A Liberal Deconstructs Conservative Talk Radio: 04/02/2019

Each day I listen to random conservative talk radio shows to get a sense of the mood of conservative voters. And to get a heads-up on what the "Fox & Friends" morning show will be discussing tomorrow. Plus, it's just pretty damn funny.

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The Faux Voice Of Reason
At first glance, Hugh Hewitt might appear to be a pretty moderate conservative-especially in the midst of the Trump Era. He's a frequent guest on MSNBC and NBC's "Meet The Press" and he spends great portions of his radio show speaking to mainstream media reporters about their most recent works. He sounds like a man who is an old-style Reagan Conservative, someone who is comfortable with the Washington power base. He comes off like a voice of the Conservative conventional wisdom.

But if you listen to his radio show with any frequency, you realize that while he sounds moderate, his core beliefs aren't any less hardcore than the ones espoused by Rush Limbaugh or Larry Elder. He just has the ability to sound less extreme. Which granted is a rare talent in the 2019 world of Conservative media.

That's especially the case with things like the Mueller Report. Hewitt is a smart guy. He understands that whatever he personally thinks about the collusion allegations, the facts are nowhere close to being settled. No one has seen the Mueller Report, at least one grand jury is still investigating some of the related charges and the Mueller team has passed off the prosecution of a number of other cases to other arms of the Justice Department. Hewitt himself has been floating the theory in recent days that the report might state that charges for obstruction couldn't be filed because the President did not sit down for an interview.

But despite that, Hewitt continues to argue that attention over the Mueller Report will fade, that's in the rear view mirror of the Trump White House. He jokes that the media is suffering through the five stages of grief over the facts of the Mueller Report, even though he knows damn well the "facts" aren't clear to anyone besides maybe Bill Barr at this point. Hewitt insists that House oversight of the report's release and the underlying facts of the case won't matter because "the media doesn't like House committee meetings."

I'm not sure what to make of Hewitt's stance on this. Is he really able to intellectually bifurcate two completely different sets of conflicting facts? Or is he just saying what he needs to say to keep that core conservative radio audience happy?


There Are Conspiracies And Then There Are Conspiracies
I've written before about my inability to determine whether or not Rush Limbaugh truly believes the things he says on the radio or whether he's just a talented and jaded broadcaster who gives the listeners what they want to hear. But there are a few topics which are obviously important to Rush and one of those is immigration. More than any other topic so far in 2019, immigration and all of its policy permutations get the big guy really worked up. But as is often the case on conservative radio, there is a fine line between passion and conspiracy theories.

In recent weeks Limbaugh has edged closer and closer to spinning out a pretty unlikely conspiracy theory about immigration and on today's show he responded to a caller's question about border crossings with a theory that is worthy of a QAnon Twitter thread.

According to Limbaugh, he believes that all of these caravans from Central America and all of the people streaming towards the United States aren't coming of their own free will. He believes there is a group of well-funded Democrats and Trump-haters who are traveling to Central America to recruit and organize people into joining these caravans. As he so oddly put it, "someone has to be paying for the vans and porta-potties." Limbaugh seems to believe this is all part of an effort by the elitist establishment to make Trump seem ineffective. In other words, he is convinced that many of the people crossing the southern border of the United States aren't doing it for safety or economic reasons. They are just another cog in this Leftist effort to troll President Trump.

I honestly don't know how to respond to that.

 

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