Rush Limbaugh, the founding father of conservative talk radio, succumbed to lung cancer on Feb. 17, 2021, at the age of 70.
The Medal of Freedom recipient, whose show aired to
tens of millions of listeners for over three decades on hundreds of radio stations, has been credited by friend and foe alike with helping set the stage for a figure like President Donald Trump and activating multitudes of conservatives who previously felt politically isolated.
David Limbaugh, an
attorney and conservative commentator, spoke to the host of BlazeTV’s “Steve Deace Show” on the episode airing Tuesday about Rush Limbaugh’s temporal journey to prominence and his ultimate journey to Christ.
Limbaugh underscored — now four years after his brother’s passing — that Rush not only blazed the way for subsequent generations of conservative commentators but demonstrated how to wed authenticity and passion and how to endure terminal illness with great fortitude.
Bequeathal
At the outset of the interview, Steve Deace asked Limbaugh what immediately came to mind about his older brother’s legacy.
“He created a cottage industry. He actually created a genre of talk radio, conservative talk, and he had done this after honing his skills throughout his life and with many trials and tribulations,” said Limbaugh.
Limbaugh noted that while there were signs early in Rush’s life — perhaps now more apparent in review — that he was well suited for broadcasting and had a “genius” when it came to the recorded word, he faced expectations to chart a more conventional course professionally. Their father, for instance, apparently wanted Rush to become a lawyer or something of the sort. After all, the men of Missouri’s Limbaugh family had in previous centuries often been judges, attorneys, and legislators.
Despite the urging of his father and other external pressures, Limbaugh indicated that Rush “knew what he wanted to do” and went for it.
In the end, he became something of an ideological tuning fork.
“Any time people wanted to know what true north was in a conservative sense, they could turn him on,” added the attorney.
“His personal legacy, in my opinion, is overcoming all the challenges that were placed in his way because he had a passion, an irrepressible passion, to do what he wanted to do, and he fought through it, and he finally succeeded in a big way to become the best in the world at what he did,” Limbaugh told Deace.
‘[Rush] was never play-acting. It was sincere.’
Limbaugh suggested that by doing so, Rush “opened the floodgates” for others who admired what he was doing and understood the potential for emulation.
While Rush’s show proved revelatory for other would-be conservative hosts, Limbaugh told Deace that it proved in many cases to be a wake-up call for listeners, revealing to Americans nationwide that they were not alone in their conservative outlook.
Limbaugh suggested that Trump’s engagement with Americans, particularly those neglected by the mainstream media and deceived into thinking themselves ideologically outnumbered on issues such as immigration and gender ideology, greatly paralleled Rush’s engagement with listeners.
“‘I can’t believe someone’s got a national platform saying the things that I believe and finally contradicting the lies, and the deceit, and the insane liberal ideology that we hear on our news every day,'” said Limbaugh, articulating the initial response some listeners may have had to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” or possibly also to Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries.
A special ability to connect with those ignored or vilified by the mainstream was not the only parallel Limbaugh raised between Trump and his brother.
“[Rush] was never play-acting. It was sincere. Everything he did was sincere,” said Limbaugh. “But he was so passionate about what he did, so loved broadcasting, so loved interacting with his audience. And he did understand his audience, I think, better than any host I’ve ever been around — and I’ve been around a lot.”
“He knew he had a bond with them,” continued Limbaugh. “This really came to light — crystallized for me — when I noticed that he, ahead of many others, saw something in Trump, particularly the attraction he had with his audience and the bond that he forged with his audience. And Rush would say, ‘There’s only one person who could break the bond that Trump has with his audience, and that is Trump himself, because no amount of third-party attacks are going to influence that,’ and that turned out to be prescient.”
Limbaugh suggested that Rush’s observation about the audience bond, whether intentionally or not, was also a little bit of projection on his brother’s part.
Besides certain commonalities, Limbaugh suggested that his brother helped whet the appetite for Trump, stating, “I think without Rush, you may not have Trump.”
“I don’t want to be presumptuous and take anything away from Trump. I just think he opened the path for what has ultimately come to be here,” added Limbaugh.
Following Rush’s death, Trump
said, “He was with me right from the beginning. And he liked what I said, and he agreed with what I said. And he was just a great gentleman. Great man.”
“He was a very unique guy,” continued Trump. “And he had tremendous insight. He got it. He really got it.”
Inheritance
In their wide-ranging conversation, Deace appeared keen to discuss mortality and the manner in which Rush publicly approached his own.
Limbaugh suggested that whereas he himself had intellectual doubts early in life about Christ, his brother did not have the same problem, though he may not have been especially engaged faith-wise early on. In any event, Limbaugh observed in his brother a “deep interest” that continued to grow over course of his life.
The attorney indicated that whatever the state of his brother’s faith in the first six decades of his life, it was abundantly clear that in his final years, especially after his terminal diagnosis, Rush “totally accepted Christ.”
‘I have no question of where his eternal destiny is.’
“He talked about it openly. He talked about how he prayed every day,” said Limbaugh. “He actually talked to God 24 hours a day like we’re supposed to.”
Despite the knowledge that he was dying, his brother seemed to be at peace, Limbaugh indicated.
“He really was optimistic, and he wasn’t fatalistic, and he wasn’t negative about his own impending death,” said the attorney. “And he knew — he knew he was going to die.”
David noted that his brother suffered terribly in his final year, especially since the chemotherapy treatments he was undergoing didn’t take, leaving him with him with intolerable swelling and other side effects.
“He suffered so much physically during that period, during the last year of his life, that it is a tribute to his fortitude and his commitment to his audience, his commitment to the country that he powered through and kept doing it,” said Limbaugh. “The way he fought cancer and the way he insisted on doing what he does and staying true to the audience — that was just an inspiration and remarkable to me.”
Limbaugh emphasized to Deace, “He came very close to Christ during those years, so that I have no question of where his eternal destiny is.”
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Steve deace, David limbaugh, Rush limbaugh, Limbaugh, Radio, Donald trump, Conservative, Talk radio, Politics
