Rush “I Don't Make Things Up” Limbaugh
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
By Solange Uwimana
On today's “Open Line Friday!” while talking with a caller who was gifted a 24/7 subscription to the Limbaugh show upon graduation by her mother, Rush repeated his claim that he is “not wrong,” although he is “super-opinionated,” and added: “As you know, I don't make things up.” Um, that might qualify as the biggest whopper since Bill O'Reilly's false claim that "[n]obody" on Fox ever pushed the health care jail-time falsehood. Even when Rush is obviously wrong, such as the time he made the “insignificant” and “minor” error of calling the Illinois gun control bill a “Chicago gun control bill,” he dismisses it as “verbal dyslexia” that really doesn't merit discussion. (On that show, he went on to say that because he is “so rarely wrong,” he's “not allowed to be wrong,” but that when he does “make the tiniest of faux pas ... it is like a tsunami sucking the water off the beach.”)
Is Rush really “rarely wrong” and does he ever “make things up”? Well, just yesterday, Rush falsely claimed that Louisiana officials “have not received any answers” on a barrier plan that Gov. Bobby Jindal has proposed to soak up oil from the spill. This is flat-out wrong. Last week, Rush said that there were no tax cuts in the economic stimulus and that it failed. Both claims are flat-out wrong. He claimed that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is a "socialist" and that she said the government could ban books and pamphlets like Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Both those claims are -- you guessed it -- wrong. Rush has claimed that an AP story reported that the “real number” of private sector jobs created in April “is 66,000” -- this is false. Rush was wrong when he said President Obama and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich were never professors. He has continually refused to let go of the false claim that Rep. Barney Frank ran a “prostitution ring out of his apartment” and he rewrote history when he described both Bush presidencies as “eight years of prosperity.” And he was even wrong when he said "[o]ur guys resign" when they are caught having affairs. And there is much, much more out there.
Rush also spent an inordinate amount of time expressing outrage today over Rep. Joe Sestak's comments that he was offered a job by the administration -- an “impeachment-type offense,” according to Rush. He went on several tirades against former President Bill Clinton, who is reportedly the one that reached out to Sestak, and that he was asked to bail out Obama even though he is still supposedly “bitter” and “angry” about Obama's victory over his wife, Hillary. Rush also touched on the oil spill, accusing Obama of “deceit” by not mentioning at his press conference that BP had stopped trying to plug the hole in the rig the night before. In the same vein as Glenn Beck, Rush also spent time mocking Obama's 11-year-old daughter, Malia, ridiculing President Obama for his tale about how Malia reportedly asked him about efforts to stop the leak in the Gulf. Rush said he would have replied, “It's none of your business” and said he'd take “odds” on whether what President Obama recounted actually happened.
Here are some highlights from the show:
Limbaugh on suggestion oil spill could intensify hurricanes: “Why don't we all just commit suicide?”
Limbaugh says America during Obama's presidency is “post-American,” “post-competence”
Limbaugh calls Obama press conference on top kill method “a brazen bit of deceit”
Limbaugh: “As you know, I don't make things up”
Limbaugh attacks Obama for remarks about his daughter
Limbaugh: “Amnesty is the single largest voter drive in the history of the United States”