RUSH: So I got in last night, I played golf yesterday afternoon, went out and did some things. I got home and I had not looked at any of my email when I was gone. Not for any particular reason; just didn’t do it. I got home and I cleaned up, went down to the library, started to settle in for the evening’s activities. And I look my email inbox, and I’ve got emails from people you would know, asking me, “Did you write Michael Caputo’s talkers tonight with Tucker Carlson?”
And then I saw, “Did you happen to talk to Rudy before he went on with Hannity tonight?”
And I said, “I don’t know what any of this is about,” because I hadn’t had the TV on. So I’m really curious now what the heck has happened. My old golf buddy Rudy Giuliani is on TV, and then I found out about all of this and Michael Caputo was on two places last night, a former Trump campaign aide that worked very early in the campaign, primarily in New York.
Now, we played some audio from Caputo yesterday, who really let the senate Intelligence Committee have it. He’s another one of these people that’s lost everything in this investigation and he didn’t do anything and he doesn’t know anything because nothing happened. He lost his home. He’s in the process of having to go out and find a job hoping to recoup this and still have money to raise his kids. He says he needs to go out and earn $125,000 a year to try to replace what he lost, defending himself in this investigation. We played the audio sound bites of that yesterday.
I didn’t know that he was on TV last night. He was on with Tucker Carlson first on Fox, and then he was on with Anderson Cooper over on CNN, and I’ve got these emails. Honestly, one of the words, “Did you write the Caputo talkers?” was the email from one person. And the other one, “Did Rudy talk to you before going on Hannity tonight?” I’m really curious now. I said, “What is this all about?” So I have the answers to what this is all about, and the answers are explainable via audio sound bite.
I’ll tell you what I want to do. Let’s first play Caputo. He was just loaded for bear last night with both Tucker Carlson on Fox and with Anderson Cooper on CNN. But let’s play the one thing that when I saw it this morning — I saw a transcript first — when I saw it, I mean, I started pounding this desk, started shouting, “Right on, right on. It’s about time somebody outside of this program said this.” And here is what it is. This is Michael Caputo last night, says he has gotten the message, with Tucker Carlson. Question: “So they just bankrupt you?”
CAPUTO: Not just me. I think other people too. I mean, a tin cup isn’t a good look, but I’ve had to open a GoFundMe page. I certainly didn’t sign up for this when I went to work for the Trump campaign. And I will never, ever, work on another Republican campaign for as long as I live. I think that’s part of this, Tucker.
I think this is a punishment strategy. I think they want to destroy the president. They want to destroy his family. They want to destroy his businesses. They want to destroy his friends so that no billionaire in, let’s say 15 years, wakes up and tells his wife, “You know what? The country’s broken and only I can fix it.” His wife will say, “Are you crazy? Did you see what happened to Donald Trump and everybody around him?” So that’s what this is about.
RUSH: The reason I’m pounding the table ’cause it’s right on and it’s a point that I have been belaboring here over and over. You may have gotten tired of hearing me make the point, I’ve made it so often. It’s exactly what this is. This is the swamp telling any outsider, don’t ever try this again, because we’re gonna destroy Donald Trump and by extension anybody else who ever tries this.
Let’s go back to the audio sound bite archives. Here I am September 20th, 2017. This is maybe nine months ago or eight months ago now. Less than a year after the election.
RUSH ARCHIVE: It’s an effort to destroy Trump and his business, to wipe him out and anybody associated with him as the biggest lesson outsiders could be taught, “Don’t try this again.” This predawn raid picking the lock, Manafort’s house, and now Manafort, “Release what you found. I got nothing to hide. I didn’t do anything.” I don’t doubt for a minute whatever this is, I know it’s an effort to destroy Trump, but I don’t mean just destroy him reputationally. They are going to try to wipe him out, folks. That’s what this all is. And everybody associated with him.
RUSH: So this is why I got this note, “Did you write Caputo’s talkers last night?” By the way, speaking of Manafort, Manafort’s lawyers — this is big, and this is from Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist. “Manafort lawyers claim leaky Mueller investigation has provided no evidence of contacts with Russian officials.”
Now, you might be saying, “Well, so what?” Well, the so-what is they’ve been leaking the exact opposite! I’m gonna try to maintain my temper here. They have been leaking the exact opposite! There have been articles galore in the Drive-By Media sourcing multiple government officials who have been confirming — it’s been in the New York Times, Washington Post, all over CNN, confirming repeated contact between the Trump campaign, including Manafort, and Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.
