Sean Hannity’s ‘Deep State’ Derangement Put’s Him at the Front of Conspiracy Crackpot Parade

The shooting in Virginia on Wednesday has renewed the debate over civility in public discourse. Predictably, Republicans exploited the opportunity to blame Democrats and liberals for the violence directed at their colleagues – this time. Even their pleas for consideration and respect are peppered with partisan attacks.

Sean Hannity Fox News

A perfect example occurred Thursday morning on Fox and Friends. Conservative agitator Michelle Malkin spent over eight minutes with her Fox News pals pretending to seek comity while throwing jabs at “the extreme left.” At one point, the on-screen graphic read “Violent Threats Sent To GOP Lawmakers.” The tone of the whole segment reflected that bias. At no time did they mention the recent threats against Democrats. Two Democratic candidates actually had to withdraw from their races due to death threats from right-wingers. And then there was the Republican candidate who literally assaulted a reporter who was just doing his job. That candidate, Greg Gianforte, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, won his race, and is now a U.S. congressman.

Sadly, the heated rhetoric that engulfs today’s political scene is viewed by some as an opportunity. Donald Trump notably abused his opponents whether Republican or Democrat. He fantasized about punching critics in the face. He promised to pay the legal fees of supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies. No wonder that, as president, he continues to associate with drooling barbarians like Alex Jones, Michael Savage, and Ted Nugent.

Perhaps those relationships are what is eating at Sean Hannity. He was the most vocal and devoted Trump-fluffer at Fox News during the campaign. His program featured Trump more than any other on television. And he literally endorsed Trump prior to the election, breaching every ethical standard for a news network. However, his access seems to have been curtailed. Trump hasn’t granted him an interview in over five months. In the meantime, fringe characters from Breitbart News and Infowars got passes to White House Press briefings.

This festering jealously might be inspiring Hannity to venture further out onto the crazy cliff’s edge. That seems to be the best way to get Trump’s enfeebled attention. So Hannity abandoned fear (and reason) on Wednesday night’s program to rant about the frightful “Deep State” that is plotting to destroy Trump (video below). The segment dwells on Hannity’s objection to reports that Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice. Some choice excerpts follow:

“Tonight, and over the next few days, when the media predictably is gonna breathlessly and hyperventilate all kinds of reports and brand new black helicopters and tin-foil hat conspiracy theories to you the American people as they lie again, remember they have zero credibility left.”

Amazingly, he said that all in one breath. However, surveys show that the American people trust the media far more than they trust Trump. And credible news outlets document their stories, unlike what Hannity is doing in this tirade. He continues to deny the reports that Trump is under investigation:

“It’s only a matter of time before this too will be debunked like everything else they’ve reported in pretty much the last eleven months.”

So Hannity is asserting that for the past year “everything” that’s been reported by the media has been debunked. That’s some pretty spicy nutball delusion. Then he launches into what he says are the real crimes. He accuses James Comey and Robert Mueller of conspiring to undermine the President, despite the fact that they are both lifelong Republicans. And naturally, the biggest criminal of all is Hillary Clinton.

“We know Hillary Clinton committed felonies with her email private server scandal. If Democrats wanna talk about collusion, great. Let’s talk about it and take a look at collusion with Vladimir Putin. Uranium One. Twenty percent of the foundational material to make nuclear weapons, while serving as Secretary of State. She signed off on a waiver giving twenty percent of that uranium to Putin, to the Russians. All while people involved in that deal were funneling millions of dollars back to the Clinton Foundation.”

And all of that is total bull crap. Clinton did not sign any such waiver. There was a deal for Russia to acquire certain facilities (not actual uranium) that required the unanimous approval of nine separate government agencies. The State Department alone could not approve the deal. And the donations to the Clinton Foundation all occurred before Clinton was even nominated for the cabinet post. All of this information is publicly available and Hannity has known about it for years. Nevertheless, he persists in spewing information that he knows is false. It’s all part of his “Deep State” saga aimed at convincing his dim-witted audience that a covert, pseudo-government is working behind the scenes to destroy Trump.

Hannity closes with a call to arrest and jail the anonymous sources who talk to the media. He asserts that they are guilty of disseminating classified data. What’s peculiar about that charge is that he also claims the information they provided is false. But he can’t have it both ways. If the data is false, then nothing classified was revealed, no laws were broken, and no arrests are warranted. If the data is true, then Hannity has to concede that Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice which Hannity rejects as fake news.

By spinning so furiously that his brain is scrambled, Hannity hopes to return to the high place he held with Trump prior to the election. He appears to think that he has to compete with the likes of Jones and Savage for the President’s affections. And he is probably right. Trump’s choice of friends and advisers is driven by their Insanity Quotient. The question is, can Fox News continue to allow a lying conspiracy kook to host a primetime program on their network? Well, why not? He’s been there for twenty years.

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

Trump, Jr and Other Republicans are Already Blaming Democrats for Scalise Shooting

Wednesday morning a deranged man opened fire on a group of Republicans practicing for a charity baseball event. Fortunately there were no fatalities, but several people were wounded including the GOP House Whip, Steve Scalise. Capital Police returned fire and killed the gunman. This is a horrific act of violence for which there is no excuse, and members of both parties have come together to condemn it. For the most part.

Donald Trump, Jr

Sadly, there are some on the right who leaped to the opportunity to take political advantage of this tragedy. And at the top of the list is the eldest son of Donald Trump, Don, Jr. The Trump scion retweeted conservative pundit Harlan Hill who posted this offensive and false sentiment: “Events like today are EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our President.”

