RUSH: I mentioned this to the staff earlier, and I needed some help with this. I needed some explaining or clarification. Here is the headline, and I don’t have a link for the story. Not that I doubt it. I know it’s true. I just like to cite the link, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter.

The headline is: “Dr. Fauci Endorses Tinder Hookups ‘If You’re Willing to Take a Risk.'” So I had to ask informed, knowing members of the staff what Tinder is. I mean, I’d heard of it, don’t misunderstand. And they told me what it was. It’s a flat-out hookup site. It’s not a dating site. It’s not where you give all your profiles the fact that you like canaries or whatever the stuff is, you know, you like Rod McKuen poetry, none of that. You just specify what kind of thing you’re looking for in a hookup. Is that basically it?

So the story says: “Tired of having to live your sex life online during lockdown? You’re in luck. Government coronavirus expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says that heartsick isolationists can hook up with asymptomatic Tinder matches in real life — but, like love, it involves some risk. The 79-year-old immunologist dropped the unorthodox dating tip in a Tuesday interview on Snapchat’s ‘Good Luck America.’

“Toward the end of the taped segment, Fauci was asked: ‘If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble or Grindr, and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, “Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.” What do you say to that person?’ ‘You know, that’s tough,’ replied the befuddled National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director to the curveball. ‘Because that’s what’s called relative risk.’

“Then he dropped the bombshell. ‘If you’re willing to take a risk — and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks — you could figure out if you want to meet somebody,’ said Fauci, who was named a candidate for People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ award. He added, ‘If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk.'”

So I didn’t understand this at all. Here is the man who is encouraging keeping your distance, safe distance, social distance, stay at home, six feet, six feet, don’t do anything to violate the six feet, now granting permission to Tinder hookups. So I had to ask, is this actually — what he’s saying is okay to do, if somebody comes over or if you go over to their place, it’s okay to have sex with them? Is that what he’s suggesting? Because that’s what Tinder is, right? Tinder is sex hookups. It’s not relationship central.

Well, yeah, wearing a mask is one thing, but, for crying out loud here. What you need, a six-foot penis? How do you pull this off? I asked Snerdley that question. He about cracked up earlier. Because look, folks, I’m not trying to be funny. I know I’m a naturally funny person. This violates everything we’ve been told and it includes the swapping of what? Precious bodily fluids. And here is Dr. Fauci sanctioning it. If you want to take the risk.

Now, look, don’t infer a tone in my voice that’s not there. If it’s okay to take the risk for a Tinder hookup, then why can’t you go to a restaurant? Why can’t Andrew Cuomo go see his mom, for example. Can anybody answer this for me? (interruption) Well, that’s the only thing I was thinking, that maybe Dr. Fauci doesn’t know what Tinder is. Well, he may not know what Bumble and Grinder are either, but still he said, you know, the question, if you’re swiping on a dating app, meaning you’re swiping around on the internet, if you’re browsing Tinder, Bumble, or Grinder and you match up with somebody really hot, okay, maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.

So he’s being asked to respond, if they come over to your crib. There’s only one reason they’re coming over if you’ve met ’em on Tinder, and it’s not social distancing and it’s not to brew a bunch of tea, and it’s not to compare scarfs. And he said it’s okay with relative risk. He said if you’re willing to take a risk, you could figure out if you want to meet somebody. Maybe he thinks it’s just meeting somebody. I don’t know.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Carol in Holbrook, Long Island. I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thank you for taking my call. Okay. I’m calling because, quite frankly, I’m a little bit annoyed with President Trump. I was born and raised in Queens, Long Island, just like him. He is a Long Islander, and yet he signs off on this stimulus package which I really think is a political stunt and gives money to everybody in the nation, but most of Long Island doesn’t qualify because we are the most expensive place to live in the continental United States. We have over 50,000 cases in the two counties alone, and yet my kids didn’t even get a check. And I got a check because I’m retired. If I was still working, I wouldn’t have qualified, either. He knows better, and he just caved to the politics of it. Well, that’s how I feel, and I’m very annoyed. I love Trump, but I’m very annoyed ’cause he’s forgotten about Long Island.

