RUSH: It’s so gratifying to see everybody come around to my way of thinking. Open up. Would it be safe to say that I have been one of the earliest clarion calls to open up? I know everybody’s on it now. But it was so necessary weeks, even months ago to do this, and all the evidence is coming in that these states that have opened up are doing far better than the states that remain on lockdown.

The states that remain on lockdown are obviously blue states, Democrat governors with a political objective behind it. And now there’s this big op-ed in the New York Post which just calls attention to the outright destruction that is done, that has been done to New York City. It is just incredible what has happened here and what’s ongoing. And now we’ve got the ability to make side-by-side comparison of things. Open up, let freedom ring, let people be responsible for themselves. And you see what happens. It all works out.

The idea that the American people are a bunch of children, cannot be protected from themselves, cannot be allowed to make their own minds up has been a classic element of American liberalism and the Democrat Party for who knows how long. And they’re eager to shovel more and more people into that category.

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RUSH: I’m gonna tell you something else here, folks. I just was looking at the Drudge page, and there’s a graphic accompanying the story, and it’s all about doomsday forecasts for the next few months in America. The doomsday forecasts are the result of a model from the University Pennsylvania Wharton School. Now, this model, which is a relatively new model on the scene…

It’s been out there, but it’s not been in the top two models that are constantly cited — the one from the U.K. and the one from the state of Washington. But the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School — which, by the way, is Trump’s alma mater. (chuckles) A very big point here. The Wharton School model is predicting… Ready for this? Dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut, dadelut!

COVID-19 cases are gonna reach 5.4 million and the death toll could be 290,000 by July 24th. That is if — if — there is reopening and if there is no social distancing. But don’t worry, because the Wharton model only predicts 4.3 million cases and 230,000 deaths, not 290,000 by July 24th if states reopen but continue social distancing. Now, what do you think the real purpose of this is?

Since everything is politicized, since everything has been corrupted that the left touches, what do you think this is? This is the new version of 2.2 million people could die if you don’t shut down, 2.2 million people do die if you don’t mitigate. This is all part of the relentless effort to prevent or to slow down the reopening of the U.S. economy. That’s all this is. Do not doubt me. It’s an attempt to scare everybody into resisting opening up.

Even if your state opens up, you’re supposed to stay scared and not participate.

That’s the objective here.

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RUSH: Couple of sound bites. This is an ABC News report today, Good Morning America, and it’s the end of a report from correspondent Steve Osunsami reporting about the number of coronavirus cases in places that are reopening.

OSUNSAMI: Here in Georgia the numbers appear to be moving in the right direction. In fact, in the 21 states that have eased restrictions since May 4th or earlier, ABC News has found no major increase in hospitalizations, deaths, or percentage of people testing positive. George?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Boy, that is encouraging news, Steve. Okay, thanks very much.

RUSH: That’s Stephanopoulos. Boy, Steve, that’s really encouraging news. What about you people that keep getting it wrong? Where are the apologies? Where are the assurances to the American people? You got this whole Trump-Russia collusion thing wrong. Not a single apology. Nobody’s returned the Pulitzer prizes you got for the fake, phony reporting. You still accept as gospel whatever the lying sources then are telling you now.

You’ve scared the American people staying at home. You’ve scared ’em to death of their own shadows. Then you run the story saying, “Hey, not nearly as bad. Wow. Boy, that’s encouraging.” That’s all you’ve got to say about it? How about we were wrong? How about we were wrong on purpose? I don’t expect them to actually admit that. But I’m just telling you, folks, you gotta pay attention.

All of these horror stories about the predictions now since some states are opening up, got new models, the Wharton School, oh, my God, 290,000 new deaths. Oh, my God. Could only be 230,000, oh, my. It’s designed to get you not to open up, not to participate in the opening up.

