RUSH: Now, we’re gonna get into the news of the day, and some of it is just silly. I mean, it’s silly to the point of being depressing. The New York Times with a supposed blockbuster story that Trump wanted to investigate Hillary Clinton and Comey. Well, damn it, they should be! Especially Hillary Clinton should be! This thing going on with Mueller is one of the biggest travesties… In fact, it is. It is the biggest travesty of my lifetime, this entire thing. You know what we’ve learned about this? You know Trump had to submit written answers to questions that this Mueller submitted, and you know what Mueller’s looking at?

We know this because Rudy granted an interview to Axios (a Millennial journalist enterprise) and you know what Mueller is interested in? You know what Mueller wanted answers to? When Trump cracked a joke, “Hey, Russia! If you’re listening, maybe you can find the emails that the media can’t find of Hillary’s — and, if you do find ’em, hand ’em over.” A flat-out joke! He was mocking the fact that Hillary’s emails were “missing” and that nobody knew where they were — when, of course, Hillary knew where every damn one of them was because she was the one that deleted ’em and hid them!

This Mueller clown actually thinks that Trump was asking the Russians to hack Hillary’s computers! This is beyond my ability to comprehend this. This culture, this society has lost all sense of any kind of adult sense of humor. It is just beyond me that this is actually what Mueller was focusing on in his written questions to the Trumpster. Holy smokes! This whole thing… I’ve been over this I can’t tell you how many times.

This guy Mueller is running around with preening arrogance thinking he’s the most important savior of whatever the hell needs to be saved in Washington, ignoring crime after crime after crime after crime committed by Hillary Clinton and Comey and the Democrats and the FBI and the DOJ and everybody else tied to Obama! Just ignore all of that real collusion, real election rigging, and go looking after something that hasn’t happened, didn’t happen — therefore, cannot be found — that Trump supposedly did!

If I were Trump, I would have lost my mind over this. I would not have been able to keep my mouth shut about this for as long as he has. They put spies in his campaign! They were trying to find evidence! In fact, they were trying to coerce criminal activity among people in the Trump campaign by having FBI and CIA embedded spies! During the campaign. We haven’t gotten a straight story about what really triggered the investigation in the first place. (interruption)

No, do not doubt me. I have the audio sound bites to prove this coming up. I mean, this is what Rudy Giuliani says that Mueller wants to know. That’s what he asked Trump about in his written questions. (scoffs) I can’t tell you the number of times over the course of my sterling broadcast career that I have cracked jokes and done bits exactly like that. Trump has this ability to mock his critics and to make fun of them and expose their phoniness and their lies, and I’ll tell you this: I think some of these people really don’t get the humor.

I think some of these numskulls really do think that Trump was asking Russia to hack Hillary Clinton. When I saw that poll the other day from YouGov and The Economist, that 42% of the American people literally think the Russians tampered with ballots in 2016? Folks, do you know if that has happened, Trump would be in jail by now! This investigation would have lasted however long it took to determine that. Yet that’s what “collusion” has come to mean.

The media is responsible for this. The Democrat Party is responsible for this. They put the word “collusion” out, and they still talk about this as though it happened when there’s not a shred of evidence. It is bigger than a travesty. It is bigger than an outrage. I don’t know the word to use to describe how ridiculous, dangerous, and whatever else this is. But I don’t want to talk about all that right now, even though I just did. I had to get it off my chest. I can’t…

I literally have run out of adult ways to contain my emotion over this. Andy McCarthy’s out there on TV today saying, “Well, yeah, I think the collusion aspect of the investigation is winding down.” He thinks that because all these innocent people that are being sentenced… Mike Flynn, who didn’t do a thing, is gonna be sent to prison after having his family ruined and his personal wealth wiped out. McCarthy says, “Well, if they’re gonna go ahead and sentence him before using him in whatever he’s got to try to nail Trump, it must mean they’re winding down.”

But Andy thinks that while the collusion stuff (i.e., Russian tampering with the vote machines) is winding down, Mueller is still full speed ahead on obstruction. Then the New York Times has this story out there that Trump was thinking about — thinking! Thinking is a crime! He was thinking about indicting or pursuing Hillary and Comey. But he didn’t! We have a story that has occupied cable news all day about what Trump was thinking of doing.

But he didn’t do it, did he? So what’s the story? We don’t even know if it’s true! I don’t know how many of these people live inside Trump’s head to know what he’s thinking. But it’s a big story. “Trump was thinking…” And then they went, they’ve got and talked to Don McGahn, who was the White House counsel and he’s telling the New York Times, “Yeah, I told Trump that if you investigate Clinton, and if you investigate Comey, it’s grounds for impeachment.” This is Trump’s own lawyer telling him this!

