the truth about rush. i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. i didn't know rush limbaugh personally. i was in his company just once. but he had an enormous impact on my profession and our nation. news of his passing has been met with as divided a reaction as his work while he was alealive. i myself have previously written and spoken extensively about the destructive influence much a polarized media on our national discourse. and how i think an important milestone was his syndication in 1988. quite simply, there would never have been a president donald trump without talk show host rush limbaugh paving the way. it is no coincidence that years before he announced his

candidacy, trump had a former aide listen to thousands hours of talk radio to discover what issues americans cared about most. s after a three decade long priming by rush, by 2016, gop primary voters were ready to vote for a candidate who reminded them of their favorite t host and trump seized the moment. and like no else before him, he resonated with rush's listeners. one need only look letter that cousin sent to congressman adam kinzinger one of the few voting to impeach donald trump, he recited god, trump and talk radio hosts limbaugh. quote, you should be very proud that you have laost the respect of lou dobbs, laura i think glam, tucker and et cetera. and more importantly rush

limbaugh and us. think about that, rush's sway over this person was such that it overruled her family loyalty and had her literally demonizing her cousin for having a difference of opinion. such was rush's reach with conservatives. with his passing, many others now finally recognize the truth of what i've been saying for years about how limbaugh led the way to polarization. bruh w but what has been missing from left and right is an accurate understanding of what made limbaugh so effective, so impactful whether you agreed or disagreed? i would argue it wasn't politics. it wasn't ideology. it was his mastery of entertainment skills. i saw it up close on a particular night october of 2007, back then, i was the morning man at a philadelphia radio station, a rush affiliate. when he came to speak at the academy of music in

philadelphia, the one time home of the orchestra. when invited by station management to introduce him, i passed. i didn't feel it was right for me or for him. it was a year before the 2008 election which would provide a break point between me and the gop i knew i was about to renounce my republican registration. but i did attend the event taking my father as my guest. dad was a big rush fan. before hand, we went back stage and met rush limbaugh and then settled into watch the performance. 90 minutes at a podium without notes. no power point, just his voice, conviction, humor, story telling. with the strength of personality, he had an amazing hold over the audience. i wrote about what i witnessed in my column for the "daily news." i said the hmaestro on stage wielded a microphone instead of a about aen to.

a baton. and you could say the evening selection was a version of fanfare for the common man. the conductor, rush limbaugh. i then wrote about his rise, how he filled avoid with his syndication when there were no conservative outlets. rush i said built them a club house, but mostly what stood out was his command of the spoken word, his raw entertainment skills. i concluded thusly, rush on stage is more ringleader than republican, more entertainer than conservative. you don't attraction 15 million plus listeners a week or 2,000 people for a night on broad street by being anything else. that was 2007. by 2016, rush and his imitators had created a climate that facilitated the nomination and ultimately the election of donald trump. when trump gave limbaugh the presidential medal of freedom, it brought their story full circle. no one has explained the

connection between talk radio and trump's rise like brian rosenwald, a university of pennsylvania professor who actually earned a ph.d. by studying talk radio. when in 2019 he published a book called talk radio's america, i hosted him here on cnn to explain the trump/limbaugh causation. rush limbaugh was watching and he thought rosenwald nailed it. >> this guy kind of gets it. his name is brian rosenwald. he was on cnn saturday so nobody saw it. michael shermerconish was talki to him about his new book and smerconish says you say it wasn't the escalator ride that began the trump candidacy, it was tugly august 1, 1988 that began the trump candidacy.

how come? >> that is the day rush limbaugh takes his act national and it is a great show and people tune in. and they start this habit -- forming this habit of listening to talk radio and then later cable news and what they hear every day is calls for a fighter. you know, it doesn't make for good radio to say hey, nuance, compromise. that stuff is boring. but fighting, that is good radio. and donald trump captured that ethos. >> so this guy is claiming that this program is what effectively set the stage, laid the groundwork for trump to come in. next question. now rest anybody think the book is a hit job on rush, you give limbaugh props being a master show man. >> michael, he blazed a path, he created an entirely different media form from anything that ever existed before because he is a great show. early in his time on the air, he would abort callers, he would play a vacuum cleaner sound effect, you'd hear scream in the background as he is hanging up

