Part Two: The Rush Limbaugh Episodes with Paul F. Tompkins

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M broadcasting from his studio in I don't know, some
fucking place with one liver tight behind his back to
make it fair for all of the narcotics in his system.
Robert Evans, you don't know, you don't like me, You
don't you don't like my my pseudo Russian intro stuffing.

(00:21):
Not on board, not not a fan of that introduction. Um,
this is behind the bastards. This is behind the Bastards.
A podcast that will never be as big as The
Russia Limbaugh Show because Sophie won't let me use cultic
mind control techniques on our audience. Um, that is inaccurate.
Feel free. Okay, well we're back. The man you just

(00:46):
heard is Paul F. Tompkins, our guest for this exploration
of the life and times of Rush Limbaugh. Everyone, Hey, Paul,
how are you feeling? How are you? How are you doing?
An hour and a half into talking about l Rush
Bow Feeling great? Feeling great, feeling. I feel energized that
he is dead. Yeah, I I too feel happy that

(01:08):
he's dead. It's fun. It hasn't worn off yet, it
has it never will. It will always be good that
he's dead. There's a few people who are like that
where it's like every now and then, I'm just like,
think back to the fact that Ryan hard Hydrick is dead,
and it's like good, good for him, you know, good
for him. So, once upon a time, Paul, the United

(01:30):
States used to have a thing called the fairness Doctrine. Now,
in short, the fairness doctrine required anyone with a broadcast
license to present controversial issues in a balanced way, providing
roughly equivalent time to present both sides of an issue.
And then this was obviously a flawed rule. Some issues,
for example, like climate change don't have two sides, right,

(01:51):
there may be different sides, but like what the right responses,
but there's not two sides to the reality of climate change. Um,
and while the but while the you know, the fairness starts.
So the Fahren's doctrine not a not a perfect not
a silver bullet, uh sort of of of thing of
a jig. But while it was in place, right wing
media in the form that we have today did not
and could not exist now since the dawn of the

(02:14):
fake news era which we're in now, a lot of
folks have talked about the time of guys like Walter Cronkite, right,
When when you had newsmen who basically every American trusted,
who could shift massive national issues just based on their
considered opinion. Right Cronkite calls Vietnam a quagmire, Suddenly national
opinion on its switches. Um. And a big part of

(02:35):
why these guys were trusted is they were required to
lend equal weight to both sides. They couldn't just be
partisan shills. Now, this generally meant that they would give
kind of the conservative opinion and the liberal opinion as
opposed to the far left of the far right. But
it did mean that you you you didn't have something
as unbalanced as Fox News right right. It's like the
voter guide you get, yeah, exactly. It gives you the

(02:56):
measured and says some people say this, say this yeah.
And as flawed as the fairness doctrine was, it was
part of why most Americans lived in a semi unified
media ecosystem back in up prior to nineteen eighties seven. Now,
obviously this did not last. In nineteen eight seven, the FCC,
as the result of a court case, the FCC rejected

(03:17):
the fairness doctrine. Conservatives cheered this on because fair media
was seen by arch conservatives guys like Roger Stone as
a big reason why Americans had broadly supported the impeachment
of Richard Nixon at the end of the Watergate investigation.
Watergate is one of these situations where when the investigation starts,
the vast majority of conservatives are against it. Right, don't

(03:38):
think Nixon did anything wrong. The evidence comes out in
opinion shifts, and it becomes very popular to get Nixon
out of office. Um, this is the last time that happens. Right,
This is the last time that like people's minds get
changed by the facts on a political issue in America. Um.
And it's the last time this happens. Because the right
goes after the fairness doctor, and after about a decade

(04:01):
or so of fighting, they're able to get it killed. Um.
And the end of the fairness doctrine was the necessary
precursor to the creation of a holy, separate, walled garden
of right wing content, which was seen by dudes like
Roger Ales as a necessary step to protecting right wing
voters from ever learning about other opinions, which would, they
believed protect the next criminal, white right wing president from impeachment. Now,

(04:26):
after Limbaugh's death, the new York Times let Ben Shapiro,
noted novelist, write a column about his professional idol. Benny
Shapps called the fairness doctrine quote, a standard that in
practice allowed for the domination of broadcast media by liberals,
with sporadic commentary by conservatives. Us of an imitation, It's

(04:49):
it's so rush. Limball was aware from the beginning that
his whole career hinged on the fairness doctrines. Death with
his and like he starts being national voice in nineteen
eighty nine, two years after the end of the fairness doctrine.
That's not a coincidence. Now, with his unparalleled national platform
and his status as a chief thought leader of the

(05:09):
American right, Limbaugh went about turning the fairness doctrine into
his main boogeyman. I found a Vanity Fair article from
two thousand nine that lays this out quite well. Quote.
The single most important issue in Russia's radio career is
now among the hot button issues and conservative politics. The
fairness doctrine a formalized, fair and balanced rule for covering
the controversial issues on the nation's airwaves, which the Reagan

(05:32):
FCC killed in nineteen seven. The most liberal wing of
the Democratic Party, which puts substantial blame on talk radio
for a generation of conservative dominance in Washington, wants to
revive the doctrine, which would pretty handily destroy conservative talk.
According to the official Seapack polling of its members, restoring
the Fairest Fairness Doctrine is the third most significant Democratic

(05:52):
Congress policy initiative opposed by the right wing raking, only
behind expanding government in public healthcare. So yeah, there is
with Russia's orchestration, a rapidness to the cause. Opposing the
Fairness Doctrine is up there with opposing abortion. And he's
you know, he's it's really him that's responsible for making
this such a popular issue. It starts off as a

(06:15):
thing that kind of high up extreme right wingers, guys
who had been Nixon's right hand men push because they
want to protect the next guy like Nixon. And it
gets popular though because of Rush Limbaugh, because he sells
it to the American conservative mainstream. It's funny, like the
sorry but the idea that like with the Nixon era

(06:38):
after Watergate, Nixon, when Nixon resigns, that is maybe the
last time that there were real consequences for any for
the for the highest office. Where after that, you know,
Clintons impeachment, Trump's impeachment, whatever, it doesn't mean anything. It's
it really is just like an asterisk in history, you know,

(07:01):
essentially of saying like, just so you know, people, some
people thought this was bad, and uh they and they
said so officially, but there's no real consequence for any
of this. So really what they're doing is saying, we
cannot Nixon should not have had a consequence. We got
to make sure that there's never a consequence ever again.

(07:22):
And unfortunately that meant for everybody for like for I
don't know what if because if it didn't happen, if
it didn't happen after Bush, which there was not even
an impeachment for Bush, like for the Iraq war that
that we all know now was bogus. If there was
never gonna be a consequence for that, then it worked

(07:46):
and there there and and from now on, Like when
is it ever going to happen again? When if it
didn't happen, then when is it ever going to happen again? Yeah?
I don't think it can because this propaganda eca system
turns out people who would fight to the death rather
than have somebody who on paper, is supposed to agree

(08:08):
with them face consequences for blatantly criminal activity, right, and
then and then it also it conditions whether whether you believe,
whether you believe in whether you're you're on Russia's side
or not, whether you're on that side of things or not.
It conditions everybody to feel like it's okay that there's
no consequences, because what are you gonna do? Yeah, it's

(08:28):
just the way things are. You can draw a fucking
line between kind of the things that Rush starts because
it has an impact on on liberals and the left too.
You've got this. It's it's Beau and and it's it's
because obviously with the fairness doctrine, nobody ever heard anything
from the far left right the far left, and in
fact was criminally prosecuted a lot of times for their
opinions in this period. Um. But the positive thing about

(08:52):
the fairness doctrine is that it was a large part
of why there was a broadly agreed upon understanding of
the basic a basic reality in the United States, right
that we don't have anymore. And when you lose that,
I kind of think when you lose that, the only
like things inevitably escalate to deadly violence. Yeah. Um, and

(09:13):
that's bad, right, not that again, under the fairness doctrine,
Americans were led into Vietnam, were let into Grenado, were
led into Panama. We're letting to all these horrible, horrible things.
Obviously we like it. It did not. It did not
mean that Americans had an accurate understanding of the world.
But when they had an inaccurate understanding of the world,

(09:34):
it was still broadly similar. Right, And that is better
than where we are now. I guess I think it
is at least less toxic that. I guess you could
argue the United States had more power, the government had
more power to pursue violent activity overseas and stuff. I
don't know, I don't know. It's it's a complicated issue.
But whatever, whatever you can say about Russ Limball, he

(09:55):
was not a dumb man. Uh. He was a huge
bigot though, and that and that came any New York
Times right up. Makes it clear that, among other things,
he was quick to realize that rampant misogyny was an
incredible marketing tactic. This was, as we discussed in our
last episode, always cloaked in a thick haze of irony.
Quote this is Rush. We know that women in groups,

(10:16):
same office, same dormitory, same barracks eventually have synchronized minstrel cycles.
We also know that there's this thing called PMS, and
we know what turns a woman into a Hellian. We
know that PMS has been used as a defense against
a charge of murder. Here's my proposal. We have fifty
two battalions. We can prepare the nations that will have
on any given week of the year, a combat ready
battalion of Amazons to go into battle. Imagine that your manual,

(10:36):
Antonio Noriega, you were in the Papal Nuncial in Panama City.
You feel safe. All of a sudden you hear this
blood curdling scream outside. I am outraged, and there is
Sergeant Major mole Yard leading a battalion of Amazons with
PMS over the hill. That would be enough to scare
the pants off of anybody, everybody. I mean, it's like,

(11:00):
it's just not even that funny, That's what it's not.
That's one of the things that sucks about Rush Limbaugh
is that he for somebody who did a lot of
bits and you know, I was supposedly doing satire. He
just wasn't that funny. He wasn't. It's just that he
was saying the bigoted, terrible things that a lot of

(11:22):
bad people wanted to say, and the fact that it
was so horrible, and the fact that it scratched their
I made them laugh and made them think he was
a genius because somebody was finally telling them it was
okay to be as shitty as they kind of wanted
to be from the beginning, because you put the tiniest
effort into constructing these bits. Yeah, and it's it's it's

