RUSH: This irritating little Pencil Neck creep, Adam Schiff, is bellyaching and whining and moaning over McConnell’s lack of ability or willingness to call witnesses and it’s just so unfair and (impression), “Trump is so bad and Trump is so mean and he so cheated. He’s gonna cheat again. Our elections are perverted, are — are — are corrupted. Trump did this and that and the other thing,” and they have no case. They’ve got no case.

They’re desperate to try to bring up anything here to throw it against the wall and see if it’ll stick. Something to keep in mind, folks, during this entire proceeding — and I don’t mean just the Senate. I mean from the moment the whistleblower came forward and Schiff began the sham basement hearings last fall, do you realize the president’s case hasn’t even been made? It hasn’t been heard! They didn’t allow it in the House. They didn’t allow any presidential witnesses to come in. They weren’t allowed to… It was a stacked deck.

The point is, the president’s case is going to consist of blowing this up. I mean, you can’t defend a negative. You can’t. This is why in American justice, the prosecution has to prove its case. You, as the accused, do not have to prove you didn’t do it. So when the president’s lawyers get their chance at this, it’s gonna be to blow up everything the Democrats have done here, which the American people have not heard from the president’s representatives. They’ve heard it here. The American people have heard it on Fox News and some other places.

But Mr. Cipollone, one of the president’s lawyers, just pointed out in his argument for McConnell’s resolution, meaning the rules, is that it’s exactly like the resolution and schedule that happened in Clinton’s impeachment trial, which passed unanimously 100 to zero. Now, I also… I have to tell you something. I know impeachments have been rare, and they’re not gonna be going forward. They’re gonna be commonplace now, probably. But comparing this to the Clinton impeachment bothers me.

Just because it was done one way then doesn’t mean it must be done that way always, or just because no precedents were set then means they can’t be set now. The cases are different. Clinton committed crimes, for crying out loud. That’s why he was impeached — and they were serious crimes. They were statutory and constitutional. He lied under oath in a grand jury deposition. He lied under oath on videotape — everybody saw it — and asked other people to lie. That’s what mob bosses do.

There is no crime. This comparison to the Clinton impeachment procedurally? I guess people are going to do it. But it seems to me that we don’t need to compare our case to anything. We got this. This is a slam dunk. They don’t have any evidence. They don’t have an impeachable offense, and there’s no reason to give them months and months and months to go through the phony, fake motion of trying to make a case on television, on the Senate floor, when they have none — and that’s why McConnell’s rules are what they are.

They’re gonna shut this down. There isn’t any evidence, they don’t have any, and the Senate’s not gonna be turned in to a back alley where investigations are taking place, which is what the Democrats are demanding in calling it “fair,” and if they don’t get it, they’re calling it a “cover-up,” and people say, “Well, the Clinton impeachment…” Screw what happened the Clinton impeachment! This is the Trump impeachment. It’s bogus. It’s totally manufactured. It’s nothing more than an October Surprise.

It’s a political event. It is opposition research. That’s all this is, because there aren’t any impeachable offenses. They had their own opportunity to find the evidence, to produce the evidence. They don’t have any. They didn’t produce any because there isn’t any. They just had a bunch of noses-out-of-their-joint civil servants and ambassadors who were left out of Trump decision-making, and on that basis, “Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing. He did not consult us, and we are the experts.”

Nobody elected you, snooty, nose-in-the-air elitists. Clinton lied under oath in a sexual abuse case. Can anybody say #MeToo? He lied under oath in a sexual abuse case, for crying out loud! Today, that’s the worst crime in humanity: Sexual abuse. Harvey Weinstein, all that, Jeffrey Epstein — well, aside from environmental abuse. Clinton lied under oath in a sexual abuse case to protect himself and asked others to lie for him! There’s nothing comparable to that in anything Trump has done or has been accused of doing.

