RUSH: Hey, folks, how’s everybody? I’m great, and it’s great to be back, and I really apologize for missing last week, but it’s actually not that big a deal. I mean, it seemed like it was a big deal at the time. I didn’t want to be out, but I had no choice. I had to be out. It was unexpected. It was unannounced. So I apologize for it.

But I’m looking back and a lot seems to have happened in the past week. But not really. I mean, how much can really happen when I’m a here? Especially when I’m not here to commentate on it and to analyze it. Look, if I don’t talk about it, did it really happen? And, if you go back and you look at some of these, it seems like a lot of stuff happened while I was away, but not really.

I mean, when you think about it, we’re pretty much where we all were a week ago. We’ve had some stuff happen in the midst. We had that Democrat debate. Man, oh, man. Do you know, even some Never Trumpers are writing that they wish that somebody in that Democrat debate would accuse somebody else’s dad of killing JFK. It was that boring, it was that dull, it was that nothing.

And it’s a sign, when Never Trumpers — it was John Podhoretz — when Never Trumper starts writing things like that — I know he’s trying to be funny, but I’m telling you, Donald Trump has changed politics in ways that all these people supposedly hate and despise, but then when they get a Democrat debate that’s supposedly serious and devoted to the issues and the future of the country, they’re bored. You know, the civility that they claim to want and the manners and all that, they look at it now, and they’re bored.

And this impeachment, it’s so patently absurd. There’s not an impeachable offense. And I’m trying to figure out what are the Democrats really trying to do? Is this a gambit to actually try to win the Senate? Do they even know what they’re doing other than placating their base? I know they’d love to get rid of Trump, don’t misunderstand. But they’re not even getting close to that. They’re making themselves look like fools and idiots.

You know when I see the Democrats on TV, I see like a gray screen in front of them. They’re looking colorless. They’re looking just miserable. Even the Drive-By Media trying to get happy about all this stuff can’t. You know, Democrats make this big deal about behaving solemnly and prayerfully after announcing articles of impeachment walking them over there in the Capitol building with those specially made pens. You know those pens look like bullets to me.

When I first saw the picture, I said, “Pelosi’s got a bunch of bullets from a howitzer there and she’s walking them over to the Senate chamber.” I looked closely and they were specially manufactured pens. And they are, I guess, very, very solemn and very prayerful.

\And then after that, the Democrats were found consuming adult beverages and whooping it up and having a grand old time, and the Drive-By Media was worried that the Democrats were giving away the game. They expected them to be out acting prayerful, a Democrat, prayerful. Ha. You pray in front of a Democrat and they might want to put you in jail.

And then how about the national championship? You know, when I saw this, the one thing that really ticked me off — so LSU wins the national championship, college football. And in the locker room after the game, they pass out celebratory victory cigars, the players light ’em up, and a cop comes in and threatens to arrest ’em. No smoking in the locker room.

And then Odell Beckham Jr. trying to lighten things up pats a cop on the butt and they think about arresting Odell Beckham for aggressive behavior against a cop. I mean, there’s lots of things to arrest Odell Beckham for, but that? But lighting a cigar, a celebratory cigar is worthy of being arrested? You can’t smoke in the locker room.

Folks there’s so many things here that the left have just corrupted and poisoned, and it all adds up to an assault on a good time, an assault on enjoying life. When you boil it all down, it’s what they seem to be upset about. Is anybody enjoying life? And particularly in ways they don’t approve. And they don’t enjoy life.

Grab audio sound bite, what is it, number 32. This is The Oprah. It was last Monday, a week ago today on ABC’s the Tamron Hall Show. And whenever there’s a new talk show, new talk show syndicated, Ellen DeGeneres, whatever it is, the first guest has to be The Oprah, because that’s the way you guarantee a ratings boost off the bat. The next four days of the week can tank and bomb out, but if you have a great opening day you satisfy everyone. So you get The Oprah out there and Tamron Hall — anybody know who Tamron Hall is?

