RUSH: We’re also approaching DEFCON 5 here for Crazy Bernie. He’s got a press conference that he’s gonna conduct about two minutes from now, if it starts on time, at 1 o’clock Eastern. He is back home in Burlington, Vermont, and he’s gonna have some kind of campaign update after really, really shattering, devastating, disappointing, bomb-out results in yesterday’s primary.

He lost four states. It wasn’t even close. The media is breathlessly wondering what Crazy Bernie’s gonna say. I have no idea. All I can tell you is, the guy is not a fighter. I don’t care what he says he’s gonna do, he doesn’t fight. He rolls over and lets whoever wants to take him out take him out. So we’ll know in a short minute or two.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Well, Crazy Bernie is… I don’t know. The media might have thought he was gonna concede and give up and quit, but I didn’t think that. I just… (chuckling) I know. He started out by saying Trump is a racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, religious bigot. He checked off every box — every box — that the liberal Democrats think about conservatives. Racist, sexist, homophobe, xenophobe, religious bigot. Has he said anything about the coronavirus yet? You know, I left the room.

I had to leave. There are certain things I can only do during commercial breaks and I had to go do those things, and I didn’t think the clown would start on time. These guys never start on time. I come back in here and he’s already at it. So Cookie is rolling on the audio, and we will have that just so I can hear it. I didn’t even hear the insult of Trump. But it’s… Look, the guy is a caricature. This is the thing.

I’m telling you, the worst thing that could happen for Biden and the Democrats is for this guy to go on, and for this guy to go on with his agenda and with the things that he’s been saying. This is one of the reasons they’ve had to circle the wagons around Biden is to head this guy off at the pass, which it looks like they have done in the delegate count.

He’s got a yeoman’s job ahead of him overcoming the delegate deficiency that he has now. And you know what I also think? I also think he’s probably heard the talk from people like me that he’s not a fighter, that he kind of rolls over, ’cause he sounds a little bit ticked off here during some of this. In fact, our microphones are there. Let’s JIP a little bit of this, just so you can hear a little bit of Crazy Bernie —

SANDERS: …a hundred thousand people go bankrupt in our country —

RUSH: That’s what we need.

SANDERS: — many of medically related debt. And what are you gonna do for the working people of this country and small-business people who are paying, on average, 20% of their incomes to health care?

RUSH: Aw, come on, man —

SANDERS: Joe, what are you gonna do to end the absurdity of the United States of America being the only major country on earth where health care is not a human right.

RUSH: Well —

SANDERS: Are you really going to veto a Medicare for All bill if it is passed in Congress? Joe, how are you gonna respond to the scientists who tell us we have seven or eight years remaining to transform our energy system —

RUSH: (chuckling)

SANDERS: — before irreparable harm takes place to this planet because of the ravages of climate change.

RUSH: Right, and we can’t go to Mars now! Elon Musk may not be able to go.

SANDERS: At a time when young people need a higher education to make it into the middle class —

RUSH: Uh-oh.

SANDERS: — what are you gonna do to make sure that all of our people can go to college or trade school regardless of their income? And what are you gonna do about the millions of people who are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt?

RUSH: Forgive it! What else?

SANDERS: Joe, at a time when we have more people in jail than Communist China, a nation four times our size, what are you gonna do to end mass incarceration and a racist criminal justice system? And what are you gonna do to end the terror that millions of undocumented people experience right now because of our broken and inhumane immigration system?

RUSH: Isn’t this great? This is… He’s challenging Biden here, folks.

SANDERS: What are you gonna do about the fact we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on earth, and are living with the fact that 500,000 people tonight are homeless and —

RUSH: No. Bernie?

SANDERS: — 18 million families are spending half of their income to put roof over their heads?

RUSH: Uh, it’s daytime right now, not nighttime.

SANDERS: Joe, importantly, what are you gonna do to end the absurdity of billionaires buying elections, and the three wealthiest people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of our people?

RUSH: Why does anybody want to live in this country anymore?

SANDERS: So let me conclude the way I began.

RUSH: You listen to this guy talk about America, why does anybody want to live here?

SANDERS: Donald Trump must be defeated —

RUSH: Yep.

SANDERS: — and I will do everything in my power to make that happens. (sic) On Sunday night in the first one-on-one debate of this campaign, the American people will have the opportunity to see which candidate is best positioned to accomplish that goal. Thank you all very much.

RUSH: All right. That’s Crazy Bernie. That debate? That debate, the Democrat Party is trying to shut it down! They don’t want it to happen. They can’t dare put Biden out there in front of this guy. They can’t do it, folks! Greetings, and welcome to the EIB Network. Great to… (interruption) What do you mean, they can’t do it? I’ll tell you: They’re gonna shut it down.

Carville and Clyburn are already saying, “End it! Let’s just end the campaign because of the coronavirus. Let’s end this; let’s end that. No more debates! Let’s just be done with it.” Here. I’ve got sound bites coming up. Grab sound bite number 3. You haven’t heard this. This is James Clyburn last night on NPR.

CLYBURN: I think it is time for us to shut this primary down. It is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates, because you don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.

RUSH: He telling Bernie, “You don’t have a prayer, man. We’re gonna shut it down. We’re gonna shut down the debates. No more debates! We’re gonna shut down the primary. That’s gonna be it.” Now, see, Bernie began by saying that even though he’s behind in delegates, he’s actually winning. I love the way Democrats calculate these things. Bernie says he’s actually winning, because the country really wants socialism, especially the young people.

The young people are the future; the young people want socialism.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So let’s go back here. I spent a lot of time on this in the previous half hour. When Bernie went off the rails and started praising Castro and Che Guevara and Soviet communism and so forth, they were up a creek. They had to go all-in with Biden, but Biden doesn’t know where he is. Biden is senile. And so now here comes Bernie challenging Joe to the questions, giving him — actually, I think this is very nice of Bernie. Do you know what Bernie’s doing? He’s doing a Donna Brazile here.

Remember how Donna Brazile gave Hillary the debate questions in advance, CNN? Well, Bernie’s being a nice guy. Bernie is telling Joe, here’s what’s coming in the debate on Sunday. I’m gonna ask you these questions, Joe. And I expect you to have answers for ’em.

So he’s giving Joe Biden a little cheat sheet. The Democrats do not want this debate to happen. Here again, playing James Clyburn now that you’ve got the context here, play Clyburn, and we’re goon gonna follow it by Carville who’s next.

CLYBURN: I think it is time for us to shut this primary down. It is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates because you don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.

RUSH: So they want Bernie to give up. They want Bernie to concede now. We’re not even to April. They want Bernie to concede now, not even half the delegates have been chosen, they want Bernie to concede. Here is James Carville last night on MSNBC.

CARVILLE: Remember, remember this is all about November. These voters want to shut this thing down. I mean, you can just look all across the spectrum of the Democratic Party and people are saying, “we’ve made our decision, this is who we goin’ with.” According to FiveThirtyEight, there’s a 99 to one chance that Vice President Biden is going to be the nominee. Let’s shut this puppy down. (laughter) This thing is decided. There’s no reason to keep it goin’, not even a day longer.

RUSH: Isn’t this fabulous? These people want to get rid of Trump, they want to use the coronavirus to destroy the U.S. economy, they want to get rid of Trump, and now they want to shut down their own primary based on a poll, based on Nate Silver, based on FiveThirtyEight. (imitating Carville) “A 99 to one chance. Shut that puppy down. Shut it down. We’re done. We’re done. Democrat Party done made up their mind, this is it, this is it, they don’t want to go no further no way no how.”

Is that what Democrat voters want? Well, James Carville is out there saying (Carville impression), “The Democrats want to shut that puppy down, we don’t go no further, don’t need to go anywhere down the raod, it done deal, done deal. We got our guy. We got Biden. He gonna be the nominee. We gonna put him in the attic. We gonna put him in the attic, nobody gonna see him, hear from him at all until November.” That’s their plan. Here’s David Axelrod. You think we’re exaggerating this a little, here’s last night’s CNN special coverage. It’s Obama’s campaign manager.

AXELROD: One of the strategic questions is what are you trying to accomplish on Sunday? Do you think you can actually topple Biden in a way that could have this galvanic effect that completely changes the physics of this race in a way that seems impossible? I do think that you’re gonna see enormous pressure from all elements of the party to yield to the results that we now can see and start getting about the business of trying to deal with defeating Donald Trump.

RUSH: This is incredible. This is incredible. They want to shut it down before anybody has the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. You want to talk about screwing Bernie Sanders twice, this time they’re doing it in public. This time they’re doing it in front of everybody. They screwed Crazy Bernie in 2016 with the superdelegates and so forth. He went along with it. Now they are screwing the guy in public, folks.

And they’re doing it on the basis that you Democrats want this shut down. You don’t want this to go any further because everybody’s made up their minds. We got our nominee, got our guy, gonna be Joe Biden, Democrat Party has made up its mind, that’s who it gonna be. We need to put it all to bed now, put our candidate to bed, put him up in the attic until November, says James Carville. Right. So we can get back to panicking everybody on the coronavirus too all the time, full time.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Crazy Bernie as he opened his presser at 1 p.m.

SANDERS: Donald Trump is the most dangerous president in the modern history of our country, and he must be defeated. Tragically we have a president today who is a pathological liar and who is running a corrupt administration. He clearly does not understand the Constitution of the United States and thinks that he is a president who is above the law. In my view, he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and a religious bigot. And he must be defeated. And I will do everything in my power to make that happen.

RUSH: Wow. I mean, that pretty much runs the gamut. Crazy Bernie is not sugarcoating anything there. And then he lowered the gauntlet to Joe Biden. He comes out. Here he has a 1 o’clock press conference speech, throwing down the gauntlet using the Drive-By Media, who thought he might concede, to issue a challenge to Biden to show up Sunday for their debate, and here’s how he mentioned that.

SANDERS: We are strongly winning in two enormously important areas which will determine the future of our country. Poll after poll, including exit polls, show that a strong majority of the American people support our progressive agenda.

RUSH: Wrongo.

SANDERS: The American people are deeply concerned about the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality in this country.

RUSH: Now, there is something that is all of a sudden surfacing in Michigan, and it’ll probably surface in other places. Apparently, Michigan State University and a number of other voting locations in the state yesterday, students had to stand in line for, in some cases, six hours to vote and had to leave. They had class, they had to go to work, they had to go get inoculated from the coronavirus, something. And they didn’t vote.

And they think it’s done on purpose. They think that they were defrauded. Students, who everybody thinks would vote for Bernie Sanders. So this is something and it’s beginning to surface now, and even Jill Stein, who was part of the whole mess back in 2016, is accusing the Democrats of vote fraud here in an effort to stymie support for Crazy Bernie, make it look like Biden had this major sweeping victory.

Folks, it’s really crazy. Joe Biden can’t draw flies to a rally, and yet we’re to believe that there is massive, uncontrollable energy for the guy at polling places? I’m not buying that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Van Jones of CNN and the Democrat Party is warning the Democrats not to assume that Bernie Sanders voters are gonna fall in line once Bernie gets screwed again. And they are openly screwing Bernie in public now by demanding that the primaries and the debates just end, and that Biden be declared the Democrat nominee. They want that to happen tonight, tomorrow, whatever. This is the Democrat establishment. Ain’t gonna happen ’cause Bernie Sanders isn’t gonna put up with it.