The 2016 Blast The latest POLITICO scoops and coverage of the 2016 elections. Email Sign Up

Tweets from https://twitter.com/politico/lists/team-politico



Rush Limbaugh thinks that the media cannot keep pace with Ted Cruz's "intellectual superiority." | AP Photo Limbaugh: Media hate Cruz for his IQ, intelligence, talent, ability

The mainstream media can't compete with Ted Cruz's IQ, intelligence, talent and ability, and they hate him for that, Rush Limbaugh declared Wednesday.

Limbaugh vigorously defended the Republican presidential candidate from what he perceived as unfair treatment in interviews in which Cruz explained his call to expand policing of Muslim communities in the wake of the Brussels attacks. "You can practically touch that hatred as it comes out of their mouths when they question him," Limbaugh told his listeners, referring specifically to CBS's Norah O'Donnell, who interviewed Cruz Wednesday morning.

During that interview and others during a morning blitz, Cruz remarked that the New York Police Department had programs to monitor the Muslim community in the city until current Mayor Bill de Blasio ended the practice.

"Why do they hate Ted Cruz so much? Well yeah, partly it’s because he’s conservative. But why hate that?" said Limbaugh, who has not endorsed. "It’s more than—it’s threatening. And I’m just going to tell you in the case of Ted Cruz, every damned one of these people knows full well that they are not in his league in terms of IQ, in terms of intelligence, in terms of talent and ability. They can’t compete with him."

Members of the media then "ignore him," Limbaugh said, and when he does appear for interviews, "they usually resort to tactics of intimidation or putting him down or snark or some such thing to try and mask his intellectual superiority."

"They can’t keep up. They despise him. He’s a threat in that regard. You combine the kind of raw native intelligence Cruz has with his heartfelt conservatism and you have personified what the left fears the most, therefore what they hate, what they despise," Limbaugh continued, adding, "They know they’ll never be able to corral Cruz, they’ll never be able to control him. They will never be able to impugn him intellectually."

The media goes after him "in other ways," Limbaugh said, remarking that they will "do anything to ride and run down his personality or individual characteristic quirks or what have you. But they can’t take him on on substance."

The particular instance of Cruz defending his call for more stringent policing of Muslim communities "is even crazier," Limbaugh averred.

"This is simply the acknowledgment of a program previously put in place by a Republican administration and an NYPD mayor and continued under Obama and Mayor Doomberg, and yet they act like Ted Cruz is proposing something that’s 'never ever' been done, and it’s 'discriminatory' and it’s 'painting all Islamists, all Muslims with a broad brush,'" he said. "It boils over to not to attack Islam. Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. That’s what Obama and everybody in the media apparently want us to believe.”