RUSH: What Pence announced today at the meeting at the White House, all health care companies that were represented at the White House meeting today have agreed to waive all coronavirus related copays. The evil health care companies that everybody hates and despises have agreed to waive all coronavirus related copays.

In addition, there is a drug, there’s an antiviral drug that is not part of any of the official testing. It’s just shown some success in some patients in similar respiratory cases. And the insurance companies have agreed to compensate for it. They’ve agreed to pay for the usage and the prescribing of this medicine for certain people.

Now, you can sit there — I read a piece today where the Drive-By Media, I forget where it was — “Trump has gotta realize this isn’t about him. Coronavirus isn’t about him.” He doesn’t think it’s about him. You know, I sit here, like yesterday, I remain totally perplexed — and I know I ought not be, but I am — at the continual, utter ignorance and lack of understanding that political professionals in Washington have understanding Donald Trump’s support, understanding the people that support him, understanding the people that make up his base.

They continue to exhibit a degree of arrogant ignorance that’s just mind-boggling to me. Donald Trump does not think this is about him. It is in their convoluted minds. They’re telling us more about who they are when they engage in this distant analysis of Trump. They’re trying to make people believe that Trump doesn’t care a whit about you, doesn’t care a whit about your family, that all Trump cares about is whether or not his image is gonna be hurt because of coronavirus. And so, as far as Trump is concerned, the coronavirus is all about him and about his reputation and about his future.

And these people haven’t figured out that, if there is one politician in America today who actually does care about the American people, it’s Donald Trump. And you can see it every day simply from the policies that he tries to implement, the policies that he supports, the agenda that he has implemented. He’s all about making America great, not about making Trump great. In his mind he’s already great. Doesn’t have to get any greater than he is. It isn’t about him.

You know, we played a sound bite from Trump’s town hall that he had with the Fox News people last week, which was the highest rated town hall Fox has ever had. And he always portrays the truth at some point, even when he is being jocular, even when he’s joking. And he said to Bret Baier, “I actually think we’re saving the country.”

It’s obviously not about him. He doesn’t need to be saved. Trump’s got it made. Trump has made it. The old American vernacular. He doesn’t have to save himself. Saving the country is about preserving it for its people. I remain flabbergasted that Trump’s critics from top to bottom and left to right, Never Trumpers on our side, rabid leftists on their side continue to think that Trump’s ego is so self-evolved and self-focused that he doesn’t care or isn’t concerned about anybody.

Look, I can tell you anecdotally, firsthand experience, Donald Trump cares about a lot more than himself. There’s a part of me that says they do understand this, they just can’t let go of it. They can’t let go of this way of criticizing Trump. They can’t let go of the idea that they are gonna find a way to distance Trump’s supporters from Trump. They’re gonna find a way to drive a wedge. And they’re gonna keep using the same techniques that have failed now for four plus years and counting.

Meanwhile, the vice president again announced today that all health care companies represented at the White House today have agreed to waive all coronavirus related copays. And they’re going to pay for this — I’ll get the name of this medicine. I can’t think of it. But don’t misunderstand. It’s not a medicine that’s been specifically developed. It’s something that already exists that has been shown to be effective with certain people. Remember, this virus is really zapping the elderly. If you’re over 75, you have pre-existing respiratory conditions, that’s who’s really at risk here.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Kevin McCarthy said something last night, and it bears repeating, because Trump himself has tried to make this point. I’ll remind everybody. It was back in December that Trump was already on target and dealing with this virus out of China. That is when he shut down China flights, all the way back in December and certainly into January.

Trump then offered to send some of our scientists and doctors to Wuhan to help out, and the ChiComs refused. He went to the House to inform them of this threat and what was coming. Now, you may not remember much of this because the way the media treated this… The Democrats did nothing about it. They said Trump was grandstanding. They said… The media tried to run the game, “This is Trump’s xenophobia.

“This is Trump’s racism! This is Trump trying to make an end run around closing the borders by hyping some stupid fear.” The Democrats did nothing. They didn’t listen. They made fun of Trump for canceling travel, just like they did when he announced the first travel ban shortly after being inaugurated. Today, do you know what they did? Today, the House passed a law to prevent him from banning travel, to keep him from banning travel.

