Those calls by Katie Couric and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to “deprogram” and “deradicalize” Trump supporters? Don’t take them lightly, warns talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Because they really mean it.
Couric, the former NBC News anchor and “Today” host, said in an interview with Bill Maher that “the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.” Ocasio Cortez said last Friday at a virtual event that it’s “going to take a very long time to deradicalize these people and a lot of effort.”
A Democratic National Committee official, David Atkins, said on Twitter that “deprogramming” is needed for every one of more than 74 million people who voted for Trump on Nov. 3.
Limbaugh said they “are literally thinking of deprogramming conservatives.”
“They don’t call us conservatives. They call us Trump cultists,” he said.
Limbaugh posted comments from a number of network personalities:
- Alisyn Camerota spoke of the “cult of Trump.”
- Steve Hassan described Americans recruited “by an authoritarian political cult.”
- Mustafa Tameez said a “Trump cult that wants to believe whatever the dear leader says.”
- Jeremy Bash said, “This was a long … deliberate effort by political leaders led by Donald Trump to brainwash, to create a cult.”
Limbaugh noted that until now, Americans had successfully handled the political divide for generations.
“There was a notion that we’re Americans, that being American meant something. That’s gone. Now, 35, 40% of the country believes ‘American’ is a dirty word, that the American founding was illegitimate, that we are an illegitimate superpower because our founding was illegitimate and because our economic system — capitalism — is immoral and unjust,” he said.
“So, I mean, folks, you don’t have to look any farther than Make America Great Again is controversial. Make America Great Again really ticks some people off.”
He said he sometimes, perhaps naively, has thought that “every American loves his country.”
“It’s not true,” he said.
If any deprogramming is needed, he said, it should be for those who, through the American public education system, “have been taught to hate this country.”
A start, he said, would be to “make a stab at telling them why this country should be loved and adored and understood and built on its foundation premises.”
Couric, he said, wants conservatives “deprogrammed” because she “doesn’t want to have to deal with them.”
She believes they “shouldn’t have any access to constitutional rights because they’re cultists.”
The radio star noted the left has redefined “hate speech.”
“So how do you define hate? Well, they’re already off and running on that. If you’re conservative and you don’t like Biden, you’re hateful,” he said. “If you say the wrong thing about the presidential election of 2020, you could be categorized as a domestic terrorist.
“And if it becomes necessary to eliminate certain people from participating because they engage in ‘hate speech,’ all you have to do is define ‘hate speech’ as something that opposes the government, for example. That’s how most totalitarian regimes do it. If you opposed the government, why you’re dangerously close to trafficking in hate.”
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