How Rush Limbaugh Invented Donald Trump – The New Yorker
Rush Limbaughs death this week, at seventy, of lung cancer, closes the book on more than a quarter century of conservative media defined by Limbaugh and his friend Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and C.E.O., who died in 2017. Before Donald Trumps entry into Republican politics, and even before Fox began dominating the cable airwaves, in the late nineties, Limbaugh had an unparalleled ability to rile up the Republican base and move the Party closer to his vision of pure Reaganism. That vision consisted of lower taxes and less regulation, opposition to abortion, and an aggressive posture abroadthe so-called three-legged stool of the Ronald Reagan coalition. For decades, this was Limbaughs mantra, with an emphasis on tax cuts. But his embrace of Trump in his final years, and his willingness to subsume his conservatism into the cult of one man, offered a different view of Limbaugh. He finished his career less as a leader of the Republican Party than as simply another Trump follower.
Limbaugh, who was born to a prominent Missouri Republican family, began his broadcast career in his teens, and landed a spot on Sacramento radio, in 1984. Four years later, The Rush Limbaugh Show went national, beaming from New Yorks WABC. (It remained his flagship station for most of his career, although Limbaugh eventually moved to Florida.) Averse to taking callersthat was often reserved for FridaysLimbaugh had a remarkable ability to sustain a monologue, with only the commercials as breaks, for virtually the full three hours that his show aired each day. (Trumps ability to command the microphone for an astonishing amount of time is the only comparable example I can think of, but Limbaugh, unlike the former President, could stay remarkably focussed.) He would often start a show by informing his listeners about his stack of clippingsusually news articles and alertsand find ways to connect them to some overarching point he wanted to make, which often had to do with the magical effects of tax cuts on the economy, and the wastefulness of the federal government. If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representations was bad, he should see how it is with representation, he once said.
As he got older and richer, he was fond of half-jokingly talking about his wealth and success. He boasted of talent on loan from God, and once stated, I cant even destroy myself. Ive tried a couple times myself and it doesnt work. Im literally indestructible. Like Trump, who enjoys informing audiences about his Ivy League education and telling them that he has better things to do than come to their rallies, Limbaugh relished the fact that those vaunted tax cuts he always talked up were going to people like himself.
An endless stream of articles and books over the past five years have wrestled with the question of how Trump was able to pull off his particular act, appealing to audiences that didnt attend any college, let alone one in the Ivy League. Limbaughs success offers a clue. His radio program was home to Club for Growth bromides about the beauty of the private sector, but it also had another side, which consisted largely of bigotry. This was a man who featured a segment called AIDS Updates, in which he mockingly read the names of victims of the disease to the sounds of Dionne Warwick. He said that feminism was invented to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society. He uttered too many racist comments to count, but displayed a special hostility toward Barack Obama. In Obamas America, the white kids now get beat up with the Black kids cheering, he once said.
Limbaugh, like Trump, never seemed particularly passionate about conservative Christian causes. He took the right positions on abortion and gay marriage, but had an early insight that to much of his audience cultural grievances mattered more. One can argue that mocking AIDS victims and coming out strongly against gay marriage are both forms of bigotry. But many people who have unsavory political views do not make a habitor a careerout of personal cruelty. In a Limbaugh monologue from 2013 on gay marriage, he stated, A lot of people have no personal animus against gay people at all. Its, instead, a, um, genuine, I dont know, love, respect, for the things they believe define this country as great. He wasnt describing himself, and you could tell his heart wasnt in it. Compare that to comments such as There are a bunch of really crafty guys out there who probably, in the normal course of events, cant get women to look at em. And theyve decided, you know what? Im gonna go be tranny. The conviction was in the vitriol.
And yet, as much as Limbaugh was willing to lie to his audience about the details of Obamacarehe even claimed it would increase the divorce ratehe did seem to have a kernel of principle in his fealty to low taxes, less regulation, and free markets. Thus, Limbaugh could have viewed the rise of Trump in two ways. One would have been to say that here was someone who didnt care at all about movement conservatism; who probably only dimly knew who William F. Buckley, Jr., was; who broke with right-wing orthodoxy on trade and tariffs; and who had no vision of capitalism beyond its usefulness in making him richer and more famous. The other way was to view Trump as someone who had the same catalogue of resentments as Limbaugh did, andperhaps more importantlywas hated by the same people.
Limbaugh didnt wait long before making his decision: he was all in. By early 2016, he was defending Trump daily, and, perhaps more significantly, striking the same rhetorical tones. The Republican Party doesnt like the Republican base, he said, in January of that year, explaining that litism was the establishments reason for opposing Trump. If Trumps takeover of the G.O.P. revealed the degree to which cultural resentment mattered more to conservative voters than any single issue, Limbaughs journey served as an exemplar of this fact. When Trump took a stance that Limbaugh would have once objected tosuch as imposing new tariffsLimbaugh simply changed his opinion and backed Trump.
Limbaughs appeasement, or worse, of Trump raises the question of how much control he ever wielded in the Party. Limbaughs influence was at times overstated. His favored candidates did not necessarily win primarieswitness his failure to derail John McCain, in 2008and his ability to steer voters was probably always less than what was assumed. But if he didnt always have direct power, his role in laying the cultural groundwork for Trump cannot be understated. The Republicans never became the vehicle of pure economic libertarianism and fealty to conservative ideas that Limbaugh may have once hoped, but they did become a party that Limbaugh could love.
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How Rush Limbaugh Invented Donald Trump - The New Yorker