RUSH: To audio sound bite number 19. This is to kind of illustrate the point that I made in audio sound bite number 1 about how the effort was underway and continues to get rid of Trump no matter what, even before he was inaugurated. This is the Bret Baier panel yesterday on Fox News Special Report.

We got Mara Liasson, Matthew Continetti — and, let’s see, who else is on there. Doesn’t matter. Mara Liasson, the question from Bret Baier: “How do the Democrats get impeachment without impeachment? How did they have these hearings and they go into the obstruction of justice case even though the underlying crime there’s not an indictment for it?” This is the question Bret Baier had for his panel.

CONTINETTI: It’s not pursuing the Mueller report, it’s going after Trump’s financial records, his tax returns, the accountant, the bank statements.

JASON RILEY: Yeah.

CONTINETTI: I believe the Democratic strategy is to continue these investigations in searching for something, perhaps in those financial records —

LIASSON: Yeah.

CONTINETTI: — that they can then use to impeach Donald Trump.

LIASSON: Or, not even to impeach —

CONTINETTI: (crosstalk)

LIASSON: — just to undermine.

CONTINETTI: Right.

LIASSON: This is what the Republicans did with Benghazi and Hillary. This is what they want to do is just chip away at him if they can.

RUSH: What does she mean, “This is what the Republicans did with Benghazi and Hillary.” The Republicans didn’t do anything with Benghazi and Hillary. That’s the whole point. Nothing happened! Hillary gets away with saying, “What does it matter now? What difference does it make now?”

Anyway, the point of this is that, according to Matthew Continetti, hey, this isn’t even about the Mueller report anymore. That’s just being used as a steppingstone. They’re really now going after Trump’s business, financial records, tax returns, all of that.

Yeah. But Bob Mueller is the pedal-to-the-metal. Bob Mueller is the foot on the gas pedal. Bob Mueller’s little eight minutes yesterday where he didn’t add — folks, this is really important — he didn’t add anything new, yet look at the interpretation: Mueller confirmed today that Trump did it. Mueller confirmed today that he would have been indicted if he weren’t president. Mueller confirmed Trump is lawless. Mueller confirms Trump broke the law.

Nothing anywhere says that. So the Democrats and impeachment. And this is where the truth comes in to play. Impeachment’s a political thing. It’s not legal. Meaning, you don’t do it unless you can achieve it. And to achieve it, you need a conviction in the Senate. If you go through impeachment but you don’t win, like the Republicans did with Clinton, then the conventional wisdom is it kills you.

If you fail at impeachment, it’s gonna cost you big time. The voters don’t like it, voters don’t like this kind of waste of time pursuit, particularly if it doesn’t result in the president being found guilty or convicted of anything.

Well, the Democrats don’t have the Senate. They also don’t have the evidence. What are they gonna impeach him on? “Well, he lied.” Yeah, about what? They’re gonna have to make some kind of case. This is where the truth, which so often seems absent or hidden or irrelevant or unknown, this is where the truth enters the frame big time. Because if it were universally accepted, if the president of the United States, Donald Trump, were seen by the people of this country the way he is portrayed in the Drive-By Media, then impeachment would be a slam dunk, would it not?

I mean, if everybody in this country thought that Trump was a reprobate, and if everybody thought he was a criminal, and everybody thought it was the biggest mistake in the world that he won the presidency, if everybody thought, if 70%, if 55%, 60% of the people thought that, they wouldn’t be hesitating a second. But they are hesitating.

Now, one of the things they’re doing undeniably is using this for fundraising. And they are using their base just like MSNBC used their audience. And the MSNBC audience is demonstrating that it doesn’t have any loyalty to MSNBC hosts at all. For two years MSNBC promised its audience Trump was history, Trump was convicted, Trump was gonna go, Mueller was gonna have the goods, Trump was gonna be found guilty of collusion, he was gone.

Then the report comes out, nothing. MSNBC is steadily losing audience rapidly since the Mueller report came out and even before. Their talent, their hosts are not enough to keep that audience there. Why? Because that audience is not being satisfied. That audience has been lied to for two years and was let down. They don’t trust MSNBC.

