RUSH: Okay. We’re gonna move on to presidential politics here for a second. We’ve pretty much devoted most of the program (first hour intensely) to the subject of what used to be called abortion in America. But let’s start here with audio sound bite No. 1. Nancy Pelosi. This morning at her weekly press briefing, a reporter said (impression), “You said the committee should be left to a consensus of its own devices. Are you committed to allowing a floor vote, whatever conference agreement that they have? Even if it includes border wall money?”

Now, I want to set this up. You know, Trump reopens the government and gives everybody three weeks to start negotiating ’cause that’s what the Democrats said. The Democrats said, “Open the government, Mr. Trump, and we can talk! Open the government and we can talk.” Nobody in their right mind thought the Democrats were gonna start negotiating, and they’re not, and Trump knew this as well. So it’s been a week, pretty much. Last Friday the shutdown ended. It’s Day 7 today. So the people are asking Pelosi: So how are you doing in talks? Are you talking about a wall? Is there going to be a wall?

PELOSI: There’s not gonna be any wall money in the legislation. However, if they have some suggestions about certain localities, technology, some infrastructure — as I said — about the ports of entry. We might need more ports of entry. That’s part of the negotiation. It is not a negotiation for the president to say… What did he say today? “It doesn’t matter what Congress does.” (unintelligible) I knew that he wanted it all to himself. I mean, oh, really? (snickering) The president who wants to have Congress be completely irrelevant in how we meet the needs of the American people? Noooo. Come on.

RUSH: I don’t know. More and more, I don’t know what this woman is talking about. But it’s safe to say that she’s admitting there’s never gonna be any money for a wall in anything she has anything to do with. And this is not a mystery. It’s who she is. There won’t be any money for a wall no matter what. So the pressure is being brought to bear on Trump. He has responded to this, and also — we didn’t get to it yesterday, but — there was a hearing up on Capitol Hill with a bunch of intelligence chiefs, and they’re out saying a bunch of various things about things, and Trump basically said, “They’re naive.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” which just caused Washington to have a conniption. And it has caused Chuck Schumer to say that it’s time for the intel leaders to “stage an intervention” with Trump. Last night, Schumer sent a letter to the “intelligence chiefs to ‘stage an intervention’ with President Trump just hours after the president called them ‘naive’ in a tweet. … Schumer asked that [Dan] Coats — along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher [“Smirkful”] Wray — set up a meeting with Trump to give him a reality check.

“‘You cannot allow the president’s ill-advised and unwarranted comments today to stand,’ Schumer wrote.” What do you call this? I mean, here you have the Senate minority leader getting hold of intelligence chiefs (which are in the executive branch) and telling them they need to go do an “intervention” with Trump! Now, the kicker is, Trump was absolutely right to call them naive about Iran.

These people have been telling us for years that Iran was not building a nuke! Look…. (sigh) The “intelligence community,” quote-unquote, has had a lot of misses. They totally blew, apparently, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They totally blew the Iranian quest for a nuclear military device, a missile and other means of delivery for that nuclear weapon. They’ve been telling everybody that the Iranians are not engaged in such a plan, and that even if they did turn the switch to start trying to create one, it would be years and years and years.

I mean, Dan Coats earlier had told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community found that Iran is not seeking to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump pointed out in his Wednesday morning tweet that Iran is testing rockets and more — and he added, correctly, “Perhaps intelligence ought to go back to school. The intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong.” Well, that just, once again, blew up the swamp.

So then Pelosi’s press conference comes. “Is there gonna be anything on the wall or any of that?” She says, “No, of course not.” So let’s jump forward to Trump sound bites this afternoon. Actually, this was around middle of the day. Trump is meeting with reporters in Washington and a reporter said, “Do you still have confidence in Gina Haspel,” CIA, “and Dan Coats to give you good advice? I mean, if you’re tweeting that they’re being naive, do you have confidence in them?”

THE PRESIDENT: I disagree with certain things that they said. I think I’m right. But time will prove me right, probably. I think Iran is a threat. I think it’s a very big threat. I disagree very much on that. I also think — and you’ll be seeing something next week, ’cause you look at what’s happened in Syria with respect to ISIS and the caliphate. We took over a lot of area in the last two weeks. We’ve done tremendous in the last couple of weeks. I think we’re doing so well on a foreign policy basis. You look at North Korea. Many of you are gonna be traveling with us to North Korea. We made tremendous progress with North Korea. … I have great respect for a lot of people, but I don’t always agree with everybody.

RUSH: Look… (sigh) There’s no great mystery what’s going on here. Intelligence chiefs, intelligence agencies, intelligence experts. Who are the people who have been the lying sources for all of this Trump-Russia collusion crap for the last 2-1/2 years? These very people! I mean, maybe not these express, same people, but their agencies. To the point that their objective is to nullify and render incompetent and irrelevant Donald Trump. So they’re called up there to testify, and they’re swamp dwellers to the T, just like the people querying them on Capitol Hill are swamp dwellers to the T.

Of course, they’re all unified that Trump poses an existential threat to life as they’ve known it in Washington. “Trump is a boob! He’s an incompetent!” It’s not unusual that they would hang tough. It’s very Trump-like that he’s not gonna back down from these people, and saying that he’s gonna be proved right on all of these threats. But you can argue whether it would make more sense publicly for Trump to endorse them (I mean, they are his intel chiefs, his administration) and then privately do what he has to do dealing with them behind the scenes.

But Trump chooses to make it public because he doesn’t see the need to hide anything of his true thoughts on these people. It’s another one of these times we’re not used to seeing this kind of thing things. It kind of makes some people nervous; others applaud it. But there’s no mystery. There’s no doubt here that all of the CIA, DIA, FBI — you name it, all the acronyms of all these different agencies — would just as soon find a way to get rid of Trump as work with him. Now, here’s Trump answering questions about Pelosi…

A reporter said, “Pelosi said this morning there’s not gonna be a wall in this deal. She did say she’d be open to other kinds of barriers, but not a wall. Would you accept that?”

THE PRESIDENT: No, because if there’s no wall it doesn’t work. She’s just playing games. So if there’s no wall, it doesn’t work — and we’re building the wall right now. I mean, we’re finishing up design on certain areas. The most important area is the Rio Grande area and others. We are building a lot of wall. You know, I’m not waiting for this committee, and I’ve told a lot of people, “I don’t expect much coming out of the committee,” because I keep hearing the words that, “We’ll give you what you want but we’re not gonna give you a wall.” And the problem is, if they don’t give us a wall, it doesn’t work. Without a wall, it doesn’t work.

RUSH: Right. So he knows they lied to him. “End the shut down and we’ll start talking.” Nobody fell for that. Don’t think that there’s some surprise. (chuckles) Well, there might be some surprised Republicans or Never Trumpers somewhere who still take Democrats and liberals at their word.

But anybody with half a brain knew that Pelosi and Schumer, none of these people were gonna actually start talking about a wall after they got the government reopened. I mean, the government reopening is their victory, and there’s no reason, as far as they’re concerned, strategically or politically, to negotiate with Trump on a wall. They’re not gonna permit it. If legislation’s involved, there will never be a wall, even though that’s the way Trump wants it. Now, Trump said he’d like to see what would happen if he removed the wall that is in Tijuana.

THE PRESIDENT: By the way, if you go to Tijuana and you take down that wall, you will have so many people coming into our country that Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall. She’ll be begging for a wall. She will say, “Mr. President, please, please give us a wall.” It would be very interesting. Some people have suggested, let me take the wall along California, let’s move it to Arizona, let’s move it to Texas.

RUSH: His point is that they already have a wall in California. It’s at Tijuana, and California’s already benefiting from it. So let’s move it! Let’s see what happens. I guess he’s being facetious. I don’t ever see a circumstance where Pelosi would beg anybody to build a wall. Do you? Well, okay, around her house, but that wall’s already there. I can’t imagine Pelosi ever having a problem with open borders and massive numbers of people crossing into the country illegally.

I can’t imagine Nancy Pelosi, while Donald Trump is president, ever standing for a wall. I know these people have all authorized the building of a wall in the past. They’ve all authorized 10 times the amount of money for the wall that Trump has asked. I know all that. I mean, deep down they know that it works. They’re just not gonna let Trump have it. One final bite here. Reporter said, “Mr. President, you’ve said the wall is basically being held hostage for political reasons by Democrats. Is there anything you would have done differently?”

THE PRESIDENT: I think by having the shutdown, we’ve set the table for where we are now. If I didn’t do the shutdown, people wouldn’t know, they wouldn’t understand the subject. Now they understand the subject. They realize what a humanitarian crisis it is. It’s called, like in deal-making, setting the table or, you know, setting the stage. We’ve set the stage for what’s gonna happen on the 15th of February. I don’t think they’re gonna make a deal. I see what’s happening. They’re all saying, “Oh, let’s do this, but we’re not giving one dime for the wall.” That’s okay. But if they’re not gonna give money for the wall it’s not gonna work and if it’s not gonna work then the politicians are really wasting a lot of time.

