Rush Limbaugh Accuses ‘Globalist Elite’ of Purposely Sparking a Recession to Destroy Trump Presidency

Rush Limbaugh is accusing a “globalist elite” of trying to engineer an economic recession in order to hurt Donald Trump’s re-election chances.

LImbaugh has been making the charge for a couple of days, most recently on Thursday’s edition of his radio show:

“I think yesterday was a dry run for later on in the election season. I think they wanted to see how they could succeed, if they could succeed, in causing the bottom to fall out of Trump public opinion by claiming that Trump’s policies are destroying the United States economy.

They couldn’t stick with it for more than one day because it isn’t true, folks. There’s no truth to the fact that we’re on the verge of a recession. We’re the only nation in the world with a demonstrably growing economy. We are not on the verge of a recession here. Quite the opposite.”

The “they” Limbaugh refers to is somewhat ill-defined, but seems to consist of a widespread cabal of “financial people” from Wall Street, the Saudis, the Chinese, and the Europeans, for starters. All of these groups have bought into the idea that “national sovereignty” must be eliminated and replaced with “some sort of global elite leadership.” Bringing this about requires the elimination of nation-states, which in Limbaugh’s formulation can be accomplished somehow by engineering an “economic calamity.”

Standing against this tidal wave of global elitism is Donald Trump. Therefore, that economic calamity has to take him down first, since the United States is the biggest bulwark against the destruction of democracy.

Oh, and also allowing waves of undocumented immigrants to cross the border is also part of this globalist plot, of course.

If Limbaugh was just some guy in a trailer in the desert broadcasting on a shortwave radio, no one would think anything of this. But he’s one of the most visible right-wingers around, a (still) highly rated talk show host broadcasting bits and pieces of the white supremacist “Great Replacement” theory to millions of listeners. And this rhetoric is part of the never-ending circulation of paranoid conspiracy theorizing in conservative media, moving from the radio to podcasts to Fox News to Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, and then back to radio in a giant, self-reinforcing circle.

The results of this sort of paranoia, in a country with a lot of guns and a long tradition of paranoia in its politics, are sadly predictable.

Listen to Limbaugh’s rantings in the clip above, via Media Matters.