RUSH: Yeah, I know it’s hard to watch. It’s very hard to watch. You know why this is hard to watch? I’ll tell you why it’s hard to watch. It’s hard to watch this because all of this is bogus. And yet it’s being given the imprimatur of legitimacy by virtue of the way it’s being dealt with even by friendly media and by some of the Republicans on the committee.

Now, I know they’re trying to expose Nadler as not knowing what he’s doing and how to run a committee, and they’re doing a good job of that, but to run around and say that this is an inherently unfair process — maybe I’m wrong. You tell me. My sense is that running around claiming that this is all unfair isn’t very persuasive. It’s kind of like two kids arguing about being bullied to their parents and so forth. Is this really how we’re gonna try to persuade people who might be impacted by this?

I think there’s a lack of confidence on our side in dealing with this. Now, this is easy for me to say. I’m not in that arena. I’m not in that hearing room, and I’m certainly not on Fox TV having to comport with whatever I think I have to comport with. I’m just here by my lonesome watching this stuff like you are. And it bothers me that we’re gonna attack this as unfair.

Of course it’s unfair, but life is unfair. Simply running around talking about unfairness, is this gonna convince people who are on the fence that what’s being done to President Trump is mean and unfair and therefore they’re going to disagree with — the whole thing is bogus. This thing needs to be exposed for what it is.

And let me just give you two examples. And they went by without anybody saying a word in contradiction. It was just like when Schiff from his chair running the committee totally lied about the contents of the phone call that Trump had with Zelensky.

Schiff’s up there saying that Trump called Zelensky and said eight or nine times: “I want you to find some dirt on my opponent, and I want you to make it up if you have to. And I don’t want to hear back from you until you have made it up, until I hear something. And, by the way, if you want some military aid from me, you damn well better find some dirt on my –” None of that was said. None of that’s in the phone call. Schiff says it as though it is the phone call, and the Republicans didn’t call him out for half an hour.

And finally a Republican called him out because the Republican said, “I just got an email from a constituent who said –” these people are so enmeshed in the game that they’re so used to the way the Democrats operate that it isn’t anything extraordinary to them. So they wait for their turn, let the Democrats say what they want.

It happened again this morning. This bogus lawyer, the first witness the Democrats called, we addressed this last Friday. In fact, let me see. Let me look at the sound bite roster here because I think I’ve got this. Well, maybe not. I don’t need it. I can just tell you what it is.

Last week and today this Democrat lawyers says that the president of the United States says Article 2 allows him to do anything he wants, anything whatsoever. And they played a sound bite of Trump saying that that took five seconds. The sound bite they took was from a Trump speech at a Turning Point USA convention, but the other time Trump was talking about it was in an interview with George Stephanopoulos.

The subject was whether or not he wanted to fire Robert Mueller. And Stephanopoulos was trying to say that Trump was guilty for even wanting to fire Mueller. Mueller was not fired. Trump was telling Stephanopoulos and the Turning Point USA audience that Article 2 lets him do whatever he wants.

The context is firing Mueller. Pure and simple. That’s what Trump was talking about when he said, “Article 2.” And he’s exactly right. Article 2, he runs the executive branch. He can fire the FBI director any time he wants. He can fire a special counsel any time he wants. The accountability is at the ballot box the next election.

Now, the Democrat lawyer played this bit today claiming Trump said he could do anything he wants with no limits on everything involving his job. That’s not what Trump said. It’s not what Trump meant. And it has yet to be countered. It was stated two hours ago. It has yet to be countered.

Now, I’m sitting here hoping that when the Republicans get around to positioning and putting forth their evidence, they’ll deal with this. But they haven’t yet so it’s been out there lingering.

The second example — they’re still getting mileage out of this. They played video of Trump cracking the joke (paraphrasing), “Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, maybe you can find Hillary’s emails. If you do, the media might really be happy.” This was during a period of time there were 30,000 missing Hillary Clinton emails, and nobody could find ’em, and everybody thought they might be relevant.

Everybody was wringing their hands, and Trump didn’t believe that nobody could find them. Trump knew that Hillary knew where they were. Everybody knew that Hillary knew where they were. She had BleachBit some of them, she had deleted some. And so Trump was cracking a joke because he was amused at all of the posturing that was going on.

So they play that video sound bite today, which has been debunked, it has been put in context for now three years. It happened during the 2016 campaigning. And they’re getting mileage out of it today and that was not refuted. All it would have taken when the Republican lawyer got his chance, “The Democrats have been reduced to taking out-of-context sound bites and failing to have a sense of humor,” and yet it hasn’t happened.