So I guess it’s okay for the entire United States government not in power to investigate Donald Trump from every which direction they want, but Trump can’t turn around as candidate or as president and investigate people who literally committed crimes trying to destroy him! What kind of two-way street…? But I don’t want to talk about all this right now. Ha-ha-ha.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites because I mentioned earlier Rudy Giuliani gave an interview to Axios in which he listed the two subjects that Mueller asked Trump about in the ongoing witch-hunt investigation. The first was the Trump Tower meeting that was conducted by Donald Trump Jr. But the second area of questioning that Mueller had for Trump (these are the written questions submitted) were related to the joke that Trump made about the Russians and Hillary’s emails. A joke. A joke.

The special counsel actually, like the rest of the media and the Democrats, think that Trump was asking Putin to hack Hillary. Stop and think of this. The special counsel — this preening, arrogant, whatever else you want to call him — Robert Mueller is running around spending millions of dollars investigating a joke. We went back, you know, Mueller has indicted all kinds of Russians that he never expected to show up and face trial. That’s why they were indicted, just so that Mueller can somehow make the appearance all of a case that Russians colluded and tried to tamper with the 2016 election.

But these are indictments that are never, ever intended to see one day of trial.

So I want to go back to me on this program, July 16th, this past summer, 2018…

BEGIN ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: Mueller does not say this in the indictment and you can infer it and it leads me to believe that Mueller intended it to be inferred. The Drive-Bys say that the Russian hacking… Are you ready for this folks? The Russian hacking of the DNC server began later on the same day Trump asked Russia to look for Hillary’s emails. They actually think that we’re gonna fall for this!

Trump’s cracking a joke about, “Hey, Russia…” Everybody’s looking for Hillary’s missing 30,000 emails. Everybody knows they’re somewhere, and the media’s going nuts trying to find out where they are, what happened… Well, the media isn’t, but some people are. So Trump… I think he was at a press conference in Miami, if I’m not mistaken, but doesn’t matter where he was.

But in typical Trumpian humor fashion (impression), “Russia! Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, maybe you can find the missing 33,000 Hillary emails that everybody’s looking for.” This indictment claims that the Russian hacking began on that very day. So it’s left for the Drive-Bys to infer that Mueller is reporting that Trump’s request of Russia to look for the emails was seen as a green light by Russia to start hacking! (laughing)

END ARCHIVE CLIP

RUSH: I could barely contain myself that day. Mueller actually tried to make the case that the Russian hacking began when Trump cracked the joke, and that’s what his indictments attempted to say. This is such… This is so rigged, this is so gamed, it is so made up, it is such a travesty. This guy’s preening around, trading off his reputation as the most honorable man in Washington with unapproachable integrity and so forth. What an absolute crock. Here is what Trump said. It was July 27, 2016. He was down in his resort in Miami called Doral…

THE PRESIDENT: I will tell you this: Russia, if you’re listening: I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.

RUSH: We now know from Rudy Giuliani that Mueller literally submitted questions for Trump to answer on that sound bite. (laughing) I have so much — honestly, folks — difficulty processing this. Are people this devoid of a sense of humor? Are people wound this tightly? I just… I’m having difficulty processing this. Or is it that Mueller thinks that Trump gave him an opening here to make something out of this joke and Mueller can use his relationships with the media to reconstruct this and repackage this however he wants it?

Now, let’s go to back. Andy McCarthy was on America’s Newsroom on Fox today, and Sandra Smith said (summarized), “Now, the president turned in the questions to Mueller saying that he has answered the questions of the witch hunt. So what happens now, Andy?”

MCCARTHY: What I think is that it’s actually only round one, even though everyone in the president’s camp seems to be trying to act like this is a done deal and over. What they did here was bifurcate the two aspects of Mueller’s investigation, collusion and obstruction. I don’t think they’ve ever been too terribly worried factually about the collusion with Russia end of the investigation. Obstruction is really the thing that brought Mueller into the case.

RUSH: (sigh) That’s the firing of Comey is what he’s referring to here, and that supposedly constitutes obstruction of justice, which it doesn’t. Trump can hire or fire anybody he wants at any time and he doesn’t have to give anybody a reason for it. I don’t think the collusion aspect of this has been downplayed at all. The collusion aspect of this has been the focal point of it from a PR standpoint, from a public opinion-shaping standpoint.