Why?

You know, they were impeaching Trump the whole time he was already working on this. He has been trying to warn people about this for months, and they were laughing and making fun of him and accusing him of trying to distract everybody’s attention away from this because he was being impeached and because it was very serious, because he was very worried — very worried — about what the Democrats were doing.

“He might be thrown out of office!” So they accused him of creating all kinds of distractions and doing all kinds of things to tell people, to get people all scared and so forth and make it look like it’d be very risky to throw Trump out of office. He turned out to be exactly right about it. They ignored and they laughed at it. He tries to get travel from China banned into the United States, and he did so finally in January. They made fun of him the whole time.

Now they’ve passed a law to keep him from banning travel. In other words, they have passed a law demanding that the borders remain open, and they’ve done this because they think there’s a political opportunity here to cast Trump as a xenophobe, as a racist, that Trump wants to ban travel ’cause he’s a racist pig and they’re not gonna let him get away with it.

So they want to be able to accuse him of that, because they think throwing the race card down accusing any Republican of racism or xenophobia is an automatic win column thing for them. I really don’t think they have the slightest idea what they are headed for in November. I really don’t. I don’t think the media has the slightest idea. I think these people live in such a delusional world; they believe they’re gaining ground on Trump.

They believe that they’ve embarrassed Trump. They believe they’re turning the tide against Trump. They believe that all this Russia stuff and the impeachment stuff worked. They think that it’s scored points here and there and it’s all adding up, and that Trump’s hanging by a thread. And they believe that the economy… They’re gonna be able to do something about the economy with the coronavirus, and that’s gonna be something that will help them.

And they think it’s all gonna be timed perfectly. It’s all gonna unravel on Trump starting in the fall, the late summer and the fall and they’re gonna win. I don’t think they have the slightest idea. I think they’ve been wrong about everything they have tried against Trump, and they’re gonna bomb out majestically on this.

Grab audio sound bite number 3. Shannon Bream last night had as one of her guests Brit Hume, senior political analyst at Fox News, and she played a clip of me and asked for his reaction to it, and this is how it sounded…

BREAM: I want to play a little bit of what Rush Limbaugh had to say today about the left and how they feel about the various crises.

RUSH ARCHIVE: What does it mean to say that the coronavirus, it could be an opening for the Democrats? It means the suffering of people could be an opening for Democrats. And they’re all excited about it. And they’re unable to let go of it.

HUME: The sense one could get from watching a lot of the coverage and the commentary: The coronavirus originated in the Trump White House and that the president is trying to spread it as fast as he can to as many people as possible. Which, of course, is nonsense. It is, I think, however, a problem that threatens him politically. Not just because people getting sick and because of a foreign flu invasion bothers people, but because if we get a bad quarter in the economy and a continued contraction of the stock market, some of the main points in his favor that he’ll campaign on will be taken away from him. So he still to worry about that.

RUSH: That’s not… Look, with all due respect, that’s not what the Democrats think when they think the coronavirus provides them an opening. That’s not it at all. They’re not thinking about the economy. Let’s just shoot straight here. They think they’re gonna be able to do damage to the economy simply by talking it down. That’s what they’ve always been able to do in the past with the assistance of the media.

No, no, no, no, no. This coronavirus means one thing to them: People getting sick and Donald Trump not knowing what or how to do anything about it. They are salivating over the fact that Trump will be blamed for people getting sick. Now, this is just who they are. Let’s be honest about something else. If Obama were president… Any Democrat! Hillary, take your pick.

If any Democrat were president and this was happening, this would also be their fear. Their fear would be that people would be blaming the sitting president, that the sitting president was gonna get grief for not being able to do anything about it. So what would they be doing then? They would be out attacking Republicans like you can’t believe.

If there was a Democrat in the White House now and the coronavirus or something similar was happening — a hurricane, you name it — they would be out attacking Republicans past and present for it. They would be doing anything they could to deflect blame from Trump. You go back and look at the Ebola virus when it hit. Look how they praised Obama. “Why, he was the man of the hour!

