RUSH: Mr. Snerdley, is our scheduled guest still scheduled? (interruption) Okay. So you have some slides for me? (interruption) Slides? Some slides to look at. You mean like 35 millimeter slides? What kind of slides? (interruption) You mean slides of like amoebas swimming around in brains? I mean, what slides?

We got Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is gonna be with us at the bottom of the second hour, 1:33 is the precise time and Mr. Snerdley said they’re gonna send some slides over. Now, slides to me are those things you used to put in a carousel projector instead of pictures or a slide that you put under a microscope to look at disease, you know, amoebas and sperm swimming around in there, watching ’em go. Slides? (interruption) Graphs. Oh, graphs and charts. Okay. All right.

Governor DeSantis has been a trailblazer here, and he’s fearless. You know, we talk about pioneers take the arrows, and he clearly has been a pioneer in this area. And the reason that I wanted to talk to him is because I saw yesterday that he’s moving forward with opening the schools. This has to happen. The question I have about this, if the schools are closed, how are the children going to eat? Is this not starving kids if we don’t open the schools?

Now, I’m talking about something that many of you probably remember and some of you may not. Depends on your age and it depends on what you were paying attention to back in 1995. In 1995 there was this gigantic battle over the federal budget. Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Newt was the Speaker of the House, and the Republicans were experiencing a new wave of popularity and power, having won the House for the first time in 40 years in 1994. It was the midterms after Clinton had won the presidency in 1992.

And so there was a showdown over the federal budget. And the Republicans, of course, wanted to reduce it. And folks, just so you understand budget talk, there never is a genuine reduction from one year to the next in federal spending. All there is, it’s called baseline budgeting, and it guarantees certain percentage increases department by department. It averages out to about 8 to 10% per department.

So if the Republicans come along and say, “We want to reduce spending on this item by 4%,” it’s still gonna be an increase of 6%, but the Democrats and media run around, they start talking about how the Republicans are cutting the budget, Draconian cuts.

The federal budget never gets smaller overall. Federal spending never goes down overall. We’re just talking about reductions in the rate of growth. And we’re talking about losing the language. The idea here was to get started on trying to get to the point where we would actually reduce federal spending. Well, this budget battle focused on education and the school lunch program.

And the Democrats, led by Clinton, harped on the idea the Republicans wanted to starve kids. The Republicans wanted to starve kids even though the school lunch program was not being cut and federal education was not being cut, it was not going to get a 10% increase, but it was still gonna get an increase.

And then the Democrats went to various parts of the country, and they had little school kids write letters to Republicans in Congress. “Dear Mr. Congressman: I can’t learn when I’m hungry. Why do you want to starve me and my fellow classmates? Why do you not want me to eat? What is it you have against me eating?”

And they were bamboozled and they were flooded with these letters supposedly written by kids. Of course, I’m sitting here saying, “Are you kidding me? These kids have parents. Are their parents gonna let these kids starve? Even if this were true, and it isn’t, are the parents gonna sit there and just let their kids starve?” And the answer to that became a rhetorical “yes.”

So the Democrats now don’t want the schools to open. The Democrats want to keep schools closed. Trump wants to open them, for a host of reasons. The economy needs schools open, and in-person education is much better than online. You’re talking about high school and middle school. Most students are cutting class, the percentage of people actually tuning in online, connecting and all that is — you can’t even quantify it.

But, see, I was told back in 1995 that parents cannot feed their children. So why do the Democrats and the teacher’s unions want to starve children by keeping the schools closed? Trump is pressuring schools to reopen. He does not want children to starve, obviously. The president is fighting. The president’s fighting to keep your children fed. Heartless Democrats apparently don’t care if they starve or not. I mean, this is quite a turnaround. Of course, yes, I’m being facetious and rhetorical here, but it does make the point.

The Democrats are using the coronavirus as an excuse to make women give up their jobs. If you can’t ship the kids off to school, then the parents cannot go to work, and the parents can’t afford nannies and babysitters and all this. So by keeping the schools closed you’re also keeping a lockdown of sorts on the economy, which then results in women staying home, barefoot, in the kitchen.

The Democrats are gonna be responsible for women barefoot and probably pregnant in the kitchen with other kids running around harassing ’em, driving Mom crazy, driving Dad crazy, and starving at the same time because Mom doesn’t know how to feed them. We learned this in 1995. Half of the fathers aren’t gonna be around ’cause they don’t want to mess with this mess. So they’re out there going through the motions of looking for a job. What they’re really looking for is a bar that’s open, get away from all of this.

Now, in Palm Beach County, which is where we are headquartered here — are you ready for this? — in Palm Beach County, they are giving free breakfast and lunch at closed schools. You know how it works? The mom, who doesn’t know how to feed her own kids at home, packs ’em up in the car, maybe doesn’t even have to take them. The mom, maybe she can’t find the kids. She doesn’t know where they are, out there at the swing set, they’re running around out at the beach. Who knows where they are, but she’s still gotta get ’em fed and she doesn’t know how to do it.

