RUSH: So, if you are just tuning in, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, fixer, whatever, has just been sentenced to three years in jail, 36 months in prison, federal prison. Primarily because he worked for Donald Trump.

Actually, his crimes that he’s being sent to prison for, the really bad ones have nothing to do with Trump. He engaged in massive $1.4 million tax fraud, has to make restitution of that. There’s a $500,000 reimbursement he’s gotta make to somebody and a $50,000 fine. So he’s gonna be sentenced in about three months. What’s he gonna be doing in the next three months? (interruption) Well, no. He’s not gonna be doing interviews yet.

By the way, I need to correct something. I said that now that he’s been sentenced and he’s testified that his use to the media has ended and expired. I need to amend that. That’s not true. This guy’s gonna have 60 Minutes profiles while he’s in prison. “What have you learned? Would you have accepted job offers from Donald Trump knowing what you know now? What is your opinion of Donald Trump as president? What did you think of Donald Trump’s buildings? Did you ever know of him taking shortcuts that risked the sanctity of his structures?”

It’s never gonna end in that regard until they get rid of Trump, and, even if they’re able to do that, they’re not gonna stop trying to destroy Trump. More of that in just a second here. No, the next three months he’s not gonna be doing any media because he’s going to be exclusively chatting with Robert Mueller. And I know this because of Lanny Davis’s statement. Lanny Davis is a lawyer, and Lanny Davis issued pretty much a statement that you can read between the lines and the stitches on a fastball, both of which I am proficient at doing, it’s very clear that Cohen is going to spend whatever time Mueller wants in the next three months, if Mueller wants sleepovers with Cohen, that’s what Cohen’s gonna do.

Whatever Cohen can say to Mueller about Trump to get that sentence reduced is what these next three months are gonna be. He’s going to try to satisfy Mueller. Now, we all know what that’ll mean. So that Mueller will think that his contributions have been significant and may in fact warrant a reduced jail sentence in which Mueller could file a petition, brief of the court informing the judge that Mueller has been even more cooperative than anybody ever imagined and, as such, Judge, we recommend taking a couple weeks off the sentence or whatever they’re gonna do.

I still think that what Cohen has done here is really attempt to ingratiate himself with the media. This is really what he wants. He want to be a media darling, a media hero. He wants to be treated with adulation and respect for the rest of his life in the Drive-By Media. And he’s taken the big first step in so doing by appearing to help in the effort to get rid of Donald Trump.

Now, we also learned just before the previous hour ended that the prosecutors at the SDNY, the U.S. attorney’s office Southern District of Manhattan, New York and Manhattan, have made a deal with the clown that runs the National Enquirer, Pecker, is that his name, David Pecker?

See, Pecker was given immunity along with Cohen because Pecker was involved with one of these women. He paid, the National Enquirer paid I think it was Karen McDougal, that’s her name, $150,000 for her story, meaning her story with and about Trump and then promptly buried the story, did not run the story.

And people are saying that’s another illegal campaign contribution. This guy at the Enquirer, he was reimbursed 150 grand for paying that babe and then he sat on her story and that would have been harmful to Trump, therefore it’s an illegal campaign donation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It isn’t either. None of these two payments, neither of them constitute impeachable offenses, and neither of them constitute campaign contribution violations. They just don’t. And again, if they do, there are 268 members of Congress who are just as guilty and of course they’re not and they will never be prosecuted. But granting immunity — and there’s been a further deal made with the Enquirer guy. And I’ll tell you where that’s going.

It is, and I may be saying something to you that’s been obvious forever, as it has been to me. But, my friends, I can’t impress upon you any more than I already have this effort to get rid of Donald Trump is as focused and as intense and as purposeful and as energized as it has ever been. There is and has to be a literal hatred for the man, all based on one thing: that he ran for and won the presidency.

Donald Trump would not be facing any of this so-called legal jeopardy that he’s facing today had he never run for the presidency. And if he had lost, he wouldn’t be facing any of this. But this encompasses the Department of Justice. That’s the SDNY. U.S. attorney, Southern District New York, that’s the Department of Justice. Robert Mueller, special counsel, Department of Justice, the FBI, intelligence community, they are still unified, and they are working hand in hand to destroy Donald Trump. They will not stop.

If they have to destroy his business, they will. If they have to destroy his family, they will. They want to. They are pursuing Donald Trump with more fervor and energy than I have seen them pursue terrorists. I have seen Department of Justice terrorists argue for leniency for terrorists and take terrorists’ side against waterboarding or so-called torture.

I have seen people in the DOJ and the Obama DOJ have more solicitousness and more tolerance and more understanding for people who participated in 9/11 than they have for Donald Trump. It is flat-out amazing. And then you add to that group of people the entirety of the mainstream media, and I’ve never seen anything like this.

