Sean Hannity

Trump’s Fox News Fetish Could Be Making the Network a Security Risk Exploitable By Russia

Posted by on January 10, 2018 at 6:04 pm. NO Comments :

The relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News has always been problematic. It represents the closest thing to state-run TV that the United States has ever had. The anchors and reporters on Fox serve as dutiful sycophants to the Trump administration, advancing his self-serving agenda and defending his every fault. While Trump repays Fox by promoting the network and its personalities with free advertisements on his Twitter feed and relentless attacks on their competition.

Fox News Commies

However, there may be more worrisome consequences from this political/media marriage of propagandistic convenience. Aki Peritz, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst, just wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that raises some frightening possibilities that might result from the parasitic combination of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and the dimwitted White House. The article, headlined “Foreign spies are watching — and probably targeting — Fox News Channel” delves into some reasonable speculation about how hostile foreign intelligence operations might benefit from monitoring – and possibly compromising – Fox News. What follows are some excerpts that provide a taste of how this problem could become a recipe for disaster:

“[I]f I were a spymaster in the employ of a hostile foreign service, I’d devote some significant effort to penetrating one specific private institution: Fox News Channel.”

“It’s no secret that Fox News — specifically, shows such as ‘Hannity,’ ‘Fox & Friends,’ ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ and ‘Justice with Judge Jeanine’ — have outsize influence on the inner workings of how certain policies are carried out by the U.S. government.”

“[H]ostile foreign intelligence services are probably consuming as much Fox News as President Trump does.”

“Trump’s unfiltered Twitter feed provides world intelligence operatives with ‘a real-time glimpse of a major world leader’s preoccupations, personality quirks and habits of mind’ – traits to be exploited in further dealings on the global stage. And what better way to determine what the president thinks – for the price of basic cable — than to watch selected Fox News programming?”

“A truly aggressive intelligence effort would not just monitor what’s being said on the network. It would target the on-air talent, as well as the folks behind the scenes who make the network’s programming possible: producers, bookers, associate producers, production assistants and the like. This might range from opening friendly contacts with these employees to outright recruitment.”

“Compared to government workers, Fox employees would make easy targets. That’s because they aren’t public officials — they’re news and entertainment people. Also, it’s television — full of trade secrets, big personalities and titanic egos. Most wouldn’t expect to be compromised by a hostile intelligence power, especially on American soil. Few, if any, have the sort of counterintelligence training the U.S. government administers to people in sensitive positions, because Fox employees are not the usual targets for intelligence operations. But the president’s continuing, very specific interest in the channel heightens their risk of being approached by a hostile government.”

Peritz specifically mentions the risk posed by covert operations aimed at Fox News staff. For instance, Sean Hannity is known to speak frequently with Trump. So bugging Hannity’s phone or office “could provide real-time intelligence on the American president and his thoughts.” The same could be true for others at Fox News. Trump’s chumminess with people at Fox has resulted in several of them getting jobs in the administration, including K.T. McFarland, Ben Carson, Sebastian Gorka, and Heather Nauert. Two of Fox’s current prime time lineup, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, were reported to have been candidates for press secretary.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The WaPo article is careful not to present this theory as anything more than informed speculation. But given what is known about how Russia conducts its spy operations, it would be prudent for all Fox News employees to be wary, even suspicious, about contacts from friendly strangers. That is, if they aren’t actively seeking out Russians for collusion on behalf of Trump, who is already deeply compromised.

Rachel Maddow Dominates an Increasingly Hysterical Sean Hannity as 2017 Winds Down

Posted by on December 29, 2017 at 1:40 pm. 10 Comments :

This has not been a particularly good year for Fox News. After the disaster of 2016 that saw their founder and CEO, Roger Ailes, fired for multiple instances of sexual harassment and abuse, 2017 was supposed to be a year of rebuilding. However, their problems escalated as their biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, was also terminated for the same deviant reasons. Several other Fox News hosts and executives were likewise jettisoned, and they faced lawsuits for both gender and racial discrimination.

Rachel Maddow

That left Sean Hannity as the default face of Fox News. He was moved up to the 9:00 pm slot and expected to carry the primetime schedule with newcomers Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. He would also be airing head-to-head against MSNBC phenom, Rachel Maddow. Surely the most embarrassing outcome for Fox News would be for Hannity to lose to a left-wing lesbian on a liberal network. But as the year comes to a close, that’s precisely what happened.

