Rush Limbaugh said critics who blame him for anti-quarantine protests across the U.S. refuse to accept the notion that his listeners are not “mind-numbed robots.”
The conservative radio host said Tuesday that pundits who accuse him of fomenting anger during the coronavirus pandemic have been sticking to the same narrative and for decades — “that all of you … are nothing but a bunch of mind-numbed robots, which they’ve been saying about you since this program debuted in 1988.”
Mr. Limbaugh, for all intents and purposes, said that intelligent people can look at the statistics and determine that, eventually, normal economic activity — despite the risks — must resume.
Johns Hopkins University has recorded nearly 46,000 U.S. deaths out of 835,000 confirmed cases and a national population of roughly 330 million.
“I mean, how long do we go?” he asked. “How long do we go with this watching careers and jobs and businesses and livelihoods literally be shuttered and watching what’s happening to the oil industry, when the data on which all this is based may not even be accurate?”
The hosted then asserted that a double standard appears to exist in the media, whereas group protests are treated differently according to their perceived ideological bent.
“Whenever the left protests, which is a way of life, we never hear anybody blamed for it other than the people they are protesting,” he said. “Isn’t it fascinating? When the left starts protesting something, it’s always the fault of the people they’re protesting. The protesters are right. The protesters must be listened to. The protesters have just cause.
“Whenever there are anti-government protests, anti-mayor, anti-governor, anti-Washington protests, why, the protesters are mind-numbed robots, stupid idiots, don’t even know what they’re protesting,” he continued. “They’re just following orders issued to them by insane conservative media. And you can book it every time it happens. The reason these protests are happening is ’cause people are fed up. They want to go back to work.”
The radio host concluded the segment by telling listeners that it was hard for him to keep “red flags” from going up when politicians seemingly set unrealistic litmus tests for reopening the U.S. economy.
“Just listen to them,” he implored. “Just watch them! The last thing on their mind is opening up, and they’re all Democrat governors at this point. They do not want to do it. They’ve got an election to win in November, don’t you know? … That’s not natural, that’s not normal. We can’t do that. It isn’t sustainable. That’s economic and national suicide to keep this country shut down as is with no end in sight or until there’s some impossible reality like a vaccine. We may never have a vaccine for this.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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