RUSH: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was on with CNBC today, Jim Cramer, said he believes the economy may be able to reopen next month. You think this is a possibility if the doctors let us — that we could be open for business — if the doctors let us? I do, Jim, Mnuchin said, soon as the president feels comfortable with the medical issues, we’re making everything necessary, American companies, American workers can be open for business.

Let me tell you, there’s a battle going on in the White House about this thing. And it’s team scarf versus team Kudlow. Kudlow, Mnuchin, the economic team, they want this open. And team scarf, they still want to focus on social distancing and all this other stuff. As I understand it — you know, all White Houses have internal battles and groups of people that have competing interests, and I think that’s what inspired them.

Now, here’s Christina in Fresno. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. I am Tea Party red in a deep blue state. And our county, Fresno County has 982,000 people. The health department said there’s confirmed 156 cases, three deaths, and one of them was an elderly man, and then only 15 hospitalizations. For that, they’re killing the economy. I say bury the dead, treat the sick, and open up the economy.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, 156 cases, three deaths, 15 hospitalizations, in your county?

CALLER: In the county of over 982,000 people.

RUSH: That’s California. There has to be — this isn’t social distancing. It cannot be social distancing that’s making these numbers pop up in California. So 983,000 people, 156 cases, three deaths, one was an elderly guy, 15 hospitalizations, and the whole county shut down. Whole state.

CALLER: And our hospitals are not overrun. You know why? Because they have stopped all elective surgery. So you’re gonna see deaths from people who put off their bypass surgeries.

RUSH: Wait a minute, how many people are hospitalized, 15?

CALLER: Fifteen with corona.

RUSH: With corona. So the hospitals are not overrun, and even with that they have shut down elective surgeries so deaths from people —

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Wow. Okay. I’m glad you called, Christina. That was well said, by the way. Brevity is the soul of wit, and you get that all in in 60 seconds. Well done. I appreciate it ’cause I have to take a break.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: CNN is shocked by the jobs numbers again and think they have the answer to it, which means they don’t. Here first is Christine Romans, who’s always surprised. No matter what the unemployment news is, no matter what the jobs numbers are, no matter what the economic number is, Christine Romans is perpetually surprised.

I don’t know what they expected when we are self-inflicting this damage. There isn’t any other way to describe this. This damage is self-inflicted. Here’s Christine Romans reacting to the jobs number…

ROMANS: Another really ugly week, 6,606,000 new jobless claims — those are 6.6 million layoffs! That brings three weeks of job losses to 16 — (whispers) wow — 16.5 million jobs in just three weeks! Never seen anything like it before!

RUSH: So we have 16 million people out of work and 14,800 coronavirus deaths. Is that a wrong way to characterize it? Is that bad? (interruption) Is that insensitive to juxtapose? (interruption) It’s factual, it’s factual, but is it purposely, uh, inflammatory? Is it intentionally inflammatory, unnecessarily provocative to say that there are 14,800 COVID-19 deaths and now 16 million Americans have lost their jobs?

Well, here’s CNN’s answer. Here is CNN’s solution to the problem.

CHATTERLEY: The bottom line is, we can’t jump ahead of the science. The safety net, the cushion, the need to keep as many people in their jobs — remember small- and medium-size businesses represent about 80% of employment in this country. The need to get money flowing to them and then to the states. You can’t choose between them, but the cushion over the next four to six weeks is so important to enable us to recover more strongly off the back of it.

RUSH: So that’s Julia Chatterley, who is an economics correspondent. Basically, the solution is the government needs to keep sending out money. That’s the answer to… (interruption) We don’t have the money we’re sending out. (laughing) The answer is to open up. The answer is… You got 16.6 million people out of work, the answer is to open up. Is that unnecessarily provocative to point that out?

Is it unnecessarily insensitive to point that out? Is it a conspiracy theory to point out that…? (interruption) Yeah, it may be a conspiracy theory. (laughing) So you have 16 million people in a matter of three weeks out of work. (interruption) “Without evidence, Rush Limbaugh said to open up. Without evidence.”

What do you mean, without evidence? There are 16.6 million people out of work and 14,800 coronavirus deaths. “But wait, Rush. But wait. It was gonna be 2.2 million, so we’re doing really good. It was gonna be 240,000. It was really, really good, Rush.” Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Okay. Back to the phones. Julie in Milwaukee. Great to have you. I’m glad you called.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Limbaugh. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I just have a comment. I feel like this whole situation with COVID got blown way out of proportion because you, as “America’s Adult,” were out of the office for a couple weeks, and everybody seems to have lost their common sense and believing the lamestream media as gospel.

RUSH: What do you mean America’s adults were out of the office for couple weeks? Who are you talking about?

CALLER: You. You were out of the office for a couple weeks as America’s Adult.

RUSH: Oh-ho! This is on my shoulders! (laughing)

CALLER: No, no, no. I’m not blaming you.

RUSH: Oh-ho-ho! (laughing)

CALER: I’m just saying, like, there’s no common sense anymore because all they have —

RUSH: Yeah, I appreciate that. I do. I’ve often referred to myself as one of the last American adults.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: I know. I didn’t put two and two together there and think you were talking about me.

CALLER: And another thing about Trump, it’s like, enough with him believing in the stupid messiah holdovers. Like he needs to just clean house and be done with all of them.

RUSH: It’s not gonna happen now. I mean, Fauci and the scarf queen are now established as experts because of the briefings. Trump’s endorsed ’em. He can’t turn around and ditch them right now — and who knows.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: They could be saying, “You know, if you get rid of us, if you put this country back to work, we walk!”

