Rush Limbaugh has suggested he will be evacuating his home base in Florida just days after casting doubts about the severity of Hurricane Irma.
Rush Limbaugh has suggested he will be evacuating his home base in Florida just days after casting doubts about the severity of Hurricane Irma.
The conservative broadcaster made the announcement on his radio show Thursday, saying, “I’m not gonna get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow…But we’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.”
Media outlets including the Huffington Post have pointed out that, despite the move, Limbaugh has long portrayed serious weather events as a way liberals try to advance talks on climate change.
Limbaugh said on his show Tuesday, “...there is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it…All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.”
He also alleged a financial motive, saying, “...the media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they’re getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers.”
He then seemed to downplay the danger of Irma, telling his listeners, “...these storms, once they actually hit, are never as strong as they’re reported.”
Afterwards, Limbaugh was blasted on social media; NBC weatherman Al Roker tweeted, “To have @rushlimbaugh suggest the warnings about #Irma are #fake or about profit and to ignore them borders on criminal. #ShameOnRush.”
However, the conservative commentator hit back at his critics Thursday, accusing the media of spreading fake news about him and reiterating, “There’s corruption everywhere in our politics, and it is epitomized during national disasters and emergencies because the left is always working on moving their agenda forward, climate change, radical environmentalism, and so the occasion of this hurricane is an exciting thing for them!”
