusion between Trump and Russia if they still haven’t proved that the Russians did anything? So a false report: “Russia Hacked into the U.S. Electric Grid to Deprive Americans of Heat During Winter.” Made up. Not true. “An anonymous group (PropOrNot) documented how major U.S. political sites are Kremlin agents,” a Washington Post story that as not true. “WikiLeaks has a long, documented relationship with Putin.” They ran in the U.K. Guardian.

They had to retract that. That isn’t true. Slate.com ran a story that said, “A secret server between Trump and a Russian bank has been discovered.” They had to retract it, had to apologize, had to pull back. There isn’t a secret server between Trump and a Russian bank. Another story that a Russian TV network had “hacked C-SPAN and caused disruption in its broadcast.” That ran in Fortune mag. That wasn’t true. C-SPAN had not been hacked. “CrowdStrike finds Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app.” Not true.

CrowdStrike, by the way, is the outfit that was hired to investigate the Democrat National Committee computer network for the Russian hackery. The FBI still has not been allowed to see it because there isn’t any evidence the Russians hacked it. The Democrats wanted to say the Russians hacked it and FBI would have been able to prove they didn’t (or the FBI would have unable to prove they did), and so the FBI was not allowed. Instead, they hired CrowdStrike, and CrowdStrike, among other things, reported that the Russians have hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app.

Not true! They had to pull it back. How many of you remember this story: “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states”? Not true. That appeared in multiple news outlets. It had been recalled. It was not true. The Russians did not attempt “to hack election systems in 21 states.” What did happen was the Obama administration offered states a service to guarantee the security of their election systems. But there was no Russian hack of 21 election systems in 21 states.

And remember this story at CNN? They said, “Links have been found between Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci and a Russian investment fund under investigation.” Not true. They had to retract that. Three people were fired over it! And that’s just a small sample. It is embarrassing except the media is not embarrassed. To them, these are success stories. To them, they’re getting these lies out there. And they stay out there long enough for millions and millions to absorb them and believe them to be true before they are retracted.

And the same thing with what happened on Friday. CNN still, all they’ve done is offered a small correction. Their story was totally debunked and blown to smithereens. Their story was totally made up. Why would they believe these sources with no evidence? Look, I’m beating a dead horse here. This is just… It’s outrageous. The evidence of media complicity and lying and everything. Matt Lauer? All these guys claim they never knew about Matt Lauer. They all knew about Matt Lauer, and they all roasted him on the basis of these things they knew about him to be true.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Mark in my hometown: Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Mark, how you doing, sir?

CALLER: I’m doing well, sir. Merry Christmas dittos.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: Rush, over the weekend I read The Interceptor piece that you quoted earlier just excoriating CNN and the media on all these “missteps,” as CNN calls them, and it got me to thinking. You know, last week you had a call: What’s the political endgame for the left. My question is: What’s the journalistic endgame here? At some point, doesn’t some senior statesman in the media have to stand up and say enough is enough?

RUSH: Well, in the old days, there were such senior statesmen. Who do you…? You’re obviously informed and you pay attention. Who would you think is today’s media senior statesman?

CALLER: Well, you know, I was gonna ask you that, but there are really only a couple that I can think of that have any level of credibility anymore, and that’s marginal credibility. The only two I could think of that would have any impact —

RUSH: Well, who they are?

CALLER: Well, it would be someone like Brokaw —

RUSH: (scoffs)

CALLER: — or even a Chris Matthews. I mean, I know what side they’re on because they’re in the media, and they spout it.

RUSH: Okay. You know, let’s play…

CALLER: Those are big picture guys.

RUSH: Let’s play this. Matthews is kind of iffy. I thought you were gonna say Dan Rather.

CALLER: Oh, no, he’s too far gone.

RUSH: Well, but wait. Let’s play it out with Brokaw. By the way, Brokaw could be the guy, you’re right. But he won’t because there isn’t anybody in journalism that is going to break away. There isn’t anybody in journalism of stature like you’re describing that’s gonna call out CNN. Greenwald is just another reporter.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: He’s not management, he’s not that widely known, and his take or his take on CNN could be called an attack by a competitor. Even though he’s right, everything he says. But having the moral authority of statesman status? If Brokaw did come out and say of CNN, “This has gone too far. This is not who we are. This is not what we do,” it might have the effect that you’re thinking.

It might give people in the media a pause. But I’m afraid that what would happen is that young journalists today would simply start mocking him as being an old guy and out of his wit and he should go away. You could throw Ted Koppel in this list or Woodward. Not Bernstein. Bernstein, no way. But Woodward maybe. Koppel. But they’re not gonna do it.

CALLER: Yeah. I thought possibly about Woodward, but since he’s, you know, print based and not so much a television person —

RUSH: Look. They’re all part of the same cabal to get Trump. They’re all part of it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Remember when Dan Rather was caught literally relying on forged, made-up documents to embarrass George W. Bush on the Texas Air National Guard? The rest of the media, Brokaw and Jennings, threw an awards dinner for him. They had to protect the business of journalism. They had to protect Rather. They had to protect themselves. Nobody’s gonna dump on CNN.