Rush Limbaugh said Thursday that the fracas over Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his talks with the Russian ambassador was really about "the Obama administration and its holdovers in the deep state" trying to "sabotage the duly elected president of the United States."

"I know the desire to defend Sessions," the conservative radio talk-show host said on his afternoon program. "He’s a great man. He’s a decent man. He's a good man.

"But it's not about the reality. It’s about the perception.

"If we accept the premise, then that sets the perception almost in stone.

"And they’re gonna go after Sessions for the same reason that they made Trump get rid of [National Security Adviser Michael] Flynn: 'He’s not trustworthy. He lied to me, lied here, lied to [Vice President Mike] Pence.'

"How do you not get rid of Sessions after having gotten rid of Flynn on that basis?" Limbaugh asked. "So, here come the calls from the Democrats: Impeachment! Special prosecutor!"

Sessions, 70, stepped back Thursday from "any present or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaign of the president of the United States."

The announcement, he added, "should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation."

Sessions also doubled down on whether he misled Congress when he did not disclose two meetings last year with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in January.

"The idea that I was part of a 'continuing exchange of information during the campaign between the Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government' is totally false," attorney general said.

Limbaugh said that the Sessions dust-up "is not about illegal talks between Trump and his campaign people and the Russians.

"This story is about Barack Obama and the Democrat Party attempting to sabotage the Trump presidency and do everything they can to either render it meaningless and ineffective — or to get him impeached or force him to resign.

"That’s what the story is," he reiterated. "That is what has to be attacked, not defended.

"We have no reason to be on defense all the time. We won the election.

"These people are barely hanging on," Limbaugh said of the Democrats. "This is all they’ve got."

Limbaugh attributed the controversy to President Donald Trump's address before Congress on Tuesday.

"Trump’s speech on Tuesday night has scared the devil out of these people.

"They thought Trump was gonna continue to be what they think is a bumbling fool," he explained. "It was gonna be easy to do end-runs around him.

"And that speech came — and in their minds, that’s the greatest speech they’ve ever heard, and it scared the hell out of them."