RUSH: I mentioned yesterday on the program that a very prestigious honor was bestowed upon me yesterday and last night in Washington by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is one of the longest-surviving conservative think tanks in the country. They’ve been around longer than I have. They’ve been around 35 or 50 years.
As long as there has been conservatism there has been the Heritage Foundation. And they have been a bulwark, and they have stood strong, and they have not wavered, and they never turned against MAGA. Maybe some individuals there did on a rare occasion, but for the most part, the Heritage Foundation has always been dependable. They are what you expect them to be. They are what you hope them to be. And I have had an ongoing relationship with them since shortly after this program debuted on August 1, 1988.
Well, last night in Washington they dedicated some new studios. They’re expanding, and they built a new broadcast complex and they created new radio studios. They’re actually going to have radio programming originating from the foundation rather than have to traipse to various radio stations around town or around the country. And they dedicated those studios to me.
In addition, they gave me an award. The Titan of Conservatism award was presented to me last night. And I want to share with you just couple of audio sound bites from Kay James of the Heritage Foundation, who made the announcement last night. Here’s the first of two sound bites we have.
JAMES: Long before I became president, I used Rush Limbaugh as my true north for decades. I’ve been listening to his show since the very beginning. I even remember going to the dedicated Rush Rooms in restaurants where you could listen to the show on your lunch hour. In his first few years with a nationally syndicated show, I always marveled at how people could call him up and say, “Thank you for speaking up like you do. I thought I was the only one who had those beliefs.” The fact is, Rush helped bring the conservative movement together three hours a day for a family meeting.
RUSH: That’s Kay James of the Heritage Foundation. Now, all of this is happening without any strategy behind it. I’m trying to just make my mark as a broadcaster, as a radio guy, and I have my own goals as a radio guy that I’m attempting to accomplish, achieve, maintain, and hold. And it happened to dovetail with the conservative establishment in Washington at the time, most of whom I didn’t know. I didn’t know them personally. I got to know them over the years and not just at Heritage, but at a number of other different places.
It’s interesting to me how here I am doing what I’m doing without knowing of the existence of any of these other organizations. I mean, I had heard of Heritage, but to me they were not what I was doing. They’re a think tank. You know, I’m a broadcasting tank. And the interests nevertheless coincided. And it helped firm up a movement and give it legitimacy and so forth.
I gotta tell you, folks, at the beginning of the radio program you had traditional human behaviors that dominated. There were some people ecstatic that there was a radio program out there that was properly, correctly identifying and promoting conservatism. You had others in the conservative movement who were jealous. Then you had others who didn’t like it at all because I didn’t go to college and didn’t have a pedigree, didn’t have a reputation that they could point to with pride. Like, “Who is this guy? Where’d he come from? What university did he go to?”
“He didn’t go to university.”
“Oh, no. So our leading spokesman on the radio barely went through high school?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“Oh, no.”
So there was that kind of reaction. But Heritage never had that reaction. They never once had any airs about them. Ed Feulner was chairman, president of the Heritage Foundation when I was first starting the program, and he welcomed me in and got me introduced to all kinds of people there. And I met people otherwise wouldn’t have met had it not been for Heritage. Here’s the second Kay James bite.
JAMES: The extraordinary reach of his number-one radio talk show has allowed him to convert millions with his common-sense, everyday language explanations of why conservatism works and how every American benefits because of it. Everyone in America knows that the conservative movement simply wouldn’t be where it is today without the venerable Rush Limbaugh.
RUSH: The venerable Rush Limbaugh. Kay James of the Heritage Foundation. So I got the Titan of Conservatism Award last night, and they named their brand-new broadcast complex the Rush Limbaugh Radio Studios. And that’s forever. That’s gonna be forever. There’s gonna be people walking in there recording things, and they will know that they are in the Rush Limbaugh broadcast complex at the Heritage Foundation.
Mr. Snerdley is saying, “Well deserved.” I wanted to take just a moment here at the beginning to thank everybody at Heritage for both of these honors because that’s what they are. The Titan of Conservatism Award and the Rush Limbaugh broadcast studios. I’m very appreciative, and I cannot thank them enough for over 30 years of a very good, close working relationship that we’ve had. I look forward to many more.