The day that many die-hard Democrats have been working toward since before Donald Trump was even inaugurated has finally arrived. The official impeachment inquiry of President Trump began Wednesday, but rather than heralding the Democrats’ longed-for victory over the Republican president, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh predicts that this could very well be “Trump’s best week.”
Referencing his comment on the day before that the Democrats would follow the model of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Limbaugh pointed to a remark by ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who argued that the impeachment hearings would actually be even more egregiously handled by Democrats. “At least during the Kavanaugh hearings the Republicans had the ability to bring up people who were supporting Kavanaugh. We don’t even have that,” Nunes told Fox News.
“The Republicans are being frozen out here,” said Rush. “Schiff is talking about what his procedure is in a grand jury. There’s a problem with that, though. Grand juries are never public. Grand juries you’re not allowed to know what went on in there unless somebody leaks, which is against the law. And Schiff is trying to give himself cover by saying that what he’s doing with this starting tomorrow is the equivalent of a grand jury. It isn’t. He’s running a show.”
The Republicans, said Limbaugh, “are not gonna have a chance to object, to call their own witnesses.” Instead, Schiff has “exerted total control over the proceedings here.”
But the way this is going to play out publicly, Limbaugh argued, isn’t going to go how Democrats hope — and the media are starting to worry about that openly.
As an example, the host played a clip of Sam Donaldson talking with CNN’s Don Lemon Monday night about what’s at stake in the public hearing. The problem, Donaldson suggested, is that the mainstream media no longer has as much control over the narrative as it did during Watergate, and he’s “concerned” that they won’t have the time to make their case:
DONALDSON: The Watergate committee hearings on Capitol Hill, the summer of ’73, I covered that. But, millions of people were watching. Now there were only three networks then. There was no VCR, there was no Internet. They got their news by watching television. The newspapers helped, of course, and the daily Monday through Friday evening news broadcasts helped. And it took over two years to get the public to the point where, yes, they thought maybe this guy was a crook, Richard Nixon. Now the Democrats this time have, what, a couple of weeks? My concern is there’s not enough time.
“He’s lamenting the loss of the media monopoly,” said Limbaugh. “He said we had a monopoly; it took us two years to screw Nixon. And now the Democrats are gonna try to do it in two weeks.”
Limbaugh then cued up another soundbite, this time from Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr., who told Fox News’ Bret Baier that he “wouldn’t be surprised if [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] didn’t pull [the impeachment inquiry] in the next several days, if this first week does not go well.”
“So, let’s put this all together,” said Limbaugh. “The Drive-By Media now saying that Trump is about to face his worst week ever. And Devin Nunes thinks it’s gonna be precisely because the Republicans are not gonna have a chance to push back, to fight back as they did during the Kavanaugh fiasco.”
“Well, how many times, though, have we been told in the last – we’re getting close to three years now — how many times have we been told this is Trump’s worst week?” he continued. “How many times have we been told the walls are closing in on Donald Trump? They are too numerous to count.”
“What does Harold Ford Jr. know? He knows something. He is connected. He’s a Democrat praising Pelosi as the most mature politician in Washington, acknowledging that she didn’t really want to do this,” said Rush. “She’s now put Schiff, not Nadler — this is key. She had Nadler or Schiff. She could have directed all of this to happen with Nadler’s committee. But she chose Schiff. She chose a bug-eyed, lying sack of excrement to be the face of this. And I’m telling you, folks, that carries with it a lot of risk.”
Rush then spelled out his point: the media, once again, has it all backwards when it comes to the public response to their targeting of Trump.
“This could end up being one of Trump’s best weeks, because the curtain is now being pushed back,” he argued. “And people who have not been following this so-called impeachment inquiry are now not gonna be able to avoid it, because the Drive-Bys are gonna televise all of it. If they have to invent networks to put this thing on, they will do it. You’re not gonna be able to miss it.
Schiff as “the face of the Democrat Party,” suggested Rush, is going to backfire for them, while the anti-due process rules imposed by Democrats will become increasingly apparent to Americans, leading them to conclude that the whole thing is a “partisan sham.”
“How many of you think Adam Schiff presents a good face for the Democrat Party?” he said. “The Republicans are gonna try to object. The Republicans are gonna try to do some things, but they’ve been frozen out of this. And that is going to be obvious as well. But I think there are gonna be millions of Americans who are going to have the chance, anyway, who haven’t been following this wall-to-wall like you and I have been, to see what a partisan sham this whole thing is.”
Transcript via RushLimbaugh.com
Related: Devin Nunes’ Impeachment Opening Statement Takes Aim At Adam Schiff’s Past Blunders