(11:43):
the same thing with all of these You've got this
kind of strain of comedians who thinks that it's important
that they be allowed to say the N word. Not
a single one of them has ever told a good
joke involving the N word. Right, it's not funny. You're
just going for shock value, right, that's all you're trying
to do. And that can be There's not that. No
good humor comes from shock value. But again, I haven't

(12:04):
heard a single good joke from a white comedian involving
the in word. Um, not that it would be appropriate then,
but I haven't heard one. You know, like so from
the beginning, the villains of the Rush limbaugh expanded universe were,
as The New York Times explained, quote black activists, gay activists,
abortion rights activists, homeless activists, animal rights activists, militant vegetarians, environmentalists,

(12:27):
artists with erotic tendencies, and above all, the now Game
gang that's the National Organization of women. His hatred Russia
said that his hatred for these people caused him an
uncontrollable urge to tweak. Quote. The simple fact of the
matter Limbaugh is apt to inform dolphins, savers and tree
lovers is that we are human beings, and we are

(12:49):
the most powerful, smartest species, and we can damn well
do whatever we want. And you can draw a line
from this kind of the way he's phrasing things. Here's
like it's stupid to care about the environment and animals
because we're more powerful than them. Um to the like
the ship that Identity Europa and Patriot Front, these like
explicitly fascist organizations exist. Now we'll put up these signs,

(13:09):
like these posters of the United States that say not
stolen conquered right where it's like, fuck the indigenous people,
we beat them and so we deserve all this right.
That's just an extension of what Russia is saying, you know,
and he the fact that he made that mainstream is
why they have a chance of making that mainstream, you know.
And the idea that it's so that they that they

(13:34):
that he phrased it as this uh matter of personal choice, um,
rather than like just common sense practical thinking, you know,
like do you really want to do you really want
to put your trash in two separate trash cands? You know,
And it's like, well, it's not so much that it's
a hassle. It's that we're gonna make earth unlivable for ourselves,

(13:57):
not that we're like, you know, fuck you the dodo
you should have you should have had claws or something.
It's that we're fucking ourselves. Like that's why why has
that been? Why is that so hard to understand? It's
so hard to comply with and so hard to uh
uh keep as part of the narrative when because the

(14:21):
logical extension is, what do you care You'll be dead
by the time by the time this ship, by the
time this ship affects people in in a meaningful way
to to you, a meaningful way, you'll be dead, So
what do you care? And and these are people that
are all allegedly all about the family, and it's like, well,
I mean, do you plan on having grandchildren, great grandchildren,

(14:44):
great great grandchildren? Like do you care about what? I
don't know? I don't, I don't. I'm not being funny
now and I'm just being just being whiny. But what
you're getting at, Paul, and what the core of this
is is that Rush doesn't believe in positive things. And
I don't mean positive in a good sense. I mean
he doesn't believe in things that should be done. He

(15:06):
believes in tweaking people. That is what he turns American
Conservatism into. He turns it from were conservatives. These are
the things we believe about how the government and how
society should be run. And too conservatism is owning the Libs.
That's where we are now. And that's what this is
is is my politics are a sort of rhetorical violence

(15:29):
against the people I disagree with. Because improving the world,
changing making positive alterations to the world is difficult and
complicated and involves a lot of debate and trial and error.
That's hard. All I want to do is own the Libs.
That's what Rush Limbaugh created, brought into the world and
turned into the entire that that's the only thing that's

(15:50):
left in conservatism. Right, You've got these odd You've got
a couple of dudes left on the right who actually
believe in something like Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwartz an
egger right. Not that what they believe in is great
or that I I believe in it too, but they
both have a clearly have a principles that aren't just
owning the Libs. But they're on the fringe now because

(16:12):
owning the Libs, as all the right has. Um, it's
just it's not it's not it's not standing for something.
It's it's I. It's like, not what I my politics are.
I don't want somebody telling me what to do. I
believe in a vague idea of a John Wayne movie.

(16:34):
And you know, things were better in this bygone era
before these people started to suggest that maybe we can
improve things and that's where it ends. Yeah, and it's
it's it's very frustrating, Paul, because that the core of
that idea that like I want to be left alone.
That's more or less my politics. That's what led me

(16:55):
to anarchism is like, don't fucking tell me what to do,
and I don't want to tell you what to do.
And that is what as a kid I was taught
conservatism was. But it's not what conservatism has ever been.
And I think a big part of why why the
Republican establishment embraces Rush is that by the early nineties,
in particular, by the mid nineties, definitely, it has become

(17:15):
clear that nothing that the right does works for the
actual people that that vote them into office. Down economics
does not function. You know it doesn't. It's well documented objectively,
does not work the way they say it does. They're
fighting against environmental regulations damages the world and makes it uninhabitable.
Fighting against corporate regulations gets a lot of their voters

(17:38):
killed by dangerous working conditions and stuff. All of the
wars they get us into our disasters and expensive, and
do not achieve the foreign policy or even the basic
national security goals they sat Conservatism as Americans do it
at least does not work. And when you know that,
you can't go back to the drawing table. You can't
admit failure, you can't acknowledge the mistake. What you can

(18:00):
do was own the Libs, you know, and that's why
that's all it is now, is owning the libs. Um,
it's good. It's a good, healthy, healthy society, Paul. It's
only going to get better too, so we gotta get better.
So Russia's justification for the outrageous caricature of a right

(18:20):
winger that he played on his show had always been
that these liberals and leftists advocating for black lives and
women's liberation and basic environmental safeguards were absurd, And, as
Rush put it, I demonstrate absurdity by being absurd. That's
his own words. Now this turned out to be an
objectively good business because none of his listeners seemed to

(18:40):
find Rush himself absurd. The character he played became the
man he was, and the once a political wanna be
DJ turned into a mouthpiece for the very worst of
our society's impulses. One thing that made the Russia Lmbough
Show groundbreaking was that, for the first time in an
explicitly political talk show, the focus was not on guests
or actual reporting or anything but the personality Limbaugh had created.

(19:03):
Rush was his own guest, and this was a deliberate
choice he made and a very intelligent one to make
the show more profitable. If the focus of your show
is on the news and on what guests have to say,
you can kind of slot any person with a decent
voice in to replace the host. Right that limits how
much money you're going to make, and it limits kind

(19:24):
of the length of your career. Rush himself explained in
an interview, I wanted to be the reason people listened.
That's how you pad your pocket. That's how you establish yourself,
and that's very smart. He did, in fact establish himself
in Rush's radio success finally got the TV people listening.
They decided to try him out as on screen talent.

(19:46):
He teamed up with Roger Ailes, the man who would
later invent Fox News, and together they produced one of
the most outrageous and vile news programs ever made. It
would sadly also turn out to be one of the
most influential. And now, Paul, it is time you and
I to take a journey into this particular piece of
our right history. So this episode from two of the

(20:08):
Russia Limbos show opens with a title card which features
an image of a microphone with the name Rush and
blazoned on it, and the words warning, the views expressed
on this program are not necessarily the views of the staff, advertisers,
or your local station, but they ought to be. Yeah,
it's good ship, man, it's good ship. So the episode

(20:29):
itself has a weirdly quiet intro, no music, just rushed,
with the pointers standing and what looks like an office
with wall to wall bookshelves and TVs interspersed within the
books on the bookshelves. He introduces himself and he starts
talking about a recent conversation he had with President George H. W.
Bush on his radio program. So there continues to be
more controversy surrounding my performance with the president yesterday when

(20:54):
he came by my radio program. The press is telling
you things that aren't true. But we have the tapes
and we have the truth me and we'll show you
and tell you both tonight. So that's telling. That's that's
that's extremely important what he does here. You have to
remember Fox news was not a thing yet at this time,
fake news was not a buzzword. Limbaugh is groundbreaking in

(21:15):
that he was not only critiquing mainstream news as being
fake and lying, but he's also telling his listeners I
am the truth. This paragraph from a write up by
Rolling Stone gets to the core of why I find
what he's doing here so terrifying. Quote. He wasn't selling
political ideas and he never has. He was selling political attitude,

(21:37):
the swaggering certitude, the mocking dismissiveness, the freedom to offend,
the right to assert your privilege without guilt or embarrassment.
And partly because he was modeling that liberation with such
wicked glee, Limbaugh was making himself indispensable. Within six weeks
of tuning in regularly, he would tell new listeners they'd
be on the cutting edge of social evolution. Best of all,

(21:57):
he promised, I will do all you're reading and I
will tell you what to think of it. I will
do all you're reading and I will tell you what
to think of it. Yeah. Wow, it's so and it's
so bald. Yeah, it's right out there. It's like he's
not there's no, it's not like um uh sort of

(22:22):
obfuscating language. He is to say very clearly what the
deal is, this is and this is the this is
the logical extent of this. I'm so smart, you know,
I gotta tie half my brain behind my back just
to make it fair. You know, I'm this big genius.
I'm so smart. You don't need to read or think.

(22:43):
I'll do it for you, and then you two will
be smart. And this is a huge thing. He spins
a lot of effort in reinforcing his intelligence. Um. After
this section of the show, he goes on to introduce
the other topics of that episode, which include feminazi glorious Steina,
interview of the movie The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
Then we cut into Yeah. Then we cut to the

(23:05):
actual intro, which is terrible nineteen nineties talk show music
played over a series of mocked up news articles with
titles like E I B linked to higher i Q.
Limbaugh gets patent, Limbos says no to presidential bid, Limbaugh
checks brain on donor's card. Limbaugh to carry a torch
at the Mental Olympics. Again, he puts a lot of

(23:29):
effort into and it's absurd, right, but it clearly works.
It worked on my parents, you know, all of the
people who raised me. To some extent, they're convinced he's fun. Yeah,
he's fun. But he also says things that I like
to hear. But he's fun. He's just fun. He's fun.
I think also You cannot underestimate the um the effect

(23:51):
of the pointer. If you have, if you have, if
you're on television and you have a you're you're walking
on over television with a pointer and pointing at something,
it looks very official. Totally absolutely, That's why I have
a point. Well I have a gun, but it works
the same way. Um. So, Robert, what all your weapons

(24:15):
in front of you? Well, I'm always I'm always surrounded
by weapons. What what's going to happen during this scusion?
You don't have anything on you right now? Mae? Right here? Yeah, strapped,
Paul fucking here's my knife there. That's lovely nice, A

(24:41):
nice little hunchback there. That makes it. Yeah, alright, now
we're all armed. We can properly get back to the show.
I didn't realize this was this was a knife on
the table show. I apologie. This is this is I mean,
there are like three knives on the table right, this
is a significant number of that's a beauty on the table.

(25:02):
I apologize. So the show proper starts after this point,
after these fake news articles kind of go through and
Russia's first subject on this episode is the then new
TV series Murphy Brown Murphy Brown was obviously the titular
character of the show. She was a recovering alcoholic investigative
journalist and a primetime news anchor and a single mother.

(25:25):
Murphy Brown was a very feminist and progress progressive series
for its day. Limbaugh opens his episode by expressing anger
at the show's success, and then, in what I would
consider a fairly abusive manner, he tells his audience why
they shouldn't watch it. Clip. Oh, people on my radio
show didn't You probably watched it too, but you didn't

(25:46):
have to. You know why you didn't have to because
I told you you didn't have to. I have the script.
I told you everything that was going to happen on
this show. I told you it wasn't funny. I told
you it was defensive. I told you this show was
was was was a little heavy handed. I said that
they're they're focusing on the wrong thing in this show,
and they really did. I have You've heard a lot

(26:07):
of people say a lot of things about this show,
but I'll tell you the most important thing is that
they got very defensive about what a family is. They
trot out all these various examples of what a family
is and that's not what the Vice president or any
of the family values people. That's profoundly abusive. I think
this is this You shouldn't have watched this show because

(26:28):
I told you not to, and I told you not
to because it's not good for you to imbibe this
um And I think it's important to break down exactly
what he's doing here. First off, he is trying to
physically separate his audience from mainstream American society. Murphy Brown
was a hugely popular show in this day. He is
literally telling them, you don't need to watch this thing

(26:49):
other people are watching because I am telling you not to.
And he justifies this by saying that Murphy Brown is
an assault on family values, which he goes on to
call functional values, because families, the ones portrayed on Murphy
Brown were, in Limbaugh's eyes, non functional. This is significant
because Murphy Brown was a single mother. She was one
of the first single mother's portrayed on American TV as

(27:12):
not just existing but as being a successful person and
a competent parent. Was furiously not into it. I can't
let you can We can't let people watch this because
it will give them the wrong idea, not just about
single mothers. I also think it's worth noting that on
the show itself, the idea of her being a single

(27:32):
mother was a uh a plot point that it was
a story arc that they discussed a lot on the show.
It was not a it was not a blive decision
by the character. It was um. They really talked about
what it because because it was a show that did
that did a lot of satire, talked about issues the

(27:53):
The discussion of whether or not she was going to
have the baby and what it meant to be a
single work mother UM was discussed at great length on
the show. Yeah, and that that's why he wants, That's
why it is important to him to keep his audience
away from it. Now. That was not the only kind

(28:15):
of groundbreaking thing about Murphy Brown. The show was incredibly
significant in its portrayal of gay people. In several episodes,
most notably in nineteen two and nine four, homosexuals were
shown as not just normal, functional members of society, but
as existing in significant numbers throughout American society. There's an
episode where like one of the characters buys a bar

(28:37):
and it becomes through kind of like comedic hijings or
whatever becomes a gay bar, and he's like slowly realizes
what it is. But the point the episode was making
is that gay people are all around us. They're part
of our community. They are a significant, meaningful part of
our society. This was rare in mainstream television for the time,
and it made Rush Limbaugh furious. We have another clip

(28:58):
here of of that just adults teaching kids doesn't matter
what the conversation a composition is of the family, and
nobody has has been critical that when Quayle said that
they glorified single mothers, what he was trying to point out,
my friends, was and I think this show proved it
last night. This is another thing. This show has got
an agenda. And they say all day long they don't
have an agenda, but last night's show proved it. It's

(29:21):
okay that they have an agenda. Just say so, like
this show. We we are perfectly upfront and honest about
what I am and what I believe on this show,
and we'll let that float out in the marketplace and
let you accept it as it is. There's no attempt
here to fool you, there's no attempt here to deny
what I am. But that's what they're all about. Now
this is also really significant. Um So what Russia is

(29:46):
doing here is he's framing his objection to Murphy Brown
as reasonable and not based in hate. He's saying, I'm
not against single mothers, or'm not against gay people or whatever.
I am against the fact that this show conceals its
political agenda. And I can see why people like most
of my family would have found this reasonable. But what's
happening here is very sinister, because Murphy Brown was not

(30:09):
trying to be left wing. It was trying to make
a point that single parents and that gay people are
regular human beings who contribute to society. It was trying
to point out that single parents are valid and functional people.
These should not be political points, and recognizing the humanity
of huge chunks of the population should not count as

(30:31):
an agenda, but it was critical for Rush Limbaugh to
turn it into one, because if you can take the
basic humanity of marginalized people and make it a political
talking point, then you make it into something people can
oppose on principle and thus frame their bigotry is not
hate but simply a political stance that they have every
right to. Rush was not the first person to talk

(30:52):
about the gay agenda, or to oppose single motherhood. Not
even close. But before him, the most prominent voices attacking
these these groups of people were on the religious right,
which had first had risen as an organized political force
in the late seventies. They were obviously influential, but they
were also obviously religious extremists, and a lot of non
religious conservatives and libertarian types did not want to identify

(31:14):
with fundamentalists. Rush who had a documented history of mocking
religious conservatives, provided the more libertarian right with a secular
justification for bigotry against gay people and single mothers and
women in general. And that's one of his great innovations. Unfortunately,

(31:34):
he pioneered this idea that if you are saying this
is okay, this thing is okay, what you are doing
is saying that's that's somehow that's an attack on me
and what I'm so the idea of dan Quile saying
it glorifies single mothers, um no one that that show.

(31:55):
No one was ever saying we should do this instead right,
we should be doing we should be doing this instead
of what you think is right. This is what we
should be doing, rather than just saying can't isn't this okay?
Like these these people exist. Isn't that all right? These
people exist, It's all right, and they shouldn't be hated

(32:16):
or punished or or ostracized for being this. He's not
even talking about a slippery slope. He's he's just saying
that if you are saying this is okay, that means
you are saying the way we live is not okay.
And that's just not there at all. It's just not
there at all. But if he's if he's able to

(32:38):
make it be that way to his listeners, then he
can number one, make sure they will always oppose these
things that he just finds gross. And number two, it
further separates them from mainstream society. This is the beginning
of the splintering of the mainstream American right from the
United States, from most of the people in this country.

(32:59):
And it is the beginning of making sure that there
there was no You cannot reconcile the right with with
the modern world, with the rest of civilization, because you
doing a different thing than them is an attack on them,
Like we're being attacked because you're different, and so we
get to fight you. That's Russia's great innovation. And also

(33:24):
that the way you think is the real America and
not the people think that's haunting. But you know what
isn't haunting, Robert, the products and services that support this podcast, hopefully,
hopefully unless it's Raytheon, which is very haunted products. But

(33:47):
that's a story for another day. And we're back. So Paul,
I would love to go with this through this entire
episode with In fact, I would love to do a
reoccurring series where we just go through, point by point
every episode of Rush limbas TV show and talk about it.
I think it would be amazing. It isn't wild, Yeah, yeah,

(34:14):
what's the what's the opposite of Proustian? Yeah? Um, I
it would be very I think fun and also intellectually valuable.
But we just we have so much ground to cover,
we that that this has to be the end of
that episode of the show. Yeah. We can't do a
rewatch of the We can't do a rewatch podcast with
the Rush Limbo Show. Yeah, at least not not today. Um.

(34:37):
I think we've gotten the point across and characterize what
he's doing on the show and why it was significant. Now,
the Rush Limbaugh TV Show was what you'd call a
modest success. The thirty minutes syndicated series ran from n
which is not a long run, but isn't a super
short run either. You know it was. It was not
a huge hit, but it was successful. That said, it's
actual impact on history was much raider then its four

(35:01):
seasons might suggest. As I said earlier, Roger Ales was
the executive producer of Limbough's TV debut. Limbaugh and Ales
had met in nineteen ninety, and Rush would later say
that their meeting was quote like finding a soul mate.
And I'm gonna quote here from a write up that
I found on courts the persona Ales helped Limbaugh create

(35:21):
on that show, something between a commentator, political strategist, news anchor,
and entertainer is exactly the kind of act you can
see today on Fox News. It is not hard to
draw a straight line from Limbaugh's TV show to talking
heads like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. Like today's Fox
News personalities. Limbaugh fancied himself as a man of the
people who railed against the latest liberal politicians and voters.

(35:43):
But as he did that, he was flying his private
jet around the country to wine and dine with powerful figures.
The myth he created of himself with the help of
Ales is the same myth that we see pushed again
and again on Fox News by its biggest names. In retrospect.
Ales may have been using Limbaugh's TV act is that
test run for Fox News to see if the brand
of conservative opinion that was working on the radio could

(36:05):
be translated to and expanded on TV. In nineteen ninety six,
the same year the Limbaugh Show ended, Ales co founded
Fox News at the behest of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Much of what ensued, the liberal bashing, fearmongering alternative reality
in which Fox's personalities lived was reminiscent of aless weird
little Limbaugh talk show experiment. So this is really a

(36:27):
test case for what becomes Fox News, you know, And
the year Limbaugh Show in six is the year Fox
News launches. What's strange to me is well, I guess
because the show was over, I guess the show, you know,
the viewership went down. I wonder why he didn't just
stick Limbaugh on Fox News in those in those early days,

(36:49):
he wanted to actually, um yeah, so uh like like
Ales actually tried to get Rush to join the network
I think in two thousand six. Um, but each kind
of preferred radio. I don't think he actually liked being
on TV very much, not not not to the extent
that he enjoyed, you know, doing his radio show. UM

(37:09):
So I think that was mainly the reason. But also
by the time Fox News really got going, Ales had
a half dozen Rush limbas you know, which we'll talk
about a bit later. So throughout the mid and into
the late nineteen nineties, the Rush Limbaugh Show was a
bona fide cultural phenomenon. Rush created the first fully monetized
right wing cult of personality within like the American media.

(37:31):
At least as you heard in the clips we played,
Rush discouraged his listeners from thinking for themselves. He was
the genius, and if you just agreed with him and
thought the way he thought, then you were, by definition
also smart. As a result, from the very early point,
he gave his fans the nickname ditto heads. The New
York Times explains the etymology of this term as it

(37:51):
evolved on his show. Ditto a time saving greeting used
by callers to avoid tedious repetition of the obvious. For example,
you're wonderful Rush, and I agree with everything you've said.
Dittohead then means a Limbaugh fan, So you're like, literally,
he's saying, my fans are people who say and believe
all of the exact same things that I do. Um,

(38:13):
and they're absolutely going to praise me. And so in
order to save some time, let's get let's just condense
all the fawning praise that you will, no doubt give
me into one word, so we know that what you're
saying is, Rush, I love you. You are everything to me, um,

(38:34):
and I need you to know that before we get
into whatever fucking issue we're going to get into. Yeah,
you're the only thing that matters to me, or at
least your beliefs are, because I am so empty as
a person as a result of how capitalism has hollowed
me out and hollowed my my class out, that that
I have nothing but the hatred of liberals that you

(38:55):
embody until that first guy came along that had to
implement mega dittos. Yes, yeah, and then there's mega dittos.
And I can't even get too much into some of
the terms used on the Russia Limbo Show because it
makes me want to punch things. Until my hands are broken.
And I already said that happened last year because of
one of his fans. Anyway, the core of the Rush

(39:16):
Limbaugh show was not, as he would always claim, advancing
conservative ideology, but was instead attacking liberals and the left,
who he referred to as kami libs or pink kami libs.
And I don't know. I again at this fucking gun
class I was at last weekend. The instructor was like,
the far left wants to take your guns away, and
obviously I couldn't be like, actually, the far left is

(39:36):
pretty heavily strapped. It's liberals think are but like, that's
part of part that this idea that Joe Biden is
somehow a leftist right, that he's a communist, that you
hear an auch and you hear all over the right. Now,
that was Limbo saying anyone who is not a conservative
as a far left, so it doesn't matter that actually
the Democratic Party is a profoundly conservative political party. In

(39:57):
today's Democrats are basically the same Republicans were when I
was growing up in the nineties. Um. There's also never
any follow up on these these the fearmongering claims whenever
there's an election, like what happened to the Obama sleeper cells,
like he never are are they still in play? Is
he still waiting to give them the word? Like they

(40:19):
never go back and say, oh, it turns out that
didn't happen. It's this, I mean, that's kind of the
thing about Republican talking points. Like the other thing they
kept panic like r like terrified during the Obama years,
He's gonna take your guns. He's gonna take your guns.
He's gonna take your guns. Barack Obama did not one
single thing to restrict gun ownership in the United States, um,

(40:39):
whereas actually Trump actually did ban certain fire the bump stock.
Like Trump put through more restrictions on gun rights than
not that I'm saying bump stocks are dumb, but Trump
objectively restricted gun ownership more than Obama. But you never
know it to listen to the right wing media, it's
it's preposterous you that by now people would know, no,

(41:02):
no one's going to take your guns. No one's going
to take your there's too many of them. It's it's
not that you know, we'll talk anyway. Absolutely, yeah, it's yeah.
As I said earlier, the core of Russia. Limbaugh's actual
ideology was owning the Libs um his his conservatism was
built entirely around attacking the other, and over his years

(41:24):
on air, Rush built up an audience of millions, and
eventually tens of millions, who began to see political victory
as being not about achievements that improve life, but about
tearing down and harming the enemy. This is why you
get to a point where now mainstream Republicans are selling
mugs with like that are like the tears of my
enemies are in the Yeah, you know, I'm gonna quote
from the Rolling Stone here quote Any Republican Canada is

(41:47):
better than any Democratic candidate, Limbaugh told his audience early on,
which might sound kind of innocuous on the surface, except
that for Limbaugh, the superiority of our side and the
inferiority of them was increasingly over the years a dead
least serious matter. It became tribal warfare, which you know,
kind of where we are now. On January three, Time

(42:11):
magazine featured Rush Limball on its cover. We see him
wearing a suit and smoking a cigar. Smoke curls up
out of his mouth. Behind the bold words is Rush
Limbaugh good for America. Now, it was obvious to anyone
who was paying attention that he was not. But for
the most part, the liberal media that Russia attacked and
demonized embraced him as kind of like the loyal opposition,

(42:33):
as an erudit foil to debate with, to argue against,
but nonetheless someone who deserved respect and honor due to
his success. Like you can see this in the episode
of Family Guy that Rush was on right where it's
like he has these fun bickering arguments with the token
liberal on the show, but in the end they really
both like each other, you know, um, as opposed to
what Rush actually represented, which is the politics of violent

(42:55):
elimination of the opponent. Um. And it's that. That's what's
most amazing to me is no matter what he said
about the mainstream media, about the liberal media, whatever, they
fedded him, They they praised him, They made him like
he was never treated as a pariah. Barbara Walters said
in an interview, people just can't get enough of him.

(43:15):
The Los Angeles Yeah, The Los Angeles Times described him
as a self styled commander in chief, fighting his private
culture war against the many liberal do gooder notions that
interfere with his right to eat and wear and spend
whatever he damned well wants, and say whatever he damn
well pleases. C Span highlighted him in a fawning interview
that helped turn him into a household name. Within a

(43:36):
year of that interview, he was carried by five hundred
and thirty stations and listened to by an estimated twenty
five million Americans. He started writing books with titles like
The Way Things Ought to Be, each of which dutifully
went on to become a New York Times bestseller. For
a man who built his career attacking the liberal media,
Rush never received anything but encouragement and financial support from

(43:57):
his so called enemies. The fundamental hypocrisy seas that undergirded
his career were seldom called out. Russia. Limbaugh had not
even registered to vote until he was thirty five years old,
two years before his show became a national, nationwide success.
The repeated double standards in his work and his life
never hurt his pull with his audience. For example, Russia

(44:17):
Limbaugh repeatedly attacked Bill Clinton as a draft dodger, which
he was, but so was Rush. Limbaugh took the route
that most wealthy young Americans during Vietnam took and found
a doctor who would diagnose him with a bullshit injuries
so that he couldn't be called up for service. When
he was eventually called on this by some journalists who
were doing their jobs, he responded, I had student deferments
in college, and upon taking a physical was discovered to

(44:39):
have a physical by the virtue of what the military says,
I didn't even know it existed, a physical deferment. And
then the lottery system came along when they chose your
lot by birth date, and mine was high I and
I did not want to go, just as Governor Clinton didn't,
which on its own is a reasonable statement, except you
spent years attacking Clinton for being a draft dodger. You
draft funny and hypocritical. To me, my my favorite draft

(45:04):
dodge uh explanation of all time is still Dick Cheney.
I had other priorities. Yeah, that's that's just that's incredible,
And it's true. Both Cheney and George W. Bush did,
like rush, like Clinton, everything they could to not actually
go and fight in Vietnam. One of the things that
will always be the most infuriating thing in one of

(45:25):
the most infuriating things to happen in American politics. To
me is the way in which um John Kerry, who
is a whatever else you can say about him, fought courageously,
went to win despite the considerable privilege he was born into,
did an incredibly dangerous job, was wounded multiple times, and
risked his life repeatedly for the lives of his men. Right,

(45:47):
Vietnam was a terrible war we never should have been in.
It was fundamentally immoral on a national scale, but on
a human level, John Kerry did the right thing, which
is not use his privilege to get out of fight
eating in a war that other people of his class
got us into. And he was portrayed during that campaign
as like a liar and a craven coward. What George Bush,

(46:11):
who did everything he could to not fight in Vietnam,
was seen as this brave warrior hero. It's it's still
very frustrating. I don't even like John Kerry, but my god,
the man did the thing all of you say is
what you're supposed to do as a man. It's it's infuriating,
it's infuriating. The ditto Heads continued to listen to their

(46:33):
idol Slam Clinton for being a draft dodger, even while
they celebrated a man who, by his own admission, had
done the exact same thing. Rush would eventually rack up
three to four and I should have stayed here. I'm not.
It's not bad to be a draft dodger. The Vietnam
War was again, horribly immoral. It's perfectly it's what. What
is immoral is dodging the draft and then going on
to incourage to do nothing but encourage more wars that

(46:55):
involve American serviceman. Right, that's immoral. It is not a
moral to dodge the draft and say, hey, this was
a bad war. We shouldn't get involved in stupid, pointless
wars that just kill people for the profits of a
tiny number. Like that's bad. I'm not going to do it,
and I'm not going to support it. That's fine. Yeah,
it's doubly a moral when you're well past the age
where it would affect you where it's you're now, there's

(47:18):
another there's a later generation of people that will be
affected by this very uh, you know, hypocritical line of attack. Yeah,
it's the moral inconsistency that's infuriating John Kerry. I actually
and John Kerry did not support the Vietnam War and
became after he got out a very very outspoken voice
against it. Um. But it's the if if Limbaugh had

(47:41):
served in Vietnam and then gone on to be a
war hawk, then at least he would be ideologically consistent.
You know, at least I could say Rush Limbaugh believes
in something. It's like John McCain. At least he fucking
believed in something. You know, it was terrible and fundamentally
toxic as well, But it was not He's not like Limbaugh.
You know, he is a person who has beliefs. Um.

(48:03):
I don't know. It's that It's not like that line
from the Big Lebowski right, like, say what you will
about the tenants of national socialism, Dude. At least it's
an ethos, you know. Uh So, Rush Limbaugh was not
a man who I think believed in much much Other
than the fame and wealth of Rush Limbaugh. He would
eventually rack up three divorces and four wives. He never

(48:24):
had any children. Despite this, tens of millions of conservatives
listened to him, opening on family values and traditional morality
on a daily basis. Rush called it functional values, and
one key aspect of his functional value system was rejecting
illegal drugs. At one point on his TV show at
the height of the drug war, Rush told his audience,
if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they

(48:46):
ought to be accused, and they ought to be convicted,
and they ought to be sent up the river. He
repeatedly called addics junkies. Yeah, to go to prison if
you dog. He repeatedly called addics junkies, and some justed
that drug dealers deserved death for their crimes. Well. He
enthusiastically supported the drug war and the use of the
car Serile state to lock up mostly black men for

(49:08):
selling drugs. Rush Limbaugh was actively trafficking huge amounts of
opiate pain killers. Rush used his housekeeper as a hook up,
handing her cigar boxes filled with cash in exchange for
thousands of pills of oxy content, hydrocodon and the like.
In two thousand three, she went public and knocked on
him to the police. When the story broke, he was
charged for his crimes and Florida Sheriff's deputies opened an

(49:29):
investigation into a drug trafficking ring. We don't know exactly
what Rushes if he was just a customer, or if
he had some other role in it, but he was
buying huge amounts of pain killers. I'm talking about a
guy who was spending probably hundreds of thousands of dollars
on his addiction. And did it come from did he
have some injury that got him hooked on it or yeah,

(49:49):
he got it prescribed to him initially for an injury
and he got addicted like most people do that. This
is this is not just with prescription painks. Most people
who have a problematic addiction to a drug get addicted
because of something negative that happens in their life, right,
trauma or an injury, or or an emotional depression whatever.
That's most people who have a problematic addiction. Um Limbaugh said,

(50:13):
anyone who does that should go to prison. Then he
did that, you know, and he oh, yeah, he gets caught. Uh,
And when he gets caught, it is a big story.
In two thousand three, his housekeeper went public, wore a
wire recorded him doing a drug dealer deal, knocked on
him to the police, and when the story broke, he

(50:33):
was charged for his crimes and Florida Sheriff's deputies open
an investigation into that drug traffic trafficking ring um. His
third wife left him, He checked himself into rehab while
his multimillion dollar team of lawyers went to work defending
him in court. The legal battle would go on for
three years, during which time he began doctor shopping to
maintain his addiction. He was charged again with fraud for

(50:54):
concealing information to obtain prescriptions from four different doctors who
prescribed him roughly two thousand pain pills during one six
month period. The case would eventually wrap up in two
thousand six, when Limbaugh agreed to a plea deal that
allowed him to avoid prosecution if he sought treatment and
avoided other criminal activity. It's very frustrated. Huh, Yeah, I

(51:17):
actually didn't. I didn't really, I wasn't really cognizant of
all the the legal side of this. I just remember
the hypocrisy of him being, you know, uh, just gobbling
up shaming and while he's gobbling down these pills. But
I had no idea. I guess I didn't. I didn't. Uh,

(51:38):
I didn't bother exploring that side of right, and like
he doesn't even it's not even a slap on the wrist.
It's like a little light tap on the wrist. It's
not even a slap on the wrists. So fucking upsetting.
And again, the immorality here is that he always advocated
criminal consequences from people who did exactly what he did,
and then he didn't go on to suffer them. And

(51:59):
that's what's It's that, like, there's nothing morally wrong with
being addicted to pain killers. If it were legal, I
would absolutely be a pain killer addict. Seems rad Um,
it's it's the But I'm also consistent about the fact
that I don't think doing or possession any substant Yeah,
with the exception of, like, you know, some explosives. Um,

(52:20):
there's a line to be drawn, and I don't think
people should have certain but Harold, speaking of Heroin, you
know who supports our podcast, Sophie, I don't know the
fine people at the cinaaloa cartel, so very specifically, like, yes,

(52:42):
this is a cartel supported podcast, And I just want
to say, let's go to ads before I get us
in some trouble. Ah, we're back good times. So, while
Rush was using his wealth power to avoid the legal
consequences that he enthusiastically supported existing for the crimes he committed,

(53:05):
he continued to act as the voice of America's conservative conscience.
Mostly this meant being super racist. At one point on
his TV show, he played video clips of black men
and boys standing in front of the TV and and like,
while he was playing these clips of black men and boys,
he would stand in front of the TV and make
guerrilla noises and grunts, the apparent joke being that black

(53:26):
people were like monkeys, Like that's kind of I don't
know what else he could be saying, um, pretty sat
very satire, Like I think he got that from a
New Yorker cartoon. It would be like if Jonathan Swift
actually murdered Irish children and then was like, this is
a satire, Get it. The joke is that their food

(53:52):
rush repeatedly blamed corruption and violence in African like the
African nation national governments, as the fault of black people
being rid of white colonial leaders, as we see in
this quote from two thousand seven quote. Right, so you
go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you
get rid of the white government there, you put sanctions
on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela, who was bankrolled

(54:13):
by communists for a time, had the support of certain
communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia, you do the same thing. Right.
He's saying that because the black people got rid of
their colonial oppressors, that's why Africa's in bad shape. Not
the decades of trauma those governments pushed. Not the fact
that when those governments gave up colonial control, they put
people like Idi Amine, who had been a British military
sergeant in charge of the government and turned out that

(54:34):
he was a fucking monster. Not because those governments, like
colonial governments, continue to suck wealth out of these countries
and support kleptocratic dictatorships that allowed them to suck more
wealth out, that made the country dysfunctional, and that led
to consistent, like decades and decades of violence. Not that
they supported ethnic groups one over the other, like they
didn't Rwanda, which led to their one to genocide. None

(54:57):
of that. It's because they got rid of the white people,
even the white people to actually leave. You know, it's
super fucked up. I didn't know that he'd actually gone
to the lengths of trying to smear Nelson Mandela. Yeah, communists, Uh,
it's good stuff. I mean Nelson Mandela also was at
one point some guy somebody who supported like terrorism and stuff,

(55:20):
which also is totally justified. If your government is the
apartheid government of South Africa, terrorism is not necessarily the
wrong thing to do. I would say, it's not off
the table. It's not off the table. Sometimes terrorists are right. Yeah.
That is like you could argue that the founding fathers
of this nation, who despite their own bigotry and slave

(55:40):
like the government they're rebelling against, also allowed slavery. They
were right to do terrorism to get rid of having
a king, because kings are bad, you know, like terrorism
is justified sometimes. Um So Rush was repeatedly critical of
professional sports for the presence of black athletes, as we
see in this two thousand seven quote. Look, let me

(56:01):
put it to you. To you this way, the NFL
all too often looks like a game between the bloods
and the crips without any weapons there. I said it. Wow.
The inherent criminality of black people was a belief that
Rush held deeply, and he expressed it constantly. In nine
he said, the a c P should have riot rehearsals.

(56:22):
They should get a liquor store and practice robberies. You're
saying this after the la riots, you know, this is like,
this is what the n A. This is not people
reacting to horrible violence the only way that they can, right.
This is not a riot being the language of the unheard,
this is what the CP wants because to criticize athletes,
I bet he couldn't even do a jog. Yeah, it's

(56:44):
it's pretty great. The the yeah, the ticking point of
like they just these you know, these people, they just
love to riot. Yeah, they just loved not these people
are being oppressed and murdered, and finally violence was the
only thing they could think to do because they were
given no other options, and they've reached the end of
their human tether. Like the people I idolized who founded

(57:06):
this nation, slavery is over. What more do you want?
I mean? And when I say that, I don't mean
to say like that. Obviously anyone rioting in Los Angeles
and was a thousand times more justified than George Washington.
And that said, I still think getting rid of a king,
all other things being equal, getting rid of a king
is a violent reason to do violence. Kings are bad. Yeah.

(57:27):
So Rush repeatedly argued that white people shouldn't be blamed
for slavery, saying it's preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for
slavery when they've done more to end it than any
other race. Any race of people should not have guilty.
If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery,
it's Caucasians, bitch. It's amazing how many Caucasians fought to
keep the thought and died to keep slavery going. Rush

(57:51):
is this just like at this point when you say
things like that, right, he is what do you think
the percentages of uh for in Russia's mind? I actually
believe this or what is the most out to what
is the most outrageous thing that I could say? I
think he comes to believe it because these beliefs, well,

(58:13):
I think what it is. It starts he's not a
political person. He doesn't care about politics. He starts with
a joke because he starts doing this persona because it
gets him listeners. But he's also a narcissist, and these
beliefs aren't political stances to him. There are aspects of
his personality, and his narcissism dictates that he comes to
believe it because believing it and defending these things is

(58:35):
the same as defending himself. And again, he's a fucking narcissist.
I think that's how it works. I like the Trump
thing where he starts out telling a lie, but then
he repeats the lie enough times that it becomes true
to him because he is saying, yes, that's exactly the case.
So another repeated rush limbab bit was attacking the daughters

(58:55):
of Democratic presidents for being In nine, he called Jimmy
Arn's daughter Amy the most unattractive presidential daughter in the
history of the country. In the early nineteen nineties, he
declared Chelsea Clinton to be the White House dog, which
is like just very vile. Um. I don't even think

(59:16):
it's like the Trump boys and Ivanka made themselves political figures,
perfectly fine to insult and attack them. You're never gonna
hear me saying anything bad about like Tiffany or Barren,
because there their children. You know, like, you don't fucking
talk about them if they don't make themselves into a
major part of things. You know, Now, Chelsea Clinton has done,

