Sean Hannity

Hannity Repeatedly Called for Mueller to Be Fired in June 2017 When Trump Tried to Fire Him (Video)

Posted by on January 26, 2018 at 11:01 am. 3 Comments :

Thursday night the New York Times released a disturbing story about Donald Trump’s ongoing malfeasance in office. The news that Trump ordered his White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller was another confirmation of the President’s attempt to obstruct justice and punish anyone he perceived to be a threat. The fact that the firing was only averted because McGahn refused to comply and threatened to quit doesn’t lessen the breach of law and ethics.

Donald Trump Sean Hannity

Not surprisingly, Fox News was contemporaneously backing Trump at the time without disclosing their collusion with the White House. Media Matters looked back and found video of the biggest Trump-fluffer on Fox News, Sean Hannity, advocating for the resignation, recusal, or termination of the special counsel.

Was it a coincidence that Hannity was speed-ranting about firing Mueller at exactly the same time that Trump was trying to do that? The tally per Media Matters was that Hannity pressed these attacks at least 111 times last June.

Trump was asked about the New York Times report while in Davos for the World Economic Forum. He casually sneered at the camera with his customary and tedious complaint that it’s “Fake news, folks. Fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories.” However Trump is ignoring that the story was confirmed by NBC, Politico, the Washington Post, CNN, and even Fox News. So is Fox now fake news to Trump as well? He didn’t say.

And don’t expect Fox News to bring it up. They barely covered the story when it broke on Thursday, or the following morning. And when they did cover it they dismissed it as the media being anti-Trump and using unreliable anonymous sources. However, the best presentation of Fox’s determination to defend Trump at all costs came with Hannity (of course), who was in the middle of his program when the news broke. At first Hannity predictably rejected the story as the media attacking his perfect president. But shortly thereafter Fox’s Ed Henry reported that his own source confirmed what the Times reported. Hannity’s reaction was priceless. He quickly went from “Fake news,” to “OK, it’s real news,” to “Oh look, a car crash.”

The fact that Hannity was so adamant about Mueller’s termination last June cannot be disregarded as an accident. Mueller had only been appointed in May, so there was hardly time for Hannity to get worked up about his investigation. There had to have been some incentive for him to go ballistic in so short a period of time. And since we know that Trump and Hannity talk often, it is likely that Trump encouraged Hannity to go after Mueller to justify him getting axed by Trump. In fact, Hannity’s smear campaign of Mueller last June is just further affirmation of the New York Times’ reporting that Trump was (and is) after Mueller’s scalp.

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

Rachel Maddow Starts 2018 With Commanding Lead Over Sean Hannity and Fox News

Posted by on January 17, 2018 at 12:13 pm. NO Comments :

Washington politics in 2018 so far promises to be a rollicking ride with unrelenting foolishness and embarrassments from the White House. In a few short days Donald Trump has managed to insult El Salvador, Haiti, and the entire continent of Africa. His former campaign chair and White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was quoted accusing the President’s son of treason, and then was subpoenaed by special counsel Robert Mueller. And growing concerns about Trump’s mental fitness spurred him to laughably declare that he’s a “stable genius.”

Rachel Maddow

However, with regard to the Nielsen ratings of the cable news networks, the new year is starting off pretty much the way last year concluded. Rachel Maddow continues to surge with poignant reporting on subjects that America’s news consumers are clearly interested in. She is dominating her competition on Fox News and providing a boost to her colleagues on MSNBC. Meanwhile, Fox News is more often finding itself in the unfamiliar position of an also ran with reporting that is becoming more deranged everyday. They appear to be adopting the editorial lunacy of Alex Jones’ Infowars and other right-wing fringe outlets that specialize in conspiracy theories and propaganda.

In the first two weeks of 2018, Maddow has won every single night in the key 25-54 year old demographic. She’s consistently beating Sean Hannity and every other cable news program in primetime. She has a twenty-one percent average margin of victory over Hannity (686K vs. 568K) for the first half of January. Maddow is also topping Hannity in total viewers by about eight percent (3.1M vs. 2.9M), driven by victories in seven out of nine nights.

