In his Friday broadcast, Limbaugh brought up the NBA’s dismissal of a freelance photographer who had posted a mock campaign ad of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden with Harris captioned ‘Joe and the Hoe’ on Facebook.

Noting the photographer was given the boot over a “sexist Facebook post referencing Kamala Harris,” he explained the ‘Joe and the Hoe’ quip was a reference to Harris’ sexual relationship with California Democrat Willie Brown, the married San Francisco mayor 31 years her senior who became her mentor at the beginning of her career.

Limbaugh also cited a story published in the Spectator magazine arguing that Harris “slept her way up” into California political life. The writer argues that Harris' past relationship with Brown should gall other women, since the stereotype of high-ranking women “sleeping their way to the top” persists even in the feminist 21st century. 

Harris, the shock jock agreed, owed her career to being the “mattress” – not “mistress,” he was careful to say – of this high-powered political figure.

While Limbaugh also remarked on how it was odd that the pair of stories had generated so little reaction in the mainstream media, his own comments about them were discovered on Monday by liberal watchdog Media Matters, which accused the popular radio host of “pushing vile sexist smears against Kamala Harris.”

Twitter users descended on him in force, with some demanding he be stripped of the Presidential Medal of Honor President Donald Trump had recently bestowed on him.