on a caller. there were things that nobody had ever seen or heard and people had to tune in because they never knew what he was going to say. >> this guy gets it. this guy gets it more than anybody that i've ever encountered writing about talk radio in general or about this program. >> limg becabaugh liked that pat there was more that he didn't air. >> there is a mindset out there, you reference puppet master, that the whole talk landscape was controlled by individuals eager to spread conservative wisdom and ideology. this the book, that is not the conclusion you reach. what was the motivation? >> the motivation as rush always said was to charge con physical camer to advertising rates which means how can we make the most money, what is the best most engaging show that we can put on every day and that didn't always work with what republicans wanted to do. at times republicans would say

hey, this is the best deal we can cut and talk radio would say no, stand up and fight for us, fight for our values. they are rolling over again for the mainstream media, for democrats, that is all they do, they just roll over. and that is the sentiment that helps give us donald trump. >> rush had a tendency to see things in black and white, not shades gray. but his own legacy was more nuanced. limbaugh was a gifted showman who unfortunately used those skills to usher in an era where entertainment and news reporting became conflated, enabling those who possessed microphones to supplant traditional political leadership, thereby valuing brand. and sound bite. over legislative achievement and rendering compromise a dirty word. i'm sure by now both the left and the right are cringing by my analysis. still to come, with covid cases

dropping, some will say we'll have herd immunity sooner than we thought. are they right. and while floridians have enjoyed a lay say fair year with covid-19, but statistics are identical to another state. how can that be. and plus bitcoin has long confound many financial experts. right now it is flying high and legitimate businesses are starting to accept it as payments. is it here to stay. go to smerconish.com and answer this question, would you invest in bitcoin. it's either the assurance of a 165-point certification process. or it isn't. it's either testing an array of advanced safety systems. or it isn't. it's either the peace of mind of a standard unlimited mileage warranty. or it isn't. for those who never settle, it's either mercedes-benz certified pre-owned. or it isn't.

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when will america finally reach herd immunity? this week one doctor from johns hopkins makes the rosy prediction that it could be as soon as april. new daily infections have declined 77% in the past six week and that it is driven by the high number of people who have already been infected and vaccinated. meanwhile president biden said he hopes americans can return to normalcy by the end of the year and the director of the cdc warns that america is still seeing more infections a day than it did at the height of the summer peak. she also cautions that the current downwards trend is threatened by the variants. but saying that the cases are drop manaping in the uk. here is more interesting data. since the early days of the pandemic, no two states have been more different in their approaches to fighting

coronavirus than california and florida. and yet both states ended up with roughly the same outcome. in california, gatherings were limited, bars were closed, indoor dining prohibited, a mask mandate imposed and implored to stay home. a where in florida, restrictions were lifted and schools stayed open because dgovernor desantis said he trusted his residents to use common sense. the program tracking project says over the course of the pandemic, california has a rates of more than 8600 cases per 100,000 people. while florida has a rates of more than 8400 cases per 100,000. it is similar with deaths. california has recorded about ' 120 deaths per 100,000 compared with florida's 137. hospitalization rates,

california is at 24 hospitalizations per 100,000. florida about 22 hospitalizations per 100,000. also with hospitalizations, it is important to note age. just 15% of california's population is at least 65 years old while 21% of florida's population is 65 years or older. meaning more residents in florida are vulnerable to a virus that preys on the elderly. finally not only the state's results were the same, but so were their trajectories. california saw spikes in april, florida in may, both spiked again in summer and then once again in early january before declining. so were lockdowns necessary, did they work, what can we learn? joining me now to discuss is dr. stewart ray infectious diseases professor at johns hopkins schooling of medicine. thanks for being here. when i as a layperson

nonphysician flip through those charts when you look at the cases, california versus florida, when you look at the hospitalizations california versus florida, the deaths california versus florida, they look remarkably similar. what are you see management d day -- seeing in the data? >> it is wonderful to see patterns and equivalencies between states. and i think it is very appealing to make those sorts of conclusions. i think the hard part is to understand some of the detailed di differences. rates in l.a. county have been tremendously higher than rates in the san francisco area, yet they are under the same state jurisdiction, the same lockdowns. so if we think lockdowns are the difference, then how do we understand those differences between municipal regions. i think that that is pretty tough to do. i think a more likely explanation is that there is a pendulum of public opinion that is swinging back and forth and

