RUSH: Let me share with you the benefit of my wisdom, which is born of intelligence guided by experience. The Senate trial — this charade, this impeachment trial — is underway, and the stage now is debating all these Democrat motions they’re making to change the rules that McConnell has announced to allow them to call witnesses. This is gonna go on a long time today, but I’m gonna tell you what the outcome will be. Mitch McConnell’s rules will define the trial. The Democrats are not going to succeed in pressuring McConnell.
It doesn’t matter what they say about him, doesn’t matter how he’s portrayed. They are not going to succeed in getting him to change his perception, his view of the Senate’s role in this entire fiasco. Now, if you want to watch whatever number of hours it takes for all of this to transpire, you’re more than welcome to, but I’m just telling you: At the end of the day, this impeachment trial will be conducted under the rules that Mitch McConnell has established. Do you know why?
The Republicans run the Senate.
Adam Schiff has nothing to say about what happens in the Senate.
Chuck You Schumer has nothing to do about what happens in the Senate because he doesn’t run it.
They are left grasping at air, desperate to find four Republican senators to give them 51 votes to allow new witnesses and new evidence and all of that. There are a couple of sound bites from the Turtle himself mere moments ago. He may be… The Turtle may be kind of the perfect person to handle something like this. He’s not gonna be moved off of his vision of what the Senate is — and let me tell you what that is. When I first…
Well, it wasn’t the first time, but it was one of my early conversations with Senator McConnell. This is years and years and years ago. I think it was during Clinton and he was explaining the limited capacity the Senate had to deal because they didn’t have 60 votes. It was a big, big deal. Sixty votes means… If you don’t have 60 — even if you have 52, 53 — you’re still not running anything at the end of the day, because you need 60 to make anything happen in the Senate, like choke off a filibuster.
He said to me, “The purpose of the Senate,” here’s the analogy, “is we’re the saucer. The House delivers us a bunch of heated stuff. That coffee is overflowing in that cup. It’s so hot, you couldn’t touch it. It collects in the saucer and cools off. That’s our role. That’s the role the United States Senate, Rush,” and he’s not gonna be moved off of that vision. He’s not gonna allow Schumer to run roughshod, not gonna allow the media to run roughshod over the process.
He’s not gonna surrender control of this process to the minority, just like Schiff did not surrender control to the Republicans in his fiasco, sham hearings in the House. They didn’t produce anything! They don’t have an impeachable offense, folks. They don’t have a crime, and they know they don’t have a crime. So they’re desperately trying to find one; so they want all these people from the administration to come testify open-ended. It doesn’t matter who, doesn’t matter what, just ask the questions.
And McConnell is saying, “That’s not our role here, buddy. Things come over here to cool off. We’re not gonna let you start pouring hot coffee back in the saucer once you get over here.” Here’s a couple of sound bites from McConnell from… Let’s see. This is, I think… Actually, I don’t know if this is on the floor of the Senate or if it’s a presser. Let me see. (muttering) Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Here, we have two bites, and this is the Senate majority leader explaining his role here…
MCCONNELL: This is a unique responsibility which the framers of our Constitution knew, that the Senate and only the Senate could handle. Our founders trusted the Senate to rise above short-term passions and factionalism. Today we will consider and pass an organizing resolution that will structure the first phase of the trial. This initial step will offer an early signal to our country. “Can the Senate still serve our founding purpose? Can we still put fairness, evenhandedness, and historical precedent ahead of the partisan fashions of the day?” Today’s vote will contain some answers.
RUSH: That’s the cup-and-saucer analogy expressed in a different way. (summarized) “Can we serve our founding purpose? Can we rise above the short-term passions and the factionalism?” Here’s the second bite…
MCCONNELL: We may hear a team of managers led by the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee chairmen argue that the Senate must precommit ourselves to reopen the very investigation they themselves oversaw and voluntarily shut down. It would be curious to hear these two House chairmen argue that the Senate must precommit ourselves to supplementing their own evidentiary record, to enforcing subpoenas they refuse to enforce, to supplementing a case they themselves have recently described as “overwhelming — overwhelming and beyond any reasonable doubt.”
