RUSH: I mentioned that these are dire circumstances. This is such a narrow channel to navigate here because I have so many conflicting thoughts on this. On the one hand, there is no doubt, there is no question how serious this is. In fact, I’ll tell you, I think that the medical experts are scared to death. ‘Cause I don’t think they have a handle on it yet. For example, they told us that the primary, the number-one most vulnerable group of people were people that have pre-existing conditions, lung disorders, lung issues, elderly, infirm. And now we see people of all ages who are healthy coming down with the disease and some of them are dying from it.

We have other news of healthy people getting it and overcoming it and without too much suffering, people getting better in three to four days, in some cases less. Now, to me, the most important story out there, aside from the media — the media continues to be a gigantic obstacle to this. And I realize too, by the way, that there are many of you listening today for the first time ever, many of you listening for the second or third time, many of you hearing me for the first time today, and it’s gonna be a shock to some of you. But most of you who have listened for the duration of this program for a long time are up to speed, you have the context, you understand when I say things that are incrementally added to things I said previously, last week, two weeks ago, two months ago. So bear with me where I maybe get redundant and get as many people up to speed as possible.

The overall belief here is that the American media is opposed to the success of Donald Trump. That’s the overall umbrella under which many of my comments will be made today. There’s no question about it. It’s not arguable. It is on display each and every day. The American media is doing everything it can to prevent the president from looking good and from even succeeding in this. And I’ll have evidence for it as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.

Despite that, the American people are strong and resilient and are coming together. And this is going to be in our rearview mirror at some point. We are gonna get past this. We’re gonna get through this because we always do. We have always overcome challenges like this. You can read about the 1918 Spanish flu. You can read about any of the other epidemics. Do you realize, the 1918 Spanish flu, more people died from that flu than in World War I? The president in 1918 was Woodrow Wilson. Do you realize he never shut down the government, he never used the government to address the disease at all. He never made one statement about the disease in 1918. He focused everything on defeating Germany in World War I. We were a different country then. But we overcame it.

The American people came together as they are coming together to overcome this in ways that we haven’t yet seen because they haven’t yet been reported. But the bottom line is that nobody wants this. Nobody wants this. Everybody wants the baseball season to kick up. Everybody wants the NBA season to finish. Everybody wants to get back to normal, and that desire and that attitude is what is going to help propel this.

Now, you might ask, “Well, how’s that gonna overcome the virus?” Well, aside from the media story today which is an ongoing story, the story of the day to me is the success of this malaria drug. It is succeeding everywhere it’s being deployed. We’re just not being told about it, and it’s kind of curious to me. But it is having overwhelming success in reducing the length of time that people are suffering. It is reducing the intensity of the symptoms in the vast majority of people who are given the drug.

The Wall Street Journal even has a story about it today. The FDA has given emergency approval to use these drugs, these anti-malaria drugs to fight the coronavirus. The FDA on Sunday — that’s yesterday, for those of you in Rio Linda — gave doctors emergency permission to use the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine itself to treat the virus. The FDA’s action allows the medicines to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalize teenagers and adult patients with COVID-19 as appropriate when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.

Now, one of the reasons why I think it’s not being reported as successfully as it is is because there simply hasn’t been enough time that the drug has been in use. Medical people are very worried they are premature in pronouncing anything a success after a clinical trial of any drug. Now, this drug has been used for 50 years to fight malaria. So it’s legal and it’s cheap. A prescription of this stuff is 20 bucks. And they have been administering it to patients successfully. What they don’t know is, are there any late-developing side effects? Does the coronavirus reoccur in these patients after a period of time? So they have to be — I’m guessing here; I’m just using intelligence guided by experience– that they have to be judicious in talking about this.

I think a lot of people are administering the drug. I think it’s being prescribed and given to a lot of people, and it’s to me one of — well, it’s the story. The CEO of the company, the single most important hard-to-find story regarding the pandemic is news regarding chloroquine and the treatments. And I think they ought to be front and center.

The chief executive officer of the company that manufactures the drug, naturally is saying that it’s the biggest hope against the coronavirus. The company is Novaris. He said that his “… generics unit’s malaria, lupus and arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine is the company’s biggest hope against the coronavirus…” It’s a Swiss newspaper. The Wall Street Journal story is this.

“In the fight against Covid-19 though we might look forward in doom, one day we will look backward in awe. In an article last week…” This is a column in the Wall Street Journal. “In an article last week, I discussed a promising drug combination to treat the disease. There is now new data supporting this treatment. Since then, Kansas City area physicians, including Joe Brewer, Dan Hinthorn and me, continue to treat many patients, and some have shown improvement.

“Major medical centers including the University of Washington and Mass General have added hydroxychloroquine to treatment options. So here’s an update, a response to some questions that have come up, and suggestions based on the latest information.” Now, this is the malaria drug that Donald Trump — President Trump — suggested might be helpful, and I think (chuckles) it’s one of the reasons why in mainstream media there is not so much reporting about this.

This really is hideous. You may think, “Rush, come on. Be serious. The media… This is too a serious thing. The media would not be partisan.” Oh, my friends, do not think that. The media… They’ve thrown everything they have at Trump, and they haven’t been able to sink him, and they think this may be the best opportunity they’ve had.

Look what’s happened to the economy. It is stunning how quickly this is happening. It’s stunning how three years of economic growth has been wiped out — and they are eager to lay this at Trump’s feet. They are misreporting Trump’s lackadaisical attitude about the coronavirus back in January. It’s the exact opposite of the way they’re reporting it.

