State of the Union 2020: Trump gave Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Presidents have bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a few of America’s biggest writers, artists, entertainers, journalists, and humanitarians — from Toni Morrison to Ansel Adams to Edward R. Murrow to Betty Ford.

On Tuesday night time, President Donald Trump gave it to one in all America’s most outstanding racists.

Throughout his State of the Union tackle, Trump appeared to Rush Limbaugh, seated within the viewers with Melania Trump, and thanked him for his contributions to American life.

“And Rush, in recognition of all you’ve got executed for our nation, the tens of millions of individuals right this moment that you just converse to and that you just encourage, and all the unimaginable work you’ve got executed for charity, I’m proud to announce tonight he can be receiving our nation’s highest — you can be receiving our nation’s highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom.”

Republicans cheered.

John F. Kennedy established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 to honor People who’ve made “an particularly meritorious contribution to the safety or nationwide pursuits of the USA, world peace, cultural or different vital public or non-public endeavors.”

Limbaugh, just lately identified with late-stage lung most cancers, has devoted his decades-long radio profession to constructing an viewers of tens of millions of listeners together with his model of right-wing, xenophobic — and patently racist — populism that Trump borrowed on his rise to energy.

Mandel Ngan/AFP by way of Getty Photos

Limbaugh fills hours of airtime every week with hateful commentary directed at African Americans, Asian Americans, women, individuals with disabilities and just about anybody who is just not white, straight and male.

One individual he does like: Donald Trump. Limbaugh has supported Trump since he received the 2016 nomination and has largely stood by him. He’s had him on his present for soft-ball interviews greater than as soon as.

Limbaugh, like Trump, was a longtime birther. Trump was an early birther adopter and stored spreading the conspiracy nine months into his presidency.

Limbaugh’s racist rants continued past the 2008 election and began lengthy earlier than.

• In 1990, Newsday reported that Limbaugh snapped at a black caller who confronted him, saying, “Take the bone out of your nostril and name me again.” (Limbaugh denies he stated this.)
• In 2007, Limbaugh joked he was “singing a music in my head right here in the course of the break: ‘Barack, the Magic Negro, doo doo do doo.’”
• In 2004, he advised that skilled basketball gamers had been criminals: “You simply gotta be who you’re, and I feel it’s time to do away with this complete Nationwide Basketball Affiliation. Name it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Affiliation, and cease calling them groups. Name ’em gangs,” he stated.
• Three years later, Limbaugh described skilled football gamers the identical approach. “Look, let me put it to you this manner. The NFL all too usually appears to be like like a sport between the Bloods and the Crips with none weapons. There, I stated it.”
• In 2011, he mocked a speech by the president of China, saying on air, “Hu Jintao was simply going, ‘Ching cha. Ching chang cho chow. Cha chow. Ching cho. Chi ba ba ba. Kwo kwa kwa kee. … No person was translating, however that’s the closest I can get.”
• In 2016, Limbaugh claimed that Obama’s race “amplified malcontent operations like Black Lives Matter. It gave rise to a thugocracy, and no one had the center to talk out in opposition to it for worry of what would occur to them.”

The checklist of examples goes on and on.

Trump himself has made his personal racist remarks and relied on race baiting all through his career. From his entry into the presidential race — calling Mexicans “rapists” — to his many, many comments since about varied teams, his presidency has been outlined by racial animus. “I feel they’re hassle. I feel they’re searching for hassle,” Trump stated of Black Lives Issues activists in a Fox Information interview with Invoice O’Reilly, echoing Limbaugh’s view.

It’s price noting that past race, each males maintain deeply held sexist views, too. Limbaugh as soon as attacked a legislation pupil and well being care advocate, Sandra Fluke, who was preventing to require medical health insurance suppliers to cowl contraception. He referred to as her a slut:

What does it say concerning the faculty co-ed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes earlier than a congressional committee and primarily says that she have to be paid to have intercourse, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, proper? It makes her a prostitute. She desires to be paid to have intercourse. She’s having a lot intercourse she will be able to’t afford the contraception. She desires you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have intercourse.

Trump has confronted ladies in public life equally, as he did in describing Megyn Kelly as having “blood coming out of her wherever” or dismissing Christine Blasey Ford as a result of “it doesn’t matter. We received.”

Each males just lately made sexist, ableist attacks on teenage local weather activist Greta Thunberg, who has autism.

“So she’s out tweeting and politicizing, and he or she is free to lie and say no matter she desires to say about local weather change and who’s liable for it,” Limbaugh said. “And no one is permitted to query her, you see, as a result of she has — what did they name it? She is within the autism spectrum, so you possibly can’t disagree, you possibly can’t query, as a result of she’s not nicely.”

Each males have develop into highly effective via build up a base by placing down others. Now one is honoring the opposite. And there’s nothing meritorious about it.