RUSH: I’m watching this stupid trial. It is obvious that Democrat senators have coordinated Democrat questions for the House managers. They got together, they’ve written the questions and answers in advance. “Do you believe there is any limit to type or scope of quid pro quo in regards to a foreign entity?” This is a question that Schiff is answering. They’re having a cow over what Dershowitz said yesterday.
Dershowitz said, “You can’t separate a politician trying to do things to help himself from doing things to assist the country. You can’t say that a president can’t engage in anything that might benefit him because it’s a violation of the Constitution or is a high crime or misdemeanor or impeachable offense. Nothing would ever get done, unless the president actively engages in policies that were harmful to him! That was essentially Dershowitz’s point.
They are mangling that and they are distorting it, because it’s one of these hard doses of reality and common sense about how human beings work. Everybody engages in self-interest. The idea that in the case of Donald Trump, self-interest is harmful to the country? Where does that come from? Here is a guy who’s done nothing but improve — by any measure — life in this country, and yet they’re out trying to make the case that Donald Trump is trying to arrange things so he’s improving his own political life, personal life, political prospects.
You know, if the country were going to hell in a handbasket and the country were triumphing, if he were selling the country out while benefiting, that would be one thing. But it’s the exact opposite of what was happening. It’s such a reverse; it’s such a change in direction. It’s such, as the cliche goes, a breath of fresh air. But these guys in the Democrat Party are actually acting like a president must actually engage in things that are harmful to him in order to be innocent of the charge of abusing his office. It’s just patently absurd, and it’s a great example of how baseless their whole case is.
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RUSH: We started here in Milwaukee. This Jerry. Great to have you, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Donald Trump has tried to ban and stop every witness testifying in the House. He’s now trying to explain John Bolton and the Republicans are trying to stop John Bolton. This has been a great cover-up. If John Bolton has nothing incriminating on Donald Trump, which Republicans seems to be the spin right now, then why are they trying to block John Bolton? If John Bolton has nothing to say that shows extortion by Donald Trump, then why are they trying to block Bolton? Because they’re afraid! They’re scared, Rush. They’re scared of what John Bolton has to say about Trump’s extortion of the Ukraine president.
RUSH: Uh, nice try, but dead wrong. In fact, Adam Schiff just tried to make the same point, and there was just a question submitted to the chief justice for the president’s legal team. The Democrats want the president to waive his rights and have every witness they want come up. (impression) “President Trump is the first witness to not wave his rights in a trial like this,” and of course he’s not. Every other president or every other target engages in this. This is a bogus argument, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, why…?”
The same thing could be said of Schiff. “If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you release the whistleblower testimony and why don’t you let the whistleblower testify?” This is Donald Trump knowing full well he didn’t do anything wrong. The trial as a setup, and he is not gonna hand his political opponents a way to wipe him out, and he’s not gonna sacrifice duly constituted rights to enable him to do so. He’s under no compunction to let anybody testify.
They have to prove their case, Jerry, and they haven’t done it — and they think Trump can’t defend his case, that’s why they want witnesses? They want witnesses ’cause they don’t have a case, Jerry. They don’t have a single impeachable offense. They don’t have bribery. They don’t have extortion. If they did, that would have been in the two articles of impeachment. In fact, let me find the sound bites where this all came up because Schiff was taken to the woodshed by the president’s legal team.
Hang on here just a second. Yeah, grab sound bites 10 and 11. Schiff tried this trick yesterday. He started claiming that Trump has been guilty of extortion and bribery. Well, those two charges are not in the articles of impeachment. You can’t bring those up. You can’t start litigating that when you didn’t put it in the original indictment. Here’s how it went. We’ll have the president’s lawyer responding right after it.
SCHIFF: We think there’s a crime here of bribery or extortion, conditioning official acts for personal favors. That is bribery. It’s also what the founders understood as extortion.
RUSH: Right. So this caused Mr. Philbin, Patrick Philbin, to not stand for it. One of the president’s lawyers went to the well of the Senate and said this…
PHILBIN: The articles of impeachment specify a theory of the charge here that is abuse of power. They do not allege the elements of bribery or extortion. They don’t mention bribery or extortion. If the House managers had wanted to bring those charges, they had to put them in the articles of impeachment. Just the way a prosecutor, if he wants to put someone on trial for bribery, he’s gotta put it in the indictment. If you don’t and you come to trail and then try to start arguing it — “Well, actually we think there is bribery going on here” — that’s impermissible. It’s prosecutorial misconduct.
RUSH: And it’s admissible, and it is a total show of desperation. Schiff knows. He’s a lawyer. He knows he doesn’t get away with this. He doesn’t care. This is like one of those where a lawyer asks a question and the judge says, “You can’t do that. I instruct the jury to ignore that. Disregard what you just heard about that horrible question!” They’ll never forget it. Lawyers ask questions they know are gonna be stricken from the record because that’s how they get them on the record, and that’s what Schiff was doing.