The false impressions created by this baseless narrative would reasonably cause grand jurors or future potential trial jurors to speculate that Manafort’s involved in nefarious conduct. This is judicial dishonesty trumped, squared. In other words, Manafort’s lawyers claim that Mueller has no evidence whatsoever that Manafort has ever had any contact with Russian officials, and yet they have been leaking to the news media the exact opposite for the express purpose of tainting public opinion, tainting potential grand jurors and trial jurors.
This is worse than “the fix is in.” And this adds double emphasis to the point that Caputo is making here, that this is an all-out effort to destroy anybody who ever had anything to do with Donald Trump because the express purpose for this is to dissuade anybody from ever trying this again. I made the point again in November 2017. This is what it sounded like then.
RUSH ARCHIVE: The objective is to ruin this guy and to send the message to anybody else that might want to go to Washington and do things differently, don’t even try, because you’ll be next. That’s what all of this nonstop search-and-destroy mission on Trump is. It’s not only to get rid of him, to paralyze him, to render him incompetent, but it’s to send a message to anybody else who might have a similar idea to not even try it because you do not want to live through what we will put you through.
Their attitude is, there’s no need to have people here with a different outlook than what we already have. There’s no reason to have people here that have a different opinion on things. We don’t need that. We need people that are gonna conform. We need people who, when they get here, are gonna be happy they’re here, and they’re gonna do what we say they have to do so they can climb the ladder of success in our establishment. We want conformists. We want people who act alike, think alike, talk alike, we want people who represent us well. We don’t want these outsiders here.
RUSH: But I wasn’t finished. I don’t know how many times I’ve made this point. We just found three. This is October 10th, 2016, folks, this is before the election. October 10th, 2016. Listen to this one.
RUSH ARCHIVE: Folks, this is what it looks like. I kept telling people over the weekend when people were asking my opinion on it, I said, “This is what it looks like when you take on the establishment. This is exactly what it looks like.” It isn’t gonna be pretty. It isn’t gonna be clean. It isn’t gonna be pristine. The establishment, with everything they are invested in the establishment, remaining the establishment and in power, they are just not gonna sit back and trust this to your votes. They’re not gonna trust this to an election, to a campaign. Not gonna trust it at all. They’re gonna do everything they can to destroy whoever it is that wants to take control from them. And, in the process, they’re gonna destroy that person so as to send a message to the next guy, “Don’t even think about it. Don’t even try. Look what we did to Donald Trump. Look what we did to whoever,” is the message.
RUSH: This was shortly after the Access Hollywood video is when this all happened. You know, NBC had that video, they leaked it to the Washington Post, NBC actually were the ones that released it. So that’s October 10th, you could say three weeks before the election. I know these people. I know exactly. I know the establishment, I know the psychology, I know how they think, I know what they think of themselves. I know how exclusionary they are. I know how protective and mean-spirited they are.
Now, let’s listen to Caputo again, audio sound bite No. 4, last night with Tucker. This is what he’s figured out after having sat for a — actually it’s an anal exam by the Mueller investigators.
CAPUTO: Not just me. I think other people too. I mean, a tin cup isn’t a good look, but I’ve had to open a GoFundMe page. I certainly didn’t sign up for this when I went to work for the Trump campaign. And I will never, ever work on another Republican campaign for as long as I live. I think that’s part of this, Tucker.
I think this is a punishment strategy. I think they want to destroy the president. They want to destroy his family. They want to destroy his businesses. They want to destroy his friends so that no billionaire in, let’s say 15 years, wakes up and tells his wife, “You know what? The country’s broken and only I can fix it.” His wife will say, “Are you crazy? Did you see what happened to Donald Trump and everybody around him?” So that’s what this is about.
RUSH: So there’s a guy, he knows now. He didn’t know at the beginning. He was working on Trump’s campaign in New York state, he wasn’t even there very long. He really had nothing to do with the convention or any of the campaign after the convention. Not long. I mean, he was active in New York state after that particular campaign. But he’s now been interviewed and he now sees it clearly.