In the first half of December, Maddow outright beat Hannity nine out of eleven days in the coveted 25-54 year old advertiser demographic. On four of those days she also won in total audience. Her demo margin of victory was an impressive average of 656,000 viewers, more than 50,000 above Hannity’s average. And Maddow helped to carry her colleagues to wins over Fox News. Lawrence O’Donnell took five of eleven nights, and Brian Williams took six of the eleven. [Note: The second half of December is not included in this analysis because most of these programs had guest hosts].

What’s more, Maddow has been steadily pummeling Hannity throughout the year. The annual figures for these programs put Maddow in close contention with Fox’s long-running leaders. In total audience, Maddow grew an astonishing seventy-seven percent. In the 25-54 demo she was the number two program (after Hannity) following a seventy-four percent growth surge. And among younger viewers (18-49) Maddow was number one.

Along with those achievements in ratings, Maddow also won two News and Documentary Emmys this year, something Fox News has never done. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Fox News is not regarded as an especially reliable source for news. They exist only to pump disinformation into the muddled heads of Republican partisans and Donald Trump cultists. Their coverage of any issue is predictably focused on advancing right-wing politics and defending Trump for whatever outrageous thing he did or said that day.

And Hannity is the worst of the lot. He openly colludes with Trump, who he reportedly speaks with almost every day. He has appeared in campaign ads for the President. There is simply no more brazenly brown-nosed Trump-fluffer than Sean Hannity. Not even Trump’s TV babysitters on Fox and Friends. And as his fortunes decline, Hannity gets ever more extreme. He is outdoing Alex Jones’ Infowars for crackpot conspiracy theories. This year he has spent hours on pure nuttery like Pizzagate, the Seth Rich murder, Hillary Clinton’s email (still?), and most recently, his fetish for smearing special counsel Robert Mueller. Hannity has led the charge to slander Mueller as a corrupt, dishonest, charlatan determined to stage a coup against Trump. Never mind that Mueller is a decorated Marine veteran with a long and distinguished career in law enforcement. And a life-long Republican to boot.

2018 may bring even greater rewards for Maddow and her MSNBC colleagues. She has the intelligence and the insight to make some very dry subjects both interesting and educational. And there is clearly an audience for smart, honest news analysis. The country yearns for programming that is more light than heat. And that’s what Maddow specializes in. She never books hostile adversaries simply to provoke on-air fights the way Fox and CNN do. Her mission is to inform, not infuriate. And when truth is on one side of the debate, lies are never presented just to have a perception of balance. That’s the Maddow model, and the rest of cable’s newscasters should seek to emulate it. It’s obviously a winning strategy, with the added benefit of having journalistic integrity.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Hannity Asked Twitter for the ‘Worst Recent Example of Fake News’ and Got Mercilessly Scorched

Posted by on December 12, 2017 at 8:45 am. 9 Comments :

No one is ever going to mistake Sean Hannity for a Rhodes Scholar. His Fox News program is nothing more than an hour of misplaced rage interspersed with unrelenting Trump-fluffing. He relies on insipid arguments embellished by goofy mugging and sycophantic guests.

Sean Hannity Fox News

So when he gets the bright idea to post a question on Twitter, it’s not surprising that he forgets that it isn’t just his equally clueless followers who are online. And the question Hannity proffered was ripe for ridicule and acute mockery. This is what he asked:

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/940415667651584000

Really? The face of Fox News, America’s premiere source for unadulterated bullshit, is asking the public at large to provide examples of the media disseminating misrepresentations and outright lies? What on Earth did he expect would be the result of that idiotic inquiry? Did he actually think that Twitter would respond with the sort of baseless blather that Trump belches out every day? If so, he must be terribly disappointed. Here are some of the typical replies that Hannity received:

The winner of Hannity’s “Worst Example of Fake News” derby was, by a landslide, Sean Hannity. Most of the Twitter responses contained the single word “You.”. Coming in second was the Seth Rich story that Hannity himself propagated for weeks, even after his comrades at Fox News admitted that it wasn’t true and deleted their story about it. That sort of admission is something that Fox has trouble doing. Even though they have no trouble with airing false reports. It will be interesting to see what Hannity does after this failed effort at crowd sourcing his research. But don’t look for him to do a penetrating exposé on the fake news he discovered emanating from the Hannity show.

