RUSH: Here we have Jennifer in Norfolk. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, so fun to talk to you. Thanks for taking this call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Rush, I think that obviously we know the Dems, they did not come up with any evidence or support of a crime, and they’ve relied on the optics just being on the nightly news, on the mainstream media theme, “We have the evidence, we have the evidence.” And their followers didn’t really demand that evidence. And I think they’re relying again on optics, something along the lines of what you’re saying, that they rely on the fact that the general public doesn’t know about the procedure, that it was actually the House’s responsibility to bring this testimony to come up with the evidence when it was their turn.

And now they’re presenting the optics of the trial begins in the Senate, like you were saying, that this is about a fair trial starting now, acting like this is a time for bringing evidence, the time for issuing subpoenas, and, therefore, if the public doesn’t know that there was already an opportunity for that, it’s gonna look like the Senate is — they are the ones blocking this and obstructing justice. And those are, again, just the optics of making these Republicans look bad.

RUSH: Yeah. If this were five, six years ago, I would sign on to that.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: In a generic politics-as-it’s-always-been atmosphere, you’re absolutely right. That’s how it would be portrayed, and that’s how we would be told the American people see it. I know it’s tempting to look at it as though they have successfully maneuvered this in such a way that the Republicans look like they’re obstructing, that they don’t want any evidence ’cause they’re trying to hide the fact that Trump did it or what have you, and the media’s helping.

But I think the media has not been getting away with that. The Democrats have not been getting away with that during the past two years of Trump. I don’t believe that Trump’s approval numbers aren’t over 50%, for example, and I don’t believe the polling data out there that says the American people — of course if you ask ’em, do you want a fair trial or unfair trial, what do you think they’re gonna say?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Nobody’s for an unfair trial. So you get these silly poll questions and silly poll results, which then drive media coverage and drive media questions of Republicans and so forth. But I think what overrides your concern — and it’s a legitimate concern — is that I think the people who compromise Trump’s base are not gonna fall for any of this. They haven’t fallen for any of it in three years, Jennifer. Why would they fall for this?

They know exactly — the people that voted for Trump — in fact, there are people that are now part of Trump’s base that didn’t vote for him in 2016. Trump’s base has expanded. It’s grown. I think there is probably more awareness today than ever before about how the media has attempted to influence public opinion, and people are standing up and opposed to it. I think people don’t talk to pollsters as often. I think they lie to pollsters.

But Jennifer, this is not happening in a vacuum. This is following two years of people being promised that Trump colluded with Russia and then there wasn’t any evidence. This follows three years of people being promised that Trump did this or did that or did this, and there hasn’t been a single bit of evidence for any of it.

There is no public clamoring to throw Trump out of office. There’s no public clamoring to put Trump on trial. This is all concocted by the media. It’s an entire political operation by the Democrat Party aimed at the 2020 campaign. It’s not feeding off public opinion. It’s not the result of public opinion. The Democrats don’t care about. If this were the result of public opinion they would have stood down long ago. This is not what the American people want to be happening.

I’m gonna tell you this. You go back to the Clinton impeachment years and Clinton was impeached for legitimate crimes, but the economy back then was roaring, the economy was good. People didn’t want anything interrupting that. They didn’t support the impeachment. They didn’t want any part of it. Why should that change now? The American people don’t want anything to happen to Trump, especially the people that voted for him. So I think they’re throwing things up against the wall hoping something sticks, but I don’t think anything is sticking.

CALLER: So in light of what you’ve said, you’re right, of course. But in light of what you’ve said, we need to fight against things like net neutrality and whatever they’re doing to AM radio because I think it’s because of free speech obviously —

RUSH: Wait a minute. What are they doing to AM radio?

CALLER: Well, aren’t they doing something — okay. This is gonna show my lack of staying up on this. But they always talk about AM radio as if it is making people extreme or, you know — I guess they talk about AM radio like it’s creating a problem in our nation and we need to get rid of it.

RUSH: Well, now, they constantly ping-pong back and forth on the Fairness Doctrine. You have to understand something, Jennifer, when you hear “AM radio,” you just need to think my name.

CALLER: I know. (laughing)

RUSH: And in that sense, yeah, for 31 years, Jennifer, they’ve been trying to nullify or negate me. They haven’t succeeded. The idea that they’re — net neutrality? Yeah. They bombed out on that too. The left is always gonna try. We can’t take the fact that the left is trying to do this and automatically assume that we’re losing just ’cause they’re trying. They’re failing. They’re corrupting culture in a lot of ways, but they’re failing at — they have not — is Trump still president?

CALLER: Yes, thank God.

RUSH: What would you rather Trump be — let’s go to back to the Nixon administration when he was under this kind of fire. Where was Nixon when this was all happening?

CALLER: He was president when things were going down —

RUSH: Right. But I mean how — this may be unfair, you may not have been alive then. Were you alive when Nixon was going through his impeachment —

CALLER: I was in sixth grade.

RUSH: Okay. So let me tell you where Nixon was. When the same kind of fire was being launched at him, Nixon was in the White House, and he was hunkered down, and he was having meetings with people, and he was strategizing how to beat it back, and he was responding totally to it. Where’s Trump?

CALLER: In the White House.

RUSH: No. He’s in Davos.

CALLER: Oh!

RUSH: He’s giving the greatest economic speech that we have heard in 35 —

CALLER: That’s great. That’s great.

RUSH: Donald Trump is building up the economy. He’s not even paying attention to this, other than a tweet now and then.

CALLER: Good point.

RUSH: Donald Trump is not acting like Nixon did. Donald Trump’s not giving this thing the time of day except to nuke it now and then in a tweet. Donald Trump is doing exactly what he was elected to do against all the odds and showing that these little fleabags are not affecting him whatsoever.

CALLER: (laughing) I like it.

RUSH: Aren’t you glad you called? Because you were prepared to say, “Oh, my God. We’re losing. They’re getting away with making it look like we’re obstructing.” Let me tell you this guy Schiff looks like a bug-eyed Pencil Neck alien. There’s no way this guy is gonna win a public opinion battle.

CALLER: No, I was thinking more about what they’re thinking and not the fact that they’re winning. But you’re right. And I was a schoolteacher who taught Millennials, and I am surrounded in my neighborhood with people who —

RUSH: Well, see, you’re surrounded by a bunch of corruption. You’re surrounded by a bunch of corrupt thinking. If you’re a schoolteacher it’s amazing that you haven’t been corrupted by it because you’re surrounded by it.

CALLER: I lived in Soviet Russia, and we never talked about politics at the dinner table and I didn’t know your name or anything.

RUSH: Right, because somebody might come shoot you if you said the wrong thing.

CALLER: Back in the eighties, we just didn’t talk politics in my family. Well, I lived in Russia and came back and I had all of my politics straightened out after living in the former Soviet Union right after it fell apart. And then I heard you right after I came back, I heard you on the radio, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh. This guy gets it.”

RUSH: Exactly right. Let me tell you something. You’re very perceptive in your fear that this could be seen as positioning the Republicans as obstructing. They’re trying that. Some people are gonna are. But Trump’s base, which he needs, is not gonna fall for this. Don’t worry about that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Audio sound bite number 22, Lesley Stahl, CBS News special report, the Senate impeachment trial. The anchor, Norah O’Donnell, with this question: “With Nixon and with Watergate, which you covered, Lesley, ultimately it was a Republican senator, Barry Goldwater, who went to Nixon and said, ‘This is ridiculous.'” Here is what Lesley Stahl said.

STAHL: It’s a very complicated story to tell. It’s Ukraine. There are so many names, so many places, so many dates. It was hard yesterday to follow. And I’ve been paying attention. During Watergate, the Senate Watergate committee had witness after witness. Just shows you how important witnesses are to developing a narrative and making the story clear.

RUSH: It’s so complicated. It’s not complicated, Lesley, because nothing happened. Ukraine got their aid. The transcript of the phone call has been released. Nothing happened. The people that you want as witnesses were not even on the phone call, Lesley. They heard about it second and thirdhand. The people you want as witnesses have never met Trump. Good grief.

I can tell you what Ukraine was. I’m not a witness. It’s not complicated. And the reason it’s not complicated is that nothing happened. What’s made it complicated are all of these outrageous, baseless allegations that are designed to get people going down a rabbit hole trying to defend and explain.

Let me go back to the phones. Mike in Elgin, Illinois. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Nice to talk to you. I’m a big fan.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I wanted to get your opinion on something.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: I’ve heard there’s a contingency out there called the “Shy Trumpers,” and these are people that secretly support Donald Trump, but they don’t admit it publicly for fear of repercussions from friends, family, or coworkers. I don’t think they can be measured in polls because, like I said, they don’t admit to their support for Donald Trump. But I think they’re gonna be a giant factor in the upcoming election, and I think that group is probably growing bigger and bigger every day as a result of Schiff and his antics.

RUSH: I would agree with that. I’ve not heard the term “Shy Trumpers,” but that’s a good description. Look, Trump people get beat up for wearing Make America Great Again hats. They get thrown out of families. There’s no question that there is a group of people who stand mute about their support for Trump.

The left is crazy. The anti-Trump maggots are literally dangerous. But I think there’s even more than that. I think the Trump presidency has caused an awakening or revolution — I don’t know the word you would use to describe it. I think there is a greater awareness of how opposition research politics happens now. Look, folks. Let me remind you of something. This is one of the reasons why the Democrats are so frustrated.

Let’s go back to Trump coming down the escalator, shall we? What did Trump say that day? Comes down the escalator June 16, 2015, announces his candidacy, talks about the rapists and the criminals and the drug dealers and the despicable human beings in Mexico. And he described them for on to 10 minutes. And he blamed them for corrupting American cultural based on the illegal immigration and said that this is the Democrat Party’s objective. He described the criminal element of illegal immigration in ways that nobody in politics has ever had the guts and courage to do so.

What did people say after he did that? “Oh, this guy’s finished. Why, this guy doesn’t have a prayer. Did you hear –” You could turn on any cable news network, you watch anybody analyzing it, this guy, they said, he’s not even serious. Nobody running for president would ever seriously say stuff like that to try get elected. There’s no way. They’re laughing about it. And of course they’re wringing their hands, it’s so outrageous, it’s so bad to talk about people that way, so bad.

But what happened? He got elected, didn’t he? Let’s look at the Access Hollywood video. What was the Access Hollywood video? Do you remember? Trump’s walking out of one of those trailers they have on set where you go take time-out if you’re an actor, you get made up or you sleep or whatever you do in there. And he’s walking out of the trailer with one of the hosts of these Access Hollywood shows, Billy Bush.

Trump doesn’t know he’s being videotaped. It’s not part of the show. And he starts talking about what the power of celebrity allows you to do with beautiful women and where you can, uh, touch them. He got elected. Anybody really stop to try to figure out, I mean, those two things, and one of them happening on the day he announced, would have disqualified anybody running for office. This guy got elected.

Every allegation they have made — colluded with Russia, Russian traitor, hired prostitutes to urinate on Obama’s bed in a Moscow hotel — they haven’t touched him. This isn’t going to touch him. This is an attempt to separate Trump from his base. This is an attempt to find some weak, frightful Republicans to hopefully vote in a wild dream to convict him. But they can’t touch him.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: John in Gainesville, Florida. Great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I really appreciate talking to you. What I wanted to say is I think that the media has done a disservice to conservatives and country with their blatant bias, but I’m also thinking that they’ve done actual damage to the Democrats because they’re not being held in check or made accountable for what they say and do.

RUSH: You are relying, therefore, on… The damage to the Democrats would therefore have to be done by the American people who are smart enough to see through the blatant cover-ups and boosterism the media gives the Democrats.

CALLER: Right. That was my point. They’re not prepared to face the people because the media’s given them a false sense of confidence, and they think that the American voters are gonna respond the same way that they do. In their world, they can say whatever they want, and they don’t get called out on it.

RUSH: Well, I think that’s true. They clearly cannot handle it. Look at when Pelosi got a simple question: “Do you hate the president?” She stops walking off the stage, comes back and gets irritated. You’re right about that. They cannot handle adversarial press.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: But at the same time I do think that it lulls them into this false sense of security of thinking that everybody thinks what they think, that everybody agrees with them.

CALLER: It actually reminds me of the movie Rocky where Apollo Creed was undisputed world champion so he didn’t train properly — and Rocky comes out swinging, and he gets knocked to the ground.

RUSH: Yeah, I remember that movie. I saw that movie two or three… (hitting buttons) Whatever, I saw it. I have to hit buttons four times here, folks, to make them work. Thankfully it doesn’t distract me most of the time. At any rate, it’s an interesting thought. You know, I’ve hoped for so long — after so much information and education — the American people can see through this tripe. I actually think that with Trump it has happened, and it’s begun to happen. Anyway, I appreciate the call out there, John.