Laura Ingraham mourns death of Rush Limbaugh as a 'cataclysmic loss'

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Laura Ingraham: Rush Limbaugh 'helped save the Republican Party'

'The Ingraham Angle' host reacts to the death of conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh on 'The Story'

The country sustained a "cataclysmic loss" Wednesday with the death of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said, reflecting on the radio legend's eternal optimism that "helped save the Republican Party."

"So many times, when people wanted to just give up on conservatism, whether in 2012 when [Mitt] Romney lost or 2008 when [John] McCain was nominated and then lost, Rush was the kind of person who you could turn on the radio and you’d realize, 'You know something? We're America. It's going to be OK,'" Ingraham told "The Story" host Martha MacCallum. 

Limbaugh died Wednesday after a year-long battle with lung cancer. The conservative broadcaster and author revolutionized the radio industry with the nationally syndicated "The Rush Limbaugh Show," which debuted in 1988. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in broadcasting and political history.

"The Ingraham Angle" host eulogized her mentor as a "happy, happy warrior," without whom she said, "I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing today."

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"I think more than anything else for the people out there who had the chance to really get to know him on the radio, that sense of eternal optimism about the American experience is going to be sorely missed," Ingraham said. "So that part of his spirit I think ... it's a cataclysmic loss."

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Ingraham described Limbaugh as one of her strongest supporters during her own battle with cancer in 2005. 

"As a friend, I will say, as someone who has gone through cancer and lived through that, he was one of the first people I called and he was one of the people that just got me through it," an emotional Ingraham recollected, before adding, "I wish that I could have done for more him."