RUSH: Okay. Quick question, ladies and gentlemen. What’s the greatest threat to our country, Bernie Sanders or the coronavirus? No, no. I’m serious. I’m serious. What do you think is the biggest threat to this country? There’s no question, it’s exactly right. Bernie Sanders is by far and away the greater threat than the coronavirus. In fact, the World Health Organization, I mean, if you want to believe ’em — it’s the U.N. — they say that the coronavirus in China has peaked, it’s on the way down. I’ve seen this guy on TV. He looks like Boutros Boutros-Ghali, maybe even from the same company — country. Company, whatever.

Greetings, my friends, great to have you with us. El Rushbo behind the Golden EIB Microphone here at the distinguished Limbaugh Institute. Great to have you. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

It is a combination of astounding and pleasurable to read of all the panic in the media over Bernie Sanders. I’m not seeing so much panic in the Democrat Party as I’m seeing panic in the media, but then the media is the Democrat Party and I believe has been the intellectual impetus of the Democrat Party for many, many moons now.

I think the media as an institution of objectivity, fairness, and presenting the news has been absent, long gone for quite a while. In fact, Margaret Sullivan, who used to be the public editor at the New York Times — that’s who you would write to if you wanted to complain about bias in the paper, and you know what would happen to your complaints. She’s not at the New York Times anymore.

She’s the media columnist at the Washington Post. And she’s just come out with her version of the Jim Rutenberg column in 2016 at the New York Times when Rutenberg said, “It’s time to throw away everything we know about journalism. We have to devote ourselves to destroying Donald Trump.”

She has done her version of that for the Washington Post now: It’s time to abandon everything we thought we knew about journalism and create something brand-new that is complete, total advocacy aimed at destroying Donald Trump.

Hey, Sullivan, you’ve already done it. There’s nothing left to do. The media has abandoned whatever its original pretense was more than four years ago. We’ll get into this in great detail as the program unfolds.

But there’s another Democrat debate tonight, and it’s being set up here with the abject panic that you encounter everywhere in the Drive-By Media today over Bernie Sanders. And, you know, it’s kind of funny in a lot of ways. The Democrat Party has actually created one of its biggest problems, and that problem is Bernie Sanders and Super Tuesday. Because after Super Tuesday Bernie Sanders is gonna have an insurmountable delegate lead.

And let’s be honest about something. You can say Bloomberg Doomberg all you want, and you can talk about his money, but what’s Bloomberg missing? What’s he missing? Fire in the belly. Bloomberg is missing the raw desire you have to have to win this office. What’s my evidence? He didn’t get into it until six to nine months of it had already gone by. He gets into it after a lot of delegates are chosen. He gets into it with no chance of having any serious delegate victory in Super Tuesday. He gets into it and does nothing but spend his money to try to impact something or other.

The fire in the belly is what’s missing. Bloomberg just doesn’t have it. I don’t care if you’re a Bloomberg fan, I hate to disappoint you, but he could not do one-third of Donald Trump’s average day. There aren’t very many other people that could, either, but Bloomberg couldn’t. He doesn’t want to. That’s the difference. He doesn’t want to. And you can see it.

So whatever Bloomberg does and whatever he’s gonna end up meaning as a factor in all this, it isn’t gonna be to propel himself. It’s too late. And, you know, all of these secret recordings are coming out. They continue to drop embarrassing things. Now they’ve got him on tape ripping into Obama. That isn’t gonna sit well with the Democrats out there.

But what the Democrats did, by front loading Super Tuesday, putting California in it, they have dug their own grave. By putting California — that’s 400 and some odd delegates. Now, it’s not winner-take-all in California. That’s the only saving grace. Delegates in the California primary are apportioned according to how the votes are tallied candidate to candidate. It’s not winner-take-all. It’s a lot of delegates, though, and Crazy Bernie is gonna get the lion’s share of them.

And nobody in the media is pointing this out. Nobody is pointing out the Democrats created their own nightmare here by putting so many of their big-state primaries, moving them forward into Super Tuesday. I mean, this thing, for all intents and purposes, could be over next Tuesday, and then the fun really begins as the Democrats in the media begin to devise ways of sabotaging Crazy Bernie in the remaining months to the Democrat convention.

