RUSH: Now back to the final element of the Kim Strassel story that there is a spy or was a spy in the Trump campaign put there by the FBI. The final paragraph of her piece today says that it’s time for Trump to declassify everything so that we can finally, once and for all, learn everything that happened and put an end to this investigation. Learn who the informant is. Learn everything there is to know about the FISA warrant application. What’s in there besides the Steele dossier?

What other things did the FBI use when asking the FISA court for a warrant to spy on Carter Page? Trump could… Kimberley Strassel’s exactly right. Trump could declassify all of this. But he doesn’t. Now, on previous occasions, I have said — and I think I’ve created a little bit of a misconception I want to try to straighten out here. I’ve said that I believe the president likes playing the victim because it solidifies the bond between him and his voters. It allows him to keep tweeting, for example, about the witch hunt.

It allows him to continue to tweet very critical things.

I’m using the word “victim” incorrectly, because Trump, of all things, is not a victim. Now, I did say he enjoys playing the victim, but I think there’s a better analogy. Because what I think Trump is doing here, if I might say so, is rather strategically brilliant. Every day that goes by it’s becoming more and more obvious to more and more people what an absolute joke this whole investigation is. You know and I know that it takes ongoing repetition over and over and over and over again for even intelligent people to hear things and believe them.

When we’re talking people that don’t pay a whole lot of attention every day to this stuff, it takes a lot of repetition, over and over and over again. Every day that this goes by, every day that the Democrats are building their future on a porn star, every day that the Democrats are building their future on impeachment, every day that goes by that there isn’t any evidence for any of this is an ongoing, slowly building victory for Trump.

I think Trump has masterfully captured the narrative from Mueller and from Rosenstein, from the intelligence community, from Brennan, from Clapper. Here you have the most accomplished person ever to be elected president since our founders. I made this observation yesterday, and I don’t think it’s arguable. Donald Trump has succeeded in more ways, in more things in life than any previous president in our lifetimes.

I’m talking about in and outside of government, in the private sector. And it matters because that’s where Trump’s expertise is, and the swamp knows nothing about it. The swamp, the Washington establishment, the elites look down their nose at people like Trump and any others who are not in their establishment. So here you have a multibillionaire, overwhelming success story who has managed to create a narrative where he is David and they are Goliath, and that probably is a better analogy for what I mean that Trump enjoys playing the victim.

They are the monster. They are the unfair. They are the outsized big guys against whom the Davids in life have no chance, no prayer. And Trump is slaying them. And he’s slaying them each and every day. It’s little by little, and some days go by and you think Trump’s losing. Some days go by, and you think Trump’s gonna lose, gonna get. But, folks, he can’t get indicted. Donald Trump will never be forced from office in a constitutional way because there will never be two-thirds vote for it in the Senate no matter what happens in the midterms.

This is what I have told you from the beginning it is. This is an effort to drive Trump’s public approval numbers down to the twenties so that he ultimately would have to be told by people like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, “Sorry, Mr. President, we do not have any support for you left in Capitol Hill. You have to resign.” This is all about forcing Trump to resign, and it’s all based on trying to drive his unpopularity sky-high. And that’s where he’s killing ’em. That is where he’s snookering ’em. That’s where he’s winning each and every day.

They thought they’d get this done the first six months, and they’re not even close now, folks. And now they’re flailing away with porn stars and little leaks here, little leaks there, Trump this or that. Meanwhile, Trump just keeps being Trump, appears unfazed and unaffected by any of it. His approval numbers are holding steady at anywhere, depending on the poll, from 42 to 51% — and to the extent that they’re moving, they’re inching up. Robert Mueller is being portrayed as somebody who has the power to determine whether Donald Trump stays in office or not.

And he doesn’t! Remember my analogy last week? If you landed here from Mars and you didn’t know anything about the way this country works, you would think there’s a permanent overseer of our government who determines who’s fit and who isn’t. And in this case it’s Robert Mueller. Robert Mueller doesn’t have any power whatsoever to get rid of Donald Trump constitutionally, and they’re not gonna try it that way. This is all about humiliation, embarrassment, raising his negative numbers, hopefully to make him resign.

That’s not gonna happen, and Trump knows it’s not gonna happen. I think he’s letting this play out sort of like giving them enough rope. They’ll eventually hang themselves. But the analogy is that he’s David; they’re all Goliath. We know how that story ends. Another way of looking at it is he enjoys being David. He enjoys being the little guy, the apparent little guy that this whole gigantic array of Washington establishment types is aligned up against doing everything they can to destroy him, and it isn’t happening.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, this is also why anybody with a brain is trying to tell Trump not to talk to Mueller. Mueller’s got nothing! Mueller isn’t gonna have anything that can get rid of Trump. It’s time to finally say this. The only way you get rid of a president is the 25th Amendment or impeachment. Impeachment is filing charges in the House. Then there’s a trial in the Senate, and you gotta get two-thirds vote in the Senate. There’s nowhere near two-thirds vote in the Senate to get rid of Donald Trump.

