RUSH: Well, it’s like the Mueller doom show out there today. You remember when Trump’s approval numbers jumped down to 39% during the height of the Mueller probe and everybody was panicking, everybody was distraught, everybody was, “Oh, my God, there’s nothing there, but they’re gonna get the guy. Oh, my God. There’s no way we compete. Oh, no, this is over.”
This is exactly what people are doing today. No matter how many times I tell people, “Snerdley, do not get caught up in the media narrative every day.” People can’t help it. And I understand it. I totally understand it, folks. It’s impossible not to, except for people like me who know exactly what’s going on and why and are constantly attuned to it and aware. That’s why you need to listen here each and every day, particularly on days like this where you think all is lost.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Bevin loss. Oh, my God. It’s over for Trump. Oh, no.” And then Schiff’s announcing that he’s gonna go public with the hearings starting next Wednesday and then take a day off so the media can lie about what we were told on Wednesday on Thursday, and then another hearing on Friday. I just want to remind you of something. The last time they tried this it was a disaster.
We had two and a half years, two years of the Trump-Russia, Mueller collusion, whatever. And it was building and building and everybody, “Oh, my God. It’s gonna be over. They’re gonna get Trump, oh, my God.” And then Mueller went public, and it was a disaster. Mueller testified, he didn’t want to testify, the Democrats dragged him out of the crypt, they say get up here and testify, he did. It was a disaster. Whenever these people, the Democrats in the media, whenever they can make sure everything goes on in private and then lie to us about what’s happening in private, they’re able to set this mood of doom and gloom.
Then they get feeling their oats. They think they’ve done it. They think the media has set the narrative and persuaded the American people that Trump finally has got to go. So then they get their oats and they feel confident and they go public with it, and it bombs. Blasey Ford bombed. It all bombed. Kavanaugh, all of this stuff bombs when they go public with it.
When they have the advantage of privacy, when they’re doing everything behind closed doors and the media is responsible for reporting to everybody what’s going on, like cherry-picking these transcripts of depositions, of witnesses before little Schiff’s committee, they paint this picture, it’s over for Trump. “Oh, my God. There’s a quid pro quo. Oh, my God. Trump is digging up dirt. Oh, my God. It’s over.” They go public after they think they’ve persuaded everybody, and it ends up being a disaster.
Now, Mueller actually was a disaster. But, see, what’s gonna befall them here, folks, is all this buildup. We’re now into three years of buildup. Three years of every claim the Democrats have made, Trump colluded with Russia, Trump stole election, Trump has Hillary’s emails, Kavanaugh had a rape train, whatever it is, none of it ever pans out. They build all these expectations up. The moment of truth comes, the big reveal, in public, and it is met with a thud.
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RUSH: Mere moments ago, little Pencil Neck Adam Schiff strode to the microphones to announce the public testimony of witnesses to Donald Trump “digging up dirt on his opponents.” He’s continuing to lie about this. Here’s the statement. Eh, it wasn’t a statement. It was a little announcement that Pencil Neck made just like a half hour or so.
SCHIFF: We are getting an increasing appreciation for just what took place, uh, during the course of the last year. Uh, and the degree to which the president, uh, enlisted whole departments of government in the illicit aim of trying to get Ukraine to, uh, dig up dirt on a political opponent. Uh, as well as further a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election that he believed would be beneficial to his reelection campaign. Uh, so those open hearings will be an opportunity for the American people to evaluate the witnesses for themselves, to make their own determinations about the credibility of the witnesses, but also to learn firsthand about the facts of the president’s misconduct.
RUSH: Okay. So remember it was a couple weeks ago Schiff was chairing a public hearing of the Intelligence Committee, and he was quoting the president during his phone call to the president of Ukraine. He said (summarized), “The president ordered the president of Ukraine to ‘dig up dirt’ on Joe Biden and his kid — ‘make it up’ if he had to! He told him nine times to do it, and ‘don’t get back to me until you’ve found it. Furthermore, you’re not gonna get any U.S. aid money until you do.'”
It was entirely made up, and it took the Republicans 30 minutes to call him out on it. So for 30 minutes it lived as true for those who watched it! Trump didn’t tell the Ukrainian president any of that. The transcript has been released! There’s no “dig up dirt,” period! There’s no “make up dirt,” period. There’s not even a command. There’s not even a formal request! It’s almost like in a throwaway. “By the way, could you do me a favor?
“We’re doing some things here,” blah, blah, blah, blah. So Schiff is lying about it, and therefore he’s setting these expectations very high. He says, “Now the American people will be able to see themselves, learn firsthand the facts about the president’s misconduct.” There isn’t anybody that’s gonna testify that the president made up dirt or asked anybody to.
But he’s lying in this statement here just like he continues to lie, claiming that he has evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. And then he says, “as well as further a conspiracy theory about the 2016 election that he believed would be beneficial to his campaign.” That’s Russia. The guy is still pushing things that have blown up in their faces when they’ve gone public with it. So now the American people are gonna expect all kinds of really bad stuff that President Trump’s been doing.
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RUSH: There’s this phenomenon out there. And I’m sure you’ve noticed it. On a day like this where you’ve got Schiff opening up the hearings to the public, “We’re gonna get Trump, the media’s all over it, we’re gonna get Trump, we’re gonna get Trump.” And then you’ve got the elections, and Virginia finishes the trend. There’s nothing unusual about Virginia going blue. It’s been headed in that direction. The Republicans haven’t put any money in there. It’s sad, it’s disappointing, but it’s not surprising what happened in Virginia.
Kentucky is being entirely misrepresented. As far as the media’s concerned, the only race there that matters is the governor’s race because the Republican lost it. So they’re telling you Trump’s losing his mojo. So when these days happen, what is the phenomenon? Well, the phenomenon is that Washington Republicans get scared. And they start saying things that make it look like they’re gonna get ready to abandon Trump.
It’s like clockwork. And that’s why I opened the program the way I did. You’ve gotta fight these days because they are constant. The media is filled with nothing but lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and the stuff they don’t cover is just as scandalous as the way they do report the stuff they do cover. So today Lindsey Graham — depending on the day that you look, Lindsey Graham is Trump’s best friend, right? Some days Lindsey Graham, he’s up there defending Trump, he’s side by side, just loves him some Trump.
Lindsey Graham said either today or yesterday — he’s chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — said it would be a big problem if Trump asked Ukraine for help investigating Biden. What? No. Why say this? It didn’t happen. Not the way it’s being portrayed. So he comes out, and here’s the phenomena. When Trump bombshells hit or whenever there is even more than the norm of negative news about Trump, these guys get scared.
They get scared that they’ll be alone and ridiculed and so they begin triangulating. They cover their bases. “Well, that would be a big problem if Trump actually asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden. Be a big problem, be a big,” blah, blah. It’s triangulating. And then when Trump survives, guess what? They become his best friends again. Have you noticed this? It’s a singular phenomena among Republicans in Washington.
Lindsey Graham is by no means the only example of this. He’s just current today. In fact, we’ve got a sound bite of Lindsey Graham, let me find it, number seven. Here it is. It’s not what I just quoted but it’s along the same lines. This was this morning on Capitol Hill, Senator Graham speaking to reporters about Ambassador Sondland changing his testimony. Ambassador Sondland did not change his testimony! That’s another lie. Ambassador Sondland did not change his testimony.
I’ll explain. But, you know, I’m getting tired of this, to be honest. I’m getting tired of having to do it. They come out, they misrepresent what people say, they twist what people say to make it conform with what they want anybody to say, what they want the news to be.
We have to come in here and clean it up and we’re always second at it because we can’t beat them to the punch, I can’t start the program — well, I could, actually. “Folks, they’re gonna lie about Sondland. Be on the lookout for it.” But that would mean every program I’d have to spend predicting the next day what the Democrats are gonna do, and the media.
Sondland did not change his testimony. It is a gross, gross misrepresentation of what he did yesterday. Anyway, this is another example because, okay, the news is that Sondland changed his testimony. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Sondland says there was a quid pro quo. Oh, my God.”