They had to get going because time was of the essence because Trump poses an existential threat, yada yada yada. Gotta do it! Gotta go now! They pointed out that they had an “overwhelming” case. They had a case way beyond reasonable doubt. Now they get to the Senate, and what happened to that case? What happened to their overwhelming, beyond-any-reasonable-doubt evidence? They don’t have it, they never have had any, and McConnell is not gonna let the Senate be turned into a circus.
He’s even got a “kill switch” built in. We had the story yesterday that if it turned into that — and Schiff is gonna try to make it that. The Democrats are gonna try, no matter what. At the end of the day, McConnell’s rules are going to prevail, and Schumer and his crowd are not gonna be able to call witnesses. They’re gonna be out there trying to intimidate Republicans in the hallways and in the elevators, four Republican senators. They’re gonna be shouting “cover up” and “unfair” and “the people are being ill-served” and all of that, and it’s just gonna fall on deaf ears.
So let me now, after all of that, set the table here, and again, many of you… I’m looking at the call roster. They’re all to deal with this, and I understand that. But, folks, nobody, nobody covered Trump’s Davos speech. Trump’s Davos speech today reflecting his attitude about America, the great history in the last three years of economic success and the promise of more in the future is what the American people should have heard rather than this garbage here in this so-called impeachment trial.
And that’s why I spent the time on it, ’cause nobody covered it. Not just because of time difference, but because CNN, PMSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS no way they want Trump shown in a good light. So Adam Schiff (Pencil Neck) and Nadler raced to the microphone this morning to complain about McConnell’s resolution which sets the schedule for the Senate trial proceedings.
Now, today is supposed to be the first day of the Senate proceedings. Last night McConnell introduced a resolution laying out the timeline for the trial, and that resolution’s what’s gonna be voted on today. If the Senate passes the resolution, each side will be given 24 hours to argue their case over two days. The Senators will then be given 16 hours for questioning. So 24 hours over two days is 12 hours a day, noon to midnight.
Now, Chuck You Schumer and Schiff and the rest of the Democrats are complaining that McConnell’s schedule is too tight, it’s too compressed, it doesn’t give ’em enough time to jigger the results. They say that Clinton’s Senate trial allowed 24 hours of arguments over four days.
Now, McConnell’s resolution, i.e., the rules, do not permit any witnesses or any new evidence until after the opening arguments are heard. At that time if the Senate votes to hear from witnesses, it will depose the witnesses first — we will not see that — and then vote on whether they should testify.
That also ticks off the Democrats who claim it’s all part of the Republican cover-up of Trump’s crimes. This is exactly what Schiff did. He took depositions of people, Republicans in some cases were not even permitted to be in the room. And those who were in the room were not permitted to ask questions. He took depositions and determined what, if anything, they said that he wanted them to then say publicly. McConnell is simply saying we’re gonna have much the same kind of procedure. The witnesses will be deposed first and then there will be a vote on whether the testimony that’s been heard should actually be given before the Senate.
The Democrats are now all repeating the mantra that the Republicans are engaging in a cover-up by not calling witnesses that the Democrats demand, and these witnesses are people like Lev Parnas and John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney. They are of the belief that there’s a whole lot of administration people that can’t wait to drop the dime on Trump. Yeah, man, a lot of administration people hate Trump and they can’t wait to join this effort to get him thrown out of office, is what they’re hoping.
But the Democrats, Schiff over in the House, they didn’t call Lev Parnas. They didn’t call John Bolton when they were conducting their hearings in the House. Now, one of the reasons they said they didn’t, well, it’s gonna take too much time and the president was engaging in a cover-up anyway, the president was obstructing.
No, the president was gonna go to court, constitutionally, and assert executive privilege and claim that these people should not have to testify. And Schiff and his boys knew that that court fight would last all the way ’til the summer. And so Schiff and the boys, okay, well — there’s ladies there, too, I know. Sometimes you can’t tell who’s who there. Schiff and the boys said, “We’re not gonna let ’em waste time.”
So they didn’t call Bolton, they didn’t call Parnas, they didn’t call any of the witnesses they’re now demanding that McConnell let them call in the Senate. Speaking of cover-ups, isn’t the mother of all cover-ups how the Democrats are fighting hearing from Joe and Hunter Biden? Do you know that at one point the round mound of the gavel, Jerry Nadler said: You know what? If it comes down to hearing from Hunter Biden or no witnesses, I’m voting no witnesses.
