Rich's original post before starting the show was "boy oh boy there are a lot of things we need to talk about the least of which including how non-competes are the worst and should be totally illegal..."
It seems to me that Rich was strongly hinting at a non-compete clause being the reason he couldn't get back on the air sooner. Non-competes are in fact "totally illegal" as far as he's concerned, so it wasn't a non-compete clause that was keeping him off the air. I don't know if he was being dumb or deceptive; the latter would square with what Fred says about him.
Bear in mind I would take a lot of what Fred says about lying with a grain of salt. He did lose a defamation suit in GA for falsely claiming his former coworker got fired (
No Witness, LLC v. Cumulus Media Partners, LLC)