“Yeah, I guess Michelle Obama wasn't there when the Rev. Wright was talking about Bill Clinton,” Rush Limbaugh said. | Getty Limbaugh defends Trump: 'How can it be assault if they let you do anything?'

Rush Limbaugh fired back at Michelle Obama on Thursday, saying the first lady has no room to talk when it comes to criticizing Donald Trump for using locker room language. And he excused crude remarks the Republican nominee made about women in a 2005 recording that even Trump isn't defending, arguing that the comments didn't amount to boasting about sexual assault.

“Men brag, and she is telling people that she doesn't know men who brag,” Limbaugh said on his long-running radio program, according to a transcript . “You know the people that have been to the White House? How about some of the rappers that talk about their ‘bitches’ and their ‘hos’ have performed such lyrics in the White House?”


Obama was stumping for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire when she blasted Trump for his comments on a 2005 video that was leaked to The Washington Post last week. In the footage, Trump tells then-“Access Hollywood” co-host Billy Bush that as a reality TV star the real-estate tycoon can do anything he wants to women. The first lady said the Republican presidential nominee’s words were not “locker room talk,” as Trump said in his apology, but rather sexual assault.

“The fact is, in this election we have a candidate for president of the United States who over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning, I simply will not repeat anything here today,” Obama said at a campaign rally. “And last week we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexual assaulting women. I can't believe I'm saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.”

Limbaugh also disputed the idea that Trump had confessed to sexual assault in the "Access Hollywood" recording.

“f you go back to this audiotape, he said, ‘When you're a celebrity, they let you do anything,’” Limbaugh said. "How can there can be assault if somebody's granting permission? How can it be assault if they let you do anything?"

"I just start kissing them," Trump says of women on the recording. "It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” he says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” Bush responds.

“Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

Limbaugh later brought up the first family’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose at times inflammatory rhetoric led then-Sen. Barack Obama to denounce him in 2008.

“Yeah, I guess Michelle Obama wasn't there when the Rev. Wright was talking about Bill Clinton,” Limbaugh said. “You remember what Rev. Wright said about Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky? [interrupting] No. That's not what he said. [impression] ‘And Bill and Monica Lewinsky was riding dirty.’ Yeah, chickens have come home to roost, baby."