RUSH: Here is Trey in Fort Worth, Texas. Great to have you with us, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s such an honor and privilege to talk to you, and mega dittos, thoughts and prayers from Texas.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: Yesterday you mentioned colonizing Mars to escape climate change, and that made me think of something. When this corona stay-at-home order had been put in place, after a couple of weeks we started to see how pristine the Earth had become. Well, I thought that we had passed the point of no return. It seems to me like the planet recovered in a couple of weeks. So does that mean we don’t have to colonize Mars now?

RUSH: You know, it’s a great observation you’re making out there. I’m very flattered at the way you’re thinking. Because, you know, one of the most vibrant conspiracy theories out there, Trey, is that the coronavirus is the product of a bunch of mad scientist-type rich guys who think there are too many people on Earth, and that that’s causing climate change, and they need to thin the herd.

Like, get rid of a couple billion people — and the conspiracy theory is the coronavirus was designed to do that. I don’t subscribe to that. I’m just reporting it to you. The joke was that this is SpaceX launch, and it was supposed to go yesterday but didn’t because of bad weather, and I pointed out that this is not just a John Glenn suborbital flight.

These guys are actually gonna go into orbit. For the first time in 10 years, America has launched astronauts into orbits — and then I jokingly said, “And they’re not gonna stop there. They’re gonna head on to Mars, colonize it, and come back and get the rest of us,” just to see how many people might believe me.