Drive-Bys Hope the Coronavirus Will Get Trump
Feb 25, 2020
RUSH: I mentioned yesterday that all this coronavirus hype is aimed at getting Trump. Make no mistake about it: It’s aimed at getting Trump. Here is a media montage that makes the point. Essentially, forget the Russians — at least today — because now the coronavirus is gonna be the end of Trump.
SARA EISEN: If the coronavirus spreads into a pandemic, it improves Bernie Sanders chances of beating Donald Trump.
RUSH: How?
RANA FOROOHAR: You’ve got coronavirus potentially causing a real headwind to the economy around November, the time of the election.
JAKE TAPPER: That could affect his re-election chances.
JOHN THOMAS: Every indicator is fairly locked in at this point for Trump to get re-elected, unless there’s a black swan moment like this.
CHRIS BEDFORD: It wouldn’t be too difficult to trigger a recession — especially with coronavirus raging — just in time for the election.
JEFF MASON: It could potentially hurt President Trump’s chances of re-election.
JIM CRAMER: … the economy slows dramatically ’cause of the virus.
DAVID FABER: Oh. Okay.
JIM CRAMER: Right, so —
DAVID FABER: That would bolster the chances —
JIM CRAMER: — of the Democrats.
BRIT HUME: With all these unpredictable factors including the coronavirus, almost anything can happen.
TUCKER CARLSON: The coronavirus could get Bernie Sanders elected president of the United States.
RUSH: Why couldn’t the coronavirus get Donald Trump reelected? What if the United States comes up with a dramatically great policy to deal with it — and the number of cases in the United States dwindles, goes down, or does not expand like the cases around the world? Then why wouldn’t that be beneficial to Trump? Notice: Here we are in February, and they’ve already got this virus ruining the economy by November, in time to take out Trump. This is proof they’ve got nothing. They know they can’t beat the guy, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to share with you some of the Trump press conference, ’cause this is confidence, this is strength, this is a presence on the world stage that the Democrats again just don’t have anybody who can match up. And in the bites that we have here, Trump deals with the Democrats and the coronavirus, goes after Justice Sotomayor — Sodamayor, for those of you in Rio Linda.
And he really has gone after these two judges on the Supreme Court. That they need to recuse themselves from these immigration cases because they are taking open public political positions on these cases. And he’s right about it. So here’s the first bite.
THE PRESIDENT: You may ask about the coronavirus, which is very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. We think they’ll be in very good shape very soon. I think that whole situation will start working out. A lot of talent, a lot of brain power has been put behind it. Two and a half million dollars we’re putting in. I see that Chuck Schumer criticized it. He thought it should be more. And if I gave more, he’d say it should be less. Automatic, with these characters. They’re just not good for our country.
RUSH: Now, I want you to pay attention to something Trump said here. Very well under control in our country. We have very few people with it. The fatality rate is something like 80,000 cases in the world that are known. There have been 2,700 deaths. You know what that translates to, a fatality percentage — it’s like 2 to 3 percent, folks. The fatality rate of this virus is less than the flu, far less than the flu.
But look at how it’s been hyped. And it’s being hyped because, as you heard in the first audio sound bite, the montage, media thinks this is the new Russia, this is gonna get Trump, they’re gleeful, they’re happy. This is gonna destroy the economy magically by November. And it won’t.
And Trump says: “Very well under control in our country.â€
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Move on now to audio sound bite number five. This is Ron Brownstein this morning on CNN’s Newsroom. He also works at The Atlantic magazine. And this is his take on how Trump is dealing with the coronavirus.
BROWNSTEIN: The contrast with how Barack Obama handled the Ebola outbreak is very, I think illuminative, of the way they approach the world. Obviously, President Obama named an Ebola Czar, Ron Klain, who was Joe Biden’s chief of staff and former White House counsel. But he also was very engaged with the frontline states in terms of sending U.S. assistance to them to help them manage the outbreak on the front lines. That if a pandemic develops, ultimately it is everybody’s problems. Look at the contrast between the president’s language when he said, you know, we’re handling it very well and no sense of kind of interconnectedness with the other countries.
RUSH: This is precisely what these people do not get. Donald Trump is president of the United States. He is not president of the world. It is not his job to control the spread of the coronavirus in China. It’s not his job to control the spread of the coronavirus in the U.K. There’s nothing he can do anyway about it. He doesn’t have the force of law behind him. All he has is the power that being the president of the lone superpower in the world gives him.
But Trump’s first commitment and first responsibility is to the people of the United States. Not only on the coronavirus, but on the economy, on trade deals, on whatever it is that affects the safety and prosperity of the people of America. His view is that his first responsibility is you and me and the 50 states in this country, 57 if you’re Obama. And his belief is that if that happens, that if the United States looks after itself first — you know, this is what they say is nationalism. This is how they try to say that Trump is an equal authoritarian to people like Hitler. And nothing could be further from the truth, obviously.
