TODD: So often as we’ve looked back through Rush’s life and as we compare him to how he might cover today’s news, the range is… It’s not just conservatism. It’s not governmentism. It’s not Americanism. It’s so many aspects of life including career — including ingenuity, including working hard, including family relationships — that Rush has talked to us about.

We’ll get to a lot of his wisdom this hour. But there is just prime in the news, it is just one more indicator the Democrat Party’s obsession. You can look at it in a couple different ways. A charitable view of this is that Democrats believe that the United States simply must be the sponge for any and all displaced peoples. Mathematically that’s an interesting thing.

We are 5% of the world’s population and we have taken in 20% of the world’s displaced peoples. We are the top provider of foreign aid on an official and unofficial capacity, the unofficial being the hearts of the American people who love preceding a gift to others, official being foreign aid, which Donald Trump, the president, did a great job of cleaning up and not funding countries that hate us.

A less charitable view is that the Democrats simply want to import new voters. I think that’s true. I think it’s unassailably true. A far less charitable view to all of these things is the Cloward-Piven view, which is hard-core leftists want to flood the American system with people who need immediate assistance and are coming here for immediate assistance.

Not to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, but to pursue a government check. And there are people who do that. What’s the mix? I don’t know. But we have a right to control our borders. Otherwise, we don’t control our society. Rush spoke so often about this. But he also looked at it from a different perspective. During the time when COVID had hit — and we were legitimately trying to figure this out.

What is this, and how bad is it? Two or three weeks into that we should have, you know, seen the data, et cetera, to understand it’s age stratified, et cetera. I can rathole on the COVID. I’m obsessed with it. But during that period of time, the border became an issue, and last December Rush had a conversation with a doctor in California that just highlighted the seriousness of this issue.

RUSH: Here’s Randy in San Luis Obispo, California. Great to have you with us. Hello.

CALLER: Good morning, Rush. Blessings and prayers to you. You’re the first person that’s been willing to have the wherewithal to go against the political correctness. You know, I’m a physician about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. I was born and raised in LA. I trained in LA hospitals, the county hospitals down there. And I’ve been dismayed to see that no one seems to be connecting the dots with regard to immigration, illegal immigration and the COVID pandemic.

I follow the sites, the Los Angeles County sites as far as hospitalizations and have been doing it ever since March, and, you know, 72% of the hospitalizations in Los Angeles are Hispanics. Seventy-one percent of the ICU hospitalizations are Hispanics. And that’s from March 1st to December 19th.

I want to make it real clear right at the start here: My wife is Hispanic. I have no problem, nothing against Hispanic people. So I just want to make that real clear. But they are the large, large majority of people that are being hospitalized in Los Angeles, which means they’re basically a reservoir — if not the main reservoir — for passing the COVID virus around.

And that’s because they can’t work distantly. They can’t work remotely. The vast majority are boots-on-the-ground agriculture — you know, domestics, chefs in restaurants and cafeterias — and they also tend to live in very dense homes where you can pass viruses around very quickly and easily. And if anybody in one of those households is illegal, it’s probably unlikely that any of them are likely to go in to seek care until they’re very, very sick.

The interesting thing was back in I think it was March or April I started thinking about this, and I looked into it. The Pew Research showed the large majority of illegal immigration was along the entire southern border of the United States. California, Texas, and Florida were the highest numbers, but it was pretty much all the southern states.

As you’ve watched over the course of time, that has kind of, you know, gone up to all the states, throughout the United States. And that’s obviously because of migration and then, of course, the passage of the virus. So, you know, I kept waiting for somebody to make this point, and I’ve never heard anybody make this point, and to me it seems very obvious.

And it’s particularly scary when I saw last night on the news them showing these caravans ramping up down in Central America kind of waiting for Biden to take office and thinking that they can start coming across the border again. I mean, if we are already overwhelmed — which we are — I mean, that’s gonna be the final deluge.

You know, these people coming across are… A lot of them have the virus or will be in situations where they’ll pass the virus around. So I just… I’m glad I had a chance to bring this forward to you because it’s extremely worrisome to me if the borders start opening up for them.

RUSH: Well, let me… While I have you here, I have the stories that you’re talking about involving Biden, and I’ve got one from the New York Post and one from TheHill.com. The first one: “Biden Says Fast Immigration Changes Could Cause a Rush at the Border.” Now, this was during his press briefing yesterday, and he said that “restoring the U.S. immigration system would be an overwhelming priority.” Folks — and I know, Randy, you’ll agree with me. By “restoring our immigration system,” he means he will no longer enforce immigration law. That’s what he means.

CALLER: I’m afraid so.

RUSH: He means he’s going to go back to the Democrat Party interpretation of immigration, and that is there’s no limits on it. But Biden also said — and I’m paraphrasing here — that he’s not gonna be able to do away with the southern border on his first day in office (he was sending a signal to leftists), because doing that might cause “a rush of two million people coming across the border.”

