On today’s Rush Limbaugh program, Rush continued his campaign-masquerading-as-analysis for Trump by making an astonishing claim about Trump. He claimed that Trump has made limited government a central tenet of his campaign.

“What the heck?” you might be thinking to yourself. “I’ve literally never heard Donald Trump discuss limited government, or reducing taxes, or lowering spending, or any such thing.” And you are absolutely right, and even Rush does not attempt to say that he does. What he does offer is a pretty ridiculous analysis of why Trump is preaching limited government anyway. Listen for yourself here:

Rush: The umbrella fear is fear of government. Well who out there happens to be talking about the incompetence and incapability of government louder than anybody else is? That would be The Donald and.. and Cruz as well. But with The Donald it’s an identifying characteristic. He never even utters the words. A caller the other day said “I never hear Trump talk about big government.” He does all the time, he doesn’t use the words. He talks about liberals all the time, doesn’t use the words. He talks about conservatives all the time, doesn’t use the word. Exactly the advice Pat Buchanan was given back in 1996. Go ahead, do everything, but do not call yourself a conservative, Pat, it will narrow your identity, you don’t need any help from any other constituency… Pat couldn’t do it, he was so tied to the conservative movement, and the party, and he couldn’t do it. But Trump can since he’s never really been associated with either political party. It’s an open question. But everything Trump talks about – much of what he talks about is rooted in opposition to things happening to people from government.

This is an absolute embarrassment. It is flat out propaganda that is so embarrassing that even the Trump campaign would not try to spin it themselves. I listen to an absolute ton of Donald Trump speeches, and he literally never talks about being opposed to things happening to people from the government as a concept. He absolutely never discusses what programs should be cut, or what things the government is doing that it should not be doing, or that taxes or fees should be lowered, or that regulations should be eliminated.

His only claim is that if he were the person who were in charge and pulling the levers, he could do it better and more efficiently. He never claims that it shouldn’t be done at all.

Here is a great example, because I listened to a ton of Trump speeches doing research for a post last week. Here is a video of his full speech at the Myrtle Beach Convention last weekend:

Trump spends about 10 minutes at the beginning of this speech bemoaning government incompetence in the construction of the Wollman Ice Skating Rink. The point of his story, though, is not that government should not be in the business of building ice skating rinks – the point is that if he, Trump, were in power, he would build the ice skating rinks better and more efficiently. At no point does he ever suggest that the construction of a massive amusement attraction should not have been done by the city of New York at all or that it should have been left to the private sector.

In fact, while Trump rails on government ineptitude on a fairly regular basis, he does not rail on government ineptitude qua government ineptitude, he does it to claim that if he were the person involved in government, everything would be bigger, classier, better. He never, ever ends one of his stories with “and that’s why the private sector should be doing this,” they always end with the point that if you elect Trump, he will cause the government to do it better.

Moreover, when Trump does offer policy specifics, they almost always involve government becoming larger or more intrusive. How else to interpret the fact that he specifically said he wanted more ethanol subsidies and a higher government ethanol mandate? Or what about the numerous ways that Trump would have the government interfere with the trade market? Or how about the fact that Trump’s immigration proposal would require a massive increase in the size of INS and furthermore a huge intrusion of INS into American daily life? This is to say nothing of the fact that he has repeatedly stated that he wants to “raise taxes on the rich,” the siren call that Rush Limbaugh has been ostensibly fighting for over two decades?

Sure, Trump complains about government incompetence, but that does not mean that he believes in limited government. In fact, he believes in a lot more government. He just believes it should be controlled by Trump.