RUSH: In the first place, CNN did not obtain anything. Lanny Davis gave it to them. So why doesn’t their headline say, “Former Clinton war room lawyer and defense hack provides CNN with secret tape of Trump and his lawyer”? Because that’s the headline.

I know we have to talk about this stuff today, but, frankly, you know, Snerdley said he was getting bored with all this FISA stuff. This stuff is all about Trump’s private life. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump even as a candidate. You know, is it just me? I have to ask, folks. Did I dream this?

It seems like it was just a couple weeks ago that the Democrats and the media literally went crazy when Louie Gohmert asked Peter Strzok Smirk about his private life, i.e., having an affair with another FBI lawyer while investigating Trump and trying to sabotage the Trump presidency and campaign, and everybody went nuts. And everybody said that Louie Gohmert should be ashamed. The Democrats in unison on that committee, they turned around, they started pointing fingers at Louie. But Louie of course was not intimidated and kept probing on this.

But you remember that? Well, now all this is is the creation of noise. This is really the creation of noise. The Democrats have tried this before. This doesn’t even get close to the NBC Access Hollywood video. There isn’t any crime in anything that supposedly is on that tape that’s been released. We discussed this tape being released yesterday and why they might have waived attorney-client privilege for it because there’s nothing really incriminating on the tape in terms of a criminal sense.

And it looks like this tape has been redacted or edited to end, a screeching halt here, to create a point or an illusion that may be the opposite of what’s actually on the tape. Remember who we’re dealing with here. Lanny Davis who came to fame defending the Clintons during the Lewinsky scandal, was very good at it, he was on TV 24 hours. If there was a cable channel on the air, Lanny Davis was there. I met Lanny Davis once. I was over at Fox to appear on — it might have been the Tony Snow Sunday show. I was in the greenroom and it was all during this Lewinsky stuff.

I walked in there, and Lanny Davis, to preempt any other conversation, came up to me, “I know a great friend of yours, a great friend of yours, and we went to law school together.” And I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “Michael Medved.” And that’s what the conversation became about. He forestalled any conversation having anything to do with what he was doing.

He said, “You know, look at me. Would you believe I can eat anything I want? I don’t have to diet at all. I can eat anything I want. You know my wife is pregnant. My wife is having another baby,” like he had nothing to do with it. “My wife’s at home having another baby.” Well, this is all fascinating. But that’s how he forestalled, you know, any — not that I would have begun the discussion anyway.

But that’s who the guy is. So he’s now got this tape, and it’s out there. And I’ll tell you what this is. It’s just continual noise. Reince Priebus made a great point last night. He was on Fox News. And what Priebus said I think is a great indication of what, in the swamp — you know, there are some pro-Trump people in the swamp. You can probably put ’em all in a phone booth, but there are some there. And I think Reince Priebus has become one of them.

You know, he was chief of staff over there for a while. Priebus said if all of this stuff wasn’t going on, the president’s approval rating might be over 60%. If all of this stuff wasn’t going on, if there wasn’t all of this noise, there would be a much greater focus on the president’s agenda and how successful it has been. And then he said, let’s be honest, part of the reason for the noise is the president. He just won’t let anything go. Something comes up that’s critical of him, he has to tweet about it, he has to hit back, and we know that’s what the president does.

He’s been very open. He was on this program during the campaign when everybody was upset that he’s tweeting and responding to every little attack out there. I asked him about it. He said, “Look. You hit me –” this has been my life “– you hit me, you hit my family, I’m gonna hit you back. You criticize me, I’m gonna criticize you back.”

So the president’s in character. He’s being who he is. The rest of these people — it literally is trying to sink a battleship with BBs fired through a plastic straw, now banned in San Francisco. Wait ’til we get to that. There’s so much cockamamie news out there.

