Rush Limbaugh Revives Crude Sexist Smear Against Sen. Harris

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh

Video screenshot from the August 10, 2020, edition of Premiere Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show/ MediaMatters

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is widely seen as a leading choice to be Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's running mate. As Biden moves closer to announcing his running mate, Rush Limbaugh revived a smear against Harris that implies that she advanced her career by dating a prominent politician.

Limbaugh has launched sexist attacks on Democratic politicians, family members, and aides for decades, frequently tying the attacks to personal relationships and marriages. This was particularly true of Hillary Clinton, for example.


The sexist narrative against Harris, pushed in graphic terms by a variety of fringe right-wing figures before spreading to Fox News, involved her past relationship back in the 1990s with Willie Brown, a former speaker of the California Assembly and mayor of San Francisco. During Harris' own presidential campaign in 2019, Fox News personality Tomi Lahren tweeted a message at her going well beyond previous innuendos on the network and instead used language that could be traced right back to the fever swamps: "Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown?"

On the August 10 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the eponymous Medal of Freedom recipient took an opportunity to bring the topic up all over again.

In response to a comment by Brown in his latest newspaper column this past weekend that "Harris is a tested and proven campaigner who will work her backside off to get Biden elected," Limbaugh went off on a particularly vile sexist tangent, declaring: "If anybody knows her backside, it's Willie Brown."

"And I mean in the biblical, intimate sense," Limbaugh continued. "He knows her backside. They've both acknowledged it. She knows his. Even though his backside is not as big as hers — but — but, look, I got distracted."


Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

North Carolina GOP's Extremist Nominees Excite Democratic Strategists

Michele Morrow

In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly missed capturing North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes, losing the state by a slim 1.4-percentage-point margin. But that was nearly four years ago. Before the Dobbs decision. Before Donald Trump’s 91 felony indictments. And before last week, when the state’s GOP voters nominated a guy who favorably quotes Hitler, has compared LGBTQ+ people to insects and larvae, and thinks a six-week abortion ban isn’t quite extreme enough for governor. Tar Heel State Republicans also nominated another extremist, Michele Morrow, for superintendent of the state’s schools.

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}