"The Hurricane Irma is a Conspiracy" - Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh spent the first part of this week acting as a Hurricane Irma truther, but now it seems he’s taking cover. 

On Thursday, the conservative radio host announced on his show that he’d be evacuating South Florida, where he lives, and would be off the air for the next couple of days. This comes mere days after he lambasted media stations for their coverage and storm preparers for battening down their hatches.

READ MORE: THROWBACK: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Catches Fire - March 25 1911

“May as well announce this: I’m not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow,” Limbaugh said on his Thursday broadcast.

“We’ll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown... Tomorrow will be problematic. Legally impossible for us to originate the program out of here.”

Limbaugh has long been hell-bent on saying hurricanes and storms like it are part of a liberal conspiracy solely aimed at furthering the discussion on climate change, but his claims about Irma in his Tuesday broadcast sent many over the edge.  

Limbaugh ranted on air, “Here comes a hurricane, local media goes on the air, ‘Big hurricane coming, oh, my God! Make sure you got batteries. Make sure you got water. It could be the worst ever. Have you seen the size of this baby? It’s already a Cat 5. Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s bigger than the island of Haiti. Oh, my God.’ People run to the stores, they stock up everything, and they hoard. And they end up with vacant stores, nothing there. And it’s a big success. TV stations got eyeballs, the advertising businesses have sold out of business, gotta restock and the cycle repeats.”

He also said that “all you need is to create the fear and panic accompanied by talk that climate change is causing hurricanes to become more frequent and bigger and more dangerous, and you create the panic, and it’s mission accomplished, agenda advanced.”

In addition to announcing his relocating to “parts unknown,” Limbaugh still doubled down on his statements from earlier in the week.

“The views expressed by the host of this program documented to be almost always right 99.8 percent of the time,” he said. “There is a reason for that because we engage in a relentless and unstoppable pursuit of the truth and we find and proclaim it and that happens to drive people crazy.”

The devastation of Hurricane Irma is expected to be even more catastrophic than that of 1992′s monster storm Hurricane Andrew.