RUSH: I mentioned yesterday that all this coronavirus hype is aimed at getting Trump. Make no mistake about it: It’s aimed at getting Trump. Here is a media montage that makes the point. Essentially, forget the Russians — at least today — because now the coronavirus is gonna be the end of Trump.

SARA EISEN: If the coronavirus spreads into a pandemic, it improves Bernie Sanders chances of beating Donald Trump.

RUSH: How?

RANA FOROOHAR: You’ve got coronavirus potentially causing a real headwind to the economy around November, the time of the election.

JAKE TAPPER: That could affect his re-election chances.

JOHN THOMAS: Every indicator is fairly locked in at this point for Trump to get re-elected, unless there’s a black swan moment like this.

CHRIS BEDFORD: It wouldn’t be too difficult to trigger a recession — especially with coronavirus raging — just in time for the election.

JEFF MASON: It could potentially hurt President Trump’s chances of re-election.

JIM CRAMER: … the economy slows dramatically ’cause of the virus.

DAVID FABER: Oh. Okay.

JIM CRAMER: Right, so —

DAVID FABER: That would bolster the chances —

JIM CRAMER: — of the Democrats.

BRIT HUME: With all these unpredictable factors including the coronavirus, almost anything can happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: The coronavirus could get Bernie Sanders elected president of the United States.

RUSH: Why couldn’t the coronavirus get Donald Trump reelected? What if the United States comes up with a dramatically great policy to deal with it — and the number of cases in the United States dwindles, goes down, or does not expand like the cases around the world? Then why wouldn’t that be beneficial to Trump? Notice: Here we are in February, and they’ve already got this virus ruining the economy by November, in time to take out Trump. This is proof they’ve got nothing. They know they can’t beat the guy, folks.

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RUSH: I want to share with you some of the Trump press conference, ’cause this is confidence, this is strength, this is a presence on the world stage that the Democrats again just don’t have anybody who can match up. And in the bites that we have here, Trump deals with the Democrats and the coronavirus, goes after Justice Sotomayor — Sodamayor, for those of you in Rio Linda.

And he really has gone after these two judges on the Supreme Court. That they need to recuse themselves from these immigration cases because they are taking open public political positions on these cases. And he’s right about it. So here’s the first bite.

THE PRESIDENT: You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. We think they’ll be in very good shape very soon. I think that whole situation will start working out. A lot of talent, a lot of brain power has been put behind it. Two and a half million dollars we’re putting in. I see that Chuck Schumer criticized it. He thought it should be more. And if I gave more, he’d say it should be less. Automatic, with these characters. They’re just not good for our country.

RUSH: Now, I want you to pay attention to something Trump said here. Very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. The fatality rate is something like 80,000 cases in the world that are known. There have been 2,700 deaths. You know what that translates to, a fatality percentage — it’s like 2 to 3 percent, folks. The fatality rate of this virus is less than the flu, far less than the flu.

But look at how it’s been hyped. And it’s being hyped because, as you heard in the first audio sound bite, the montage, media thinks this is the new Russia, this is gonna get Trump, they’re gleeful, they’re happy. This is gonna destroy the economy magically by November. And it won’t.

And Trump says: “Very well under control in our country.”

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RUSH: Move on now to audio sound bite number five. This is Ron Brownstein this morning on CNN’s Newsroom. He also works at The Atlantic magazine. And this is his take on how Trump is dealing with the coronavirus.

BROWNSTEIN: The contrast with how Barack Obama handled the Ebola outbreak is very, I think illuminative, of the way they approach the world. Obviously, President Obama named an Ebola Czar, Ron Klain, who was Joe Biden’s chief of staff and former White House counsel. But he also was very engaged with the frontline states in terms of sending U.S. assistance to them to help them manage the outbreak on the front lines. That if a pandemic develops, ultimately it is everybody’s problems. Look at the contrast between the president’s language when he said, you know, we’re handling it very well and no sense of kind of interconnectedness with the other countries.

RUSH: This is precisely what these people do not get. Donald Trump is president of the United States. He is not president of the world. It is not his job to control the spread of the coronavirus in China. It’s not his job to control the spread of the coronavirus in the U.K. There’s nothing he can do anyway about it. He doesn’t have the force of law behind him. All he has is the power that being the president of the lone superpower in the world gives him.