Folks, I ran across a story yesterday and I spent a little bit of time last night and today editing it. It’s by a writer I’ve not heard of. His name is Douglas Rushkoff and the piece originally ran at a publication called Medium. It’s been reprinted in The Guardian, the U.K. Guardian. He is the author of a book coming up called Team Human.

Anyway, this guy found himself in a room with five or six of the richest hedge fund/tech people. Now, he has, the writer I guess has a reputation of being somewhat of a futurist, and he thought that these guys wanted to talk to him about the future and what he saw. And it wasn’t about that at all. And I can’t wait ’til we get to that point in the program today when I share this with you, because whether you like it or not, these are very influential people.

As hedge fund managers, they are beyond wealthy. They’re multibillionaires. They finance and underwrite a lot of the tech. The tech industry has its own bunch of super billionaires. And they are highly influential in a lot of clandestine and beneath-the-surface ways. And it’s scary. It is scary what these people asked this journalist. It’s scary what they believe. They cannot be very bright.

They are thought of as among the most intelligent and brightest people around because they’re billionaires and because they run hedge funds and have gotten rich doing that and because they’re involved in tech. But when it gets right down to brass tacks common sense, these people are dangerously stupid. And I want to illustrate that as the program unfolds.

But there’s this other stuff that we have to start with. I don’t know. Maybe Trump wasn’t joking when he said that the Russians are already meddling in the 2018 campaign to try to defeat him. Maybe Trump was thinking about this so-called evidence, which surely must have been a hot topic around D.C., this Cohen business. Now, the thing about this that irritates me is I’m required to spend a certain amount of time talking about it, even though it doesn’t reveal anything that we don’t know.

We haven’t seen… There’s nothing new in here. Everything in it we have seen reported over the weekend and in the past. There isn’t any crime. There isn’t even the implication of a crime, other than the way Lanny Davis and some people have tried to edit the thing. It’s not a crime to pay off a blackmailer, for example, and Rudy is making it clear that Trump wanted the payoff “memorialized,” meaning he wanted there to be a record of it, which means that Rudy is saying Trump did not want to make this payment in cash.

But this is nothing compared to Access Hollywood, and here’s why I’m really not all that hot to talking about it, because I know that it isn’t gonna separate a single one of you from Trump. You look at this, and the fact that it’s on CNN is step one in making sure that you are not affected by it. The fact that they won’t let it go. The fact that Trump’s lawyer has turned on him, many people say, “Wow! Mueller really must have something on Cohen. Wow! Mueller really must have something to cause Cohen to betray Trump like that.”

This is not Mueller’s case anymore. This case has been handed off (like every other Mueller case) to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, the now famous SDNY. It would be great if some of this noise could be eliminated. It won’t be because the media’s not going to let it evaporate or dissipate in any way.  This is all they’ve got in their ongoing quest to win the House in November and to defeat Trump in 2020 — and, if they can, still realize their dream of having Trump thrown out of office or forced to resign as quickly as is possible.

So first question I got today:  “What the hell has Mueller found to scare Cohen so much he would risk his livelihood by flipping on Trump?  Who would ever hire Cohen again after this?  Who gave these tapes to Lanny Davis?”  Well, we discussed yesterday that the Trump team, Giuliani, waived privilege on these tapes.  So if they waived privilege, then that’s kind of a signal, “Okay.  Go ahead and release ’em.”  I mean, they’re in the hands of the court.  The special master has all this stuff that they absconded from Cohen’s office in that raid.

And if the Giuliani-Trump team figures that there’s nothing on these tapes that is incriminating, go ahead and release ’em.  You know, waive the privilege, get out in front of it, stay on offense with this stuff.  There’s supposedly 11 more tapes, and the word is that Trump isn’t on any of ’em.  But we don’t know.  By the way, the recording quality is horrible, and Rudy has addressed that.  Rudy made a point that these tapes… He’s heard much worse tapes than these, and he’s talking about the quality.  He’s not talking about the substance.