But he said that he’ll get it done within the next six months, and he says it’s gonna cost a lot of money to not enforce the immigration law. Now, all of these illegal aliens, will they be tested for COVID before they’re allowed to enter the United States or are they just gonna be given priority to get a vaccine? What do you think?

CALLER: Well, of course, that’s a very big and important question. You know, they’ve been prioritizing it to first front-line caregivers. In fact, I’m scheduled to get my vaccine next week, and then kind of down the line — and they talk about essential workers. I hope essential workers means the people that I’m talking about. But I really think if you were gonna aim at one particular source, you want to get the source that is passing this around most frequently.

That, of course, is the illegal immigrants and the people who have to work in person, and they can’t do it from home. So I would hope that they would start immunizing those people. Because it’s actually very much akin to, you know, back in the early 1900s when they tried to get control of yellow fever. You know, what they found…

When they finally realized it was a mosquito that was passing this, they started putting anti-mosquito agents into all the ponds and lakes and the places where they breed, and that is how they finally got control over yellow fever. This is kind of a similar thing, and I don’t mean to be in any way degrading people and saying they’re like mosquitoes.

But just like the mosquitos that were the reservoir for the disease, in this same situation the people that are the reservoir for the disease are the groups that should be, I think, approached most aggressively and, you know, in the very forefront of this.

RUSH: Well, one thing is — and I could be wrong about this. My perception is that in all discussions of COVID and reading where it’s the United States is the epicenter now. More people are dying from it here than anywhere else per capita. More people are contracting it here than anywhere else in the world per capita. But in all of this, we never hear about why and how.

Other than the people who are attempting to shut down the economy by saying that it is spreading in these ways that really can’t be established or proven… And it’s being used as an excuse to shut down economies and shut down various businesses and so forth. It’s being used to exert control over the American people by primarily Democrat governors and Democrat mayors.

But the one thing I was gonna say that doesn’t come up, which is why I was fascinated talking to you, is the role illegal immigration plays in the spread of this. I know you’re not comparing people to mosquitoes. Don’t misunderstand here. But still, if you have a known source that is a problem, doesn’t it make sense to do something about it?

CALLER: Well, that’s exactly my point, and that’s exactly my concern.

RUSH: Doctor, thank you for the call. That’s Randy in San Luis Obispo, California. I appreciate the perspective. Meanwhile, on the same subject, Susan Rice, who has been chosen by Biden as his domestic policy chief, told a Spanish-language news service on Monday — and again, I’m paraphrasing here — that the border will not be able to be erased overnight due, in large part, to “the damage done over the last four years.”

But Rice said the Biden team is committed to erasing it as soon as possible. “Members of … Joe Biden’s White House transition effort cautioned Tuesday that he would not undo all of President Trump’s changes to the U.S. immigration system overnight and explained that incoming administration officials would ‘need time’ to pursue such efforts.” They really want to roll back everything Trump did.

Trump tightened down illegal immigration.

They’re admitting that they to want reopen it back up.

But they’re cautioning everybody that it’s gonna take time because of the possibility of COVID spreading, but they still are gonna do it. “Susan Rice, the president-elect’s domestic policy chief [said], ‘We will be able to take some steps to change policies right away. Others will take time to put in place, and the situation at the border will not transform overnight due in large part to the damage done over the last four years.'”

The “damage done over the last four years” was to clean it up.

The “damage done over the last four years” was to fix it.

Elections have consequences.

TODD: Yes, they do, Professor Limbaugh. Yes, they do.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

TODD: Charlie in Indianapolis, Indiana. Charlie, you’re on the Rush Limbaugh program. Todd Herman is your guide host today.

CALLER: Todd, great to speak with you. Thanks for taking my call.

TODD: You’re welcome.

CALLER: I first started listening to Rush when I began my professional career back in ’88. I just happened across him on the AM band there and was fortunate to have him truly be the soundtrack of my conservative life. He opened up so many doors of learning for me. The reason that I was calling is because of the spending that we’re engaging in.

If we have one minute when I got done, there’s one other topic that I’d like to raise with you. But there are two ways to tax people. Let’s say that we have a small economy with a hundred dollars in it. If I wanted 25% of that economy, I could tax you 25%, and I’d have $25, you’d have 75. The other way that I could tax you without putting my fingerprints on it and do it invisibly is to print $33.

TODD: Right.

CALLER: ‘Cause then I would have a quarter of the money in the economy. I wouldn’t have to sign off on a tax increase.

TODD: Right.

CALLER: But that leads to inflation because now you have more money chasing the same number of goods and services that isn’t backed by anything and it ends up being a stealth tax increase, particularly on our seasoned citizens who are living off of either fixed income tax or savings that have accumulated over the years. Your thoughts on that.

