Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

With Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appearing likely to clinch the election on Friday against incumbent President Donald Trump, right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh provided his listeners with a cornucopia of conspiracy theories about Democratic officials manufacturing votes to overcome what would otherwise have been a Trump landslide victory.

His propaganda creates an image of fraud at the polls — in contrast to actual election results — that would put Charles Foster Kane's newspapers to shame.

Much of Limbaugh's conspiracy theories hinge around Biden overtaking Trump's earlier leads in key states after days of counting mail-in votes in heavily Democratic cities — a phenomenon dubbed the "red mirage" that was predicted for months due to increased interest in mail-in voting among Democratic-leaning voters as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

In fact, the mirage has occurred precisely because of decisions made by Republican officials, not Democrats. In the key state of Pennsylvania, for example, the state's Republican legislature did not pass changes requested by the state's counties, which would have allowed them to begin processing mail-in ballots before Election Day. As a result, they began the day with a tremendous backlog of envelopes to sort through, which are only now being resolved.

Limbaugh has been peddling a variety of conspiracy theories, such as falsely claiming there were more votes cast in Wisconsin than registered voters in the state — though the voter registration figure dates back to 2018, and since then the rolls have increased significantly. And during his show on Friday, he claimed that Republicans won some key down-ballot races, while Biden was pulling ahead in the vote count because Democrats were in a hurry and only manufacturing fake votes for Biden. (Just to be clear, the House and Senate races he has discussed are not connected to such contests as the presidential race in Pennsylvania.)

Limbaugh kicked off his November 6 show by reading from a column published at Fox News, written by Jason Whitlock of the right-wing sports site OutKick.com, decrying that "hate" had conquered "love" in the election — that is, claiming that dislike of Trump had was a greater motivating force among Democratic voters than love for Joe Biden, in contrast to Trump's own supporters genuinely loving him.

Limbaugh commented further on his own. "I know, it doesn't matter to anything now. But it matters to me, I'm sorry," he said. "The guy that won did not have any kind of massive pro support. He was just the vessel. He was just the recipient of whatever anti-Trump sentiment there was out there."

In the early afternoon, a tweet circulated, which has since been deleted, interpreting this talk from Limbaugh as amounting to a concession — an admission that Trump had lost the election.

Limbaugh soon returned, and told listeners that he had received a question about this from Fox News anchor Bret Baier. His answer to Bret Baier: No, he isn't conceding — plus a warning to Fox News, that they should not become the first network to project Biden as the president-elect, which the Democrats must truly want to see.

Finally, though, Limbaugh circled back to Whitlock's piece: “Well, hatred is driving the fraud. Hatred is driving the cheating. Hatred — the unwillingness to accept Trump as a winner — is driving all of this chicanery the Democrats are engaging in. It is hate that is driving it. I understand Whitlock's point, and in quoting his piece and talking about it, people might have heard me say that I was agreeing with him that it's over." But then again, Limbaugh still expressed his disappointment in the way people voted. “What really irritates me more than anything is that people vote for it," he said, and claimed that he was hoping people would vote against Democrats after the party had “finally exposed themselves" via urban “riots" and COVID-19 lockdowns. “I'm saying this has got to open people's eyes. It's got to alert people what we are up against. It's got to alert people to what the Democrat Party is," Limbaugh concluded. “And I don't know if it did or not, because there's too much damn vote fraud in these four states."

So did “people vote for it," as Limbaugh said in disappointment — or was it all just fraud, as he also insisted? “We just don't know," he concluded. “Common sense would tell you the American people do not support this stuff. This stuff is not the majority. It's not how they want their country to operate and proceed." Well, that's his story, and he's sticking to it — even if he doesn't really know.