Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke out against Rush Limbaugh’s extreme rhetoric today, calling the latest outburst “embarrassing to our country.”
“Even in the Rush Limbaugh world, there’s certain things you can’t say. And what brought his attention to this is lots and lots of sponsors of his program said, no more, you’ve gone too far,” Reid said in an exclusive interview with msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “Rush Limbaugh, each day that goes by, is becoming less credible with the American people.”
Rush Limbaugh offered another half-ish apology to Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student he called a “slut” and a “prostitute” on his show last week. She spoke before a congressional hearing in support of health insurance policies covering birth control, which riled up the conservative radio show host.
“We cannot have something like this take place, that’s embarrassing to our country. It’s embarrassing to the Congress to have a woman who had something to say — she was invited to testify and was disinvited by an all-male group of people,” said Reid, a frequent political target of Limbaugh. “You can’t do that to women in America anymore.”
For the record, Fluke didn’t accept Limbaugh’s apologies. Reid also said putting a written apology on a website isn’t enough.
And with sponsors, it seems. At least 12 major advertisers pulled the plug on their sponsorship and two radio stations announced they’ll stop airing his show.
Reid says he doesn’t listen to his program and Limbaugh, a staunch conservative, doesn’t like the Democrat “for whatever reason.”
Reid didn’t go as far to characterize this as part of the so-called “war on women” with the recent uproar over contraception coverage, the failed Blunt amendment and Komen temporarily defunding of Planned Parenthood.
“Women are entitled for contraception, so their contraceptives of their choice. That’s what this was all about,” Reid told O’Donnell. “We should never run into the firestorm that we did, that people calling this fine woman, by all means.”