Do you know that on Jeopardy they asked a bunch of people, they showed Schiff’s picture to a bunch of people, nobody knew who he was. Nobody knew who Adam Schiff was, nobody knew who Pencil Neck was on Jeopardy. Those are smart people playing that game. Everybody on Jeopardy knows who I am when they’re asked about me. We have the audio sound bites to document this coming up.

Now, here’s Tamron Hall said, “You’re on your ‘Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus’ tour.” Did you know that Oprah was on a tour? Yeah. Well, she is. Oprah 2020’s Vision: Your Life In Focus tour, and Tamron Hall says to The Oprah, “So why now?”

OPRAH: Why now is because I think the country is so torn. The country is just, everywhere you go, you can’t be in a conversation with anybody anywhere where we’re not talking about how messed up things are, how torn apart we are.

HALL: It’s the new hello.

OPRAH: Yeah, it’s the new hello.

HALL: They walk in and they say, “Can you believe?’”

OPRAH: “Can you believe? Did you see? Oh my God.” So, this is the thing. You look in the stadium and you got all the states represented here, red states and blue states and purple states and no states, and independents. So, everywhere you go, people just say, “It’s so bad.”

HALL: Right.

OPRAH: It’s so bad.

HALL: Nobody says hello.

OPRAH: (laughing) Nobody says hello.

RUSH: They don’t have a good time. They can’t even have a good time seeing each other. You would think when a leftist meets Oprah there’d be a smile. No, the first thing out of their mouth is, “Do you believe how bad it is?” Do any of you, when greeting your friends, talk about how bad it is? No, you say, “Hi, what’s shaking?” The economy’s roaring, your kids’ future looks pretty good, unemployment rate lowest than it’s ever been in 50 years.

The people that are what I consider to be traditional American values… Oh, and that is another thing! I have a thing here in the Stack of Stuff, and I knew this. I’m kind of frustrated I didn’t make the point. It’s about rich white liberals and how they raise their kids and run their families, and it’s nothing like the crap that they claim to believe. They raise their kids according to conservative values. They care about getting the best education they can.

But they do not admit this publicly, ’cause they would be considered traitors to the cause. They don’t send their kids to Planned Parenthood. They try to keep their kids from getting pregnant. Yeah, it’s a bunch of total hypocrites. Well, I’ve got all this stuff. I collected all this stuff while I was gone. It’s gonna take me awhile to get to it all. As I do the program, my mind is working famously well. I say one word, and it reminds me of something. Another word reminds me of something else.

But look, here is The Oprah admitting they’re not have a good time. You watch some of these awards shows, these Hollywood shows. Are they having a good time? Even when they win the awards, they’re not having a good time — and they’re upset when anybody else is. “Nobody says, ‘hello.’ Nobody says, ‘hello.’ Everybody says, ‘Do you believe how bad it is?'” Well, that’s because you’re losing, and it’s because you have no prayer of winning in 2020, and they all know it — and this impeachment?

This is an embarrassment. This is gonna be an albatross around their neck. You know, Pelosi is running around saying, “Trump will be impeached forever.” He’s gonna be acquitted forever, too. He is gonna be not guilty forever, and he’s gonna be elected to a second term. You people are gonna be sucking sand out there doing whatever you’re doing, continuing this preposterous behavior because you’ve got nothing else. Let’s review.

Trump’s been investigated by the GOP, the Hillary campaign, Robert Mueller, the FBI with FISA warrants — Trump was spied on — the House Democrats ran their own basement investigation, and they found nothing. You cut to the chase, you get to the bottom line, the pedal hits the metal, the rubber hits the road, they’ve got nothing. They don’t have a single crime. They don’t have an impeachable offense. So now they’re circling back to Russia.

Pelosi’s out there talking about (impression), “This is important, because we’ve got to assert that Vladimir Putin is not running this country.” Vladimir Putin! What happened to Ukraine? Oh, Lev Parnas! The star witness for the Democrats, Lev Parnas, who Trump says, “I don’t even know.” This guy… (chuckles) The people the Democrats find to hang their latest hats on are just poor schlubs, and they’re demonstrated to be after not too long a time.