“He was the guy to be in charge. Republicans would not have known what to do.” They politicized virtually everything. The idea that this economy is gonna come crashing down? Even if that is what they’re salivating over, why the heck would we want that to happen just to have Democrats reelected to the White House? But it’s all moot. It’s all moot. Let me tell you why it’s moot.

Now we’re back to Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is going to be the Democrat presidential nominee.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Lambertville, Michigan. Hey, great to have you with us, Gordon. You’re next, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s a true honor to speak to you, sir.

RUSH: Thank you very much. Great to have you here, too.

CALLER: Hey, it’s a real travesty what the media has done with this coronavirus, I feel, because, you know, it’s one thing to stand in the wind and rain on a coast and affect a city or two and maybe, you know, a couple hundred thousand or million people. But now we’ve got a whole continent that’s freaking out over this. And what happens when there really is something to be concerned about? You know, what are we gonna do then? We’re gonna just thumb our nose at ’em and say the last time —

RUSH: Let me ask you, why do you think the coronavirus is not something maybe to be concerned about?

CALLER: Well, it’s speaking to everyone. I’ve done some research online. Obviously people say, oh, online, online this, online that. But, you know, I’ve been around, I traveled to Mexico last week. It’s my birthday next week. My wife took me to Mexico. We didn’t have any problem. We came back. We’re fine. And I’m just not seeing this. I don’t think this is much more than the flu. I’ve seen numbers. They kind of correlate it to the flu numbers and how many people get sick and die of it each year.

Sure it’s something to worry about, you wash your hands and you carry on. But, I mean, there’s people fighting over toilet paper and other things at the grocery stores. It’s just blown way out of proportion in my opinion, and I just wonder what’s gonna happen when there really is something of great concern to be really worried about.

RUSH: Well, that’s a valid concern. But I think your question is well taken. The media has made it look like this is it, precisely because people are fighting over toilet paper and paying a hundred bucks a roll to get some. I mean, this is clearly — have you seen any medical people say anything that would warrant the degree of fear or panic that you see out there?

CALLER: Other than those that are put out in front of the mainstream media, no.

RUSH: That’s my point.

CALLER: That they bring forward, yeah, nobody.

RUSH: We haven’t seen the CDC say things or the NIH, these are all people now that are part of the Trump task force. And, folks, let me tell you something about this. And I may get in some trouble for this. I’m not gonna name any names, but there’s a lot of people in this Trump task force who despise him. They are holdovers from previous administrations many, many administrations ago. Some of these people, I am convinced, think Trump is a buffoon.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: My point is that there are people at the CDC — and they’ve been there for years. They’ve been there longer than Trump’s been in the White House. They’ve been there (some of them) since before Obama was. Same thing at the NIH.

You’ve got people at the NIH who’ve been there since the 1980s. You’ve got people at Homeland Security, Health and Human Services. You got people there, I will guarantee you… I shouldn’t say “guarantee,” ’cause I don’t actually know, but I’m just pretty sure. You’ve got some people there who let’s say just don’t like Donald Trump. They are Never Trumpers, either Republican or Democrat.

Now, those peopled could be… If they wanted to, they could be going to the media like the intel community did during Trump-Russia collusion. They could be leaking all kinds of stuff. They could be leaking that this virus is gonna wipe out half the population. They could be leaking anything they wanted. If they really wanted to destroy Donald Trump, they could do it. Now, I don’t… (interruption)

No. I didn’t state that right. If they wanted to cause real havoc here, they could do it. They have a receptive media. They have a media hoping and praying that somebody’s gonna leak stuff like this to them about this virus, and the point is it isn’t happening. The people in the health community who are in a position to know are not feeding the media the information necessary to create the panic that the media desperately wants people to feel.

And yet the opportunity is there. I’m just… I’m bouncing off our last caller, because he says, “What happens when there is something really, really bad? I mean, once this thing runs its course and people realize it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the media said, then at some point are we gonna create a bunch of people in the country who are not gonna listen to the media anymore?”

I don’t know about that.