So to me this whole thing is not about fairness. It’s about how bogus this is. There isn’t any evidence. Ladies and gentlemen, there’s not a shred of evidence, and there has yet to be a witness who was asked, “Can you name for me the impeachable offense in the phone call?” who has answered. No hands have gone up. Nobody from the ambassadorial call, the ambassadorial corps, crew.

I mean, in fact, most of the witnesses were not even on the phone call, for crying out loud. We don’t have any direct witnesses. We’ve got second, thirdhand witnesses — and not a one of them has been able to identify an impeachable offense at any point when they have been asked point-blank.

There isn’t any evidence. The most you could say… I don’t even want to concede this, but our guys are. Our guys are conceding, “Well, the president may have overstepped here a little bit, but it’s not an impeachable offense.” That’s a defense, that he did it but it’s not something that rises to the level of impeachment? See, the truth of the matter is this is hurting the Democrats. The polling data still is moving in Trump’s direction. Let me give you the latest details. This is from Axios. This is a Millennial website.

By the way, have you heard the way Millennials are now arguing with Baby Boomers, their parents? No. They’re saying things like, “Is that all got, Boomer? Is that all you got, Boomer?” That’s what they’re say to their parents. That’s what they say to their grandparents. “Is that all you got, Boomer?” meaning Baby Boomers, that all you got, Boomer? Anyway, the Axios poll: “Impeachment Is Helping Trump in Three Key Battleground States —

“Quarterly polling by the Republican firm Firehouse Strategies, with Optimus, had President Trump struggling in the mega-battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — but in the newest edition, he beats every Democrat,” including Mayor Pete. What happens to these people if Mayor Pete wins Iowa and New Hampshire? What happens to ’em then? (chuckles) Let me tell you what this is about, and I am going to do everything but quote because I don’t have the words right in front of me.

Last Friday, Nancy Pelosi — or maybe it was Thursday.  I get the days missed up.  Her press conferences are on Thursday.  Nancy Pelosi said, “This isn’t even about Ukraine.  It’s about Russia.”  I said, “Wait a minute.  What happened to this whole thing being about Trump asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden?”  She said last week, “It’s not about Ukraine; it’s about Russia, and it’s about weakening Ukraine for Putin.”  It’s mind-boggling!

Ukraine got its financial assistance from Trump.  It has military defense capability now.  It never got that during Obama, and it was Biden that was playing games with them and engaging in quid pro quos and threatening if they didn’t do what Biden wanted, they weren’t gonna get the aid.  So Pelosi comes along and says, “It’s not even about Ukraine.  It’s about Russia,” and then we get to this today.  Do you know what this is about today?  Let me give you the overall theme.

Nadler has mentioned this and the Democrat witnesses who have spoken today have said, “This is about the fact that Trump meddled in the 2016 election.  This is about the fact that the 2016 election was illegitimate because the Russians meddled, and the 2020 election is going to be illegitimate because Trump is already meddling in it.”  So what these people are doing is casting aspersions on the integrity of our elections and our election system.

They — not Russia, not Ukraine, not the ChiComs. The Democrat Party is striking the perception of other than and integrity of our elections.  They are building a case today for continuing all of this when Trump wins in 2020.  They’re building a case today that the 2020 election is already illegitimate because of what Trump did in Ukraine.  They’re already laying the groundwork for when they lose to justify continuing all this and to try to continue to portray Trump as illegitimate because his elections are illegitimate.

Because both elections will have been tampered with. That’s what this is today.  Now, if I can say this and if I can see it, why isn’t it…? And it may well be pointed out by the time somebody figures it out later today.  Remember the pattern of these things is the Democrats get all of the show in the morning and then they get all of the benefit of the analysis after that.  Then there’s a lunch break.  Then the Republicans get their shot, and everything changes, the perception.

But there’s something else in the works today.  We’ve got the IG report coming today, supposedly at 1 o’clock.  Now, what’s gonna be happening at 1 o’clock?  My guess is the Republicans are gonna be presenting their case about 1 o’clock.  So the IG report’s gonna come out and give the networks an excuse to leave these hearings when the Republicans are making their case, and then go to the IG report where they’re gonna tell us, “There’s nothing here.  The investigation of the FBI of the president was totally warranted.

