Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday the media coverage of Hurricane Irma is a plot to advance a climate change agenda.
Irma was upgraded to a category 5 storm Tuesday and has maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, making it one of the strongest storms to ever come out of the Atlantic. Experts predict it will strike the Miami area sometime this weekend.
Limbaugh said the mainstream media's coverage of the storm is causing people to panic and raid grocery store shelves, all with one goal: to talk about climate change.
"There is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are one of the fastest and best ways to do it," Limbaugh said on his radio program. "You can accomplish a lot just by creating fear and panic.
"You don't need a hurricane to hit anywhere. 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."
Limbaugh went on to say that local media outlets in Florida have a relationship with stores for when a storm hits. The stores spend advertising dollars with the media, and in turn the media causes people to panic and run to the stores to stock up on water, bread, and batteries.
"The media benefits with the panic with increased eyeballs, and the retailers benefit from the panic with increased sales, and the TV companies benefit because they're getting advertising dollars from the businesses that are seeing all this attention from customers," Limbaugh said.
Florida has already declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm's expected landfall.
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