TODD: No, it’s a brilliant way to put it and they’re doing both. They’re taxing and they’re printing and they’re borrowing, they’re do you go all these things all at once, $1.9 trillion with all of $600 million, maybe, related to the COVID. It goes to the point that we were talking about. You know, Charlie, we were talking about lifeboats.

CALLER: Yeah.

TODD: And you’re talking about diluting the fuel of the lifeboat; so if the lifeboat runs on fuel, now you’ve diluted it or you have had other people seize while the lifeboat is being filled with too many people. And if you… When you take a comparison like you provided and you compare COVID rules for let’s say college campuses, you can’t…

We can’t have parties breaking out on college campuses. But, Charlie, you know, to your point, we can suddenly have all sorts of freedom for people — youngsters — who Biden is detaining at the border as he should while we figure out if they’ve been trafficked. Right?

CALLER: Yes.

TODD: So you have that. All of a sudden there’s no COVID rules there, Charlie, to your point. And, you know, and Rush has spoken about that at length. I know under the influence one more thing to say. I’m gonna ask you to say it… I hate asking callers to hurry up but I want to make sure, brings to mind why is it Rush said about crossing the border. I want to get to that in this segment. But what was the other thing you wanted to say, Charlie?

CALLER: I can do it quickly. There was a civil case 1973 that dealt — and I wanted to ask you because of your tech background — that the government cannot induce, encourage, or promote private citizens or entities to accomplish what it itself is constitutionally prohibited from accomplishing.

TODD: Yeah.

CALLER: That case was Norwood vs. Harrison.

TODD: Yep.

CALLER: It seems like much of the tech tyranny that we’re getting today is in response to congressional incentives and/or threats of regulation, and it seems to fly right in the face of that particular Supreme Court decision.

TODD: Brilliant, and that’s why I’m thrilled to see Ron DeSantis taking on Big Tech — and, yes, exactly — that the Big Tech is doing the bidding of the Democrats. They’re one and the same. During the hearings over Dr. Rachel Levin, Amazon disappeared a scholarly book written with great love called When Harry Became Sally. They disappeared it during the hearings.

They clearly colluded. So that’s a great point, and we can talk more about that. I’m glad you know more about that case. Many people don’t. Charlie, thank you for the call. So take the COVID rules. We just talked about freedom breaking out on college campuses, young skulls full of mush saying, “You know what? We’ve had enough government. We want our parties back.”

Opportunity.

Other opportunities to go to those same kids and say, “Did you know that you’re in trouble for partying, but not at the border? COVID rules are off at the border. So rules for you, not rules for them.” An opportunity to show the hypocrisy, because immigration is a growing issue — a staggering, 100,000 crossing the border in February.

By contrast, all of last year we saw 453,000. Still a lot, but that’s all year. Trump was excoriated for temporarily halting immigration until we got a handle on the COVID. He was called racist, xenophobic, you name it. Let’s listen to Rush remind everyone the primary job of the commander-in-chief.

RUSH: The thing to remember is the virus doesn’t know borders. The virus doesn’t have a race. It’s not xenophobic. It’s hidden. It’s invisible. It’s really invisible in asymptomatic people. Asymptomatic people, people not suffering from it nevertheless are contagious. What matters is keeping America safe.

What matters is keeping the virus out of the country any which way we can, even now. This immigration business, I guarantee you, this is a test to determine who the serious people are. If you and I can’t move about as we please, why should illegal immigrants be allowed to?

What are we gonna immediately sequester ’em once they get in? What are we gonna do, put ’em in cages? What are we gonna do, put ’em in cages and make sure they’re no closer than six feet to each other? What are we gonna do? I’m saying that on purpose, Mr. Snerdley. I’m throwing it back in the left’s face.

Somebody ought to put a mask on the Statue of Liberty, for crying out loud, to illustrate where we all are. This is insane! Why shouldn’t immigration be suspended? I don’t want to have to go to through this again. I just wanted to show you that I was right, that the left was gonna react politically to this as though it’s outrageous.

It’s no different than knowing that a very contagious flu is in your house and you invite the neighborhood in. If people found out you did that, you would be in heap big doo-doo. No, I’m serious. Somebody ought to put a mask on the statue. Let that be a task for Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to work on, a joint project.

It doesn’t have to be a real mask. You don’t want to waste all the material, but get up there with a scaffold and put a mask on the statue and blame it on the Trump. Put some anti-Trump sign on the mask. It’d be typical of what the Democrats would do.

TODD: It’s brilliant. Brilliant idea. And take things like this, this framework of illustrating absurdity by being absurd — by showing hypocrisy in shining light to these college kids where freedom is breaking out. Maybe they’ll have a similar moment of awakening as our last caller. We need to be there for that to happen.