So now it’s time for Trump supporters to start triangulating, to cut their losses, to maybe position themselves so if Trump did it, they can always jump off the ship. So here’s Lindsey Graham talking to the media this morning.
GRAHAM: I’ve read the transcript for myself. I made up my own mind. Volker, the special envoy, said there was no quid pro quo. Sondland has changed his testimony to say he presumes there was. What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine, it was incoherent. It depends on who you talk to. They seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo.
RUSH: See? It’s incoherent. I’ve read the transcript. It’s incoherent. Incoherent foreign policy, Ukraine, incoherent. They’re incapable of doing a quid pro quo. So now Trump’s incompetent. Incapable of doing a quid pro quo ’cause he doesn’t know what he’s doing in this whole field of endeavor with Ukraine anyway.
Now, the key is the transcript of the phone call is all anybody needs to read. The fact that Trump released it is still what’s guiding all of this. It’s blown up in their faces. And you’re just gonna have to trust me on this. They fully intended that transcript to remain secret. They thought Trump would never release it. They could characterize it however they wanted to as a cover-up, as obstruction.
But Trump released it so therefore there’s no need for a whistleblower, there’s no need for any of these witnesses, absolutely none. And yet they’re going ahead with it. That’s what these Republicans ought to be saying, not that there’s incoherence here, the incompetence is such that they couldn’t come up with a quid pro quo if they wanted to. Come on.
Now, Trump will survive this, and then next week all these people become Trump’s best friends, and he’ll be brilliant again, and he’ll be smart again and be out running his enemies, his opponents. What it boils down to is that all the people on our side have to play it fast and loose with the media so that whatever happens, they’re positioned to be able to not be harmed by it. It’s entirely a defensive posture.
Yet what was so hard about what Rand Paul did Monday night? There’s nothing defensive about Rand Paul and his claim about the whistleblower and the need for prosecution and defending Trump. So what is this all about? Well, you’re at the right place to find out. I’m happy to tell you.
So Schiff announces about an hour ago that the first public hearings in his impeachment inquiry are gonna be held next Wednesday, November 13th, which – wait, just double-check something here. It’s Wednesday. Next Tuesday is the Disney+ launch. Well, maybe that is the 13th as well. Disney’s new streaming service. I’m just getting confused. At any rate, November 13th is when little Schiff is gonna begin his public hearings.
And remember, he’s setting it up by the American people are gonna learn how Trump told them to dig up dirt. Now, nobody has testified to that. So the first day of public hearings will be Wednesday, November 13th. The next day will be Friday the 15th. So Thursday’s gonna be a bye. No hearings so that the media can use Thursday to pound the lies and the misrepresentations of what was said on Wednesday, give the media time to promote whatever they want out of the first hearing.
So now we’re gonna do… You know, Schiff’s gonna preside over one of his Stalin-like show trials starting next Wednesday, and Schiff is the decider in all these things, as is typical of a show trial. He also announced that his witness on the first day is gonna be none other than the irrefutable, the unattackable, the uncriticizable, the perfect William Taylor. His witness the second day will be Marie Yovanovitch.
All of these people are gonna say, “Trump went outside the interagency group to people conducting foreign policy, not us. They didn’t know what they were doing. This is dangerous.” There was no word as to when Republicans will be able to call Schiff himself as a witness. Schiff’s never gonna be called as a witness. The Republicans are out there claiming he’s a fact witness because he had a role in shepherding the whistleblower through this, which is in violation regulations, rules, and perhaps even laws.
But you notice, my friends, who Schiff is not calling here on these first two days of hearings? He’s not calling the whistleblower — who, by the way, Donald Trump Jr. identified in a tweet today. Did you hear about this? AP is saying (summarized), “We still can’t independently confirm name of the whistleblower, so we’re not gonna print the name. But Donald Trump Jr., that pig, he did it!” Everybody knows who the whistleblower is. Anyway, I digress.