When Rudy says, “I’ve heard much worse tapes,” what he’s talking about is the tapes that were the result of bugging the Ravenite Social Club and other such hangouts of John Gotti.  I happen to know the FBI agent/agents that actually placed those bugs, risking their lives placing those bugs in various places that John Gotti hung out.  And if you’ve heard those tapes played, if you’ve heard them played as they were in court, you know you can’t alone understand.  There’s all kinds of echo.

The microphones have to be hidden deep inside walls.  They’re not anywhere near close to the people who are speaking, and it takes a long time to actually translate these tapes or transcribe them and get them accurately.  You cannot follow them without some sort of subtitling or closed-captioning type of effect if you happen to be watching the Gotti tapes played on TV.  Rudy’s making the point that these are the same way.  It’s very difficult to understand, and there appear to be some really quick, jagged edits in the segment of the tape that has been released.

So I think it’s just more of the same.  It’s the media trying to make something out of really nothing.  There isn’t anything new here.  It is the examination of the president’s private life.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, Lanny Davis, back in those days defending Bill Clinton, what did he say every night countless times on TV?  “It’s only sex.  It’s nobody’s business.  It’s his private life.  Didn’t affect his job.  We need to move on and forget it!”  Lanny Davis, talking about Bill Clinton.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So during the break here I was going through my Stack stuff that I got for today’s program, and I just decided, screw this Cohen business, screw it. If you want to call and talk about it, if you have a question, you want comment, have at it. 800-282-2882. But I’m not gonna spend any time on this above and beyond whatever it is you on the phones ask me about, because this is just another distraction.

There’s nothing here. We’ve been here and done that, and it’s just the latest attempt by the media — I’m getting sick and tired of having to give credence to every one of these bogus attacks and these attempts that they are making to get rid of Trump and overturn the election results and so forth. I’m not gonna help them by making this a bigger deal than it is. As I say, if you have questions about it, or you want to make a comment, feel free, have at it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No. I’ll tell you why. I’m not gonna deal with this stupid Cohen video because I’m sick and tired of CNN setting the agenda. I’m not gonna sit here and keep reacting to this stuff. I know Trump people are not gonna be affected by this. This has nothing to do with Trump as a candidate, nothing to do with Trump as president. This is Trump’s private life. He’s led a full life, a much fuller life than 95% of people covering him.

Ninety-five percent of people covering Donald Trump are jealous as hell of the life that he has lived. They’re trying to cut him down for any number of reasons. And I’m sick and tired of helping ’em out. You know, let this thing play out as it will, just like the Access Hollywood video played out. It didn’t hurt.

Donald Trump is a different kind of politician. The Democrats do not know any other way to get rid of Republican politicians than the way they’ve always done it. They cannot adapt to Donald Trump. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. They’re not trying to find out why you love him. They don’t care about that. They think they’re gonna finally be able to fix you into distancing yourself from him using their same old tried and true techniques.

It’s not gonna work. And, frankly, there are more important things out there today than just chronicling what the little malcontent children at CNN seem to be bugged by every day. If there’s ever a group of people embarrassing themselves, it’s CNN. It’s not Donald Trump. And it’s the rest of the Drive-By Media. This today holds no interest to me. I’m not gonna get into the intricate aspects of it. It will play out as it plays out. I want to devote time to things that have much greater interest to me and I know will have much greater interest for you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: In the meantime, Magnus in Houston, Texas.  Great to have you with us on the program.  Hello, sir.

CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  I’d just like to help close the book on this Lanny Davis tape.  Let’s call it what it is.  It’s not an attack on Trump.  They know that we know we didn’t elect a choirboy to go to a street fight.  This is an attack on Melania, the first lady.  They’re trying to drive a wedge between him and his wife, and that’s just dirty.

