Limbaugh Calls 12-Year-Old a Liar, Then Claims He Never Attacked Him

Posted by Faiz Shakir at 2:00 PM on October 19, 2007.

This post, written by Faiz Shakir, originally appeared on Think Progress

On his radio show earlier this month, Rush Limbaugh participated in the smearing of 12-year old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost. Limbaugh introduced the segment, saying: "I had some rudimentary information on this two weeks ago, and it wasn't enough for me to trust going with. But since then, it has been verified, and most of it has been verified by a 'Freeper' at Free Republic."

Limbaugh propagated the now-debunked claim that Graeme Frost was actually a well-off kid being pampered by the government. He then explicitly called Graeme a liar who had been corrupted by the Senate Democratic Leadership:

So the bottom line for me is: They can't rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. [...] They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid's head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me.

Now that the right-wing smear campaign against Graeme has been proven to be completely baseless, Limbaugh is desperately trying to revise history. Last night on Hannity & Colmes, Limbaugh claimed he "never attacked" the Frost family:

I never once attacked this family. I attacked the Democrats for exploiting them. I attacked the Democrats for putting lies into the head of a 12-year-old. [...] The Democrats are amazingly brazen in this at using kids, using season citizens. I never attacked this family. I simply reported what their financial circumstances are.

During the segment, Limbaugh also sneeringly mocked Graeme by taking on the voice of a 12-year old child. Watch the video to your right.

Limbaugh never apologized for his role in misreporting the family's financial circumstances. Rush now claims that Graeme's big "lie" is that he wanted to "make the American people think that they would not get covered because Bush didn't want to expand the program." It's true. The Congressional Budget Office reports more than 700,000 children will lose coverage under Bush's proposal.

More at Newshounds.

Tagged as: media, children, limbaugh, conservatives, health care, s-chip, frost

Faiz Shakir is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report.