(59:36):
hasn't put herself in the public eye, and it's perfectly
fair to criticize her for the things she does in
the public eye. But at that time, when he was
saying that she was literally, but she was a child. Yeah,
and what you're what he said about her is a
kind You can't be a good person and say that
about a child to an audience. Yeah. In two thousand twelve,

(59:59):
when your town law student Sandra Fluke went before Congress
to argue that contraceptive should be covered by the Affordable
Care Act, Limboch called her a slut and a prostitute.
It's it's hard. You can't overstate how vile he was.
When um the Marty from Back to the Future, um uh.
Michael J. Fox, Michael J. Fox made some political statements

(01:00:21):
that Limbab disagreed with. Limbob mimicked having Parkinson's disease to
mock him on his Show's a bad person to say
that to to and imply that Michael J. Fox was
playing it up for the cameras when he went testified
before Congress. I remember this. I remember this so well
because Michael J. Fox deliberately did not take his medication

(01:00:45):
and said that and said, I want you to see
this is what happens and Russia. Limbab accused him of
like playing it up like it's not that bad, and
he's he's jiggling all around like I that's like burned
into my brain forever. It's horrific. I mean, it's like
and and to say that it would be it's like,

(01:01:05):
I think what he did was perfectly reasonable. I'm not
going to take my medicine because you need to know
what it is like for people who don't have access
to the medicine. I'm rich. I have access to all
the medicine I need. Here's what it's like if you don't.
I want to make this less abstract to you. Yeah.
I I had a friend. One of the big things
in terms of like me changing my political attitude that
started with like me changing my attitudes on drugs. This

(01:01:27):
conservative that like marijuana should be I llegal, that it
was a moral I had a friend who was much
older than I met on World of Warcraft, who had
multiple sclerosis, and we were video chatting and she showed
me how badly her hands shook before she started smoking. Right,
she like showed me herself shaking, and then she took
a hit, which was difficult for her, and I watched
in real time how it affected her. And I never

(01:01:50):
again supported keeping that ship illegal because you can't when
you see it, right, you can't it's medicine, not that
most people use it use it medicinally, which doesn't isn't wrong,
like it's out wrong to use it recreationally, But just
the idea that what she was doing was a crime
made it clear to me how ammorl our drug laws
were um in a way that maybe if I had
like it would have taken longer otherwise I think, um

(01:02:13):
so Yeah. Anyway, Limbaugh did occasionally face consequences for his
bald faced bigotry. In two thousand three, ESPN hired him
as an on air commentator. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he
was fired after like seven weeks because he said Philadelphia
Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb didn't deserve any of the praise
he received. So he said Donovan, Yeah, he said Donovan

(01:02:37):
McNabb didn't deserve the praise that he received because, quote,
I think the media has been very desirous that a
black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and
black quarterbacks doing well. I think that there's a little
hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of
credit for the performance of his team that he really
didn't deserve. People just like this guy because he's black,
not because he's a good quarterback. The media has invested
in black men being good quarterbacks. You know, I like

(01:03:00):
you went into your Shapiro voice for that quote. It's
what the funk man. You couldn't do what he's doing?
How dare you like? So this combat drew enough widespread
condemnation that Limbaugh was forced to resign from ESPN. But
obviously this had little to no impact on his bottom line.
Maybe it annoyed him personally, but it didn't hurt him financially.

(01:03:20):
By the early aughts, Rush was worth hundreds of millions
of dollars. He had a private jet, He had a
palatial mansion in Florida. He smoked cigars that cost more
than some people's cars. This is disgusting, but I think
any fair accounting of Limbaugh's career has to acknowledge how
impressive it was too. The early two thousands saw the
explosion of Fox News. This is the period where it

(01:03:42):
became the most watched news network in the country. A
slew of Limbaugh imitators rose up, men like Bill O'Reilly,
Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson, to name a few. While
these folks were all hugely successful and influential, none of
them ever eclipsed Rush. This is because, in addition to
wielding influence, Rush held extrue actual, demonstrable political power. And

(01:04:03):
I'm gonna quote the Rolling Stone again here. His sky
hire ratings and the rabid fandom of his dittoheads, who
just happened to fit the profile of people who voted
frequently in Republican primaries, made it inevitable that the GOP
would come courting. After he he boosted Pat Buchanan's pitchfork
populist make America First Again challenge to George Bush, the
President became so hell bent on gaining Limbaugh's favor for

(01:04:25):
the general election that he not only invited the host
to the White House, but toted his bags personally into
the Lincoln Bedroom. Limbaugh had only praised for Bush from
that day forward, at least until he lost to Bill
Clinton in November. That set a pattern. Limbaugh might instinctively
gravitate to the radicals, but he was ultimately a team player,
the national precincts captain of the Republican Party, as Mother

(01:04:45):
Jones described him two years later, Limbaugh basically co captain
the Republican Revolution with House Leader Newt Gingridge, when their
efforts produced a landslide that brought seventy three anti government
Zealots to Congress. The host was made an honorary House
freshman and fed it at a GEOP orientation in December,
where the new members wore Rush was right, buttons and
listened to his marching orders. This is not the time

(01:05:06):
to get moderate, he said, This is not the time
to start trying to be liked. Ronald Reagan himself declared
Limbaugh the number one voice for conservatism in our country,
and Rush was always very clear. And Rush was always
very clear about where he wanted to see the party head.
Smaller government, stronger, more powerful corporations. He said all he

(01:05:30):
said outright. I consider myself a defender of corporate America. Yeah,
it would not be wrong to view Rush Limbaugh as
something of a cult leader. One of the strongest pieces
of evidence supporting this conclusion is, in my mind, Limbaugh's

(01:05:50):
embrace of the irrational politics. For Rush Limbaugh was never
about concrete results or observable reality. It was a fight
between good his side and evil anyone who disagreed with him.
And since those were the stakes, it didn't matter if
he lied or spread conspiracy theories because the essence of
what he was saying, that the Democrats were monsters, was true.

(01:06:13):
Nowhere is this clearer than in his hatred of the Clintons.
It started when George H. W. Bush lost to Bill,
robbing Rush of a president who would directly, you know,
take him into the White House right. From an early stage,
Rush realized that lying about the crimes committed by Bill
and Hillary was a more productive route than criticizing them
on policy, and so in nineteen four he announced Vince

(01:06:34):
Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton
and the body was taken to Fort Marcy Park, rolling
Stone rights conspiracy theories once the province of fringe right
wingers started to become the mainstream Republican fair they are
today during Clinton's two terms, and Limbaugh was the great
popular riser of the genre. Long before Fox House began
amplifying the fringe eyear theories about American politics, Limbaugh was

(01:06:56):
busy mainstreaming wing nut world, the conspiracy cranks, the on Bircher's,
the Christian Zionists, the science deniers, the info warriors, their
wildest fantasies, fears, and paranoias, all came out to play
in the national prime time on the Rush Limbaugh Show,
repackaged by the host into a palatable fair for the
Republican masses. And this isn't this is significant because Russia's

(01:07:16):
demonizing of the Clinton's who There's plenty of very value
valid things to critique them on, but at the end
of the day, pretty normal neoliberal politicians. It's even spread
on the left, this idea that Hillary Clinton is somehow
more of a war monger than other liberals, right, is
somehow like exceptionally bad. When she's not. She's very much
in line with everyone else in in the party, and

(01:07:38):
everyone else who was had has held those positions and
is not as bad as some of them. Right, She's
more hated by certain people. Even on the left. You'll
find people who are who are more directly aggressive towards
her than they are to fucking Kissinger. Um. And it's
not that she's not bad. She is. So is Bill.
They're greedy, Bills a rapist. They they have supported, you know, Initiati,

(01:08:00):
the Iraq War, a number of violent actions overseas that
were disasters, but there they did that as part of
uh uh as as like within a large group of people. Right,
there's nothing about them that is exceptionally bad for the
the the the crew that they run with, but this

(01:08:20):
absolute demonizing of them that has a real impact by
the on the election. That's a big part of what
we get Trump is something that Rush Limbough pioneers. The
Clintons are not like my parents hated Trump, hated Trump
when he was running and voted for him because their
hatred of Hillary Clinton was it's beyond rational. It's it's

(01:08:41):
it's it's and again a lot of super valid criticisms
of Hillary Clinton. I don't think she should have ever
been president. Also hard to say she would have been
worse than Trump. Um, And if you are saying like
she would have, for example, been more killed more people
overseas than Trump, you're not actually paying attention to the
death toll as a result of American air strikes and

(01:09:02):
missile strikes and drone strikes as it changed from the
Obama administration where Clinton was Secretary of State to the
Trump administration. Because there was a massive escalation and death
under that. In addition to repealing of the rule about
any sort of reporting about civilian casualties from US air strikes,
Trump was worse on this sort of stuff, but you'd
never know it anyway. I don't want to get into
a rant on this, but like that, you can't. It's

(01:09:25):
almost impossible to analyze the Clintons, their impact, their crimes,
and their and their um and their their behaviors, their
policies with any sort of rationality because this they've been
turned into goblins. Right. It's it's very frustrating, um and

(01:09:47):
it makes it it makes it so that if you
try to say, like, well, actually, this thing you're criticizing
them on isn't a reasonable thing to or at least
the way you're criticizing them isn't reasonable, Suddenly you're defending them,
and it's like, no, that's not what I'm It's very
I hate it. I hate everything. Sorry, it gets that
that's sort of specific personality demonization gets in the way
of actually accomplishing, uh, you know, discussions of of policy

(01:10:13):
and where and where we are as a country and
how we do things. Because absolutely they were completely typical
of the people that occupy the White House on any
given year, you know what I mean. And and and
like you know, Hillary, uh, even if she had killed
as many people overseas as Trump did, probably fewer people

(01:10:37):
domestically in terms of policy. Um, if you're talking about that,
if you're gonna talk again into the pandemic and stuff
like that, if she had been elected, um and and
you know anyway, Yeah, I totally agree that it's like
it's a very weird um uh thing that uh, that's

(01:10:58):
that that absolutely sprung out of the Rush Limbaugh uh
personal personal demonization that that that then gets into you know,
like this fucking Alex Jones ship where there's a fly. Yeah, exactly,
it's this, it's this turning people from like, Okay, let's

(01:11:20):
analyze what this person has actually done, how it's worked,
when it's been successful, when it's been unsuccessful, when it's
been moral, when it's been a moral And to know,
she's just a criminal, she's just a warmonger, and we
don't have to analyze what she actually did or anything.
We don't have to. We we just have to condemn her.
We should. And it's not that she doesn't deserve condemnation
for a lot of things, but like for one thing,

(01:11:41):
I don't know, I don't I don't want to get
onto a defending because I don't like Hillary Clinton, but
she's also has it like it's very frustrating. Yeah, it's
very it's all just very frustrating. Um and and he's
and he creates this culture and it it spreads. Now
it's not just the Clintons now now it's it's everyone. Right,
you don't have to analyze people that you disagree with.

