Tag: Sean Hannity

On Fox News, suddenly a very different tune about the coronavirus

Washington Post logoFor weeks, some of Fox News’s most popular hosts downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, characterizing it as a conspiracy by media organizations and Democrats to undermine President Trump.

Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura In­graham accused the news media of whipping up “mass hysteria” and being “panic pushers.” Fox Business host Trish Regan called the alleged media-Democratic alliance “yet another attempt to impeach the president.”

But that was then.

With Trump’s declaration on Friday that the virus constitutes a national emergency, the tone on Fox News has quickly shifted. Continue reading.

Trump Parrots Hannity’s Lies About Obama Response To 2009 Swine Flu Outbreak

While speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon at the White House, President Donald Trump made a false claim about the Obama administration’s handling of the H1N1 flu (also commonly known as “swine flu”) back in 2009. And there’s a good bet that he’s learned this latest fiction from Fox News — and his favorite host, Sean Hannity.

“If you go back and look at the swine flu, and what happened with the swine flu,” Trump said, “you’ll see how many people died, and how actually nothing was done for such a long period of time, as people were dying all over the place. We’re doing it the opposite. We’re very much ahead of everything.”

As Media Matters has previously documented, Hannity and other right-wing personalities and outlets have circulated a lie that the Obama administration had done nothing about H1N1 — waiting six months to declare a national emergency, they say — while Americans died in vast numbers. In fact, this is totally false, and it also relies on obfuscations based around bureaucratic terms of art and specific effects on government regulations. Continue reading.

Trump supporter is ‘calling for reparations’ — to go to conservatives: ‘People do have to pay for this’

AlterNet logoFormer Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page called for reparations on Fox News, but not the kind generally discussed.

There is a movement in America to provide reparations to the descendants of slaves, as their family wealth remains lower due to the theft of their labor.

But Carter Page suggested a different kind of reparations during an interview with Sean Hannity. Continue reading.

Conservative pundits blame a grab bag of supposed villains amid the coronavirus outbreak

Washington Post logoChoose your scapegoat: Democrats, the news media, the Chinese government, the “deep state,” Bernie Sanders or even “identity politics.”

All received some share of the blame this week from conservative media figures for the growing public concern over the coronavirus, the communicable disease that has spread across the globe.

In fact, many conservative commentators have expressed less interest in the spread of the virus or efforts to combat it than they are in the story of the virus — a story they are convinced shows evidence of bias designed to harm President Trump. Continue reading.

Leaked Memo Shows Fox Execs Knew Hannity Broadcast Lies About Ukraine

An internal Fox News document detailing the Ukrainian disinformation campaign which helped trigger President Donald Trump’s impeachment reportedly reveals the network knew that host Sean Hannity had been the campaign’s focal point. But the network failed to take action against Hannity for his transgressions — in fact, it rewarded him, sending the Fox star and sometime presidential adviser to interview Trump at the Super Bowl earlier this month.

In a Thursday report, The Daily Beast summarized the findings of the 162-page research briefing book, which was authored by Fox senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, a member of the network’s internal research “Brain Room.” It is unclear when it was first drafted, but the cover page states that it was “updated” December 9, 2019.

The document, which largely condenses and summarizes reporting from other news outlets, accuses frequent guests on the network’s most popular programs — Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer; Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, Republican attorneys with ties to the White House; and veteran conservative writer and Fox contributor John Solomon — of “spreading disinformation” about former Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. It says the smears originated with Yuriy Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general of Ukraine, and the Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, a client of diGenova and Toensing. Continue reading.

Trump’s Super Bowl Interview With Hannity Is Fox Propaganda

President Donald Trump will give his first nationally televised interview with a broadcast network in seven months this Sunday when he appears on Fox Broadcasting Co. before the Super Bowl. While the prospect of the president facing detailed questions about the abuse of power scandal that triggered his impeachment by the House of Representatives should place him in political peril, no one at the White House will lose sleep over this weekend’s sit-down. That is because Trump will be interviewed by Fox News host Sean Hannity, a loyal sycophant with deep ties to his administration who has no interest whatsoever in trying to elicit damaging information from the president.

Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump have all sat for pregame interviews with the network hosting the Super Bowl (the game rotates between CBS, NBC, and Fox, the NFL’s three primary broadcast television rights holders). Because those interviews receive massive ratings, with a viewership generally between 10 to 20 million, they are showcases for each network’s talent. For NBC and CBS, that has meant calling on the star anchors of their morning, evening, and Sunday political talk shows to interview the president. Fox, on the other hand, traditionally gave the slot to conservative opinion host Bill O’Reilly, their “king of cable news.”

But this year’s Super Bowl offered Fox the opportunity to decide who would represent it in a new era, as Sunday marks the first time the network has hosted the Super Bowl since O’Reilly’s 2017 firing. If Fox executives had wanted to showcase their much-touted “news” side, they could have put forward someone like anchor Chris Wallace, who has occasionally made news for challenging interviews with Trump officials. Instead, they are sending Hannity, who is so sympathetic to Trump that he effectively functions as a White House spokesperson. Continue reading.

Trump Will Make Super Bowl Appearance With Hannity

Fox announced on Friday that Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed before the Super Bowl by Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of his biggest fans and supporters. The network said the interview will take place at the White House and cover “an array of topics.”

Trump sat down last year with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan and made a series of outlandish claims,  including suggesting migrants were invading the country, claiming he ‘knocked out’ ISIS almost completely, and dismissing concerns about ISIS’ return by saying the U.S. military had “very fast airplanes.”

Trump skipped a Super Bowl interview in 2018, when it ran on NBC, but in 2017 he agreed to be interviewed by then-Fox Host Bill O’Reilly in 2017, the last time Fox broadcasted the game. Continue reading.

McConnell’s impeachment collusion admission handed the Democrats a powerful new weapon to damage the president

AlterNet logoMitch McConnell’s admission on Fox News that he is working behind the scenes with the White House to stack the Senate impeachment trial gives Democrats a potent weapon against the GOP, wrote Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman in the Washington Post.

“If Democrats play their procedural cards right, they can pressure Republicans to allow for a much fairer and more open trial that could actually produce new revelations — and if they refuse, extract a political price for it,” they wrote.

“By telling Sean Hannity that the process of Trump’s trial will be set up ‘in coordination with Trump’s legal team,’ McConnell told the world he wants to rig the process to produce maximal benefit for Trump,” they explained. “But McConnell might not actually be able to do this, if he doesn’t have 51 GOP votes for it — which could be the case, if vulnerable GOP senators don’t want to go along with it. And that allows Democrats to make a public case for a much fairer and more open process — and to try to force those vulnerable GOP senators to take a stand on whether they, too, want a fair and open process.”

Continue reading

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity appears to be knee-deep in Trump’s Ukraine scandal — despite his profuse denials

AlterNet logoFox News host Sean Hannity raved that he never spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about ousted Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch after a third witness confirmed the alleged call to impeachment investigators.

David Hale, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, testified under oath that Yovanovitch was the victim of a baseless smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney of President Donald Trump, which led to her ouster. According to a transcript of the closed-door deposition released Monday, the smears originally stemmed from the conservative columnist John Solomon, who wrote in The Hill that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had claimed that Yovanovitch gave him a “do not prosecute list.” Lutsenko later retracted that claim.

Hale, the third-ranking official at the department, claimed to impeachment investigators that Hannity had pushed the same narrative on Fox News and that Pompeo had reached out to Trump’s favorite host.

View the complete November 20 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Top Diplomat Testified Pompeo Called Hannity About Yovanovitch Smears

“It did come up at some point with the secretary,” David Hale said. “I understood that he did call Sean Hannity.”

David Hale, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said in his closed-door impeachment testimony that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Fox News host Sean Hannity last spring to ask about the smear campaign launched against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, according to a transcript that was made public Monday night.

Discussing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and pro-Trump media to besmirch the reputation of Yovanovitch ahead of her ouster as ambassador, Hale noted that Pompeo spoke to Giuliani twice in late March regarding the allegations.

At the time, conservative columnist John Solomon had reported that former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Yovanovitch had given him a “do not prosecute list.” (Lutsenko would later walk back that claim.)

View the complete November 18 article by Justin Baragona on the Daily Beast website here.