If Limbaugh has been overshadowed lately by Hannity and Fox, the legendary radio host has come roaring back in recent days, driving a far-right furor that threatened to shut down the government. Longtime watchers of conservative media say that Limbaugh’s resurgence served as a reminder that, even if Fox News has become the center of Trump’s media world, Rush can still flex almost unparalleled power.

“We didn’t bump him down to No. 2, we bumped Hannity up to No. 1,” said Talkers editor Michael Harrison. “I don’t think Limbaugh is any less influential at No. 2 than he was at No. 1.”

The difference, he said, is that with a media-obsessed president, there is more opportunity for more media figures to wield power. “Just because Limbaugh is not talked about as much does not mean he’s not big,” Harrison said, explaining that the message the radio host show drives on his program often ripples through conservative media.

That’s what happened on Wednesday, when Limbaugh started fuming about Trump’s tentative plans to sign a spending bill without money for a border wall. “Trump’s gonna get less than nothing because this compromise strips out the $1.6 billion for the wall that the Senate Appropriations Committee had already approved weeks ago,” he told his listeners. “That’s gone too. Not only is there not gonna be $5 billion, there isn’t gonna be $1.6 billion that was already allocated. So it’s an even better compromise in the minds of the drive-by media and the denizens of the swamp. Not a penny. Forget wall. Think border security.”

The “less than nothing” soundbite drove headlines at sites like Breitbart and played on a loop on Fox News. With both his and Ann Coulter’s attacks on the president ricocheting around the conservative media ecosystem, Trump’s base grew increasingly riled.

“It is that interlocking universe of websites, Fox News, and talk radio,” said the longtime conservative radio host and MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes. “And when they all turn up the volume … Trump understands that is his world.”

He added, “It is an extraordinary moment when the president of the United States listens to Rush Limbaugh and not Gen. Mattis,” referring to Trump’s defense secretary, who resigned this week over deep differences with the president.

Trump grew so concerned about Limbaugh that on Thursday, as Limbaugh discussed on air, the president reached out to him to offer assurances. “The president got word to me 20 minutes ago that if it comes back to him without money, if whatever happens in the House and Senate comes back to him with no allocation of $5 billion for the wall, then he’s going to veto it,” Limbaugh said on his radio show.

Brian Rosenwald, a senior fellow at the Robert A. Fox leadership program at the University of Pennsylvania who is finishing a book on talk radio, noted that while Trump appears to have unfollowed Coulter on Twitter after her criticisms, he genuflected to Limbaugh.

“The thing I hear over and over again,” talking to people in the radio world, Rosenwald said, “is Rush is the king. He is the guy who sets the agenda for everything else.”

In many ways, talk radio feels less relevant than ever, specifically because of Trump. Beyond his Twitter feed, Trump favors interviews on Fox News and has only once done a big radio event — common under previous administrations — in which stations from across the country descend on the White House, and the president and other top officials blitz through interviews.

While a candidate in past days might have risen to prominence appearing on Limbaugh — as Ted Cruz did on his way to his first Senate election just six years ago — now the pipeline to power runs through Fox News. Politicians like Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis all caught Trump’s eye with their frequent Fox appearances, shooting their political stars through the roof. In DeSantis’ case, his Fox appearances likely vaulted him all the way to the Florida governorship.

But it’s also true that more people than ever are listening to talk radio, which includes Limbaugh. Numbers for individual shows are generally unreliable, but according to Nielsen, listenership to the news-talk format was up 10 percent in 2018 from the year before, after being up 9.9 percent in 2017, 9.6 percent in 2016 and 8.9 percent in 2015. Even among listeners 18-34, who have supposedly cast aside old-fashioned terrestrial radio for podcasts and other new media, listenership was up 4.3 percent in 2018, compared to 3.6 percent three years ago.

It’s not so much that Limbaugh’s reach has lessened under Trump — it’s that other outlets’ influence have grown, creating a noisier, more crowded space, Rosenwald said, where it’s possible for Limbaugh to seem overshadowed. He noted that Hannity has been out this week, leaving Limbaugh with an open field.

“As long as Donald Trump is president, he understands that he can’t hold his base if he doesn’t have that ecosystem,” Sykes said.

Though Limbaugh has rarely criticized Trump — a big part of what made his comments this week so striking — Rosenwald said the host likes to wield influence behind the scenes so that he can maintain the outsider status that’s animated his show. As a result, he said, Limbaugh might not boast of his high-profile contacts the same way others do.

“Rush likes to keep a little distance, and I think that affects the narrative in this Trump era of influence,” Rosenwald said. “But what we saw this week was a reaffirmation that he’s still the guy who wields a lot of influence, he’s still the guy who the president of the United States pays attention to, even if we don’t see the tweets.”

Harrison said he’s not sure who will be at the top of next year’s Talkers “Heavy Hundred” list of most influential radio hosts, but the obvious favorites are Limbaugh and Hannity.

“It could be Rush again,” he said. “I think it’s a horse race.”