Sean Hannity turned his unglued rage on Rachel Maddow again this Wednesday night. He seems to have forgotten his scheme to promote advertiser boycotts of her show and is now suggesting she is some kind of threat to the country through her criticisms of Hannity’s Glorious Leader.
Hannity spent about 10 minutes attacking Maddow with rhetoric like this (transcript excerpts via FoxNews.com):
HANNITY: Now, also tonight, we continue to expose the biggest black helicopter tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist in the destroy Trump media, NBC’s Rachel Maddow. This is off the hook, out of control! And if it wasn’t so serious, it’s actually funny.
Now, last night—remember, they were expecting a big victory [in the Georgia special election] ... Rachel Maddow, instead of focusing on their big loss, puts on her tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist wires. And by the way, asked if bad weather was to blame for bad Democratic voter turnout and their loss. You can’t make this stuff up! Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: If there was a turnout effect from the bad weather today in the district, does that have any partisan implications that you could foresee in terms of what was expected for same-day election day voting...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
MADDOW: ... here rather than the early vote?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Given that there’s early voting, it doesn’t seem like a crazy question to ask about the effects of weather on Election Day voting. She wasn’t announcing that’s why Ossoff lost. She was merely asking.
But Hannity seemed to think Maddow had engaged in some kind of dangerous speculation. This, despite the fact that Hannity won’t stop promoting his baseless speculation that the Clintons had a young DNC staffer named Seth Rich murdered because he was somehow involved in the hacked DNC emails leaked to Wikileaks. Hannity has kept up this conspiracy-theory mongering despite repeated pleas from Rich’s family.
Hannity also attacked Maddow for her focus on Trump’s ties to Russia. As if he wouldn’t have outdone her had there been evidence of suspicious ties between the Obama administration and Russia the way there are between Trump and Russia.
HANNITY: Then, of course, the night cannot go by without Maddow floating some sort of Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory even though nobody has says it—nobody believes it! It’s been debunked! To date, there is zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, nothing whatsoever! It’s been a farce, a total fabrication, 11 months of lies and conspiracies made up by people just like Maddow.
Now, despite these facts, today Rachel—she was at it again, whipping up a new crackpot theory involving President Trump, the mob money and money laundering, and even Vladimir Putin made it into the mix. Now, you cannot make this stuff up. Well, I guess, apparently, she can at NBC News. Take a look.
Hannity played a clip of Maddow discussing reporting by Tim O’Brien about “Russian money pouring into Trump properties and it coming from sources close to Putin through people known for their mob and money laundering ties.”
HANNITY: If you’ve been watching this show, you know that example is nothing compared to the other unhinged, completely insane things that NBC and Maddow are saying night after night, day after day.
Actually, O'Brien's report came was published by Bloomberg. It seems quite credible, carefully researched and reported. Tellingly, Hannity offered no specific rebuttal, only his blanket attacks.
Apparently, Hannity thought that the bigger his smokescreen, the more his viewers would believe Maddow's pants are on fire.
But Hannity might want to check his own trousers. For example:
HANNITY: Here are just a couple of her craziest Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. You’re going to love this. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
MADDOW, ON “THE LATE SHOW”/CBS, MAY 22: Just last week, Reuters reported on 18 new previously undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.
Let’s see, did Reuters report on 18 new previously undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians around the time Maddow said it had? Why, yes it did!
But it’s Maddow, not Reuters that has been beating Fox News ratings these days.
By the way, given Hannity’s promotion of birtherism, his promotion of armed insurrection and his insistence that brain dead Terri Schiavo wasn’t, Hannity is probably not in a great position to be calling other people tinfoil hat wearers.
Watch Hannity’s latest ranting and raving above, from the June 21, 2017 Hannity show.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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