with the holiday travel we saw a lot of movement of people, which resulted in cases which generated a synchronized sense of alarm. and that that has resulted in big drops nationwide. so i think that it is appealing to in both the lockdowns and i will comment that lockdowns are all about timing. we saw a lockdown in march in california that was very effective. and at a time when we would have thought that they would have a big rise, they blunted it. and i think many experts attributed success to that lockdown. the lockdown in california this december was -- sorry, go ahead. >> no, no, please finish your thought. >> so the lockdown in december was nuns announced on december 3, they already had 20,000 cases per day in california at that point. so closing the barn door after the horse has left may not protect communities that are vulnerable. >> i want to talk about herd

immunity. a colleague of your wrote for the "wall street journal" testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. applying a time weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases means that 5 a% of americans now have natural herd immunity. 15% of americans have received the vaccine and the figure is rising fast. former food and drug commissioner scott gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of march. there is reason to think that the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection as more people have been infected most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer americans left to be infected. at the current trajectory, i expect covid will be mostly gone

by april allowing americans to resume a normal life. do you agree? >> i don't. and i can't help thinking about someone else saying that covid will be done by easter or may. and that didn't go very well a year ago. the notion that everybody who has been infected is fully immune is one that doesn't have a lot of data to support it. we've seen a second infection even with people with normal immune systems being more severe than the first and we don't have a good estimate of the number of reinfections. i think that number that he invokes of 1% is wrong if a variety he have reasons that i'd be happy to go into. the other challenge is we really don't have a measure of immunity. in almost every state, suggesting that everybody got a little alarmed at the end of december and early january with the number of cases and deaths,

that if people start celebrating before we reach the end zone, that often doesn't go well. we need to wait until we're in the end zone to celebrate. >> quick final question. i want to put on the screen a graph from the "new york times" today which says that total immunity in the united states today, it is hard to read that chart i'm sure, but here is the bottom line, that we're right now at about 40%. do you agree with that? >> i think that is reasonable. we don't have a good measure of immunity, but i think that that is a good estimate and i think that we have a ways to go before we reach herd immunity. >> but if you look by which we're vaccinating people and presume that it will continue to tick upward, doesn't it mean that perhaps by spring we've reached somewhere between 70% and 85% of immunity, herd immunity? >> i do think that we have a chance if we really ramp up vaccination and we need people to help support that, that we could reach herd immunity by

summer m summer. and we know that something happens in the summer, we made i see a drop in incidence for that other reason too. but now is not the time to be celebrating. >> doctor, thanks for that. i didn't mean to insinuate we should be celebrating yet, but hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel. let's see what you are saying. herd mentality without vaccination is suicidal. i don't think anybody is advocating that we go the route of herd immunity without vaccination because so many people would die as the virus continues to spread. but both are taking place right now. and escalating rate of vaccination and so many people who have already had the virus. a lot of data out there. i'm not an expert. read the "wall street journal" es essay, factor in what you heard from dr. ray and i think that the "new york times" did a pretty darn good job in trying to explain how complicated a subject it really is. up ahead, bitcoin is so

mainstream that master card and as i like to say it tesla are accepting it for payments. three years ago these two experts fought here whether cryptocurrency was a scam, so i invited them back to see if they are now in agreement that it will for real. that inspired the survey question. would you invest in bitcoin? and in 2010, a football injury left this college freshman paralyzed from the neck down. doctors told him he had a 3% chance of ever moving again. he is here to tell an unbelievable story. >> just in a matter of seconds, i went from independent to depe dependent. i couldn't feel a thing. i'm not going to be a part of the 97% that doesn't recover from this. >> a little farther. good. >> i'm going to do what i can to beat it.

