Legendary conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh has died, according to his wife, Kathryn Adams Limbaugh, who announced it during his regular radio broadcast Wednesday.
Limbaugh was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer early last year and was quickly honored by then-President Donald Trump, who surprised him during the State of the Union Address with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.
Limbaugh anticipated that his days were numbered during a moving sign-off in December before his holiday hiatus.
“The day’s gonna come, folks, where I’m not gonna be able to do this,” he said.
“I don’t know when that is—I want to be able to do it for as long as I want to do it,” he continued. “I want to, but the day will come where I’m not going to be able to, and I want you to understand that even when the day comes, I’d like to be here.”
Nonetheless, he continued to push forward with his mission of hammering at political hypocrisy until the very end.
Limbaugh’s broadcast career, spanning more than three decades, was hugely influential in defining modern conservative politics of the post-Reagan era.
He was at the forefront of early efforts to combat rampant media bias by offering a right-wing alternative, effectively reshaping both the media and political landscapes.
Although his many fans had a year to prepare for the loss, the shocking news compounded the sense of a country spiraling farther into the clutches of the radical Left, particularly in the wake of Trump’s electoral defeat amid concerns of massive vote fraud.
But Limbaugh offered words of comfort during his December sign-off, while criticizing president-in-waiting Joe Biden’s bleak outlook of what lay ahead for America.
“It’s never time to panic, folks,” he said. “There’s never, ever going to be time to give up on our country … It’ll never be time to give up on yourself. Trust me.”
