[See NewsBusters for more.] Previewing Donald Trump’s address to the nation on the government shutdown, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday night repeatedly and obsessively blamed the border battle on Rush Limbaugh, who the Hardball host derided as gutless. Matthews or his guests mentioned Limbaugh by name ten times in just one hour. After an aside on the “guts” of John Wayne, the journalist sneered, “Rush Limbaugh, if he had any guts and stood for anything besides audience, he would say, ‘Let’s move on here. This isn’t helping.’” Matthews opened the show by blaming the shutdown on “hard-right agitators like Rush Limbaugh.”