They’re at their wits’ end! They don’t have a case. They don’t have a shred of evidence. So here comes little Schiff whining and moaning about bribery and extortion. I don’t have a case, Jer. It’s a nice try, but you’re sounding just like Schiff: Baseless, without any substance. In fact, Judge Napolitano — who used to be 180 degrees different than he is. He used to like Trump. Now he’s a Never Trumper. Nobody knows what happened.
Some people have told me that Judge Nap thought that he might be on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees, and when he found out that he wasn’t, he got mad. I can’t believe that. Have you heard that, Snerdley? (interruption) Yeah, I’ve heard that too. That just sounds… Well, anyway. They went to Judge Nap today on Fox & Friends. Ainsley Earhardt: “Adam Schiff said, ‘It’s extortion! It’s bribery!’ The president’s legal team says, ‘It’s not fair. You never put that in the articles.’ You know this. You’re a lawyer.”
NAPOLITANO: This would not happen in front of a jury in a criminal case. It absolutely would be a mistrial if it were stated in front of a jury in a criminal case.
RUSH: Yeah. But this isn’t a criminal case, and it’s not a jury. It’s an impeachment trial, and so there are different rules here. But still, the principle holds. What it really means is that Schiff knows he’s got nothing. He knows they’ve got nothing. Pelosi knows. Now they’re out there bellyaching and whining and moaning, “Well, we can’t have an acquittal without a trial, and you can’t have a trial without witnesses, and you can’t have a trial without documents.” (chucking) Documents? There are documents out the wazoo in this case.
Here’s Eileen in Ventnor, New Jersey. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush! Dittos from South Jersey, Trump country.
RUSH: Right on. Great to have you here.
CALLER: (chuckles) Hey, last night Bret Baier concluded his interview with Joe Manchin. He brought up how Adam Schiff asserted he did not know the whistleblower, had no contact with him, and I quote Joe Manchin: “If they lie to me once, then shame on them. I’ll never believe them again.” He was referring to Adam Schiff and his fellow Democrats.
RUSH: Yeah. I’m looking for the sound bite. I know we’ve got… Well, I thought I had it. I know that Manchin called Schiff… Schiff is lying through his teeth about not knowing the whistleblower.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: So Manchin is pointing out that Schiff is lying. Is that what you heard last night on Bret Baier? Is that your point?
CALLER: Yes, and do you think there’s any chance that he could follow Jeff Van Drew’s lead and flip if they found out that Adam Schiff is lying?
RUSH: And change parties?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Joe Manchin, change parties?
CALLER: Yeah. Wouldn’t that be great?
RUSH: Well, it would, but I don’t know if it’s even necessary. He’s voting with Republicans. I mean, yeah, it’d be great if it happened. But I think Manchin’s gonna end up voting for acquittal. I think Manchin is gonna be one of these people voting against witnesses. For crying out loud, why call out Schiff as a liar? He’s the Democrat leader of the case, the lead manager. To call him out on that like that is…
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Look, they all know who Schiff is. You see, for the Democrats, who Schiff is, is a plus. These kind of things interesting me. I look at Pelosi trying to pick her people here. She picks Schiff. She picks the Round Mound of the Gavel, Nadler. I ask people who are in a better position to know, “What in the world does she see in this guy, Schiff? The guy is a pathological liar to the point of not being mentally stable. He is animated by a deeply personal hatred for Trump and, I think, a lot of conservatives.”
The answer I got back was, “The moment she met this guy when he first came to Congress in 2004, whatever, she has just been enamored of this guy. He’s from California, he took the seat away from a Republican, and she’s just been enamored the guy, and she trusts him. She trusts him. As far as she’s concerned, he is the cat’s meow, loyal and all that.” I think all of this is ultimately gonna come back and bite all these people really, really badly.
Now, I don’t think it would have gone any better if they’d a put anybody else in his place. You know, he’s the chairman of the Intelligence Committee; so he is a ranking Democrat on that committee, but I don’t know who else they would have been put in there. But the problem they’ve always had is they don’t have a case. And, folks, I’m not just uttering syllables here. They really don’t have — and this is not partisan support of or defense of Trump.
They don’t have any evidence for anything they’ve alleged. There wasn’t collusion with Russia by Trump. They did! The Democrats colluded day in and day out with Russia. But Trump did not. Trump’s election was legitimate. It was not fraudulent. It was not the result of cheating. It’s the Democrats who rig elections — as against Crazy Bernie, and they’re trying to do it again now in denying him the nomination. But there’s the transcript of the phone call!
