RUSH: Here’s Matthew in Perrysburg, Ohio, as we stay with the phones. Great to have you, Matthew. Hello.

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Mega dittos and prayers from Ohio.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I was looking at this $2.8 trillion spending that we did, which is our debt, and if you take that and you spread that over every person in the United States 35 and younger, that is a $37,000 debt for every person. So we stopped our economy, we’re hanging a huge debt over our younger generation in order to save a few of our old and at-risk population. We substituted the real economy for stimulus debt.

RUSH: You know what this is? The way you lay that out, this is like death panels in reverse.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: You remember… Let’s go back and look at this. In the first days of the Obama administration’s Obamacare proposal, remember how everybody reacted when there were death panels? What were they? It was Sarah Palin who gave them their name.

What the death panels were, is Obama administration officials who were going to decide who among the sick got treated and who didn’t, who would have money spent on their recovery and treatment and who wouldn’t. And everybody concluded, “Well, it’s obvious the elderly are going to be those that will probably be treated the least because the decision will be, ‘Why invest in them?

“‘They’re at the end of their lives statistically, and the young have their lives ahead of them and their productivity ahead of them, so let’s invest in them.'” Now your situation as you laid it out is the exact opposite. We have piled debt upon debt upon debt on the youths to save the elderly, according to the stats of who is most likely to get this disease. It’s the death panels in reverse.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Now, your larger question is… (Pfft!) I assume your larger question is, “Is it worth it?” You’re trying to assign a worth or a value to this. Is it worth $37,000 in additional spending? Because, by the way, every American had a pre-existing amount of debt based on the national debt. So that’s $37,000 that you’ve computed, that’s on top of what’s there already.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So you’re probably thinking that that amount of debt is essentially a jail cell around these people, that they owe that kind of money to the federal government. The federal government can, in a variety of ways, find ways to get paid back, if they want to.

It wouldn’t be sending people a bill, but it would be in the way government policy is formulated, the way tax cuts are projected, denied, or applied. So you’re thinking that that $37,000 additional debt is going to essentially be more and more government control over those people’s lives.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah. I don’t think that’s deniable. You know, there are a lot of people that think this is a conspiracy. Have you heard that? (interruption) Have you heard that? (interruption) You have? I tell you, I’ve heard… Let’s go through the things. I have heard, “The virus was manufactured by the ChiComs to take us out, that the ChiComs did not want to engage in a military battle ’cause it’s not worth it.

“The odds of winning are not good. After a war with America is over, both countries… Nah. Not the way to do it. If you really want to take out the United States, do it without having to fire a shot. So here we come. They’ve engineered a virus, and they’ve made sure that just enough people in China got it so they could thin out their population.

“But really wreak havoc,” and then there are variations of that conspiracy theory that are alive and well. There’s a bunch of conspiracies involving Dr. Fauci. You know what my favorite conspiracy theory is? (laughing) I don’t even know if I should tell you (laughing), because if people hear this out of context, they’re gonna report that I actually said I believe this.

My favorite conspiracy theory… You know what? I’m gonna think about whether I should tell you. I gotta take a break here. (interruption) Hmm? (interruption) Oh, yeah, that Dr. Mikovits or whatever that says Fauci… (interruption) No, that’s not what I’m thinking of. That’s not it. That’s not it. That’s out there. I don’t need to attach my name to that. I don’t need…

That’s got distribution all by itself. (interruption) Well, you believe it? (interruption) You don’t believe that? (interruption) Who is nuts? (interruption) Oh, people that watch…? Well, but that doctor doesn’t seem credible to you in that video? Dr. Mikovits or whatever her name is? (interruption)

(laughing) Well, you’re right. I got people sending me that. “You gotta talk about this, Rush! You gotta talk about that! Look at that!” No, I don’t have to talk about that. But there is a conspiracy out there that just… (laughing) Oh, it’s James Bond-type stuff. I’ll decide whether or not to tell you in a minute.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, Mr. Snerdley, that video that you’re talking about, I got my share, you know, last week. “You gonna watch this,” emails, “You gotta watch this, you gotta watch this.” So I wrote back some of the people that sent it, “Okay, seeing that this video is 26 minutes. Could you tell me what this video says in a minute? ‘Cause I really don’t want to take 26 minutes. Why can’t you just tell me what this damn thing says?”

So they did.

In three sentences they were able to explain why I had to watch a 26-minute video. I said, “Okay. So this babe has been screwed by Fauci in a bunch of different ways, and this whole thing is a setup for a whole bunch of different –” Fine. Then I was able to determine would I want to watch 26 minutes for details, which I probably watched five. I just can’t sit there and watch these things. It’s all about time for me. If you can tell me in five minutes what a 26 minute video says, I will choose the five minutes every time.

But my favorite conspiracy theory — and I’m not gonna tell you who it accuses. That’s the way to do this. My favorite conspiracy theory is that this virus is the work of a bunch of lunatic billionaires who really believe that we are destroying the planet and they have discovered that we can’t get to Mars in time and we can’t colonize the moon so they have come up with a way to get rid of billions of people to make the world have a longer survivability potential.