I think the effort’s gonna fail. I think it’s already falling apart. I think the blue states are falling apart. I think the blue states and these blue state governors are under intense pressure like you and I can’t believe because it isn’t being reported. But who’s giving the standing orders to the blue state governors to stay locked down? Are they doing it on their own? Or is it coming from higher up? Is it coming from whoever’s running the DNC? Is it coming from Pelosi? Is it coming from Schumer? Or are they just doing it instinctively because this is what they do?

I mean, look at the Obama economy for eight years. You know, Obama’s out there talking about how incompetent Trump is. For crying out loud, Obama rewrote the book on presidential incompetence. And all you need to do is look at his economy for the evidence and what Trump was able to do to correct it in three years. And now look where we are, trending right back down to the Obama economy and lower. And who is it that’s happy about that and wants to keep us there? Your Democrat Party.

They don’t deserve your vote. They do not deserve your vote. I don’t care if you’re a lifelong Democrat, voting for a Democrat is voting for your economic death. Voting for a Democrat is voting for the transformation of America, which I doubt a lot of you Democrats are really all in with.

Here’s the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, last night CNN Situation Room with Wolf Blitzed. He said, “On Sunday you said it was too soon to tell if your concern over Governor Kemp’s decision was warranted to open the state. How do you feel about Georgia’s reopening today?”

BOTTOMS: We are about ten days in. Things are not as bad as I thought that they would be, yet. And I am very hopeful that they continue that way. But, as we know, with COVID-19, there’s often a lag in infections and when people begin to actually show symptoms and get sick. And so, right now, it appears that we’re doing better as a state, and I will keep watching and waiting.

RUSH: For what? What are you gonna wait for? To get worse? Is that the objective? So Governor Kemp is wrong? What about your concern for the people? What about your concern that your city not become a ghost town? What about your concern for the people that live in your city? It’s good news, you haven’t seen any bad news, yet, from the reopening of the state of Georgia.

Contrast this with the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. This is Monday, his daily coronavirus briefing, he said this about prohibited activity at the New York City beaches for Memorial Day weekend and beyond.

DE BLASIO: No swimming, no sports, no gatherings. NYPD will be out, parks department will be out. Don’t go in the water. It’s a dangerous situation to ever go in the water when there’s not lifeguards present. Anyone tries to get in the water they’ll be taken right out of the water.

RUSH: There you go. So there’s your contrast. New York can’t do this, don’t do that. If you do that, we’re gonna come get you. If you do that, if you go there, we’re gonna come get you. The authorities, the police force are gonna come get you if you do that, if you don’t do that. If you don’t listen to us, we’re gonna come get you and who knows what. You might join Lori Loughlin in jail. You heard about that? Lori Loughlin and her husband accepted a plea deal of two months in jail, $150,000 fine for the fraud in getting their daughters into USC.

It’s about the same deal that what’s-her-face, Felicity Huffman got, except Felicity Huffman didn’t fight it. These two did. And as they fought it, they kept adding on charges. You don’t fight us. We are the same bunch of people that went after Donald Trump. You don’t fight us. We’re gonna keep adding charges. You ever heard of Michael Flynn? You do not take us on. They finally reached the settlement.

Here’s Phil Murphy. Here’s the governor of New Jersey this morning on CNBC Squawk Box. Joe Kernen says, “Bring us up to speed what stage we’re in right now and whether [New Jersey] is within all the guidelines,” to start opening up.

MURPHY: We’ve begun to take what I would call baby steps. Admittedly beaches is a big step in that list, but we’ve had a bias toward opening things up first that are outdoors and loosening that. We’re as moneyball as we can be, and we say all the time that data determines dates and then more broadly public health creates economic health. Trust me, I want to get folks back to work as fast as possible, but if we screw up the public health piece, none of that will happen and that’s really the side that we need to err on.

