Rush Limbaugh Blames Obama For The Rise Of Trump
Limbaugh: “I Have Nothing To Do With This ... Nobody At Fox News Does”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From the January 25 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Here's my recycled explanation again for the theory that the GOP paved the way for Donald Trump. And so did Obama by the way. And Obama's actually the starting point. It's Obama's radicalism that actually begins the process which creates a scenario where somebody like Donald Trump charges in to fill an absolutely, impossibly huge vacuum. Now, we knew who Obama was -- well, I did -- from even before he was inaugurated. I don't know how many Republicans looked, or today even look at Obama as a radical anything. Many of them just see him as the latest Democrat. But he is far more than that. He is the most radical leftist that has been elected president, that has even gotten close to it. And because Obama was not stopped, because the Republican Party laid down -- I'm telling, folks, Donald Trump would not have exploded. Donald Trump would not have thought to even do any of this, nor would any other outsider. I'm telling you, if the Republican Party had just simply, seriously tried to stop Obama. If they had just done what opposition parties are assumed to do. 2010, 2014, the Republican Party was given huge, landslide victories, admittedly in midterm elections, but in both of them, one of them gave them the House of Representatives and a record number of Republicans in the House. The Democrats haven't had this few members in the House of Representatives since the Civil War. The 2014 midterms gave the Republicans the Senate. So yeah, they were midterms, but they were huge, huge Democrat landslide defeats all the way down the ballot. On every issue that matters, on every issue that drove the turnout, in 2010 and 2014, on every issue that not only drove the turnout, but resulted in massive Republican victories, the Republican Party took a dive. They did not make one serious effort at stopping Donald Trump -- or stopping Obama. Now they want to stop Trump, but they made not one effort to stop Obama.
[...]
Now, I have nothing to do with this. Nobody on talk radio does. Nobody at Fox News does. Nobody is taking cues on Donald Trump from anybody but Donald Trump. He's perfectly capable of providing and giving the cues. He's done plenty to give people reasons to support him and to believe him. If the Republican Party had actually been opposed to Obama and acted like it, the vacuum would not have existed, making it much more difficult for Trump. When somebody comes in, enters a race, and is the only person from the outset that is voicing opposition to the status quo and is identifying with people and their feelings about it and their thoughts about it and is telling them that he wants it to stop, why wouldn't people support that one voice?
Previously:
Rush Limbaugh: “I Did Not ... Turn On Trump”
Limbaugh Defends Donald Trump Amid Controversial Comments About Implementing A Muslim Database