BY JOHN K. WILSON

I interviewed Ian Reifowitz via email about his new book which is being published today, The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Ig Publishing). Reifowitz is Professor of Historical Studies at SUNY-Empire State College and also the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity.

John Wilson: Trump’s candidacy, early on, divided the conservative movement because Trump is not a true conservative but a soulless con artist who believes in nothing but himself. A few of the conservatives became Never Trumpers, most fell in line, but Rush Limbaugh was one of the few who could have undercut Trump’s candidacy but refused to ever attack Trump. Why did Limbaugh embrace Trump, and did that enable him to become president?

Ian Reifowitz: First, my research did not focus specifically on what Limbaugh said about Trump during the 2016 campaign, as my focus was on what he said about the Obama presidency. I had some notes on this from 2011 and 2012, and I also took notes on Limbaugh’s reaction to Trump’s announcement that he was running for president. In 2011 and 2012 Limbaugh mostly used Trump as a way to talk about birtherism without having to fully endorse it himself. He also praised Trump for his tough talk about China, and in general for “taking it to Obama” in a way Limbaugh didn’t see other Republicans doing.

However, when Trump was flirting in 2011 with a presidential run against Obama, Limbaugh also made clear that he was skeptical at best that Trump was a conservative Republican. For example: “I mean he’s a marginal Republican in terms of the way people classify (4/7/11).” On Trump’s statement that he would impose large tariffs on China: “it’s a foray into populism. This certainly isn’t conservatism. (4/19/11)” The host also said: “I do think [Trump] has a skewed view of conservatism. I do. I think somebody’s given him a bit of a misread on the conservative base. (4/26/11)”

Limbaugh also repeatedly characterized Trump as a Perot-like figure: “There are a lot of similarities, if you listen to Trump carefully, between what Trump’s saying and what Perot was saying, because they’re both oriented here in populism.” Limbaugh also reminded listeners that Trump toyed with running for the Reform Party nomination in 1999, during which time he proposed a one-time wealth tax of 15%, about which the host said “Now, that isn’t conservative. Nor are 25% tariffs on imports from the ChiComs. That isn’t conservative. (4/20/11)” But in 2011 and 2012, when Limbaugh talked about Trump, I didn’t see him bring up immigration, and I don’t remember Trump talking about immigration in hateful, divisive ways back then either. If he had, Limbaugh might well have liked him more.

Finally, when Trump did announce in 2015, Limbaugh began his discussion of it as follows: “Well, well, well, well, Snerdley and I just spent the last half hour sitting here watching Donald Trump’s announcement that he’s going to run for president, and we were laughing ourselves silly. I mean, it was a howl session.  But, at the same time, there’s no doubt in my mind — I’ll tell you what this is shaping up to be.  For those of you who have the long-term memory and in this for the long game, think Perot.” So, he’s still bringing up Perot.

Now, your question was why did Limbaugh embrace Trump. The answer to that is twofold: one, he wasn’t going to attack the front-runner, in case the front-runner ended up winning. And Trump did win the nomination. And once things got to that point, well, Limbaugh is as partisan as it gets, so Trump was his party’s guy. The second, and this goes to the heart of my book, is that Trump’s hateful rhetoric around immigrants—which was a core element his campaign pitch—echoed what Limbaugh had been talking about for years, in particular during the Obama presidency. My sense is that Limbaugh realized that, even if Trump wasn’t in sync with him on, say, tariffs/trade, that ethnic/cultural issues—which was a much stronger motivating force for Limbaugh’s audience, i.e., the right-wing base—was far more important, and something he could certainly get behind Trump on. Had Trump lost to Hillary, would Limbaugh have continued to hold him up as a true representative of conservatism? That is a really good question, and on that, your guess is as good as mine.

On the matter of how much Limbaugh’s support enabled Trump to become president, I would say that Limbaugh’s audience was already inclined to support any Republican nominee in the general election, although given the tiny margins with which Trump carried Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan—without which he doesn’t win the Electoral College—every little bit helped.

But that doesn’t mean Limbaugh didn’t help Trump in other ways, after all, the title of my book states that Limbaugh paved the way for Trump. I’ll share some material from the book, which includes data that demonstrates the role Limbaugh’s race-baiting rhetoric played in paving the way for Trump:

“Public opinion research data suggests that exactly this kind of rhetoric helped move some whites who had previously voted for Obama into Trump’s column by 2016—most Obama-Trump voters expressed high levels of anger toward non-whites and foreigners. It might be hard to imagine Obama voters being bigoted, but John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck found that significant numbers of whites who voted for Obama in 2012 expressed varying degrees of white racial resentment while also overwhelmingly embracing liberal positions on issues such as taxation and the existence of climate change. It might be surprising, but about 25% of those whites who found interracial couples unacceptable nonetheless voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. The country’s racial climate during Obama’s second term contributed to this phenomenon of racially resentful white Obama voters shifting to Trump, as [according to Zack Beauchamp at Vox] Black Lives Matter and Ferguson “kicked off a massive and racially polarizing national debate over police violence against African Americans.” Limbaugh took full advantage of that climate, and his race-baiting helped pave the way for Trump.”

JW: The conservative movement used to be represented by WIlliam F. Buckley who, for all his many flaws, at least aspired to be an intellectual and posed as one and served as a model for conservative thinkers. Limbaugh became the de facto leader of the conservative movement after Reagan, and he brought a new model for conservatives to become talk-show hosts rather than intellectuals. How has Limbaugh, a college dropout, brought a new anti-intellectual focus to conservatism, and what is the impact of that?