“There! It says so right there in the summary,” because nobody’s gonna have had a chance to read the whole thing.  There’s gonna be a little summary.  There always is a summary of these reports before the actual report.  You know, it’s like a big book.  You’ve got a summary, then the whole rest of the pages.  Nobody’s gonna read the rest of the pages.  They’ll read the summary, and they can say about it whatever they want to say, because this is nothing but a pack of lies. When you get right down to it, all these allegations against Trump are a series of lies.

They even acknowledged this, ladies and gentlemen. “The House Judiciary Committee released a report Saturday in which it argued that a president may be impeached for illegitimate motives even if his actions are legally permissible.”  That was to set up today.  They are going after Trump for what he may have wanted to do.  They’re going after Trump for what may have been in his mind. Even if what he was doing was legally permissible, he wanted to engage in some kind of illegality or crime.

This is the basis on which they are proceeding.  Now, we can go through a point by point rebuttal of all the points they’re making, but all that does is accept the premise of their point.  And I don’t think any of this is legitimate.  If you want my version of this, what’s illegitimate about all this is the Democrats and these hearings and this entire process.  That’s what’s illegitimate.  The 2016 election was totally legitimate.  It was totally fair.  The Democrats can’t get over it.

The 2020 election is gonna be totally legitimate and totally fair.  Oh, there might be some fraud, as there always is in local precincts — vote counting, dead people voting, that kind of stuff — but that’s not the Russians.  That’s local election officials doing that.  That’s always happened in our elections.  But the Russians? No foreign power can come in and change the outcome of a presidential election.  They can’t rig it!  Nobody can actually effectively rig an election.

Now, you can go in and you can let dead people vote and you can try to get illegal aliens to vote and all that. But, folks, that’s just as much a part of American elections as legal voting is.  It’s not good. Don’t misunderstand.  But there’s nothing new about that, and there certainly is not Russian meddling as part of it.  Our election in 2016? There’s not a single person that could allege a single vote was changed by virtue of what Russia did.  There’s no evidence nor is there an allegation that a single vote was changed, much less election outcome because of what the Russians did.

And no less than Robert Mueller himself said that in his indictment of the Russian troll farms during the era of his bogus investigation and forthcoming bogus report.  So the Democrat Party, it’s as though they know they’re gonna lose.  They have no way of beating Trump.  So the only hope they have is to make Trump illegitimate so that he can’t enact an agenda.  And even with that, Trump’s agenda is being enacted, and we’ve got an economy roaring like most Americans have never experienced in their lifetimes.

We have unemployment at a 50-year record low.  African-American, Hispanic, minority unemployment, ditto, record low.  Wages, every economic indicator is on the rise at almost unprecedented levels.  People are living it, and they know it.  The public sentiment on the economy, public confidence is also at near record highs.  This is what the Democrats are up against.  So all they can do… We’re reliving the eighties in the sense that we had the same kind of implementation of conservative supply-side economic theory/policy, and it is working like a champ.

And all the Democrats can do is try to delegitimize anything and everything associated with it, including Trump.  But this really is no more complicated than they just hate him, and they can’t get over the fact that he won, and they can’t get over the fact that they still can’t get rid of him.  And they can’t get over the fact that the media can’t get rid of him.  They can’t get over the fact that the deep state experts, best and brightest, haven’t been able to get rid of him.

Bill Taylor didn’t get rid of him.  Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see — didn’t get rid of him. Yovanovitch wasn’t able to get rid of him.  Fiona Hill wasn’t able to get rid of him. (Fiona whatever her name is.)  They’re at their wits’ end.  Anyway, I guess it takes being outside Washington and outside this process to be able to see this, because my take on this, I have yet to hear anywhere on TV.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  In our remaining moments here, back to the polling data from the Axios story: “Impeachment Is Helping Trump in Three Key Battleground States.” In the newest edition of the Firehouse Strategies, with Optimus, poll, Trump beats every Democrat “by an average of six percentage points in hypothetical match-ups against all current Democratic candidates, including Joe [“Ukraine”] Biden… The poll found that a majority of likely 2020 voters surveyed do not support impeaching and removing Trump from office.”

What are the three states?  They are Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  Now, our media bigwigs are trying to make a big deal out of, “Well, none of these 31 members of Congress from Trump districts have asked Pelosi not to do this.  I guess they’re not too.”  We don’t know that.  We don’t know whether these people have asked Pelosi to shelve this or not.  There’s a whole lot that we do know. If these people, however, are willing to lie and edit the evidence, then to me the whole case is bogus, and there have been two video examples of it so far today.