“I can no longer ignore what is becoming obvious,” Rush Limbaugh somberly notified his audience at the beginning of his three-hour show on Thursday, Oct. 22, 1992. His voice — and presumably his heart — was heavy. His tone was unusually forlorn. A melancholy mood permeated the air.
“I’ve decided to endorse Bill Clinton,” he continued. “It’s necessary to have the courage to change.”
Listeners to the Rush Limbaugh Show were shocked. President George H. W. Bush was caught in a tight, uphill race against Clinton and third-party candidate Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, and El Rushbo — our esteemed “Doctor of Democracy” — had just jumped ship and sided with the liberals? (And not only Ditto-Heads were shocked: President Bush’s reelection campaign made frantic calls to Limbaugh, too.)
What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On?
Over the next hour, Limbaugh feigned total sincerity. When flabbergasted callers demanded to know how he could switch sides like this, at first Limbaugh sounded tired, resigned, and accepting of Clinton’s inevitable ascent. Hey, what can ya do? We've all gotta change eventually.
He steadfastly denied this was a put-on. Nope, this was all on the level: Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network are now Team Clinton!
The mainstream media caught wind of Limbaugh’s newfound political conversion. (Some of their articles, such as the one from the L.A. Times, are still available online.) It was a huge deal at the time.
Alas, liberal hearts began breaking about an hour later.
As angry callers grilled Limbaugh for pulling a bait-and-switch on ‘em, El Rushbo suddenly began changing his tune: “Why, I never said that!” “That wasn’t me!” “How can you hold me to something I said 17 minutes ago? That was in the past.”
A few minutes later, he updated the timeline: “That was 23 minutes ago. You keep talking about something that happened 23 minutes ago. It’s irrelevant… I never said that... Can we look forward now? People want to keep looking into my past. How can you keep bringing up my past?”
Eventually, listeners were able to deduce what was happening.
During the closing half-hour of his show, Limbaugh finally came clean. He explained that he was “illustrating absurdity by being absurd” — and that it’s utterly pathetic the American people would expect more consistency, integrity, honesty, and morality from a talk-show host than the Democratic nominee for president.
“Gov. Clinton has been doing for 20 years what I did on my show today: Saying things and denying them,” Limbaugh noted afterward. “The whole reason I’m a success is because people trust me and believe me. Character does matter, even for a lowly talk-show host, and it should be even more for a presidential candidate.”
Years later, Limbaugh’s stunt continues to influence conservative talk show hosts. In 2022, Hugh Hewitt replayed Limbaugh’s endorsement of Clinton for his radio audience after Joe Biden denied ever saying that Putin “cannot remain in power.”
“Thirty years ago, Rush did that bit…” Hewitt explained to listeners. “Life imitates art… It’s not funny when it’s the President of the United States saying ‘nope, that wasn’t me.’”
Rush Limbaugh’s prank stunned audiences in 1992. For Hewitt, it still had relevance in 2022. And now, in the waning days of the Harris-Walz campaign, it’s just as timely as ever.
That’s because radio hosts may come and go, but alas, the Democratic Party is the same as it ever was.
Interestingly, Limbaugh later expressed regret for the bit. He felt that it was unfair to listeners who trusted him to always tell the truth. (He did a similar stunt in 1990 as well.) His October 22, 1992 endorsement marked the very last time Limbaugh ever endorsed a liberal — satirically or not.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member