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<\/p>\nRUSH: Now, there are other things still related to this that we didn\u2019t get into in the first hour. And, you know, Trump\u2019s banning travel from Europe. Democrats not happy about this, folks. They do not like losing their precious travel from their precious European Union even for a day. Some people have asked, “What did you think of the president\u2019s speech last night? You didn\u2019t say.” I thought he gave the right speech at the right time.<\/p>\n
Look, I know some people get frustrated. “My gosh, couldn\u2019t they do something with the sound? You could hear the president breathing.” You can hear him breathing whenever he speaks! He\u2019s got… It\u2019s part of his speech pattern. I\u2019ve grown accustomed to it. Maybe some sound people could do something to limit it by turning down the compression. But… (sigh) Look, he did what he had to do.<\/p>\n
He was purposely dour because that\u2019s what the media and the Democrats are demanding. He read from the prompter. That\u2019s what they think is presidential. I\u2019ve had a lot of people say, “That\u2019s not Trump\u2019s best format! He should just launch, he should…” Right. But understand what this was last night. This wasn\u2019t a Trump rally. This was a presidential address from the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
Of course, these lamebrains on the left have this idea of what is presidential and what isn\u2019t, and reading a teleprompter — which takes hardly any skill whatsoever — is considered presidential. So he read the teleprompter, he stuck to the script, he was dour, he was serious. As far as these people are concerned, that\u2019s how you define presidential in their stupid, boring world.<\/p>\n
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So he did what he had to do. Politically, it was wise. I mean, folks, I cannot tell you how much the left in this country hates the idea of shutting travel from their beloved European Union. But because Trump did it, now they\u2019re gonna have to go on record either opposing the travel ban or supporting it — and if they oppose the travel ban, it\u2019s gonna be lethal for them.<\/p>\n
They may as well come out and proclaim that they\u2019re for open borders, which we all know that they are. In any case, these shutdowns may clamp down the virus and the hysteria because I guarantee you… I asked you before the break, “Can anybody tell me the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States?” (interruption) You looked it up, did you? You had to look it up because you didn\u2019t know off the top of your head.<\/p>\n
The one thing missing in all of this panic-driven coronavirus news is what? The number of deaths in the United States! Why, we get stories, “My God, a player in the NBA actually touched a microphone of a media person. The NBA\u2019s canceling the season!” “Oh, my God! Tom Hanks and his wife are in Australia filming an Elvis movie, and they\u2019ve got the coronavirus. Are we gonna have to stop going to movies?<\/p>\n
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“Can it spread from the screen to the audience? Oh, my God! Is it that bad?” In all of this panicked reporting, what\u2019s the one thing missing? The death toll. You don\u2019t hear about the death toll, do you? Do you know what the total is? I\u2019m not gonna tell you. I\u2019ll tell you this. About 60% of the death toll has happened in one place, and I don\u2019t mean one city. I mean in one place in one city.<\/p>\n
Now, you would think with a panic of this kind, with this magnitude, that the central reporting figure would be the number of people dying, and yet? Well, that\u2019s not part of the reporting at all. Yet go back. The swine flu: 18,000 people dead, 60 million infected, 300,000 hospitalized in 2009-2010. You know another reason why that didn\u2019t make any big news? It\u2019s because that\u2019s when Obama was selling Obamacare!<\/p>\n
Of course, the swine flu helped push the notion for government-run health care. So the swine flu coming along when it did in 2009-2010, the media glommed right onto it and used that to promote Obamacare. There was no way Obama was gonna be ripped or criticized for presiding over a runaway, mad period of swine flu infectious and death. No way. (interruption) You still don\u2019t know the death toll? You can\u2019t find it. Folks, you\u2019re gonna have a tough time finding it. (interruption)<\/p>\n
How long did it take you to find the death toll, Snerdley, and where did you find it? Less than a minute, okay, but what…? (interruption) Okay. Did you go to a specific website, or did you just…? (interruption) Did you do a Google search “coronavirus death toll”? (interruption) And what site did it take you to? You even forgot what the website was already? All right.<\/p>\n
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Okay. I\u2019ll tell you what number he found in his site search. (interruption) Thirty-nine, did you say? Do you know that 26 of those deaths have occurred in a nursing home in Seattle, Washington state? You take the 26 deaths out of the equation from the nursing home in Washington state and how many deaths are we talking about? And yet we are reacting this way? We\u2019re wrecking the United States economy!<\/p>\n
We are literally destroying the stock market. We\u2019re telling people not to go to work! We\u2019re telling people not to congregate with people. We\u2019re shutting down the freaking NBA season (which, big deal). But now Major League Baseball\u2019s getting ready to kick off. Oh, what are they gonna do about March Madness, Mr. Snerdley?<\/p>\n
What are they gonna do about the NCAA and what are they gonna do with — upcoming — the first major of the PGA season? That would be the Masters. Can you imagine the Masters without the patrons? Can you imagine the Masters without the gallery? Would they do it? In fact, I would think golfers might actually like it with no fans in there, no noise, no distraction. But I could be wrong about that.<\/p>\n
And in the midst of all this you get to turn on TV and listen to how incompetent the president is and how incapable he is at dealing with such complex situations. What are we talking about? Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes for Health has been all over television telling anybody who would listen the most important thing that happened here was Trump limiting and banning travel from China in January. Fauci is saying if that hadn\u2019t happened it\u2019d be much worse in America than it is.<\/p>\n
Are they ignoring him? Yes. They\u2019re focusing on other things Fauci is saying, but they\u2019re ignoring that. Anyway, Trump doing all of the stuff that these little Chihuahuas were ankle-biting him to do, they now either have to oppose it as unnecessary or say that travel bans were too late, which they can\u2019t do given their open borders creed.<\/p>\n