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bitcoin the digital currency created as an alternative to cash is exploding in value. will it last? many financial experts dismissed the crypto occurrencurrency as . at the end of the day friday, its value was over $55,000. elon musk the ceo of tesla recently bought 1.5 of bitcoin. and said his company will accept it as payment for its electric cars. has mastercard, apple pay and others allowing it as a form of payment. is it now a safer investment? january 6, 2018, i hosted a debate on this program between a bitcoin bear and bitcoin bull. that morning bitcoin was worth around $17,000.

two years earlier a tech entrepreneur and author had declared bitcoin dead and is sticking to his guns at least then. >> i think that it is the greatest scam of modern times. bitcoin is never going to be a digital currency, it will implode before you know it and regular people who trust you will lose their shirts. >> dan moorhead founder of the first bitcoin focused hedge fund defended the currency. > . >> i'm a trader so can never be sure of anything, but that was written two years ago and since then $100,000 in bitcoin would be worth $4.5 million. >> since bitcoin has more than tripled in the intervening three years and the fund is up more than 69,000%, i of course had to invite both men back to check in. dan moorhead who started at goldman sachs is founder and ceo

of pantara capital. and also the author of how large companies can see the future and rethink motivation. i think dan is probably here for a victory lap. if that is true, is it premature? >> michael, when is the last time you bought a pizza with bitcoin in never. when is the last time anyone watching this used bitcoin to transact commerce. practically never. in the old days this story is about people buying pizza with bitcoin, but we don't use it as a digital currency anymore. what it is a speculative asset. it is as value only as casino chips are. now, the argument will be that bitcoin will reach $100,000. it could reach half a million dollars or it could be down to $5,000. we don't know. just like gamestop, it is gamestop on steroids. the difference between gamestop

and bitcoin is gamestop had a bunch of nerds and geeks and good people who had no experience in finance behind it and this has investors who has tech moguls pouring billions into it and then the price rises, they cash out, take their profits and you've got the zealots like my friend dan who persuade new investors to come in and buy it and they lose their shirts and leave bankrupt and crying where the rich got richer and then they buy it again after the price drops and then it falls again. so the common person loses no matter what happens and the rich keep getting richer. >> dan, friday night happens to be pizza night in our house. last night i used cash. does he have a point that until and unless it reaches a degree where bitcoin is used to buy the friday night pie, we don't have anything here? >> no, bitcoin does dozens of different use cases from digital

gold to cross word money movements to all kinds of things. and really the last thing it will do is be good for buying a pizza. actually the first commercial transaction with bitcoin was a developer who bought pizza with 10,000 bitcoin. and that is worth $100 million, $5 billion today. that is why people don't use to buy things at the moment because it is appreciating at such a rapid rate. and those arguments have been made by the very small percentage of people who are negative on cryptocurrencies. but it is really being used. 7% of bcross border money movement goes over bitcoin. we recently sold a company in the philippines that has one out of every ten adults in the country using bitcoin. so bitcoin is being used and investors that are investing in it today aren't investing in it because it is great if buying a cup of coffee, they are investing in it because it will disrupt finance payments, all

these industries. and ten years from now, it will be good for buying a cup of coffee. >> vmen vivek why are you unperd given the new that the largest bank or tesla or paypal or apple pay, there seem to be so many vendors maybe not a pizza yet, but so many vendors that are recognizing it as a form of occurrenccurrency that they wil. >> there is a fear of missing out. and the difference here is that you have intelligence sophisticated investors, billionaires, elon musk spending $1.5 billion of his company's money which comes from the public which comes from tax breaks on a casino. that is the type of behavior you have and these people could inflate it a lot more. i was also watching gamestop the same way. i said oh, my god, there is no telling where this goes. it could be worth a trillion dollars just like bitcoin is or

it could go bust and it went bust. sam thing could happen with bit coin oig. we don't know. right now, i bet it could go to $100,000 the next few weeks. but what happens after that? it will drop again and again, the people who bought it at $100,000 will lose their life savings and the rich who sold it will put the profits away and reinvest it and it will go up again. it is a game. >> hey, dan, everything i know about the markets i learned by watching wall street. and it is like vivek is the character who says it is all about fundamentals. i don't know if you know the movie reference. but respond to what you just heard. >> yeah, it is actually funny, pantara's previous investment was an investment in tesla motors in 2011. and i heard all of the same arguments. it is just a car company, there hasn't been a car company go public in the united states since ford motor went public.