I’m just telling you that the media is doing what it can right now to create panic. Look at the headlines on Drudge. Now, the headlines on Drudge are nothing more than headlines on the news. You can sit there and complain about Drudge all you want, but it misses the point. I haven’t done it on purpose because it’s just one “the end of the human race” story after another.

Country by country, it’s the end of the human race. That’s what’s in the media today. Those are the headlines. It is clear that there are objectives that the media’s attempting to achieve here with this. We all know why. The effort is, in part, aimed at getting rid of Donald Trump. They can’t help themselves. No matter what the news story is, it’s gonna be tailored, flavored, flaked and formed and aimed at Trump in a way that’s supposed to hurt him.

My point to you is that the people who could be providing that kind of information are the ones not doing it. So my point to you is that the people in a position to know are not literally responsible for the hysteria that is there is in the media. So you ask, “Well, who is?” I don’t know.

Anonymous sources. It doesn’t take much. Here. Grab sound bite 24. I’ll give an example. Grab sound bite number 24. This is the esteemed governor of New York. This is the brother of Fredo. This is Andrew Cuomo this afternoon in Albany talking about his plan for containment of the coronavirus.

CUOMO: We’re also going to use the National Guard in the containment area, uhh, to deliver food, uhh, to homes to help with the cleaning of public spaces. Some opinions are the virus can live on a hard surface such as stainless steel or plastic for, uh, two days or more. If that’s the case, uh, that’s… That would be a significant issue as to why it is, uhh, transmitting the way it does. So cleaning those surfaces is very important — cleaning it with the right material — and the National Guard will be helpful on that.

RUSH: All right. So the government of New York has declared a one mile containment area in New Rochelle. That’s what the announcement was about. We have a one-mile containment area. Now, if this were a Republican governor, they’d be out there calling this martial law. Calling out the National Guard? Calling out the National Guard? This is the kind of stuff that’s spreading rumors. He’s not a health official. He’s the governor. But this is…

You have stories like this that feed into… He is a Democrat, doesn’t like Trump. I mean, we know the score here. My point is that all of this is way overblown. There is a justification for a certain level of concern. (interruption) Well, yeah, you could say he’s got a containment area. He’s just closed the borders of New Rochelle, and then he’s got the National Guard going in there to distribute food and clean surfaces.

So if you violate the containment area, I wonder… (interruption) No, I’m sure it doesn’t apply to illegal aliens. I’m sure illegal aliens can come and go in New Rochelle and do whatever they want to do. They’re not stopped anywhere else. Why would this stop them? See how this works? (interruption) Oh, you could have a sanctuary city, you could have a sanctuary state where you welcome in all kinds of people who break the law.

But now we got the coronavirus and we’re gonna put a containment area around New Rochelle. They’ve gotta have some illegal aliens living there. What if they want to leave? Are they gonna be allowed to leave? ‘Cause they’re allowed to come and go as they want. Is a sanctuary state. So illegal aliens have kind of free rein to come and go. My point is, this is the kind of stuff. But he is… He’s not a health official.

He’s not the NIH. He’s not with Johns Hopkins. He’s not with Health and Human Services or the National Institutes for Health saying all this. It’s just the governor. He’s a politician. My only point, folks, is you go back through the history of the Trump administration/the Trump the presidency, and we’ve had all kinds of anonymous sources from within the Trump White House, the West Wing, the Oval Office.

They’ve been writing anonymous pieces about how dangerous Trump is and how, “We’ve got adults in there and we’re looking out for things for everybody. Everything’s okay. We’re gonna be protected, ’cause Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing; he’s very dangerous.” None of that is happening here. You got a bunch of NIH people in there and a bunch of CDC people in there.

And they could be going to town against Trump if they wanted to. Am I making myself clear here? This is a roundabout way of saying that it probably isn’t wise to panic yet because the people who would really know if it’s time to panic would be saying so. And if they really wanted to create a panic to go get Trump or whatever, then they could easily do it.

And so far it looks like Trump and Pence’s efforts to keep a lid on this and to keep a semblance of normalcy and non-panic about it are working within that universe.