RUSH: Jennifer in Columbus, Indiana. Great to have you. I’m glad you called. How are you doing?

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I’m a longtime listener, but this is my first time calling you. I wanted to let you know that the main reason I voted for Trump to be president was to keep Hillary from destroying America. But now Trump is my guy. And no matter what Cohen says, he will stay that way.

RUSH: I’m glad you were first today. I’m glad we got you up here because I think that pretty much sums up where the average Trump voter is and why they voted for Trump. I can’t tell you, in fact, how many times I’ve heard this from people when I’ve asked them over the years, “Well, why’d you vote for Trump?” Anti-Hillary. People were scared to death of what four years of Hillary, slash, Obama would do to this country — i.e., change it forever. Make it impossible to put this country back together. And that prospect scared the hell out of people, and Trump was it. Trump was the only way to stop Hillary Clinton. And such you haven’t changed your opinion of the Democrats, right? They still represent the same threat that Hillary did —

CALLER: Yes, they do.

RUSH: — two years ago?

CALLER: Yes, they do. But what’s changed is me. I didn’t take Trump very seriously. Now I look at him over in Vietnam and what he’s done for the economy, and I couldn’t be more proud to have him —

RUSH: Wait a minute.

CALLER: — as my president.

RUSH: Wait a second. When you went to vote in 2016, you really didn’t take Trump all that seriously, this was just whatever the hell to do to stop Hillary? That’s really what your vote was about, that was it?

CALLER: Yes, it was.

RUSH: And now two years later you have an appreciation for Trump that you didn’t have when you voted for him?

CALLER: That’s absolutely correct.

RUSH: Wow.

CALLER: That’s absolutely correct. I am so impressed with putting America first. I have seen it firsthand, how he has helped the economy. He is smart. He doesn’t always do or say the right thing at the right time, but by golly that man is getting stuff done.

RUSH: Let me ask you this. Do you like Chef Boyardee? And do you wish you were being invited to Hollywood red carpet openings?

CALLER: No. No. No, I don’t want to be anywhere near it.

RUSH: So you don’t wish you could make a reservation at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant tonight?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: You’re happy with who you are, you’re happy with who you voted for, and you haven’t changed your mind on who poses the greatest threat to America, the Democrat Party?

CALLER: That is correct. They would destroy and change this country to something that is unrecognizable.

RUSH: Sure would.

CALLER: Trump is awesome. He’s not perfect, but he’s awesome.

RUSH: Well, he’s all we’ve got. I mean, can you imagine — let me read to you a Trump tweet. Trump’s in Hanoi. He’s in Vietnam, as they said when I was in school. Donald J. Trump: “I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate Senator from Connecticut (how is Connecticut doing?). His war stories of his heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud — he was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders!” Do know any other Republican who would ever continue to call out these phony, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller Democrats like Donald Trump does?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: There isn’t anybody.

CALLER: No. I am so proud of him for standing up, calling ’em out, not backing down, not — I don’t want to use that word — not being a stand-up guy. He knows what’s right, and he’s fighting. I’m so proud of him for fighting day after day after day. You get depressed and you get Democrats and they’re all ganging up on him trying to wear him down and push him down, and that man is still standing, and not only that, he’s fighting —

RUSH: Yeah. About that, let me ask you one more question, because Cohen —

CALLER: Sure.

RUSH: — said today, he told the people of the country that Donald Trump never wanted to win, never expected to win. Does Donald Trump look like somebody who doesn’t want to win, to you, and didn’t expect to?

CALLER: No. Donald Trump was in it to win it from the minute that he started it. He is all the way, all the time.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: There is no way he did it as a ruse.

RUSH: Jennifer, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Again, glad you got through. We move to Pittsboro, North Carolina. Ed, you’re next. How you doing, sir?

CALLER: Hello.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, look. You know, I’m listening to the testimony today. So if Cohen testified in front of Congress that Trump had no expectation during the 2016 campaign to win, how did he knowingly collude with the Russians to win?

RUSH: Well, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. If he didn’t want to win, why collude with ’em? And if he didn’t expect to win, why collude with ’em? But again, Cohen doesn’t have any evidence of collusion. He doesn’t want to go there. Let me find — I’ve got so many people that have tweeted that — Katie Pavlich. And there it is. Cohen says he wouldn’t call anything about Trump and Russia colluding. Well, folks, keep in mind that’s what all of this started out as being.

I think it is an amazing — if you do a timeline of this, this whole thing started with this phony dossier that was used to get a phony FISA warrant to spy on the campaign of a guy who we’re told today didn’t even want to win and didn’t expect to win. And then for the next two years we are told every day, multiple times a day, that Trump stole the election, participated, colluded, conspired with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.

