Limbaugh: AP report on Sherrod Brown "racial component" falsehood demonstrates that "I get it right all the time"

Summary: Rush Limbaugh cited a February 17 Associated Press article about his previous false claim that Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is black as evidence that "even the mainstream media knows I get it right all the time, and it is such an odd thing when I am wrong that it is news."

On the February 20 broadcast of his show, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh cited a February 17 Associated Press article about his false claim that Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is black as evidence that "even the mainstream media knows I get it right all the time, and it is such an odd thing when I am wrong that it is news." Limbaugh added: "You must learn to look at these things positively in life."

Brown is running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH).

Limbaugh made the erroneous assertion that Brown was black on the February 14 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show in the course of discussing Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett's departure from the Ohio Democratic Senate primary race, which would have pitted him against Brown. As Media Matters for America noted, Limbaugh asserted: "And don't forget Sherrod Brown is black. There's a racial component here, too," adding that "the newspaper that I'm reading all this from is The New York Times, and they, of course, don't mention that." Brown is white -- a fact that Limbaugh later acknowledged.

Despite Limbaugh's theory that the AP article about his imagined "racial component" demonstrates that he is "right all the time," Media Matters has documented scores of Limbaugh's falsehoods, distortions, and baseless or misleading claims.

From the February 20 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: I have learned over the past four or five days that when I make a mistake, it can become national news -- that the Associated Press will actually run a story and hundreds of newspapers will pick it up about how I made an error. Which tells me -- and by the way, folks, I was not offended by this. I know what people's expectations are. When the Associated Press did that story about how I made this error and am misidentifying the race of Sherrod Brown in Ohio, you know what it said to me was that even the mainstream media knows I get it right all the time, and it is such an odd thing when I am wrong that it is news. You must learn to look at these things positively in life, yours and mine as well.

—J.S.