Pencil Neck… When I turned on at the top of the hour to watch this, Pencil Neck used his time (and he’s still using it) to argue against McConnell’s resolution and to run through the fallacious claims about Trump’s crime, which is really why the Democrats wanted this debate, so they could present their bogus case while they had a peak audience. “You know, it’s the trial. It moves to the Senate!” Nobody watched ’em in the House. These people are a bunch of dryballs, a series of dryballs. Politics is showbiz for the ugly, and Schiff and his pals on the Democrat side prove that.

Nobody watched them.

So they want a bigger audience here in the Senate.

I’m imagining what it must be like to be in the Senate and listen to this little snivelly voiced, arrogant snob tell them how they don’t know what they’re doing, how dangerous the president is and how they must be allowed to do… He’s lying through his teeth about what the president did, about the evidence, lack of it. I mean, it’s just… I told you it was gonna be painful if you watch this because at the end of the day Schiff and his guys are gonna get shut out; the McConnell rules are gonna survive — the resolution, the timeline, and all of that.

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RUSH: Texarkana, Texas. This is John. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi there, Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: I’m good, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Yeah. I was calling, I just basically decided to tune out the impeachment. The more I watch, the angrier I get just watching. They’re a bunch of people just lying through their teeth. The people that just got through in the House doing the very things that they’re accusing the Senate of doing, it’s just infuriating.

RUSH: And so what did you do? You turned on this program.

CALLER: That I did. You’re always positive, upbeat, and you’re able to —

RUSH: Exactly. Positive, upbeat, and I don’t lie to be positive, and so you had to leave that, and you came here in order to have normalcy restored?

CALLER: That’s true, yes. That positive outlook of what’s true is a lot easier to swallow than a bunch of lies all day.

RUSH: I tell you, it’s been a big bugaboo of mine for a long time. I mean, everybody lies to one degree or another, but in the political realm where everybody really, really lies, to be confronted with a serial lie that propels itself with a bunch of offshoots for three years, that Trump stole the election and colluded with Russians. And so we’ve gotta overturn the election of 2016, this for three years.

We’ve been subjected to every lie they have been able to manufacture about this presented to us, of course, as official evidence. I told you, I told you if you were gonna watch this today, that you’re gonna have to just put up with it and realize at the end of it all that McConnell’s rules are going to survive, they’re gonna be what guides this trial when it ultimately happens.

I mean, I’ve got a couple of Pencil Neck sound bites here. I don’t even know if I want to subject you to them. Why should this guy get any more time, particularly on this program where more people will hear him than if they’re watching the stupid trial on C-SPAN or wherever. I probably will play it when I have more time.

There’s something else too. We keep hearing about witnesses. They want witnesses. Witnesses to what? There aren’t any crimes that have been committed here, folks. The transcript of the phone call, which is what this is all about, has been released. There are no witnesses to an impeachment crime because Trump hasn’t committed any crimes, much less in front of witnesses.

“Well, Rush, what about all those ambassadors that testified?” They had no firsthand knowledge. And every one of them was asked, “Did any of you witness or see an impeachable offense?” Dead silence. Every one of those ambassadors, even Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see? — he didn’t even find any impeachable offense. He just had his sensibilities bothered.

So even this term “witnesses” is loaded. The Democrats want to be able to say after the fact, “See? See? See? We had the goods. Witnesses to all of Trump’s reprobate behavior ready to tell all, but these evil the Republicans stopped us.” There aren’t any witnesses. There hasn’t been a crime committed here.

The only witnesses there are are people who are in the Trump administration who have watched him execute his constitutional duties. And that’s what they’re trying to turn into crimes, abuse of power and have witnesses. They don’t have any witnesses. They’re asking for haters. They want haters. They want disgruntled employees.

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RUSH: I want to try to properly characterize what I just saw for you watching the impeachment, whatever this is in the Senate — and it seriously makes me wonder about these people and what they literally thought was gonna happen. I mean the Democrats. So Schiff just did the opening presentation for the Democrats, and (sigh) I don’t care what he said. It was all just cockamamie BS. It’s not the point what he said.

