RUSH: We go to Valdosta, Georgia, first. First Robert. It’s great to have you here. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh. I’d like to make two points. My first point would be concerning professional and ethical conduct of the witnesses I see in front of these testimonies in Congress. And second point, nondisclosure of privileged information. I was in a position where I escorted senior officials of our government — cabinet-level secretaries, secretary of defense, secretary of state, many other senior officials in foreign government areas —
RUSH: Now we’re all wondering what you did.
CALLER: Well, that’s okay.
RUSH: (laughing) He’s not gonna tell us.
CALLER: When you overhear a senior official’s telephone conversations or private conversations with other government officials, I — as a person and the training I received certainly was — those are privileged conversations. They’re privileged conversations between the official and the person he is talking to. It is not my responsibility to disclose that to anybody else. And if I did so, that would be professionally unethical conduct.
RUSH: This is a great point, folks. This is absolutely a fabulous point.
CALLER: And the second point is, nondisclosure of such privileged communications outside my immediate chain of command. If I ever had a responsibility, I could go to my supervisor. That might be appropriate. I could go to legal counsel. But, if I go to legal counsel, it stops at that point ’til until counsel tells me what to do with it.
RUSH: Right. He’s talking about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman here, folks.
CALLER: I really have problems with Mr. Holmes and his overhearing a conversation with Ambassador Sondland, and I really have problems with Mr. Vindman — or Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — and the conduct that they portrayed and implemented.
RUSH: It’s LIEUTENANT! COLONEL! Vindman.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. Not Mr. Vindman. Schiff can call him Mr. Vindman, but we can’t. It’s “Lieutenant Colonel Vindman,” and then sing the national anthem. And then the other point is (laughing) somebody like ambassador using an unsecure phone at a restaurant in a foreign country with staffers who he’s not completely familiar with and making and placing a call to the president of the United States —
RUSH: You have just described… The reason why this is so good, our caller from Valdosta has just described exactly what these hearings have been. (singing) “O say can you see, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, by the light of the day…”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, why was this previous caller so right on the money? Because this excrement show that Schiff has put on for the past two weeks boils down to two themes. Now, these themes have a bunch of subthemes and subsets, but they’re basically two primary themes in what is a gigantic hoax. It is this. Bureaucrat A, Witness A supposes, presumes, assumes what Bureaucrat B says or hears. That’s been the extent of it.
“Well, I heard Sondland on the phone and I thought it was so loud when I heard Trump say…” And then, “Well, Sondland said that, but then I (sputtering) I was talking to Holmes, and Holmes said, ‘What did you think of what Holmes said? How did you feel?’ ‘Oh, I felt really bad! I thought it was bad.'” This was all it’s been. You call it hearsay or whatever, but Bureaucrat A, God’s Gift to Humanity A supposes, presumes, assumes, or thinks what God’s Gift to Humanity B says or hears.
In other words, we don’t have a John Dean, we don’t have a Jaworski, we do not have a “fact witness.” Despite Fiona Hill claiming to be one, we don’t. We don’t have a witness. We don’t have anybody that was there saw what happened because nothing actually happened. I actually saw somebody… I hate doing this. I hate it. I hate it. I saw somebody on Fox today just telling the audience that Schiff and Pelosi, they didn’t even want to do impeachment until whistleblower showed up.”
I said, “Oh, my goodness. Oh, jeez. Are you…?”
“They didn’t even want to do impeachment until the whistleblower came forward.” Some days, it’s tough out there, folks. Schiff and Pelosi have wanted to do this… The articles of impeachment are written! Do you understand? They’re written. They’re done. There may be amended based on testimony, but it’s going to happen. All of this is meaningless, and I don’t mean meaningless in a substantive sense that it’s not serious. It’s meaningless in the sense that it’s gonna have no effect on whether Schiff or Pelosi file articles.
This is just a bumbling of perfunctory public display to try to give some credibility to what the articles of impeachment are going to say. Because this is it. If you watched the Democrat debate last night, they have got nothing, folks. That debate was so boring, I can’t tell you. And the number of people… You couple the boredom with these hearings and the boredom with the Democrat debate, and there’s some people who are gonna need to be brought away from the ledge.
Snerdley just asked me, “Rush, tell me something. I know that the radical left are all in on this and they can’t wait for Trump to be frog-marched out. But what about the Democrats that are not radicals? What about the mainstream Democrats that we grew up with? How in the world are they seeing this?” I said, “There aren’t very many of those left, and so it’s kind of a waste of time to try to figure out what they think.” This party is gone, folks. The Democrat Party that you’ve always assumed was just a, quote-unquote, left-wing version of the alternate or opposite party, they are gone.
They have been co-opted. The Democrat Party has been totally taken over by the radical left. Take a look at their presidential candidates running for the nomination. There’s not a moderate in the bunch. Every moderate in that group has been drummed out, and now there’s some new moderates thinking about getting in like Doomberg. I can’t wait for that to happen. Who’s the other one? Oh. There’s somebody else in the media out saying keep a sharp eye out for Michelle Obama. That’s how bad it’s getting in the Democrat list.
