RUSH: You know, a lot of people sent me emails, “Rush, why are you so suspicious of the medical and health expertise that gathers at the briefings and so forth?” Folks, this is it. I’m gonna answer this to the best of my ability. It’s a case of, “Once you learn what people are capable of is, you better never forget they can keep doing it.”

And I’m telling you, this Trump-Russia collusion scandal was the biggest political scandal in our nation’s history, what was done — the people who participated in it knowingly lying and making things up — and it was done for one reason. Without getting into all of the reasons, they hate Trump.

They just despise Trump for all the reasons we’ve discussed. They want him gone. They’re not gonna stop ’til they get rid of him, no matter what it costs, no matter what damage is incurred, they’re not gonna stop until they get rid of him. They hate his guts. And that has not changed.

And so if there is representation of that kind of thinking found in the Washington establishment that is then employed and used in this coronavirus task force, I can’t help being suspicious. I know that the Washington establishment will not stop until they get rid of Donald Trump. And I don’t believe it’s changed. “Are you saying that Fauci and –” No, I’m not saying that. If I were saying that I would have come out directly and said that. ‘Cause Trump would know if there are people in there that are trying to sabotage him, he would theoretically know.

All I’m telling you is, folks, that the effort and the desire to get rid of Donald Trump has not stopped. It hasn’t ended. The people who want that to happen have not lost any of their energy for it. They’ve thrown everything they’ve possibly had. The shutdown was not Trump’s idea. It was recommended to him. “Hey, Rush, when you come out and say you think the shutdown was a mistake, are you separating yourself?” No. Because this was not Trump’s idea.

Trump will tell you every day at the briefing — I forget his exact words — “They came to me and they said you gotta shut it down, you gotta shut it down, you gotta shut it down, that’s what I’ll tell you, that’s what they told me, you gotta shut it down.” So he was told he had to shut it down. They told him 2.2 million people would die. You’d shut it down, too, if they told you that. That number was never the valid. It was never real, because it was all predicated on if we don’t do anything to attack the virus.

Then you throw China in the mix here and I’m just telling you that it would be foolhardy to not consider this is a continuation of the movement to get Trump. “You think the Chinese are -” no, folks, don’t assign things to me I haven’t said yet. I’m giving you generic overall suspicions. My general distrust of conventional wisdom, and after what we’ve learned about the Washington establishment, why would we automatically just forget all of that and start slavishly believing everything they now tell us?

The smarter thing to do would be to remain skeptical throughout. What if it’s true? What if they are dead wrong? All they’re using is computer models. What if they’re dead wrong about the actual number of infections? What if the Stanford people are right — and there are three or four other studies that are documenting it — what if the number of infections as in Santa Clara County is 50 to 85 times higher than the reported number? Do you realize the death rate is infinitesimally smaller?

It means the virus is not nearly as lethal as the New York City situation is making everybody think it is. And do you realize they never shut down the subways in New York? And they couldn’t. Because all the essential businesses that were kept open, their employees had to get to work. So you’re sardining people in subways and buses. It’s a petri dish for spreading any kind of sickness, and it did.

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RUSH: I just got a note. Somebody said, “You’re sounding more bummed out today than you usually do.” Do you guys think I’m sounding bummed out today? (interruption) Well, of course, what would you say? They’re saying “no” on the other side of the glass.

Folks, look. Damn it, I am bummed out over the economy being shut down, I’m not gonna deny that. I’ve been bummed out, but I haven’t hidden that from you since I’ve been talking about this. I’ve told you why it bums me out. I don’t need to repeat that. You know, I have to travel for medical treatment stuff. I see closed businesses, boarded up things, and there are people behind all those closed businesses to me, in some cases their dreams. And they’re just gone.

And it defies logic to me that we have an actively large number of Americans satisfied with this and want to continue it. When the subject of opening up comes up, they don’t even fake being interested in it. They go straight to, “We can’t. We’re not anywhere near open.” You talk about me being bummed out.

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RUSH: We had a guy who was on hold up here, and he had to hang up for some reason. But his point was gonna be that they… (sigh) The euphemistic “they.”

He was gonna say, “Rush, look at how easily they have learned that they can manipulate public psychology,” and his example was gonna be, “Look at what happens in South Florida every hurricane season.” If anybody in the country is familiar with hurricanes, it’s people who live in South Florida.

And yet they are routinely successfully scared out of their wits when a storm is still a thousand miles away by a model showing a potential landfall. And they go to grocery stores and they buy everything out. They buy all the water, they buy the batteries, they start hoarding things, even though they know that the odds are that a thousand-mile-out forecast is not gonna be right.

If you go back and you do a study of the hurricane models, the track forecasts — and I’ve done this ’cause I happen to live in Hurricane Alley here, and I have comforted myself by realizing that when they have a forecast for 10 days out — and you only have the models for this — that show a landfall right where you live? If that’s 10 days out, you can rest assured it ain’t gonna happen.

Forecasts are not that accurate. They just aren’t. It’s when you get down to five days and four days that you really have to start paying attention, because then there’s less room for the storm to be affected by atmospheric steering things and sea level steering currents and so forth. But a forecast that’s longer than five days, even six or seven or 10? Certainly when using models, those of us in Hurricane Alley have learned to pretty much…

They’re items of interest. They make for great talking points. “Hey, you see that model? That model shows a right-dead hit.” Never happens. I haven’t seen one yet. There has been one — I take it back — and I wish I could remember. There has been one hurricane that, from the moment they started predicting it was gonna hit us, it did. It never wavered. It came from the east as opposed to from the Gulf.

And I kept waiting for it to change, because the standard is no forecast 10 days or longer out is right, even eight days. But this one hit. One time it’s happened. His point was gonna be, “Look at how they have successfully used hurricane track models and forecast tracks to affect behavior.” Now, the counter to that is, “Hey, they’ve got to! They’ve got to get people prepared.

“They’ve gotta get people prepared for the worst — and if the worst doesn’t happen, then that’s good news. The last thing they want is to get a forecast right, and to have an area hit that it was not forecast to hit so therefore people weren’t prepared.” I know it cuts both ways, and I know that the general behavioral pattern is safety. That’s the primary bit.

I’m telling you, though, that politics has found its way into virtually every aspect of our government. It’s found its way into every aspect of our lives, and you have to factor it now. If you’re gonna pay attention to this stuff — if we’re gonna pay attention to this coronavirus, if you’re gonna pay attention to every aspect of it — you have to factor it.

If you want to be a critical thinker, if you want to be an independent thinker, if you don’t want to just be a conformist and go along with the conventional wisdom, if you don’t want to just rely on the experts — and I’ll tell you why I don’t rely on the experts is because how often are they wrong? They’re telling us the computer models are experts.

They are not.

They are the equivalent of tarot card readers, folks. The computer models have yet to be right. They have to be revised every day based on how wrong they were the day before, and yet they’re still used. Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb back in the 1970s. It was all about if the world population ever became half what it is today, mass starvation, mass poverty, the end of civilization as we know it.

The guy hasn’t been right yet, and he’s still a recognized source authority for the left. The same thing with these computer models on climate change or now on the coronavirus. Not to be critical here, but the hurricane track models, as I just said, are never right until a day or two out — and even then, they give themselves a 250-mile cone in their charts, in their own forecast track.

Their cone will give them at least a 250-mile (either side of the line) variance ’cause they just don’t know. So once you know all that, you have to factor it in if you’re gonna be a critical thinker. I am. I do not go… I’m not a conformist. I don’t go with conventional wisdom, and I do distrust government experts. If the CDC is so hot, why weren’t they doing their jobs and on the case of this virus before it got here?

Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? When you think of the Centers for Disease Control and you think of America, you think, “In America, is the best. In America, we have the highest tech. We have the smartest people. We have the most committed people. We have the highest degree of expertise.” Well, if that’s true, then why wasn’t this virus detected? Why wasn’t it known? ‘Cause it’s been around a lot longer than we think.

The World Health Organization was not helpful at all — another bureaucracy which did not do its job — yet they are the acknowledged experts. And now after the acknowledged experts have gone on record and are responsible for public policy, now we’re getting independent scientists who were doing their own studies and finding that the infection may be much more widespread, 50 to 85 times more widespread.

These are people not in government. These are people in universities and other research places. So, yeah, I’m… Now, the left loves to run around now and suggest that one of the problems with Trump voters and Trump supporters is a general distrust of expertise. Let me tell you what the big problem is.

The big problem is how the Drive-By Media doesn’t question a one of them. The Drive-By Media does not have one question for any government expert they talk to. It could be an intel official lying to them about Trump and Russia. It could be somebody in the National Security Council lying to them about Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine.

It could be anybody at any government bureaucracy, whatever anybody there says, unless it’s a noted Trump appointee, they are lying, according to the media, but everywhere else they do not mistrust this expertise. I’ll never forget, I was watching, CNN did a town hall on something, might have been Hillary’s health care thing. And we’re going back, Bernard Shaw was still working there. He was still the primary face of CNN, the prime time anchor. And they were doing a daytime town hall summit.

It was on while this program was on. And they goofed up and they let a bunch of people in the audience that were not screened, and the people in the audience began to protest before the town hall even began. They began to protest before anybody had taken the stage. And Bernard Shaw is up on stage trying to get everybody to calm down. He’s trying to restore order. And you know what he’s saying, “Just wait for the officials. Wait for the authorities. Just wait for the officials.”

So he was perfectly calm, whatever they were, officials of government. Whatever the subject of the town hall was. Wait for the officials. So whatever they came out and said, Bernard Shaw wasn’t gonna question it, he wasn’t gonna be suspicious of it, he was gonna totally sop it all up, he was gonna lap it all up, he was gonna soak it all up, whatever they said he was gonna believe it unquestioningly, and that still happens to this day.

And I am suspicious after what I’ve seen elements of this government who are invisible that we didn’t elect, after I’ve seen what they did to try to get rid of this president, the scam they ran, the hoax they ran, the silent coup that they ran, do it once and you can bet that they could do it again or not stop doing it in the first place. If they’re hell-bent on something happening, they’re gonna make it happen. They’re not gonna stop. In this case, getting rid of Trump. It would be stupid to not be suspicious.

Now, you can be suspicious without being accusatory. And you can be suspicious without jumping the gun. You can be suspicious without being prejudiced. But to not be curious, to not be questioning, to just blanket accept whatever the experts say. Remember during the campaign Trump bragging, “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and my supporters would still support me.” Well, Dr. Fauci could come out and say anything he wanted and everybody in the media would believe it no matter what it was he said.

Dr. Fauci could come out and say, “I have evidence that Trump actually cooked up this virus in the White House kitchen with Ivanka and Jared Kushner,” and they would believe it. They would believe it without even questioning it because it came from the expert Dr. Fauci. Scarf Queen, same thing. And why wouldn’t they? They all are from the same sector of life. They’re all from the Washington government, slash, political class. You and I aren’t.

You and I are frowned upon, looked down upon, mocked, laughed at. Look up there on CNN. Madeleine Albright’s back, and she’s purple this time instead of blue. Look at that. Do you believe this? Last time she was up she went blue. Now she’s purple.

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RUSH: You want another example of sheer stupidity — no, I better dial that back — well-intentioned ignorance. Are you familiar with the actor Idris Elba? He plays Luther. He’s been touted as perhaps the next James Bond. He just came out and said, “When this is all over, we all need to quarantine for a week every year so that we never forget this.” We need to quarantine a week every year so we never forget it, as though – (sighing) never forget it. And of course, as an actor, he carries a certain level of expertise with the groupie crowd.