(01:12:03):
You come up with a three word thing about them,
and you spread these like like Bill Clinton has committed crimes.
He's a fucking rapist. You don't have to make up
that he and his wife are having people murdered. Like, yeah,
like he's a rapist. That's bad. But of course a
lot of people calling him a rapist or rapists themselves,
and they have to make it up that. Now, no,

(01:12:24):
he's a murderer. You know. It's it's fucking bullshit. It's
very frustrating. So Rush also led the charge on demonizing
and denying global warming and climate change. In his book
See I Told You So, he declared that quite a
few scientists are now backtracking on their once dire predictions
of melting ice caps and worldwide flooding. Cut to Texas

(01:12:44):
being submerged in the layer of snow that destroys civil
society or the entire West Coast burning down last year. Anyway,
he lampooned Al Gore uh and scientists who warned about
climate change as quote a few hardline do sayers who
are sticking to their thermostats. Yeah, yep. His conclusion was,

(01:13:08):
you know, and now it's it never affected him and
he never affected him. Now he's dead. Yeah, as far
as he knows, he was right about this. He was
right about this. Limball was unquestionably the single most influential
American conservative from about nineteen eighty nine to at least

(01:13:29):
two thousand eight. Now, his star did start to fade
by the end of George W. Bush's term, and there
are a couple of reasons for this. For one, he'd
been out at as an opiate addict, gone to rehab
three times, and through it all had repeatedly defended an
administration that led the United States into two disastrous and
expensive failed wars. By the time Barack Obama was elected,
many of the more libertarian minded right wing we're starting

(01:13:51):
to reject the neo conservative ideology that Russia had spent
eight years hyping up. Now the fact that Barack Obama
was the man who finally broke. A years of GLP
power wound up being the salvation of Limbaugh's influence. Yes,
he'd encouraged the nation to burn through its treasure and influence,
losing two wars, but now a black man was president,
the floodgates of right wing racism open wide. In the

(01:14:13):
first four years of Obama's term, the number of hate
groups in the United States rose by seven hundred and
fifty five percent. This surge in public anti black racist
I know, it's pretty shocking when you actually look at
the number. Yeah, the idea, there's there's a black resident.
We're gonna need more hate groups. Guys. This here's the

(01:14:35):
hate groups, the extant hate groups that we're not going
to get it done. We need more hate groups. There
is a black president who in his actual policies is
not wildly different from George H. W. Bush. But like, yeah, um,
the fact that Barackoba. Yeah, So, this surge in anti
in public anti black racism was heralded, in cited, and

(01:14:56):
led by Rush Limbaugh, the USA's most prominent bigot. There
already a lot of different clips that I could select
and make this point, Paul, but none is more appropriate
than this song. That aired on Russia's program while Obama
was still on the campaign trail. Now, the context of
this is that Limbo was talking about the fact that
um Al Sharpton Barack Obama. Now Sharpton had like a

(01:15:17):
public series of arguments, right, I think Sharpton was backing
Hillary at first. Um So this is this song that
you're about to hear. The singer is supposed to be
Al Sharpton singing about Barack Obama. And I'm just gonna
let Sophie play the clip now imaging indecing times because

(01:15:43):
he's not send him County what God him and not
mecause he's not from see real black man, snoop call

(01:16:06):
have talk and talk and walk the walk not coming
and one imagic All right, I think that's enough of that. Yes,

(01:16:29):
pretty bad. I mean I just I guess I just
wish that non comedy people would stay in their lane.
You know what that that like the meter was terrible.
It's bad. It's not it's not funny unless you're bigot,

(01:16:49):
you know, unless you're a bigot. So Limbaugh had other
Obama singers saying at one point, if he weren't black,
he'd be a tour guide in Hawaii. In two thousand eight,
he compared Obama to a cartoon monkey he repeatedly called
Michelle mouchell and while because she's a cow, you know,
and by the and all the while, he claimed that

(01:17:09):
racism had nothing to do with his hatred of Obama.
Doesn't matter to me what his races. He's liberal is
what matters to me. Yeah, Okay, Barack the magic Negro guy. Yeah,
I just I just brought it up time, that's all. Yeah,
I just I can't talk about it enough, but I'm not.
It's just convenient that he's black. It's not a problem
that I have with them, but it's convenient for me

(01:17:32):
from my satire. God, I hate this guy. Is he
even doing satire at this point? Like? Has he has
he pretended? Has he dropped that pretense? Yeah? I mean
I can play you songs that like there's a bunch
of Nazis that will go through and like rewrite Disney
songs to be about hating the Jews and stuff, or
about race traders and whatnot, because it's the kind of

(01:17:52):
thing that's easy to spread. Right. You You make a
racist song and people laugh and at first it's a joke,
and then it becomes less of a joke. It's the
whole story, right, That's exactly what Limbaugh is doing. You know,
it's not even all that much less racist. Um, he
just doesn't say the N word. Um. When Canada Obama
became president, Obama, Rush said, I hope he fails, explaining

(01:18:16):
that rooting for liberalism to fail is rooting for America
to succeed. Limba declared that stopping Obama was quote what
I was born to do. One of his tactics to
this end seemed to be stoking fears that because Obama
was anti white, he was trying to gin up a
race war. In two thousand nine, Rush declared, in Obama's America,

(01:18:36):
the white kids now get beat up with the black
kids cheering. Clearly he would have preferred it when you know,
I don't know when white kids were burning down black
kids schools in his hometown. Those were the days. Those
were the days, my friend, he thought they'd never had. Yeah,
it's great. Limba was not the only person who stoked

(01:18:58):
white resentment in anti black Big a Tree in this period.
He was not close to the only person, but he
was the man who had created the blueprint and the
cultural space that all of those other right wing media
figures acted in. Ben Shapiro was very open about the
fact that Limball was his hero and idol. Alex Jones
altered the way he spoke and altered the acoustic setup

(01:19:20):
of his Info Wars studio in order to more closely
resemble Rush Limbaugh. In two thousand ten, Limbaugh was picked
to address SPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was
the main event that year and gave what he called
his first Address to the Nation. Limbaugh was so central
to the Republican Party at this point that RNC Chairman
Michael Steele was asked on CNN if Limball was the

(01:19:42):
effective party leader. When Steele claimed that Rush was just
an entertainer, This piste off Rush Limbaugh, who attacked Michael
Steele on air and caused such an outpouring of right
wing rage against the RNC chairman that Michael Steele was
forced to make a public apology to Rush limb Ball
kind of proving that he was effectively the leader of

(01:20:03):
the Republican Party. Yeah. No, it puts me in mind
of Howard Stern Uh coming into the Philadelphia market and
Uh forcing John Dobella, the host of the Morning Zoo
to apologize for being on the radio. Jesus, I didn't
know that it happened. It was It was ridiculous. So,
as leader of the Republican Party, Limbaugh spent the Obama

(01:20:25):
years repeatedly hammering home the idea that there could not
be peaceful coexistence between the right and left in the
United States. Quote from Rush, we live in two universes.
One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie.
Everything run dominated, controlled by the left here and around
the world is a lie. Every other universe where is

(01:20:46):
where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and
we deal with it America, the real America, and there
can be no coexistence this now. Now we're in the
age of you know, because Biden said the you know,
it's looking for unity. Anytime somebody's looking for unity, and uh,

(01:21:06):
there is a there's a criticism of a famous monster
like Rush Limbaugh. The response from the right is always,
where's the famous unity? Where what I thought you wanted unity?
And it's like, well, do you care about unity? You
don't give a shit about it. You're already living in
a world that says if you don't, if you don't
come to believe the things that I believe. You are

(01:21:30):
against America, and you are. You're the real racist, You're
the real misogynist, you are the real hater of of
all things that are decent. So it's I don't know
how we I don't know how we unfunck ourselves from this,
from this situation. Yeah, it I don't know that we can. UM,

(01:21:52):
But the way to do it is not too not
to yield to these people, right, it's it's it's not
to just let them get what they want, because what
they want is the annihilation of the other and and
honestly the annihilation of themselves, because it's a fucking death
cult at this point, like they can't be allowed to win.