AND SPEAKING OF FAKE NEWS: Today PolitiFact announced their 2017 Lie of the Year. You’ll never guess who won: Trump Calling Russia’s Election Interference a ‘Hoax’

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Sean Hannity Attacks President Obama as Sick, Pathetic, and Twisted for Telling the Truth

Posted by on December 8, 2017 at 11:54 am. 2 Comments :

Poor Fox News has suffered greatly in the past year or two. They launched the #MeToo movement when their CEO, Roger Ailes, was fired for sexual harassment and abuse. Then their biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, was terminated for the same reason. Their primetime schedule was thrown into chaos with the departure of O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, who left partly due to harassment by Ailes.

Fox News Obama Hannity

Consequently, the current primetime roster for Fox News depends on newcomer Laura Ingraham (who is regularly beaten by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell), Tucker Carlson (who has been fired from every other cable news network), and the excruciatingly annoying Trump-fluffer, Sean Hannity (who was moved into the time slot opposite Rachel Maddow and quickly descended to second place).

Hannity is an unabashed sycophant for Donald Trump, even to the point that he has bitterly renounced the Republican Party in favor of his reality TV cult leader. He will defend Trump for any and all criticism, no matter how definitive the facts against the President. And he will attack Trump’s foes with a fury that is beyond hysterical. Which is precisely what he did on Thursday’s program when he went after President Obama:

“No class Barack Obama back again. What is he doing? Launching a new, far left attack against President Trump warning that America could turn into Nazi Germany.”

Indeed. Obama did articulate such a warning, and with good cause. He told an economic conference in Chicago that:

“[The danger is to] grow complacent. We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly. That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Wiemar Republic, and centuries of high level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolf Hitler rose to dominate…Sixty million people died. So you’ve gotta pay attention. And vote.”

It’s difficult to figure out what Hannity objects to in those remarks. Vigilance in the defense of democracy has always been considered patriotic. And Hannity is often the first to accuse Democrats, including Obama, of radical political extremism. Even Trump has invoked the risk of rising totalitarianism, although his warnings were baseless and delusional:

Note that Obama’s warning was generalized to refer to a broad slate of potential risks, while Trump was attacking his own law enforcement apparatus. Hannity continued his tirade by engaging in accusations that far exceed what he is accusing Obama of:

“Very cute, very clever comparing the president in a subtle way to Hitler and Nazis. Obama, by the way, how are your unrepentant domestic terrorist buddies Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn doing? Oh and by the way, please send our best wishes to the “Church of GD America” and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Now the former president is obviously sick, pathetic, and twisted in this obsession with President Trump. He’s kind of like everybody in the media.”

By bringing up fake allegations against Obama that date back nearly a decade, Hannity proves that he has completely run out of tricks from his anti-Obama playbook. But calling Obama sick, pathetic, twisted, and obsessed, is classic projection. It’s actually Hannity who is sick, pathetic, twisted, and obsessed with an unnatural infatuation for Donald Trump. His program is 100% state-run TV propaganda. But his sagging ratings and fleeing advertisers are proof that this strategy is failing. Meanwhile, Stop Hannity movement continues to gain momentum.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Sean Hannity Affirms That The Trump Cult Has Officially Replaced the Republican Party

Posted by on December 6, 2017 at 3:16 pm. 1 Comments :

The ascension of Donald Trump has heralded a new era of political absurdities. His unpredictable rise in the Republican Party came with unusually hostile pronouncements directed at GOP regulars. The objects of his contempt included John McCain, George W. Bush, and Mitch McConnell, to name a few. As an example of the schizophrenic nature of his fractured loyalties, Trump argued publicly with the Republican National Committee during the campaign, then named it’s chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff (briefly).

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

However, Trump’s true allegiance was always to his own self-interest. And the best gauge of where he stood at any moment was the cast of characters at Fox News. The “Curvy Couch” potatoes on Fox and Friends, his personal pals, and fellow sexual predators, Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes, and the premiere suck-up of the century, Sean Hannity, were (and are) his closest advisers. The relationship between Trump and his shadow cabinet of Foxies is excruciatingly tight.