RUSH: Yeah. Well, the question, how are these other states doing it then? You think they’re not concerned with the public health aspect? Is it that the state of New Jersey is much more dense than the state of Florida? I mean, what is it? “We say all the time data determines dates. More broadly, public health creates economic health. Trust me, I want to get folks back to work as fast as possible, but if we screw up the public health piece, none of that will happen, and that’s really the side we need to err on.” Meaning, we can’t open up if it’s gonna increase the number of cases.

Well, I’m sorry, then you’re never opening up, Governor. That’s what you’re saying. You know something else DeSantis said? He studied the Spanish flu pandemic in 1917 and 1918, which was worldwide deadly. And one of the things DeSantis, the governor of Florida, one of the things he said he learned is there wasn’t even a focus — because World War I was raging — there wasn’t even a focus on shutting anything down. It was a pandemic. It came along, it did what it did, the country did what it could to protect people and to help those who came down with the flu get over it, get better, but still it was massively deadly. But there wasn’t anything of the sort like what we’re doing now.

In fact, Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States during the Spanish flu which had two big waves, 1917-1918, and there wasn’t even an Oval Office address about it. Not just Oval Office, there wasn’t even a White House presidential address about it. It was just something that happened. “Oh, there’s a pandemic out there.” “Okay, we deal with it.”

It didn’t stop the presses on anything.

It was just another event like an airplane crashed today or a car didn’t crash today or whatever. It was not… It’s like, do you remember the Donner party? They had to turn to cannibalism to survive their trip over the Sierra Nevada Mountains as they’re going into California. The Donner party had to resort to cannibalism. If you read the diaries written by the members of the Donner party and survival, you know the only reference you’ll find to the weather, which is what forced them to cannibalism?

The only reference you’ll find is, “It was a particularly cold winter.” There wasn’t any complaining about it. There wasn’t any whining and moaning or, “Oh, my God! What are we gonna do about the children?” They just endured it. Yeah, they had to resort to cannibalism and that’s how we know about the Donner party — and, no, nobody’s advocating that. I’m just talking about the fact that what we’re going through here is not unprecedented.

There have been pandemics. This isn’t even as deadly as AIDS, and we didn’t shut anything down for AIDS. Not a single thing. And there were people who made allusions to maybe we might want to quarantine…? “No, you don’t! You’re not quarantining anybody.” So there were all kinds of mitigation efforts that were proposed during AIDS. It’s just back in the 1980s. They were all summarily rejected by the group of people suffering from HIV.

Do you know there was no antibiotic of any kind in 1917? The solution for Spanish flu…? You know what the treatment for Spanish flu was in 1917-1918? (interruption) Exactly. Get out in the sunshine and fresh air. Vitamin D, although they didn’t know what vitamin D was. They might have known. I don’t know. But sunshine and fresh air is what they said.

If you go back and look at the historical record, that’s what helped in the days of the Spanish flu. Now we have this thing running around, “You better not go onto the beach. If you do, we’re gonna drag you home. If you get in the water, we may drown you right there or we may take you home. It doesn’t matter to us. How do you want to die?”

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RUSH: Tom in Springfield, Illinois. You’re next, sir. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Dittos. Honor to speak with you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I just wondering why aren’t we seeing models of what would happen if we keep the economy suppressed too long or closed for too long? Will the economy collapse? And if it would, what would it look like? I don’t think anybody thinks, on the Democratic side, that there’s any drawback —

RUSH: Obviously they don’t.

CALLER: — to just staying closed for another two months, three months it might take.

RUSH: Well, no.

CALLER: They don’t.

RUSH: I may have misspoken. (sigh) There are some elements of the Democrat Party who wouldn’t mind a total destruction of the economy because it would allow them the opportunity to remake it.

CALLER: But why wouldn’t they want to educate the voters, such as… I know CNN’s not gonna —

RUSH: Well, because nobody’s in favor what the Democrats want. Nobody wants the economy to crash. Nobody wants to go back to the Great Depression permanently, and nobody wants the Democrat Party rewriting the economy in their massive dreams and turning America into this massive socialist/communist “paradise.”

