Rush Limbaugh, a talk radio pioneer who saturated Americas airwaves with cruel bigotries, lies and conspiracy theories for over three decades, amassing a loyal audience of millions and transforming the Republican Party in the process, has died, his wife revealed at the beginning of his show on Wednesday. He was 70 years old.

Limbaugh announced in February 2020 that he had been diagnosed with advanced stage 4 lung cancer.

Former President Donald Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the 2020 State of the Union, calling Limbaugh the greatest fighter and winner you will ever meet.

Perhaps no moment better encapsulated Limbaughs legacy, nor demonstrated the immense influence he came to wield in Washington.

The medal was a just reward: Trumps ascension to the presidency couldnt have happened without Limbaughs brand of right-wing media.

The modern Republican Party often functioned with Limbaugh as a fulcrum. President Barack Obamas former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once called Limbaugh the voice and intellectual force of the Republican Party. Limbaugh would at times massage the failures of the party and its leaders, dismissing obvious policy or political failures as simply part of liberal conspiracies.

But he also helped set the agenda. When a Republican politician promoting racist and sexist policies could only use a dog whistle, Limbaugh provided a bull horn he was, for example, an early progenitor of the racist birther conspiracy theory about Obama that Trump would later use to fuel his political career.

For decades, Limbaugh was associated with the far-right fringes of the Republican Party. In 1995, only days after Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, President Bill Clinton issued a blistering attack at a speech in Minneapolis in which he said the nations airwaves ... spread hate, they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable. It is time we all stood up and spoke against that kind of reckless speech and behavior.

Limbaugh vehemently protested the characterization, assuming that it was about him which in all likelihood it was. Make no mistake about it: Liberals intend to use this tragedy for their own political gain, he said on the radio afterward.

People did take up Clintons charge to speak against Limbaughs style of reckless speech and behavior, but without much success. While remaining a controversial figure and at times suffering advertising boycotts and derision from the mainstream media, in less than 25 years, rather than be condemned by another American president, Limbaugh was given a medal.

Decades Of Hate

A full accounting of Limbaughs lies and exaggerations; his racism and his misogyny; his homophobia and his Islamophobia; and his sheer cruelty could fill books and have but even a cursory overview of his lowlights makes his prejudice clear.

In 2003, he was forced to resign from ESPN after stating that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was only receiving praise because the media was very desirous that a Black quarterback do well. In 2004, Limbaugh said the NBA should be renamed the T.B.A. the Thug Basketball Association. He then added: Stop calling them teams. Call em gangs. He similarly whined that watching the NFL was like watching a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.

Once, after arguing with a Black man who called into his show, he told the caller to take that bone out of your nose and call me back. Another time, Limbaugh asked his audience, Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson? while discussing the Black civil rights activist and politician. Limbaugh once ludicrously asserted that if any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, its Caucasians. He invited a guest on air who sang Barack, the Magic Negro to the tune of Puff, the Magic Dragon. In 2016, he read an essay on air that had been penned by a well-known white supremacist.

Limbaughs radio career was also one long exercise in misogyny, perhaps best summed up by his thesis that feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.

In one of his most infamous episodes, he called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute in 2012 after she testified in Congress about the importance of women having access to birth control.