Rush Limbaugh: Heartland Viewers Say Fox News ‘Not Considered The Conservative Network That It Used to Be’

Andy Kropa/Getty Images
Andy Kropa/Getty Images

On Wednesday, conservative icon and talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh said “Fox News is not considered the conservative network that it used to be” to many viewers in the heartland.

On his daily radio program, Limbaugh said “he has found when talking to people, including media people, in the east coast” and places like Washington, Boston, and South Florida that “virtually everybody thinks of Fox News as a conservative network.”

Limbaugh said he travels to Missouri for Christmas and the holidays and goes on golf trips all over the country and, “I’m here to tell you Fox News is not considered the conservative network that is used to be.”

He said he is “not trying to start anything up” and added that “when you hear the media” who “are all leftists” talk about Fox News, “it may as well be the John Birch Society as far as they’re concerned” or “whatever evil right-wing organization” and “that’s why they hate it.”

“That’s what they think it is,” he said the day after Fox News mocked and taunted GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in a press release and compelled him to skip Thursday’s debate.

But Limbaugh said that, “You go out to the heartland of this country, and it’s not so much.”

“What would a conservative network be doing giving time to Michael Moore? Why would New York Times and Washington Post reporters be on the air to give opinions on a conservative network?” Limbaugh asked. “This is what peope are saying out there… that I hear.”

He said that Fox News’s identity is still “heavily tilted to news and analysis that you don’t get anywhere else,” but “I’m just telling you people’s perceptions as they share them with me.”

He blasted the mainstream media who view “everything through their their own prism of being in the Northeast and part of the liberal power structure that determines everything–social, political structure in that part of the country”—for thinking that Fox News is “just embarrassing” and “so right wing” when so many people in Middle America realize that Fox is moving more to the center. He said the mainstream media’s false perception of Fox News is “more evidence of the media being out of touch and not really knowing what people say,” especially in Iowa.

Limbaugh blasted the divide between elected officials/media elite and regular Americans and cited immigration as one of the main points of division.

In 2013, Limbaugh said it was “quite telling” that Fox News did not want him to discuss his opposition to the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive amnesty legislation.

“Now I told the people at Fox that I wanted to talk about this today three or four times and they wouldn’t do it,” Limbaugh said then. “They were not interested in bringing this subject up. I wanted to talk about this in relationship to the current state of the Republican party and they wouldn’t do it.”

As Breitbart News reported, Limbaugh said he “had to bring [the amnesty issue] up myself to whatever extent I did, and that by the way, is quite telling to me.”

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