I mean, they’re now even — Pelosi and the Democrats — accusing Mitch McConnell of being a secret Russian spy. I think they’re in panic mode. The average person… Your average American in average anywhere America knows it was a good thing to kill Soleimani. They knew the economy is sizzling and all of their impeachment stuff has blown up in their face. Their candidates are weirdos. The Democrat candidates for president are a bunch of weirdos, boring dryballs — and no matter what happens, Plugs is still leading.

I don’t care what anybody tells you, Plugs is still leading in the Democrat primary in poll after poll. Speaking of Soleimani, here’s another thing. Lee Smith. We’ve quoted him often on this program. He did yeoman’s work unraveling the deep state effort, the Papadopoulos story, planting evidence, all kinds of stuff. He has a story on this whole Iran deal that Obama put together. He asserts here that the primary objective that Obama had on the Iran deal — and, by the way, pardon me for hopscotching all over the place.

This is what happens the first day back. I’ve got all this stuff here that I want to impart, all this wisdom I want to share, and it just occurs to me as the brain synapses fire. Anyway, this is important. He was saying that the real objective that Obama had — which I’ve already said, which I’ve already told you. The real objective Obama had with the Iran nuclear deal was not to prevent them from getting a nuke, as they all say.

It was to delay it, but to guarantee that they could get one. The purpose of the Iran deal, as far as the Obama administration was concerned, was to change the balance of power in the Middle East and make Iran the primary power in the Middle East, not Israel. That’s what the Iran deal was supposed to do — and Trump has come along and deep-sixed it. Now, why would anybody want to make Iran the leader and the power and the balance of power in the Middle East?

Why in the hell would anybody want to do that?

Well, it goes back, if you remember. It goes back to the entire post-World War II order that was set up after the United States basically saved the world, saved Europe. It was decided that we needed a balance to the United States. We needed a competing superpower. So hello, Soviet Union. This was considered to keep the world safe because the U.S. is not the good guys. Remember, to the left, the United States is not the good guys. The United States — as the leading economic power in the world, leading military power in the world — is not good.

Madeleine Albright teaches at Georgetown that the United States was simply an accident. The founding was just an accident. You had a confluence of the birth of certain people and in the world. But there’s nothing exceptional, nothing special, nothing unique. It’s just an accident, and it’s destabilizing for the U.S. to be so powerful. So the objective here is to build up Iran (or was) with the Iran nuclear deal, to build Iran up as a competing power to the United States, to make sure…

Because if you understand that from Obama on down, the Clintons, the left… If you understand that they believe the United States is not the good guys, then a lot of other things begin to make sense. If you don’t believe that, if you don’t understand that they don’t — and believing the U.S. is the good guys is part of growing up an American. So it seems really foreign and strange to hear that there are power people in this country, mainly leftists and Democrats, who don’t think that. So a lot of people reject it because it just doesn’t seem right. “Oh, nah, nah, they don’t really think that.”

Yes, they do, and if you don’t think the U.S. is the good guys — if you think the U.S. is basically racist and bigoted and sexist and all this stuff and too powerful and imposes its way — then you’ll want a competing power to stabilize things. And you put the United Nations in the middle of this to regulate it all and to help siphon power and money away from the United States. Hillary Clinton was to be the continuation of all this. Donald Trump, by being elected and following through on his agenda, has literally ripped that agenda to shreds.

And there is abject anger and disappointment and panic. By the way, Tom “Puff” Daschle has announced that the Obama administration was a failure. Yes, we have it right here on the audio sound bite roster of things coming up. Look at Trump signing the first ever trade deal with the ChiComs, as Pelosi is sitting around with her pens and her solemn march over to the Senate to present the articles of impeachment. The tariffs worked — and the tariffs, by the way, are going to remain on China, and the tariffs are gonna remain on Iran. They are working.

Look, let me take a brief time-out. We’ll come back and resume right after this. Again, sorry I was out last week, folks, but I’m back now, and, since I’m back, this is when things begin to now matter.