it is just tesla and elon musk fan boys that buy the stock. it is disrupting transportation, it is disrupting power generation, it is disrupting power storage. so tesla now is, you know, kind of safe from criticisms like he has said. the criticisms of bitcoin are essentially all the same. and in one of his previous papers, he said bitcoin is the pets.com of this era. and i think that is a great an analog. the major investor in pets.com invested in a bunch of ideas to then people use these new technologies, to what is now called the internet. and some didn't work. but the investor in pets.com a guy named jeff bezos and his company is doing pretty well. >> vivek, you get the final ten seconds. >> what happens if elon musk cfo

loses his password for the $1.5 billion he has? that will go down the toilet. that is the risk with bitcoin, it is all based on passwords. computers can be hacked. it is as easy as that to steal money like that. so it will take one fall like that for this thing to crash and burn. >> gentlemen, i appreciate both of you. and i will definitely invite you back. thank you so much. >> thank you, my friend. >> thank you. from the world of twitter, smerconish, i would never invest in bitcoin but i would also never let a tesla to the driving for me. old school. hey, i used to feel the same way. but i let that car drive me to the studio today. so now i'm thinking to myself maybe i'm wrong about bitcoin as well. go to my smerconish.com and answer the survey question. would you -- i can't wait to see. because i have no idea how you

will vote on this. would you invest in bitcoin any know you wish you already had. that is not is not today's ques. would you invest in bitcoin. still to come, a new documentary chronicles the inspiring journey of a former college football player who became paralyzed in 2010, chris norton withheld from his fiance emily sought to wake across the stage of hiats graduation and succeeded. with an accomplishment like that, it is no surprise the video has been viewed more than 300 million times on social media and the nortons join me next. it's time for the ultimate sleep number event on the sleep number 360 smart bed. you can both adjust your comfort with your sleep number setting. can it help me fall asleep faster? yes, by gently warming your feet. but, can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and

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take trajectory of a young man's life. chris norton suffered a devastating spinal cord injury in 2010 while playing in a football game leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. doctors gave him only a 3% chance of every moving again. odds he was determined to beat. norton began several years of intense medical and physical therapy all with the goal in mind of walking across the stage at his college graduationgradua. he had met his significant other emily three years after the accident and she has been by his side every since. >> we had no idea how he was going to walk across the stage. he was walking in this big walker. he was working four, five hours every day. sometimes even more. >> i went to that graduation and i busted myself for years, if i trip and fall, so be it. >> christopher norton.

>> what happened next is a comeback story that will inspire anyone to overcome the odds. the video of his triumphant walk across the stage at his college graduation became a viral sensation with more than 300 million views. norton's determination was on display for another inspiring feat in 2018 when he walked his then fiance emily seven yards down the aisle at their wedding side by side. more of his remarkable story is being told in the brand new documentary seven yards, where norton himself reenacted the football tackle that changed his life. it is available to purchase and rent on apple tv, prime video and other on demand platforms come tuesday. chris and emily norton both join me now. i'm so thrilled to see both of you. chris norton is a motivation and i will speaker , author and founder of chris norton foundation and they co-authored

the seven longest yards. and they are also foster parents to seven children. it is 2010, you are 18, you are playing college football as a freshman on a beautiful day in iowa. your parents are in the stands. and this freakish injury paralyzes you. what was it like to have to recreate that for the movie? >> going into it, i wasn't worried about it. as a motivational speaker, i have to tell my story thousands of times. but when you put on the shoulder pads again, the helmet, and you are lying in the exact same spot that you were seven years earlier, all those emotions just come flooding back. and i can just remember the fear that i had and just wondering about my future. but obviously being seven years out from that moment, knowing where i was at, i had the love of my life, i was having children.