He has been eviscerated by Jay Sekulow — one of Trump’s lawyers — and now Pat Cipollone, and they are ripping the skin off of his bones, and Nadler too. They are describing, maybe for the first time in a lot of American people’s experience… They’re describing the sham that was Schiff’s investigation in the basement room in the House. They’re explaining how no Republican witnesses were called. They’re explaining how Democrat witnesses were ordered to only say certain things under threat of contempt if they didn’t follow Schiff’s instructions.

These are things that you know because you listen here and you’ve been told. But the American people watching this are hearing for the first time about the abject absence of any evidence in the totally phony unfairness and bias of Schiff. Cipollone right now just ripped Schiff a new one in every which way about procedures in his basement hearing room, the SCIF. But in addition to that, Cipollone went through almost word by word how Adam Schiff lied to the American people about the transcript of the phone call.

Now, you know about this because I’ve already made a big deal about it. The president released the transcript of the phone call with the president of Ukraine. It’s out there. Anybody can see it. Anybody can read it. It’s not on a private server where you need a password. Anybody can read it. Schiff, on a day where the House Intelligence Committee was meeting — he’s chairman — recites what he wants people to think is the transcript.

It’s that day where he said (summarized), “The president called Zelensky and said, ‘You listen to me and you listen tight. I want you to find dirt on my opponent in 2020, Mr. Biden. If you have to make it up, I want you to make it up. You find the dirt, and you don’t get back to me until you find it — and I’m telling you this nine times.’ The president told this guy nine times, ‘Make it up if you have to! Find the dirt, whatever, and don’t get back to me until you do.

“‘And, furthermore, you’re not getting a dime — you’re not getting a dime from the United States — until you give me what I want.'” So Cipollone goes through how this is an abject lie. It is a psychopathic lie. Schiff did say exactly what I just told you he said, and it took 30 minutes for a Republican on that committee to call him out on it. Thirty minutes! I’m losing my mind here watching. “Where are the Republicans objecting to this?” Schiff, when he was finally called on it, said (sputtering), “It was a parody. It was satire.” It was neither.

He was trying to get away with lying about it, knowing the media wasn’t gonna call him out on it. Okay. So here he comes and makes his case. Does he not think this is going to be pointed out? Cipollone just pointed it out pretty much like I just did. Schiff is sitting there somewhere watching this. Do these people like Schiff and Nadler, who have lied through their teeth — conducted the essence of a prefab, unfair, biased, so-called investigation — not know that they’re gonna get called out here? Do they not know that they’re gonna finally be exposed?

They have to know this is gonna happen. And yet they still do this. Sekulow and Cipollone are literally stripping these two guys bare right now in the entire way they conducted the investigation both behind closed doors in that basement meeting in the House and the public televised hearings, and it just makes you wonder. Pelosi and all these people, do they not realize that on day one they’re essentially dead — on day one! They can whine and bellyache about witnesses all they want.

They have just been exposed. Now, they obviously are not telling themselves this. They’re saying, “Well, nobody’s gonna believe Sekulow. He works for the president; he’s gonna be seen as a liar. Nobody’s gonna believe Cipollone. He works for the president; he’s gonna be seen as a liar.” You just lie through your teeth so many times and you demand another forum where you know you’re gonna be exposed and you go forward with it? Maybe I’m off base. It’s something I wouldn’t do, obviously. I’m not… They’re not me; I’m not them. Did they…?

I don’t know. Did they not stop to think what the president’s lawyers could do with this totally bogus case they have assembled? Did they not realize it could be dismantled inside of 10 minutes in opening presentations on the Senate floor? While Schiff is up there calling the president a liar and an abject threat to our democracy and our elections, he gets exposed as a pathological liar and an incompetent to boot, and an unfair…

Well, I’m running out of adjectives that are not profane. We’ll see. I just… (chuckles) Cipollone and Sekulow have really done a good job, let’s just put it that way, and I’ve only had a chance to watch them, you know, three minutes at a time — max, maybe four minutes — on a couple of breaks. I really hope somebody would make… Well, no. I’m not gonna say it that way. I just want to remind you again, there really aren’t any witnesses. That’s another loaded term.

