On his radio show Wednesday, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh addressed the latest big development in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal this week to vote on impeachment “at this time.” The refusal, Limbaugh said, is more proof that the whole impeachment campaign is a stunt, while a recent comment by President Trump on the much-anticipated inspector general report likely has Democrats worried.
“There’s no requirement that we have a vote,” Pelosi said Tuesday. “We’re not here to call bluffs. We’re here to find the truth to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious.”
Pelosi’s refusal to call a vote came in response to President Trump declaring that the administration will not cooperate with the House Democrats unless they officially vote to launch the impeachment process.
As USA Today reports, Democrats “considered holding such a vote, potentially in case courts said such a move was necessary to compel administration officials and other potential witnesses in the investigation to provide documents and appear for testimony.” But in a move that surprised some on the left, Pelosi and other leaders announced that they would not take that formal step.
Though Pelosi insisted Tuesday that she and her colleagues are “deadly serious,” Limbaugh says her announcement that she won’t hold a vote just proves that the Democrats’ big campaign is “an obvious charade.”
“Pelosi says no formal vote on impeachment,” Limbaugh said Wednesday (transcript via RushLimbaugh.com). “That has let a lot of air out of that tire. And I told you there wasn’t gonna be one. I’ve been saying from the get-go that she would not commit them to a formal impeachment process. It isn’t gonna happen.”
“The news here that Pelosi is not going to hold a formal impeachment vote when everybody was under the impression that she was, the conventional wisdom was that a formal vote was coming,” said Rush. “But they’re holding off on a full House vote authorizing an impeachment investigation.”
“Now, this is obviously a sign of weakness,” he continued. “The word has been out that they’ve got the votes, that you don’t do the vote ’til you have the votes. They may have the votes, but she’s still not gonna pull trigger. There will not be a vote.”
“The whole thing is an obvious charade,” Limbaugh concluded. “It’s been an illusion or an attempt to create an illusion from the beginning. This is not a House impeachment. This is a Democrat stunt. It is a Democrat early October Surprise. What you’ve got is a bunch of these Democrats thinking they can put Trump on, what, probation? I don’t know what their mind-set on this is. But it is a farce.”
Citing a post by The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra, Limbaugh noted that one of the Democratic leaders who voted for a non-vote is “Pencil Neck, Adam Schiff,” the guy who’s been spearheading the whole campaign. Rush then offered a theory on why they’re declining to move forward officially.
“I think one of the reasons is that they think indictments are coming,” Limbaugh suggested, a suspicion he shares:
And I too, I must tell you, folks, I’m getting confident that some indictments might be coming down, some indictments from the Barr investigation or the inspector general investigation. I think Pelosi knows it. And I think they’re really scurrying trying to figure out how to handle that. If she goes ahead and authorizes a floor vote in the House on impeachment and the vote passes and then here come some indictments then that’s gonna turn everything upside down and it’s gonna turn Pelosi and her House and the people that voted, it’s gonna commit them to defense because whoever files the indictments and what brings those to be filed will be on offense, and that would represent a sea change.
Limbaugh then cued up a soundbite from Trump addressing a question about John Bolton describing Rudy Giuliani as a “hand grenade” and asking, “Are you concerned that Bolton could be called to testify in the impeachment inquiry?”
“Giuliani was seeking out corruption mostly in the 2016 election because there was tremendous corruption in the 2016 election,” Trump responded. “It was disgraceful what happened, and that continues with Nancy Pelosi and with Schiff. Rudy was a great prosecutor. He was the best mayor in the history of the city of New York as far as I can see. When he saw what was going on with our election of 2016, the election I won, but the election that was absolutely corrupted by things that took place in government. The IG report’s gonna come out soon, and we’ll see what happens.”
Rush said that while he doesn’t know anything about what is in the highly anticipated IG report, he predicts that “you will see things that you don’t even believe, the level of corruption, whether it’s Comey, whether it’s Strzok and his lover, Page, whether it’s so many other people, McCabe, whether it’s President Obama himself.”
“I already had a confidence level that there would be indictments coming down from these investigations going on,” said Rush, but Trump’s comment “just ratchets up my confidence on that.”