I was alive during the pursuit of Richard Nixon, and I’m telling you officially now that the pursuit of Richard Nixon pales in comparison to what is going on here. It’s personal and professional, like it was with Nixon. They despise Donald Trump personally. And it’s over the most childish things. They don’t like that he tweets. They don’t like what he says when he tweets. They don’t like that they think he’s stupid! They don’t like that they think he’s unsophisticated.

What they really don’t like is that he doesn’t know his place. And his place is Queens. He’s not even qualified to be in Manhattan society. He’s an interloper in Manhattan. His family’s from Queens. He’s not even in the upper strata of New York society. And he doesn’t deserve to be, and he’s pretending top, and he did everything he could to succeed and become a force in Manhattan, and they resent the hell out of it.

The fact that he then took that success and entered the political sphere, that’s theirs. They own it. They determine who succeeds and who doesn’t. They determine who profits and who doesn’t, and they haven’t been able to lay a glove on him so far, and they can’t believe it, and they are frustrated to no end. They have thrown everything they have, from fake news to phony allegations from anonymous sources from the intelligence community for a year and a half and every major newspaper and cable network in this country. They have lied, they have blasphemed, they have impugned, they have done everything they can to cast Donald Trump in as inhuman a light as they know how to do.

He has survived it. They think the Democrats winning the House is step one in getting rid of him. But they’re not gonna leave it to elections. They’re mad at you for electing him in the first place. They have as much resentment for those of you who voted for him as they have of him. It has gone beyond a simple political objective to get rid of somebody they think is a political opponent. It is now deeply personal with every one of these people involved.

They are pursuing people on the basis of criminality that they ignore, behavior they ignore in 99% of the population. They are calling acts that Donald Trump has engaged in that people all over this country engage in multiple times a day, they’re calling it criminal, and in some cases, the worst crime in American history. The crime is that Trump won. The crime is that he outsmarted them. The crime is that he has not sought to include them in his administration.

He has not sought their counsel. He’s not sought their advice. He has not asked them to become part of what he’s doing. He continues to criticize them open and in some cases by name. And this is simply not permitted in this club. Donald Trump apparently represents an even greater threat to the elites of Washington and New York than we even knew. And it obviously goes beyond whatever policies Trump believes in. It goes beyond immigration issues and the wall and travel bans and this.

When they start criticizing Trump because of his hair and the way he speaks and he’s not sophisticated, it is the essence of irrational personal, irrationality personal. It’s difficult to describe. They are attempting to scare and frighten anybody who might agree to join his administration. They are trying to make Donald Trump a poisonous pariah who will result in anybody working for him being destroyed.

The message is, “You see what we’re doing to Trump? If you join him, you become his chief of staff, you become this or that, we’re gunning for you too. Don’t care how much we’ve love you had in the past, don’t care how much we’ve respected you. If you join this guy we’re gonna destroy you right along with our efforts to destroy him.” They want to isolate Donald Trump so that the only thing he has is his voters. Because in the big scheme of things, the voters don’t really matter to these people. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing.

They’re attempting, right in front of our eyes, to overturn the result of the 2016 election. There is no sanctity of the vote. There is no acquiescence to the will of the people. There is resentment for it. There’s contempt for it and for you who voted for him. And I think they’ve now concluded that separating you from him is the last thing, and it’s probably gonna be the hardest to do. They’re still gonna try to drive his approval numbers. The easiest way to get rid of him would be to succeed in driving his approval numbers down to 30. That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if in opinion polls — not now, but starting in 2019. These people can poll whatever they want and they can report whatever they want. They can ask any question they want designed to get any answer they want.

So don’t be surprised if you see Trump approval numbers start to show at 43, 42, then 40, and there’s gonna be that magical day when the Trump approval number is 39. And when that happens, you’re gonna think that it’s Christmas Day to these people as you watch them report it. But that’s the objective because they know they don’t have impeachable offenses, and they know that the likelihood of getting 67 senators to vote to impeach, if Trump’s approval numbers are in the forties, mid-forties or higher, is probably not going to happen.

The Republicans run the Senate, even though there’s probably a lot of them there that despise Trump, they’re not gonna slit their own throats unless Trump’s numbers are down to the thirties, preferably the low thirties. Then there’s nothing to lose by joining the chorus of demands that he leave.

I’ve been aware of the seriousness of this and of the intensity of this from the get-go. But just watching cable news today in the Cohen plea, the aftermath of the Cohen sentencing and then the announcement, the glee with which the deal that’s just been made with the National Enquirer people and realizing that this is coming from the Southern District of New York. This isn’t even coming from Mueller, although they are working hand in hand, don’t misunderstand. But these are not Mueller pronouncements, Mueller deals. They’re not part of the collusion with Russia business.

This is totally ancillary stuff. That the only reason any of this stuff is even usable is because regulations were violated and a crime was not specified when Mueller was named. So Mueller has basically been able to go out and find or invent or create any crime he wants. And remember with these people they don’t have find a crime. They just have to say they did. They don’t have to find an impeachable offense. They just have to say they have. All they gotta do is get those words in the media: impeachable offense, high crimes and misdemeanors, Donald Trump campaign violations, Donald Trump paying off porn stars.

The never-ending assault. And it’s simply because they can’t stand to have this guy in their midst. They cannot stand to have this guy in the White House. And I dare say that in many cases, in the case of many people, the things Donald Trump is accomplishing, the agenda and issue items that Donald Trump is succeeding with are things that many of these people have devoted their lives to and they still hate the guy and they still want him gone and they still can’t stand it. It’s a class thing. And by class, I mean, high class, low class, upper class, elites, ruling class versus the hoi polloi.

But it’s despicable, what is happening here. And very eye opening for a lot of people who didn’t think things like this could ever happen in the United States. This is the kind of stuff that happens in totalitarian regimes, but not here, but yet here it is happening day to day right in front of our eyes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Folks, now, look. I didn’t tell you all this stuff to be fatalistic about it. I’m trying to keep you engaged and supportive and involved in this. Don’t misunderstand the last opening monologue of the hour. That’s not “woe is us and it’s over.” It’s designed to keep you ticked off and loyal and not just to Trump, but loyal to what Trump represents.

Remember, the issues that we all care about existed before Trump. Trump is the guy who came along and finally gave voice to them in a way that people believed he meant it. This is not meant to disparage Trump. But this movement and these issues and these desires are gonna remain even after Trump serves his two terms, if he does. Trump has capitalized. Trump has the benefited. Trump has more than benefited. He has taken a movement here and personalized it and made it his own.

But it’s not that if Trump goes, the movement goes. It’s not gonna go. And so the point here is to remain engaged and do not let them succeed in driving his approval numbers down to the thirties, even though they may issue polling data that is made up to try to do that. It’s gonna be risky because if it’s not true, somebody can go out and prove that in a legitimate poll.

So please do not misunderstand what I just did here as an honest characterization of the status quo. I meant that as a means of firing people up, not depressing you. You gotta know what we’re up against. And, I mean, if some of you been asking, “Can’t Trump do something to make these people –” No! He can’t do anything to make them like him. There’s no a matter of behaving presidentially that’s gonna change this. These people have to be stopped and defeated.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Edmund in Lexington, Illinois. Great to have you, Edmund. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you very much. Rush, I have three very brief points on why I support Donald Trump shutting down the government if necessary. And I think you might disagree with the third one. But quickly. Number one, Trump won Michigan by a measly 10,000 votes. If he continues to allow illegals to come in, that will never happen again, and then game over. My point number two that I hope Trump brings up is the Democrats are focusing on Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall. I think the revised NAFTA agreement is benefiting our country more than $5 billion dollars, maybe over a couple years, but I think he could look ’em right in the eye and say, “Chuck, they are paying for it.”

And here’s my third point, Rush, and you may disagree with this. Trump’s at 48% in the Rasmussen poll today. This is with the stock market having a lot of troubles recently, China trade war, tariffs, all the bad news. I think if Trump resolves the China stuff and stands firm on the wall, there are some Trump supporters who’ve gotten a little wobbly because they were all-in on the wall, and after two years, I don’t think they’re as firm supporters as maybe you think. I think maybe 5% of his supporters, those people come back in, I think Trump may break —

RUSH: No, I think you’re right. That’s why I did my opening monologue, to keep everybody engaged and bucked up here. He’s trying and he’s got the entire establishment lined against him. Now, you mentioned NAFTA. He’s got the substitute for NAFTA, the renegotiated deal with Canada and Mexico. And it hasn’t been ratified yet, and he is threatening to just wipe out NAFTA if they don’t. There’s some people hoping that they can defeat Trump by not ratifying the new deal and keep NAFTA in place. He today is threatening — actually the news was yesterday — is threatening to just wipe out NAFTA if they don’t move forward and ratify his new deal.

Look. I think you’re right. If the wall gets built and there is a demonstrable impact on border security for the positive and the China tariff stuff is going to get resolved. I have no doubt that that’s gonna get resolved in the United States’ favor. It’s gonna get resolved so well, the media is not going to tout it. They’re not gonna talk much about it. In fact, until it’s resolved the media is gonna continue to do stories about how iPhones may end up costing $150 more because of Donald Trump. Those stories are gonna be all over the place. But I think he’s gonna get the Chinese trade war tariff deal done, and I think the wall is crucial. You’re right. I don’t disagree with any of that.