This is patriotism. And it may even be nationalism. What’s wrong with nationalism? What is wrong with nationalism that is rooted in patriotism? Nationalism of Trump is not country right despite everything, it’s not always right, right or wrong, America right, at the end of the day. It’s not that at all. But his view is: I have the ability and the foresight and the responsibility to protect the people of the United States from illegal immigration, from economic calamity, from whatever it might be, including rampant disease.
It’s also his job to avoid creating a panic when one is not necessary in the United States. And so here comes Ron Brownstein, representative of all in the media, contrasting this with Obama. And look what Obama did. Obama not only tried to protect America from Ebola, but he tried to protect the world. He appointed an Ebola czar, Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff. Very engaged with the frontline states in terms of sending U.S. assistance to them.
These are for show moves. This is what Washington politicians do. Nothing but making it look like they’re doing everything. The difference is Obama and his ilk are a bunch of phonies devoted to public relations victories. Trump is a real guy who is actually trying to protect the United States when it comes to coronavirus or anything else. And then he doesn’t phony it up by appointing a coronavirus czar and sending him over to China to supposedly manage it there, where it originated, or anywhere else where it happens to be spreading. He deals with it here.
But these guys, “Oh, man, we wish we had Obama. Obama would control it for the whole world.†What did Obama do for Ebola? How was Obama stopping Ebola? He didn’t. You know what stops Ebola? I hate to say this, death. Ebola can’t survive in dead hosts. It needs hosts. The more people with Ebola die, the faster Ebola dies out in that particular strain. If you can isolate the people who have Ebola, that’s how you stop it.
Ebola’s a horrible, horrible virus, not even comparable to the coronavirus. It’s literally horrible. And there’s no antidote for it. It’s a virus. Don’t have a cure for viruses. Otherwise the common cold wouldn’t be what it is, and the flu wouldn’t be. These are all viruses. Now, we can mitigate the damage, treat the symptoms, maybe strengthen the immune system to make the effects of these diseases less, but we can’t cure them, and there are very few — what do you call ’em? — vaccines for viruses. There are some, but it’s a handful, folks. It’s tiny.
And there’s no stopping Ebola. You don’t want any part of it. An Ebola czar wasn’t gonna do one thing to stop Ebola. It was just gonna make it look like Obama cared, which is exactly what liberals do. “We care. Other people don’t. Vote for us.†Meanwhile, what do they do to solve problems? Zip, zero, nada. What happened to America during the eight years of Obama? Trump spent three years trying to fix it and has.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: John King at CNN brought in the chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, this afternoon to refute something I said yesterday about the coronavirus — and I want you to listen to this very, very carefully.
KING: I want you to listen here, uh, to Rush Limbaugh’s take on the coronavirus.
RUSH ARCHIVE: It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. … The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.
KING: Dr. Gupta, is the coronavirus the common cold?
GUPTA: This is a brand-new virus. It’s a novel virus. Uh, we don’t know exactly how this virus is going to behave. And I think that would unfortunately, you know, be minimizing it. I think what, uh, Rush Limbaugh’s sort of referring to is the idea that it is from a family of coronaviruses that is the family name of these viruses, and, uh, some of them in the past have caused symptoms that were more consistent with, uh, the common cold. But it’s also been the same family of viruses that caused SARS, that called MERS — uh, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
RUSH: I said yesterday there are numerous types of coronavirus. This is coronavirus 19. Now, the official name of is COVID-19. But it’s in common parlance so that even people in Rio Linda can follow along, it’s coronavirus number 19. The fatality rate even in China is 2%. Now, that’s greater than the common cold but less than the flu. It’s a respiratory virus. That’s what it does. It gets into your respiratory system and it causes symptoms like the common cold — or, at worst, the flu — and depending on your age, just like the flu, it can be fatal.
Now, the question about this coronavirus is, “Where’d it come from?†It came from, as best anybody can tell, a lab in Wuhan, China. Now, I don’t know, but there are people who are speculating that the ChiComs were attempting to weaponize this virus, and somebody discovered this. Some scientist, some doctor discovered this independently back in December and tried to warn everybody about what he was seeing, because it looked like a virus that had a human element to it that was weaponized.
That scientist/doctor is now dead. Wuhan, China, is a town of about 11 million. It’s a huge city by American standards. It’s, you know, middle of the road by ChiCom standards. I looked at it on a map. It’s right smack-dab in one of the most populated regions. And just for the sake of your information, the reason why there’s all this talk about hard economic times for Apple and other tech firms that have their products assembled there is because the factories that employ 500,000 people are part of the Wuhan metro area.
That’s why these factories are shut down or were and why the numbers of people returning to work is less than 50%, and that’s why there’s all the talk here about potential economic problems, slowdowns for companies like Apple and so forth, ’cause Wuhan is right smack-dab in the middle of China. It’s a large region. You got a billion people there.
