Fellow Patriot: The voluntary financial generosity of supporters like you keeps our hard-hitting analysis coming. Please support the 2024 Year-End Campaign today. Thank you for your support! —Nate Jackson, Managing Editor

February 19, 2021

My Friend, Rush

I owe much of my career to Rush.

In December, I was sitting on my front porch when my phone lit up with a message from Rush Limbaugh.

He and my wife have variants of the same type of lung cancer, though hers was caught very early, and her treatment has thus far contained it. Rush knew she had an older iPhone with touch-ID, and he had been chiding me to upgrade her phone. He didn’t quite understand my wife’s resistance to technology and insisted I was neglecting my wife by failing to give her a state-of-the-art phone.

Undeterred, he now wanted me to know he was sending her a new iPhone 12 Pro Max because he was convinced her chemo would screw up her fingerprints and make unlocking her phone difficult, which it already had been. My wife now has a better iPhone than me, thanks to Rush.

That is the sort of guy Rush was. In the midst of his own far more serious battle with cancer, he was insistent my wife have a better phone.

I was not alone in benefiting from his generosity. He was generous with advice and with iPhones, and God help you if you offered to buy lunch at a restaurant. You’d inevitably wind up aggrieving the wait staff, who knew Rush was the best tipper in the restaurant. The Erickson household has had several generations of iPhones show up thanks to Rush. At one point, Rush and I would race each other to buy the phone and email to claim victory. Then he started letting other people order for him, and it wasn’t a fair fight anymore.

Back in 2010, as Herman Cain was preparing to run for President, Cox Media Group offered me Herman Cain’s job. I was running the website RedState and also on CNN and served as a city councilman in middle Georgia. I was not sure I should take the job, but Rush told me he would never speak to me again if I said no.

A decade later, having filled in as a guest host for Rush along the way, I’m now doing five hours of radio — my own syndicated show and local drive-time radio in Atlanta on one of the most listened to talk stations in the country.

I owe much of my career to Rush.

When I was a teenager making obligatory college visits with my dad, we stumbled on Rush’s program while driving through Alabama. My dad was searching for Paul Harvey. We developed a shared affection for Rush, and even when we couldn’t talk about other things, we could talk about things Rush had said on air. I’d stay up late at night and watch Rush’s TV show, which Fox News head Roger Ailes had produced.

The day my parents finally stopped suggesting I should probably hold onto my law license was the day I filled in for Rush the first time. Years before, Rush had referred to me on air as “my friend Erick Erickson,” and it was the first time I could remember my dad calling me to say how proud he was — not that it was the first time, but it was the first memorable time, because he just about ran off the road when he heard it and was out of breath when he called.

Rush Limbaugh pioneered a model of radio, and a lot of us would not be doing what we are doing but for Rush. He created an industry that did not exist before him. All of us in this business know none of us will ever be as good as him. Rush Limbaugh was the best and will perpetually be the gold standard by which everyone else in talk radio is measured.

There’s a public caricature of Rush Limbaugh that was formed by those jealous of his success and contemptuous of his views. Then there is the real Rush Limbaugh — a friend, a mentor and now the man who gets to personally deliver his talent back to the God of all creation from whom Rush got it and who Rush knew, loved and served.

COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.