That it is a population control thing because wealthy billionaires who really thought they could colonize Mars or the moon and leave this planet to save themselves now realize it isn’t gonna happen in their lifetime, so time for Plan B, let’s get rid of a couple billion people so the earth will survive. (interruption) Well, no, the first name you mentioned is the one I saw. I’m not gonna mention the name. The other name you mentioned is a satellite entry in the theory.

Now, the reason why it suckered me in for five seconds, is because it has just enough believability. These people are nuts. They seriously were hoping to be able to escape earth to get to Mars, somewhere, to colonize ’cause they really, really think we’re destroying the planet. That kind of insanity is out there and it’s in charge of the climate change or global warming, whatever you want to call it, movement.

(interruption) What? The what? (interruption) Oh, yeah, well, you know, that conspiracy theory isn’t true because its primary proponent is Woody Harrelson. This is the theory that the new 5G cell phone transmission speeds are poisoning and causing all these viruses and abnormalities and mutations. And so the people that believe this are running around and destroying 5G cell towers all over Europe.

Here’s Manny, we go back to phones. Manny is in Odessa, Florida. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s great to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I was telling Mr. Snerdley that my comment has to do with these leftists, the media, the Democrat Party, they’ll stop at nothing. They would burn down the entire United States if they thought it would get Donald Trump out of office. And anything that comes along in the news they’re gonna utilize, as they say, they never let a crisis go to waste. So this is just one of many more to come. We’re under attack. And we have to realize that. This chemical attack, I think, was no accident. This is the same as if we were attacked —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. What chemical attack?

CALLER: This attack, the virus attack.

RUSH: Oh. The virus attack.

CALLER: The virus is an attack, I believe. This was no accident. You know, why a few months before an election. I think it’s just another assault on the Trump administration. There’s just a lot of horses trying to get him out of office.

RUSH: Well, yeah. It’s more than that. But I agree with you. I tried to make the point yesterday that it’s about two things. And they seem related, and in one vein they are. I think these people that we’re talking about — and, by the way, I’m not agreeing with the premise that the virus was created by Pelosi and Schumer or Adam Schiff or Robert Mueller to get rid of Trump. Don’t infer that, folks. I think, however, that the people who are utilizing it in that way are beyond help.

They’re beyond help sick. And I really believe that they epitomize what happens when the poison of hatred totally consumes you. And these people have lost all rational aspects of their existence, their personalities. And they have two objectives. And you’re right. The first objective is getting rid of Trump. But I think there’s a second objective that’s tougher to explain because they’re tied together. I think that the fact they lost the 2016 election to anybody has sent them into a nosedive. And you add that they lost it to Trump on top of it, and it has rendered them clinically insane.

I think they were so convinced that Hillary was gonna win and what that meant for their ongoing transformation of America. Trump has done more damage to their plans. There are people that devoted their lives to the next phase of what was gonna happen if Hillary Clinton had won, and Trump has blown it to smithereens. They can’t believe that Hillary Clinton lost. They can’t come to grips with it. The fact that it was Trump is just insult to injury being added.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So the reason I asked about conspiracy theories in the last half hour is I have a story here for you. It’s from Fox News. Let me just share the headline: “LA City Council Votes to Name Hotels that Refuse to House Homeless, May ‘Commandeer’ Them,” these hotels. Do you know what’s happened out in LA?
Let me tell you what’s happened, if you haven’t heard this. The hotels, of course, are shut down. You can’t have a hotel up and running. It’s very hard to find one that’s up and running. So what happened was the homeless moved into them. It was a strategery. The homeless and their advocates took over these hotels in Los Angeles and refused to move out.

Then the LA city council told the people that own the hotels, “You can’t kick ’em out.” Well, now, the people who own the hotels do not want their property to be summarily ruined and damaged. So they want the homeless to have to vacate, and the LA city council voted yesterday to identify these hotels — to shame them — if they refuse to allow the homeless to take over their hotel, and said that these hotels could be “commandeered.”

This is the kind of stuff that makes people believe in conspiracy theories, ’cause who would ever believe something like this would happen? But it’s happening right in front of your face. Democrat officeholders in Los Angeles and San Francisco are essentially implementing left-wing ideological beliefs, taking advantage of the coronavirus shutdown and opportunity in order to illustrate what they really think, who their hatred is for, who their constituents are.

You could say that Los Angeles and San Francisco, in the real world, have been embarrassed for this homeless problem. I mean, look, the homeless problem skid row in Los Angeles has been a problem that has been building and mounting since — well, at least since — the middle of last year, and it intensified as the Democrat presidential primaries got underway.

Same thing in San Francisco. The San Francisco homeless problem got so bad, that they had to publish maps so tourists would know where to avoid the piles of human feces because the homeless were pooping on the streets, and San Francisco couldn’t keep up with the cleanup. So maps were published — and they became jokes.

Los Angeles and San Francisco became the brunt of jokes, because of their homeless problem and their incompetence in dealing with it. And it stems from two things: Really rotten policies with Democrats administering them. So now what they’re doing in LA is they’re taking this opportunity to move the homeless by force into these hotels.

