RUSH: This is unbelievable now. This is straining credulity, isn’t it? Kayleigh McEnany has now tested positive for COVID-19. Still can’t find a Democrat that’s been infected. (interruption) Well, I don’t know, folks. I just don’t believe in coincidence.

Greetings and great to have you. Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882 if you want to call into the program today. If you want to send an email, it’s ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

Also this afternoon — I set this up last week before all of this blew up over the weekend. So we’re gonna go ahead and do it. Conrad Black, who is a longtime friend of mine, one of the biggest advocates for Donald Trump in the world, is gonna be with us at 2 o’clock this afternoon, the beginning of the third hour. He has an update to a book that he wrote two years ago, “A President Like No Other: Donald J. Trump and the Restoring of America.”

The paperback version is out and Conrad’s gonna be with us in the third hour today to discuss his thoughts on Trump, the president, Trump the man. He’s known him for years. He’s been one of his number-one advocates, has never wavered during anything, and it will be great to get Conrad’s take. Conrad’s in Canada. He’s a former publisher, media titan, real estate raconteur, and one of the most brilliant in Mensa IQ terms people that you will ever encounter. A dry wit. He had just a tremendous book some years ago now called Flight of the Eagle about the early days of the United States, a tribute to George Washington and some of the founders. Just a great title, a great book and he’ll be with us.

I’m gonna be fascinated to pepper him with questions about his take on what all is happening here, ’cause, folks, what do we have here? We’ve got the president and the first lady. We’ve got two senators on the Judiciary Committee, two Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee, and now everybody, “Oh, we gotta cancel the hearings, oh, we can’t go forward, oh, we gotta delay it.” You know, they haven’t made a big deal about Amy Coney Barrett, the Democrats haven’t, other than the standard, traditional opposition to any Republican nominee.

But, folks, I have to tell you, I’ve been looking for ways to describe how the fait accompli confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, will undo decades of work these people have done, to turn the Supreme Court into a 6-3 on balance conservative tilt is just — I can’t describe for you how horrible that is to them, how they cannot permit that to happen, how they will not permit that to happen. I don’t care how cavalierly they appear to be dealing with it. It is as unacceptable to them as Trump being elected president and then being reelected.

And they will pull out every weapon they’ve got to stop Amy Coney Barrett being confirmed. And that’s what we were in the middle of here. That’s what this is all about. As far as they are concerned, as far as the left or the Democrats are concerned, there’s some ancillary benefits to this.

And that is, all these Republicans being infected with COVID, which now allows the Democrats and the left, who are not religious, to start invoking biblical terms to explain what’s happening, like God and the Bible are finally getting even with Trump because Trump wouldn’t pay attention to COVID. He wouldn’t pay attention to the masks. He wouldn’t go along with shutting down the country’s economy.

And now God, who they don’t even acknowledge exists, is now coming back to get Trump. Maureen Dowd had a column rooted in that belief. It is maddening. These people are invoking things they don’t even believe in order to spread their glee. They are happy about this. They can’t contain their happiness. They’re trying. They’re trying to act like they’re prayerful, but they can’t contain their glee over all of this.

But I’m telling you I, for one, you know me, I have been saying ever since the nineties and the Clintons that there’s no such thing as coincidence in politics. It’s not a new philosophical belief of mine. And I don’t think there’s a whole lot of coincidence going on here. But look, I’m sure you want to weigh in on this as well. And we will do that. We’ll get to your calls at the regularly appointed time, which nobody knows. We’ll just get there when I happen to feel like starting on the phones.

Kayleigh McEnany tests positive for coronavirus. She’s asymptomatic. She’s not feeling any symptoms. She announced it in a statement earlier today, posted to Twitter. She said that she had tested positive this morning, is experiencing no symptoms of the disease. Do you know that she has had — I’m not betraying any privacy here. Do you know that Kayleigh McEnany has had a double mastectomy? And she did it because she has a genetic marker indicating that she’s likely to have breast cancer in her life because of genetics and other things.

So she had the double mastectomy as a precautionary, an advance move to take that risk down. And so she’s medically up to speed and aware of things. “After testing negative consistently, including every day since Thursday, I tested positive for COVID-19 Monday morning while experiencing no symptoms. No reporters, producers, or members of the press are listed as close contacts by the White House medical unit.” That’s her way of saying if you came in contact, don’t worry about it. “Moreover” — the press is harping on this next one — “Moreover, I definitively had no knowledge of Hope Hicks’ diagnosis prior to holding the White House briefing on Thursday.”

Now, the press is harping on that because their regime right now is to just rip Trump and rip the administration for hiding the diagnosis. They think Trump tested positive on Thursday despite not announcing it until early, early Friday morning. They think Trump knew he had it but he went ahead and did fundraisers, and he went ahead and came in contact with people, and he was irresponsible about it, and they found out Hope Hicks had it, didn’t tell anybody for a while.

Now, Kayleigh’s saying she didn’t know that Hope Hicks had been diagnosed prior to the White House briefing is a way of saying had she known about Hope Hicks, she would have altered her behavior on Thursday and Friday. Hope Hicks experienced symptoms last Wednesday night, tested positive for the virus on Thursday morning.

