RUSH: Folks, remember that story that we had yesterday… Everybody found this story after this program ended yesterday, everybody had this story, headline of the story: “World Health Organization Now Says Lockdowns Are a Bad Idea That Should Be Avoided.” Remember our collective reaction to that? What the hell is this? Lockdowns are a bad idea that should be avoided? The only people promoting and sustaining — this is economic lockdowns — are Democrat blue states and their governors.

And they have been engaging in this lockdown strategery purposely in order to make sure that the nationwide economy does not rebound in time to benefit President Trump prior to the election on November 3rd. And then out of nowhere — and the World Health Organization got all this going. They’re the ones that promoted and suggested the lockdown that we did engage in. We shut this country down for a couple months. We haven’t recovered from it yet. It was never necessary to do.

So now they’re coming along and saying what we’ve known from the beginning and what we’ve been saying from the beginning. Lockdowns, bad idea. Should be avoided. Instead, protect the most susceptible. Everybody else, wash your hands, don’t lock down. If you want to wear a mask, go ahead and wear a mask.

So everybody picked up on this yesterday. And they did so with varying degrees of incredulity like we did here. Said, well, what is this? There’s gotta be a reason. This stuff just doesn’t happen. Now today we have another story. Ready for this? “New York Times: Experts Confident Pandemic To Be Over ‘Far Sooner’ Than Expected, Trump Efforts ‘Working With Remarkable Efficiency.”

We really gotta dig into this. Now, no, I didn’t read the New York Times for this. This is actually a Daily Wire story. That’s Ben Shapiro’s outfit. And it’s written by Ryan Saavedra. “A new report from The New York Times indicates that experts have ‘genuine confidence’ that the coronavirus pandemic will end ‘far sooner’ than originally expected and that President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed … has been ‘working with remarkable efficiency.’ The report, published on Monday, comes with just over three weeks left in the presidential race between Trump and Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden. ‘Events have moved faster than I thought possible. I have become cautiously optimistic,’ New York Times science reporter Donald McNeil Jr. wrote. “Experts are saying, with genuine confidence, that the pandemic in the United States will be over far sooner than they expected.”

Now, something is behind this, folks. Something is behind this. I think part of it is that there must be polling because everything in major political party politics, especially the Democrats, is done bouncing off of or reacting to polling. Now, last week when the president was going to appear here on Friday in the largest Radio Rally in American history — and, boy, was it — we asked listeners to submit questions.

We set up a special page at RushLimbaugh.com. We asked listeners to submit questions that they would like us to ask the president. And, my friends, I think I mentioned this to you on Friday. I told the president when we were doing the rally, the number-one topic that people mentioned — and I’m telling you, it was hundreds of thousands of responses. The number one topic was health care.

People are scared. A subset of the overall health care topic, preexisting conditions. People are scared. Health care is a big, scary issue, despite it not being talked about much in the campaign. Now, they’ve turned the Amy Coney Barrett hearing into an emotional prop-filled infomercial on Obamacare. And the only thing that her hearings have to do with Obamacare, and the only thing the Supreme Court has to do with Obamacare, is whether or not it’s constitutional.

The policies contained within it — and she has said this herself — are irrelevant and matter not at all to judges in the federal judiciary. It’s just a simple question of whether or not, as written, Obamacare is constitutional. And that’s the mandate, that’s where it all started, other aspects of this.

So, New York Times: “To Be Over ‘Far Sooner’ Than Expected.” So World Health Organization says lockdowns, bad idea. We’re three weeks from the election. What and how do these three things tie together? Three weeks ago from the election, World Health Organization now admits what everybody’s known, lockdowns are counterproductive and do great damage, are not necessary. And experts — New York Times! — express confidence that the pandemic is gonna be over far sooner.

Well, for one thing, the New York Times and the World Health Organization, which means the global left is trying to take these issues off the table one way or another. If the pandemic is gonna be over soon, it means that we don’t need to have crisis after crisis-related policies regarding it. If we’re defeating it, if it’s naturally fading away on its own faster than anybody knew, great news. And if we don’t need to lockdown, the only reason these two things are happening is something is hurting Joe Biden out there. Something is hurting the Democrat campaign, the overall Democrat position here.

Now, you would think three weeks into the election that the stories would be the exact opposite. Pandemic racing, pandemic worsening, Trump administration horrible at dealing with it. You would think, likewise, that the World Health Organization would be doubling down on lockdowns because the pandemic is so bad, it’s so damaging, it’s so out of control. But it’s the exact opposite. They’ve gotta have some polling data.

Where is Trump on all this? Where is Trump on health care? He’s in control of it. He’s in charge of it. He’s, as an issue, he’s the one talking about it. He talked about it at length on this program on Friday, the largest Radio Rally in history, talked about it in Sanford, Florida, last night. He’s opposed to lockdowns, doesn’t think that the first one should have happened, went along with it because we didn’t know as much then as we know now.

I still haven’t been able to synthesize this down to its simplest form, you know, to make the complex understandable. But there’s something here, give me time, this stuff just hit me a few short hours ago. And I’ve had to do my thinking about this as well as fulfill the duties of show prep and all that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, there’s another thing here on this New York Times story: “Experts Confident Pandemic to Be Over ‘Far Sooner’ Than Expected, Trump Efforts ‘Working with Remarkable Efficiency.'” New York Times? You know, who does this leave hanging out there at the end of the limb? Dr. Fauci.

Dr. Fauci has been out there in sort of a distanced way. He’s been out there just ripping Trump to shreds in the Fauci way, and now this story comes along. “Oh, we’re making so much progress here! The president’s plan, Operation Warp Speed, has been working with remarkable efficiency.”

Now, look, I know that there’s also the possibility gigantic setup and that next or later this week, the New York Times may say, “We sadly have to report that there’s been a dramatic turn for the worse in Operation Warp Speed. Vaccines are killing people!” But whatever it would be, it’s still remarkable here.