Rush Limbaugh turned tail and ran away as fast as he could when he found out that “liberal hoax” Hurricane Irma was heading his way.
Audio via Media Matters:
After calling Hurricane Irma a liberal hoax on Tuesday, “So there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it. You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don’t need a hurricane to hit anywhere. ll you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.”
By Thursday, the host announced that he was running for his life, “May as well… announce this. I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow. We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.”
While it is funny to mock Limbaugh for his willingness to say absolutely anything to try to get attention, the reality is that his rhetoric is incredibly dangerous. Rush Limbaugh’s average audience age is 68 years old. No one should willingly stay in the path of a category 5 hurricane, but the people who should be most concerned with getting out of harm’s way ASAP are seniors and people with illness or disabilities.
It was beyond irresponsible for Limbaugh to suggest to his vulnerable listeners that Hurricane Irma was a hoax. If any of his fans chose to stay and ride out the hurricane, they are risking their lives based on words from a man who doesn’t believe what he says on the radio.
The Limbaugh/Irma debacle is a reminder that conservative media exist in an echo chamber where profit always comes before fact. The Rush Limbaugh types will tell their listeners anything as long as it keeps them tuned in and the money to their bank accounts.
America didn’t become as deeply divided as it is today accident. People like Rush Limbaugh created and profited off of those divisions one lie at a time.
In the case of Hurricane Irma, the lie has returned to humiliate him.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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