On his talk radio show Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh addressed all the drama surrounding the Roger Stone case, which was thrown into chaos after federal prosecutors recommended seven to nine years in prison for the 67-year-old and were swiftly rebuked by the Department of Justice, which called the recommendation “excessive and unwarranted” and moved to reduce the sentencing. With President Trump increasingly poised to intervene and Democrats demanding yet another investigation into supposed abuse of power, Limbaugh framed the whole thing as “an object lesson in presidential follow-through.”
“Let’s talk about what happened here with the DOJ, the attorney general, Barr, these four prosecutors, the Roger Stone case, because this, folks, is an object lesson in presidential follow-through,” Limbaugh said Wednesday (transcript via RushLimbaugh.com)
“The proof of the pudding here is I’m watching the Drive-By Media, ‘Oh, my God. This is horrible. This is so bad. Trump now has no guardrails. There’s nobody stopping Trump from doing anything. He survived impeachment. He survived the Russia thing. Oh, my God. There’s nothing to stop Trump. This is horrible. This is bad,'” said Rush. “And, of course, that’s exactly 180 degrees wrong.”
After reminding his audience about Stone being arrested at the break of dawn by “jackbooted thugs along with CNN cameras strategically located outside his front door,” Limbaugh explained why he believes the whole case against Stone is politically motivated “setup.”
“It was specious because this whole thing has been made up, this entire hoax, this entire coup started out with the Steele dossier,” said Limbaugh. “Four FISA warrants were granted on a fake document to spy on the Trump campaign via Carter Page. There was never anything to it. Not a single crime was committed by the Trump campaign at any stage. There was never any evidence of a crime having been committed. So anything that was charged along the way here was purely political. What happened to Manafort, those things that they charged and convicted Manafort on had nothing to do with when he was in charge of the Trump campaign or working there. Sentenced to solitary confinement. Sentenced to die in jail. And that’s what they did to Roger Stone. They gave him a seven- to nine-year sentence hoping he would die in jail.”
“There’s not a person in the world that can tell you what Roger Stone did of a criminal nature that threatened the people of this country, that violated the laws of the country, that somehow helped the Trump campaign win an illegal election. Nothing,” said Rush, adding: “Roger Stone was an ancillary player who wanted to make himself look like he was in the middle of everything. And he wasn’t.”
The intervention of Attorney General William Barr, Limbaugh argued, “ought to be one of the best indications you could get so far that he and Durham are still working this case, and they still have major announcements yet to come over all of these people that engaged themselves in this coup.”
Trump has “total freedom to be involved in this,” he said, whether he was connected or not. “If he can pardon Stone, then what the hell’s everybody worried about whether or not he gets involved in the sentence being reduced?” said Limbaugh. “And he can pardon Stone.”
“So Trump’s out there attacking the judge as well, in addition to praising Barr for moving in on the case this way,” Limbaugh added later. “It is a gutsy thing for Barr to do. This goes flat-out, smack-dab right in the face of the Washington establishment and the people who are in charge and responsible for this coup.”
“Barr’s had enough of it, folks,” Rush declared later. “So has Trump. So should we all.”
After playing some media clips revolving around the Stone fiasco, Limbaugh summed up what’s going on with the “borderline delusional political insanity” out there: it’s a “frustration of failure to these people who don’t know failure.”
“When they decide to take somebody out, they generally succeed in doing it,” Rush said. “But they have failed with Trump. So even if there weren’t a need to discredit Barr, if there weren’t a need to discredit Trump, investigate, whatever, they would still react this way. Trump is in their heads, has totally poisoned them, and no matter what he does, no matter what he says, this is the reaction they’re going to have to it.”
Related: Trump Defends His Actions As Pelosi Calls For Investigation Into DOJ Intervening In Stone Case