Iconic conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh gave a particularly touching thank-you to his listeners on Wednesday, his final show before taking off on an extended holiday vacation.
“My point in all of this today is gratitude,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “My point in all of this is to say thanks and tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizable and growing and still-beating heart.”
During the emotional broadcast, Limbaugh, currently stricken with terminal lung cancer, offered special thanks to his wife, Kathryn, and other family members, while opening up about the struggles he has faced.
“I wasn’t expected to be alive today,” he said. “I wasn’t expected to make it to October, and then to November, and then to December. And yet, here I am, and today, got some problems, but I’m feeling pretty good today.”
But despite his undercurrent of optimism and hope, many speculated that the show might be Limbaugh’s last.
Even if Limbaugh is able to return in 2021, he noted that he will soon succumb to the stage IV cancer.
“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.”
With the sunset of President Donald Trump’s first term fast approaching, Limbaugh’s departure likewise seems a fitting bookend.
His impact on conservative thought and the Trump presidency were honored during the State of the Union address last January, when Trump surprised Limbaugh—whom he had invited as a guest—by giving him the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
While facing a forboding diagnosis in his own health struggles, he acknowledged the anxieties many listeners feel regarding the prospect of a corrupt Biden presidency after the Nov. 3 election brought evidence of systemic and widespread vote fraud to the forefront.
Likewise, the increasingly bold and brazen influence of China, the authoritarian exploitation of the coronavirus, and other structural issues within America’s constitutional system of checks and balances have only amplified the sense of dread.
But Limbaugh—who has led the fight against leftist corrosion for more than 30 years—encouraged the audience not to give up while lambasting Democrat Joe Biden’s prognosis that America’s darkest days were ahead.
“What a bleak way of looking at things,” Limbaugh said.
“It’s never time to panic, folks,” he continued. “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.”