It was all over the Drive-By Media. People are so inundated with it that polling data suggests that 42% of the American people actually now believe that Russia tampered with actual votes. There has never been any evidence of it. Whenever Mueller has indicted any of these Russian trolls or Flynn or anybody else, Rosenstein’s made it a point to say no election was changed, no votes were tampered with.

So we start with that. Keep this in mind. We start with — and that’s a horrible charge: The president of the United States rigged an election, he stole it, he colluded with one of the nation’s premier enemies to do it. And here we are two years later, and the star witness the Democrats and the media can bring forward to try to damage Donald Trump is a guy who has been convicted of lying to Congress and is going to jail in three months for doing it, who says that he cannot address Trump-Russia collusion. There wasn’t any.

I mean, do you realize the scope of this hoax? Do you realize how much it has collapsed on them? Do you realize the extent to which it has fallen apart? Try if you can to remember your outrage and anger starting two years ago. You couldn’t get away from these stories that Trump rigged, Trump stole, Trump colluded. We had anonymous sources from the most credible agencies — intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, all saying that the proof was there, it’s just gonna take a little time to dig it up, and the media kept reporting it.

And here we are two years later, and the star witness, the best they’ve got is a convicted liar going to jail in three months who cannot say that there was any Trump-Russia collusion. That’s how far this has fallen apart, and that is how desperate they have become. And in all of this today, their star witness has yet to say or accuse or acknowledge any illegal activity by Donald Trump. I mean, this is one of the biggest explosions of a hoax.

And with Cohen acknowledging that he saw, doesn’t know of any Trump-Russia collusion, that tells us Mueller doesn’t have any. It tells us the SDNY doesn’t have any. Because if Cohen had that, if Cohen had the golden goose — this is what they have wrapped everything up in, is this collusion with Russia — if Cohen had anything that was truly damaging, I am telling you again, his plea deal would not include jail time.

He would be free as a bird. He would be the biggest star on earth. He would already have book deals. He would have so much star power, so much respect, he’d be the biggest guy in the Democrat Party today. He would not be going to jail if he really had anything on Trump that could facilitate legitimate impeachment hearings.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: James in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Welcome to the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush!

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: I just want to let you know that, you know, I voted for Trump because of the Supreme Court. I figured if we lost the Supreme Court, we would probably lose our country. Since then… You know, I was kind of a closet Trump supporter, and since then I’ve come to really admire our president and become a defender of his. I speak out on his behalf to moderates and liberals alike, even some conservatives.

RUSH: Okay, let me ask… I’ve only got a minute and a half here, and I want to ask you a question.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: You’re the second caller today who said you were kind of lukewarm when it came to actually voting for Trump. You were voting against Democrats, you were trying to protect the Supreme Court, and you were lukewarm about Trump. But now in two years, you’ve become a Trump advocate. How did that happen with all of these daily, nonstop attacks on Trump — this effort to impugn him, slander him, libel him? How did you get past that in order to now admire him?

CALLER: Because he pushes back. He doesn’t lay down. You know, the Republicans in Congress and even in here locally — our local Republicans — they don’t push back. They’re afraid, and he’s got enough backbone — and enough cojones, if you will — to push back. And that’s what we need. We need somebody up there to show what conservatism is.

RUSH: And one more question.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: When the Democrats start tarring and feathering — and the media — Trump as some immoral reprobate, are you of the impression that the Democrats are paragons of virtue and morality?

CALLER: Absolutely not.

RUSH: Well, exactly.

CALLER: I mean, if you look at them, they are so out of it. I mean, with this abortion thing? I’m telling you, that’s got me so worked up that I am now looking at going and volunteering at some pro-life organizations ’cause it’s so bad!

RUSH: There you go. I actually think — and I said this at the end of yesterday’s program. I think that a lot of this stuff is starting to boomerang on the Democrats and nobody knows it yet.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Rhonda in Galion, Ohio. You’re next. It’s great to have you with us today. Hi.

CALLER: Oh, Rush, what an honor it is to speak to you, and being a longtime listener and a recent graduate of The Caller College from Mr. Snerdley, the point is that Cohen is speaking to Congress while our president — our sitting president — is on foreign soil, making these accusations without him even here to defend himself. He’s in a foreign country. I have called Portman. I have called Jordan to support him with the prayers that… What else can we do?

RUSH: Just keep doing what you’re doing. People ask this all the time. But I think… Because you don’t know how many people you’re influencing as you go ahead and do these things. You never know. You never know how many people are persuaded by your own passion or your enthusiasm, and so I would just encourage you to continue your passion and be unafraid in speaking of Trump whenever the subject comes up.