Schiff is not calling the whistleblower, and he’s not calling the lieutenant colonel, Alexander Vindman, to be a witness, either, in these two hearings — and that’s when the ratings are gonna be the highest. Remember all of the excitement when that doddering special counsel Robert J. Mueller XIX was going to testify? Remember how that blew up on them? Okay. So why is Lt. Col. Vindman, who they’ve really…? I mean, they’ve hyped this guy up.
“You can’t criticize him, either. Why, he’s a decorated Army lieutenant colonel. He went to West Point, has shrapnel in his body from Vietnam. He’s a Ukraine expert, born there. You can’t criticize him. (sputtering) You can’t… You can’t… You just can’t!” So why’s he not being called? Well, we can only surmise. My surmise is Schiff doesn’t think Vindman is the strongest witness, or it’s possible that he thinks Taylor is the best because Taylor’s unassailable.
Taylor looks like he is from central casting, U.S. national security official, national security diplomat. William Taylor may be the absolute best first witness as far as images, photo-ops are concerned. Maybe he’s looking at Vindman as cleanup, the guy that’s gonna finally knock it all out of the park. We’ll just have to wait and see.
But he’s not putting Vindman up there when the ratings are gonna be the highest and the interest is gonna be the highest, which tells me that he doesn’t think Vindman is the strongest witness. Even though we were told all last week that Vindman’s testimony was the real, honest to goodness most smoking of the smoking guns — that Vindman had the goods, that Vindman was the guy that was gonna nail Trump — and his credibility cannot be impeached. “You can’t challenge him. You can’t disagree. You can’t.
“Just like you couldn’t with Obama because he’s the first African-American, you can’t challenge the credibility of Lieutenant Colonel Vindman because he’s a West Point graduate and wears the uniform of the Army.” So not calling Vindman also tells me that Pencil Neck isn’t gonna push this phone call as Trump’s most impeachable offense anymore, which makes sense, ’cause the transcript of the phone call is out and it doesn’t jibe with anything anybody is saying about it.
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RUSH: Okay. So if they’re gonna call William Taylor first instead of Vindman, it means that Schiff is gonna focus on other crimes. I think… Folks, the quid pro quo thing has kind of faded away, and you’ll notice — if you listen carefully — they’re not even talking about it. The media is, but if you listen to Schiff and the Democrats, they’re moving on to something else now: Extortion and bribery. There wasn’t a quid pro quo. The transcript can counter anything Vindman says — and Taylor.
Vindman is the only one of Schiff’s anti-Trump witnesses who was on the Zelensky phone call. Nobody else was on that call — well, of the witnesses — and since neither Taylor nor Yovanovitch were on the call or know anything about it and they are the first two witnesses, then it would tell me that Schiff’s gonna deemphasize the quid pro quo, but maybe not the digging up dirt — extortion, bribery. “You’re not gonna get the aid ’til you dig up dirt.”
If Schiff literally tries to make a case that Trump told the president of Ukraine to make up and dig up dirt, then this is gonna bomb exactly like Mueller bombed on ’em. David Marcus at The Federalist today: “Desperate Democrats Drop ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Rhetoric, Now It’s ‘Extortion’ and ‘Bribery’ — The hours of transcripts of witnesses in the Ukraine impeachment inquiry rack up and continue to underwhelm, Democrats and their allies in the media have seized on a new tactic. The old … term ‘quid pro quo,’ is about to go the way of the Dodo.
“In its place the terms ‘extortion’ and ‘bribery’ will fly about like hot air balloons in California wine country. … The supposed justification for this ramping up of the rhetoric is an amendment that Ambassador Gordon Sondland made to his testimony before the impeachment inquiry in which he said that on September 1st, 10 days before aid to Ukraine was released, he told a Ukrainian official that that aid was not likely to flow if a promise was not made to investigate the gas company Burisma, which employed Hunter Biden.
“Such a promise was never delivered. Though Sondland’s revision of his testimony is being heralded as a bombshell (what isn’t)…” Everything is a freaking “bombshell” to the media today! So this “is being heralded as a bombshell [but] the revelation [by Sondland] doesn’t change the basic facts of the case.” The word “presume” is all over his testimony. (summarized) “I presume there was a quid pro quo. After hearing this other testimony, I presume there was.” But it doesn’t fundamentally change anything.