So the schools are open for drive-by, parental drive-by, so the parents who don’t know how to feed their kids and haven’t since 1995, drive up to their neighborhood Palm Beach County school, and somebody there hands them breakfast, and they come back later and somebody hands ’em lunch.

Now, this means that kids in Palm Beach County are going without dinner because you can’t drive by there and get dinner. They’re not open for dinner, right? (interruption) What’s pathetic? (interruption) I know. This entire operation is pathetic. I know it’s pathetic. It’s pathetic. We can’t open the schools. The kids are gonna starve.

You know, the Democrats are willing to sacrifice the education, the propaganda, they’re willing to sacrifice the indoctrination opportunity.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. So Snerdley said that the governor was gonna send me some slides. I said, “Slides? What the hell are slides?” If you would have told me it was a keynote presentation, I would have known exactly what it was. It’s charts and graphs involving coronavirus and related circumstances.

So now I’ve got six charts and graphs that I gotta learn and study here while doing the program in the next hour to prepare for Governor DeSantis’ appearance here. Who else — what other host — would anybody attempt this with? This normally would come in hours before the program so I could learn it and study it.

I get it in the first break of the first hour, and now — in addition to hosting the program and taking your phone calls — I’ve gotta study six different keynote slides here on the details of whatever the coronavirus, school lunch, whatever the hell it is here in Palm Beach County in the state of Florida.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I’m looking at Fox News, the headline up there: “Trump threatens to cut funds if schools don’t open in the fall.” And then they go to Biden and Biden says, “Well, we can’t do that.” You know, Joe Biden’s literally worthless when it comes to policy, when it comes to reasonable contributions to anything. But he’s the opponent out there, so they have to provide the contrast.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Braden somewhere in South Dakota, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Oh, Rush, thank you so much for taking my call. It’s an honor to be on your show.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Something on my bucket list. I’m pretty excited. I just wanted to say, I really appreciate what the last caller had to share, and we are in the same boat. I could say the exact same call. I’m 42. I teach high school Spanish. Long time conservative — thanks to you, by the way.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I’m a Christian Trump supporter here. But she’s 100% right. I had to go back to school. I was working in banking and marketing and I moved into education, and you were spot on. You would be horrified with what’s happening in the public education system. I substitute taught for four years, and every morning for several teachers’ classes they wanted me to turn on CNN for 15 minutes for the students to watch. And, of course, you can imagine how hard that was every morning.

RUSH: Now, what class was that?

CALLER: It was for a variety of classes. Math, history, homeroom. They would —

RUSH: Didn’t matter?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: No matter what class, you had to turn CNN on for 15 minutes?

CALLER: Yeah. Yes. Exactly. And I had the same experience as your last caller. I had to take a human, uh, something class, like a diversity class.

RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, in pursuit of your master’s, ’cause you have to have one of those.

CALLER: Yeah, right. And it was horrifying.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And of course, the poor 18-year-old, 19-year-old students who respect the teacher just ate it up.

RUSH: I appreciate your call. I really do. Thank you so much.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Adrian, Columbia, South Carolina, you’re next. Great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Rush, mega prayers, mega dittos, first-time caller. I have four Rush Babies. You seemed so concerned in your opening monologue about the children starving if we don’t go back to school. And I wanted to let you know that the kids aren’t starving in our district. The cafeteria workers have been packaging breakfast and lunch every day, Monday through Friday. And the kids don’t even have to come pick them up. We take them to their neighborhood.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Now, in Florida I learned today that the parents have to go pick up the food. Are you telling me in Columbia, South Carolina, the school district is delivering breakfast and lunch?

CALLER: There are districts where you might have to go pick them up, but in our district we will take them to you. And you don’t have to worry about the weekends. The churches in our area — and this is not a COVID thing, this is all the time — they pack book bags full of meals for the kids for the weekend. So they’re taken care of Sunday through Saturday here.

RUSH: What does this cost people?

CALLER: I think Title I pays for it which, you know —

RUSH: Oh, yeah, Title I. I thought it was Title V. Title I’s paying for this. Okay.

CALLER: There are community groups that pay and do this thing for the weekend —

RUSH: Right, where do they get the money?

CALLER: Out of their own pocket because we —

RUSH: The parents don’t have to pay for any of this?

CALLER: I’ll say in our district we want to take care of students who are in families that can’t —

RUSH: Now, I understand that, but, I mean, the parents don’t have to pay for their own kids’ food?

CALLER: No. Rush, and I have a friend who lives — if they’re a Title I school, they shouldn’t be. She can drive up in her Suburban, stick her four fingers out the window, and they will bring her four meals, their family makes six figure income, it’s for all students, low income —

RUSH: I’ve heard these stories and I just — you hear things like this, folks, and it’s just another mountain that has to be climbed and overcome. I don’t know. This stuff, it didn’t exist when I was in — look, I’m not an old fuddy duddy saying we need to go back to the way it was. I’m just saying when did we lose this era of personal responsibility?