(01:22:15):
And like the people and and that's not to say that, um,
every aspect of what has what traditional conservative ideology is wrong.
They have some points. That's why it brings people in
the idea that like you should always be worry about
giving the government control of things, You fucking should, you know,
like there's a space, there is a space for conservatism

(01:22:38):
in society. That is not what rush Limbaugh turned it into.
Which is not to say that it was because fucking
Reagan was president before Limbaugh came onto the scene, and
he was terrible and very toxic, not like to toxicity,
and the Republican Party goes back very far. But also
it's not for nothing that the Republicans used to be
the party of Abraham Lincoln. You know, uh, there, it's

(01:23:02):
it's not there. There is a way to have a
conservatism that is influential in society that isn't a fucking
death cult. And we have to at very least get
back to that if we're going to continue to be
a democracy that doesn't spiral inevitably into civil war. You know,
I have I'm a pretty committed leftist, but I also
do not seek a society that forces my beliefs on

(01:23:24):
other people. But you can't. You can't give these people
an inch because they'll take everything. That's how they are,
you know, That's what part what Rush had a big
impact in making them into. By two thousand fifteen, Rush
Limball had succeeded in leading a right word push that
finally prepared the Republican Party to nominate an obvious fascist,

(01:23:48):
Donald Trump. Limbaugh embraced Trump early on right wing radio
host and never Trump or Joe Walsh, who is another
actually principled conservative, draws a direct line between Limbaugh and Trump. Quote.
The average Trump supporter loves Trump because he fights man.
He fights, not because of any policy or issue or
political philosophy. That's why they love to Rush. Before him,

(01:24:10):
it wasn't about conservatism. I still can't tell you after
thirty years what the funk he believes in. But he
knew how to prey on audiences, grievances and resentments, which
is what conservative talk radio does. Rush was the son
of a bitch. He'd lie about the dims and punch
them and make fun of them. That gave him a
quote like following from the beginning. Trump sort of inherited it,
and I Joe Walsh again not a grade I agree

(01:24:33):
agree with on much, but he's right on the money here.
He's analyzing it properly. Absolutely. The thing I think the
thing also about Trump is like, like Rush doesn't really
have any deeply ill beliefs like that you could you
couldn't say this guy, even convincing himself, really cares that
much about anything beyond what's right in front of his

(01:24:55):
fucking face that is about him. All he cares about
is his own aggrandized right. It's it's narcissism. Trump and
Limbaugh are very similar. Rush bent the knee to Trump,
declaring him everything but the Second Coming. And we will
not labor long on Rush during Trump's years, because once
he had helped shepherd his massive audience into Trump's arms,
his cultural influence faded. It was watered down by the

(01:25:17):
sheer mass of right wing idolaw ideologues who flooded the
Internet and increasingly urged their followers to embrace a rationality
conspiracy and fascism. In February of Rush led the charge
denying the reality of COVID nineteen. He called it the
common cold and mocked even his old ally Matt Drudge
for caring about the burgeoning plague. He urged his listeners

(01:25:38):
against mask wearing, calling it a symbol of fear. Russia
had long denied the dangers of smoking, particularly second hand smoke,
but this was a new level for him. When Trump
lost reelection to Biden, Limbaugh immediately called the election a
sham and joined the chorus of voices claiming fraud. By
this point, though, he was sick, and the playing field
was so flooded with men who sounded like him, triggered

(01:26:00):
the libs like him light like him, that his voice
hardly rose above the din Rushi had succeeded in building
a right wing so made in his own image that
he no longer stood out in it. His last show
was February second. He died less than two weeks later,
killed by the lung cancer he denied had anything to
do with smoking, because that was another thing Rush denight

(01:26:21):
his entire career. Joe Walsh, a former Limbaugh lover, UH
found like when he was much younger, he got into
talk radio because of Limbaugh, eventually wound up and to
be fair before Trump rejecting Limball in a lot of
ways found the whole arc of Russia's career to be
terribly sad. Quote. I didn't think that at the end

(01:26:41):
of his life Brush would sell out to Trump the
way he has. He had every opportunity this final year
to come clean and be decent. I mean, he was
still on this February lying about a stolen election. He'll
keep up this act till he dies, and it's sad.
When a writer from Rolling Stone asked if maybe the
reason he kept backing Trump was that Limbaugh truly believed
in what said, Walsh countered with a theory of his

(01:27:02):
own quote. Maybe knowing him, it's one last, big, extended
fuck you. Maybe it's Limbaugh saying I'm not going to
bend to the Dims and anybody else, no matter what,
never to the end, I'm never gonna do it. And
at the end of this, I can't help but think
that there's something terribly meaningful and the fact that Joe
Walsh rejected Limbaugh in his later years and at his end,

(01:27:22):
Walsh gained prominence as a voice of the Rising Tea Party.
He is very conservative, but his constant principal resistance to
President Trump proves that he is not a fascist. And
it turns out what Limbaugh was really selling, what he
was preparing the American right for all along, was fascism.
If you want confirmation of this, you need look no
further than how America's most prominent neo Nazis reacted to

(01:27:46):
Limbaugh's death. Chris can't Well was one of the speakers
and organizers of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
He is a straight up Nazi. He assaulted left wing
counter protesters at the event, and when this brought legal
consequence is on him. He filmed himself crying in fear,
earning the nickname the Crying Nazi. Can't Well gained prominence

(01:28:06):
among the all right as a podcaster with shows like
Outlaw Conservative and Chris can't Well openly sees Rush Limbaugh
as the man who invented his style of content, who
made his career possible. He's in jail right now because
he made a bunch of illegal threats and stuff. But
he was interviewed for another fascist podcast by guy named

(01:28:26):
Jared Howe on like right after Limbaugh's death, and in
this clip about to play The Crying Nazi, Chris can't
Well discusses his reaction to learning about Rush Limbaugh's death.
And when I heard, you know, when I heard Katherine's
voice like chop up, and I said, oh no, he
knew you. Yeah, yeah, I knew. And Katherine Limball I

(01:28:50):
had actually uh she wrote a letter to Rush. I guess.
I kept thought hoping that you know, I get out
of here in time that I can like call into
the show or drop an email. And I started realized, like,
all right, he's at philansan of weeks. Uh, if I'm
gonna contact this guy just proa got to do it
by mail. And I was actually gonna I forgot to
do what I was gonna ask you to get me
see if there was an address that I canna write to.

(01:29:10):
And uh, it turns out to a little late vision.
But you know when I when I heard her voice,
I choked up and I said, oh no, my Shelly
Ivy and he knew exactly what was going on to
tell her and um and so yeah, I heard it
when it happened, and I was like, you're gonna be
fucking kids me, man. So that's I mean, you know,

(01:29:32):
you he's legitimately affected by this. He's mourning Rush Limbaugh,
this Nazi, and he's not the only Nazi. Morning Rush Limbaugh.
The Daily Showa is one of the most prominent Nazi
podcasts on the Internet. The words show up is the
Hebrew term it mean I think it means calamity for
the Holocaust. So there, it's literally this is the Daily
Holocaust and it is maybe the most prominent Nazi podcast

(01:29:56):
on the Internet now. TDS is its hosts call. It
has been on the years for years at this point,
since before Trump was in office, and the hosts of
The Daily show a consider Limbaugh to be something of
an idol. Now, these guys are hardcore Nazis, so they
consider Russia moderate and they do demean him at times
for that, but they also recognize that he paved the

(01:30:18):
way for their financial success and cultural influence. And in
this next audio clip you can hear several members of
the Daily Showa can't emphasize that name enough. Learn live
about Rush Limbaugh's death and the emotional impact it has
on them is undeniable news cuked on that that's what
happened today. What sen that's bad news for you, Buddy,

(01:30:42):
Rush Limbaugh is dead. I mean, well, I guess I
can't see what he's saying about tex I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna dance on his grave. He said a
lot of really dumb things. But I'm still something kind
of sad about that. Like I'm very sad about that.
I wouldn't be here. If not, I wouldn't be here,
says host of the Daily Showa. Without Rush Limbaugh, I
can't think of a more damning thing to say in

(01:31:04):
a man's passing, but that he was truly honestly mourned
by Nazis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the end of the day.
That's what you can say about Rush. And that is
the end of our episodes on Rush Limbaugh. You're doing, Paul,
I'm good. I mean, look, he said some dumb things.

(01:31:25):
I'm absolutely going to dance. He sucked and I'm glad
he's dead. He was a bad person. And I have
to say on social media when when the story broke
people were talking about it, there were a lot of
people that wanted to say, you know, you can you
you know, you can say whatever you want. But Rush

(01:31:46):
was hugely successful, more successful and you will ever be
had more influence. He was a millionaire. Guys take the
w do you know what I mean? You can't. And
this is the problem with these guys, with Trump, with
people like this, is it's not enough for them to win.
They need people to lick the boots. They need people
to say you are the greatest. It is never enough

(01:32:10):
for them. It is never enough for them to be hated,
to be feared, to have all the marbles. They need
you to say I love you too. They need it.
And that is that is what the only solace I
can take in a life like this is that in
the end he didn't get the thing that he wanted,

(01:32:32):
which was everybody saying You're the greatest and I love
you and that. Yeah, it was piss and a bunch
of Nazis crying. If you if you make if this
is what you make of your life. This is how
This is what's going to happen, is that you're gonna
have people saying rest and piss. You're gonna have people
saying this and it's and and sorry. You can have

(01:32:54):
all the success you want. You're never gonna get that love.
It's not gonna happen. And people are actively making plans
to ship on your grave because you materially harmed their lives, Yes,
and the lives of people that they loved. You have
you have made life that much harder for generations of

(01:33:14):
people of humans you have Rush Limbaugh had a material,
significant negative impact on billions of people, many of whom
are yet unborn. Yeah, rest and piss brush. I wish
this to cancer had worked faster, you know. Yeah, anyway, Paul,
you gotta got some plug. Double plug. At the end

(01:33:36):
of this episode, Um, I'm gonna be appearing on The
Daily Show, uh in a couple of weeks. TDS fan,
By the way, I want to. I want to shout
out and give face to Daniel Harper of the wonderful
podcast I Don't Speak German, which is the deepest dives
you're going to find on Nazi content creators. I guess

(01:33:58):
you go Nazi thought leaders in the and I estate's
very important work. Daniel Harper, I don't speak German. He
provided those clips to me. Thank you, Daniel. UM, sorry
back here, No, not at all. UM. You can follow
me at p F Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram and um,
I have a few podcasts that you can listen to. UM.

(01:34:18):
You know, just all the usual stuff. You can find
out about me on Paul off Thompkins dot com al
F Tompkins dot com. Well that's gonna do it for
us here at Behind the Bastards. UM, so go out
into the world, tie one half of your brain behind
your back and then die because that would actually kill you.
That that would that would immediately lead to your death.

(01:34:41):
Exposed brain. There's reason we have skulls people to take
your brain inside of it. Yeah, anyway, I guess

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