The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union is getting rave reviews from American conservative talk radio hosts.
The Brexit shares many of the populist nationalist impulses that have come to the fore in the U.S. election, expounded by Donald Trump and amplified in the media — particularly the Trump-favorable media, including talk radio, which has boosted him since he got in the race.
Trump himself celebrated the Brexit while visiting his golf resort in Scotland on Friday, and has even fundraised off of it, telling supporters in an email fundraising appeal that “voters face the same choice on Election Day” and “we’re going to do the exact same thing on Election Day 2016 here in the United States of America.” And on Friday, some of the most prominent voices in conservative talk radio echoed him, casting Brexit as a nationalist rebuke to the global elite, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“People that desire a strong nation where they live, somehow that’s a negative, we call it populism, we call it nationalism, and it’s horrible, nationalism — how do you explain the British empire?” Rush Limbaugh said on his show on Friday. “How do you explain the United States becoming the world’s lone superpower? We didn’t do it by joining some group. We didn’t do it by having elites run the show. That’s not at all how we attain greatness. And this is what people are finally realizing. There’s nothing great in the EU. France wants out. A number of nations want out.”
“The opportunity here is immense,” Limbaugh said. “And the statement here is powerful. This is a nation of people rising up against the ruling class and the elites.”
“Now, the decision here, I will tell you, it is a stunning rebuke and defeat for Obama and Hillary Clinton,” Sean Hannity said on his show. “They both wanted Britain to stay in the EU. But they threatened the British people, what would happen if they left, which was only fear-mongering by the left, but this whole statement of Obama, ‘Well, they’re going to the back of the queue, meaning the back of the line,’ from the perspective of the U.S. Now the British people, in their very polite way, showed Obama their middle finger.”
Hannity, who frequently has Trump on his show for softball interviews, described Trump’s comments about British concerns about migration as “pretty profound.”
Boston-area host Howie Carr drew a parallel between the U.K.’s immigration concerns and those of the U.S.:
CARR: “It’s a parallel situation to what’s happening in the United States. And you know, they not only have the Muslims, you know that are coming over, all these, Eastern European immigrants are coming in from the states that used be—”
CALLER: “Yeah, Hungary, Poland…”
CARR: “Yeah, Romania and Bulgaria are the main places. A lot of them are gypsies. And you know, these people go away for like three months and they come back to their house, and these people from Romania have decided to squat in their houses and they go to the courts, like you or I will do if somebody squatted in our property and they say, I want to evict these people. They have no right to be here, here’s the deed to my property. And the courts are ruling that they have to let the quote-on-quote migrants, stay there. I mean, it’s insane! I mean, who wouldn’t vote to end this craziness? It’s like the end of the Roman Empire after the Goths started coming across the Danube in the 4th Century, you know?"
Laura Ingraham said she had been “dreaming about Brexit” all week.
“I mean, and I’m not kidding you, but I’ve been literally dreaming about Brexit, and I had it in my bones that it was gonna pass,” Ingraham said.
Ingraham argued that immigration has made London unrecognizable.
“London is a much different city than she was, 20, 25 years ago,” Ingraham said. “A lot of people go to London, they think they’re in Pakistan.” (Pakistani immigration to the U.K. has nothing to do with immigration from other parts of the EU.)