and so the great peace then, but i knew it would be really impactful for the viewer to recreating that moment. so i'm really glad we did it. >> emily, you are a saint. you were able to look past his jury injury when the two of you met. i wonder if everyone would have been able to do that in a similar circumstance. what was attraction, what brought you into his life? >> i mean, a lot of him you see is his hard work. he has this determination that he is never going to let his struggles determine who he and where he goes. and i think the biggest thing that attracted me is how he not only went through something difficult, but instead he wanted to do something for other people. he wanted to use those difficulties and what he learned through to help others in other situations. and just because he is in a wheelchair he is not any less of a person or a man, that has not determined who you are. your physical ability. so i just love who he is and the

work ethic and how caring and loving he is. >> chris, a buddy of mine who is a physician wrote a book called compassion-omics. and it makes the case that when there is a little added compassion exhibited by a medical roprovider, it can make all the difference in the world with a patient. i don't want to give too much away from the movie, but tell us quickly about that nurse from wyoming. >> yeah, so i'm lying there scared, it is the middle of the night, and this woman comes in to check my vitals. she gets done on one knee and she goes something that i never expected, she tells me to look her in the eyes and that she wasn't going to tell a lie and she told me in that moment while i was just crying, chris, you will beat this. you will beat this. and those words changed the trajectory of my life.

and i clung on to what she said to me every single day. those words echoed in my head, chris, you will beat this. and i just kept going and going working as hard as i can each and every day. >> at the other end of that spectrum, that compassion-omics spectrum, is the doctor d disbelieving and you say hey, i think i just moved. what was it, your left big toe? >> that's correct. yeah, so he comes into check my toe and i tell him something is happening. and he tells me, chris, you will never move anything in your legs ever again. and i was devastated. when you are a patient in a vulnerable situation, you cling on to every single word your doctor, your medical professionals, tell you. so to be told that news, it was -- it wrecked me. but thankfully i was with my dad, he was there to encourage me. and also those words that

georgia told me of chris, you will beat this, i heard those words, i listened to that, i held on to that faith and not that fear and i kept going. and on thanksgiving morning, i wiggled the left big toe he said that i would never move again. >> emily, i only cried six times during the film. the one question i need to know, if you explained it, i missed it, why seven yards as a walk down the aisle? why not five or ten? >> yeah, so it was seven years since chris' injury. so we felt like that was significant to do seven yards representing those years and the struggles and everything that it took to get to that point, all the hard work. so that is where the seven yards came from. >> you two are so inspiring. thank you so much for being here to tell your story. i loved the movie. and i encourage everybody else to watch it. no matter their circumstance, especially in these very partisan and divided times, it

is a hell of a story. so thank you. i wish you all good things, chris. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> thank you. still to come, more of your best and worst tweets and facebook comments and we'll give you the final result of the survey question. would you invest in bitcoin? go vote. with everything from mel robbins to blake griffin, is there a more fascinating place than audible? no. and i've done the research. of course you have. audiobooks, podcasts, audible originals. ♪ [ "could have been me by the struts ] ♪ audihey, mercedes?ts, audible originals. how can i help you? the 2021 e-class. motortrend's 2021 car of the year.

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i'm floored by that. it's at like 55,000 and change. at least it was when i last checked. 86% of you say no, not going to do it. we'll continue to visit that subject with those two great guests. here's some action from during the course of the program. >> as an amateur, all i know about financial investment is never buy high. how do you know if it's high? we're already looking back at when i did the initial interview and i said when they were here before, you know, three years ago, it was at 19,000, now it's at 55,000. this is the high. i'm not going to buy it. what about the guy who thought 19,000 was the high and now he's kicking himself? what else came in. here's another one. if both left and right are cringing at your analysis, that means you have probably done something right. wow, nick, how did a

complimentary response get in there? here's what i said in the opening commentary about rush. what i said was that he was a gifted showman. nobody can deny that. he was a gifted showman, a masterful entertainer. and i said it's unfortunate that he used those skills to drive a partisan divide in the country that many politicians have been following ever since his rise. and guess what? both of those are true. and i understand that the response to the opening commentary -- go ahead and watch it online if you missed it -- is voluminous. if you took only one-half away from the analysis you missed my point. actually, you reinforced my point. thank you for watching. see you next week.

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so grateful to have you with us here on this saturday, february 20th. i'm kristy paul. >> i'm victor blackwell. we begin with breaking news. just a few moments ago, president biden approved a major disaster declaration for texas after the devastating winter storm that crippled a lot of the state for several days. more than 15 million texans are now facing a water crisis. >> they either don't have running water or they have to boil the water that they do have. officials say it could b