And if the hotels, which are private businesses… They’re privately owned. If they don’t acquiesce, if they don’t stand aside and let the homeless “commandeer” the hotel and take it over, these elected Democrats are going to out them publicly. They think they can shame them.

Virtue signaling. They’re gonna name the hotels that refuse to be taken over by the homeless. Now, this is supposed to do what? This is supposed to make the citizens of Los Angeles hate the hotel owners? So, what?

The people that own hotels in Los Angeles are supposed to allow their properties to be taken over by a bunch of people that are gonna end up destroying the property and not pay for being there? And that’s the purpose of a hotel — and if the hotel doesn’t permit that to happen, then the LA city council can publicly shame them? To what benefit?

To what end? How does this help the people that own the hotels? How does it shame them? Are the people of Los Angeles so screwed up that they would do what the LA city council wants and hate the people that own the hotels for refusing to allow a bunch of nonpaying vagrants to come in and essentially wreck the places?

Because you know that’s what’s gonna happen.

Take a look at any homeless encampment. Take a look at the New York subways. For crying out. Do you know that some of those subway cars were actually used as toilets? This is mind-boggling stuff that the LA city council would partner up with the homeless and their activists to essentially ruin the hotel industry in Los Angeles?

To what end?

Well, if you don’t understand socialism and how it hates capitalism, and if you don’t understand how capitalists and free market entrepreneurs are hated and despised, then you will not understand the actions of the LA city council here. Councilman Mitch O’Farrell said, “It would seem to me to be a complete justification that we expect something back especially during an emergency.”

So the hotels apparently have some duty during an emergency to open their doors to let people come in and literally tear them apart, will not be paying for their rent. That means the hotels have to stay open and operated. The water has to keep running. The HVAC has to keep running. The people that own and operate the hotels have to keep them operating, but nobody in there is gonna be paying for any of it. And the LA city councilman here says: I think publicly shaming them would be a complete justification. We expect them to give back. We expect them to give back during an emergency.

The Ritz-Carlton in downtown Los Angeles, which also has luxury condo residents — you can buy condos as part of the Ritz-Carlton downtown — was among those resisting. The Ritz-Carlton. They’re gonna take it over, the homeless are gonna take it over, and the LA city council wants to think they can shame the Ritz-Carlton. Because over the years, you see, the hotel has received millions of dollars in tax breaks from the city.

So you see what happens. You people that do business with Democrats, you see what happens when you take their goodies, when you take their tax break, you see what they think you owe them? You owe them your property. You owe them the right to run it. You owe them the right to kick you out of it. And then you owe them the right to publicly shame, as in bad PR plastering your name all over however they’re gonna do it, billboards, however they’re gonna be shame them, they’re gonna do it. You try to explain this.

Up in other parts of California, try this headline. This is Politico. “Barbers, Beauticians Plan To Sue Newsom Over Stay-At-Home Order – The professional organization representing 500,000 California barbers and hair salon owners announced Wednesday it will sue Gov. Gavin Newsom this week in an attempt to reopen as soon as possible. The Professional Beauty Federation of California announced Wednesday it has retained the Center for American Liberty, headed by San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon, to sue Newsom over his statewide stay-at-home order. Newsom has indicated that salons and barber shops will not be in his initial wave this week for reopening.”

Sad day, folks. Sad day. Hardworking Americans in the very progressive state-of-the-art, so far ahead of everybody else residents in California have to sue the governor just to be able to work. Who would have thought it? Can you imagine having to sue the governor, to sue the mayor, to sue the town council president just to work? But that’s what this has come to.

And another story out of California here. This is from PJ Media. California has begun forcibly quarantining people over COVID-19. “California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he was raising up an ‘army’ of contact tracers – as many as 20,000 people – to track down everyone with COVID-19 and quarantine them.

“Newsom announced that the ‘army’ – his word – will start with a deployment of 3,000 and grow to the 20,000 mark to chase down who, what, where, and with whom COVID positive people have had connections.” Contact armies. Contact tracers.

South Carolina plans to hire hundreds more contact tracers to bolster coronavirus response. Minnesota, 4,000 more workers. The Ventura County health director, California, Robert Levin, said, quote, “We will find everyone with COVID-19, and we’ll isolate every one of them. And we’ll make sure they stay quarantined, and we’ll check in with them every day.” Ventura County has had 19 deaths. So 846,000 people live in Ventura County, 19 deaths, and this guy is announcing that they’re gonna search and they’re gonna find everybody with COVID-19, and they’re gonna quarantine ’em, and they’re gonna stay quarantined until who knows when.

Can you imagine the outrage if anybody had suggested doing this during the AIDS outbreak? Can you imagine what would have happened if some LA city councilman or some local county mayor had come and said, “We’re gonna track down every person with AIDS, and we’re gonna quarantine ’em and we’re gonna keep in touch with every day, and we’re not gonna let ’em out,” can you imagine the hell that would have descended over any public official who would have tried that? Ho. Man, I don’t even want to think about it.