Sean Hannity is mentioned more times than any other media personality and in the context of an advisor to the White House. What will public hearings reveal about him?
November 12, 2019

As we get ready for the impeachment hearings set to begin Wednesday morning, a subset issue I'll be keeping in mind is the role of Sean Hannity in Trump’s bribery/extortion scheme with Ukraine. As CNN host Brian Stelter put it yesterday, the testimony we have seen so far has highlighted Hannity’s role as one of Trump’s “shadow foreign policy advisers.”

On yesterday’s Reliable Sources, Stelter and his panel discussed how the impeachment hearings may play in the right-wing media. Guest Tara Dowdell, a Democratic political and business strategist, predicted that the right-wing media will “ramp up” its aggression and become “more robust, more comprehensive” in its coverage.

In other words, we can expect more attacks, more deflections and more whining – especially from Hannity. “Sean Hannity is functioning as a de facto advisor, but he's also functioning as a chief spokesperson for the Trump administration,” Dowdell continued. “Anytime Trump has an issue with something, Sean Hannity goes on the attack.” She noted that Hannity even attacked Fox News’ own polling after its results were unfavorable to Trump.

But Hannity has already been implicated as a player in the scandal, as we noted last week. According to Stelter, Hannity has been named “more than a dozen times” in just one transcript.

Shareblue editor and SiriusXM radio host Jess McIntosh highlighted what’s so problematic about that.

MCINTOSH: We’re seeing really disturbing things coming out of the transcripts that have been released over the last week. The most disturbing, I thought, aside from the open extortion of a foreign government, was the fact that the secretary of state had to call Sean Hannity to find out how the president was feeling about an ambassador. That was so shocking. And it just threw into really high relief that Hannity and [Rudy] Giuliani have been operating as unelected, un-appointed foreign policy executors for our country, which is deeply disturbing.

I hope more will come out about this during the hearings.

Published with permission of NewsHounds.us

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon