RUSH: And greetings to you, music lovers and thrill-seekers and conversationalists and getting pent up and getting roaring and ready to go and so frustrated out there. All of you, great to have you with us. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, eagerly anticipated each and every day by millions who are cooped up.

Folks, I get a sense — I don’t know, I follow my instincts — and I just have to share with you. It’s based on nothing. It isn’t based on any conversations with anybody. I’m feeling good about things right now. Not the current status quo. But I mean the future. I’m feeling good. And it was just a couple days ago you could talk to people that I know, if you could find out who they are — ha-ha-ha — we keep that a secret so that they won’t get hassled.

But if you talk to people I know a couple days ago they would have told you that I was getting pessimistic that we weren’t gonna open by May 1st, that there were active efforts in place to prevent that from happening. You gotta admit, folks, there are people who want to profit from this shutdown in many ways politically because they haven’t given up the dream of getting rid of Donald Trump. It just boggles my mind.

You know, you want to talk about American unity, everybody in this country. I mean, you got stragglers, nothing’s ever gonna be 100%, but if there was ever anything to unify around it would be getting this country up and running. Even if you don’t like it, people have to work. And, even if you don’t like the country, you have to have careers and opportunities. Even if your career and opportunity is destroying America, you still have to be able to have an office to be able to get up and go to work to do that.

There needs to be some kind of unity around reopening. And I think that there is, but there are stragglers, there are stragglers, some of them in the health medical community, some of them in the political community. I get the sense now that everybody’s down for this. This can’t go on. The sustainability of the status quo simply isn’t.

And I have a sense that we’re moving finally in the right direction here. And I hope my instincts on this are right. ‘Cause, you know, I’ve tried to be guarded when I have had upbeat feelings. I’ve tried to make sure that I don’t go overboard either way in sharing things with you, realizing how deeply powerful and influential that I am.

I’m taking the risk to tell you today that I’m feeling good about the prospects. And part of what’s making me feel good is it’s a battle, it’s a battle to overcome the naysayers. It’s always a battle. It’s a battle to overcome the people who want to maintain the status quo. And I think that is something else that we are winning. I’ll give you some examples. Trump has named the committee, “9,900” people on the committee. One of them is Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, never a Trump fan. He’s been part of that crowd that think Trump’s an idiot. He’s made no bones about the fact that he thinks Trump is stupid. Not IQ stupid, just… not there.

But this morning Mark Cuban was on the Fox News Channel. He said, “I’m gonna do all I can to help the president make this decision. I’m gonna help him any way I can.” I did a double-take. That’s not the kind of messaging we’ve been getting from Mark Cuban. You might say, “Well, Rush, what does it matter what Mark Cuban thinks?” Well, look. This is how the media operates. He’s on TV, number one. He’s on a TV show called Shark Tank. Number two, he’s been anti-Trump, which makes him very attractive figure to the media. He owns the Dallas Mavericks, NBA. He’s got a high profile, he’s a billionaire.

So because he’s a billionaire he’s automatically presumed to be brilliant and smart. And he’s probably pro-choice. So you throw all that in with the anti-Trump stuff, and he’s a very attractive figure to the Drive-By Media. And today he made it clear that he’s gonna do all he can to help the president make this decision regarding opening up the economy.

And if you watch Cuban on Shark Tank, I mean, he gets it, he’s a good capitalist, he’s a good entrepreneur, understands how this stuff works. And it’s the first time in a long time I’ve heard anybody outside the president’s political sphere say that they wanted to help him, on television, publicly. It’s a big deal. I’m sure he’s getting destroyed on Twitter by people who think he’s gone overboard or is a sellout. No one’s offered to help Trump.

Yesterday’s briefing. I had a lot of people, Mr. Snerdley emailing me during the briefing, “What is this with ventilators? For crying out loud, can we not start talking about reopening? Why do we keep talking about ventilators?” The fact of the matter is we’re okay on ventilators. We don’t need nearly as many as we thought.

Well, I’ll tell you what that was yesterday, folks. When we didn’t have enough ventilators, President Trump asked American CEOs to retool their manufacturing, like the My Pillow guy. The My Pillow guy shut down manufacturing My Pillows and he started making medical supplies. I think he was making masks. It doesn’t matter. I could be wrong. General Motors stopped manufacturing automobiles, started manufacturing ventilators. A lot of CEOs retooled to meet the emergency.

Yesterday was a thank-you. They did it. They retooled. They stepped up. They totally remade their businesses in an emergency after a request from the president. It was wildly successful. The president had ’em in yesterday in a Rose Garden briefing to say thank you, to honor them, to acknowledge their efforts, and to give thanks to them for what they did. It made total sense to me. I’m like a lot of people, I’m a little worn out hearing about ventilators, but I understand why he did it.

It was one of the first briefings we have not heard from Team Scarf. And it was briefing we did not hear from Dr. Fauci. It was strictly with the president, the media, which is always enlightening and fun.

Here’s another thing. Do you know how much money Disney is losing every day? Well, now, Bob Iger, if you recall, Iger, media loves Iger. Bob Iger ran Disney, Mr. Mickey. Mr. Mickey Mouse. Of course they would have to love Iger because in many cases he is their boss. Oh, yeah, Goose Gossage has even come out in favor of Trump. Goose Gossage, folks, this guy, Goose Gossage used to be an environmentalist leftist liberal like you can’t believe, and he is fed up with the attacks on Trump. I have details of that coming up. There are signs out there that this is all headed in the right direction now.

So Bob Iger shocked everybody. They knew he was gonna retire at some point. There was even some talk some months ago that Iger would seek the Democrat presidential nomination. I mean, everybody at some point was gonna be the Democrat nominee ’cause they knew Plugs isn’t the answer, they knew they had to beat Trump. So they were looking for attractive people. Iger got mentioned, and he fell into it, he played along with it as though it might happen, but it never did. He wasn’t gonna do that.

So he retires from Disney in a shocking move, but he retired a year, 18 months before the succession plan dictated it. He was gonna become chairman of the board and some new guy that nobody had really heard of became the CEO. Then the shutdown happened, then the coronavirus hit.

Disney is losing $30 million a day. This is unsustainable. I don’t care what Bob Iger or anybody in the Disney executive suites politics are — meaning if they are part of the cabal that wants Trump gone — they are not gonna sit there and have Disney destroyed to pull that off. $30 million a day. You might say, “How the heck are they losing that much?”

Look what shut down. The theme parks — and it’s not cheap to get into one of those. The theme parks all over the world are shut down. Disney has cruise ships. Ha! Who wants to get on one of those right now? They’re all in dock. Disney owns ESPN. There isn’t any programming. There is no live sports programing — other than people playing tiddlywinks, which nobody wants to watch.

They are hemorrhaging subscribers to ESPN. They were before this all happened. Before this all happened, Disney — ESPN/ABC — was thinking about getting back into NFL televised games. They wanted the Thursday night package, maybe even the Monday night. They wanted to go back to the old-fashioned days when ABC did Monday Night Football.

They were prepared to pay out the wazoo for it. They wanted to try to convert Monday Night Football into the game of the week, taking it away from NBC Sunday Night Football. They were prepared to break the bank to go get it. Now that’s all out the window, and the NFL releases, you know what? Their rights packages, their deals with TV networks all were coming up between now — 2021-2022.

Do you realize the networks may be looking at having to pay the NFL a lot less for rights to televise based on this? What if there are no fans in the stands? The landscape is simply unsustainable for everybody, not just the small businesspeople whose lives may be in the process of being destroyed, whose dreams may be ruined. It’s the big guys as well — $30 million a day!

A story in the New York Times (it’s an estimate) says it’s $30 million a day. Theme park closures, cruise ships docked, movie theaters and movies. No big openings. No red carpets. No big promo deals. No interviews. No stars. No stars out doing anything. None of the sports that would have been televised and broadcast by ESPN. The headline to the story: “Bob Iger Returns to Fight for Disney’s Life.”

It can’t go on.

It is unsustainable.

And this story from Breitbart: “Crowd Gathers Outside Ohio Statehouse to Protest Coronavirus Lockdown — A large number of protesters gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse again on Monday,” this story’s a couple days ago old, “to make their voices heard during the press conference held by Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton.

“The protest came amid the stay-at-home order due to COVID-19, to which many Ohio residents have voiced opposition. Throughout the gathering, chants of ‘facts not fear’ and ‘O-H-I-O Acton’s got to go’ could be heard from within the meeting room and through the microphones via televisions.” There were “signs that read, ‘Open Ohio: We want our rights back’ and ‘My inherent rights don’t end where your fear begins.’ …

“As of Monday, the Ohio Department of Health reported 6,975 total cases of COVID-19 under the new method…” There’s a new method of calculating COVID-19 deaths, by the way, which is expanding the number of deaths, because federal money is attached for each COVID-19 death for hospitals and states. “[T]he Centers for Disease Control’s expanded case definition of probable infections.

“More than 2,000 people have been hospitalized, 613 have been admitted to the ICU,” these are Ohio numbers, “and 274 have died. People, say, “Okay. Look, it’s a tragedy. But we’ve shut down economic activity for over a month for 274?” Some governors believe their states are ready to reopen, the head of the CDC says. Forbes magazine has a list of states and dates that they are ready to reopen. Some of them are this month.

We don’t know if those are solid dates. They’re probably flexible and will move. And then there’s even this. “Dr. Anthony Fauci Sees Path for Sports to Come Back Without Fans.” So Dr. Fauci is again finding himself in the policy arena. Dr. Anthony Fauci said, “Sports returning without fans is within the realm of possibility.” Now, ladies and gentlemen, how many of you believed or believe that the shutdown had as its primary purpose flattening the curve?

And the purpose of flattening the curve was to what?

What do you think the objective was behind flattening the curve? Many people believe that the objective behind flattening the curve was to eliminate death, to reduce the number of people who die. And you could not be blamed if that’s what you believe because that has been one of the overriding, shall we say, mantras or narratives that the media has used, that all of this that we’re doing is designed to prevent as many people dying as possible.

But flattening the curve — and if you don’t know what that is, I’ll explain in a minute. Flattening the curve was never about reducing the number of dead. It was never about reducing the number of people who die. It had an entirely different objective. Many of you know it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I knew this was gonna happen. Man, oh, man, did I get… Ho! “You think there is unity out there? What are you smoking? You think there’s unity?” And then this person goes all through the list of opposition. “Globalists like the Democrat Party, the ChiComs, United Nations, the World Health Organization. They’re not gonna help us! They’re not…”

Well, of course not.

I’m not talking about international enemies. I’m not talking about unity with international enemies, and I’m not talking about unity with the Democrats. I know not one Democrat has offered to help Trump. But that’s not new, either. No Democrat’s ever offered to help Trump do anything that would be beneficial to the country or to Trump.

I’m talking about the unity of the American people. I’m talking about the fact that more and more… Look, Mark Cuban came out again thanking the president and offering to help. That’s one example. But I’m talking about the American people. When you see Disney losing $30 million a day, they can’t go on this way, I don’t care how much they hate Trump in the executive suite.

Look, I’ll expand on this as the program unfolds.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have the Mark Cuban sound bite. I want you to listen to it. And just to clarify, when I talk about the unity, I’m not examining the WTO to be on our side and I’m not expecting the ChiComs to be on our side. I’m not expecting our enemies to want us to rebound and get our economy up and running.

When the American people start demanding things — when they start protesting in Michigan and start protesting in Ohio — when the American people make it clear they’re getting tired of being fed up and when they start questioning the value of all this… Maybe “unity” is the wrong word, because I don’t want to give anybody the idea that I think Trump’s enemies are being converted to anything here.

That’s not my point.

I’m just saying that two weeks into this, everybody was docile and ready to sit down as long as necessary and follow the instructions of the experts and do whatever — and I was frustrated from day one of this. I’ve been frustrated since the first week. I’ve been questioning whether it was necessary, and I’ve alluded to this from the moment I was able to get back to behind Golden EIB Microphone.

I’ve been alerting… I started telling you that we’re gonna have a debate ’cause these models have not been right about anything yet. We’re gonna have a debate when all this is over as to whether the shutdown was necessary, and I want you to count me among those who maybe think that the extent to which we’ve been shut down was not necessary.

Although I need to leave a door open to be wrong about that. But now that we’re into the fourth week, and there are people out there who want you to think that there’s no end in sight to it. What is the effect…? By the way, what’s the psychological effect when somebody like Dr. Fauci says, “Well, I can see a return to sports, but not with fans in the stands”?

How does that effect you psychologically? Does that inspire you to say, “Oh, wow, we’re getting back to normal”? That’s not getting back to normal! No fans in the stands? “Yeah, I can see sports coming back but with no fans.” Now, if all you’re looking for is televised content of daily drama to which you don’t know the answer until you watch it — which is what sports is; it’s why it’s so popular — then, okay.

You could be mollified by that. But to me, it doesn’t constitute a return to normalcy. And to people saying, “Rush, we’re never gonna go back the way it was.” I understand what people mean by that, but I don’t like the automatic concession that we’re not gonna go back to the way it was. The way it was wasn’t bad. The way it was is not why we’re in this situation.

The way it was, we were in the middle of a roaring economy unlike many people had ever seen in their lives. There’s no reason to not want to return to that. The normalcy of six weeks ago and a month ago and two months ago, a year ago? There’s nothing about that normalcy that led to this. There’s no reason to want to avoid going back to six months ago.

It was perfectly fine. Now, the Democrats don’t want to go back to that because they were unable to stop Trump and the economy was roaring. And I, of course, do not mean that I think they are starting to unify. But let’s just wait. As the president likes to say, “Let’s see what happens,” as the momentum starts to build. Look at this.

There’s a rally in Michigan right now against the Michigan governor’s expanded stay-at-home order. More and more people are gonna realize in more and more states that it hasn’t been necessary, and maybe we had to live through it to find out it wasn’t necessary. It’d be a dangerous prediction to say there, “We don’t need to shut down anything.”

I understand a certain amount of this. There are certain states… California. I guarantee you, some people in California are saying, “We didn’t need to shut down. The stats do not indicate this was necessary.” People are start to bzz bzz bzz — you know, privately amongst themselves in their bathrooms where you don’t think the government surveilling them.

Okay. Here’s Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban on the Fox News Channel today with Sandra Smith on America’s Newsroom. She said to him, “You’re now gonna be in a position to help President Trump decide when to reopen things. What’s your recommendation? Is May 1st too soon?”

CUBAN: I really don’t know. We’re getting new data every day. What I really want to contribute is the fact that businesses really don’t know exactly what to expect on the other side. There’s so much uncertainty that by talking to everybody in each of the groups, I think the president can get a lot of great feedback on how businesses are approaching it.

Because as much as safety is critical, we also have to see how businesses want to move forward. My focus right now is helping the president. My focus right now is helping the American people, helping particularly small businesses where I can. We all have gotta come in together. Unless everybody’s a hero, nobody’s a hero. I’m an American patriot first.

RUSH: “I’m an American patriot first,” and I want to do what I can to help. “My focus right now is helping the president. My focus right now is helping the American people…” Not a whole lot of people outside the president’s sphere are saying that, and Cuban is not been a noted pro-Trumper. Now he’s on the sports committee.

There’s a hundred people on that committee, and it’s a great honor to be on that committee, and they want to make it worth their while. So I’m just saying that it’s a positive. In addition, ladies and gentlemen, the… It’s just my instincts speaking. When I tell you, I’m sensing good — that I’m feeling optimistic about this — largely, it’s my instincts.

I can find some evidence for you. But it’s just largely my instincts.