They’re trying to create this illusion the president’s committed a series of crimes, constitutional and otherwise, so bad he’s gotta be removed, and there are witnesses. Democrats know the witnesses, the witnesses know who they are, we gotta hear from them. There aren’t any witnesses; there’s not a crime here. Witnesses is a loaded term. What they’re looking for are haters.

They’re looking for more Trump haters, either in the administration or in the civil service corps or in the deep state, the administrative state, whatever, disgruntled employees like that parade that Schiff put forth before his committee. These are the people, “Well, Trump went outside the normal channels. Trump did not use the interagency group.”

Yeah, he didn’t trust you. He had his own people in Ukraine. Ukraine’s been a corrupt hotbed for all those years in the Obama administration. You people were there and ran a lot of it. He doesn’t want to talk to you about it. And sure as hell these people up there testifying before Schiff’s committee are lying or maybe not lying, but they’re shading their testimony to make it look like they’re the experts, they’re the brilliant ones, they have all the answers, diplomatically.

And Trump’s a buffoon, doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s dangerous, poses a great threat to the world, he didn’t listen to us, didn’t seek our advice. But did you see him break the law? No. Have you seen any impeachable offense? No. No. No impeachable offense. Were you on the phone call? No, I wasn’t on the phone call. Have you ever met president? No, I haven’t met president. The witnesses hadn’t met the guy. They weren’t on the phone call, which is all any of this is about.

So there aren’t any witnesses. If they had actual witnesses, folks, they would have called ’em over in the House. The witnesses would have been paraded through there and we would have had mounds of evidence based on their testimony, but they haven’t called them. You know, Schiff has been saying he’s got evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. He’s still saying this.

After the Mueller report, he’s still saying it, but he’s never revealed whatever this evidence he has is. He’s never released it. Well, call him as a witness. Apparently he’s got evidence. Call him as a witness. Bring the whistleblower in. Call him.

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RUSH: Let me read to you one thing Cipollone said. This is not what I saw with Cipollone just dismantling Schiff and his lying representation of the transcript of the phone call. But this is one of the things that Pat Cipollone, he’s one of the lawyers on the president’s team, he said, “In an election year, some of you are upset because you should be in Iowa right now,” meaning the Democrats. They’re not allowed, the Democrat senators have to stay there.

Biden and Buttigieg, Mayor Pete, they have the run of the campaign trail ’cause the Democrat senators running for president are locked in the Senate. So he’s saying, “In an election year some of you are upset because you should be in Iowa right now but instead we’re here. And they’re not ready to go, and it’s outrageous. It’s outrageous. The American people won’t stand for it. I’ll tell you that right now.” And he’s speaking here of the House managers like Nadler, Pencil Neck. “They’re not here to steal one election.” He just said this from the floor of the Senate as part of the trial.

“They’re not here to steal one election. They’re here to steal two elections. It’s buried in the small print of their ridiculous articles of impeachment. They want to remove President Trump from the ballot. They won’t tell you that. They don’t have the guts to say that directly, but that’s exactly what they are here to do. They are asking the Senate to attack one of the most sacred rights we have as Americans, the right to vote, the right to choose our president in an election year. It’s never been done before. It shouldn’t be done now.”

So this is an assault on their motivation, what they’re really here to do. And, by the way, he’s not wrong. Schiff did make a motion to have the Senate do what they could to remove Trump now, get him out of there now so he can’t be on the ballot in November because he represents an existential threat because he’s already said — this is Schiff again — Schiff said that Trump has already said he’s gonna cheat again. He’s happily out there saying he’s gonna cheat again. That’s what the phone call was about.

He’s lying through his teeth about it. How can there be any undecided senators? How can anybody like Cory Gardner, Mitt Romney be watching any of this and want to give these clowns the moment of the time of day? But Cipollone called out their true motive, get Trump off the ballot, second election they want to steal. They failed in overturning the 2016 election. They’re trying to get Trump off the ballot for this coming election, which happens to be true.