Rush Limbaugh blames the “deep state” for “cultural rot,” including LGBTQ equality

Limbaugh referenced SCOTUS decision on marriage equality and this week's decision on employment discrimination

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the June 18, 2020, edition of Premiere Radio Network's The Rush Limbaugh Show

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): Kate, Fairfield, Connecticut. Great to have you. Hello.

CALLER: Hey. It’s an honor. I just wanted to comment on your remarks about why do we do it, why should we just not vote our Republican and why don’t we give up? And the reason is, this just might be our place in history where we expose them, and we might not be winning today, but we have to expose them and their dirty deeds.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know, this is a fascinating theory, because as host of this program, I have been waiting — and I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been waiting — this cultural rot has been happening for 30 years. It'd been happening since the sixties, the modern era of it. It’s longer than 30 years, and I have been waiting for this magical moment where most Americans finally realize what a cesspool the Democrat Party has turned the country into, what a cesspool American morality has become, what a cesspool the American left is turning our culture into — and it hasn’t happened. We continue to descend further and further. We’re now below the gutter. We are so low that when we look up, we see a filthy gutter. That is how low our culture and society has fallen, and still there isn’t any pushback.

Still, the Supreme Court comes out earlier this week and throws in transgenders and gay people into the Civil Rights Act bill of 1964 where none of that was ever under consideration, and nobody pushes back against it. Nobody pushed back against gay marriage, at least after the initial pushback. They were cowed. So I think you have a point. We haven’t reached bottom yet. At some point, we will.

There’s gonna be a point before people, I am convinced, are going to say, “This is insane! No more of this.” I don’t know what it’s gonna take, and I don’t know how long it’s gonna take for all that to happen, but your belief here that it is our place in history to continue to expose this and to explain it to people is a good point.

CALLER: I think that’s just where we’re at. I mean, we endured the W. Bush generation where we didn’t understand why he wasn’t fighting for us. Well, now I think we know why.

LIMBAUGH: Why?

CALLER: Because I think he’s a moderate enough where he’s a part of the system — and I was a big supporter of him. So I just think it’s now time that we say, “Look, this is what it is. We have to stop pretending that America — we have to start fighting for what we actually believe in and is morally correct and shining the spotlight.”

LIMBAUGH: Well, let me -- there’s a lot here that’s gonna have to be beat back. One of the — constant references in the past four years to the deep state, that’s a relatively new thing. There have always been people who have believed that there’s a private cabal of powerful people that are insulated and their actions and positions are not determined by elections and so forth. They have ultimate power.

But for the most part, for most of my life, the American people have trusted their government. They’ve trusted the National Weather Service. They’ve trusted FEMA. They’ve trusted every institution. They trust the FBI. They’ve trusted presidents. They trusted everything. It was the toughest thing in the world to convince average Americans that there might be something corrupt about their government.

They did not want to believe it. So it’s a relatively new branch of the progress here, new branch of the project, to try to convince people of the existence of this deep state, who’s in it, and what their express purpose is, and that — contrary to their beliefs — the deep state doesn’t exist to make your life better. It doesn’t exist to protect your freedom of speech.

It doesn’t exist to give you a roaring economy where you can have a job and a career and make something out of yourself. The American system does that. These people are in it all for themselves.