RUSH: Conrad Black writing yesterday at National Review under the headline: “President Trump Has Already Won — As the year ends, the Trump legal drama winds down towards its tawdry end. The immense fraudulent fantasy of a Benedict Arnold on steroids collaborating with a foreign enemy, a Manchurian Candidate ‘groomed for the presidency by his Russian controllers,’ has come down to a squalid dispute between the president, his crooked former lawyer, and the publisher of the National Enquirer over the nature of incentivizing the pre-electoral silence of a porn star and a former Playboy bunny.

“The slab-faced, trim and grim Robert Mueller, closing in like a heat-seeking missile on the start of the third year of the most ineffective and redundant investigation in history, could be a brilliant straight man, desperately serious and purposeful as he silently marches across our television screens every night in reruns of the same old news film in the elaborate pretense that he is doing something useful and important. It is the same pattern as the Clinton investigation, which began with the financial improprieties of Whitewater and meandered around to checking the president’s semen against a White House intern’s carefully preserved dress.

“The lust to tear down a president leads ostensibly serious and responsible people to act contemptibly, and ultimately to become absurd. Many of the president’s enemies do not, cannot possibly, realize what is happening to them. … The country knew what it was getting with Donald Trump; the fact that he affronted scores of millions of Americans pleased a numerous enough mass of other Americans to elect him. His enemies attacked savagely, invented the Russian-collusion nonsense, have been forced off that ledge, and are now scruffing around in the gutter with this bunk about paying off indiscreet female claimants of former intimacy.

“It is very hard to make a serious claim that the payments to them were campaign contributions, or that anyone but Trump ultimately paid the money, but impossible to take the word of Michael Cohen and the publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, over that of the president to an extent that meets the required threshold of being ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ … All of these attacks — on the Trump charities, the Trump inauguration committee, and by the two angry (and greedy) women — is piffle.” P-i-f-f-l-e, for those of you in Rio Linda. It “is piffle. The president can’t lose this match politically, and as his opponents have descended beneath him, he has already won morally.”

Conrad Black, National Review yesterday.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, the interim or acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, has been cleared to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, meaning oversee Mueller and the special counsel investigation. The left was trying to get him disqualified because he had made some prior statements about Mueller and the investigation. But he’s been cleared by the same group of Justice Department lawyers that said Sessions had to recuse himself. So he’s in the clear here.

I met this guy at the White House bash on Monday evening. I was minding my own business talking to Bill Bennett, and the guy tapped me on the shoulder and I turned and saw him and I recognized his face immediately. He’s been on TV. He was just as nice as he could be, as complimentary as he could be, said he became a conservative because of this program. And, you know, you always love hearing that. To this day, folks, I have to tell you I remain — and it’s a good thing. I remain surprised when I find out who listens or who has over the years. But he’s really a good guy. There’s also…

You know the Trump nominee to be AG, Bill Barr? He wrote a 19-page memo some time ago unsolicited with his opinions, former attorney general for Bush 41. He’s been all over the Justice Department. He is eminently qualified, and there’s barely anybody out there who thinks he shouldn’t be involved and would not be a good attorney general. But he wrote a 19-page memo in which he just kind of ripped to shreds Mueller’s entire investigation on obstruction. I mean, really, the idea that the president obstructed justice by firing Comey is absurd.

He writes a memo explaining why, using statutory law as evidence, the Constitution as evidence. And then also casually mentioning to Comey (paraphrased), “You know, I hope you can go easy on this Flynn guy. Is a good guy, doesn’t deserve all.” That’s not obstruction, and he wrote a full memo on this. And the memo was critical of the obstruction aspects of Mueller’s charge, a couple of other things. So now they’re trying to say that Barr has no business being attorney general, ’cause he’s prejudged Mueller and this is just not fair.

So the effort is on to get out in front of this and be truthful and analytical about the memo that he wrote, which is actually very brilliant in terms of its analysis of Mueller’s investigation, what parts of it are questionable and so forth. Again, it was not written on behalf of Trump or anybody else. It was just… This is an intellectual. He is a very active legal aficionado, and he wrote it just to write it.

There might have been some purpose behind it that I can’t remember. But they’re trying to get him disqualified now ’cause they don’t want anybody in there who might not be fully on board with Mueller in the investigation. But the point is Matt Whitaker has been cleared so he can be the AG, and he’s been critical of certain aspects of Mueller’s investigation too. He’s been cleared to remain acting AG until the nomination of Bill Barr is dealt with.