CALLER: Rush, the stock market alone will broadcast the success of the China tariff deal. When that happens, I don’t care what the press says, I think we’ll see the market breathe the biggest sigh of relief and we’ll get back to the 2016-2017 —

RUSH: That’s true, but I’m telling you, there’s a lot of people already jimmying the market to try to keep it down to hurt Trump. I mean, this effort that is underway to ruin this man and his administration is a full-fledged from every corner of this country effort. And there are some leftist investors who would willingly take a financial hit for a while if it meant furthering the cause of getting rid of Donald Trump. This clown at the Federal Reserve was talking about raising interest rates, for crying out. What do you think that does? Raising interest rates slows down the economy.

Do not doubt me when I tell you there are a lot of leftists and Democrats that would love the economy — in fact, this is what they do! They win the House, Democrats win the House and what they’re gonna try to do is come up with legislation or any kind of effort they can to create an economic slowdown. And then the media will start calling it a recession, just like happened with Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush in 1992. We were treated to such lingo as “the worst economy in the last 50 years,” which was a crock. And this is what they’re gonna attempt in the next two years with the economy. So there’s gonna be all kinds of downward pressure on the stock market, on the economy as part of the overall effort to ruin Trump.

So your theory that getting the China tariff deal done would cause the market to breathe a huge sigh of relief is true, but there are gonna be people that will try to counter it with pressures in the market, on the market from other sectors. None of this is gonna be easy. And he’s all alone, other than us. And that was the other point of my opening monologue in this hour. Let me give you — thanks for the call, Edmund. I appreciate it. Grab sound bite number 9. Here’s Bob Corker. This is classic. This is exactly what I meant earlier. This is on CBS This Morning today, John Dickerson, the leftist host, says, “Where are you right now on your feelings about this president?”

CORKER: I like many of the policies, love the deregulation that is taken place, I love the animal spirits that have been released in our country. Obviously I’m Republican. I love the number of judges that have been confirmed. But I think what the — where the president hurts himself and hurts our country is his own personal conduct. It’s unnecessary. You know, it’s an unforced error. The part that’s disappointing is that I know it to be purposeful.

RUSH: What’s he talking about? What is this “Where the president hurts himself and hurts our country is his personal the conduct.” Is he talking about tweets about Tillerson? Is he talking about his never-ending criticisms of fake news? What is it? What is it that’s so bad that Corker has to wring his hands over the fact that things he believes in that are improving America are happening? What’s Trump doing that makes him feel bad?

This is the class thing, folks. This is the “Trump, just not sophisticated, he doesn’t know how to act normally. He doesn’t know how to behave. He doesn’t know how to say what he means without saying it. He doesn’t know how to lie. He doesn’t know how to be diplomatic. He’s just gross.” And that overrides the implementation of an agenda that Corker loves? He loves the deregulation? He loves the animal spirit being released — what animal spirit? He’s talking about you churning this economy in the new areas of growth and so forth. He loves the number of judges that have been nominated and confirmed! “But I just don’t like the guy, his personal conduct.” What personal conduct? The porn stars? What about all the members of Congress that have had illicit affairs?

Where were these people when Bill Clinton was around? Most of them in Washington were defending him. “It’s just sex. It’s none of our business,” they said. “It’s not affecting the way he’s leading and doing his job.” Where is all of that today? It’s not about Trump’s personal conduct. It’s about the fact that Trump won. It’s about the fact that Trump is succeeding where these people claim this is what they wanted, but they never made it happen!

You realize how many people Trump is making look bad? All of these brainiac conservative writers who have been begging people to fund them by asking them to donate to this magazine or that website or go on this cruise or whatever, you must enable us to keep writing. We must keep opining. But nothing ever happened. Except the people kept claiming they were running out of money and needed more!

But in terms of implementing any of this stuff, it never happened! Well, along comes Donald Trump, and it’s happening! And it’s been happening for two years! Guess who hasn’t been needed to make it happen? The brainiacs. Guess who’s looking bad? Guess who’s making people ask questions, “Why do I need to keep sending these people money when none of this ever got implemented when they were in charge, but this guy Trump is making all this –” This stuff can’t be allowed to stand. Donald Trump is threatening lifestyles. He’s threatening incomes. He’s threatening standard of living. And when they say, “He’s offending my sensibilities, he’s making it very, very hard to support conservative politics.”

Really? You are such a flimsy conservative that you can be made to abandon your conservatism because of the way a guy talks or tweets? Your conservatism must not be very solid or real, if that’s the case. I’ll tell you one thing. There isn’t a single thing Donald Trump could do to make me abandon my conservatism. There’s not a thing he could tweet. There’s not a thing he could say, other than sabotage it. If he sabotaged it, then I’m gone.

But if he’s implementing it and succeeding and the country is improving, there’s not a thing he could do or say that would make me abandon my core beliefs! So who are these people so eager and happy to do just that, “because Donald Trump’s personal behavior and conduct offends me.” A crock, folks.