While Sean Hannity’s right-wing colleagues accuse the left of fomenting the kind of violent rhetoric that led to yesterday’s shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and several others at a Republican baseball game practice, all will probably overlook Hannity’s inflammatory term for Hillary Clinton that suggests she’s at least somewhat guilty of the crime.
Hannity is very, very upset that his Glorious Donald Trump is reportedly being investigated for obstruction of justice. So, in typical Fox form, Hannity “defended” his beloved Trump by smearing those who aren't the slavish sycophant that he is.
Special counsel Robert Mueller who is looking into whether or not Trump obstructed the Russia probe? Smear Target Number One.
Hannity accused Mueller of having “more conflicts of interest than, by the way, we can count on this show.” Of course, that didn't stop Hannity from trying. You can watch the clip below to find out what Hannity thinks they are. “These are massive conflicts of interest that cannot be ignored!” Hannity exclaimed.
Not surprisingly, Hannity didn’t think the fact that Mueller’s last law firm represents Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Nor did Hannity care that DOJ ethics experts had cleared Mueller to lead the Russia probe nevertheless. In “Great American” Hannity’s mind, “conflict of interest” seems to mean not slavishly adoring Trump the way he does.
Hannity continued: “Mueller’s investigative team – let’s see: Three people donated to Democrats, including Killary and Obama.”
In right-wing world, Hillary Clinton is often called “Killary.” That was an underhanded way of suggesting she's somehow guilty of the Scalise shooting.
That was also the segue for Hannity’s Smear Target Number Two: Clinton. Hannity went off on a tangent suggesting that she is the real colluder with Putin and should be the one under investigation. Too bad Hannity can’t tell the truth at the same time that he’s attacking. Because his allegation that Hillary gave uranium to Russia in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation was false. Snopes has a detailed explanation.
But why should Hannity read the facts? They might only interfere with his attempts to deflect from Trump’s possible obstruction of justice and/or his associates’ collusion with a foreign country meddling with our election.
Hannity’s use of the term “Killary” is also a suggestion that he refuses to stop using the tragic death of a young DNC staffer for his own political ends, despite repeated pleas from the murder victim’s family.
But while ginning up hostility for those with differing political views, Hannity played the political victim. In a discussion with Geraldo Rivera, on the same show, Hannity called the shooting a “left-wing assassination attempt on Republican lawmakers.” During Hannity’s discussion with Republicans on the baseball team, Fox News conveniently ran that same phrase on the lower third:
Instead of calling out his colleague, Rivera agreed, “This was attempted partisan mass murder.” He said that liberals such as Kathy Griffin “didn’t cause this” shooting. But, he added, “They are the symptom of a division where this kind of festering hatred has been allowed to metastasize to a place now where anything is possible.”
But the violent rhetoric of Ted Nugent, Newt Gingrich, Hannity and Donald Trump? That doesn't count.
Watch Hannity’s dishonest, inflammatory hate mongering above, from the June 14, 2017 Hannity show.
(H/T NewsHound Richard and Andrew Lawrence)
Originally published at Newshounds.us