And you note that very little focus and attention on this aspect of Caputo’s interview today is in the Drive-By Media. The Drive-Bys today are devoted, they are all-in on Rudy and what he said about the payment of $130,000 from Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, to Stormy Daniels lawyer and so forth because they think they’ve got Trump on now lying about a campaign violation, and they think Trump may be gettable on this. I don’t think so. I’m gonna explain why in due course. But that’s what everybody else is focused on.
But this, folks, to me, this claim or this observation by Caputo is all anybody needs to know to understand everybody in this. To understand Comey, to understand Mueller, to understand Mueller’s team of lawyers, to understand Rosenstein, to understand the Republicans and Democrats who consider themselves part of the establishment who’ve done everything they can to oppose Trump, to understand the Never Trumpers on our side, this is all you have to know.
Their noses are out of joint because an outsider came in and ran rings around them. That’s not supposed to be possible. They’ve got this system so wired that people from outside it are never supposed to have a chance. Trump not only came in and had a chance, he beat them.
And then after that, Trump has actually, in less than a year-and-a-half, demonstrated that an outsider can come in and have dramatic positive change throughout the country. These people in the establishment have built up this belief system, “Look at how frustrated people are with politics. Look at how many people think it doesn’t matter which party you vote for anymore. Look at how many people think that Washington doesn’t get anything done.”
That’s by design. The establishment’s like any other bureaucracy. Never solve anything. If you solve something, there’s no reason for you to exist anymore. That’s the bylaw, the first bylaw of the State Department. Why do you think they don’t want Trump pulling out of the Iran deal? ‘Cause that’s gonna fix it. The Iran deal prolongs the problem, the need for the State Department and other bureaucracies to be involved.
You think what’s happening in North Korea could not have been done before Trump got here? It sure as hell could have. And I’m not taking anything away from Donald Trump. I’m telling you that this whole concept of a New World Order or a world order and the United States’ place in it, John McCain gave it away in one of his statements of disgust and anger at Trump when he talked about why would we want to do something to establish the order we have established since World War II, that we effectively run?
Meaning, the United States is the dominant superpower in the world, and we have established the postwar order of things including how things function at the European Union, the United Nations. And how things function is specifically designed so that very little ever gets solved. And in that process, a lot of things continue to go wrong and get worse, like cultural rot in America, like attacking and overturning time-honored traditions and institutions in our country that have defined our greatness.
The people that sit in power at the establishment — and some of their names you know and some of them you don’t. Basically it’s everybody in the political media, think tank class in Washington, that’s who the establishment is. Some of the names you know; some of the names you don’t. But their objective is to maintain total working control over everything that goes on in Washington, from the Treasury on down to the interior, you name it, and to maintain themselves in that position, those positions of power. And then in the process, establish in the minds of the American people what can and can’t be fixed, what can and can’t be done about anything.
And the express purpose is to frustrate you and to make you wear out of politics. ‘Cause they really only care about you at election time. And as long as we remain a representative Republic, slash, democracy, you count at election time. But this election, notice, you goofed up. And so it’s time to reverse what you did. You screwed up. You have chosen outside your betters, your establishment. They gotta overturn what you did. This can’t stand. That’s what this is.
Caputo’s seen it now, has commented on it. The idea that you’re frustrated with politics, that things don’t change, that’s by design. They want you to not care. They want you to not pay attention. They want you to not be interested. They want you to get frustrated at how powerless you are. They’ll let you whine and moan on talk radio, whine and moan on social media, but actually affecting things, I can’t tell you how frustrated they all are that you have thwarted their plans on immigration and amnesty.
The establishment are livid at people like you and the people they think are responsible for the way you think, like me and others on talk radio, Fox News and so forth. I know who these people are. I know what gets ’em up every day. I know what angers ’em. I know what makes ’em happy. And they are 180 degrees out of phase. They’re enraged. They’re angry. They are filled with hate here.
None of this is supposed to happen. And it’s even worse because they were supposed to get rid of Trump in six months. They thought all of this would force him out, to make him not want to put up with it, start attacking his family, his businesses. They hoped that Trump would say, “To hell with this. Nothing’s worth this. See you later. I’m outta here.” They don’t know Trump, and they don’t know you really.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And one more from Michael Caputo from Tucker last night. Question: “They’re not charging you with anything. There’s no allegations that you committed a crime, but they have so intimidated you, you can’t even talk about your conversation on the show right now that you had with Mueller and his team, and, furthermore, you say you are now retiring from campaign politics?”