They do not want any part of the Republicans getting a chance to ask Hunter Biden or his dad or Biden’s brother anything. That’s the mother of all cover-ups. The mother of all cover-ups is the Democrats fighting every which way they can to keep Hunter Biden from testifying. Not to mention that this entire sham has been a concerted effort to cover up the biggest political scandal in the history of the country, and that is the attempt to overturn the 2016 election. That’s the big cover-up.
That’s why all of this is happening is to keep any investigation of all of that from occurring publicly.
I’m fairly confident I can tell you that after all of this caterwauling today that Mitch McConnell’s rules and Mitch McConnell’s resolution will prevail, and the Democrats are gonna be left shrieking about a cover-up and they’re not gonna call their witnesses.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, one thing about the House and Lev Parnas, who’s this — you know — watch it, Rush. Watch it. Like I told you, I’ve been amazed in the early days of some of Trump’s staffing decisions, and I don’t know how in the world Rudy gets involved with somebody like Lev Parnas, but he did, and it is what it is.
But the bottom line is Lev Parnas was not covered by executive privilege, meaning Schiff could have called Lev Parnas any day he wanted and nobody could have stopped him. Schiff could have brought Lev Parnas. He’s this Ukrainian the guy that claims that Trump’s lying every time he opens his mouth about it, and Rudy’s out saying this guy, Parnas, you know, I knew him and his wife. I’m stunned that this guy’s misrepresenting everything that’s happened between us.
Well, somebody scared the hell out of Parnas or else is offering him a lot of money. But all that aside, Schiff could have called Lev Parnas. He’s not protected by executive privilege. He’s not part of the regime. He’s not part of the administration. The Democrats had no excuse not to call Lev Parnas.
Now, they couldn’t have gotten Bolton, and they couldn’t have gotten Mulvaney because of executive privilege, but they could have called Parnas, and they didn’t. They didn’t call a whistleblower. You want to talk about a real cover up, not calling the whistleblower. The whistleblower, who got all this started. Why not call the whistleblower?
I’ll tell you why you don’t call the whistleblower, because you gotta protect Schiff, because Schiff and the whistleblower conspired to move this whole thing off the dime before Trump had released the transcript. The whistleblower never heard the phone call. Remember, he got it secondhand we think from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see.
The whistleblower’s original report was terrifying, it was shocking, it was frightening. “I couldn’t stay silent.” And then Trump releases the transcript. And then it was discovered the whistleblower first called somebody in Schiff’s office. Schiff then put him in line with the inspector general. Everybody ended up being corrupted. That’s why the whistleblower is not gonna be called, to protect Schiff.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just saw a graphic up there that the Turtle has decided to expand the evidence presentation to three days instead of two. That’s probably to satisfy some recalcitrant Republicans.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s a couple of things here to warn you about. The Drive-By Media is all ecstatic because they think McConnell has already caved by giving an additional day to present cases, two days was the original, 12 hours a day, 24 hours total. He’s now moved it to three. Many liberal journalists, “See? He’s beginning to cave. He knows that he’s about to lose four Republicans.”
That is not the case. In fact, what I think you’re gonna hear some about it’s gonna be downplayed. But there are some Democrat senators who are getting fed up. Schiff had the opportunity to call all the — he’s the committee chairman over there. He’s the Intelligence Committee chairman. He could have called these witnesses any day he wanted, and he didn’t. And now he’s come into their chamber and preaching to them and demanding, they’ve got a duty to do it.
And some of them, I’m telling you, you’re not gonna hear this, but it’s reverberating there, it’s percolating, some Democrats, “What the hell is our job for?” It’s one thing, Democrat unity, but for some little pea brain to come over from the House and start chastising the Senate for not doing its duty when Schiff could have called these witnesses and now putting the onus on them to do it. The media wants you to think McConnell is caving and that four Republican recalcitrants are maybe gonna win the day and Schumer may end up running the trial. Don’t fall for any of that. It’s the usual attempt to dispirit you, depress you, and all of that.
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