But Trump’s first commitment and first responsibility is to the people of the United States. Not only on the coronavirus, but on the economy, on trade deals, on whatever it is that affects the safety and prosperity of the people of America. His view is that his first responsibility is you and me and the 50 states in this country, 57 if you’re Obama. And his belief is that if that happens, that if the United States looks after itself first — you know, this is what they say is nationalism. This is how they try to say that Trump is an equal authoritarian to people like Hitler. And nothing could be further from the truth, obviously.

This is patriotism. And it may even be nationalism. What’s wrong with nationalism? What is wrong with nationalism that is rooted in patriotism? Nationalism of Trump is not country right despite everything, it’s not always right, right or wrong, America right, at the end of the day. It’s not that at all. But his view is: I have the ability and the foresight and the responsibility to protect the people of the United States from illegal immigration, from economic calamity, from whatever it might be, including rampant disease.

It’s also his job to avoid creating a panic when one is not necessary in the United States. And so here comes Ron Brownstein, representative of all in the media, contrasting this with Obama. And look what Obama did. Obama not only tried to protect America from Ebola, but he tried to protect the world. He appointed an Ebola czar, Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff. Very engaged with the frontline states in terms of sending U.S. assistance to them.

These are for show moves. This is what Washington politicians do. Nothing but making it look like they’re doing everything. The difference is Obama and his ilk are a bunch of phonies devoted to public relations victories. Trump is a real guy who is actually trying to protect the United States when it comes to coronavirus or anything else. And then he doesn’t phony it up by appointing a coronavirus czar and sending him over to China to supposedly manage it there, where it originated, or anywhere else where it happens to be spreading. He deals with it here.

But these guys, “Oh, man, we wish we had Obama. Obama would control it for the whole world.” What did Obama do for Ebola? How was Obama stopping Ebola? He didn’t. You know what stops Ebola? I hate to say this, death. Ebola can’t survive in dead hosts. It needs hosts. The more people with Ebola die, the faster Ebola dies out in that particular strain. If you can isolate the people who have Ebola, that’s how you stop it.

Ebola’s a horrible, horrible virus, not even comparable to the coronavirus. It’s literally horrible. And there’s no antidote for it. It’s a virus. Don’t have a cure for viruses. Otherwise the common cold wouldn’t be what it is, and the flu wouldn’t be. These are all viruses. Now, we can mitigate the damage, treat the symptoms, maybe strengthen the immune system to make the effects of these diseases less, but we can’t cure them, and there are very few — what do you call ’em? — vaccines for viruses. There are some, but it’s a handful, folks. It’s tiny.

And there’s no stopping Ebola. You don’t want any part of it. An Ebola czar wasn’t gonna do one thing to stop Ebola. It was just gonna make it look like Obama cared, which is exactly what liberals do. “We care. Other people don’t. Vote for us.” Meanwhile, what do they do to solve problems? Zip, zero, nada. What happened to America during the eight years of Obama? Trump spent three years trying to fix it and has.

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RUSH: John King at CNN brought in the chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, this afternoon to refute something I said yesterday about the coronavirus — and I want you to listen to this very, very carefully.

KING: I want you to listen here, uh, to Rush Limbaugh’s take on the coronavirus.

RUSH ARCHIVE: It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.

KING: Dr. Gupta, is the coronavirus the common cold?

GUPTA: This is a brand-new virus. It’s a novel virus. Uh, we don’t know exactly how this virus is going to behave. And I think that would unfortunately, you know, be minimizing it. I think what, uh, Rush Limbaugh’s sort of referring to is the idea that it is from a family of coronaviruses that is the family name of these viruses, and, uh, some of them in the past have caused symptoms that were more consistent with, uh, the common cold. But it’s also been the same family of viruses that caused SARS, that called MERS — uh, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

RUSH: I said yesterday there are numerous types of coronavirus. This is coronavirus 19. Now, the official name of is COVID-19. But it’s in common parlance so that even people in Rio Linda can follow along, it’s coronavirus number 19. The fatality rate even in China is 2%. Now, that’s greater than the common cold but less than the flu. It’s a respiratory virus. That’s what it does. It gets into your respiratory system and it causes symptoms like the common cold — or, at worst, the flu — and depending on your age, just like the flu, it can be fatal.

