Rush Limbaugh closed out his popular radio program on Thursday by announcing he would be off the air on Friday and broadcasting next week from ‘parts unknown’ as he and other residents of Palm Beach were ordered to evacuate before Hurricane Irma made landfall in Florida.
That announcement came just two days after Limbaugh delivered a dismissive diatribe in which he downplayed the threat of the then-Category 5 storm, stating that reporting on the natural disaster had become ‘politicized’ and was being used to advance the notion the climate change is real.
His Friday program was hosted by Mark Steyn.
Gone girl: Rush Limbaugh (above hosting his radio show) has evacuated from his home in Palm Beach and will be broadcasting from ‘parts unknown’ next week
‘May as well announce this. I’m not gonna get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow,’ Limbaugh said at the end of his show on Thursday.
‘That will be in the hands of Mark Steyn tomorrow. But we’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown. So we’ll be back on Monday. It’s just that tomorrow is going to be problematic.’
He then added: ‘Tomorrow it would be, I think, legally impossible for us to originate the program out of here.’
There was no offer of an apology or any remorse however for the comments he made on Tuesday.
‘There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it,’ said Limbaugh at that time.
‘You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic. You don’t need a hurricane to hit anywhere. All you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.’
His downplaying of the storm’s threat immediately drew the ire of ‘Today’ meteorologist Al Roker.
‘To have Rush Limbaugh suggest warnings about Irma are fake news or about profit and to ignore them borders on criminal,’ wrote Roker on Twitter.
He then added: ‘#shameonrush.’
And in another tweet Roker wrote: ‘Do not listen to @RushLimbaugh when he says #Irma is not a dangerous #storm and is hype. He is putting people’s lives at risk.’