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RUSH: Let me just give you some of the headlines of these panic stories.

Here first, New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait. This guy… He’s a leftist; so he escapes this characterization. This guy just hates us, folks. He just hates conservatives, Republicans, hates Trump. Headline: “If Democrats Aren’t Terrified of Bernie, They Are Not Paying Attention.” From TheHill.com’s The Memo: “Democrat Rivals Have Seven Days to Stop” Crazy Bernie. Washington Post, Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel. “Get Ready for the Anti-Sanders Media Avalanche,” and from Thomas “Loopy” Friedman of the New York Times:

“Dems, Want to Defeat Trump? Form a Team of Rivals.” Wait ’til… This guy’s off his rocker. The precise reason they’re in trouble is ’cause they can’t do what Thomas “Loopy” Friedman wants them to do. He also wants the United States to become more like China. And there’s an internal poll from the Bloomberg campaign showing that Bernie would sink Democrats down the ballot — House, Senate, mayor, comptroller, dogcatcher, you know, what have you. He’d wipe ’em out.

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RUSH: This is Gideon in Greenwich, Connecticut. I’m glad you called. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush.

RUSH: Hey.

CALLER: You said Christina (sic) vanden Heuvel predicts there will be a media war on Bernie, but I think she’s half right. I think they will pursue that for a little while, but once he’s in, once this happens, I think they will coalesce around him. They will rally around that guy like we’ve never seen, ’cause you said a few weeks ago: They’re not afraid of him because he might win. They’re afraid of him ’cause he might lose.

RUSH: Exactly.

CALLER: I agree with everything. There’s not… Is there a point…? Is there a single part of Bernie’s philosophy that a typical, leftist media member —

RUSH: Let me read a portion of this piece to you and get your reaction to it, okay? What Gideon is reacting to is there’s a column in the Washington Post today by a well-known communist. Her name is Katrina vanden Heuvel. She is the daughter of some wealthy New York communist. She married a guy named Steve Cohen from Princeton who loves the Russians and loves the Soviets. She’s all-in on the Soviets — well, Russia becoming the Soviet Union again. She loves ’em.

We called her Hurricane Katrina, ’cause she didn’t like that. Her name is Katrina vanden Heuvel. Katrina is a Russian name, as you well know. It’s an Eastern Bloc name. It’s all in there, and the headline of her piece: “Get Ready for the Anti-Sanders Media Avalanche — Bernie Sanders’s resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses — and the Vermont senator’s sweep of the popular vote in the first three primaries — makes him the early front-runner…”

Dadelut! Dadelut! Dadelut!

“A self-professed ‘democratic socialist’ leading the race? Get ready for red-baiting, slander and just plain silliness. Politicians can’t help themselves. The question is whether the media will pile on — or provide common sense. The early returns aren’t encouraging.” She loves Crazy Bernie. She is afraid that the media is going to turn negative on him and try to savage him. That’s what she’s worried about. You think that after enough time goes by, the media will sign on like they have AOC and they’ll be all-in for Bernie? That’s your theory?

CALLER: They will not even allow Bernie to call himself — they won’t use his title — “socialist” anymore. That will be dropped. He will be completely sanitized. I can’t remember reading a negative leftist media story about AOC, ever, and I think Bernie will get the same treatment. He will be frustrated. He’ll say (impression), “Stop calling me a Democrat. I’m a socialist!” But that’s what they’re gonna call him.

RUSH: Hey, that’s pretty good. Say that again. That was pretty good. Say that again.

CALLER: “Stop calling me a socialist.” I mean, “I’m a socialist. Stop calling me a Democrat.”

RUSH: Better the first time but still good.

CALLER: Ha-ha-ha! By the way, there’s never been a better name for a political rally (sic) than Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

RUSH: Boutros Boutros. (laughing) By golly, why not? Look, you got Carville. You think Carville’s gonna end up becoming pro-Bernie?

CALLER: No. Carville will be a holdout ’cause he’s a Marine, for God’s sake.

