As Daily Kos previously covered, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh recently attacked former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and 2020 presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg on his radio show, suggesting that Buttigieg’s sexual orientation, and his (modest) physical affection with his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, on the debate stage, might hurt him with potential voters. Buttigieg hit back at Limbaugh with a lot of grace, as he appeared on CNN’s State of the Union, saying that he doesn’t take “lectures on family values” from the likes of Limbaugh.
Limbaugh, apparently, doesn’t know when to let something go, because he’s now retorted that he has Donald Trump’s graces to not “ever apologize” for what he said.
"Hell, the president even called me about this! He said, 'Rush, I just got to tell you something. Never apologize. Don't ever apologize," Limbaugh claimed on his show on Monday, as reported by Media Matters.
”I think they think that there’s a lot of people that don’t know he’s gay,” he speculated, “and that I sort of dropped the dime on it and let people who otherwise didn’t know that Mayor Pete is gay. The president checks in every now and then to see how I’m doing. He's such a nice guy,” Limbaugh added, claiming that he has a private number for the White House.
The White House hasn’t yet released a comment.
As a palate cleanser, here is Buttigieg on CNN.
“I love my husband. I'm faithful to my husband," Buttigieg said on Sunday. "On stage, we usually just go for a hug. But I love him very much. And I'm not going to take lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh."