RUSH: Again, just to repeat, I had to run through some things pretty quickly. Germany is reopening all of its shops and allowing soccer. Italy, Spain, and France have eased their lockdowns after the hot spots in those countries have now seen a record low number of coronavirus cases.

So, my point is that lockdowns are being lifted all over the world, not just here in the United States. And there is mounting pressure to keep states closed, to keep the lockdown on and in place in the United States, primarily in Democrat-run states. And we all know what the reason for this is. There is an ongoing effort to retard the American economic recovery, if you want to call it that, whatever the renewed economic activity is. And it’s breathtaking to behold. It really is.

You know, people talk about we gotta cross the aisle, we gotta show people that we can work together, we gotta demonstrate that we can make sure the government can work. We can’t even unify on a pandemic. Now, it actually doesn’t surprise me at all because I know the American left. I know them backwards and forwards. I know today’s Democrat Party. And I know what their political objectives are.

And I’m just telling you, they don’t care capitalism’s taken a hit. In fact, there’s some things happening in this situation that they have been secretly hoping would happen someday, somehow. Socialists by design don’t like capitalism. They’ve been looking for ways to damage it, destroy it. This thing has come along, it’s a godsend to many people on the left.

If you have people who consider the United States as the problem in the world, because the United States is too big, it’s too big a superpower, it’s too big economically, it’s just not fair, something like this comes along and can cut the United States down to size. There are plenty of people in this country, most of them in the Democrat Party who are all for it.

Don’t believe me. I mean, it may be something you don’t want to believe. Just take a look at where states are shut down, will continue to be shut down, where governors don’t want to open them up. Ask what party they’re in and ask what could the reasons for this continued lockdown and the continued destruction of people’s economic fortunes and lives, what could that be about? What purpose does it serve? Because, believe me, it serves a purpose.

Keeping a state locked down, keeping people in financial ruin with no opportunity to go back to work, it does serve a particular political objective. And that objective, of course, is beating Donald Trump in November. It sounds simplistic to some of you, but it is the case.

Now, I mentioned earlier in the program the U.K. Guardian. There’s a column here by somebody named Francine Prose. I’ve never heard of her, don’t even know if she’s a real person, a pseudonym or whatever. But the piece is entitled, “Will Americans Ever Forgive Trump For His Heartless Lack Of Compassion?” The subhead is: “While the nation grieves, the U.S. president has spent less than five minutes expressing compassion for those who are suffering. … And yet we can’t help thinking how much less worried we would be if a humane, competent, well-informed adult was making the decisions that affect us all.”

Now, that intrigues me because I want to ask you, just point-blank. Take everything that’s happening and leave it in place. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening and what you think the immediate future — in other words, do you think Major League Baseball will play this season?

Do you think the NFL will kick off with fans in the stands? Whatever. If you think yes, fine. If you think no, whatever. Whatever you think of the current circumstances, would you be thinking differently, would you be less worried if somebody were in the White House expressing compassion for people who are suffering? Would it change your attitude about any of this? “What, are you against compassion?” No, I’m not against compassion. Don’t put words in my mouth.

I’m asking, what good does it do in the context of what we’re talking about here? By the way, will Americans ever forgive Trump for his heartless lack of compassion, where has it been established that he is heartless? So there’s a gigantic presumption that kicks this whole thing off, which is that Trump is a heartless SOB and that Americans know it and Trump needs to get their forgiveness quick because Trump is making this worse. Trump is making this worse because he doesn’t have any compassion for the people suffering. The nation is grieving.

Now, what is Trump doing? Well, you can define compassion in a whole bunch of different ways. But can optimism be compassion? I know that Trump refuses to get caught up in pessimism. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to be identified with it. He doesn’t want to be involved in things that create panic. So Trump will oftentimes be optimistic because he thinks that’s far more productive and much more helpful for people than to sit there and wring his hands together and talk about how sad he is because there are certain things that you just assume.

Nobody is happy with the number of people who have died here. Nobody is happy with the number of people who are sick. Should you have to say that for people to understand that about you? Let me give you an example. This happened when I was out. Do you remember the brouhaha that erupted after Trump, at one of the briefings, talked about the possibility of injecting Clorox or whatever it was? You remember the outrage over this? You remember people talking about how dumb and stupid and, “Oh, my God. How embarrassing, Trump’s actually out there, and he looked at the Scarf Queen and he’s asking her to confirm they could someday shoot people up with Lysol. It’s dangerous. This guy is an absolute idiot. He’s stupid,” people were saying.

Now, what happened? What happened is that Trump was briefed on some news that was announced — who was the guy, what department was it? Was it FEMA? Somebody made an announcement at that briefing that they had discovered the virus doesn’t do well in high temperatures, it doesn’t do well on surfaces, it lasts 30 seconds with disinfectant, Clorox, whatever it was. Well, Trump had been briefed on all that a mere couple of minutes before the briefing had started.

Now, I don’t believe that Donald Trump actually thinks or thought or wants to shoot anybody up with Lysol or Clorox. What Donald Trump is is a can-do kind of person. And if he hears that this virus is wiped out in 30 seconds with exposure to whatever it was, Clorox, then his mind is gonna, “Okay. So how do we apply that?” And he thinks out loud. “How do we apply that? If that kills it, then how do we apply that to people who have it?”

He thinks out loud. He’s not literally thinking of shooting people up with whatever these disinfectants are. And yet the assumption was that he was thinking that. The assumption was that he’s so stupid and he’s such a fool that he literally wanted to go grab a patient and get a syringe and put some Clorox in there and have Dr. Birx shoot the person up and zap the virus.

And yet everybody reacted to it as though he is that stupid, that he is that heartless, that he is that. I have encountered that side of Donald Trump on the day of the State of the Union in which Kathryn and I were his guests and I got the Presidential Medal of Freedom. You would not believe what all had to happen for me to get to Washington that day, and none of it would have happened were it not for him making it happen, things that you would say are impossible to get done in two hours or three, cannot do. He did it all. He’s a can-do kind of person. He doesn’t have “no, can’t” or something negative in his makeup.

So when he goes about these briefings — yeah, the briefer was the homeland security undersecretary for science, Bill Bryan. It was Bill Bryan that came out and told everybody what happened to the virus in high humidity and high temperatures, certain kinds of disinfectants and so forth. All Donald Trump is is a problem solver. And he likes to encourage people. He likes to inspire people. He likes to get people moving. And he does think things that a lot of people think can’t be done can be.

And he doesn’t just sit there and think it. If he’s dealing with somebody who thinks something can’t be done, he’s gonna try to tell ’em it can. The mistake here was to do this impromptu, ad-lib, in front of the cameras. But I guarantee you that had the cameras not been there and had Trump learned this, he would have been asking, “Is there some way we can apply this? Is there some way we can take what you’ve just learned here and apply it to the way we’re treating people with the virus?”

He doesn’t mean shoot ’em up with disinfectant or poison. “Is there something to learn here?” Well, the reaction to this was just so over the top. You remember it. Trump’s an idiot. Trump’s foolish. Trump’s this. Trump’s that. It was so bad that Trump himself, his staff, “You gotta go out there, you gotta fix this.” So they went out there the next day and Trump said, “I was being sarcastic. I was being sarcastic with the media. I was asking a sarcastic question.” That’s obviously not what he was doing.

I wish I had been in the meeting to formulate the strategy, the procedure here for dealing with this, because, believe me, it could have been converted into a total positive. The reason I’m bringing all this is up is because we have a piece here in the U.K. Guardian, “Will Americans Ever Forgive Trump For His Heartless Lack Of Compassion?”

The last thing Donald Trump is is heartless and the last thing he has none of is compassion. It is the exact opposite. Donald Trump believes everybody’s capable of greatness. He believes that everybody’s capable of accomplishing things. He doesn’t believe in sitting around and rubbing people’s shoulders and saying, “It’s okay. You suck. You’re never gonna amount to anything, but I’ll make you feel better about it.”

He doesn’t believe in that. He believes in inspiring people, getting the most out of people, particularly people that work for him, particularly for people that can’t do things that he needs done or that he can’t do himself. He needs those people to come through. “We can’t help thinking how much less worried we would be if a humane, competent, well informed adult was making the decisions that affect us.”

And here’s another pull quote from this piece. And yet “we’ve learned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned away refugees from Hitler’s Europe, we can still imagine how comforting it was, for those who lived through the Great Depression, hearing his radio speeches.” Oh, so people were suffering in the Great Depression, they’d lost everything, but somehow listening to Roosevelt on the radio made ’em feel better. Maybe it made them feel better, but it did not change their circumstances.

My mother used to get real mad at me. She’d make me eat everything on the plate. I’m sure yours did too. And if I didn’t do it she would say things like, “You know, there are people on the other side of the earth over in China starving. They would love that.” I said, “So, Mom, let me ask you, if I eat everything on this plate, are some Chinese kids gonna be rubbing their stomachs going, ‘Man, I feel so full now?'”

“You smart aleck. You be quiet. You don’t sass your mother that way.”

I said, “I’m sorry. Explain to me how my eating something is gonna fill up a bunch of ChiCom bellies.” “Wow, Rush, you are really -” I’m just Mr. Realville, folks. And I know exactly what Trump was doing. This idea here that the American people cannot function, we can’t function unless there’s somebody like Bill Clinton talking to us and making us feel like somebody cares about our pain and so forth, the assumption being that if I don’t tell you I know you’re suffering, then there’s no way I know you’re suffering. That’s ridiculous.

Empathy, which is another thing they claim that Trump does not have any of. And let me just tell you, you could not do a rally, you could not perform, you couldn’t host, you couldn’t execute a Trump rally as Trump if you didn’t have empathy as the primary ingredient, outside of the talent necessary to be able to speak for an hour and a half, two hours. Throw that out, you know, you have the talent to do that. But without the ability to empathize with audience and keep ’em glued into what you’re doing.