Isn’t gonna happen. The 25th Amendment? It’s not gonna happen. Mueller can’t do anything unless Trump makes the mistake of talking to him, and then Mueller can hatch one of these perjury traps. But even at that, presidents cannot be indicted, and Mueller knows this. The whole point here is to destroy Trump’s reputation in the eyes of the public. This is how they got rid of Nixon. If you’ll recall, they drove Nixon’s numbers down to the twenties, and Howard Baker goes up and says, “Mr. President, I’m sorry to tell you that if it came to impeachment, you do not have the support here to survive.”

If you’ll notice, that’s the only mechanism by which the media and the left have succeeded in getting rid of a president is exactly what they’re doing now. They’re so caught up in the Watergate motif that they’re trying to relive it. They’re trying to reenact it. Everybody in the Drive-By Media wants to be the new Woodward and Bernstein, and Mueller wants to be the committee conducting hearings in Congress. It just…

The lack of originality, the lack of anything that’s actually complicity tied to this… Well, there isn’t anything to sigh it to. There was no collusion. There was no criminality. See, look. As time goes on, look what we learn. We’re learning that the FBI, the DOJ, the Obama administration had a spy, they had an informant in the Trump campaign. There’s more of this stuff to come out, I’m certain, but there’s no way that Mueller can get rid of Trump unless Trump talks to him. Even then, the perjury trap leads to an indictment, and no president has ever been indicted. It won’t happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Oh, look at this. You know, this is incredible. As I was going through my explanation mere moments ago –my theory about why Trump does not declassify all of this documentation — CNN was covering it as I was saying it, and we have the audio sound bite here. This is John King on CNN. This is mere moments ago, while I was actually discussing it. I’ve not heard the bite. Let’s see how accurate it is. It’s No. 25.

KING: Whether you like or don’t like Rush Limbaugh, he gets this just right.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I think the president likes the perception that they’re out to get him. He loves tweeting about the witch hunt. He loves tweeting that they’re out to get him. .. I think he believes that appearing as a victim of this giant, deep state effort to get rid of him solidifies the bond he has with his supporters.

KING: And it has two goals, essentially. No. 1, we’re in a midterm election year where Democrats have an intensity advantage; the president trying to gin up his support. No. 2, if Mueller comes out with more charges against more people or a critical report, the president’s trying to convince at least about a third of the American people, “Pay no attention to it. Don’t believe it.”

RUSH: No. No, no, no. See, this is where these guys go off track. They should listen to what I say. I say what I mean. As the saying goes, let’s unpack this. I have amended my use of the word “victim” here as an analogy, and I’ve recast this as Trump as David and the swamp — Mueller, the establishment — as Goliath, and we know how that story ends. Now, it’s all predicated on a simple question. The president of the United States, whoever he is, can declassify whatever he wants.

He can declassify anything going on in the DOJ, the FBI, CIA. He can declassify whatever, including all of the aspects of this investigation. So the latest is from Kimberley Strassel: There’s a spy, the FBI hired a spy. There’s an informant that was working in the Trump campaign. She thinks that she knows the identity of the spy but she doesn’t want to publish it because she can’t get any independent confirmation. As far as I’m concerned…

We’ll eventually learn the name. The name doesn’t matter to me right now. For me what’s important for our purposes is the Obama administration hired an informant. The Obama administration had a spy in the Trump campaign! That’s all we need to know. We know this is the case, we know it’s true now because of the efforts of Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy to declassify some documents they’ve been subpoenaing from the DOJ and the FBI and Rosenstein will not declassify, will not send up this stuff after it’s been unredacted.

There was a meeting yesterday between Nunes and Trey Gowdy and Rosenstein. It was incorrectly reported that Nunes was shown this information. He was not. The meeting yesterday was a, quote-unquote, “negotiation” over it. They’re gonna have another meeting next week where Nunes expects to be shown, and if he’s not, then sparks will fly. But the Washington Post has all but admitted that there was an informant implanted in the Trump campaign. Kimberley Strassel’s put two and two together, and she thinks she knows who it is.

So why doesn’t Trump just declassify this and tell everybody? Just end this suspense and end all this and let it be known. That’s where my theory comes into play. I believe that the president wants to expose — I believe Trump wants to expose all of these people and their techniques — that they don’t have any evidence, and yet they continue to try to destroy him and his presidency and anybody he had anything to do with.

