RUSH: Here’s the headline in Politico: “Falling COVID-19 Cases Create Opportunity and Peril for Trump — Virus cases are dropping everywhere, but the rush to reopen could backfire.” Hard to see how. Anyway, they’re getting nervous, folks.

This story is just dripping with fear that the COVID-19 story is reaching a point where it’s going to be beneficial to the president for the next couple or three months. Number of cases down; number of deaths down. There are new CDC numbers on the actual number of literal COVID-19 deaths. It could be just a little over 6,000, not 180,000.

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RUSH: I mentioned earlier, ladies and gentlemen, that The Politico has a story today about the COVID-19 cases creating an opportunity and peril for Trump. “Virus cases are dropping everywhere, but the rush to reopen could backfire.” No, it can’t.

You know what could backfire is Joe Biden out there saying that he will listen to the science, and, if the science says that we need to lock the country back down, then by golly, by gosh that’s what we’re gonna do. Science? When you hear that, folks, I think you need to understand, I think most of you do, they’re trying to paint Republicans as Neanderthals. They don’t believe the science of climate change. They don’t believe the science of this. They don’t believe the science of that.

It’s not that we don’t believe science. It’s just that we don’t think this is science. We don’t think climate change is science. You cannot have consensus and have science. We know the left has politicized and corrupted so much that we just don’t trust it. But science, we believe it. I believe science when science is actually what’s involved. But science is not involved in climate change.

It’s an open question. Man-made climate change is an open question. It is not resolved by science. It has been resolved by politics. But for Biden to sit there and say, as he has said, that he will listen to the science, he will listen to the scientists. And if the scientists say we need to lock down the country, then that’s what he’ll do. Hey, Joe, if you happen to get elected, you’re being elected, not a bunch of nameless scientists that nobody’s ever heard of. What’s the big deal about passing the buck? Are you trying to say that the only credible people left are science and scientists?

I’m gonna tell you, the last thing that needs to happen is closing down the United States of America again. And for Plugs to promise everybody that he will do it if some lamebrain comes along and tells him to do it. They’d better get him to shut up about this, because that’s not what people want.

I’ve been reluctant to share this next bit of news with you, folks, only because I’m worried it could be a trap. But the numbers involved here come from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. You want to talk about science, you want to talk about there might be some fake scientists. By fake scientists I mean politicians who are pretending to be scientists. And don’t doubt me, ladies and gentlemen, they’re all over the place. Anybody can put on a white lab coat and tell you they’re a scientist.

The Centers for Disease Control this weekend lowered the number of China virus deaths by 94%. From the Centers for Disease Control website itself, quote, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause” — wait. This may be a tweet. No, it’s the CDC. “For 6% of the deaths COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19 on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes.” These are called morbidities.

In other words, folks, for 94% of deaths, the virus was there but didn’t cause the deaths. The CDC is admitting this now. Let me give the data to you in another fashion. The Centers for Disease Control — and they very quietly did this. This has not been trumpeted with fanfare. This was very quietly posted on the CDC website. They updated COVID death numbers to admit that only 6% of all of the 153,000 deaths recorded actually died from COVID. That’s a total of 9,210 deaths. That’s a big difference from 153,000 deaths.

Ninety-four percent of people who have died had two to three other serious illnesses. An overwhelming majority of these 94% were of advanced age. So the bottom line here is that the CDC is admitting that the number of people who actually died from COVID is 9,210. The number that you have heard, 153,504 — and it’s constantly changing — that number contains people who had COVID-19 but maybe didn’t die from it. They had pneumonia. They had cancer. They had any number of other things. COVID-19 did not kill them. But their death was nevertheless recorded as a COVID-19 death.

So according to the CDC’s own numbers, the actual COVID-19 death count is 9,210. Now, let me ask you, was it worth murdering a $22 trillion economy for that? No, of course not. It’s a rhetorical question. But that’s exactly what we did. The idea that we got some doofus Democrat presidential candidate promising everybody that he will relock down the country if some scientist comes along and tells him we have to ought to scare the bejeezus out of everybody, because that is the last thing we need to do.

The Politico story. “Falling COVID-19 cases create opportunity and peril for Trump — For now, the numbers are again breaking in the right direction. The U.S. is averaging roughly 42,000 new infections per day, down from 49,000 last week and 65,000 earlier this summer. The decline has been particularly significant in states like Arizona and Florida, two battlegrounds that could decide the election. Even with the numbers looking better, Trump still has to convince people it’s truly safe to venture out in order to get the bounce he’s looking for.”

Let me tell you what this is about. Politico is worried. I want you to stop and digest this. Politico means the media, which means the Democrats are worried the COVID-19 situation is improving. They’re worried it’s improving at this time, ’cause that could end up helping Trump. Now, this is the party, he keeps talking about unity and we need to come together. Wouldn’t you think that party would be happy that the numbers of reported cases are coming down? And wouldn’t you think that party would be happy the number of COVID deaths are not nearly as bad as we thought?

But, no, we’re really, really worried here. Uh-oh. What does this mean for Trump? Uh-oh. We could be in trouble. So Politico is hoping Trump overplays his hands. I think this story could be an extension of what the Democrats tried all last week — trying to goad Trump into reacting to them with hate.

He didn’t. He reacted to them with love. He reacted to them with reason. He reacted to them with a really, really cool Republican convention. There was no hate to be found. I think they’re trying the same thing here. I think they want Trump to go overboard and start talking about how COVID’s over, we beat it, it’s heading downhill, and we’ve overcome it. I think they hope that they can make Trump act and speak as though he has defeated COVID. That’s what they’re hoping to do with this.

Do not worry, my friends. He will not. He’s wise to their ways, and his instincts anyway have caught up with the Democrats’ attempts to manipulate or seduce. (interruption) No, no. Okay. Look at it another way. Only 6% have died from COVID alone, if that helps you to understand it. Only 6%, which is 9,000 people, only six percent, 9,000 people have died from COVID alone, 9,201. Out of the 161,000 COVID deaths so far, only 9,000 from COVID alone. Meaning only 9,000 where COVID is without question the cause of death.