So it may not come as a surprise to hear Hannity lash out at the party for which he has been a devoted toady for the last twenty years. With his infatuation for Trump growing by the day, Hannity has completely abandoned his long-held political commitments in favor of a new faithfulness to the emerging Trump Cult. And in the spirit of that betrayal, Hannity prostrated himself to the Pope of Trumpism, Steve Bannon, to declare and affirm that the Republican Party is dead:

“Here’s my view on the Republican Party. It is a dead party. They are morally corrupt, they are weak. They are ineffective, they’re vision-less, and they have no identity.”

Who can argue with that? Hannity went on to lament that he was “heartbroken” by what he said was the failure of trust by the GOP turning on Trump. It was behavior that he called “total and complete bullshit.” What precisely he is talking about is a mystery, considering the GOP’s blind obedience to Trump’s every delusional whim. They are a party that has stood by him despite his “pussy-grabbing” confession of sexual assaults, his denouncement of fellow party icons, his embrace of racist white nationalists, his admiration for brutal and oppressive tyrants like Vladimir Putin, and his infantile taunting of nuclear-powered foreign adversaries.

For a well known Republican bootlicker like Hannity to publicly renounce his party in favor of a reality TV game show host turned wannabe dictator should be profoundly disturbing to Republican politicians and voters. They are being thrown over for a faker who has manged to sell a shitload of snake oil to a pitifully ignorant minority of gullible Americans. But the Trump Cult movement is about as thick as a hair’s breadth. As soon as he wanders off to his golf resort retirement, or is paraded into a prison cell, the true believers will disperse and deny they ever supported him.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

It isn’t certain that after Trump’s downfall his former disciples will re-embrace the GOP. Consequently, Trumpitis may be a fatal disease that ushers the party to its inevitable demise. And if the rest of us live through these difficult days until Trump shuffles off the stage, the damage he does to the right-wing may turn out to be blessing. If only the wait wasn’t so painful and dangerous.

Rachel Maddow Crushes Trump-Fluffer Sean Hannity in November Ratings War With Fox News

Posted by on November 29, 2017 at 3:13 pm. 1 Comments :

Two months ago Fox News moved Sean Hannity’s program to 9:00 pm. It was the latest schedule change resulting from the terminations of Fox anchors (Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling) accused of sexual harassment and abuse. For Hannity it was a promotion to a more desirable time slot with a potentially larger audience. He must have been excited for the opportunity.

Rachel Maddow

He very likely regrets it now. The latest Nielsen ratings report for November 2017, has some depressing news for Hannity and Fox News. In the new time period Hannity has been losing to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on a regular basis. The programs are not really competing for the same viewers, but the bragging rights for being number one are important for both promotion and advertising revenue. Hannity is especially hurting on the latter as a result of his support for the pedophile senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Advertisers have been fleeing the program and a successful Stop Hannity campaign was launched.

The Nielsen ratings results for the month of November reveal another bitter loss for Sean Hannity. With the pressure of going up against Fox’s top program, Rachel Maddow managed to score an impressive victory. That makes her the number one program in all of cable News in the coveted 25-54 year old demographic. Her ratings improved year-over-year by forty-eight percent. Fox News was down eighteen percent.

On the strength of Maddow’s popularity, the rest of the MSNBC lineup benefited as well. It was the only cable news network to grow its total audience from last year, rising thirty percent. Meanwhile CNN and Fox News both declined (-49% and -31% respectively). The MSNBC primetime was a strong contender across the board, finishing either first or second.

For early risers, Morning Joe took second place and delivered its best numbers in the twenty-one year history of the network. It was also the only show in the time period to grow its audience. In the 25-54 demo Morning Joe advanced twenty-two percent. CNN was down just three percent. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes at Donald Trump’s favorite show, Fox and Friends, fell by twelve percent.

This has to be a satisfying victory for Maddow and MSNBC. Having suffered a year of Donald Trump’s infantile whining about fake news and low ratings, the network can boast that it handily outperformed Fox News (aka State-Run TV). It’s an indication that the country is hungry for real, in-depth reporting and analysis that doesn’t talk down to them. And, more importantly, doesn’t lie or engage in humiliating episodes of fawning over and defending the ignoramus in the White House.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

As we go forward we will likely see more of the same as Trump’s star falls ever further and the legal noose around his neck gets tighter. Hannity and his Fox News colleagues will undoubtedly ramp up the crazy (just as Trump is doing) in a desperate attempt to keep from becoming totally irrelevant. But their desperation will result in even more ludicrous conspiracy theories and lunatic outbursts. Who knows? This might actually end up being kinda fun to watch.

Fox News Sinks Even Lower: Hires Crackpot Racist Birther Mark Levin For Weekend Program

Posted by on November 21, 2017 at 3:33 pm. 2 Comments :

As evidence that Fox News is descending ever further down the rabid hole, they just hired radio talker Mark Levin. Anyone who thought that Rupert Murdoch’s sons were going to moderate the networks extremist right-wing blather can put those fantasies aside. Levin is the worst of the worst who has embraced the most ludicrous conspiracy theories and engaged in the most heinous hate speech.

Fox News Mark Levin

Levin is an OT (Original Trumpster) who has been fawning over Donald Trump from the start of his presidency. Although during the campaign he was a Ted Cruz supporter and lashed out at Fox News saying “it’s not the Fox News Channel — it’s the Fox Channel, and the Donald Trump super PAC.” He should have stuck with that assessment. Instead, he now works for them. He is also a close friend of Sean Hannity, who has been featuring Levin on his show for several weeks. For a primer on Levin’s ultra-conservatism, check out these rhetorical departures from reality that he has propagated over the years (courtesy of Media Matters):

  • Trump Gave Levin One Of His First Interviews As A 2016 Presidential Candidate.
  • Trump’s Claim That Obama Ordered A Wiretap Of Trump Tower Came From Talk Radio Host Mark Levin
  • Obama Is A “Low-Life” And A “Racist”
  • Part Of Obama’s “Agenda” Was To “Change The Racial Makeup” Of America With The “Importation Of Millions And Millions From The Third World.”
  • “There’s Been More Genocide, More Rape, More Enslavement Under This President [Obama] Than Any President In Modern History.”
  • Jewish Obama Donors Are “Self-Haters” Who “Despise Their Own Country.”
  • Obamacare Supporters Are “Brown Shirts.”
  • GOP Should “Stop Chasing Genitalia” To Win Elections.
  • Levin Compared Marriage Equality To Incest, Polygamy, And Drug Use.
  • Levin Claimed That Greenhouse Gases Were A Nonissue Because “Carbon Dioxide Is Necessary For Plants.”
  • Attorney General Eric Holder Committed “Hate Crimes” By Conducting Civil Rights Investigation In Ferguson After Shooting.
  • “There’s Nothing Controversial” About A Tweet Comparing Muslims To Nazis.

From all appearances, Sean Hannity has taken over Fox News. Levin is one of his goto guests who reliably bashes President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all things liberal. Hannity also recently got Fox News to hire former Glenn Beck protege Tomi Lahren. And now the Hannity show is so consumed by conspiracy delusions that it is challenging Alex Jones for the Conspiracy Crackpot Crown. Among Hannity’s obsessions is Hillary Clinton, who has become such a regular feature of the show that CNN’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, suggested renaming it The Clinton Scandal Hour.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Unfortunately for Fox News, Hannity’s programming philosophy is a proven catastrophe. That style of unhinged wingnut outrage is wearing thin and losing viewers. His program, which recently moved to a time period opposite MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, is frequently getting beat in the ratings race. That’s something that was unheard of a couple of years ago. And the addition of screaming screwball Levin isn’t likely to turn anything aroung for Fox. So let’s all welcome Mark Levin to the Titanic of cable news.

Rachel Maddow Grabs Another Weekly Win From Fox News and Floundering Sean Hannity

Posted by on November 19, 2017 at 3:11 pm. NO Comments :

A few weeks ago Fox News had to realign their schedule due to all the sexual perverts being terminated. First they lost Bill O’Reilly, and then Eric Bolling. They also lost Megyn Kelly, who was a victim of the sexual abuse from both O’Reilly and Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. These scandals gutted most of the network’s primetime lineup. Today they are left with newcomers Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

Rachel Maddow

Sean Hannity is the lone holdover and he’s not not exactly holding his own. For one thing, his support for the pedophile Republican senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore, is costing him advertisers (see Stop Hannity). His fear and desperation resulting from that caused a major meltdown on Sunday as revealed in a series of hysterical tweets. But his problems don’t end there.

Last week Rachel Maddow pulled off another ratings victory over her new competition. Not that they are competing for the same viewers, but having a Nielsen win during your time period is an important factor in the television marketplace. Maddow’s strength in the ratings against the biggest draw on Fox News is a significant development and a dire dilemma for Hannity.

Maddow and Hannity actually split the week with each winning two nights (Maddow was preempted on Friday by a special program). However, the average over the four nights favored Maddow. That’s because her wins were with larger margins, and where she came in second it was close. All of this points to the weakness of Hannity’s program despite being the top rated show on Fox.

Maddow’s success has had a positive effect on the rest of MSNBC’s primetime. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell took on Fox’s new Laura Ingraham show and beat her three out of four nights. The same was true for The Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams in it’s battle with another new entry for Fox, Fox News @ Night. The only weak spot for MSNBC is All In with Chris Hayes. But although it isn’t delivering big audience numbers, it has become a sort of Emmy magnet. Hopefully over time viewers will appreciate the high quality of the show and tune in more.

As for Fox, clearly their replacement programs are not performing particularly well. But the bigger problem is that the cornerstone of the schedule, Hannity, is not only failing to maintain the network’s long-time dominance, but it’s also less viable financially as its advertisers fall away. In their last quarterly report, Fox News disappointed stockholders with a seventeen percent drop in ad revenue.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox’s troubles are not going to go away anytime soon. Their audience shows signs of weariness with knee-jerk, right-wing propaganda. Some of them want to know what is actually happening in the world, not the Fox News manufactured version of it. And the glassy-eyed ultra-conservatives are starting to drift off to other news outlets like Breitbart that aim to out flank Fox from the right. Even the efforts of Donald Trump, who has been feverishly hyping Fox, have not helped. It’s likely that the fate of Fox News and Trump are going to be tightly bound together in a Titanic sinking. We just have to wait until the iceberg (Russia? Mueller? Sex crimes?) takes its inevitable toll.

Sean Hannity Unleashes His Inner-Trump In a Full-Psycho, All-Caps Twitter Rant

Posted by on November 19, 2017 at 12:56 pm. 1 Comments :

The surest sign that someone is becoming unmoored from what’s left of their sanity is an all-caps upchuck on Twitter. It signals the impending collapse of mental stability along with a sense of grave desperation. And that’s precisely the state of mind that must be burdening Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

In the past few weeks Hannity has been the subject of an advertiser backlash due to his repugnant support for the pedophile Republican candidate for senate in Alabama, Roy Moore. His knee-jerk affinity for a man who has been accused of serious sexual misconduct by multiple women has proven too much for many of his commercial sponsors.

The campaign to inform advertisers of the risks of being associated with Hannity (Stop Hannity) is being advanced by Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America. So Hannity has focused his outrage on Carusone in the most deranged manner he can: a series of aimless, insulting, dishonest outbursts on Twitter. In this online tantrum, Hannity baselessly accuses Carusone of being an anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist. For example:

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/932247467697102849

There is so much wrong with that tweet it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s start with the fact that Carusone is gay and his husband is Jewish. So there goes the homophobic, anti-Semitic allegations. Hannity offers no proof whatsoever of any racism on Carusone’s part. Additionally, Hannity directs this tweet to CNN and its media correspondent, Brian Stelter, asking why they would support those heinous behaviors that don’t actually exist. And one has to wonder what made Hannity think that anyone at CNN would take his criticisms seriously considering his relentless bashing of the network as “Fake News.” Finally, Hannity ended his tweet with a link to fake account on Twitter pretending to be Carusone (here is his real account).

Exacerbating the lunacy of this tweet is the fact that Hannity posted it five times in five minutes. The exact same message (although he swapped in different photos), one after another. After he got that out of system he continued his tirade with a tweet asserting that Media Matters “is atrocious as they are the most anti free speech, pro censorship group in America.” Consistent with right-wing doctrine, Hannity regards free speech as a one-way principle. He can say whatever bullcrap he wants, but no one else can reply or disagree. If they do it’s an attack on his constitutional rights.

Sean Hannity has always been an ultra-rightist shill for the GOP (Greedy One Percent). But since the election of Donald Trump he has devolved into the Fox News version of Alex Jones. He’s become America’s preeminent conspiracy theorist and hate monger. His manic idolatry of all things Trump has made him a favorite of the President who, it’s reported, calls him almost daily. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin has observed that their relationship has resulted in what he calls “the Sean Hannity Presidency.” “The only response Donald Trump has to any political event now,” Toobin notes, “is identical to that of Sean Hannity and Fox News.”

Indeed, it is impossible to distinguish any difference between Trump’s ignorant, unhinged rhetoric, and that of Hannity (or Tucker Carlson, or Laura Ingraham, or Jesse Watters, or the loonies on Fox and Friends). The only question is, is Trump the president Fox News created, or is Fox News the PR division of the Trump administration?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Angelo Carusone was interviewed Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/Vh0lKAoVL2M

Fox News Flack Donald Trump Tries to Save Sean Hannity’s Fast Sinking Program

Posted by on November 15, 2017 at 12:07 pm. 2 Comments :

Following an embarrassing “Make America Gag Again” tour of Asia, Donald Trump slinked back into the White House and immediately took up his Twitter machine to regale in his own wonderfulness. Having achieved nothing of significance, while kowtowing to foreign adversaries, the President needed to sing his own praises because no one else with any credibility was going to do it.

Trump Hannity

However, he has not neglected his primary role in public service since pretending to engage in it. As a candidate and an alleged president, Trump has spent more time promoting his PR department (aka Fox News) than any other “official” duty. Fox News has benefited greatly from this arrangement, scoring millions of dollars worth of free advertising. For example, for just one program, Fox and Friends, Trump has tweeted or retweeted 142 times since the beginning of his campaign. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes were among his first tweets upon returning to the U.S. Note that most of Trump’s Twitter activity is to promote something he recently saw on Fox. This one is promoting something that has yet to air. Apparently they are sharing their programming schedule with him in advance of broadcast:

Trump also wanted his Twitter followers to know how much he suffered while travelling the world. The itinerary that he pitifully regarded as “almost physically impossible” had the added torture of having to watch something other than relentlessly fawning Fox News coverage (i.e. real news):

What’s more, Trump gave a bigly shout out to his most devoted cheerleader on Fox, Sean Hannity. He retweeted this celebration of Hannity’s ratings:

This is the clearest sign that Hannity is big trouble. He has been losing advertisers at a rapid clip since coming out in support of the pedophile Republican running for the senate in Alabama, Roy Moore. The seventeen percent ad revenue slump at Fox News is evidence of the disastrous impact Hannity is having on the network. Consequently, Trump was called in to help plug the leak. But there are some serious problems with the help he’s providing.

First of all, the positive ratings tweet that Trump retweeted is two weeks old. It doesn’t represent the whole picture of Hannity’s ratings performance. He has been frequently beaten by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. The most recent ratings for this past Monday show Maddow trouncing Hannity. No wonder Trump didn’t post something more timely.

Furthermore, the Twitter user Trump retweeted identifies himself as a media analyst, but his account was created less than three months ago and has only sixty-nine tweets. He follows only two Twitter accounts: Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. He’s also a writer for the ultra-rightist web rag, American Thinker. And somehow Trump found a rotting two week old tweet from this nobody and saw fit to relay it to his glassy-eyed disciples.

Hannity must be hanging by a thread. When Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly it wasn’t because of the tens of millions of dollars that they had to pay out to multiple women who O’Reilly harassed and/or abused. Fox was cool with that. It was because his advertisers had ditched the program and it was no longer financially viable. That’s what Hannity is facing now. That’s why Trump is contributing, in his lame way, to Hannity’s rescue. Even Hannity recognizes that he’s sinking fast. Tuesday night he did a double back flip to throw Roy Moore under the bus:

Trump’s post-Asia tweetstorm was typical self-promotion and lies. It conveyed nothing of value to the American people. As usual he is just consumed with himself and fails to do any of the hard work of governing. He complains about being forced (by whom?) to watch CNN and spews endless praises for his pals at Fox. Yet he insists that he doesn’t have time to watch TV (which he also did five months ago). And in all of that Tweeting he left out any updates to this tweet from two days ago:

He must have forgotten what his “major statement” was. Maybe he’s picked up whatever virus caused Jeff Sessions to forget so much of his recent past with Russians. Or Maybe Trump’s aging and distorted memory is just incapable of functioning anymore.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.