Tag: Sean Hannity

How Sean Hannity Stoked Trump’s Rage Towards Ukraine

President Donald Trump has a deep enmity for Ukraine that long predates the fateful July 2019 phone call which triggered an impeachment inquiry, The Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey reported Saturday. Their story depicts the president raging against Ukraine as early as a 2017 briefing to prepare him for an upcoming September meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. White House aides were reportedly baffled by Trump’s anti-Ukraine animus. “We could never quite understand it,” a former senior White House official told the Post. “There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations they’d hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.”

There’s a simple answer to Trump aides’ confusion about the source of the president’s conspiracy theories — check what he’s been watching on his television. In the months leading up to that September 2017 meeting, sometime presidential adviser Sean Hannity was telling Trump and the rest of his Fox News audience that the “real collusion” during the 2016 election had been between Hillary Clinton and Ukraine.

In July 2017, The New York Times broke the news that Donald Trump Jr. had arranged a June 2016 meeting between the campaign’s top aides and “a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin” after being informed that the lawyer would provide damaging information on Clinton as part of the Russian “government’s support” for the Trump campaign. The story came weeks after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to look into Russian interference in the election and was exacerbated by a false statement Trump Jr. released about the meeting that the president had dictated.

View the complete November 4 article by Matt Gertz from Media Matters on the National Memo website here.

Indicted Giuliani Associates Were To Set Up Hannity Interview In Vienna

CNN reported this week that two Soviet-born con men arrested while attempting to flee the country earlier this month claimed they were on their way to Vienna to facilitate an interview between Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Hannity has been at the forefront of promoting the false claim that former Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly by withholding U.S. aid to force the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested October 10 at Dulles National Airport on conspiracy- and campaign finance-related charges as the two were attempting to leave the country. Parnas and Fruman reportedly worked closely with Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, to dig up dirt in Ukraine against Biden.

It had been previously reported that the two were arrested on their way to Vienna, where they would later be joined by Giuliani, but questions remained as to the purpose of their trip. According to CNN, “they told others they were headed to Vienna to help with a planned interview the next day: Shokin, they said, was scheduled to do an interview from the Austrian capital with Sean Hannity.” A spokesperson for Hannity would neither confirm nor deny that he had intentions of interviewing Shokin prior to Parnas and Fruman being arrested, according to CNN.

View the complete October 25 article by Julie Millican from MediaMatters on the National Memo website here.

Trump calls into Sean Hannity’s show, revives debunked wiretapping claim

This claim has been debunked several times by his own Department of Justice.

Fox News host Sean Hannity dedicated most of his show on Wednesday night to another phone interview with President Donald Trump.

While most of the talking points were familiar to anyone who bothered to tune into Trump’s reelection kickoff speech Tuesday night or any of his other recent interviews on Fox News, Trump did let slip that he still believes his phones were wiretapped during the 2016 campaign.

Repeating his claim that intelligence agencies were “spying” on his campaign, Trump said, “We will have to find out if they were listening on my calls, that would be the ultimate. If they spied on my campaign, and they may have, it will be one of the great revelations in history of this country.”

View the complete June 20 June 20 article by Zack Ford on the ThinkProgress website here.

Morning Joe co-host ridicules Hannity’s freakout over Pelosi saying Trump belongs in prison: ‘Irony meter’ melted down ‘like Chernobyl’

Fox News host Sean Hannity freaked out over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) calling for President Donald Trump’s imprisonment — and MSNBC’s Willie Geist was astonished.

Pelosi said earlier this week that she remained uninterested in impeachment, but would prefer Trump be voted out next year and prosecuted and put in prison.

“Speaker Pelosi now apparently telling senior Democrats that she’d like to see Trump behind bars,” Hannity informed viewers.

View the complete June 7 article by Travis Gettys of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

GOP Paid Fox News Pundits Over $500K For Speeches

A new report from Media Matters for America reveals Trump’s favorite right-wing pundits at Fox News have brought in more than $500,000 from the Republican Party.

The report tracked the flow of funds from Republican state parties to several of the network’s biggest names and found Fox News pundits regularly getting paid for speeches since 2007, calling it an “ethical disaster.”