Literally at the moment that phone call happened, there’s not a person that said anything about it. It’s only when some other effort bombed out that they went to this phone call because impeachment was something that they’d been planning on since two weeks after Trump was inaugurated. They’ve been waiting the timeline and for the issue — and as I have been warning you all week, this is gonna end. Trump is going to be acquitted.
It has always been the case. He was never not going to be acquitted. What they’re trying to do now is to poison or dirty up the acquittal. But when this is over there’s gonna be something else, folks, because there always is with these people — meaning the Democrats and the media. There is something else. They’ve already got it in the hopper. They’re waiting to spring it. Whatever it is may require Trump to say something or do something, or somebody in the administration say something and do something, but we’re waiting to drop it.
We’ve got 10 months before the election. You think this is it? You think this — and here’s the thing that’s gonna amaze me. This is gonna bomb out, Trump is gonna be acquitted, the media is going to treat it as a fake acquittal. They’ll go along with the Democrats’ theory that it’s a dirty acquittal. But it’ll become something that’s in the past. Whenever the next so-called scandalous event hits — whether it’s another whistleblower on a private conversation on Air Force One, whatever it is — you watch.
The media is going to treat it like it is occurring in a vacuum, meaning: They’re gonna treat it as though it’s earth-shattering, it’s real. “Oh, my God! Can you believe this?” As though none of this stuff in the past has happened, although it will be added to the mix. They are not going to understand. They’re not gonna have the slightest bit of understanding that most Americans are worn out on this. They’re worn out on the tactic. They’re worn out on the specifics. Look at how many of these phony scandals the American people had to sit through.
Trump-Russia collusion. Nothing! Kavanaugh. Nothing! Cohen. Nothing! Stormy Daniels, Avenatti. Nothing! Whatever they thrown at him. Omarosa. Nothing! There are so many of ’em, I’ve forgotten. But they’ve all added up to nothing and yet there’s gonna be another one and the media is gonna treat it like it is a biggest bombshell that we’ve ever had, totally ignorant of the fact that most people are gonna yawn at it like they’re yawning at this impeachment.
It’s gonna be… We’re now into the fourth year of the Democrats whining and moaning and complaining that Trump’s this, that, and the other thing. And we’re into the fourth year of there not being a shred of evidence to back up any allegation that make. And whenever the next shoe drops, I’ll guarantee, the Never Trump Republicans are gonna be right in there joining the media and the Democrats doing everything they can. You talk about a bunch of people that have been emaciated, have been deballed? (I can’t think of the sophisticated word for that.)
Man, oh, man.
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RUSH: Grab sound bite 28. I just got the bite. This is the transcript, sound bite of one of the president’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow, answering a question from Senator Pat Toomey and others. Question: “For the president’s counsel, given that the election of president is one of the most significant political acts in which we as citizens engage, how much weight should the Senate give to the fact that removing a president from office and disqualifying him from ever holding future federal office would undo that democratic decision made by voters and kick the president off the ballot in this year’s election?”
SEKULOW: We’re discussing the possible impeachment and removal of the president of the United States not only during election season, in the heart of the election season. And I think that this does a disservice to the American people. It was so urgent to move this forward that they had to do it by mid-December, before Christmas, because national security was at stake. And then they waited 33 days to bring it here. Their entire process was corrupt from the beginning, and they’re putting it on this body. But to do it while the American people are selecting candidates for nomination to be the head of their party, to run as president of the United States — some of you in this very room — we think that this points to the exact problem that’s taking place here.
RUSH: Do you realize what he just said? He just said to these Democrat senators, “You people are a bunch of idiots. The Democrats in your own party are delaying your effort to win the Democrat Party nomination. They’ve screwed up the nomination process for you, in your own party, by waiting 33 days to bring these articles of impeachment over.” Man, what a setup question that was! (laughing) “How bad do you think it is that they’re doing this during an election year, and they might deny a man who was elected the chance to ever be reelected?” So there’s obviously coordination going on, on both sides.
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RUSH: How about this question? Senator Wyden and Senator Sherrod Brown asked the House managers, “If Trump remains in office, what signal does that send to countries that want to interfere in our future elections?” Now, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat House manager, is answering this question. But what a question! “If Trump remains in office, what signal does it send to countries that want to interfere in our future elections?”
Uhhh, Trump has not been found guilty of interfering in the election. Trump has not been found guilty of colluding with any country that attempted to interfere in the election. So what the hell is that question? Do you…? Countries that want to interfere in our election are gonna do it no matter who is in the White House! I’m telling you, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel and what they are doing now is simply giving the media talking points.
There is none of this that’s gonna change the vote on witnesses. There’s none of this that’s gonna change the voting on acquittal.
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