Talk Radio’s America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States—Brian Rosenwald (Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2019, 358 pp.)

Abstract

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">In March 2020,</b> as the coronavirus was rapidly spreading throughout the United States, President Trump strode into the Situation Room for a meeting with his COVID-19 task force. According to sources in attendance, the President excitedly announced that he wanted to start a 2-hour, daily White House talk radio show to provide a regular opportunity for him to update Americans, quell fears, and answer listener questions. Ultimately, the President quashed the idea, giving as his reason that it would compete with Rush Limbaugh, whose legendary talk radio program was the gold standard among conservative supporters. When aids suggested the White House program might air at a time that did not conflict with Limbaugh’s broadcast, the President demurred, choosing not to ruffle the feathers of right-wing radio’s Big Bird. The talk radio maestro was held in such high regard that, just a month or so earlier, the President used the solemn occasion of his State of the Union address to announce that he was giving Mr. Limbaugh the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This decision would not surprise Brian Rosenwald whose book documents Limbaugh’s formative role in turning an old technology into an instrument of power that transformed the Republican Party and political discourse in the United States.