I mean, some people do, but not a majority. This was something… The Democrats still have to govern against the will of the people. When they win, they still have to force things on us. They are elected… Do you think Obama would have been elected if he’d have been honest about Obamacare, what it was gonna do?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: No! They have to cover up everything they’re gonna do and mask it. They camouflage who they are, and when they’re really feeling confident after winning elections is they take the masks off and start behaving as they really are with their arrogance — which is what happened during the two terms of Obama, and look what happened. Hillary Clinton loses! The American people still are not to the point where a majority of us want what the Democrats want. So the only way for them to get where they want is by use of authoritarian force.

CALLER: I see.

RUSH: Your question is actually pretty good one: What would the country look like if these lockdowns continue as long as Democrat governors want them?

CALLER: And what would the signs be? What would be the first elements?

RUSH: Well, (snort) we’re living them!

CALLER: Well, yes, we are. So would we be in the same shape in another two months?

RUSH: No, it’d be worse, depending on where. See this is another hideous part of this. These blue state governors are standing by, doing nothing, maintaining their lockdowns, while depending on the red states to bail them out, to create growing economies, to have their people go back to work producing tax revenue and whatever else that can contribute. It’s like playing tiddlywinks right now, but still contribute some to the bailouts and the ongoing sustenance necessary in the blue states.

CALLER: I see.

RUSH: If the red states were doing the same thing the blue states are, your question would be academic; we’d already be there.

CALLER: But there’s no models of what it would look like if we go way too long.

RUSH: What do you think would happen?

CALLER: Well, I think for one we move closer to socialism every day we proceed.

RUSH: Yeah, but what does that look like? You’re asking me what it’d look like. What do you think it would look like?

CALLER: That’s what I’m asking. I don’t really know exactly. I don’t know what it would look like if we —

RUSH: It looks like… The country would become a ghost country. Look at pictures of New York. It is a ghost town. Look at pictures of Boston. It is a ghost town. Just expand it. By “ghost town,” I mean nothing is open.

CALLER: Uh-huh. I see. Well, I just wondered. I thought, you know, there’s one-hour specials all over the place on all the networks and articles in the newspaper of all the models. But nobody talks about the long-term economic collapse that could happen and when it would look like.

RUSH: No, because you’re supposed to endure that if it means saving just one life. Look, you actually have swerved into something here. I started asking the very question you’re asking within two weeks of this lockdown. It seemed out of place to me from the very beginning. It didn’t seem necessary. There was a part of me intellectually that understood it.

But after two weeks — and I wasn’t hearing anybody talking about reopening, even at these White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefings every day, there wasn’t a damn thing mentioned about reopening. There wasn’t a damn thing mentioned about the damage already happening to the U.S. economy. There wasn’t a damn thing mentioned about the unemployment that was already happening. What the focus was was how we’re ramping up to build ventilators, we’re ramping up to build masks, that we’re doing a great job in sending hospital beds to New York.

It was all about how we are coping with the virus and saving lives and how we’re competing with other nations around the world and how we’re beating them. Are you like me? After a while at these Coronavirus Task Force briefings, I got sick and tired — I’ll be honest — I got sick and tired of hearing Trump bragging about the ventilators, about how we got more ventilators than any country in the world, we got more this, we got more tests, we got more this than any country in the world until I figured out what was going on.

And Rich Lowry has a great piece about this, too, in addition to his piece on DeSantis. What Trump did, what Trump and his administration did in ramping up the PPE, the personal protective equipment and all of this, the masks and the ventilators and the tests, it is a phenomenal achievement because we didn’t have any of that supply chain ready to go. The Obama administration, there was nothing, just like there was in the military.

And the reason Trump kept bragging about it is because the media was ignoring it. And it was a massively huge achievement that he was proud of. And because the press wasn’t covering it, he was talking about it every day, about the number of ventilators that we manufactured, about the conversions at various American factories to build ventilators because during the early period of time, the news was that everybody who gets this can’t breathe. Everybody’s gonna need a ventilator. That turned out not to be true, either. But it was just an incredible presidential administration achievement, to get all of that stuff built at scale and ramped up as fast as they did.

The media was ignoring it. So Trump had to constantly tout it. And in the process of touting it, there was never any mention of opening up. If you were listening regularly here at this time, going back to the middle of March when all this began, you’ll remember that I came back from a prolonged absence because of cancer treatment. And I was fit to be tied that nobody was talking about reopening. And I was talking about how I’d traveled around and I saw boarded-up storefronts and empty storefronts and all I saw behind them was people and faces and dreams, people had invested everything they had in opening some of these businesses. Not a single person was yet talking about the damage being done to them.

We were making a hero out of Andrew Cuomo as the death toll mounted in New York City and New York state. We’re trying to make heroes out of other Democrat governors. In the meantime, people were losing their livelihoods. And I could not believe nobody was talking about it. So actually out there, Tom, I was way ahead of you on this. I mean, I wasn’t in visualizing what it was gonna be if we didn’t open up in six weeks, two months, whatever, but as I continued to hear no sports, no fans in the stands, no schools open, I said, what the hell is this? We’ve never done this before. And it isn’t necessary. And I was cringing at it. I was waiting for somebody, some governor, open your state, please. Let’s prove none of this is necessary.

And so some of the states have opened. Kemp opened up and then DeSantis never did really close down. I mean, there was a small stage of it. And these places that have opened up are thriving, they’re doing well. It’s all looking good. Are the blue states influenced by it? No way. Are governors of blue cities in these states impressed? No way. ‘Cause it’s politics first, baby. It’s kill Donald Trump first, baby. That’s requirement number one.

And it was breaking my heart seeing what was being ignored. And it was music to my ears when Trump and Pence finally started talking about reopening and how we’re gonna do it and why we have to do it. ‘Cause this lockdown shouldn’t should not have lasted more than two weeks. Once that we learned that there was not gonna be an overrun of the hospitals, which is the only reason we flattened the curve, was to make sure the hospitals were not overrun, we should have been reopening at that time after two to three weeks, folks.

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RUSH: I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, and it’s being discussed all across the — well, it’s interesting. The Drive-By Media is ignoring this. It is a piece in the New York Post by David Marcus, and it ran yesterday, actually it was published last night. And the headline: “Sometimes, a good rant is all a writer can offer. Bear with me.” And the New York Post has covered it.

“One man’s plea: ‘The Big Apple is dying. Streets are empty. Tens of thousands have been plunged into poverty. Our leaders have no plans and no answers.'” And, boy, is that ever true. Cuomo and de Blasio don’t have a clue, folks. “New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated. It needs to end now.”

Do you know the recovery rate for people who get coronavirus under the age of 60? Do you know what it is? Ninety-nine percent. Ninety-nine percent of people under 60 who get coronavirus recover from it. Why are you surprised? Because you’re not told. The exact opposite impression is given, that everybody who gets it dies, that everybody who gets it suffers unbearably.

The fact remains and it always has been the case that 98% overall of people who get the coronavirus recover from it. Some take a day or two, some take a week, some take a month. It’s not uniform. But it is not 10 times or 30 times as deadly as the flu, as they have been attempting to get people to believe.

Now, if you get into the higher age ranges where patients have pre-existing conditions, then it is deadly, like the flu is deadly for people in those groups. But let me read you some pull quotes from this New York Post piece by David Marcus.

“Last Friday morning, some 3,500 New Yorkers lined up at a Catholic church in Queens to receive free food hours before it even opened. … Catholic Charities has reported a 200 percent increase in demand over the past month and a half. By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty. It needs to end. Now.”

And it’s not just New York, but it’s where this guy happens to live and is writing about, so we’ll stick with him. It’s not just New York where this is happening.

“In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it. We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

“Meanwhile, the Big Apple is dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.”

Exactly. Let’s tear it all down, these people, just tear it all down and rebuild our socialist utopia. Let it all go away. Let it all fade away.

“Open the city,” writes Mr. Marcus, “Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

“For two months, we have waited for Cuomo and de Blasio to tell us how this ends. Where is ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg with his alleged army of tracers that the governor told us was the key to reopening? And why did he hand that responsibility over to Bloomberg, whom nobody elected anyway?” And nobody can find now.

“What the hell is going on? Is anybody in charge of this situation? Or are we just left with the governor and his talking-head brother arguing on CNN about which of the two Ma loves best? (Who cares?) In late April, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp defied experts by opening his state. The Atlantic magazine, once a serious publication that should now come with a stick of stale bubblegum, accused him of engaging in ‘human sacrifice.’ You want to guess what happened? Guess, come on, take a guess. Instead of the predicted spike in deaths, the number of cases of coronavirus and associated deaths declined.

“We did what we were asked. We flattened the freakin’ curve. There is no longer any reasonable justification for the government to deprive us of our livelihoods. And our rights aren’t the government’s to grant or take away. They belong to us — the free grant of nature and the God of nature. We’re Americans. More than that: New Yorkers, G-damn it.”

David Marcus is a correspondent in New York for The Federalist website. And he’s tapped my sentiments exactly. The only thing, I just want to remind you, I’ve been on this rant since two weeks after the shutdown, maybe three, I don’t know. It made no sense to me. It literally never made any sense to me. When I first saw the recovery rate for this virus is 98%, the only way it made sense to me was as a weapon to be used against Donald Trump. And the first time I mentioned that, oh, you should have heard the catcalls. “Rush, you know, not everything’s about Trump and not everything is about Republican versus Democrats.”

The hell it isn’t. If it’s on American media, it’s about Donald Trump. And if it’s on American media, it’s about harming Donald Trump. If it’s on American media, it’s about defeating Donald Trump. If it’s on American media, it’s about impeaching, about getting rid of Donald Trump. And any deviation from that is ignored. It’s always been about getting Donald Trump.

In fact, I’ll go one step further. I was worried that Trump went along with it. So I started conjuring up my theories as to explain it. I think I got pretty close. You know why we’re here today? A bogus poll from the U.K. that 2.2 million people in America would die. They went in, they tell Trump 2.2 million people will die. You gotta shut it down. Who tells him this? Fauci and the rest of the National Institutes of Health people and the CDC people, people that were all there before Trump got there, they were all there when Obama was there and many prior to that. They are part of the Washington establishment.

Nobody will convince me that a vast majority of them don’t also want to get rid of Trump just like that ambassadorial crew that was brought in to testify in open hearing about Ukraine. I know that all of the Washington establishment would love to be rid of Donald Trump even before they would like to save this economy. Trump wanted the respect of those people. In this kind of crisis, deadly crisis, lives on the line, Trump wanted to be seen as cooperative, taking it seriously.

He didn’t want to appear knee-jerk and think they are lying to him. He didn’t want to go down that road. I could, ’cause I’m not Trump and I’m not part of government and I don’t have to get along with ’em. But I’ve been suspicious of it all since day one. And the reason is simple. I’ve not been suspicious of the medical news. I’ve been suspicious of the models, as you well know, my first rant was about the models and how they’re always wrong, be it climate change or this or whatever.

The reason that I was doubtful and the reason that I had my antennae up is that from the beginning there was no talk of how long this shutdown was gonna last and when we were gonna reopen. All we heard was flatten the curve, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate, socially distance. Then we kept hearing about we can’t go to sports, we can’t play sports, we can’t go to church, we can’t open schools. What the hell is this? We’ve never done this before on something that 98% of the people who get it recover from. And all of this is coming after a failed impeachment effort?