Let me give you an example of fake news just today: “CBS News Airs Footage of an Italian Hospital During a Segment About New York Hospitals.” This was done on purpose. This was to frighten people in New York watching news coverage of the coronavirus situation in New York City. The story was broken yesterday by Gateway Pundit. “CBS News painted a dire picture from New York City … in their coronavirus coverage.

“On Wednesday morning, CBS aired this footage from a New York hospital.” But it was actually Sky News “video from inside an Italian hospital from Sunday March 22.” Now, the implication of this are big. If people in New York City think the hospitals are full and if they think they’re packed with sick people, they may decide not to go to the hospital, and this is not good. It just…

It’s classic media behavior in this era. But it is undeniable that the media and the left (which is one and the same), see an opportunity here to do damage to President Trump and his reelection in November. It’s… (pause) I don’t know, folks. A of people don’t want to believe that. A lot of people think that that’s a bit extreme to think this is the case. But, you know, you’ve seen…

Maybe you haven’t. There have been stories about the mainstream media debating amongst itself whether or not to cover the daily briefings the president and the medical team give. The reason for that is that they don’t think the president should be seen unmediated, meaning, “He should not have direct access to the American people ’cause he lies and he doesn’t get things right and the media needs to fact check and correct him.”

So they have tried to arrange it so that he doesn’t get live coverage. But Fox, of course, is and many others are. Chris Cuomo, Fredo Cuomo on CNN last night basically accused Trump of hoping the elderly die because of something Trump said in his press conference yesterday. So Fredo Cuomo said, “Yeah, the president, he’s willing to sacrifice elderly people to save his economy, to save his reelection.”

Really? Who was it that told a woman to give her 100-year-old mother a pain pill and let her die happy because the American health care system couldn’t take into account the will to live? As I recall, that was Barack Obama on ABC News during a one-hour promotional piece for Obamacare back in 2010 or 2009. I forget which. (I don’t need the sound bite, Cookie. I’ve got enough sound bites. I don’t need it.) So there is an undeniable effort here to try to damage the president.

It’s not gonna succeed.

But the problem with it is that it hurts the overall esprit de corps that the country needs right now. You know, folks, stop and think. We’ve heard about “politics ends at the water’s edge,” and we’ve heard, “We can say whatever we want about our leaders but if somebody in a foreign country does, you can’t do that! We’ll come together to defend our president, defend our leaders, defend whatever when they’re under attack from afar.”

If not even this can unite us… Dare I even mention Pelosi and the Democrats and that stupid attempt to ram madcap socialism into the bailout package, which is itself an entirely self-contained topic to discuss? But if not even this can bring the warring factions of this country together, then what the heck can?

I think the American people will do it on their own. I think the American people are gonna come together. I think the evidence is all over the place. The president’s briefing yesterday, I thought, was fascinating on a number of levels, and among them was the illustration of the joint effort for the supply chain to continue and to work, and the insurance companies canceling/forgoing their copays.

There are a number of American industries and individuals who are doing everything they can to keep as normal a set of circumstances for people to live in as they can. The electricity has to stay on. The electricity has to stay on! The internet has to stay up and running. Trash collection has to happen. All of these things. You know what’s fascinating to me, one of the things?

(chuckles) So many things are fascinating. You look at the work that is often derided in this country as hayseed, hick, unsophisticated. Guess what kind of work we couldn’t survive without? Exactly that kind! We couldn’t survive without our farmers today, and they are routinely impugned and laughed at, made fun of because they live out in the country and because they vote Republican.

We couldn’t survive without our truckers and our over-the-land distribution centers. We couldn’t survive without grocery stores. We couldn’t survive without the people that put the stuff in the grocery store. We couldn’t survive without pharmacies. We couldn’t survive without Big Pharma today. Every industry that is targeted or held out as an enemy…

SIRI: (interruption)

RUSH: Hey, Siri, stop. My HomePod lit up there, and it’s still lit up. I’ve gotta go to a break anyway. But it’s all of these industries that are routinely targeted as hayseed, hick or what have you. We are seeing what really is vital. We are learning what we actually can’t do without — and it isn’t the media, and it isn’t a bunch of white-collar people right now. Me, they can work from home and we don’t even miss it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just got an email question. “Have you put a mask on the Golden EIB Microphone?” No, there’s no mask on the Golden EIB Microphone. We’re not gonna replicate way back in the early days when we put a condom on the microphone to illustrate “safe talk” and the folly of safe sex. But, no, I don’t want to muffle the sound of my voice, ladies and gentlemen, otherwise I’d put the mask on.

If there were scientific evidence that a mask on a microphone would protect you, then of course I would do it, but so such scientific evidence exists. I’m gonna get to the phone calls as soon as we come back from the break here at the bottom of the hour. A lot of people want to weigh in on this, and I realize that there are thousands of you who have been dying to talk to me and ask me questions for the last two weeks and have not been able to.

And today is your golden opportunity to have access. So we’ll get to the phones sooner than we usually do. But I sit here and marvel, folks, at how little time it has taken to wipe out three years of American economic growth — and the ChiComs are saying no new cases in Wuhan, and they’ve opened up the wet markets selling that food that caused this?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I am told by people that have taken the drug that I have been mispronouncing the word hydroxychloroquine. The American pronunciation is chloroquine. So I stand corrected. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. If I slip up and say chloroquine, it’s simply I’m pronouncing it properly. The Americanized pronunciation chloroquine, I’ll eventually get it right.