Fact Check: Rush Limbaugh Has NOT Been Suspended From Twitter -- Deleted Own Account

He Deleted It

Was radio host Rush Limbaugh suspended from Twitter in the wake of President Trump's suspension from the plaform? No, that's not true: in an email to Lead Stories, Twitter has confirmed it was the user behind the @RealRLimbaugh account who deleted it. At the time of writing there is no statement about the deletion on Limbaugh's site but it is likely one will appear shortly.

The claim went viral on social media, for example via this Facebook post (archived here) published on January 9, 2021 which read:

Rush Limbaugh, who is dying of stage 4 cancer, has been suspended from Twitter.

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Jan 9 10:36:53 2021 UTC)

Limbaugh's account @RealRLimbaugh is indeed inactive at the time of writing. The last snapshot taken by The Internet Archive that showed the account as active dates from January 7, 2021 (with the last archived tweet being from December 17, 2020).

The timing in the wake of the suspension of the Twitter account of President Donald Trump by Twitter led many to believe the platform had taken the same action against Limbaugh's account.

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.https://t.co/CBpE1I6j8Y

-- Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 8, 2021

Lead Stories reached out to Twitter to inquire what happened with Limbaugh's account and received following reply from the Head of Policy Communications, APAC:

It was not a suspension. The user deactivated the account.

This was confirmed by Joseph Wulfsohn from Fox News in a tweet:

Twitter SPOX: "I would like to correct that He is not suspended. The user deactivated their account."

Deleted previous tweet. pic.twitter.com/30agl2Aqbl

-- Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) January 9, 2021

We have reached out to Rush Limbaugh as well but we did not receive a reply at press time. This story will be updated when we know more.