Because it furthers, if you will, a meme or a narrative, and the narrative is that the Washington establishment hates this guy and wants to get rid of this guy and will do anything to do it. I’ve just concluded that as far as Trump is concerned, he thinks that there is value in having people see this. Look, I want to stress something again. I know there’s a lot of panic, anger over the fact that the media’s making it look like if Mueller gets the goods, he can get rid of Trump.

There are two ways that happens. One is the 25th Amendment, which isn’t gonna happen. That’s the cabinet getting together and deciding the president’s unfit. The other way is via impeachment. That ultimately requires two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict on impeachment charges brought by the House. It isn’t gonna happen. I don’t think it ever has. I don’t think that we’ve ever gotten rid of a president in one of these constitutional ways.

Nixon resigned. He was not impeached. That’s what they’re trying to make happen or what their original purpose was with Trump. Just to repeat this one more time. Since the networks are monitoring, I want to do everything I can to help them get what I’m saying right. The whole point of this… Well, I think they may have thought at the beginning Trump colluded. I think they’re that dumb. But the argument against that is they’re the ones that were colluding!

Hillary was colluding! Hillary paid off this opposition research document, this dossier. It still boggles my mind to think that some of these people actually might have believed that Trump was colluding with Russia and that somehow they stole an election. That still boggles my mind that we have otherwise intelligent people who would believe that. But I guess we have to consider that maybe they did when they started this.

But going the impeachment route, since it hasn’t ever successfully been done, it’s gonna be a huge task. The easiest thing to do is have never-ending innuendo, never-ending leaks, never-ending negative news — I mean 24/7 negative news — on Trump designed to drive his personal approval numbers down to the point that they can make him resign. Because he has lost support everywhere, and that remains the objective of all this. But it isn’t working.

Because Trump’s approval numbers are holding steady. The latest that I’ve heard about the Mueller investigation? You realize he’s now looking at possible crimes in funding the inaugural committee! Really? What does that have to do with collusion with the Russians? Anyway, you may have your own theory as to why Trump does not just declassify all this, and as Kimberley Strassel says: Rip the Band-Aid off this; let everybody see it.

I think Trump is smarter than these people going after him. I think he sees what they’re doing, and I think he has decided there’s value, and there is a potential winning strategy here. John King says, “Whether you like or don’t like Rush Limbaugh, he gets this just right,” and plays the bite where I explain that Trump likes being seen as the victim. And I’ve amended that. I don’t actually think Trump… He doesn’t play victim well, because in Trump’s mind, he’s not.

He’s never a victim of anything. What he’s doing is setting up a narrative. The David and Goliath analogy is the best I can do to explain the narrative Trump is setting up. Let’s go to the audio sound bites and try to illustrate one side of this. Grab sound bite No. 4, last night in Washington at the Aspen Institute. This is the fourth annual Aspen Security Forum. The former CIA director John Brennan said this about Trump and his impact on the country —

BRENNAN: I think if the Republican Party is going to salvage itself from —

RUSH: Wait, wait! Whoa, whoa. That’s No. 5. We need to go to No. 4 first, please. Three…two…one…

BRENNAN: (whispering) This is a very large and painful national kidney stone.

WOMAN: (giggling)

BRENNAN: The relief we feel afterward is going to be just exhilarating.

WOMAN: (giggling)

BRENNAN: Of course, I think Mr. Trump has been fueling polarizations and partisanship in this country. And that is very much, I think, uh, undermining what this country really is all about. Just breaking norms left and right, what signal is that sending to the young children of this country? What signal is that sending to the world?

RUSH: You know, this is outrageous in its open way because there has never been a more purposefully partisan president than Barack Obama. Barack Obama set out to divide this country and capitalize on it. Barack Obama set out to create as many divisions in this country as he could and then assemble a coalition of all of the so-called minorities in these divisions as his winning coalition, and he succeeded! Look at how divided America’s campuses are today.

Look at how divided American politics is. Obama didn’t unify anything — and remember how everybody thought the election of the first African-American president would provide unity like we haven’t seen? “It would prove the country’s lost its racist tendencies, that we’ve come together.” It did the exact opposite, and that was predicted. Trump has not been fueling polarization and partisanship. Trump has been breaching American greatness!

Now, who is it that finds that provocative? Who in the world finds American greatness to be a partisan issue? It’s locoweeds like John Brennan and Hillary Clinton and Crazy Bernie and all these other people who think that making America great again is somehow insulting, that it’s insulting to minorities. “They don’t know a great America, and you don’t want to include them in your great America,” is what they all say. Where did it ever happen that American greatness, that American exceptionalism is a provocative and partisan agenda?

Because that’s what Trump’s agenda is. “Undermining what this country really is all about”? That’s what Trump’s doing? Once again, I would point to Obama, who said that this country needed to be transformed. It was Obama unhappy with what this country is. It was Obama who said he needed to transform this country. It was Obama who started spelling out how America was wrong here and needed to apologize over here and so forth.