McEnany held a briefing with reporters on Thursday, which she conducted without wearing a mask as they gratuitously toss in, raising questions about when she knew that a colleague was sick. She’s made it clear that she did not know that Hope Hicks had been diagnosed when she had.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’ll start with Jay in Vero Beach, Florida. Welcome, sir. Great to have you.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Great talking to you. Right to the point. It seems to me that along with your notion that you just mentioned that there are no coincidences, I think that there’s a theory, perhaps conspiracy theory that ought to be investigated, and that is that President Trump’s, you know, dealing with the COVID virus and his high advisers, three senators on the Judiciary Committee, could be a result of bioterrorism. I’ve got no evidence to support that, but then the mainstream media has no evidence to support the fact that it came from his not wearing a face mask.

So I have no trouble conjuring up ways and methods of which it could have occurred and the selectivity and the timing. I think they were hoping that he would catch it before the debate and it would have been really rich irony that he would not have been able to — that Biden could have avoided the debate because Trump caught the COVID virus.

RUSH: Interesting theory that they were hoping he would catch COVID before the debate, not be able to show up for the great ironic contrast that everybody is talking about Biden, who is unable because of physical limitations, and here it turns out that it’s the strong bull of an ox, Donald Trump, who can’t make it. That’s what your thinking is, huh?

CALLER: That’s possible. Yeah, exactly.

RUSH: Well, let me ask. You said there are conceivable ways that this could have been done. Share with me a couple that you’ve been thinking about. If somebody wanted to purposely infect a number of people at the White House — and, I’ll tell you this — in terms of this is a bioattack. People are just literally honestly trying to figure out how did it happen, they’re zeroing in on two events. One was debate prep, ’cause Chris Christie’s got it. You heard about that, right?

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Chris Christie came down with it. He was in debate prep. He was in there with the president and some others, and then the Amy Coney Barrett Rose Garden announcement ceremony is where a lot of other people came down with COVID-19. So, given those two locations, those two events, how would, if somebody wanted to infect a bunch of Republicans, how would they do it at those two events?

CALLER: Well, I think the White House would be a very difficult place to do it. Because I think people are tested before they go in and sit down and do whatever.

RUSH: I think it would be very easy to do at the White House.

CALLER: Well, I think it’d be easier to do it on Air Force One. You got all sorts of people coming and going, refueling, bringing refreshments on board. I’m sure there’s some security, but I can’t imagine it’s as tight as it could be so, you know, anybody who’s an outside vendor anywhere, anyplace, where, you know, people were and, you know, ask the Chinese. They’re very good at this sort of thing.

RUSH: A-ha. The ChiComs. The ChiComs. Let me just throw a couple things out to you. These are just possibilities. These are not, whatever you think out there, folks, we are leveling no allegations. What about an infected swab that they are testing people with?

CALLER: Well, if —

RUSH: What about some person who has the virus but is asymptomatic and is walking around all of these places getting close to people, breathing on ’em, touching ’em, and maybe a Republican, even. What do you think about those two possibilities?

CALLER: I think they’re all possibilities. I don’t think you can dismiss anything out of hand. While we’re speculating, consider it all. But, you know, what you have to say is that you have to use the Democratic line, “If true, this has serious ramifications.”

RUSH: Yeah. That’s what they say about their own journalism stories. “Wow, if true, this is really bad.” Wait a minute. What do you mean, “if true”? You shouldn’t be running it if it isn’t true. But this is how they’re quantifying a lot of stories. All right. I appreciate it, Jay.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Scott in Pittsburgh. Great to have you, sir. Glad you waited.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thanks for taking the call.

RUSH: You bet, sir.

CALLER: Continued prayers for your health and improvement.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, thank you very much.

CALLER: And to my point. The liberals and the demon press have the mind-set of the end justifies the means. For example, Harry Reid with Romney’s taxes, “Well, he didn’t win, did he?” And having said that, let me speculate, if you will. With all of these members of the House of Representatives, the vast majority of them being Republicans being sick, are they?

I would not put it past the liberals to come up with an outcome that they want saying for the fear of the COVID, they can’t vote for the Supreme Court nomination and with the Republicans being sick, push it past a reasonable time frame to not have the representatives there to vote her in and thus she doesn’t get confirmed.

RUSH: Wait a minute. I wasn’t able to hear everything you said. The House of Representatives doesn’t vote on the Supreme Court nominee.

CALLER: I’m talking the collective Senate, whether it’s the Congress or whether it’s the Senate, you know, making their votes and doing the inquisitions that they’re gonna put her through. They will turn around and say they don’t have time in order to do this, and the Republicans aren’t there to paint her in a better light.

RUSH: Okay. Okay. So you’re speculating that this is all about preventing the vote on Amy Coney Barrett? Is that what your theory is?

CALLER: Yes. If you can look at this as it’s getting to that point now where they’re not gonna have enough time —

RUSH: That’s not a theory. I mentioned this in the first hour of the program today. This is exactly what the whole point of this is, is to shut down this nomination. This is ball game for these people. Anyway, I’m sorry to scream at you. I gotta go. I’m up against it on time. We’ll be back here in just a second.