IR: Limbaugh absolutely has placed anti-intellectualism at the center of conservative rhetoric and demagoguery. Although it wasn’t a focus of my book, I came across numerous mentions of what he referred to as The Four Corners of Deceit (I wonder if he trademarked the phrase, he used it so often). They included: government, academia, science, and the media. So look at what he’s done there. We know conservatives hate government (at least while someone like Obama is in charge), and we know they attack the mainstream media as biased. He adds in academia and science, branding them as just as untrustworthy and deceitful to those who like to get their information only from reliable (read: conservative) sources. It’s all about ruining the credibility of anyone delivering information who isn’t Limbaugh, or another partisan conservative. It’s truly Orwellian. Think about it in relation to some of the things I said above. Limbaugh said in 2011 that Trump isn’t really a conservative because tariffs aren’t conservative. But now, because Trump wants them and he’s the leader of conservatism, tariffs are A-OK with Limbaugh. And if an academic like me points this out, well, I’m just part of the Four Corners of Deceit (TM?). And that is how you create an echo chamber.

I’ll give you another example of Limbaugh’s Orwellianism, along with his race-baiting. Limbaugh absolutely slammed Tiger Woods during the Obama presidency, when Tiger was going through a scandal over his extramarital affairs. Limbaugh repeatedly sought to tie these sexual escapades to Obama, using racialized and sexualized language, on the basis of little more than the fact that the president and Tiger were both light-skinned brown men with black fathers. I’m not kidding about this, I go through the examples in the book. But now, because Trump has embraced Tiger in 2019, Limbaugh has as well. The one consistent thing is that Limbaugh continues to blame Obama for having made racial tensions worse—that’s definitely not Trump’s fault, or Limbaugh’s for that matter. At least that’s what the audience heard.

JW: One similarity between Limbaugh/Trump and many progressives is the distrust of elites and suspicion toward the mainstream media. How can progressives challenge the status quo and question media bias without falling into the rhetoric of “fake news” and attacks on intellectual work? Or do progressives need to take back the position of rebellion and denouncing the establishment?

IR: This is a great question, and one I’ve been thinking about for twenty-five years myself. Going back at least to the 1980s, there has been an intellectual approach on the left—maybe not from progressives as much as from some of those to their left—that argued against universal principles, denouncing them as agents of the status quo, the patriarchy, the white elite, etc. They had good intentions and some important critiques to make, in particular regarding unintentional bias and the idea of the white male as the default, assumed position in various aspects of culture and thought.

However, in denying the concepts of objective truth and universal values—which include principles like human rights, equality, justice, etc., they did to some degree play into the hands of people like Limbaugh and Fox News. If everyone is biased, and everyone has “my truth” to tell then those who are perfectly willing to lie 100% of the time reap a political advantage. If there are no facts, then the right can dismiss evidence of injustices as just another piece of fake news. Objective truth and universal values are some of the most powerful tools progressives have, because without them politics becomes nothing more than a matter of who brings the most political muscle to the table, and that means entrenched power will almost always win. Remember, the right won’t admit they are lying, in fact they will say that the ones telling the truth are the liars.

For a perfect example of how this plays out, there was Cathy Garnaat, the woman who attended the town hall meeting organized by Republican Rep. Justin Amash—the only one who has come out in favor of impeaching Trump. She said this: “I was surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump. I hadn’t heard that before. I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report and President Trump has been exonerated.”

To me, this one incident sums up the entire problem we have had with the conservative media in this country since Limbaugh emerged on the national scene in 1988, and of course since the launch of Fox News a few years later. There are certainly mainstream journalists who are biased, but the problem is exponentially worse in the partisan, right-wing media. There’s a difference between unconscious bias and outright lying and propaganda. We need to discuss bias in a nuanced way, with specific evidence and examples, and careful debunking.

Now, I’m not blaming post-modernists for Trump. What I am saying is that if progressives just say that everyone is biased, then that means there is no truth, which means there are no lies. If there’s no truth, and no lies, we’re screwed.

JW: We now have a generation of conservative college students who have never known a world without Rush Limbaugh. How does Generation Limbaugh affect college teachers, who must deal with students who think climate change is a fraud because Rush told them (and their parents) so? How should professors deal with Dittoheads in class?

IR: Generation Limbaugh, wow, that’s a scary notion. Let me start by saying that where I teach (SUNY-Empire State College), my courses are one-on-one, tutorial based, independent studies, so I don’t have that much recent experience with the kind of thing you’re talking about. Having said that, here’s my thinking: If something like that happens in class, you have to always remain a teacher. Present facts, present the truth, present disagreements among scholars—legitimate ones, based on evidence (as opposed to the ‘teach the controversy’ BS we hear on issues like evolution). You may not convince the climate denier, but either way you’ll have a pretty decent chance of convincing some of his or her classmates.

More importantly, you’ll be providing a model of serious, objective inquiry that your students will take with them when they leave your classroom, a model they can hopefully use to resist liars like Limbaugh. He likes to present himself as an educator, and often refers on-air to his show as The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The truth is that those who attend such an institute don’t get any closer to the truth than the attendees of Trump University got to actual knowledge about making money in real estate.