Now, the question about this coronavirus is, “Where’d it come from?” It came from, as best anybody can tell, a lab in Wuhan, China. Now, I don’t know, but there are people who are speculating that the ChiComs were attempting to weaponize this virus, and somebody discovered this. Some scientist, some doctor discovered this independently back in December and tried to warn everybody about what he was seeing, because it looked like a virus that had a human element to it that was weaponized.

That scientist/doctor is now dead. Wuhan, China, is a town of about 11 million. It’s a huge city by American standards. It’s, you know, middle of the road by ChiCom standards. I looked at it on a map. It’s right smack-dab in one of the most populated regions. And just for the sake of your information, the reason why there’s all this talk about hard economic times for Apple and other tech firms that have their products assembled there is because the factories that employ 500,000 people are part of the Wuhan metro area.

That’s why these factories are shut down or were and why the numbers of people returning to work is less than 50%, and that’s why there’s all the talk here about potential economic problems, slowdowns for companies like Apple and so forth, ’cause Wuhan is right smack-dab in the middle of China. It’s a large region. You got a billion people there.

So you could go as far as 500 miles away from Wuhan and still be within a very centralized location where there are many factories that employ that many people who can’t show up for work, who are now starting to trickle back to work. But I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers: The World Health Organization says that the… Let’s see. This is not the one. Yes. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom “Boutros Boutros-Ghali” Ghebreyesus, said yesterday that “while Iran and Italy have reported a surge in coronavirus cases over the last several days” the coronavirus “has not yet met the criteria for a pandemic…”

In fact, Mr. Tedros Boutros Boutros-Ghali “said that the health agency has not found ‘uncontained global spread’ of the virus, and has noted a steady decline in new cases in China…” So it may have peaked at the point of origin, and you know how you know that it’s peaked at the point of origin? Because all of these tech firm factories are opening up, and these factories are now offering all kinds of incentives to get the employees to come back.

The ChiCom government would not be permitting this if the threat were still expanding in the Wuhan area, and let’s call it like a 500-mile radius or 400-mile radius. The ChiComs would still be trying to get a handle on it. You know, a lot of people — you know, cynics everywhere — say it’s weaponized, potentially. China, ChiComs, communist Chinese, what are they doing here? You know, it wouldn’t be bad for them if they lost some of their population. It’s impossible to feed and keep healthy.

Do you know where this virus is rumored to have come from? You may not know this. But food in China is such a different proposition. You try feeding a billion people as a communist economic system. These people eat anything. They eat live bats. They eat live snakes. Do you realize how easily contaminated this stuff can get? That’s where it’s thought that this might have originated.

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RUSH: “Rush, what do you mean that an Ebola czar is just a PR move?” Okay, Ebola czar. Remember when Boko Haram kidnapped a bunch of girls in Africa? What did Michelle Obama do? Come up with a Twitter hashtag called #BringBackOurGirls.

What did that accomplish? Zero! But it sure made everybody think she cared a lot. It felt like they were doing something about it. That’s what I mean by PR move.

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RUSH: Let me share with you a sound bite, again from CNN. This afternoon on Inside Politics. The guest is the national political correspondent from TIME magazine. Her name is Molly Ball. I don’t know whose talking, I don’t know who was asking her anything, John King or whoever. She’s obviously been asked about me and my thoughts on the coronavirus and this was what she said.

BALL: Everybody hopes that Rush is right and this is no more serious than the common cold, and even if lots and lots of people get it, it is not very deadly, but I think there is the potential for a situation, uh, where there’s mass confusion because nobody knows what to believe because this president has such a track record of not necessarily being truthful, that you could have a panic, you could have all kinds of consequences of that.

RUSH: So the coronavirus, we hope Rush is right, but Rush could be wrong because Trump doesn’t tell us the truth. Rush could be wrong because Trump has such a track record of not being truthful that you could have a panic and he would deny it. And so you could end up getting a fatal disease and not know you’re gonna die because Trump is telling you you’re okay.

I’m sorry. This is how they’re covering this. And, meanwhile, it was Obama who told a woman whose mother was a hundred years old (imitating Obama), “No, I don’t think your Mom wanting to live is gonna be a factor in Obamacare. I think at that age, if she gets there, we’ll just give her a pain pill so she’ll be happy. Here’s a happy pill and enjoy the rest of your life.”

