RUSH: Exactly what I thought would happen, and I told you. Exactly what I thought would happen is beginning to happen, ladies and gentlemen. Let me tell you how Trump has these people skunked. In the first place, we had the story late yesterday that Pencil Neck has been outed by the New York Times for having had preliminary contact with somebody that’s being called “a whistleblower” who’s not a whistleblower and arranging this whole thing.
It’s like Hillary Clinton arranging the Steele dossier. After I had a chance to read this thing in depth after the program yesterday, I found out that it was Schiff’s office that spilled the beans to the New York Times! They knew this was coming and were trying to get out in front of it and nullify or dull the impact here by being the source of the information. Now, more on that as the program unfolds. At the TheHill.com, they just had to cringe when it came time to have to release this. President Donald Trump’s approval number in the Hill-HarrisX survey…
This is not Rasmussen. This is TheHill.com. It’s a Drive-By Media poll. Donald Trump’s approval number, they say, “ticked up.” It is up to 49%. That’s the highest mark this year. It is “a two-point increase from a Sept. 11-12 poll, but a two-point decrease from its previous peak of 51% last August.” Forget that. Look at the trend and look at the timing. It had to kill them! It had to kill them to report this. The new poll shows the approval rating for Trump among Americans has grown in the midst of this impeachment hoax.
Do you know why Pompeo was able to do that? Because they are not at the point where they can let subpoenas. They can’t compel anybody with what they’ve done. You officially embark on impeachment, you have the floor vote, you do everything to make it official; then you have subpoena power, then you can compel people to come up. They’re just sending letters to people asking them to show up! What’s happening… It’s all an illusion, like I told you yesterday.
So Schiff and his committee send a letter to Pompeo, the secretary of state. The media then takes over and reports (dramatically), “The committee has summoned the secretary of state who finds himself deeply entwined in the spinning, out of control controversy,” blah, blah, blah. So the media takes as a fact that Schiff sent a letter requesting Pompeo to show up and testify. Pompeo threw the letter in the trash. Well, I’m sure he kept it for posterity, but it has no force of law behind it.
There is no way that they can make Pompeo show up, and he told them to pound sand, effectively. But the media’s in there reporting (dramatically), “The committee has summoned the secretary of state, and the secretary of state is stonewalling the impeachment inquiry.” Folks, it’s nothing more than a campaign strategy. It’s nothing more than an illusion. There is no impeachment. They’re just calling their campaign strategy “impeachment,” and now that they’ve hustled into this — and this whole whistleblower thing is on the verge of backfiring on them in a major way and so is the entire effort.
They’ve even got Charlie Cook, who is the dean of pollsters and analysts and has The Cook Report in Washington… Whatever Charlie Cook says, all these inside-the-Beltway people stop, read it, and believe it. Charlie Cook is saying, “I don’t know if I’d be doing this if I were them,” meaning the Democrats. “I don’t know if I’d be doing this.” You know, another reason that it’s not an impeachment? Look at how they’re hurrying this thing on. Congress is on recess, and these guys are moving it along full speed.
It is pouring in. Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, continues to report the numbers and submit opinion pieces to go along with the numbers. All of the indications that this is causing people to abandon Trump? It’s the exact opposite. I’m talking about voters now. In the Beltway, it’s a different story. You’ve got the Never Trumpers on Fox and got the Never Trumpers outside Fox all claiming it’s all imploding on the president. It isn’t. They continue to misrepresent and lie what the president’s doing in that phone call to Ukraine.
The president’s actually pretty smart. He did another press conference today on the way to the Marine One helicopter. He’s going down to The Villages here in Florida, which is, what, outside Orlando? And he’s gonna make a speech down there, and he had one of those press gaggles. You know, where he stops. You hear the whine of the helicopter engine in the background. You can barely hear the screaming kids of Democrats in the media shouting their inane, childish questions, and Trump answers them.
I was just… You know, you’re reading the media today, and they continue to miscast. Here’s their talking point. This is why they are impeaching him, by the way. This is it. If you know how to watch ’em, as I do, if you know how to translate what they’re saying, as I do, what they are saying — and this is all they have. This is why they have called what they’re doing “impeachment.” They are claiming that on that phone call to the president of Ukraine that Trump asked Ukraine and the president to “dig up dirt” on his 2020 political opponent, which would be Joe Biden.
That’s not how Trump characterizes what he’s doing and that’s not what Trump was doing. But they are taking this and they’re running with it. They’re way premature, they’re way early, they can’t stop themselves, they can’t help themselves. It’s gonna come back and bite them. It’s in the process of doing that now, they are claiming that what Trump did was ask the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt. Remember Schiff even had to lie about it. He had to lie about it. The transcript of the phone call does not say anything of the sort.
But Schiff lied as committee chairman by saying that the president called the president of Ukraine and asked him to “make up” and “dig up dirt” on his opponent, “make up as much as you can, and don’t get back to me until you have done that.” That’s not what Trump did, and Trump perfectly characterized it here in his little press gaggle today and on previous occasions. What he is saying is that I, as president, have a duty to make sure that government officials are not corrupting or acting in a corrupt way in foreign governments.