It’s the same thing here. The Democrat base is being used. They’re being used to fundraise. They’re being used, they’re stoking ’em, they’re promising impeachment, they’re talking about impeachment, people are donating money on the basis. If they don’t do it, and Pelosi doesn’t want to do it, then there could be hell to pay. And there could be hell to pay if they do do it! Which is what Pelosi’s fear is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A couple of impeachment stories here. The first one, this is from McClatchy (paraphrasing) “The Dam Has Burst: Liberals Warn Democrats Risk Backlash by Not Impeaching Trump. Leading Democrats remain fearful that impeaching President Trump will bolster his reelection campaign.

But if Robert Mueller’s brief, unexpected statement did anything Wednesday, it clarified that a Democrat Party that does not embrace impeachment still faces a potentially sizable political risk, especially from core supporters demanding more loudly than ever before that the House try to remove Trump from office. Ezra Levin, co-founder of the influential liberal activist group, Indivisible, said, ‘There is a real danger if Democrats fail to have message clarity and moral clarity when it comes to this.’ His warning was emblematic of the response to the former special counsel’s remarks about…” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then in the same news agency, McClatchy News, another story (paraphrasing) “Why Nancy Pelosi Isn’t Talking Trump Impeachment: Most congressional Democrats heard one message in Robert Mueller’s public statement on Wednesday: It’s up to you to punish President Donald Trump. But House speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled unwillingness yesterday to take a leap that many on the political left have already made — impeachment. Investigating and potentially impeaching Trump dominated Capitol Hill talk all day Wednesday and last night behind closed doors, where influential Democrats urge starting an inquiry and out loud among progressives demanding action.

“Pelosi did not utter the word Wednesday in her terse five-paragraph statement issued two hours after Mueller left it to Congress to investigate Trump for…” Does anybody think Mueller is coordinating with Democrats in Congress? Well, look at the way this is written. (paraphrasing) “After Mueller left it to Congress to investigate Trump further…”

Go out and look at Jerry Nadler, (paraphrasing) “Well, I don’t think we need him to testify anymore. He pretty much gave us what we needed.” On the other hand Pencil Neck is saying, (paraphrasing) “He didn’t say anything different. We still need him up here talking to us.” So Schiff is kind of… He’s not playing ball, if there is coordination. I’m not sure there is, but it’s clear that Mueller and the Democrats both are part of the cabal that wants to get rid of Trump. Nothing, nothing would surprise me.

If there’s collusion between Mueller and the Democrats, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a dossier, which there is, the Mueller report, the Mueller dossier. Schiff is saying (paraphrasing) “I don’t think Mueller’s statements move the needle on impeachment.” So, if there is coordination, little Pencil Neck here doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

On MSNBC little Pencil Neck said he doesn’t think anything Mueller said earlier in the day really moves the needle regarding impeaching President Trump. Nadler, on the other hand, Jerry Nadler said (paraphrasing) “Oh, yeah. He gave us everything we needed. Impeachment is coming.” The Democrats’ leading presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said impeachment may be unavoidable now. Unavoidable now! They’re gonna have to… Why? Because of what Mueller did? Remember, folks, I got a letter, I got an email yesterday… I just put it out there because it’s fun to consider all of this stuff. The email I got yesterday said, “Rush, before we start jumping to any conclusions here, let’s operate under one theory, and that theory is that impeachment helps Trump.

Whether it does or not, we’re gonna operate under that hypothetical for a moment. Impeachment helps Trump.” So here comes Mueller. What does Mueller do? Mueller essentially says, (paraphrasing) “My hands are tied. I know this guy is stomach, I know this guy’s a reprobate, I know this guy did it, but I can’t do anything about it because I can’t indict a president. It’s up to you!”

And so here comes Nadler, and here comes Biden, here comes all these people, (paraphrasing) “We gotta do it, we gotta do it, we gotta do it!” Mueller says, (paraphrasing)”We gotta do it, we gotta do it.” Now, if doing it helps Trump — remember, that’s the hypothetical we’re working under here in this little discussion piece, this little think piece here –- what did Mueller actually do? If he’s encouraging them to go through with it… Then the question becomes, does it help Trump or not? Pelosi clearly thinks it’s gonna help Trump.

Remember how Washington believes in the past and that it repeats itself verbatim, which is why they’re trying to relive Watergate here, which is why Don McGahn is John Dean, for example. And reliving Watergate means getting rid of the president. But that didn’t do impeachment. They were able to force Nixon out before impeachment by driving his numbers down.

