“Rush Limbaugh, no matter his protestations otherwise, is one of the main reasons Donald Trump is the nominee for the GOP today,” Caleb Howe writes at Red State. “Like Fox News and other Republican media, he has cheered for Trump and Trump's rhetoric and Trump's rise all along.” And he failed to warn his listeners about what would likely follow if Donald Trump won the Republican primaries.

Had Limbaugh merely failed to foresee the future that would be forgivable, especially if he took responsibility for the failure. Instead, Limbaugh betrayed his listeners. And a call this week on his program is the quintessential illustration of his betrayal.

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The caller was named Rick and lives in Los Angeles. The subject: various positions Trump has staked out on illegal immigration, particularly a recent reversal where he suggested he may not deport everyone. Why didn’t the conservative media inform voters about the unreliability of Trump, who had only recently criticized Mitt Romney for being too harsh on immigration, during the GOP primaries, when he pledged a course that was politically and logistically impossible?

Rick broached those questions in his call:

Rick: I just wanted to comment on your comment that you just made about Trump and his deportation shift. I just distinctly heard you say that it’s not considered a flip flop. You’re doing a disservice to all of us Republican primary voters who didn’t vote for Trump, who are struggling with whether or not to vote for Trump, when you diminish the impact of his single policy that he ridiculed all other candidates for... I mean, John Kasich classically said on the debate stage, he laughingly said, “Come on folks, this isn’t serious, he’s not gonna deport everyone.” And Trump went ahead and ridiculed everybody who wasn’t for deportation. For all of us who were saying that it was a con job, a snow job, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s unqualified to be president—for you to sit here and say, when he adopts the positions of everybody he ridiculed as not even being a flip flop and it’s no big deal?! This is why so many Republicans have such a hard time going to the con man. Rush Limbaugh: Well, in the first place, I don’t think Trump has actually changed that much from what he said. And I’m also not aware that he told every Republican that they had to agree with him or else whatever he was going to do to them… Rick: With all due respect, Rush, on Chuck Todd’s show, he specifically said, when asked the question, “You mean you’re going to rip the families apart?” He said, “No, I’m not going to rip the families apart, they all have to go, even the U.S. citizen children.” He then got into the middle of the debate, and the argument between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, when Ted wanted legalization and Marco wanted citizenship as part of a comprehensive plan. He said that they were both wrong, that they were both being absurd, that they all had to go “or we don’t have a nation of laws.” Come on! You were watching the debates as well as the rest of us were. You know exactly what he said and you know exactly the way he ridiculed everybody on that stage. Rush Limbaugh: Yeah, well I guess the difference is—well not the difference, I guess the thing is, this is gonna enrage you. You know, I could choose a path here to try to mollify you, but I never took him seriously on this! Rick: 10 million people did. Rush Limbaugh: Yeah, and they still don’t care. My point is they still don’t care. They’re gonna stick with him no matter what. Rick: But this is why Trump is going to get annihilated. Because nobody called him out early on about his absurd policies. Rush Limbaugh: Yes they did! For crying out loud, 15 candidates called him out. Everybody was calling him out. Everybody was calling him an idiot and a charlatan and a phoney-boloney plastic banana—everybody was. Rick: Except unfortunately the number one place where Republican primary voters get their news. Rush Limbaugh: Oh no, it’s on me and we’re out of time–– Rick: Which is Fox. Rush Limbaugh: Oh, he said Fox, I thought he was dumping on me.

Caller Rick should have concluded by calling out Rush Limbaugh. The Chuck Todd interview from August 16, 2015, is just as Rick characterized it, with Trump declaring that he wouldn’t split up families because the whole unit would be deported. The next day, August 17, 2015, here is what Rush Limbaugh said on his program:

He goes on Meet the Press yesterday and, have to tell you, the establishment is shocked, angry, saddened. He came off as presidential. He had a serious immigration plan. And the key to Trump's immigration plan is that it almost dovetails exactly with public opinion on immigration. You know, it's kind of stunning. We got 16 Republican candidates now, and there's only one of them—only one—with a unique view or different view on immigration. It's Trump. It's obvious that that issue is the foundational issue for Trump, and I think for Trump to blow this he would have to change immigration. He'd have to backtrack, which he's not gonna do. But I'm just saying, all the other stuff … You know, "Is he conservative/is he liberal?" I still don't think that people in what we call the establishment (some call it the ruling class) inside-the-Beltway get it.

Here is Limbaugh a few sentences later:

Sixteen people are running for the presidency, and 15 of them are perceived … I know they would argue with this, but 15 of them are perceived to have essentially the same policy on immigration. One of them is entirely different from the other 15, and he's the one who's leading. Now, don't you think people inside the Beltway should be able to look at this and put two and two together and figure out what is causing this? They can chalk it up to celebrity, they can chalk it up to pop culture, they can chalk it up to circus. But it's not. It is due to substance and it is due to immigration, and with Trump releasing this comprehensive immigration plan yesterday … You know, all these questions of who's a real conservative have been obviated here. Even that question, "Who is that a real conservative?" is up for grabs now.

As if that wasn’t clear enough, Limbaugh goes on to excoriate Arthur Brooks of AEI for suggesting that voters who believe Trump on illegal immigration are being duped:

Arthur Brooks yesterday is talking about (are you ready for this?) the low-information voters supporting Trump. I saw that, and I really stopped on a dime and did a double-take. Look at who they think low-information voters are inside the Beltway! ...The point is, look who they think the low-information voters are. Look who the inside-the-Beltway people think the LIVs are. You people! According to Arthur Brooks, you who support Trump are the mind-numbed, uneducated, uninformed low-information voters, and they are confident that you're gonna see the light at some point. That's what I meant about this been a barnburner weekend … Now, there are pieces being written by conservative intellectuals explaining who the real conservatives are and who the real conservatives aren't and what makes a real conservative and what constitutes a fake conservative. And if you support Trump, you are a fake conservative, and you are dangerous, and somehow you're gonna have to be rescued and brought back into the fold here. But you are under the spell of some Svengali (i.e., Trump).

That is outright mockery of the notion that Trump is duping conservatives.