"There isn’t anybody doing what I do that has a thing to do with actually making policy for this president," Rush Limbaugh said. | Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images Media Limbaugh denies influence over Trump: 'I don’t make policy'

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Sunday denied that he wields any substantial political influence over President Donald Trump, criticizing the notion as a false narrative pushed by the president’s opponents to make Trump seem incompetent.

“If these people in the media, Chris, really thought that I was telling Trump what to do and when, they’d be calling me, they’d be asking me about it, they’d want to get down to the dirty details,” Limbaugh told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”


“People don’t really believe what they’re saying about this,” Limbaugh said. “It’s just another effort to continue to try to diminish the president, diminish Trump, as somebody who doesn’t know what he’s doing, can’t do it without guidance from the so-called wacko right.

“It’s not at all the way he’s governing, and there isn’t anybody doing what I do that has a thing to do with actually making policy for this president,” he said.

Limbaugh and a host of other right-wing commentators were partly blamed in December for plunging the federal government into a 35-day partial shutdown after urging the president not to sign a stopgap funding proposal that allocated far less than the $5.7 billion Trump had demanded for construction of a wall separating the United States and Mexico.

On Friday, Trump declared a national emergency after signing a massive spending agreement reached by congressional negotiators that apportions $1.375 billion toward border security measures. The emergency declaration lets the White House redirect billions more toward construction of a border wall.

Trump on Friday praised Limbaugh as “a great guy” during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, in which he announced the emergency declaration. The president also mentioned Fox News host Sean Hannity and conservative author Ann Coulter.

“Here’s a guy [who] can speak for three hours without a phone call,” Trump said of Limbaugh. “Try doing that some time. For three hours he speaks. He’s got one of the biggest audiences in the history of the world. I mean, this guy is unbelievable.”

Limbaugh on Sunday said “of course” Trump cares about what he tells his millions of radio listeners.

“He cares about what everybody thinks, but I don’t make policy.”