MSNBC is seeing its schedule score additional victories with the programs that follow Maddow. The 11th Hour with Brian Williams beat Fox News @Night with Shannon Bream every night. The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell beat Fox’s Laura Ingraham Angle eight out of nine nights. And MSNBC took the whole primetime block four nights during the period.

Maddow’s dominance of Hannity is a huge embarrassment for Fox News. He was the only old-timer left after Bill O’Reilly was fired for serial sexually predatory behavior, and Megyn Kelly quit in part due to the sexual harassment she suffered. That left Hannity as the de facto face of Fox News. And as he drifted further over the edge of wingnut extremism his ratings were battered by his fetish for Hillary Clinton’s emails and a tedious obsession with the debunked Uranium One non-scandal.

With each new day Fox News is cementing its role as the state-run TV news network. If they think they will restore their past glory by sucking up to Donald Trump, the most unpopular president in history, they are going to be sorely disappointed. But don’t expect them to change course now. Fox News will continue to lavish undeserved praise on Trump, and defend his every failure, for the foreseeable future. At this point they have no clue, or interest, in functioning as a legitimate news operation. With Rupert Murdoch and his sons running the network it will remain a rabidly partisan source of racist, war mongering, science denying, treasonous Trumpism, and toadying for the GOP (Greedy One Percent).

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

Sean Hannity Falls Hard for Daffy James O’Keefe Video About Dick-Pics and Spies on Twitter

Posted by on January 16, 2018 at 10:36 am. 2 Comments :

Sean Hannity posted an article on his website Monday that blows wide open the scandal of the decade. And it might even have been interesting except for one problem: It’s not this decade. The headline screams “TWITTER EXPOSED: Social Media Giant SPIES on Users’ ‘Private Sex Messages.'” Of course the video fails to prove anything of the sort. Apparently Hannity didn’t know that Twitter collects and analyzes user data, including tweets and direct messages, and compiles profiles that can be marketed to advertisers. This is something that all social media sites and web enterprises do, including Hannity’s employer, Fox News. And they’ve been doing it for years.

Sean Hannity Fox News

Luckily, Hannity has investigative slimeball James O’Keefe to bring him up date. O’Keefe just published his latest “undercover” video (posted below). It’s likely to have been edited to make its participants look bad because that’s the O’Keefe brand. Hannity, however, was clearly impressed by this pitiful waste of time. He featured O’Keefe’s video on his website with an introduction that described it as…

“…a bombshell video outlining social media giant Twitter’s shady policy of spying on users private communications, including ‘sex messages’ exchanged between individuals using the platform.”

Hannity has an awfully low standard for what constitutes a bombshell. This is more of a dud by conventional standards. Although there is actually a germ of a significant issue here that deserves some attention. How media organizations store and use private data is indeed a concern. That’s why legitimate privacy advocates have been concerned about it for years. O’Keefe thinks he discovered something new that’s been concealed from the public. Never mind that it’s a well known problem and people more serious and respectable than him are working on it. But even his lame pseudo-discovery is presented in an entirely asinine way.

Most of this video contains clips of secretly recorded conversations with allegedly former and current Twitter employees. It’s packaged in a way that implies some covert operation has been unveiled. But the only thing these supposed plotters reveal is that Twitter has computer algorithms (not people) that read your tweets to determine how best to exploit the ad value of their users. OMG! What a scoop. There might even be a few cave dwellers that didn’t know about this twenty years ago. But even that’s unlikely. Only pathetic dorks like Hannity and O’Keefe seem to still be in the dark.

Speaking of dorks, there is an inordinate amount of time spent musing about dick pics in the nine and a half minute video. It’s not clear whether that’s because O’Keefe is obsessed with penises, or if he is worried that Twitter might have uncovered some of his own perverse activity. The same could be said for Hannity. Either way, they can’t seem to let the subject go. You might think that they would be concerned about some political bias or free speech issue, but no. It’s all junk talk.

Despite their insinuations about nefarious spying by pervy Twitter ops, the video actually undoes its own premise. It shows one employee saying explicitly that no one at Twitter accesses private data except when it’s reported as a violation by a user. That destroys the whole phony narrative they were trying to contrive. So not only is this video exposing something most people already know, it’s even failing to tell that boring story coherently.

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

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.