So you could go as far as 500 miles away from Wuhan and still be within a very centralized location where there are many factories that employ that many people who can’t show up for work, who are now starting to trickle back to work. But I have here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers: The World Health Organization says that the… Let’s see. This is not the one. Yes. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom “Boutros Boutros-Ghali†Ghebreyesus, said yesterday that “while Iran and Italy have reported a surge in coronavirus cases over the last several days†the coronavirus “has not yet met the criteria for a pandemic…â€
In fact, Mr. Tedros Boutros Boutros-Ghali “said that the health agency has not found ‘uncontained global spread’ of the virus, and has noted a steady decline in new cases in China…†So it may have peaked at the point of origin, and you know how you know that it’s peaked at the point of origin? Because all of these tech firm factories are opening up, and these factories are now offering all kinds of incentives to get the employees to come back.
The ChiCom government would not be permitting this if the threat were still expanding in the Wuhan area, and let’s call it like a 500-mile radius or 400-mile radius. The ChiComs would still be trying to get a handle on it. You know, a lot of people — you know, cynics everywhere — say it’s weaponized, potentially. China, ChiComs, communist Chinese, what are they doing here? You know, it wouldn’t be bad for them if they lost some of their population. It’s impossible to feed and keep healthy.
Do you know where this virus is rumored to have come from? You may not know this. But food in China is such a different proposition. You try feeding a billion people as a communist economic system. These people eat anything. They eat live bats. They eat live snakes. Do you realize how easily contaminated this stuff can get? That’s where it’s thought that this might have originated.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: “Rush, what do you mean that an Ebola czar is just a PR move?†Okay, Ebola czar. Remember when Boko Haram kidnapped a bunch of girls in Africa? What did Michelle Obama do? Come up with a Twitter hashtag called #BringBackOurGirls.
What did that accomplish? Zero! But it sure made everybody think she cared a lot. It felt like they were doing something about it. That’s what I mean by PR move.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me share with you a sound bite, again from CNN. This afternoon on Inside Politics. The guest is the national political correspondent from TIME magazine. Her name is Molly Ball. I don’t know whose talking, I don’t know who was asking her anything, John King or whoever. She’s obviously been asked about me and my thoughts on the coronavirus and this was what she said.
BALL: Everybody hopes that Rush is right and this is no more serious than the common cold, and even if lots and lots of people get it, it is not very deadly, but I think there is the potential for a situation, uh, where there’s mass confusion because nobody knows what to believe because this president has such a track record of not necessarily being truthful, that you could have a panic, you could have all kinds of consequences of that.
RUSH: So the coronavirus, we hope Rush is right, but Rush could be wrong because Trump doesn’t tell us the truth. Rush could be wrong because Trump has such a track record of not being truthful that you could have a panic and he would deny it. And so you could end up getting a fatal disease and not know you’re gonna die because Trump is telling you you’re okay.
I’m sorry. This is how they’re covering this. And, meanwhile, it was Obama who told a woman whose mother was a hundred years old (imitating Obama), “No, I don’t think your Mom wanting to live is gonna be a factor in Obamacare. I think at that age, if she gets there, we’ll just give her a pain pill so she’ll be happy. Here’s a happy pill and enjoy the rest of your life.â€
Who is it that doesn’t appear to care about people? The idea Donald Trump doesn’t care about people is so asinine. You couldn’t have the trade policy, the economic policy, the tax policy, you couldn’t have the foreign policy Donald Trump has if you didn’t care about the American people. What we’re looking at is a president who actually cares more about the American people than many of the presidents we’ve had in our generation. And I am not exaggerating that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, in that previous sound bite — I’m not gonna replay it — the one with Sanjay Gupta on CNN, John King says, “So, Dr. Gupta, is the coronavirus the common cold like Dr. Limbaugh says?†And Dr. Gupta says, “Well, you know, I think what Rush was referring to is it’s from a family of…†He did not say I was wrong. Can I ask you a question? You remember the cruise ship that was quarantined in Japan? What was it, the Virus of the Seas? Whatever the name the ship was.
How many people were on board that trip, 2,500 or 3,000?
What percentage of ’em were infected?
Practically 80% of them were infected.
How many have died?
Pfft! Zero.
Fourteen Americans, I think, on that ship have been brought back under quarantine. How many of ’em have died? Look, folks, it is what it is. The media wants it to be what it not yet is. Now, it could be. It could evolve and who knows what it could be. Right now, the media is reporting on the coronavirus as they hope it evolves. They hope for hurricanes on the first day of hurricane season. They hope for Hurricane Katrina so they can say, “Climate change!â€
Anything to advance the leftist agenda. Now, the leftist agenda includes getting rid of Trump. They would love for the coronavirus to be this deadly strain that wipes everybody out so they could blame Trump for it. Don’t doubt me on that. If you’ve been paying attention to the mainstream media for the past four years, you can’t doubt me on that. They haven’t reported one thing true about these supposed Trump scandals.
There was no collusion with Russia. There was not a shred of evidence. There was nothing he did wrong to be impeached — zip, zero, nada — and yet look at what they made of it. The news became what they wanted to be true, and because they wanted it to be true, they reported it as true. They’re doing the same thing with the coronavirus. Just be patient. Just, you know, be in control. If it evolves and becomes something very bad, I am confident the United States will be prepared for it because we have competent people in these agencies now.
(sigh)