RUSH: They are. And he told Republicans that you’re wasting time negotiating with these Democrats if you think they’re gonna get a wall. And the Republicans are tweeting — it’s kind of amazing. Some Republicans are tweeting out, “Well, we’ve been trying to talk to ’em for a week but they still won’t come to –” Really? You’re surprised at this? And, by the way, the idea that we can flood the news with the fact that the Democrats are not negotiating in good faith and somehow create negative attitudes about the Democrats, that isn’t gonna work, either!

That’s not the dynamic here. “But, Rush, but, Rush, the majority of the American people are for a wall and they must know, they’ve gotta be told the Democrats are against it.” They already know this. But tweeting out or trying to explain how the Democrats are not even negotiating in good faith, that’s not gonna create a single vote against the Democrats. But by the same token it’s no different than when Ocasio-Cortez or any of these other loco weeds come along and promise free everything and we say “how you gonna pay for that? We don’t have the money.” That does not dissuade people from supporting it, a point that I’ve been trying to make intently for the past couple of weeks.

So the idea the Democrats aren’t negotiating, yeah. I maintain to you that when the president offered a deal, 300,000 DACA, 200,000 TPS, whatever it is, we’ll give you Democrats a lot of what you want for $5.7 billion for the wall. He knew they were gonna reject it. He knew it. The bill was proposed to be rejected, I’m convinced. I think the president also knew last Friday when he gave them 15 days to negotiate or else he was gonna do a national emergency. He knew that they’re not gonna sit down and talk, and he knew that there’s no way that Pelosi’s gonna ever authorize any House legislation money for a wall while he’s president.

So there’s something else that is in the pipeline, whether it’s a national emergency declaration or whatever. But the president, he’s not naive. He’s not part of the crowd that thinks the Republicans were gonna be negotiated with by the Democrats and now the Democrats aren’t. He’s not. Nobody expected. Opening the government is their victory. Why water anything down beyond that? That’s not who they are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair. By the way, I got my show prep all out of whack here. Here it is. There’s a new poll out. This is Breitbart’s story. The poll is from some outfit called Ear to the Ground. You ready for this? 2700 Trump voters, poll claims that Trump will lose 43% of his base of support if a border wall is not built. Now, this polling outfit, Ear to the Ground Polling is a new company as of 2017, and they are led by the Sorock Research Group. Its head is a woman named Anne Sorock. She’s written pieces for the Daily Signal.

The poll claims that only 43% of Trump voters consider the conclusion of the partial government shutdown a victory for Trump even though 60% approved of ending it. The poll claims that Trump supporters support Trump building the border wall by declaring a national emergency by 95%. That’s a humongous number for a poll to produce. Ninety-five percent? Ninety-five percent of Trump supporters support declaring a national emergency.

Anyway, the article goes on to point out that this poll shows why the Democrats and the media are adamantly opposed to funding the wall. And it makes perfect sense politically. From the beginning of the Trump presidency, even during the transition, the objective has been to separate Trump’s base voters from him. The Russia collusion story, the never-ending stories of Trump-Russia collusion have all been oriented toward causing Trump supporters to doubt their decision to vote for him. And what this poll is showing is that 43% of Trump’s voters will abandon him if there is no wall.

Now, if you’re Nancy Pelosi or Chuck You Schumer and you’re looking at this and you believe the poll, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna make sure that there’s never any wall built with any of your assistance or any federal money whatsoever. Now, I don’t think Pelosi and the Democrats even need this poll to buttress their position. They aren’t gonna give the wall simply ’cause they’re not gonna have Trump win anything, especially in the two years now leading up to the presidential election. There’s simply no way.

So however this is gonna get done, it is not gonna happen bipartisanly, it’s not gonna happen with cooperation, it’s not gonna happen with the parties proving they can work together for the benefit of the American people. None of that. It’s going to have to happen some other way.

TheHill.com, get this. “Democrats Give Themselves From Wiggle Room In Border Talks.” Now, this is an article on the negotiations that just began over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security. As usual, this headline is completely misleading because the quotes in this story from Democrat leaders all show that they are completely opposed to any funding for a wall. But the Drive-Bys know full well that the headline is what 95% of people see when they read the news and so the people, “Oh, the Democrats, they’re participating, some wiggle room, maybe the Democrats are –” And then when there’s no wall built it won’t be because the Democrats weren’t helpful. I mean, it’s journalistic malpractice yet again over and over and over.