Traditional journalistic outlets prohibit intermingling between on-air personalities and party politics — MSNBC once disciplined then-host Keith Olbermann for donating to Democratic candidates. But while Fox has sometimes given lip service to opposing party-pundit financial arrangements, the speeches have continued for a decade.

View the complete May 20 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Fox News’ audience believes its “deep state” attacks

Fox News host Sean Hannity opened his show last Friday by accusing the FBI under former Director James Comey of engaging in a criminal conspiracy aimed at preventing President Donald Trump’s 2016 election through a purportedly illegal investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. “And according to my sources, tonight, good news is in the horizon,” Hannity concluded. “James Comey, I warned you, you have the right to remain silent.”

These sorts of conspiracy theories have taken hold with Hannity’s audience, according to new poll from Navigator Research. The group’s memo reports that “the Fox News echo-chamber” has created “an alternative reality in American politics,” with Republicans who watch Fox News a few times a month or more showing significantly more radical views than others on a host of issues. Continue reading “Fox News’ audience believes its “deep state” attacks”

Trump doubles down with Sean Hannity tweet amid new scrutiny of his ties to Fox News

Television personality Sean Hannity speaks as President Trump listens during a campaign rally on Nov. 5, 2018, in Cape Girardeau, MO. Credit: Jeff Roberson,AP

Only hours after a blockbuster report reignited a national conversation about the White House’s cozy relationship with Fox News, President Trump doubled down.

In a string of tweets Monday night, the president unloaded attacks against his usual targets — mainstream media outlets and congressional Democrats seeking to investigate Trump and seemingly every aspect of his business and political dealings.

But on Monday the president landed his digital blows by quoting Fox personalities. Earlier in the day, he pinned a segment from Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs to his account and wrote, “Presidential Harassment!” Later in the evening, he posted a direct quote from Tucker Carlson before doing the same for close confidant Sean Hannity.

View the complete March 5 article by Kyle Swenson on The Washington Post website here.

Rep. David Cicilline says Sean Hannity should be subpoenaed over Michael Cohen

Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo, Epa, REX, Shutterstock

Fox News host asserts in interview with Trump that Cohen gave him information that conflicts with his Oversight testimony

Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to insert himself into the congressional investigation of President Donald Trump in an interview with Trump aired Thursday night, leading to speculation that he could be subpoenaed.

Hannity asserted to the president that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who testified in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, gave him information that conflicts with Cohen’s testimony.

Cohen explained to the committee that Trump directed him to make illegal hush money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels.

View the complete March 1 article by Ben Peters on The Roll Call website here.

Hannity Urging New Attorney General To Investigate Trump’s Enemies

Sean Hannity, the Fox News host with the ear of President Donald Trump, has a message for newly confirmed Attorney General William Barr: Investigate the president’s political enemies — from former leaders of the Justice Department and FBI to Obama administration appointees to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton — or suffer the consequences.

Fox’s leading propagandists spent much of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ tenure denouncing him over his refusal to turn their conspiracy theories into federal investigations. Hannity apparently has reason to believe that Barr, who has spoken favorably about the notion of appointing a special counsel to look into the Uranium One pseudo-scandal about Clinton, will be more pliable.

On Thursday night, just hours after the Senate confirmed Barr, Hannity crowed, “My sources telling me tonight things are happening as we speak.” The Fox host went on to detail numerous purported crimes he said had been committed by 10 “deep state actors,” including former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

View the complete February 17 article by Matt Gertz on the National Memo website here.

Sean Hannity, Chris Wallace and why Trump wants to control follow-up questions

President Trump greets Sean Hannity at a rally in Missouri on Nov. 5. Credit: Jim Watson, AFP, Getty Images

The Trump administration, in its wisdom, has issued a rule that reporters, called on at presidential news conferences, will be limited to one question apiece.

It’s a terrible idea, which was clearly illustrated in two recent Fox News interviews of President Trump.

The first one — the very definition of lame — was by Sean Hannity at the same infamous Missouri rally during which the Fox host joined the president onstage as a campaign prop.

View the complete November 25 article by Margaret Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.