Who is it that doesn’t appear to care about people? The idea Donald Trump doesn’t care about people is so asinine. You couldn’t have the trade policy, the economic policy, the tax policy, you couldn’t have the foreign policy Donald Trump has if you didn’t care about the American people. What we’re looking at is a president who actually cares more about the American people than many of the presidents we’ve had in our generation. And I am not exaggerating that.

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RUSH: By the way, in that previous sound bite — I’m not gonna replay it — the one with Sanjay Gupta on CNN, John King says, “So, Dr. Gupta, is the coronavirus the common cold like Dr. Limbaugh says?” And Dr. Gupta says, “Well, you know, I think what Rush was referring to is it’s from a family of…” He did not say I was wrong. Can I ask you a question? You remember the cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan? What was it, the Virus of the Seas? Whatever the name the ship was.

How many people were on board that trip, 2,500 or 3,000?

What percentage of ’em were infected?

Practically 80% of them were infected.

How many have died?

Pfft! Zero.

Fourteen Americans, I think, on that ship have been brought back under quarantine. How many of ’em have died? Look, folks, it is what it is. The media wants it to be what it not yet is. Now, it could be. It could evolve and who knows what it could be. Right now, the media is reporting on the coronavirus as they hope it evolves. They hope for hurricanes on the first day of hurricane season. They hope for Hurricane Katrina so they can say, “Climate change!”

Anything to advance the leftist agenda. Now, the leftist agenda includes getting rid of Trump. They would love for the coronavirus to be this deadly strain that wipes everybody out so they could blame Trump for it. Don’t doubt me on that. If you’ve been paying attention to the mainstream media for the past four years, you can’t doubt me on that. They haven’t reported one thing true about these supposed Trump scandals.

There was no collusion with Russia. There was not a shred of evidence. There was nothing he did wrong to be impeached — zip, zero, nada — and yet look at what they made of it. The news became what they wanted to be true, and because they wanted it to be true, they reported it as true. They’re doing the same thing with the coronavirus. Just be patient. Just, you know, be in control. If it evolves and becomes something very bad, I am confident the United States will be prepared for it because we have competent people in these agencies now.

(sigh)

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RUSH: Okay, here is a confirmation of the Wuhan, China, coronavirus outbreak. The numbers (exactly as I mentioned to you mere moments ago) are 80,419 cases in a city of 11 million plus the surrounding region, 2,711 deaths from COVID-19, which is coronavirus 19. Somebody call Louis Farrakhan. This is coronavirus 19 — and you know in Calypso Louie’s world, 19 unlocks the secret to everything. (impression) “There are 19 steps in the first three feet of the Washington Monument,” or whatever he came up with.

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RUSH: Livonia, Michigan. This is Michael, great to have you. We love calls from Livonia, Michigan. Great people there. How are you?

CALLER: Rush, I want to tell you, first of all, that my family and I are praying every day for you to make a full, fast recovery.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: And easy recovery.

RUSH: Very much.

CALLER: So what prompted my call — we need you, Rush — what prompted my call was, and I don’t want to nitpick too much here on the numbers. I appreciate what you’re doing, but I think a lot of people are concerned, like I am, because we don’t have all the information. Everything I’ve seen — and I’ve been trying to educate myself in a responsible way. And if I’m using sources that you feel are discredited or not valuable, then tell me and we should, you know, know not to use these sources.

But everything I’ve seen, the flu rate, the death rate from the typical flu typically is somewhere between 1 to 2 percent. What we’re seeing right now with coronavirus, COVID-19 in countries like Italy, I think it’s around 3%. In Iran, I think it’s somewhere closer to like 16%. South Korea, we don’t know, but it’s much higher.

And so here’s what I wanted to say to you yesterday. Because I haven’t really heard everything that Trump has said, but as of yesterday I certainly felt when you made the comment that President Trump — that this is somehow being used to try to destroy President Trump, I was thinking, President Trump will hurt himself if he doesn’t get out in front of this and make sure that the public — he needs to instill more confidence in the American public that he understands this, that he has this under control, and that we’re doing the job we should be doing. The last comment —

RUSH: Yeah, let me comment on the Trump thing first. I think Trump is a different ball of wax. If Trump were out there telling you, “I got it controlled. My team’s working on it. We’re doing everything we can,” even though that hasn’t been done yet, would you feel better about it? You probably would. I think Trump’s people, I think the National Institutes of Health, I think all kinds of people are working their butts off on this, and Trump knows not to assure people before it’s time to.