RUSH: Well, if Carville’s a holdout, there’s gonna be a bunch of ’em that are holdouts. Your theory makes sense. ‘Cause at the end of the day, the enemy will remain Trump, and if Crazy Bernie’s the only way to get rid of him, then they’ll unify behind him. That’s the odds, anyway.

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RUSH: This is New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait. Now, this guy is highly reputed and respected on the left. He is considered one of their biggest brains, and he hates us. He thinks Republicans and conservatives are as close to subhuman as you can get — and that’s, I guess, one of the reasons why he’s revered. “If Democrats Aren’t Terrified of Bernie, They’re Not Paying Attention.”

Let me give you a couple of pull quotes to illustrate why Jonathan Chait is in full-fledged panic mode over Crazy Bernie winning. Pull quote number one: “Watching the Brexit debacle from afar, it seemed impossible to understand how the Labour Party could know full well it needed to win a national election in order to prevent an irreversible setback, yet harness itself to Jeremy Corbyn, whose toxic leadership made victory nearly impossible,” and they did.

This guy, Jeremy Corbyn, is Crazy Bernie on steroids. He’s just a genuine left-wing lunatic/mainstream Democrat. But he was so toxic that not even the British left could stomach the guy. So Chait continued: “The rise of Bernie Sanders, at a moment when Donald Trump is accelerating his war on the rule of law…” What? (sputtering) What — what — what? “Donald Trump is accelerating his war on the rule of law”? It must be immigration he’s talking about.

See, the lefties don’t like enforcing the law on illegal immigration.

“A liberal party drifting helplessly along as a small radical cabal steers it toward likely catastrophe? I didn’t think it could happen here,” he writes, but that’s what he thinks is happening: “A liberal party” the Democrats” drifting helplessly along as a small radical cabal” led by Crazy Bernie “steers it toward likely catastrophe.” Another pull quote: “The Democratic primary can be seen as a series of candidates goading each other to jump into the lion’s den.

“All the candidates have exposed themselves by taking at least a few unpopular positions, but none have gone quite as far as Sanders. What makes Bernie’s profile uniquely toxic is the way his liabilities all reinforce each other. He combines discrete, deeply unpopular policy positions with an unpopular socialist label, which in turn reinforce the fact that his campaign is premised on radically changing the economy, the one thing most voters believe Trump has done well.

“His historic statements praising various leftist dictators reinforce the impression of kookery.” Impression of kookery? He is a kook! Bernie Sanders as an abject kook. “His historic statements praising various leftist dictators…” See, the Democrat Party has always loved leftist dictators. They just haven’t said so. It’s only yesterday I told you how Ted Kennedy was working with Soviet leaders to undermine Ronald Reagan.

It was the Democrat Party that was attempting to help the Soviet Union establish a beachhead in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Ditto Grenada at the same time. It was the Democrat Party that got very mad when Daniel Ortega of the Sandanistas embarrassed them by flying off to Moscow for some money after the Democrats voted in favor of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas in the 1980s. The idea that the Democrat Party is not friendly with various leftist dictators is absurd.

What do you expect? It’s not just Bernie Sanders fascinated with Castro. All of Hollywood’s fascinated with Castro. All of Hollywood’s fascinated with Che Guevara. All of Hollywood was fascinated with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It isn’t unusual for Democrats and their celebrity figureheads to love dictators. It’s common. I’m sorry, folks, if I’m yelling, but it’s just me trying to be forceful. This idea that Crazy Bernie’s an outlier and is embarrassing to Democrats by praising Castro?

They’ve all praised Castro, particularly against American presidents like Nixon and Reagan. You’ve got Michael Moore running around doing documentary films on the superiority of the Cuban health care system, for crying out loud. It’s mainstream Democrat Party belief to sidle up to and support left-wing dictators. I don’t know what Chait’s concerned about here. Bernie Sanders is no different.

The only thing different is he’s the first guy to actually look like he might get the Democrat nomination talking about this stuff. But I’ll guaran-damn-tee you that Barack Obama… Look at the efforts Obama made to normalize relationships with Cuba. Look at the efforts that Mondale was making during the campaign against Reagan in 1984. Look at the Democrat Party’s forever alliance with Erich Honecker in East Germany. My golly, folks. (sigh) I mean, it would actually be more uncommon to find a Democrat speaking out against these people.

Who do you think wears the Che Guevara T-shirts around? Who do you think is it that lionized Castro all these years and claimed that Castro was a victim of United States imperialism? Okay. So Crazy Bernie’s all-in on it. He honeymoons in Moscow in the eighties and lionizes Fidel Castro today, praises Castro for a “literacy program.” As I said yesterday, Castro’s literacy program was the imposition of propaganda and indoctrination on Cuban kids.

It was the selling of communism and the glory of the state! It wasn’t a literacy program. They had to learn to read this stuff or else they’d go to gulags, or their parents would. There is starvation rampant in communist countries, including China today, including Venezuela, including Cuba — and wherever there are vestiges of it anywhere in the world, you’re gonna find misery, discontent, and people desperate to escape where they live.

Where do they all want to go? Right here, United States of America, which — to the Democrat Party — is the destabilizing agent of the world because of our superpower status. To the Democrat Party, it’s the United States that’s causing all the misery in Cuba and all misery in Venezuela and all the problems in China. It’s our superpower status and the fact that we’re so rich and so much more powerful that we have stolen so much to become what we are, which is bogus.

This idea that Bernie Sanders is some oddball outlier? Don’t fall for it. He is mainstream Democrat Party. So this headline: “If Democrats Aren’t Terrified of Bernie, They’re Not Paying Attention.” Let me give you one more pull quote from this piece just to illustrate what I was just saying. Quote: Bernie “Sanders is a completely unique asset for the left…” No, he isn’t. He is as common as you are, Chait!

“Sanders is a completely unique asset for the left — a proud socialist who holds national office — who will be too old to run again by the next election (if he isn’t too old already), and who has no short-term successor. They have every incentive to imagine away his many flaws and seize on the real but unlikely possibility he can defy the odds and win. What is shocking is observing how many other progressives have joined in this fantasy with them.”

(Snort!) This is not a fantasy. It is a dream come true to these people, Mr. Chait! You know what’s amazing? Not even the people in the middle of this pro-socialist, communist-sympathetic party realize what they are. They think Bernie’s an outlier. They think Bernie’s an oddball kook who’s gonna take ’em all down. I’ll tell you, it’s easier to find a Democrat sympathetic to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez than it is to find a Democrat who opposes them.

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RUSH: Back now to the stories that I accumulated here on the panic related to Bernie Sanders. The next one in my Stack is by Niall Stanage today at the Hill, and the headline: “Democrat Rivals Have Seven Days to Stop Sanders — Rival candidates have just a week to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders if they hope to prevent the Independent from Vermont from taking the party’s presidential nomination.”

Now, why seven days? What is it? Well, because of Super Tuesday coming up a week from today. If they don’t stop Bernie by – (interruption) How do you stop him? “His current trajectory is set to carry him to at least a top-two finish in South Carolina’s primary Saturday. From there, he looks likely to roll through Super Tuesday on March 3, harvesting huge numbers of delegates from California and other large states.

“It is eminently plausible that, by the end of that night, Sanders will have jumped out to a delegate lead that none of his rivals can reel in — especially given the likelihood that more than a half-dozen other major candidates remain in the race.”

Four hundred fifteen delegates in California. It’s not winner-take-all there, but if he wins most of the popular vote, he’ll get most of the delegates. Seven days to stop Crazy Bernie.

So here is the piece de resistance — a little French lingo there. Thomas “Loopy” Friedman from the New York Times, who believes that the United States needs to have a government more like the ChiComs, 11 or 12 really smart people making all the decisions about everything, and Friedman thinks that he should be one of the 11 or 12. Because he was in an Obama workshop on employment even though his expertise is supposedly foreign policy.

So his idea is, “Democrats, you want to defeat Trump, you need to form a team of rivals.” You know, this is a takeoff on Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Lincoln’s cabinet was composed of a bunch of people that didn’t like each other, and some of them didn’t like Lincoln. And the theory was that if you have a team of rivals in there, that you’ll eventually find the truth and the solution to any problem because you’ll find a way to weed out all the bias.