That’s been pooh-poohed previously by others. Not me, by the way. I always thought… Let me put it this way: I will not be surprised, and I would never be surprised if at the last minute she comes in to save the day because it looks like there’s not a single one of these people that’s gonna be able to be elected. And now they’re having this impeachment thrown on them. They have to incorporate this in their campaigns because the party in Washington has made everything about this, and yet they’ve got nothing.
And again, the evidence they’ve got nothing is that impeachment didn’t last long as a topic last night. If there had been a Jeb Magruder, if there had been a John Dean in these hearings, if there had been… Who am I leaving out? Who was the big guy? Alexander Butterworth. If there had been somebody to reveal the White House taping system, if there had been anybody that had any evidence, that’s all that the Democrats would have been talking about last night in that debate.
But it barely got any mention after the first couple of questions, and they reverted back to how many they’re gonna give away to everybody. So Bureaucrat A supposes, presumes, assumes what Bureaucrat B says or hears. We have no tapes. We have no blue dress, no semen-stained blue dress. We don’t have perjury. We have nothing. We have no evidence. There’s literally no evidence. Not a single witness has had anything but hearsay and his opinion or assumption.
And these very bureaucrats — whose opinions and assumptions are so valuable and are so powerful. These same bureaucrats had no problem appeasing Putin and denying aid to Ukraine. All during Obama administration Ukraine got zip, zero, nada, and these people were fine with it, because Vladimir Putin had to be appeased — and do not doubt me on this. Everything is the exact opposite of the way the Democrats are presenting it.
It was Barack Obama and the Democrat Party that was in cahoots with Putin. It was Barack Obama who did not want to upset Putin. It was Barack Obama who wanted to please Vladimir Putin. That’s why Ukraine never got any aid. That’s why Ukraine never got any assistance. And every one of these bureaucrats (whining) “upset that Ukraine had its assistance (sobbing) withheld by Donald Trump. It’s so bad!” Ukraine never got a dime.
They never got a bullet when these very same bureaucrats were in the foreign policy apparatus dealing with Ukraine. That’s right. They didn’t give Ukraine anything. Now they are outraged that Trump armed the Ukrainians with lethal aid. The only common denominator and all you need to know as you watch this, is whatever Trump was for, they were against. Whatever they were against, Trump is for and that means Trump is wrong and that means Trump is a criminal, and that means Trump is dumb and stupid and unqualified.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, “O say can you see.” Now to his story. This is from BizPac Review. “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — the Soviet-born impeachment witness being championed by Democrats — is demanding that Fox News ‘retract and correct’ an opinion that attorney/law professor John Yoo stated on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News opinion show. Vindman’s lawyer is David Pressman, a former Obama aide.”
Vindman’s lawyer is a former aide to Obama. Vindman is in supposedly the Trump foreign policy apparatus. So this lawyer, David “Pressman slammed Yoo’s suggestion that some people might think that Vindman could have committed espionage when he advised Ukraine while undermining Trump’s policies while working in the Trump White House.” So John Yoo has offered an opinion — and, by the way, John Yoo is not the only one to offer this opinion.
I’ve had emails from lieutenant colonels and majors, people in the military I know who think it’s worse than that. I’ve had emails from military people who think Vindman should be court martialed for what he’s admitted to doing. But what Yoo is talking about is Vindman very proudly said that he told the new Ukrainian president a couple pieces of advice, “Don’t get involved in American domestic policy, and don’t forget the Russians.”
Remember Will Hurd from Texas said, “Well, when you met the new Ukrainian president, was it a one-on-one?” “Oh, no, no, no,” said Vindman, “We’re in a bilateral group, a lot of people in the room.” “Is that when you gave this advice to the Ukrainian president?” (sputtering) “Did anyone overhear you give this advice to Ukrainian president?” (sputtering) So all John Yoo did was over his opinion that has been backed up by many people that Vindman could have committed espionage because he’s advising the Ukraine president, essentially, not to go along with President Trump.
It’s a valid opinion, is it not? But Vindman is upset that this opinion is smirching his opinion. “In the letter, Vindman’s attorney wrote: ‘The Segment was not true. It has now been repeated by some of the most powerful people in the world. It is causing great pain. We ask you to retract the coverage, correct the record, and publish the truth.'” Oh, poor Lieutenant Colonel Vindman is experiencing great pain!
I wonder what it must be like to be Donald Trump, to have people like Lieutenant Colonel Vindman offering their opinions that Trump needs to impeached! Lieutenant Colonel Vindman taking evidence from a phone call that he overheard and telling the whistleblower, who then goes and sets off this whole charade. That Lieutenant Colonel Vindman? I’m sorry. Just my opinion, just my opinion. Just my assumption, which is all any of these witnesses have.
So Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, “O say can you see,” is “whining” through his lawyer “over someone’s opinion of him, keep in mind that he is accusing President Trump of treason,” based on his own opinion and thinking Trump needs to be impeached. Somebody sent me a note. Memorable military quotes. “I have not yet begun to fight,” Admiral John Paul Jones, 1779. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864. “Nuts,” General Anthony McAuliffe, Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
“I felt marginalized by his tweets,” Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, impeachment testimony 2019.
“I felt marginalized by his tweets.”