While President Trump’s baseless accusations of election fraud are losing steam with some Republicans, interest in the topic on the biggest right-wing talk shows has only grown.
In the eight days since the election, “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” which normally has around 15 million listeners a week, has mentioned fraud, almost always in the context of the election, 204 times — or roughly 10 times more than the word came up in the eight days before the election, according to a New York Times analysis of transcripts of Mr. Limbaugh’s show. The analysis was based on a tool called RadioSearch, which was developed by the Media Lab at M.I.T.
On Monday, “The Rush Limbaugh Show” was largely dedicated to the topic of voter fraud. The word “fraud” came up 53 times, the RadioSearch data shows.
“There was plenty of fraud that took place,” Mr. Limbaugh said at one point. “There’s simply no way Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. I just can’t believe it.”
In contrast, the top-rated left-wing radio host, Thom Hartmann, mentioned voter fraud just 17 times on his three-hour show since the election, up from five times in the eight days before the election, according to the analysis.
Data from the highest-rated radio shows before and after the election illustrates how the most popular right-wing talk show stars, like Mr. Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, have been consumed by the same theories of wrongdoing that have preoccupied Mr. Trump.
“You listen to Limbaugh in the last week, it feels like something you would have heard on Alex Jones four years ago,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative talk-show radio host who renounced Mr. Trump early on. Mr. Jones has promoted conspiracy theories on his online radio shows and on his site Infowars.
Before the election, the focus on the two top-rated talk radio shows, hosted by Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Hannity, was the alleged corrupt activities of Hunter Biden, the son of now President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The claims have not been substantiated, and the Biden campaign has rejected the accusations.
Mr. Hannity brought up Hunter Biden 81 times before the election. Mr. Limbaugh and his guest hosts, who have been filling in for him as he deals with terminal lung cancer, brought up the younger Mr. Biden 33 times, according to RadioSearch data. Since the election, interest in the president-elect’s son has fallen off, with the name coming up just three times on Mr. Hannity’s show and four times on Mr. Limbaugh’s show.
Representatives for the two shows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” from National Public Radio, did not mention Hunter Biden once in either the week before or after the election. The NPR shows have briefly mentioned Mr. Trump’s claims that the elections have been stolen, generally with information to rebut those claims.
But for Mr. Limbaugh’s show, it has become a regular talking point, coming up even more often as Election Day has receded further into the past. On both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the show mentioned stolen elections five times.
“We need a legal case that the election was stolen,” Mr. Limbaugh’s guest host on Wednesday, Todd Herman, said. “That’s the case that we need in order to, for the first time in the history of America, overturn an election.”
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Here’s how often election fraud has come up on right-wing radio talk shows. - The New York Times
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