Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asserted Tuesday that the national Republican Party power apparatus and the news media are essentially co-conspirators lined up against Donald Trump.

"There is this assumption that official Republicans feel the same way about the media as you do, and they don't," Limbaugh told his listeners. "The media is part of the overall ruling class."

The influential host suggested that Trump's supporters were under the false impression that if the presidential contender could successfully confront the national media, which Limbaugh said he has, then the "Establishment" GOP would come to rally behind him.

"If anything, it's going to make the Establishment even more opposed to Trump because it's going to make Trump an even bigger threat," he said.

"[W]hen the entire castle is threatened, i.e., Washington, they're gonna circle the Potomac, and anyone outside trying to get in there, they're not gonna let 'em in," Limbaugh added.

After he was outmaneuvered by Ted Cruz last weekend in Colorado, where the state party did not hold a primary election but instead selected delegates by way of a convention, Trump has railed against the GOP nomination process.

During a TV interview Monday on Fox, he called the process "rigged" and "crooked."