So Trump\u2019s kind of playing it, I think, brilliantly on the political front. You might not have liked the way he sounded. You might not have liked the way he looked. But what he did and what he said in that Oval Orifice address last night has presented several dilemmas for the Democrats. He stayed on script. He was dour, which means they can\u2019t find much to smear him with because he stayed on script and he was presidential.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t like all these shutdowns. I think this is so overblown. But remember, this is political. Everybody\u2019s, “No, Rush, it\u2019s not political. It\u2019s a health issue.” Yeah, I wish it were. If it were being treated as a health issue strictly, it\u2019d be one thing. But it is political. And so in that context, it was the wise thing to do. And maybe in three to four weeks it\u2019ll stop the new case increases that are fueling the panic, \u2019cause it\u2019s not the death toll that\u2019s fueling the panic. It\u2019s something else.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t that amazing, by the way, folks? The death toll is not part of any of the reporting. Is that fascinating to you, or is that something that only fascinates me?<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
Victor Davis Hanson today with a piece at the Townhall.com: “The Great Coronavirus War Is upon Us.”<\/a> He\u2019s taken a very interesting approach here, as has Mr. Hanson. He frames his piece, his column as a war against a clever enemy. Imagine the coronavirus as an active, clever enemy of the United States, and that when you think about it like that, think about it that way, the fact that the left is not on board to work together to fight this enemy in every way possible, can really open your eyes and make you get sick to your stomach.<\/p>\n “Viruses and anti-human microbes have not had a major win in America in decades, perhaps not since polio used to terrorize, cripple, and kill thousands of Americans annually. COVID-19 believes our progress, confidence, and sophistication are not our strengths but rather our greatest weakness, as our vanity and assumed invulnerability render us ripe for panic. The battle is upon us. But if we stay calm and rational, we can easily defeat the enemy, whose reputation is likely far scarier than its reality.”<\/p>\n It\u2019s an interesting way to look at it. Imagine the coronavirus as having its own army — and it does — but its own tactical, strategic generals and it\u2019s very upset that its cousins, other viruses, have failed to wipe out the United States, but now they\u2019re back and they\u2019ve got something else they\u2019re trying with some head fakes here and there. The whole point is imagine as though it\u2019s a militarized enemy with a functioning leadership, and it\u2019s aiming at the United States and it\u2019s trying to wipe us out. “Try this thought experiment. Envision the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as a living, breathing enemy — which, of course, is exactly what it is. But imagine for a moment that we are in real war with a cognizant, thinking, and clever enemy whose sole reason to live is to hurt, maim, or kill as many of us as it can.<\/p>\n “COVID-19 may not have jets, tanks, or nukes, like our past enemies. But its arsenal, numbers, cunning, and willpower are said to be formidable. To win its war against Americans, COVID-19 must infect and sicken lots of Americans each day. If it cannot infect enough victims to multiply and sustain a hungry army of viruses, COVID-19 will soon sputter and die. It will get trapped in just a few hosts among an otherwise victorious and healthy nation of about 330 million.”<\/p>\n Interesting to think of it that way because he\u2019s exactly right. And we\u2019re not united against this thing. We got too many people attempting to carve a political advantage out of it. But I love also, the expression here, that it needs healthy hosts. We can\u2019t contain it in the sense that we think we can. Testing and all these things don\u2019t contain the virus. It needs to run out of healthy hosts. And that can happen any number of ways.<\/p>\n Healthy hosts need to develop immune systems that spread and render the virus helpless against most of the patients that it attacks. But again, I just want to remind with you be the total number of coronavirus deaths in the United States as we speak is — dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut dadelut — 39. In a story featuring this degree of omnipresent panic, don\u2019t you think the death toll would be one of the lead items in stories about this?<\/p>\n BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n RUSH: Looky here. Just to mention this again, Seattle, the Associated Press: “Most Coronavirus Patients Recover. Still, Anxiety and Fear Loom.”<\/a> (interruption) Yeah. You people in the media wonder why. “Most Coronavirus Patients Recover.” Why not stop the headline there? “Still, Anxiety and Fear Loom.” Despite global fears of coronavirus, more than 60,000 people who\u2019ve gotten it have recovered from it. In fact, hang on here just a second. Let me look at the number: 68,000 people have recovered.<\/p>\n Here are the worldwide numbers. You ready for this? Let\u2019s round it up: 128,000 cases worldwide. The total deaths: 4,718, of which in the United States there are 39. So 39 deaths in the United States, 4,718 around the world. The number of recoveries is 69,000. So here\u2019s the headline: “Most Coronavirus Patients Recover. Still, Anxiety and Fear Loom.”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/APP-town-hall-TEARAWAY-031220.jpg\")
<\/a>Here\u2019s a pull quote from Mr. Hanson\u2019s piece. “It is a vengeful enemy. It knows we have killed off or rendered impotent most of its fellow viruses. Its cousin, the flu, has not since 1918 translated its annual tactical wins into a strategic pandemic victory.<\/p>\n
\nYou would think that everybody in the U.S. would align against it. And that isn\u2019t happening.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/APP-Tearaway-AP-031220-x.jpg\")
<\/a>Folks, look. I opened the program today and I\u2019ve been itching. I\u2019ve been chomping at the bit to get here all night and all morning \u2019cause I had my fill watching television last night. Just can\u2019t do it. I\u2019m watching people who are incompetent and unqualified occupy positions of seeming competence on television doing commentary and analysis, and they\u2019re nothing but a bunch of political boobs, they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/APP-030220-Coronavirus-B.jpg\")
But since this is the atmosphere that\u2019s been created, then this is — look at this: