Rudy Giuliani Reacts To Rush Limbaugh's Death

Almost a year after announcing a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, fans and followers learned that author and conservative pundit Rush Limbaugh died from the disease via an announcement made by his wife during what would have been his regular radio show slot on Feb. 17, 2021. Shortly following, conservative figureheads took to social media to praise Limbaugh — a controversial figure frequently criticized for espousing racist and misogynist rhetoric, and who received the Presidential Medal Honor from Donald Trump in February 2020. Among them was former New York City Mayor and Trump's one-time personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani — who is, at the time of this writing, facing two separate billions-dollar lawsuits by voting machine system manufacturers over his repeated claims that they aided in voter fraud in the November 2020 presidential election — was quick to express his condolences over the death of the conservative jockey and pundit. 

"My friend Rush Limbaugh was the most influential commentator in the world. He created a whole new genre. A genius, patriot, humorist, great golf partner, and a generous kind man," tweeted Giuliani after the news of Limbaugh's death went public. "We will miss him but he lives on in heaven and on earth with those he inspired." But despite Giuliani's designation of Limbaugh as a personal friend, the months leading up to Limbaugh's death after Trump's electoral loss to President Joe Biden might indicate their relationship had fractured, albeit slightly.

Although Rudy Giuliani referred to Rush Limbaugh as a friend in his condolence-laden tweet, there may or may not have been some tension between the two within the last few months, most markedly immediately following the results of the November 2020 presidential election. As outlets like Salon and Mediaite reported at the time, Limbaugh went on his radio show to criticize Giuliani and other members of Trump's legal team at length after a widely-panned news conference Giuliani held on the property of a business called Four Seasons Total Landscaping outside of Philadelphia, in which Giuliani announced the Trump campaign's intent to investigate possible (and now thoroughly debunked) instances of voter fraud.

"You call a gigantic press conference like that — one that lasts an hour — and you announce massive bombshells, then you better have some bombshells," Limbaugh said of Giuliani's failed event. "They promised blockbuster stuff and then nothing happened, and that's just, it's not good." 

In December 2020, Limbaugh later castigated Giuliani and other high-profile Trump supporters for making conservatives at large look like "kooks" in an effort to further the claim of an election fraud conspiracy, per The Daily Mail. "As a conservative, it's getting harder and harder to not look like a kook," the radio host said on-air at the time.