RUSH: Get this, last night on MSNBC, Brian Williams read a tweet: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million.” And then somebody from the New York Times editorial board, Mara Gay, chimed in, “It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing.”

Uhhh, no. He spent $500 million on ads. Run the numbers here, Wendy. Let’s run the numbers together. Math is not hard. You’re a smart woman. It’s $500 million. The Population is 300 million, 327 million Americans. You got 327 million Americans and $500 million. If you’re gonna divvy that up equally, how much is every American gonna get? The answer’s $1.53, and yet here they are at MSNBC suggesting that since Bloomberg spent $500 million and the population of America’s 327 million, that every American could have been given $1.5 million by Bloomberg.

The point they’re trying to make is he wasted all this money and got elected to zilch, zero, nada. He wins American Samoa. I don’t think you can even live on that island, can you? (interruption) You can? Okay. So he wins American Samoa, spending $500 million. How much did the Russians spend trying to meddle? What did Mueller find? Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians for spending $150,000 and then $300,000 on Facebook ads. That’s what Mueller indicted the Russians for doing: $150,000 here, $300,000 there on Facebook ads.

Bloomberg spends $500 million — a half a billion dollars — and got nothing for it. And yet the Russians were somehow, with one-tenth, one one-hundredth of what Bloomberg spent were able to rig the 2016 election? Anyway, this is striking ignorance on the part of these people at MSNBC. You know, we do quick math calculations here on this program, and I’m not the best at doing quick math in my head which is why I always have somebody else do it while I’m talking about it, ’cause I’m invariably wrongdoing these numbers in my head.

Some people are good with numbers. I’m not. Not in my head. You give me time to write ’em down, do ’em on a calculator, and I can handle it like anybody. But this is not hard. You have $500 million and you have 327 million people, how in the world do you think that that equals $1.5 million per person? That would cost… If you’re gonna give 327 million people $1.5 million each, you’ve gotta multiply 327 million by $1.5 million, and you’ve got zeros — more zeros there than you can count.

So you’ve got these guys on MSNBC talking about how, “Well, Bloomberg, boy, he’s really selfish! He could have given everybody $1.5 million. He could have wiped out poverty!” No. Sorry. See, that’s the thing. People think wiping out poverty, wiping out homelessness wouldn’t be all that expensive because of stupidity like this. You look at how much we spend on Social Security. Can I give you an example?

I used to do this all the time back when the Democrats made a big deal out of the Republicans routinely wanting to cut people’s Social Security. Do you realize how much it took, how much of a budget increase it took to give every Social Security recipient $20 additional every month? It took billions! It took billions of dollars to give every Social Security recipient an additional 20, 25 measly bucks a month.

The bottom line is you can’t give people enough money to wipe out poverty. They have to work. People have to be productive. People have to be self-reliant, and they have to be able to produce for themselves, their families or whatever. There isn’t enough money to give it away. We’re too many people if you start running the numbers on this kind of stuff. They said, “Well, he spent $500 million! There are 327 million Americans; that’s $1.5 million!” How do you get there? I mean, that’s a basic computation!

But somebody in the New York Times editorial board is chiming in, “That’s exactly right! That is an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing.” No, what’s disturbing is the level of abject ignorance, literal ignorance — I’m not even talking about stupidity here, literal ignorance — that has found its way to the upper echelons of elite America. Elite journalism, elite corporate entities, elite wherever you want to go, the degree of ignorance…

You know what the ignorance is rooted to? Political bias. These guys literally that the billionaires and billionaires, if they just share it, if they just trickle it down, just give it away, we can wipe out poverty. They have no idea the amount of money we’re talking about, no idea whatsoever how the… If they want to start talking about everybody giving away what they’ve got… You know the old saw — and it’s still pretty much true. It hasn’t changed much. You could confiscate, not tax…

You could confiscate all wealth over a million dollars, and you know how long you could run the country? Barely two weeks. I’m not talking about taxing it at a certain rate. You go take it. You go take Bloomberg’s $60 billion and then you take Gates’ $80 billion and you take Buffett’s $90 billion. You take all these billionaires’ money. Bezos and his $120 billion, you take it all — and you can only do it one time, by the way. Once you take it, it’s gone.

I’m talking confiscation.

You take all these billionaires’ money. All of their billions, take it. You could run this government for no more than two to three weeks, maybe a month now. But it’s infinitesimal the amount of money we’re talking about. You got idiots like this thinking, “Well, $500 million, we could give every American $1.5 million.” It’s that kind of ignorance that leads people to believe that the wealthy are cheap and stingy, “and if they would just give away what they’ve got and let it trickle down, we could solve all…”

No. No. It doesn’t work that way.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Running the numbers. Okay. So you have 300 million — let’s round it up, 350 million — Americans, and you want to give each of them $1.5 million dollars, and you think that Mike Bloomberg can do it with $500 million. You’re not even… Do you realize the final computation here is going to be close to the trillions?

You’ve got 350 million Americans, and you want to give each of them $1 million. So you’ve gotta multiply 1, comma, 500, comma, three zeros — times — 350 and six zeros. Do you realize how many zeros you’re talking about here in order to this? And where do these clowns come off and somehow think that 327 million people divided by $500 million equals (chuckling) $1.5 million per person?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Let me just cut to the chase, save you the trouble. You have 327 million Americans. You want to give every one of them a million dollars. Hello, $327 trillion dollars. That’s what it would cost you, $327 trillion. Do you know what the national debt is, ladies and gentlemen? The national debt is around $22 trillion.

We don’t have the money to give everybody a million dollars. We don’t have the money to give everybody $10,000. We don’t have the money to give everybody $30,000, whatever number you think would be fair, we don’t have the money. Like I’m telling you, give every Social Security recipient an additional $25 bucks a month, we barely have that. You’d be stunned.