The idea that Trump is some orange man ogre is again a manufactured image just as was the image of George W. Bush was a stupid idiot cowboy who, by the way, they now all of a sudden love ’cause George W. Bush went out there, cut a little video on unity. And they all thought it was a slap at Mr. Orange Man. Snerdley, did you think Trump actually wanted to grab a patient and inject Lysol? All right. It was absolutely stupid.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Let me expand on something. I got an email, “What do you mean you’ve experienced this with Trump?” State of the Union, the day of the State of the Union address, I’m hearing about it, the first thing is 10 o’clock in the morning, “You’ve gotta get here,” he says, “You’ve gotta get here.”

I said, “I can’t. I’ve got a surgical procedure that is scheduled for 5 p.m. today. It is a full-fledged full anesthesia surgical procedure.”

He said, “What is the procedure?”

I told him what it was. I’m not gonna tell you because of HIPAA and privacy and all that. He wanted the name of the doctor. “Can’t you just have the surgeon do some of it tonight and the rest of it tomorrow? Give me his name. I’ll call him.” So here I am, I’ve gotta do a 5 p.m. — it’s scheduled– you know what surgeries are in hospitals. And if you miss it, you know, how soon can you reschedule. And this had to be done. This had to be done. I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10 necessity, this is like a nine and a half.

And he’s saying, “Your health comes first. Your health comes first. Obviously, your health comes first. Look. Give me the guy’s name. I’ll call him. We’ll get some of this done. You could do some of it this afternoon, right? And then we’ll finish it up tomorrow after you get back.”

He wasn’t gonna take no for an answer. This is whatever it takes to get this done. Nothing is impossible. Well, it turns out we were able to reschedule the surgical procedure for 6 a.m. the next day because the hospital, the doctors were highly flexible, cooperative when they found out what the reason for this was.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We keep hearing, “We need people who think outside the box. We need people who come up with new ideas, new ways of doing things,” and then when they show up, “Oh, my God. We can’t deal with this! This is nuts. This guy’s a lunatic. This guy’s a wacko,” and we want people to go back inside the box where we feel more comfortable.

I’m gonna tell you something, folks. I think that a lot of people have never really been close to the kind of people to whom anything is possible. Let’s be honest. Let’s face it. Most people, it’s just the way we’re built. Pessimism. Negativism. It’s the norm. Optimism is the exception. People… How can you get rich writing books on how to think positively? But look at the people that do.

Because it’s hard to do, apparently. It isn’t natural. Pessimism is. Pessimism, negativity, thinking something isn’t gonna work, thinking you’re not gonna work, thinking you can’t do something is natural. Don’t worry about it. Everybody thinks this way. The people that don’t are rare, and Trump happens to be one of those people that do not think that you can’t do something.

He doesn’t think that something that would be a miracle is impossible. He doesn’t think that things, by definition, can’t be done. He thinks just the exact opposite. If you don’t have experience being around those kinds of people, they’re gonna scare you. You’re gonna think that they’re not attached to reality.

You’re gonna think that they’re really odd and weird and dangerous, and it’s all a matter of what your experience is. It’s why I’ve always said when people ask me… It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but during the early days of this program — maybe halfway through it — people asked, “What career advice could you give for me?”

The first thing I would tell ’em is, “Whatever you do, avoid the people who have failed in this business. They are everywhere, they are bitter, and they don’t want you to succeed. They will tell you how the business is unfair. They will tell you how it will eat you up, spit you up, chew you out, whatever.
“You’ve got to find the people who’ve succeeded, who are successful, and pick their brain and make them explain things to you three times, ’cause on the third time they’ll be telling you the truth. But it’s an absolute mistake to speak to people who are angry or who have failed at whatever it is you want to do ’cause they’re everywhere.”

I’m just telling you if you have a chance — and I’m sure many of you have — to encounter somebody who thinks that anything is possible… I’m not talking about irrational impossibilities as being possible. I’m talking about average, ordinary, everyday things that most people think, “That’s too hard. I don’t think that can be done.

“I don’t know that I could do it. I don’t know that we want to go to the trouble of doing it,” versus somebody who says, “Oh. That? Fine. Let’s go do it.” If you have very little experience being around people like that, then when you are around somebody like that, they’re gonna scare you. You’re gonna think, “Man, this person is a nut,” simply because people like that are…

Well, they’re more common than you know, but there’s not enough of them that you’ll run into ’em by accident every day of your life, and Trump happens to be one of those kinds of people. He’s just not wired to go first to the “why this can’t be done, why it shouldn’t be done, why that person can’t do what needs to be done.”

He just doesn’t think that way. It really isn’t… To me, it’s not even controversial or complicated, but you get yourself in a corporate bureaucratic setting where conformed and not rocking the boat are the keys to survival, then someone like Donald Trump is gonna scare the hell out of you. He’s the definition of thinking outside the box.