RUSH:  Well, I don’t doubt that.  But I think it’s an attack to Trump.  I don’t think these people can do anything else.  I think they’re fixated.  I think that they have almost become robotic now.  It’s actually to me quite breathtaking to watch, particularly CNN and then next MSNBC, which I will admit I don’t watch much because I really… Folks, you have to really guard against exposing yourself to too much insanity and low-IQ behavior, ’cause it can affect you.  You have to be really careful.  I don’t go near this stuff.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t watch cable news anymore, ’cause it’s just plain stupid. It’s shortsighted. It’s simple-minded, simpleton stuff.  CNN has become an ongoing joke; they’re the last people to get it.  They’ve become robotic now.  Their hatred for Donald Trump, their disgust at being unable to dislodge him is what’s driving all of this.  They hate Melania!  There hasn’t been… Folks, there hasn’t been a single story in any woman’s magazine about our first lady and her fashion sense and typical first lady things.

You couldn’t go three days in a given week without two or three of those about Michelle Obama.  There hasn’t been one about Melania Trump because they hate her.  The hate in this country is all contained on the left, and it is on display each and every day in the leftist media.  Yeah, they hate Melania, and they would love for Melania to publicly abandon and leave Trump since they are unable to make you leave Trump.  But that isn’t gonna happen.

But they are also trying to separate you, who voted for Trump.  They still think they can do it.  When they got rid of Richard Nixon… Do not make the mistake of thinking this was so long ago, so far ago that it doesn’t matter today.  They got rid of Richard Nixon.  That, to me, was a watershed to them.  That told them that if they put their mind to it, they can get rid of presidents.  They tried to get rid of George W. Bush.

They tried to get rid of George H. W. Bush, and they might have had a chance if he had served two terms.  They drove George W. Bush’s approval numbers down to the high twenties.  They celebrated having done that each and every day.  They destroyed the war on terror.  They destroyed and undermined the war in Iraq in the process.  They didn’t care.  They attempted to destroy the policies we had to deal with terrorists.  They tried to blow everything up, and they’re trying to do it now.

They are attempting to undermine every aspect of the Trump agenda they can because the objective is to get rid of him and overturn, nullify the election results.  They did it once; in their minds, they can do it again.  They’re obsessed with it, and they are spitting mad that they haven’t been able to do it by now.  This is the first Republican that has not slinked away and begged for forgiveness.  This is the first Republican who has not apologized for the transgressions he’s been accused of!

This is the first president to fight back at ’em and call ’em out for being the small-minded Nimrods that they are!  This is the first Republican and the first president who called ’em what they are: Purveyors of fake BS!  They’re beside themselves.  They’re used to people being scared of them, intimidated by them.  I don’t care what time of day you tune in to CNN, you’re watching raw, undiluted sewage-level hatred for an American human being who goes by the name of Donald Trump.

I cannot impress upon you how beside themselves that they are, that they have not been able to get rid of him.  I can’t tell you, I cannot accurately describe the hatred they have for Trump defeating Hillary.  I can’t tell you, I can’t adequately describe the hatred they have for Trump for dismantling the agenda of their precious President Obama.  They’re so fit to be tied over so much — and then you add to it the fact that Trump is an outsider and not one of them, therefore not sophisticated, not qualified, not elite enough.

These people are miserable, and then they see Trump enjoying himself. They see Trump enjoying life — and that VFW thing yesterday? I guarantee you, folks, when Trump gets a standing O, they get ticked!  They look at that as personal failure.  They think Trump should get booed at every one of these rallies. They think they’re engineering and Trump should get booed at the VFW that’s what they think they’re accomplishing.

When this 94-year-old guy got up and told the story of his love and devotion to Donald Trump and made the request that for once in his life he would love to see the Oval Office, and Trump invited him? You could see the love and the passion in the room for that guy, that 94-year-old veteran for Trump.  The Drive-By Media is looking at it with hatred because that guy is supposed hate Trump, and everybody at the VFW is supposed hate Trump!  That’s what they’ve been trying to pull off, and they failed at doing this.