CAPUTO: I’m never gonna work on a Republican campaign again unless somebody legally indemnifies me. Clearly these lawsuits after the fact are the new Democratic strategy. When you lose, you still win. I don’t think anybody should work on a Republican campaign again, unless they’re legally indemnified. I think if you do, you’re crazy.
RUSH: Stop and think of this now. See, nobody’s focusing on this. The media’s not looking at this at all. They don’t want anybody to hear this. They’re focused on Rudy and that $130,000 payment to the porn star, but this is huge! This is a guy who is just a campaign assistant, he’s been destroyed. He never wants to work in Republican politics again.
That’s the purpose of this. The purpose of all of this is to frighten anybody decent and good out of Republican Party politics. This is the criminalization of policy differences and it’s on display right in front of our faces and being ignored.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Listen to this. This is from The Daily Caller. “House Democrat Warns Trump Team: You’ll End Up ‘Sullied’ Like Ronny Jackson.” Now, put this context with what you’ve just heard Caputo say. Michael Caputo, never, ever again working on a Republican campaign and is gonna suggest to anybody else they not do it ’cause even when you win, and especially when you win, you lose!
There becomes an investigation of everybody involved in the victory. There’s no evidence for anything. They kill you with leaks and innuendo. They destroy your reputation. They take all your money away. I’ll tell you, people angry about this are entirely justified to be.
“Democratic Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen warned on Wednesday that members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle will end up ‘sullied’ like former White House physician Adm. Ronny Jackson — if they stick with the president for long.”
He was on CNN last night. He predicted that Emmet Flood, the lawyer who has joined Trump’s legal team, will not last long. Quote: “Nobody can stay around Donald Trump long who has a conscience and who has character and who believes in ethics. I think that’s probably why Dowd left; that’s why Ty Cobb left, and that’s why Mr. Flood’s time is limited.
“This man is an uncaring, unethical individual, who will bully anybody and takes borders and moves them down the field. … And anybody with character or conscience cannot stay attached to him, and if they do for long, they will be sullied and end up like Dr. Ronny Jackson, with a questionable period in their life when they had none up to that point.”
The Democrats, Steve Cohen, Tennessee, is literally threatening anybody close to Trump. “We’re gonna get you, no matter how clean you are, we’re gonna sully you.” That’s what he’s saying. He says you’re gonna end up sullied. Well, who does the sullying? Ronny Jackson was minding his own business. Nobody cared anything. He was a great doctor. He was Obama’s doctor. All of a sudden Trump wants to put him in the cabinet, and then all hell breaks loose.
And things that were supposedly known about Ronny Jackson for 10 or 15 years, and nobody cared now, all of a sudden here they are in public and Ronny Jackson’s life and reputation are destroyed. And this guy Cohen from Tennessee is saying, if you want that, you can have that, sick with Trump. Same message Caputo heard talking to Mueller and his team.
And this is assuredly going to have a chilling effect. And you know what else it does? I think it explains, in part, why the Republican leadership is as spineless as it is. They know all this. You know, everybody has assumed that the Republicans go quiet and don’t fight back because they’re afraid of being called racists if they attack Obama or bigots or whatever. It’s not just that. It’s that they know they can be destroyed. They know that there are people, supposedly their colleagues and friends in Washington, who will do it.
Trump runs for office in the midst of all of this and shows everybody that the establishment can be beaten. And once Trump is elected, he continues to spit in their face. This further scares to death the Republican establishment and the Never Trumpers. “Oh, my God, Trump’s gonna make ’em mad at all of us, oh, my gosh.” I think this is what this is really all about, all these Never Trumpers, they’re scared to death that everybody’s gonna be coming for them, so they have to make sure everybody knows they hate Trump. They got nothing to do with Trump. They don’t want Trump to succeed.
They’re simply buying insurance and asking the powers that be in Washington to spare them. “Please let us continue to write our columns. Please, let us continue to appear on Fox. Please let us continue to write our books, and we’ll behave.” So they come along they trash Trump every chance they get. They make names trashing Trump. They lead efforts in the Republican Party to trash Trump all so they will be left alone.
Unlike Michael Caputo, who was not left alone, unlike Ronny Jackson, who was not left alone, unlike Trump, who’s not left alone, family members of Trump not left alone. You see the pattern here, and it’s all very easy to understand. I want to run through just a couple of other things. I don’t have audio here. Don’t need it. I just want to run through a couple of other things that Caputo said because he makes one of the best TV witnesses for Trump that’s out there.
