RUSH: Now, I want to go back to June 20th, 2018 — actually it’s a story — not go back, but the story’s today, but it’s about past events. Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News.

“Obama cyber chief confirms ‘stand down’ order against Russian cyberattacks in summer 2016 — The Obama White House’s chief cyber official testified Wednesday that proposals he was developing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. presidential election were put on a ‘back burner’ after he was ordered to ‘stand down’ his efforts in the summer of 2016.”

This is the Obama administration. They knew the Russians were hacking. They knew Russians were engaging in cyber warfare, and the Obama White House chief cyber official testified that he was told to stand down. So Obama didn’t do anything about the Russians! Obama was telling everybody the Russians could not hack the presidential election. Obama was telling people that it was too massive and widespread and intricate, it couldn’t be done.

But this… “The comments by Michael Daniel, who served as White House ‘cyber security coordinator’ between 2012 and January of last year, provided his first public confirmation of a much-discussed passage in the book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, co-written by [Isikoff] and David Corn… [This] came during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing into how the Obama administration dealt with Russian cyber and information warfare attacks in 2016…”

The point is: Where was the media? Where was the media all hopped up about what Putin was doing in 2016, what the Russians were doing? Obama was telling everybody, “Stand down. No big deal! Don’t worry about it.” What did Obama know that we didn’t know? Why did Obama want his own administration to stand down and not do anything? Could we maybe use the word “treasonous,” that Obama was willing to stand down and stand aside and let the Russians continue meddling and tampering and whatever?

All of this that we’re talking about happened before Trump was even president. All of this happened before Trump — in many cases — even became a candidate. A lot of it happened before Trump even won the Republican nomination. Somehow, all of this is Donald Trump’s fault, not standing up to the Russians. Here are two left-wing socialist reporters, David Corn and Michael Isikoff, writing that Obama told his cyber security people to “stand down” in the face of Russian cyberattacks in 2016.

Now, what can we infer from this? Did Obama think that the Russians were going to try to help Hillary and hurt Trump and so he wanted everybody to stand aside and let that happen? Did Obama think that what the Russians were gonna do was somehow gonna benefit the Democrats and so the objective was to stand aside and let it happen? Where was all the outrage back then? Where was all the outrage when Trump was just a candidate and Obama is the president and he’s telling Dmitry Medvedev, “You tell Vlad to be patient.

“I’ll have more flexibility on getting rid of nuclear weapons after I win reelection in 2012.” Where’s all this? It’s nowhere. It’s nowhere to be seen. We can’t placate the media. Trump cannot dial back anything he’s done. You know what the real irony of all this is? The real irony of all this is how hard and tough Donald Trump has been on Russia since he became president. Donald Trump is not a Vladimir Putin secret agent. He’s not a pushover.

He’s not linguini-spined. He has basically read Theresa May the Riot Act. He read Angela Merkel the riot act for making a deal with Putin for strengthening Russia with a super-secret might be deal benefiting only Germany at the expense of other NATO nations. Donald Trump has been hell-bent on opposing Vladimir Putin, in terms of deeds and actions. When he talks, he talks about, “There’s no reason to be enemies. We can get along,” and so forth and so on.

Trump’s actions… Forget the words. Trump’s actions dispel all of these lies about himself selling out, about him valuing Putin’s evidence over his own intelligence community’s evidence. There have been presidents who have given the Soviets and Russians everything, or more than they should have. Look at the concessions that were made to the Soviets over the years by presidents prior to Reagan. Look at what Jimmy Carter, what Jimmy Carter did the Soviets! They’re all over this, the Democrats helping the Soviets build the client state of Nicaragua.

But Donald Trump did the same thing… You know, Reagan rejected Detente. There was this big thing called Detente where Russia and the United States would get along, and Drive-Bys were all in favor of that. Back in the eighties they were all in favor of exactly what Trump talks about doing now, and Ronald Reagan rejected Detente, and they hammered Reagan. They said, “Gorbachev is the savior of the world. Trump is an uncontrolled dunce.” Sorry; Reagan. “Reagan has no business being president! His finger’s poised near the nuclear button. That puts the world at great risk.”

The media, the left, the Democrats were investing all of their hope in Mikhail Gorbachev to save the world from the irresponsible and dangerous Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, Reagan what? He continues his agenda, and the Soviet Union falls apart, the Berlin Wall comes down, and then the left gets mad at that! Donald Trump is engaging Putin — he’s talking to him — while at the same time confronting Putin on their abuses with actions, such as how he dealt with Angela Merkel, such as how he’s dealing with Theresa May on Brexit — and he gets hammered for this.

We’re dealing with sheer hatred here. We’re dealing with sheer hatred for Donald Trump for a lot of reasons and on a lot of levels. It’s not just enough to say that Trump is hated because he’s an outsider. That’s clearly an element, but there’s much more to it than that. It’s deep, and it’s visceral. So what matters? Words? Placating the media? Are we trying to soften the coverage here? Do Trump’s actions and his achievements against Russia not count for anything? And that may be the world we live in: Reality trumped by words, images, photos.