RUSH: All right. This happens every day. I tell you what I’m gonna do, and then things happen and what I’m gonna do gets delayed. Like I was gonna share with you all these stories detailing the panic in the Democrat Party and the media over Crazy Bernie. I’m still gonna do it, but things happen. Things happened. And another thing just happened, so I’m gonna delay it even further. And the same thing with your phone calls. If you’re on hold, please stay there.

But, folks, there’s a life lesson here and a show lesson here. And remember, for those of you who have been listening for any length of time whatsoever, there are new people tuning in every hour to this program, and certainly every day, which is a great, great thing. The audience is expanding here at geometric proportions. I’m very happy and proud of that.

What it means is that there are people listening for the first time every day who may hear me say something that they don’t have the context of experience listening to the program to understand, such as what I said just before the end of the first hour. So I want to convert this into a miniature, brief, little lesson on conservatism versus liberalism, phoniness versus reality, and a way to make sure that some of these people listening for the first time don’t misunderstand me.

So we have here a circumstance where the media is saying that Donald Trump is insufficiently prepared to be truthful or effective in dealing with the coronavirus. CNN did this today. And they pointed out that when Trump talked about it, he only talked about it from the standpoint of protecting America and that’s not good. We need to look to what people like Barack Obama did. Obama, back during the Ebola fear — and, by the way, whatever happened to that? Whatever happened to the worldwide Ebola pandemic? Didn’t happen, did it?

But, anyway, Obama appointed an Ebola czar. And what did the Ebola czar do? Nothing. There was nothing the Ebola czar could do. We don’t have a cure for it. Ebola is a deadly, horrible thing. And the idea that the Obama administration tried to make people believe that by appointing a czar we could somehow stop it is irresponsible. And it’s public relations. It is not real. It misleads people. And I think it’s a disservice to people. I think it’s what liberalism is.

Liberalism, communism, socialism, the last thing that they do in those ideologies is solve problems. They create problems. Like the Democrats are trying to do to the entire Democrat campaign is trying to create problems because they have solutions, they’re offering solutions for which there are no problems right now. Trump and America have gone beyond them. We don’t have the problems the Democrats are whining and moaning about in their debates and their commercials and so forth.

So here I am criticizing Obama and the Ebola czar. “Come on, Rush, don’t you realize he’s only trying to help?” No. That’s not what he was trying. He was trying to make you think he was doing something about it when there’s nothing he can do about it. Obama was not God. He’s not a doctor. He doesn’t understand health care. He’s got no experience in it at all. Why should anybody think that he is the savant?

So my comparison is this. There’s a terrorist group in Africa, Nigeria. It’s called Boko Haram. They kidnap and traffic young girls in addition to being terrorists. So I forget the year, but they went in there and they kidnapped a bunch, like 200 girls from a African village and the world was shocked, the world was outraged. Many people never heard of Boko Haram until this happened. They were confusing it with Procol Harum, Whiter Shade of Pale, but that was not who it was. It was Boko Haram.

And immediately Michelle Obama created a Twitter hashtag called #BringBackOurGirls. And what did the media do? They melted. “Oh-ho-ho-ho, she so wonderful.” And I criticized it from the standpoint it sounds good but it isn’t gonna do diddly-squat. So you go on the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag, you go on Twitter and you sign it, and what are the Boko Haram guys gonna do? They’re gonna see all these people hashtagging #BringBackOurGirls and give them back? Ain’t gonna happen.

That night Jon Stewart did a 10-minute monologue on me and the fact that I have no soul because I dared criticize Michelle Obama’s #BringBackOurGirls hashtag. Now, the difference here is I’m actually interested in solutions. I don’t believe a Twitter hashtag is gonna get any kidnap victim back. It’s gonna make somebody who has nothing to do with it feel better, make them think they’re doing something about it, but that’s the whole point of liberalism versus conservatism.

Liberalism is the most gutless, easy choice you can make. You never have a solve a problem. All you have to do is claim that you care about it. And, man, people assume you’ve got this gigantic, big heart. And you’re a wonderful person. But you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to give any money to a charity, you don’t have to save anybody who is in dire straits, you don’t have to get the girls back that were kidnapped by Boko Haram. All you have to do is sign on to the hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it for me.

Now, if you’re into making yourself feel better in these things and making it feel like you’re doing something that’s meaningful, have at it, but it isn’t gonna mean anything. And for that I’m said to have no soul. “Well, what would you do?” In the first place I wouldn’t tell anybody, if I’m president or if I really wanted to do something about it, I would target these people, I’d go in and mount a mission and do what it took to take them out and get the girls back.

I wouldn’t do any of it on Twitter, and I wouldn’t do any of it publicly. And I would only announce that it happened afterwards, and it would be part of a comprehensive anti-terrorist strategy that would be part of hopefully a framework I have as a president to deal with these kinds of things.

Now, the reason I bring this up, Donald Trump has survived every coup attempt, every assault on him that has been made up. And now the coronavirus, they’re trying to lay it at his feet and make him responsible for it, and they’re doing irresponsible news reports claiming that the coronavirus is gonna destroy the U.S. economy by when? November. Isn’t it magical?

The coronavirus is the new Russians. The coronavirus is gonna take out Donald Trump because Donald Trump doesn’t care about anybody but America. And we can’t trust what Trump says anyway. And so I’m sitting here, and I’m not gonna play ball with this. I’m not gonna join a panic over something that I have been independently informing myself about. I have no interest in lying to you about anything, that doesn’t help me, it doesn’t help you, it doesn’t further anything. It doesn’t help a thing for me to knowingly lie to you about something as serious as a possible global pandemic.

And that’s how the media is treating this. And they’ve been treating it this way since late January, before the Chinese New Year. And they have been using it to attack the various enemies they have, like Apple and other tech firms, and now they’re using it to go after Trump. And some of the stories — let me get just a couple headlines here real quick.

CDC: “Very strong chance of an extremely serious outbreak of the coronavirus.” Very strong chance of an extremely serious. And the CDC warns, “It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when.” And so the media is out basically telling people you might die. There are also stories that the United States is short on latex gloves and masks. We don’t have enough. Oh, my God. We don’t have anything to protect ourselves, it’s Trump’s fault.

I’m just telling you that where this whole thing started, the fatality rate is 2% of the infection rate. That’s less than the flu. I’m not saying it’s tolerable. Folks, this kind of story is made to order for modern media, which reports first before they know anything, and they flame it, flake it, form it to fit their agenda of the moment, which now is “get Trump.”

And now they’re comparing Trump to Obama and Trump’s coming up short because, “Trump only said that he was gonna make sure it’s okay in the United States. Well, Obama did an Ebola czar and made sure it’s safe around the world. That’s the difference in Trump and Obama.” Well, Obama’s Ebola czar had zero effect on anything to do with Ebola, just a hashtag on Twitter, #BringBackOurGirls, had zero to do with saving anybody from Boko Haram.

I’m sorry if that sounds mean. This is what being the mayor of Realville is. This is what it means to live in reality versus hiding yourself away in the universe of platitudes and feel-goodism. That doesn’t get anything done. And we in Realville are about getting things done.