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Who knows. Who knows. “Rush Limbaugh advancing a conspiracy theory that Birx and Fauci are holding the president to blackmail without evidence…” No. I’m just having fun here, just speculating. (laughing)

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: I’m glad you called, Julia. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Here’s Bruce. Bruce in Siesta Key, Florida. Welcome, sir. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Thank you very much for taking my call, and God bless you on your journey.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: You asked, “How long is this gonna continue?” As long as we let it. Rush, you’ve said for years, conservatives, we don’t march, we don’t protest ’cause we’re working.

RUSH: Uh-oh. Here we go! (laughing) Now we’re not working. So we better start protesting and marching.

CALLER: Well, tell me: What would be wrong with a parade down every Main Street in this country with delivery vans and company trucks and employees holding up signs, you know, talking about their business and say, “Put America back to work! Make America work again.”

RUSH: I tell you what” If you try that where I live the town will follow the parade, get everybody’s names and publish their names on the front page of the town website to try to humiliate ’em.

CALLER: Well, then we’re all doomed.

RUSH: (laughing) And then try to get ’em arrested and find and so forth. I get your point. We were gonna let this go on as long as we let it go on. But look, a lot of people that you’re talking about have total faith in President Trump.

CALLER: Yes, and I do too. But I don’t believe for a moment that CNN poll that you cited yesterday that said 60% of the people are worried about going back to work. I don’t believe that for a moment.

RUSH: Now, what was that poll? It was more people worried about… No. The poll said more people are worried about money than the virus.

CALLER: You cited a CNN poll yesterday too. But nonetheless, you’ve said it a hundred times. This can’t go on.

RUSH: No. It isn’t sustainable. And yet it goes on.

CALLER: But we’re sheep. We’re letting it happen too. And I’m disappointed.

RUSH: I understand your sentiment. I totally understand your sentiment on this. The reason that I am not as forthcoming as you are blaming the American people or putting it on their shoulders is you’ve gotta remember what they’ve been told. And you gotta remember that they believe it. This is the thing that frosts me if you want to start talking about things. They were told that there could be 2.2 million people dead because of this. They have been told that you can get it by breathing and talking to someone. Now there’s a video out there showing how the pathogen is spread when somebody coughs in a grocery store, how many aisles the pathogen travels to infect people.

The people of this country have been scared to death into staying home. They have been told, “No vaccine, no cure. This is instant death. This is instant hospitalization, and it’s an ugly death. You can’t breathe. It’s horrible.” They have been dutifully frightened. And one of my concerns for when this is over is how many of ’em are gonna still be afraid to go out because of all they’ve been told about this.

Meanwhile, 14,800 dead. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying it’s a good number. I’m saying you put it in context based on what we’ve been told, measure it against other diseases or behaviors that kill people, and it’s not even anywhere near the top. And we have never shut this country down for any disease. We’ve never shut it down because we invented the wheel. We never shut the country down after airplanes crash. When have we ever shut the country down like this? We never have done this.

The Great Depression did it, but that wasn’t on purpose, like this is. That’s what’s scary to me about it. We did this ourselves. We wiped out three years of unparalleled economic growth, in three to four weeks. We wiped it out on numbers that turned out to be very wrong. And the people that gave us the numbers are still the ones giving us the numbers even though they haven’t been right yet.

They are not being held accountable. They are allowed to change their data. They are allowed to change their data points. They are allowed to change their input data. They are allowed to say that you, because you are following orders from on high, from Chairman Fauci, are the reason why this thing is working out so well.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now out of intensive care. That’s good news. You know what? We’re talking about here the scarf queen and Dr. Fauci and my understanding that there’s an internal battle going on between team scarf and team Kudlow. You know what I think ought to happen at these briefings? I think team Kudlow needs to have a greater presence in these briefings.

No, no. I’m serious about this. There needs to be at these briefings information for people on these loans that are being made for every single small- and medium-size business, how to maintain their payroll. There need to be procedural instructions given. There need to be some information, economic reopening of this country. That needs to be something front and center at these briefings.

How many more statistics do we need on ventilators in the states, statistics on the masks? And how many more statistics do we need on we’re doing better than other countries and making this and producing that? And how many more times do we need to hear, “We love telling you to mitigate and we love that you’re doing it. Social distancing, don’t stop.” How long do we need to hear this? Team Kudlow or anybody that can speak economics, get ’em out there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Scott in Modesto, California. How are you doing, sir?

CALLER: I’m doing great. Mega dittos and my prayers are with you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much.

CALLER: My feeling is this. You know, you’ve got millions of people that are chomping at the bit to get back to work.

RUSH: We think.

CALLER: Well, I believe so. And these folks need to get food on the table and pay the electric bills and heating bills. And what would happen — my suggestion is that come Monday morning, say millions of people get up and just start going back to work, what are they gonna do? And they would have a very powerful backing. It’s called the Constitution. It’s free assembly and freedom of speech.

RUSH: Well, I love the idea, if all of a sudden on Monday people say screw this and went back to work, for that to happen the people that owned the business would have to open ’em up.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So I think okay, what could stop this? It’s something called government and fines and jail for violating the orders of Dr. Scarf and Dr. Birx to stay at home and mitigate.

CALLER: I’m sorry. I agree with that, but like I said, but what if millions do it? They don’t have enough resources to stop the people of the United States doing what they need to do.

RUSH: Well, ever heard of Waco?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: When people pose ideas like this that I love, I’m instinctively drawn to, okay. How can it be stopped? How could the government think of stopping it. I love the idea. I think it’s fascinating. I love the way you’re thinking. It would illustrate American ingenuity, entrepreneurism and control over their own lives, but I’ll guarantee you, I’ll guarantee you that somebody would do something to shut it down.