So Friedman — when I first saw the headline, I didn’t quite know quite what this meant. “Form a team of rivals” to defeat Trump. “If this election turns out to be just between -” get this, by the way. This is the opening sentence. “If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that?”

So Trump is an undiagnosed sociopath, and Crazy Bernie is a self-proclaimed socialist. He’s actually self-proclaimed communist. So Thomas “Loopy” Friedman says, “That’s all I am thinking about right now. My short answer is that the Democrats have to do something extraordinary — forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before. And that’s true even if Democrats nominate someone other than Bernie Sanders.

“What would this super ticket look like? Well, I suggest Sanders — and Michael Bloomberg, who seems to be his most viable long-term challenger — lay it out this way: I want people to know that if I am the Democratic nominee these will be my cabinet choices — my team of rivals.” He’s stealing here from Lincoln.

“I want Amy Klobuchar as my vice president. Her decency, experience and moderation will be greatly appreciated across America and particularly in the Midwest. I want Mike Bloomberg (or Bernie Sanders) as my secretary of the Treasury.” Bernie Sanders as secretary of the Treasury? Bernie Sanders as — ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ha! There won’t be a Treasury. It will be empty! There won’t be any money anywhere.

Folks, this is out… (laughing) This is incredible. “I want Mike Bloomberg (or Bernie Sanders) as my secretary of the Treasury. Our plans for addressing income inequality are actually not that far apart,” Bloomberg’s and Bernie’s aren’t (this guy’s insane), “and if we can blend them together it will be great for the country and reassure markets. I want Joe Biden as my secretary of state.” Thomas, he doesn’t know where he is! He thinks he’s running for the Senate now!

He thinks he talked to with Deng Xiaoping yesterday. You want this guy as your secretary of state? I guess that’s to continue to cover-up whatever’s going on in Ukraine with Hunter Biden. “No one in our party knows the world better or has more credibility with our allies than Joe Biden.” Man, these people have lost it. Nobody knows…? “No one in our party knows the world better or has more credibility with our allies than Joe.

“I will ask Elizabeth Warren to serve as health and human services secretary. No one could bring more energy and intellect to the task of expanding health care for more” American Indians, uh, “Americans than Senator Warren. I want Kamala Harris for attorney general. … I would like Mayor Pete as homeland security secretary… I am asking Cory Booker … to become secretary of housing and urban development.”

This guy is literally suggesting every Democrat you’ve ever heard of pledge right now to be part of whatever administration the nominee is.

That’s the only way to beat Trump.

Oh, and, by the way, folks, I was not asking rhetorically. Let me go back to the CDC story. I’ll find it here. (shuffling papers) Here we go. Remember I asked somebody to look up who does Dr. Nancy Messonnier donate to? Well, let me tell you. “Dr. Nancy Messonnier’s sister,” or, I guess, brother, “is Rod Rosenstein.” Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who’s urging everybody to not go to school and stay home and teleconference all your communications.

“Nancy Messonnier’s,” it says, “sister is Rod Rosenstein.” But that can’t be, because Rosenstein is not a woman, so I’m assuming it means “brother” here. There’s a reason I asked this question. So you’ve got here the CDC urging Americans to prepare for a coronavirus virus outbreak. “This might be bad, could be bad. Keep your kids at home. Don’t go anywhere. It might be bad. We’ve got 53 cases. It might be bad.

“It could be! The stock market’s plunging.” Okay. This person running this agency, who does she donate to? Well, her brother is Rod Rosenstein. I’m guessing. Let me check. I need to double-check this, ’cause what I’m seeing here is “Messonnier’s sister is Rod Rosenstein.” Unless Rosenstein’s had a sex-change operation, that can’t be right.

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RUSH: Okay. I clarified this. Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control — which today warned it could be bad, it might be bad, don’t go to school and don’t go to work, stay home and teleconference — is the sister of the former deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Well, take that; do what you want with it. It may mean nothing. Might… Who knows? It’s just in that town, I’m telling you, everything is incestuous. Most of that town is establishment oriented or rooted, which means they despise Trump.