The media and the Democrats have totally turned that, done a 180 on it, claiming that Trump’s digging up dirt on his 2020 opponent. But that is it. That is why Kasich said to CNN, “You can’t impeach a guy over a phone call.” That’s it. Yes, I watched a Democrat activist on Fox today. That’s the only thing they’ve got. This woman kept returning to that. No matter what objection was raised, no matter how it was pointed out that that’s not what Trump was doing, that’s all she had. “You can’t engage…”
In fact, it was a repeat of what Donna Brazile said yesterday on Fox. (paraphrased) “You can’t use the presidency to advance your own personal political fortunes!” So they’re saying that Trump was asking the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, and that’s not at all what was happening. But that’s all they’ve got, and because that’s all they’ve got, now they’ve got the whistleblower. They’re trying to make it look like somebody overheard Trump saying this.
It’s all as made up as the Russia collusion was, folks. It is as made up as that. It is as totally manufactured out of nothing as that is. There is no real impeachment. There is no impeachable offense or behavior by the president in this circumstance. The corruption was engaged in by Biden and his son. By the way, we may need an APB on Hunter Biden. Has anybody found the guy? Here’s a good way of looking at this. I saw somebody make this point. Let’s say that you have some money that you want to invest.
Would you call Goldman Sachs? Would you call the Blackstone Group (that’s Steve Schwarzman and his buddies)? Would you call Merrill Lynch? Would you call Wells Fargo? Or would you call Hunter Biden? Hunter Biden is the last person anybody would call to manager their wealth portfolio. He doesn’t know anything about it. He never has done it. He’s put on the board of this company that does it. He’s paid $50,000 a month. He got a big sweetheart cash bonus. This is how Biden took care of his kid.
This is what happens. Well, this is the United States government — the Obama administration’s vice president — corrupting the flow of business in Ukraine, and Trump wants this guy to find out the truth. What Trump’s actually doing — and I stress again. What Trump was actually doing was asking the president of Ukraine to be of assistance in the pursuit of the Barr investigation, the investigation into the investigation. There is a telltale sign…
If you are going wobbly, if you are getting weak-kneed, if you are beginning to doubt that the Barr investigation’s real or that it’s going to produce anything, let me give you a different way of looking at it. Barr has spent a lot of time in Italy. Barr is traveling all over Europe tracking down this investigation. Everywhere he goes, there is a Drive-By Media story featuring quotes from various people who say that Barr is “chasing a conspiracy theory.”
That’s why there’s such speed by the Democrats here to get this phony impeachment thing going. When they see polling data shows that Trump’s ticking up two points and his fundraising? And that’s just one poll. It’s happening in Rasmussen as well. Oh, and there’s a Monmouth poll out there. This is not insignificant. Monmouth is a poll that all these Drive-By people love and believe in. I didn’t catch the numbers. I caught the numbers for a split second. I tried jot them down here. I think, 43-37, believe that Biden engaged in corruption in Ukraine with his son.
It’s 43-37. Now, who’s out there spreading that story? Well, of course Trump and his allies in so-called alternative media. Who’s out there trying to nuke it? Everybody else. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the CNN. And yet in the Monmouth poll, it clearly says that a plurality, 43… I think it was 43. It might have been 47, but I think was 43-37 believe that Biden had engaged in corruption, U.S. officials were corrupt in foreign countries, Ukraine and so forth.
Anyway, let me take a brief break and come back. That’s a brief set of the table. We’ll now tear it down and go through this bit by bit. We’re gonna bring back — we’re gonna bring back from the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites — the Adam Schiff getting punk’d by a couple of comedians in Ukraine phone call during the Trump-Russia collusion. People can’t hear this enough. We have led the way in American media in airing this.
The New York Times blew that up yesterday.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Just got confirmation. It’s 43-37 the Monmouth poll: 43-37, people believe Trump’s allegations about Biden. It’s 43-37. In the Monmouth University poll, 43-37, people believe Trump about Biden. You got TheHill.com poll: 49% approval, having ticked up two points during this latest impeachment fiasco. It ain’t going down like they thought. Like I told you! Like I told you late last week and the beginning of this week, you know, when Jake Tapper says, “Well, you know what? When Nixon was impeached, he had a big really bunch of lawyers, and so did — so did Clinton.
“But Trump doesn’t! Trump doesn’t. What does Trump have? Trump has Fox News and Fox and talk radio.” They were ticked off that it wasn’t working.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have a little bit more here on the Monmouth University poll, and it’s even better in some regards. The 43 to 37% plurality there that believe Trump and his claim that Biden pressured Ukraine to keep them from investigating his son’s business, that’s registered voters. Likely voters is a better sample, but registered voters, we’ll take it. It’s a good slice, and 43% is a good number. But! In the category known as the precious independents and moderates, 40% — 40% of independents — believe what they have heard from Trump.
It’s not that 60% don’t, because there’s a whole bunch of don’t-knows in here. The fact that 40% of independents are inclined to believe what they have heard from Trump is a gigantic red flag (or ought to be) to the Biden campaign. The independents! Remember, in Washington this is where they think elections are won. This is where they think it all matters: The precious independents. I think it’s way overblown, but that’s what they think, and what they think is what matters here.
If 40% (a plurality) of independents believe Trump over Biden? Ho-ho-ho-ho! Coupled with the TheHill.com poll? Ho-ho-ho-ho! It ain’t unfolding as they had dreamed.
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