On the Clinton side, Clinton was impeached, and he was indicted by Ken Starr 11 counts. He ended up surrendering his law license. He committed perjury. He suborned perjury; he was found guilty of all these things. The Democrats have been rubbed raw over this. But the Republicans paid a political price. The Republicans went down in flames in the next election. Because Clinton was a popular president when he was impeached. And so Pelosi remembers that. And she remembers that impeachment did not help the Republicans; it hurt them.

Pelosi is also sitting there thinking, like a lot of Democrats are, “Why should we do this? We’re in the driver’s seat. The guy’s on the ropes. Everybody thinks he colluded. We got the Mueller report out there. We own the media. We can set any narrative we want. The only thing that can hurt us is stuff that we do! Things that we don’t do can’t hurt us.”

It’s that old song again, it’s that it’s old theory. Like I’ve shared with you the analogy of top 40 radio. You can’t be hurt by a song you don’t play. Meaning, if you don’t play a song that people don’t like, then they’re not gonna tune out. If you play a song people don’t like, they might tune out and go to some other station. You can’t be hurt by something you don’t do, because nobody will really know you never did it.

I maintain that a top 40 radio station could get away with never playing the number one song and not be hurt by it. Nobody would ever know for sure. That’s not what they do. They play the number one song every 72 minutes. But they can get away with not playing it. But, if they play something over and over that people hate, it’s sayonara. So Pelosi’s sitting there thinking, “If we do this, we can’t get a conviction in the Senate so what’s it gonna do for us? It’s not gonna accomplish anything.”

And maybe worse. Maybe it’s gonna drudge up sympathy for Trump, maybe even among people that don’t like him because still, if they start impeachment, they’re gonna have to list the crimes, the high crimes and misdemeanors, and they don’t have any. They’ve got, “Well, he lied. Well, yeah, okay, he lied. What are the high crimes and misdemeanors? Well, he obstructed justice. No. There isn’t… No. He hadn’t been charged with any of that. Well, he colluded with the Russians. No. No, no, no. Your official Bible says there wasn’t anything… He couldn’t prove any collusion with Russia.”

So she’s sitting there saying, “What are we gonna impeach him over? The fact that we don’t like him? That he’s a reprobate, a criminal, whatever? We don’t have any evidence here. So what Pelosi is doing… She knows full well that the lunatic base wants Trump impeached because they think that’s what it’s gonna take to get rid of Trump. And there’s so much hatred for Trump that they’ve got to worry on the Pelosi Democrat side that something has to be done with that hate.

They’ve gotta find a way to monetize that hate, monetize it either in fundraising or votes. But they can’t afford to let that hate be, shall we say, unrequited or unserviced. So they’ve got their entire base literally hating Donald Trump, and they need an outlet for the hate. Impeachment is the outlet. Pelosi is hoping that talking about it, holding it out as a possibility, dangling it as a carrot will be enough. Others on the Democrat side say, “That ain’t gonna be enough and we gotta go beyond fundraising. We need to actually do it.” And there’s all kinds of people advising them.

Grab audio sound bite number 4. Richard Da Nang Dick. Dick Blumenthal. This guy… You know people that just grate on you just… This guy just rubs me raw. He sounds like, (impression) “I don’t know, I just don’t… Mr. Perfect, never done anything except lie about my military service.” He sits there in holy judgment of everybody else. He was on Fredo Prime Time last night, CNN, and Fredo said, “What did Mueller mean to you today?”

BLUMENTHAL: What he meant to me was, number one, the President of the United States would be in handcuffs, criminally charged but for the fact he is the sitting President. That’s what almost 1,000 former prosecutors, including myself, federal Attorney General and assistant Attorney Generals said in effect, that he would be criminally charged but for that memorandum which articulates Department of Justice policy, not a rule, that the Constitution forbids charging him while he’s in office.

RUSH: Oh, yeah, so he’d be in handcuffs. This is what they’re saying. Yeah, Trump would be in handcuffs. Did Mueller actually say that he would have charged Trump with something? What he said was, he couldn’t exonerate them. paraphrasing) “If the president didn’t commit a crime, we would have said so.” Now, these guys are all running with it. I think this personifies the rabid lunatic Democrat base demanding impeachment.

They want to see Trump in handcuffs. They couldn’t even begin to tell you why anymore, just that they hate the guy, that he won and all that. So Pelosi’s getting advice from Karl Rove and others on what to do about impeachment.