Assuring people that nothing’s gonna go wrong until he knows that would be the biggest mistake in the world. This is what other people do, “We’re working on it, we got it handled, we got a czar. We’re gonna prevent the spread of this.” That’s the total wrong way. Trump is not into PR on these kinds of things. He’s into the reality of it. So I think he’s not talking much about it yet because he’s got nothing really to say about it until he gets reported to by people at various CDC agencies, National Institutes of Health, on what really is going on here.

CALLER: Well, that’s fair. But, like I said, even if he could just simply say that we’re watching it very closely, we’re taking it seriously, even that’s something. I think he was saying yesterday something like the stock market looks great or never better and, meanwhile, it’s dropping a thousand points. But let me mention this ’cause I think this is even more important than the real reason I called.

So I’m looking at a source called pandemic.news. It’s an offshot of NaturalNews.com. The gentleman’s name is Mike Adams. I don’t know if this is credible, but he claims to be using U.S. government and CDC and other U.S. government websites and statistics to prove all his points and he’s got a background in pandemics or in science and health.

So he’s saying, as of yesterday, that there’s hardly any testing going on in the U.S. So, therefore, we don’t really know how many people in the U.S. have this or how serious it is, and the CDC kits are not reliable. I’m not really sure, if this is to be believed, then we don’t yet have a handle on this —

RUSH: Well, I can’t help you ’cause I never heard of the guy. I mean, I know a lot of Mike Adams. Don’t know this guy, don’t know this website. I can’t help you. These are the kind of things that — they’re a challenge. Everybody wants to know more than what is being reported on something. And you glom on. If you’re worried and scared and if you think this is gonna be bad and you run across a site that confirms your fears, then you tend to believe them. It’s the nature of the internet today.

Now, I do have a sound bite — this might make you feel better. This is Dr. Anthony Fauci. We lifted the ban. He was on MSNBC’s ripping me. He’s ripping me for being wrong about this. And here’s what he said about it. This was just this afternoon.

FAUCI: Well, first of all, the common cold rarely, if ever, kills anybody. Rarely. Truly rarely. And even seasonal influenza has a mortality of 0.1%.

RUSH: It’s higher than that.

FAUCI: The current mortality of this outbreak, at least in China, was about two to two and a half percent. That’s serious. So I think it would not be appropriate to say that this is just another common cold because it clearly is not just another common cold.

RUSH: So the long knives are out for your host on CNN and on MSNBC. And the question that Dr. Fauci was asked, I want to share with you from the fill-in host, Chris Jansing. Are you ready for this question? “Dr. Fauci, one of the things the president said today was that I think the whole situation will start working out, and Rush Limbaugh, who is a big supporter of the president, said to his many listeners on his show Monday that we’re basically overstating this, that it’s the common cold.”

So I’m being lumped in with Trump and therefore I can’t be trusted, Trump can’t be trusted. We gotta go to Dr. Anthony Fauci, “Well, it’s a little bit worse than the common cold because of the death rate and so forth.”

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RUSH: The one thing that people do in all of these epidemic, pandemic things, people keep mixing up the mortality rate for the United States with the mortality rate for the rest of the world. And, folks, the mortality rate in the rest of the world is always gonna be higher than it is in the United States. And I’m sorry if that offends anybody, but it’s just the way it is. We’re an advanced society.

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RUSH: So just sitting here watching Fox, and, you know, it’s panic city. CDC — Centers for Disease Control — “U.S. outbreak a question of when, not if. It could be bad. Americans should brace.” “CDC Urges Americans to Prepare for Coronavirus Outbreak: ‘This might be bad.'” It’s a virus. What are you gonna do?

Here’s the substance of the story. “Americans should brace themselves for an outbreak of the deadly coronavirus to upend their daily lives.” That’s a hell of a warning. Snerdley, everybody in there, you need to be prepared for your lives to be upended. (interruption) Well, you better be. You better be. Your life is about to be upended. Do you know what that means? (interruption) No. Your life being upended, it means what’s up is down and what’s down is up, including you. Your life is gonna be upended.

That’s just the first paragraph. Let’s move on to the next one. “‘It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country anymore but a question of when this will happen,’ the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier told reporters.”

Somebody, quick, find out who she donates to politically. M-e-s-s-o-n-n-i-e-r, Dr. Nancy, CDC. I want to find out who she donates to. Next sentence. “We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.” Okay. How would you prepare for something that might be bad? Remember, now, there’s not a coronavirus shot like there is a flu shot. There isn’t one of those. So what are you gonna do?

Next sentence. “Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, outlined what an epidemic here could mean for schools and businesses.” By the way, the number of cases in the United States right now is 57. I just saw it on a map, 57 known cases in the United States.

“She said schools should consider plans to divide students into smaller groups, or use ‘internet-based tele-schooling.'” So keep the kids at home, maybe. Don’t let ’em go to school. Don’t let ’em in the incubator. Now, that could upend your life. Hee-hee-hee-hee. Next sentence. “For adults, businesses can replace in-person meetings with video or telephone conferences and increase teleworking options.”

So the CDC is telling everybody right now keep your kids at home and keep yourself at home and don’t go anywhere, and communicate with people via FaceTime. There are 57 cases, known cases, reported cases in the United States. The CDC on Monday announced — I’m sorry. It’s 53. I was wrong.

“The CDC on Monday announced there are now 53 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US, including people evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan and from the Chinese city of Wuhan.”

So the 53 cases are people who contracted the disease while not here. How many of the 53 have died? It doesn’t say. So we’ll have to just wait see. And now there’s a market sell-off. The Dow was down about 600 points. Now it’s down 824, 825 points. And the Drive-By Media is showing video clips of Donald Trump in India downplaying the coronavirus, saying we’ve got it handled, we’ve authorized two and a half billion dollars to get started on research and planning on this stuff.

Alex Azar, who heads the Department of Health and Human Services, appeared before Congress, said that’s what we’re doing, we’re getting full speed. And that’s when Chuck Schumer said, not enough money, criticized Trump for not caring enough, not putting enough money at it. So that’s that.

So I’m sure a lot of people are going to be appropriately concerned ’cause now you have the CDC telling everybody to stay home, don’t let your kids go to school, start communicating with people on FaceTime or some other teleconference manner that you have. That just isn’t practical. That isn’t going to happen.

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Okay. Back to the audio sound bites. And up next is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. He’s from the famous Emanuel family of Democrat power brokers, including Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, and Ari Emanuel, who’s one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. I’ve met Ari. He’s a nice guy. And he knew who I was. He’s a nice guy.

Now, Zeke Emanuel was very, very, very, very closely tied to the creation of Obamacare during the Obama “adminishration,” as so many Democrat women pronounce the word, “adminishration, schuggle.” He was on CNN Newsroom this afternoon with the infobabe Brooke Baldwin. And she said to Zeke Emanuel, “What do you make of how Trump characterized the virus -” by the way, Trump characterized the virus as “we got it under control. We’re dealing with it. Two and a half billion dollars have been appropriated. We’re gonna study it, we’re gonna keep things under control.”

That’s what Trump said and the media is livid saying that Trump doesn’t care, Trump’s not out front enough, Trump’s not doing enough. Trump said, “Don’t worry, we got it under control.” So here is her question: “What do you make of how Trump characterized the virus?” Here’s Zeke Emanuel.

EMANUEL: It’s gonna get worse before it’s gonna get better and we need to be well aware of that. We’re gonna have more faces before it’s going to taper off and decline, and the idea that we’re not gonna have more than a 50 or a few more cases, that’s just not likely. It is a low-risk situation now, given what we know, the death rate is 2.5%, mainly among old people and people with other complicating diseases like diabetes or heart failure or emphysema, and that seems to be where the real problems are. But we’re gonna have a lot more cases in the United States.

RUSH: It sounds like he’s making my point, does it not? It sounds like old Zeke Emanuel here is kind of making my point, two and a half percent, mainly old people, people with complicated — it’s a respiratory thing. Same thing they say about the flu. The flu is gonna grab you if you’re elderly.

Look, folks, I hate doing this, but I’m gonna do it anyway. I’ve been to a lot of hospitals lately. I’ve been talking to a lot of doctors lately. I’m a naturally curious guy. I was even in the hospital for three or four days with the flu about three weeks ago. And it was the flu. They did the test where they send a probe up your nose and they try to find it. It came back negative. And then they ran a blood test and they found it. And I got fluids and I got all kinds of stuff thrown in me, and I was basically over it in a day, I was able to go home in two days.

And I asked them, and I’ve asked other doctors I’ve been dealing with about this coronavirus, and there’s not a one of them yet that’s been taking it seriously. There’s not a one. Now, admittedly… (interruption) Have I had the corona test? No. I haven’t had the corona. No. But my only point is, in recent weeks, I’ve been asking every doctor I’ve come in contact with because every day the media says we’re gonna die, oh, my God.

It’s a pandemic, not an epidemic, a pandemic, it’s going to soak and clothe the entire world. I’ve been asking, “Are you guys worried about it?”

“Nah, this is basically a Chinese disease because of the way they eat. Nothing is pasteurized, purified, I mean, they eat raw everything. They don’t have any food in China, Rush,” these doctors say. They eat raw bats, they eat raw snakes, unrefrigerated. That’s where this disease comes from.

Now, here’s another thing, folks. As coldhearted as this may sound, the Chinese are a nation of a billion people they can’t feed, losing 3,000 people ain’t any big deal to a communist government, okay? They kill that many in the concentration camps over the course of months. Don’t doubt me. I know you’ve been romanticized in education about communism and how much it cares.

The Chinese communists don’t care if they lose 3,000 citizens. They don’t care to even know their names, it doesn’t matter. The number of people that are in political prison and reeducation camps that are being starved into getting their minds right in China would blow your mind. Try being a Muslim in China. Try being from Tibet, get caught in China, I mean, you’re getting the crap kicked out of you if you just look the wrong way in that country.

So they look at a stat of 80,000 cases, 3,000 dead, that’s a success story in China. Do not doubt me. A communist government has nothing in common with the government of the United States in any which way, matter, or form, including compassion and care for the citizens. In this country it’s the people who make the country. This is one of the problems the Democrats are having is they’ve kind of lost touch with the fact that it’s the people who make the country work, not Washington.

But Trump is totally in touch with that. He respects the people who make the country work. He cares about the people who make the country work. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. That’s what his agenda is. That’s what getting these trade deals right is. That’s what bringing jobs back is all about. That’s what tax cuts and creating wage increases, that’s what it’s all about for Trump.

He’s making America great again and you can’t do that without improving life for the majority of people who live in the country. A great country requires great people accomplishing great things. And too many people in Washington think the world centers around them and that their policies are responsible for this or that and the other thing. And they look down on people in flyover country who actually make the country work.

Well, Trump doesn’t. Do not think for a moment that he’s not concerned about this coronavirus, and do not think for a moment that he’s not got people looking into this. And I’ll guarantee you he didn’t authorize the CDC to start creating a panic like they did today. I mean, I can’t guarantee that, but the last thing in the world that I would believe that he did was authorize something like that. It doesn’t jibe with his press conference today in India about this.

If we lose 3,000 people, it’s a big deal. That is going to be a major problem. If we have stats like that in this country, there’s gonna be hell to pay. Because it’s not necessary in this country. It’s not necessary for people to die from this disease, folks. Not in an advanced country like the United States.

Barring preexisting conditions. Diabetes. Like Zeke Emanuel here says (summarized), “If you’ve got emphysema, if you’ve got a respiratory problem already? Well, this is not a good thing to get. But if you’re young, vibrant, and healthy, you can survive it.” But they’re not telling you that. They’re making it look like (sobbing), “We’re gonna die! Oh, my God. (sniffle) Don’t go to work. Teleconference, telework, do whatever.” We’re not there yet. There are 53 cases. Now, Zeke says it’s gonna be more than that, and it will be. But let’s just see.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Senator Grassley just tweeted the following: “2day I had classified briefing by federal depts/agencies abt the coronavirus After hearing from top levels of govt I’m confident Pres @realDonaldTrump is doing everything needed to keep Americans safe.” That’s Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley in a tweet earlier this morning