That’s all this Cohen garbage is, the latest episode.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No. I’ll tell you for the umpteenth time, I’m not worried about this Cohen stuff. I’m not worried about any of this. Let me tell you why. Donald Trump continues to do his job. Donald Trump is doing what he was elected to do. And he is succeeding at it, and the people that voted for him know it. This stuff is not sidetracking him.

What it is doing, the only thing that this is doing is creating all this noise that is preventing other people from learning how successful Trump is and how successful the agenda is. If this noise were not what it is today, if it were not that loud, this distracting and so forth, I dare say Trump’s approval numbers would be well, well in the fifties, and these people wouldn’t have anything to throw at. That’s what they’re trying to do, is create all this noise.

I just decided today I’m not gonna play. I’m not gonna let them distract me or this program for the same old thing, recycled the thousandth time. If CNN wants to just go insane before our very eyes each and every day doing this kind of stuff, let them have it. But I’m through with them setting the agenda. I’m through with CNN and the New York Times and the rest of them defining for the rest of us what the narrative is every day.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Bruce in Frederick, Maryland, as we head back to the phones.  I’m glad you-called, Bruce. How are you doing, sir?

CALLER:  Okay, Mr. Rush.  Hey, listen.  You know, I’m 65 years old.  When I was in my twenties, thirties, forties, I was… I’ve never been married.  I was out there tearing it up. As Mr. Snerdley said, I was a “player.”  Now, if I had become —

RUSH:  In other words, what you were doing, you were sowing your wild oats at night and praying for crop failure the next day?

CALLER:  — and this and that and all this.  But nobody cares.  None of us care.  Anybody who voted for Trump is gonna vote for him again, and all kinds of other people that didn’t vote for him are gonna vote this time for him.  So they’re doing themselves damage by all this like you said.

RUSH:  That’s what I think. I agree with you.  I think they’re driving people too… (sigh) Folks, I don’t want to make too much here of my thought process today, in terms of extrapolating it to represent a certain body of thought in the country.  But I’m gonna tell you something.  Over the course of 30 years — and Snerdley will back me up on this — it has not happened very often that the lead story throughout the Drive-By Media is something I ignore.  That has happened so rarely, I could probably count the number of times on one hand — and I am not interested.

Frankly, I’m worn out.  I can’t keep up anymore.  I don’t care what these people think of Donald Trump and his sex life before he became a candidate.  I don’t care!  And I’m telling you, I believe if I don’t, then there’s probably a whole lot of other people who have reached their limit too.  That’s just my instinct.  Now, I know that there are some of you worried about it. You’re worried that CNN won’t stop and you’re worried that it might start influencing a bunch of independents and others, and for that reason you think maybe I need to pay attention to it and nuke it each and every day.

I can understand that.  But even those of you who think that are fed up with this.  There’s a reason CNN’s audience is approaching the size of a phone booth, folks!  There’s only so much of this that the average human being’s emotional reservoir can deal with — and after a year and a half of constant, full rage with no end and with no satisfying result, Trump is still there! Trump is still president, and he’s still doing his thing, and he’s still implementing his agenda, and CNN has not stopped him.

And if you’re investing in CNN and watching CNN, reading the New York Times, hoping that they will stop him, you’ve gotta be frustrated as hell, too!  Because nothing is stopping him.  So on that basis, to hell with ’em.  If they want to sit here and obsess over some shyster lawyer and his rat-tail treatment of a former client, let ’em go ahead.  I’m telling you, there’s nothing here that’s new.  CNN is chasing the sex life of the president of the United States.

And they’re being very hypocritical about it because previous presidents’ sex lives (snort), they tried to cover up and hide or promote.  Bill Clinton asked people to lie for him under oath about his sex life!  Trump hasn’t done anything of the sort!  They can’t even find any criminal act related to whatever this tape is about today.  As far as I’m concerned, they keep striking out with all of it.  I just have run out of passion, energy to even describe for people what CNN’s trying.  Let ’em fly on their own here, ’cause they’re obviously not able to.