On Wednesday, conservative talkshow host Rush Limbaugh said the economic shutdown is unsustainable, stressing that the uncertainty over an eventual start-up date is only aggravating the problem.
The host also noted of the hostility toward anyone who dare raise economic devastation as part of the United States’ COVID-19 response equation, which he argued is being incorrectly framed as “lives versus money,” when it’s actually measuring “lives versus lives.”
“We simply cannot — with no end in sight — go on like this,” Limbaugh said Wednesday, one day before it was confirmed that a total of 10 million jobs were lost in just two weeks of nationwide coronavirus precautions. “We cannot be in the midst of this economy being shut down with no end in sight.”
The host said the so-called “mitigation” timeline offered to Americans from the Trump administration is unhelpful.
“It’s not gonna work,” Limbaugh said. “Now, they can tell us, ‘Well, we think in two weeks we’ll be able to relax things,’ and then those two weeks go by and they can’t. They’ll say, ‘Oh, give us another two weeks,’ because they think that we can live with waiting an additional two weeks every two weeks.”
“If they tell us six months, that won’t work,” the conservative continued. “But there’s an overriding problem with this, and it is the uncertainty combined with nobody talking about it.”
“Right now all of the talk is about medical. All the talk is about the horrible medical statistics, predictions, models, all the talk is apocalyptic when we’re discussing the virus. It’s all apocalyptic,” Limbaugh said. “It’s all end of the world. It’s all end of this. It’s all death. It’s all new numbers, 2.2 million, 240,000.”
“Meanwhile, everybody’s at home, the economy shut down, everybody realizes this can’t go on, but there is this degree of uncertainty as to when this is gonna end. It cannot go on like this,” he added. “At some point, folks, we as a country are gonna have to answer a question: How much of the economy do we let drift toward Great Depression status before we stop it?”
The 69-year-old highlighted a piece from The Federalist’s Ben Domenech critical of the federal one-size-fits-all response to COVID-19, titled, “We’re Following A One-Size-Fits-All Coronavirus Strategy Right Into A Great Depression.”
“Dead-on right,” the host said of Domenech’s argument on economic uncertainty. “The uncertainty. Nobody’s talking about when this is gonna end. Everybody’s talking about the end of everything else, except the end of the suspension of the economy.”
Limbaugh stressed that anyone who dares bring economic damage into the COVID-19 response equation is “gonna be hit.”
“The media is gonna cream ’em for insensitivity, not caring about how many lives are lost. But it is a reality that cannot be ignored,” he said. “National cable news and its ovesrall attitude of apocalyptic futures ought not be what dominates everybody’s mind-set.”
“My point is that I know the crushing fear associated with it, the lack of self-esteem and respect that that situation causes people,” he added. “Now, this is not the result of people being fired, but they’re being fired; they’re being laid off in some cases. This is even worse in some cases. We have purposely shut down the economy.”
“Now, I’m not arguing that it didn’t need to be done,” Limbaugh noted, “but it’s gotta get turned back on at some point. I don’t care if it’s November. They need to tell us what the target is. There needs to be some way of eliminating this wave of uncertainty that pervades everything here.”
The host noted that “nobody in officialdom, nobody in these briefings is talking about [potential economic devastation] other than Trump saying, ‘We’re gonna get back up,’ blah, blah, in a generic sense.”
“Democrats are gonna pitch this as lives versus money, and they’re gonna do their best to make sure this economy stays shut down because that’s the fastest way they think to beating Trump,” he continued, adding: “When in fact it’s lives versus lives. It’s not lives versus money. Money is not an enemy of lives. Money is not an enemy of life. But to the modern-day Democrat Party and media acolytes, it is.”
“Democrats and the media think government is the source of wealth, that government can create high paying, green jobs out of nothing,” he continued. “You know what the truth is? We’re gonna have a stimulus package of $2.3 trillion dollars, do you know how much money that is? You can’t fathom it. You can’t imagine how much $2.3 trillion is, and it’s not enough to support anybody for longer than two weeks. The government cannot provide, nor can the government create an economy that was providing anywhere near like the American people were being provided for or like the American people were creating. It just can’t be done.”
“Ours is a $22 trillion economy,” Limbaugh stated. “And that’s not the result of government growing and government — well, government’s a part of it. It’s 19% of GDP, 19 to 22%. The media and the Democrats are doing everything they can to reorient people’s thinking once again to thinking government’s the source of wealth, government’s the source of fairness, government’s the source of freedom, government’s the source of rights. None of that is true. That’s why the longer this goes on, the more worried I get about it.”
“That can’t go on indefinitely. It just can’t,” concluded Limbaugh.