Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said state flags will be raised in the personal hands of Rush Limbaugh, the far-right broadcaster who died this week at age 70.
The decision met with opposition.
Gary Farmer, leader of the Democratic minority in the Florida Senate, said: “Any move to lower our flag in deference to a man who helped to spur hatred and inflame prejudices against marginalized groups, people of color, women and anyone who didn’t if it looked like it or think how wrong it is and should be terminated.
“We are not like that. This is not who we want to be. “
But DeSantis, a controversial governor known to some as a “mini-Trump” and widely regarded for having presidential ambitions, called Limbaugh a friend.
Appearing with James Golden, longtime producer of the main “shock athlete”, the governor told reporters: “When there are things of this magnitude, once the burial date for Rush is announced, we will lower the flags to half the team . “
Limbaugh has fueled fury among liberals for years. In 2004, former Saturday Night Live cast member and Minnesota senator Al Franken wrote a bestselling book called Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot.
Golden called him “a second generation founding father”.
“The seeds he planted,” he said, “will spring up in America and continue to grow for generations and generations to come, and America will be great again, not just because of Rush, [but] because of men like – and women – but men like this governor. “
Limbaugh lived in Florida. He died on Wednesday, just over a year after revealing that he had lung cancer. The funeral plans were not immediately announced. He was widely regretted by conservatives.
But the Limbaugh Guardian’s obituary said he “set the tone for the era of internet politics, calling women’s rights activists ‘feminine’, referring to HIV / AIDS as ‘Hudson Rock disease’ and claiming that ‘crazy environmentalists’ were ‘a group of scientists organized around a political position’.
“He argued that the existence of gorillas refuted evolution, characterized both the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (2010) and the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019) as ‘false flag’ operations organized by leftist and accused Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe of allowing the riots in Charlottesville in 2017 to worsen in order to boost his presidential ambitions.
“’Have you noticed how sketches made up of criminals always look [the black activist] Jesse Jackson? ‘ he asked.”
In February 2020, the day after Limbaugh announced his cancer diagnosis, Donald Trump gave him the highest civilian tribute in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
A month later, when the coronavirus pandemic started, Limbaugh told listeners that it was just a “common cold” that was being “armed” against Trump from the left.
He also said, in response to Pete Buttigieg’s strong showing in the Democratic primaries, that “despite all the great enthusiasm and all the great terrain that has been covered … America is not yet ready to elect a ‘gay guy kissing his husband on the stage of the ‘President.’
Buttigieg replied: “America has changed and we must have a policy of belonging that welcomes everyone … I am saddened by what the Republican Party has become if it has embraced this type of homophobic rhetoric.”
Buttigieg is now transport secretary in the Biden government.
In his statement on Friday, Farmer, the state senator, said that DeSantis’ decision to lower flags for Limbaugh “turned this distinction into a political party tool to greet a man who did not serve other interests than his own and did the same. better to deeply divide a country along lines of political failure ”.
DeSantis had previously ordered the flags to be half-masted to pay homage to police officers killed in service, members of the United States Navy killed in a gunfight in Pensacola, and Supreme Court liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among others.