It was Barack Obama who spearheaded the whole politics of division. And he succeeded at it. “What signal is Trump’s partisanship sending to the young children of this country”? “What signal is it sending to the world”? I think the signal being sent to the world is that America’s back and that America is focused on its greatness and its strength again. “Question about what signal is this sending to the young children”? What he does that matter? They’re children! They’re not even adults yet.

Since when does partisanship extend to childhood, for crying out loud? Anyway, I play this to give you an idea of just how turned upside down these people are. They can’t believe they haven’t been able to get rid of him! They can’t believe that this guy has outsmarted them at every turn. They can’t believe that he got elected. They spied on him. They used Hillary Clinton opposition research and tried to pass it off as real intel on him. They have used every dirty trick in the book on him, and it didn’t work, and that’s what they can’t abide.

Here’s the next Brennan bite from the Aspen Security Forum last night in Washington…

BRENNAN: I think if the Republican Party is going to salvage itself from the trauma of Mr. Trump — and that’s what I think it is — they really need to be able to reach deep inside themselves and find their North Star and say, “Are they Republican partisans first and Trump loyalists first or are they Americans first? Are they going to do what’s right for this country?”

RUSH: (chuckling) What do you do with this? I mean, the Republicans have their problems, but it’s not because of Trump. All Trump did was win the election. Isn’t this fascinating? The guy that wins the election is the guy that owes it to everybody to fix what’s wrong. The guy that wins the election is the guy that’s made all the mistakes.

The guy that wins the election is taking the country away from its North Star. “If the Republican Party’s gonna salvage itself…” Mr. Brennan, Democrat Party is in deeper doo-doo than you apparently know. Your party doesn’t even have an agenda it can publicly state and get behind. The Democrat Party agenda today is why Donald Trump is president, Mr. Brennan.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Our next caller, I think, went to the bathroom. Wait a minute. You took the question down. He wanted to know why doesn’t Jeff Sessions do anything about this? He’s heard us talk all day about the fact that Devin Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee wants to know from Rosenstein, the FBI, the DOJ what has gone on during the campaign.

You remember Devin Nunes actually threatened to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt for refusing to provide this information, which the House Intelligence Committee has had subpoenaed for months now. And Rosenstein has stonewalled this, and then when they have turned over things, it’s been heavily redacted. And the… (interruption) No, no. The answer to this is it’s not Sessions. Sessions could not be stonewalling or Rosenstein could not be stonewalling unless Trump let them. Now, I don’t want to be understood here.

This is not intended to be critical of Trump. It’s just to tell you that Donald Trump, any president can declassify anything — anything — any time he wants. If Donald Trump wants the FISA warrant application declassified so that we can all see what the FBI used in their application to get that FISA warrant, he can do it. If everybody gets caught up in who is this spy, who did the FBI hire, and who did they plant — who is the informant in the Trump campaign and when were they put there — Donald Trump can force that to be released.

If Jeff Sessions will not do it, it’s because Donald Trump is not forcing him to do it. My only point is that the ultimate authority resides with Trump, with the president here. In other words, Jeff Sessions cannot refuse. If Trump says, “Jeff, Mr. Attorney General, declassify that and release it.” If Sessions says, “No, sir, I won’t,” then we’ve got problems. But if Sessions refuses congressional requests and Devin Nunes wants to hold him in contempt? Fine.

But the only way Sessions can get away with it is if Trump lets him. So we’re back to why won’t Trump declassify any of this. I’ve explained my theory four or five times in the past two days and I don’t have time to go through it again. But look, there’s an inspector general that has finished, I think largely, his work here, and there’s an IG report coming on a lot of what’s gone on at the FBI. It could well be that Trump doesn’t want to get out in front of that.

But I think it really comes down to the fact that there is a strategy involved here. And it’s not that Trump wants to be seen as a victim, ’cause he’s not. It’s more a David and Goliath narrative that’s been set up. He likes the appearance that all of these deep state guys are aligned and trying to get rid of him. He thinks there’s value in this being seen over and over again every day.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, there’s one more reason why Trump doesn’t declassify, and that is his lawyers are scared to death that if he does they’re gonna accuse him of obstruction. Say he declassifies and Mueller says, “We were right on the verge of getting him and he knew it! So he goes public with all this and blows up our investigation!” They’re trying to avoid that kind of thing as well. Believe me, I don’t think he think he needs that yet. Just be patient.

Related Links
RushLimbaugh.com: Did the FBI Plant an Informant in the Trump Campaign? - 05.10.18
Wall Street Journal: About That FBI ‘Source’ - Did the Bureau Engage in Outright Spying Against the 2016 Trump Campaign? - Kimberley Strassel

        

                        

                        
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