Michael Caputo, with his appearance last night on Fox and also on CNN, Trump couldn’t have anybody better on TV explaining what’s going on here. And he said to Tucker Carlson last night, “They’re still looking at Russian collusion. Don’t believe they’ve dropped it and moved on to obstruction. If anybody think’s Russia collusion’s off the table, they haven’t visited with the Mueller team.” If they’re still looking at collusion, there isn’t any collusion. It’s all on the Democrat side. If they’re still looking at it, what that means is they’re looking for a way to claim they found some. There isn’t any to find.
We are now two years into this investigation, a little bit over one year for Mueller. There’s no evidence. It’s time to pack it in and go away, right? No, no, no, no. As I have also told you, this isn’t going away this year at all. This is gonna be chugging right along right up to the midterms. Michael Caputo said they know more about the Trump campaign than anybody who worked there. They know more about what I did in 2016 than I do myself. The Mueller team knows more about what Michael Caputo did than he can remember.
Tucker Carlson said, “What are they looking at?”
Caputo said, “I don’t want to interfere with the investigation. I was warned about that.” He was warned not to say very much or else, even though he hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t been charged.
Tucker said, “Do you consider that to be a threat?”
He said, “I’m not gonna be friending them today on Facebook, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s not nice, but it’s nothing compared to the $125,000 in legal bills that I’ve stacked up for nothing. What’s happening to me and my family is happening to many other people in this investigation, and I’m just a witness. I can’t imagine if somebody’s a subject or a target, what they’re going through.”
I can tell you what Manafort’s going through. His lawyers again, Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist, Manafort lawyers claim that the Mueller investigation has provided no evidence of Manafort having contacts with Russian officials. And yet, the Mueller team has been leaking all over the media for a year that Manafort had contact with Russian officials before the election, tainting the jury, tainting the grand jury, tainting public opinion.
But Manafort’s lawyers have asked for — this is a new filing. They’ve demanded a full hearing on what Manafort’s lawyers say is a series of illegal government leaks about his case. Special counsel’s office says it has no evidence in its possession responsive to Manafort’s request for transcripts, notes, or tapes of any conversation or contact between Russian intelligence or government officials and Manafort.
It’s not just Manafort’s lawyers saying Mueller doesn’t have anything.
Mueller has said, “We don’t have that!” Manafort’s lawyers have asked for it. Mueller, “We don’t have that.” Then why the hell you been leaking for the past year that you do have that? So this revelation, the series of potentially false and illegal leaks from who knows however many government officials claiming they had such evidence call into question the legal basis of Mueller’s investigation of Manafort in the first place, which was ostensibly launched to ferret out illegal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and foreign officials.
And yet there isn’t any evidence. And yet this guy has been indicted. And that’s what Caputo is saying. “What’s happening to me and my family is happening to many other people. I’m just a witness. I can’t imagine if somebody’s a subject or a target, what they’re gonna go through.” Take a look at Manafort.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Ian in Katy, Texas. Great to have you, Ian. What’s shaking?
CALLER: Rush, it’s an honor. Been a listener since 1988. (Unintelligible) time caller.
RUSH: Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we lost him. I could tell that was a bad cell connection. And this ticks me off. He said he had just listened to Caputo and thinks that anybody being investigated should have their legal bills paid for by the government. People shouldn’t have to go broke. You know, that’s an excellent point to make another point. They don’t care, folks!
Mueller and these people don’t care. Mueller let four people stay in jail who he knew didn’t do it for years. Two of them died in jail after Mueller and everybody knew they were innocent! Just so he wouldn’t blow the identity and the credibility of a confidential informant that he had. Look. They don’t care who they ruin. That’s the point! They don’t care about the people! These people exist in opposition to the people.
The Washington establishment — I don’t know how else to say this. They exist in conflict with the American people. They exist to not implement public opinion, if public opinion, in their view, is uninformed and wrong. They don’t have any concern for Caputo going broke or Flynn. It’s quite the contrary. They sit there and they are proud they can do it, and they hope other people get the message.
This is not bubble gum here. This is not civics 101 here. They are ruining people. They’re conducting an investigation, if people get ruined, innocent people in the process, that’s the price that has to be paid for you people voting for Trump in the first place. They exist in conflict with public opinion, if it is not to their liking, best way I could put it.