RUSH: Mr. Snerdley, you were dead-on right about something yesterday. Remember I pointed out that the airlines are saying they might have to remove the center seats from coach in order to fly safely? Well, the CEO of an Irish airline, a guy named Michael O’Leary, said to hell with that. We’re not pulling the middle seat out of there. That would give us 66% occupancy. We can’t fly at that. The middle seat’s not coming out. So you were right.

Greetings, folks, and how are you? Rush Limbaugh. Here we go. Three hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead. And we’re looking forward, in about a half hour Vice President Mike Pence will be here for a few minutes starting at 12:33 Eastern. So we got some stuff to cover before the vice president. The vice president’s travel schedule is about to resume. He’s gonna be, I think, going to Indiana and Minnesota. I think I’ve got that right, which is a great sign. The president hasn’t been flying or traveling anywhere, and the idea that they are gonna start traveling — we’ll ask about it, but it would seem to be a good sign.

Right before the program started, I was sent a tweet today by Dinesh D’Souza. “Global hysteria is nearly always overblown.” The reason I like this is because it dovetails with a constantly expressed theorem of mine that there’s always something out there that’s gonna kill you. There’s always some kind of crisis that is used to manipulate you. And Mr. D’Souza happens to point out that global hysteria is nearly always overblown. It’s always exaggerated.

In the 1970s the earth was running out of food. In the early 1970s we were on the verge of an ice age. In the early 1980s that became we’re about to melt here because of global warming. In the 1980s nuclear winter. Do you remember that? Then we had the ozone hole. And then we had acid rain. And we had full-blown segments on 60 Minutes for all of these things. Acid rain, pollution, if it hit you, you rotted instantly, you turned into an immediate radioactive isotope.

And none of this stuff ever eventuated. None of it ever manifested to the extent that we were told that it would. The ozone hole. And now, by the way, they’re trying to bring that back. And now they’re combining whatever the latest scare tactics are on man-made climate change with, of course, the pandemic. Now we’ve got the apocalypse because of the global pandemic. And D’Souza says we humans are suckers for being manipulated by the politics of fear. That’s not incorrect.

Okay, folks, you talk about breaking your heart. Another 4.4 million people filed for unemployment compensation last week. Are we there yet? Are we at the point where the cure may be worse than the disease and you don’t even have a computer model to figure that out? You want to put this number in perspective? That means 26 million people.

Now, they’re trying to say, “Hey, Rush, it came in better than the experts forecast. They were predicting another five to six million.” Okay, good. So we only came in 4.4 million filed for unemployment. More than 26 million Americans now have filed unemployment claims in less than two months. To put this number, that number of 26 million in perspective, we have now officially, according to labor department numbers, we have wiped out every job gained since the 2008 recession. Every job gained in the last 12 years has been eliminated and wiped out.

That is just mind-boggling to me. And it’s not because of any capitalism failure. It’s not because of any unfairness or inequality or racism or sexism. We’ve done this to ourselves. I mean, this is shocking. You know, one data point that I loved expressing was that it didn’t take us very long to wipe out the three years of economic growth we’ve had under President Trump, Vice President Pence and get us back to the high point of the Obama economy. But we’re way beyond that now. We’re back 12 years ago. The U.S. economy has wiped out all job gains since the Great Recession.

And, by the way, some federal government jobs are next to be lost. And you can read about this because this has the Drive-By Media very upset. The Democrats in the media are stunned, they’re unhappy. The fact is, whatever government jobs are lost, you can guarantee that pretty much every one of them is coming back. But how many of these private sector jobs are gonna come back?

How many of the small businesses — now here comes the clich? — that you now know form the backbone of the American economy, how many of these small businesses are gonna reopen? How many are gonna be there to reopen? How many their proprietors, owners, are gonna be able to reopen? How many are gonna even want to try to reopen, whenever that is.

So a lot of these jobs are not gonna coming back. They’re gonna have to be recreated with new industries, new businesses, which can happen. But, man, folks, wiped out every job. And the headline here, this is CNBC, this headline’s so misleading: “The US Economy Has Wiped Out All the Job Gains Since the Great Recession.” The U.S. economy hasn’t done anything. The U.S. economy has had its hands tied. The U.S. economy has been shut down. And even now when there are expressed efforts to get parts of it reopened, here come the doomsayers, here come the naysayers. “It’s too early, it’s too soon, you can’t do it, more people are gonna die.”

At what point…? Yesterday, I was watching the briefing as I do each and every day. I was looking for any hope. I was looking for any sign that anybody up there could offer anybody hope. And I want to share Jim Cramer. I’ll let him say it. This morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box, we have two sound bites, and here is the first…

CRAMER: Dr. Fauci completely just made us feel awful again by talking about how horrible it’s gonna be in the fall. These press conferences or shows — whatever you call them — are now unwatchable, I’d rather just turn ’em off. Hospitals are talking about, “Please come back! Don’t feel like it’s a death sentence just to come in and get your knee done.”

So I’m looking at better news medically, except for when I pick up the New York Times. We have the smartest people in the world working this problem, and I refuse to believe that they’re just a bunch of knuckleheads. They gotta know more! I mean, is it really just about whether we’re gonna have a hair salon open in Georgia? Aren’t these people gonna come through with some breakthrough?

RUSH: How many of you are going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s exactly what I think”? Especially when he says, “Look, there’s no reason for this, unless they know something they’re not telling us.” That’s what Cramer’s essentially getting at. “We have the smartest people in the world working on this, and I refuse to believe they’re a bunch of dunces and knuckleheads.

“They have to know more and it’s gotta be…” What he’s implying here is it’s gotta be really bad if they’re going to these lengths to keep everything shut down. Are they really worried about a hair salon opening up in Georgia? Is that really what’s got these people fit to be tied? Are they really that…?” No, he thinks that’s so insignificant compared to what these people are doing.

And then, “Aren’t we anywhere near a breakthrough? Haven’t these people… We have best minds in the country, in the world working on this. Is there not one advance? Is there not one breakthrough that these medical people could share with us during these briefings?” So Dr. Fauci completely just made us feel awful again — and, by the way, everybody dumped on Brian Kemp at the briefing yesterday, including the president.

Dr. Fauci said (muttering), “If I were advising him, I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t do it. If I — if I were advising him.” Dr. Birx is the only one that said, “Hey, they’re smart people. If they can figure out how to open nail salons and tattoo parlors and keep social distance, then I’m all for it.” Now, she may have been being sarcastic there. How do you do a tattoo six feet away from the customer? Ditto, nail… nail…

What do you call them? Manicures. President Trump said, “I think it’s too soon, gotta wait a little while. But he’s free to continue.” The point is that nobody… What is waiting two more weeks gonna do? What’s waiting another month gonna do? What the hell’s gonna happen in another two weeks or four weeks that’s different from now?

“That curve will flatten more!” Here’s the second bite from Jim Cramer. Now, remember, he’s just kind of laid into Dr. Fauci for destroying hope. Dr. Fauci just made us feel awful talking about how horrible it’s gonna be in the fall — and then the CDC guy did the same thing. He came out there and said, “Man, it’s gonna be really bad in the fall because this thing’s coming back — and we’re gonna have the flu!”

So he had to walk back the misimpression he gave that the coronavirus is gonna be even worse in the fall. He didn’t mean that. He meant the combination of the coronavirus out there, which will have… All these medical people say that it will resurface ’cause it’s a cyclical, seasonal thing. But then the fall flu season is gonna hit at the same time. Double whammy! So Cramer says: My gosh, these guys just destroyed all hope again. They’re making us feel horrible out there!

Here’s Cramer’s next comment…

CRAMER: Is it okay to be hopeful — I guess that’s what I’m asking — or should we take that off the table and be despairing and just be one text away from not killing ourselves?

SORKIN: We all want to have hope.

CRAMER: Do we? I want to be optimistic. I don’t want to be a suicidal 65-year-old! My wife sent me a picture of me in Italy and she goes, “Will this ever happen again?” I came back and I said, “Yes,” and she… (unintelligible) I’m the dreamer that I might go to Italy someday? I don’t know.

KERNEN: I know. We’re planning it.

CRAMER: I’m sorry, excuse me for thinking that life didn’t end on Feb. 1 or now we turned out to be Jan. 23rd, or some sort of laboratory that may or may not have leaked some virus that made it so a bat in a bowl of soup is killing us. Not going there! Sorry.

RUSH: Well, these frustrations are starting to mount everywhere, because to a lot of people, it isn’t making any sense. Twenty-six million Americans have filed for unemployment in essentially two months. In two months, we have eliminated every job created after the 2008 recession.

And whenever anybody seriously proposes reversing course and reopening, the doomsayers and the naysayers pop right up and carry the day. (impression) “Well, I don’t think it’s time. I think it’s very, very risky to do this.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: As usual, I check the during the during the break and there’s some snark in there. “Come on, Rush, I know the truth. We haven’t lost as many jobs as we created after the Great Recession.” In fact, we’ve lost more! The jobs created since the 2008 Great Recession (now, these are labor department numbers) is 22.4 million.

That’s how many jobs were created in the U.S. economy since the Great Recession of 2008, and you remember that one. Oh-ho1 It’s gonna wipe us out! Oh, it was it bad! Oh, my God! We had to do it all! Oh! It was gonna be the end of the world financial system. Remember? I remember being at a meeting with a senator. I asked, “Do you really think…?”

“Oh, it’s bad. It’s bad, Rush! I gotta tell you, it’s bad. We’re facing the wipeout of the world’s economic system!” “Really?” “Oh, yeah!” That’s what he had been told, and he was sticking with it. So, anyway, that was exaggerated. We’ve had 22.4 million jobs created. Now we’ve got 26.5 million people who’ve lost their jobs.

In fact, we have lost two million more jobs than we had created since the 2008 Great Recession.