Now, Andy’s talking about the legals here and where Mueller may think he has the best case and that’s it’s not collusion. He’s right about that because there wasn’t any. Folks, I’m literally at my wits’ end to describe this for you. Something that did not happen versus a lot of a lot of corruption and collusion that did, which is being completely and totally ignored. It literally is one of the most gigantic assaults on our entire justice system that I can recall seeing.

Searching for a crime, spending millions of dollars looking for a crime that will not be found while ignoring the very same crimes that everybody knows happened! Including lying to FISA court judges, including using a phony dossier passed off as legitimate intelligence when it wasn’t. It was made-up opposition research bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton, and it is still being used as evidence of Trump collusion! Now, one more bite here with Andy. Sandra Smith then said, “Well, what sense are you getting that this Mueller investigation is gonna wrap up any time soon?”

MCCARTHY: I think it is winding down. The president’s answering of these questions doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The other things we see are, for example, Special Counsel Mueller is evidently going to allow General Flynn to be sentenced. It looks like Manafort is heading toward sentencing. I can tell you as a[n] experienced former prosecutor that if you’re intending to bring another big case and you think you have these witnesses who would be cooperating witnesses in that case, you don’t let them get sentenced. You have them testify first and then they get sentenced down the road. Just the fact that we have indictments that are brought, he’s letting the witnesses — or the potential witnesses — get sentenced, that sure signals like things are winding down.

RUSH: We’ll see.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: There’s one thing about this whole business of Trump asking the Russians to go look for Hillary’s emails. During this entire so-called era of collusion, has it not been presented that Putin is running Trump, that Trump is the puppet, that Trump is the tool, that the Russians have something on Trump? Therefore Trump owes the Russians? The Russians got Trump elected. They meddled with the ballots, they meddled with the votes, they colluded. If that’s the case — if Putin is running Trump, if Putin holds all the cards — what’s Trump doing telling Putin what to do?

Why is Trump telling Putin to start hacking Hillary’s emails if Putin is running this show? These two things do not coincide logically and understandably, because we’re told that Vladimir Putin’s running this show. Vladimir Putin wanted Trump elected ’cause he hated Hillary. He’s scared of Hillary, right? Ha-ha. We’re told that Trump owes his business success to Russian money. That’s why they want to see Trump’s tax returns. So why is Trump given Putin orders? Why is Trump telling Putin what to do when Putin is the boss in this relationship? That’s what so cockeyed about all this.

Here is Mike in (chuckles) Bad Axe, Michigan. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Yeah, hi, Rush. I just wanted to say I don’t think that Mueller really believes that Trump wanted to get the emails from the Russians. I don’t think he really believes that. I think he’s just saying that in order to influence the minds of the uninformed, impressionable people that are out there.

RUSH: Why does Mueller care about that?

CALLER: What’s that?

RUSH: The American people have nothing to do with what Mueller’s report’s gonna say, what Mueller’s prosecution might be, if Mueller indicts. Mueller doesn’t care about public opinion, in terms of his ultimate objective here.

CALLER: You don’t think so, huh? I think he’s trying to get people behind him, you know, and behind what looks like a conspiracy against Donald Trump.

RUSH: Well, look, everybody in Washington cares about public opinion. I’m just telling you that — and everybody knows that judges pay attention to election returns, too. I’m not trying to deny that. I’m just saying that Mueller… Let me ask you this. If public opinion swung to Trump’s favor in this thing, do you think that would affect whether or not Mueller does whatever he can to damage and harm Trump?

CALLER: I have a feeling that it would.

RUSH: You do?

CALLER: Yes, I do.

RUSH: See, I don’t. I don’t. If public opinion came out in favor of Trump, I think Mueller would still try to destroy him. I think the media… I don’t think it would matter. I think that’s the point here. I don’t think any of this is happening under the rubric of democracy. That’s the whole point. The Washington establishment doesn’t care about public opinion. They resent public opinion. They don’t want to be governed by it whatsoever. Only election result — and then if they don’t get what they want, look what they do. Now, Mueller cares about reputation, like all of these clowns do.

He cares about historical legacy, cares about all of that, and he can read the tea leaves. But there he’s gonna be much more concerned what the media says than what public opinion is. ‘Cause public opinion doesn’t write history. His media buddies are gonna be writing history, and if Mueller would do anything that looked like he was losing enthusiasm to go after Trump he would be dead. The media would turn on this guy faster than you could see. But I appreciate the call. I really do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s another example. You know, we were talking yesterday about resenting having to talk what the media talks about. This story, “Trump Wanted to Order Justice Department to Prosecute Comey and Clinton.” Well, he didn’t! He didn’t! Now there’s a whole story and now a whole day of news about what Trump wanted to do, as though even that is illegal.