The reason that they’re making a big deal out of Sondland is because he’s revising his testimony, bro! He’s revisin’ the testimony. That allows them to characterize Sondland as, “You know what? I got caught lying, and now that Taylor — who can’t be impeached — is telling the truth, I’d better change my story.” That’s what they’re trying to make you believe, that Sondland tried to get away with lying about this, and he’s got caught. So now he’s trying to change it, so he doesn’t go to jail. That’s what they’re trying to tell you happened here with Sondland, and it isn’t.
I’m so sick of having to do this every damn time these people try one of these maneuvers, but it’s the damn truth, folks.
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RUSH: I think we don’t even to this moment know how big a blow it was when Trump released that transcript. I’m telling you, folks, it blew up the entirety of Pelosi and Schiff’s game plan.
What they really wanted was to be able to portray Trump as Nixon in a cover-up and obstructing by not releasing the transcript — and if they hadn’t released the transcript, then everybody would be able to rely on what the whistleblower said. The whistleblower was going to be this event’s Robert Mueller. The whistleblower was gonna be Mueller. The whistleblower was gonna have the goods. Whatever the whistleblower said would be presented as fact.
Because nobody will see the transcript of the call, so people on the call could lie about it. But Trump blew all of that up by releasing it. So now they have been scrambling, and this is where they are. I just want to remind you again before we go to the break: They spend all this time in secret behind closed doors. Mueller had 2-1/2 years, not one leak about what he was doing, building up expectations. “Mueller’s gonna have the goods. It’s gonna be disaster for Trump.
“He’s gonna find the evidence that Trump colluded, Trump stole the election, voting machines were tampered with, outcomes of elections were changed,” all this. Everybody was expecting that that’s what Mueller was gonna have. Then Mueller testifies, and we all felt like we had been transported to a retirement home. It was a dud. Now they’re setting themselves up to do the same thing. All of this behind-closed-doors stuff, all these witnesses and Schiff’s selective leaking of the dynamite things they’ve said.
Now they’re gonna testify in public, and Schiff is relying on the fact that you can’t criticize ’em. (impression) “They’re unimpeachable. Their integrity is so above and beyond reproach that you can’t even be in the same room with them! You can’t even look at them, that’s how superior to you they are. You can’t even look at Bill Taylor. You don’t even have the right to breathe the same air as Bill Taylor and Marie Yovanovitch. So don’t even dare think you can criticize them!”
They’re gonna show up, they’re gonna look like human beings, and all they’re going to have is their opinion of what Trump has done!
So we shall see.
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RUSH: So, again, I just want to remind you, folks.
I made this point at the opening of the program and it bears repeating. Throughout the 2-1/2 years of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation and Mueller, it was all private. Well, except for the stuff that ran in the media every day. But even then, the sources were all anonymous and unnamed. We didn’t know who they were — and, for the most part, I think it was largely made up, ’cause there was never anything to it. Nobody ever had any evidence other than the dossier which was not evidence and had never been corroborated.
The point is that they spent 2-1/2 years — the media, the Democrats — building up everybody’s expectations. “Trump did it, Trump’s traitor, Trump cheated, Trump stole the election, Trump worked with the Russians, the Russians tampered with machines,” all of this stuff. Then it came time! The Mueller report came out and it was a dud — and the Democrats didn’t want to live with that. So they demanded that Mueller common and testify, and he did — and that was a dud!
The lesson is when Schiff and his buddies can behave in private, behind closed doors — and lie to the media about testimony and all that — then, yeah, they can make it look very, very bad. But then they start feeling their oats and they think they’ve got him! They’ve Trump. They’ve now pulled it off and they go public with it?
Their experience is that it’s been a disaster every time they’ve tried. Kavanaugh, Avenatti, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone. Take your pick of any of these things were going to be the downfall of Trump. Whenever they’ve seen the light of day, it has been an implosion, a disaster for the Democrats. I expect this is going to be the same thing next week.
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