RUSH: I’m sure that there are other places in the country that might have the same complaint, areas of the country where affluence is assumed beyond what maybe is really true. And therefore they are or are not getting money in certain places.

CALLER: We’re a hot spot. I mean, we are a hot spot, Rush.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but, Carol, here’s the thing. What this is showing is one thing very clearly. The federal government, no government can take the place of a functioning, roaring economy. The government simply cannot give people enough money to replicate an income, to replicate what they would get from a career or job. They don’t have the means to come up with the money, they don’t have the means for adequate and fair distribution. It’s socialism.

CALLER: I agree.

RUSH: And it doesn’t work. And you, unfortunately, live in a hot spot area being victimized by the truth of it.

CALLER: Yes. Well, can I ask one more question? Why are Social Security recipients receiving this? I didn’t lose income during this epidemic. And that’s why I think it’s a political ploy.

RUSH: To what end? You mean the choice or the determination of who gets a check is politics that Trump is playing?

CALLER: Absolutely. Well, he signed off on it. I mean, why should I get a check? I’m gonna give it to my kids, but why should I get a check? I’m not even working.

RUSH: But everybody should be getting a check, doesn’t matter. Whether you’re working or not, you don’t have any money.

CALLER: Okay. (laughing)

RUSH: Right?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Okay. And the point is, they can’t give everybody enough money. We printed $6 trillion, and it’s not even making a dent. This ought to wake people up. We had a $22 trillion economy that we just told to go to hell. We sat it down. We turned it off. And it wasn’t long before rent came due. It wasn’t long before credit card payments came due. It wasn’t long before bills of all kinds had to be paid. And with what?

This is why I have been an early advocate for ending this. Look, I’m not a dunce. We’ve never done this before. We have never, ever. There is no track record for this. We’ve never shut down the economy like this. Oh, we’ve had government shutdowns now and then. We’ve had economic collapses. We had 2007-2008 so-called financial cries. We had the Great Depression. This one we are causing.

We literally decapitated the world’s most robust economy. I still haven’t gotten over that we did it. And folks, I’m not singling out Trump, the fact that we did it. And I know why we did it. Here came the projections. Here came the models. Remember, I was out for two weeks because of a very bad reaction, some side effects to my Phase One cancer treatment. I’m out two weeks. The first day back is when the models are being used to project all this, and I remember the first hour my voice was really weak, I was still trying to get back in shape.

I remember plugging through and warning everybody that these models didn’t have a prayer being right because they’re never right, and I correlated them to climate change models that have yet to be correct. And with climate change, man-made climate change, we don’t have any data.

All we’ve got are model projects of what the fears are 20 and 30 years down the road. We don’t have any data. There isn’t any. Don’t doubt me on this. There isn’t any actual data. Now, you can have left-wing blog sites give you pictures, fraudulent pictures of polar bears on little thin sheets of ice that are made up.

And you can talk about rising sea levels in Borneo, Bora Bora, that may be temporary, but they’re portrayed as permanent. Or you can talk about the king tides that happen on Honolulu and in Miami which temporarily flood downtown areas, and you can have a picture of that published as though it’s a permanent sea level rise. But legitimate, legislative change has yet to occur.

It remains model projections, and they haven’t been right. Paul Ehrlich’s models on what would happen if the world population became half what it is today? Do you realize there was gonna be mass starvation? And this guy’s still a guru! He still is a golden source. He’s never been right. These models haven’t been right. So this shutdown has…

I’m telling you: It has ripped my heart out, because of the effect that it’s having on the people of this country who are just powerless in the face of their government. They have to trust it. They have to trust that what they’re being told to do is for their own benefit, and this… (sigh) Well, a permanent shutdown is certainly undoable.

I mean, there’s no solution in the midst of a shutdown. Otherwise we’d shutdown permanently if shutdowns were the way to go. If shutdowns were the way to never die, if shutdowns were the way to eliminate risk in life, then we would be living in permanent shutdown — and, of course, we’re not.