Trump and Hill are referencing a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar where the title character was made up to resemble Trump. But they are woefully ignorant of the content of the play which concludes that political violence is abhorrent and counterproductive. What’s more, they never had any complaints when the same play was staged with President Obama in the role of Caesar.

More to the point, Trump, Jr. is demonstrating a callous disrespect for the victims and their families by rushing to politicize this shooting. It exposes his obsession with partisan antics aimed at disparaging Democrats. And he isn’t alone. Other Republicans have also dived into the scummy end of the pool. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) called it a “political rhetorical terrorist attack.” Fringe wingnut radio talker Michael Savage tweeted “I warned America the Dems constant drumbeat of hatred would lead to violence!” Alex Jones’ InfoWars deemed it “media-inspired terror attacks.” That’s notably different than his take on the Sandy Hook murder of twenty children as a hoax staged with actors.

Conservative websites like the Drudge Report and Breitbart News joined in the pile on against Democrats and liberals. Never mind that every Democrat who has spoken out about this has unconditionally condemned it. And then there’s GOP congressman Chris Collins (R-NY), who assigned the blame solely to Democrats for rhetoric that he said “fuels the fires.” He continued:

“I can only hope that the Democrats do tone down the rhetoric. The rhetoric has been outrageous. The finger-pointing, just the tone and the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump, his supporters. […] Maybe this is a wake-up call. I’m not saying it will be. But let’s hope we could disagree on a more polite, conversational basis.”

So Collins’ idea of being more polite is to accuse Democrats – and only Democrats – of inciting violence. And his solution to finger-pointing is finger-pointing. Just for the record, Republicans have been notoriously hostile toward Democrats for decades. And that has only worsened during the Era of Trump, who famously suggested “2nd Amendment solutions” to handle Hillary Clinton. And who can forget the images of Obama being lynched that were circulated endlessly by right-wing trolls. In many cases they were further disseminated by GOP officials.

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

Republicans are right to admonish anyone who glorifies violence against political adversaries. They’re right to condemn such violence when it occurs. But they are just bending the arc of hypocrisy to the breaking point when they assert that they are not at least as guilty of hostile partisan rhetoric. And they need to extend their outrage to abortion clinic bombings, assaults on Muslims, LGBTQ people, women, African Americans, Latinos, etc. Then they can start to consider lecturing Democrats on civility.

Janeane Garofalo Gets The Last Laugh On Sean Hannity And The Tea Baggers

Last month, Janeane Garofalo appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In the course of the interview, she made some rather controversial comments about the those attending the Fox News sponsored Tea Parties:

“…let’s be very honest about what this is about. It’s not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about, they don’t know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

Subsequent to that appearance, Sean Hannity, and a phalanx of other feverish right-wingers, immediately went on the attack. They criticized Garofalo for expressing her views, and Olbermann for allowing her to do so. Mind you, these are the same defenders of the First Amendment that are now complaining that the noted racist schlock jock, Michael Savage, has been banned from the U.K. To them, in other words, speech by a racist is fine, but speech about racists is foul.

In an attempt to further chastise Garofalo, and even harm her professionally, Hannity promoted this story which he prefaced by saying that “Revenge is sweet…”

Hannity (4/29/09): “The Boston Herald reports that supporters of the Boston tea party protests earlier this month. well they’re planning to attend one of her upcoming stand up performances. And they plan to give her a piece of their mind […] tickets, by the way, are reportedly going fast. Unfortunately for the left-wing actress, many of the tickets are being sold to the same tea partiers that she labeled racist […] It looks like Janeane isn’t going to get the last laugh this time around. By the way, good luck in Boston.”

Hannity and the tea baggers had better exercise some restraint in doling out pieces of their minds. They seem to have little to spare. First of all, the clown who came up with idea to scoop up tickets to Garofalo’s show in order to hurt her by making her richer is truly hilarious. Secondly, Hannity offers no evidence whatsoever that any tickets were sold to tea baggers, much less “many” as Hannity claimed. Lastly, the threat to which Hannity is referring from the article in the Herald really comes down to a single anonymous e-mailer with anger management issues:

“This (bleep) is gonna hear it from Boston,” the anonymous e-mailer said. “All us bigots and racists are buying up tix to let this piece of excrement hear it from us. shame on her.”

Despite the cantankerous warning from the mad e-mailer, and Hannity’s free publicity for it, the turnout of angry tea baggers was decidedly underwhelming. In fact, according to an update in the Herald, Garofalo performed her entire, nearly sold-out set without interruption from inside or outside the theater. She even had a bit of fun with them on stage saying…

“If there are any tea baggers here, welcome, and white power.”

As it turns out, Hannity’s contention that “many of the tickets” were sold to tea baggers was, not surprisingly, a lie. And it looks like Garafalo did end up getting the last laugh. But Hannity was right about one thing: Revenge is sweet.

Hillary & The Dead Kennedys

This past week has seen a perverse conspiracy of events that strains the capacity for people of good will to avoid giving up on civilization all together.

It began with the sad news that Sen. Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. As the shock and trauma of that news was settling in, James Rosen of Fox News declared on air that this could not be considered a tragedy because he had lived (past tense) a full life. Soon after, radio Neanderthal Michael Savage decided it would be appropriate to play snippets of the 1980’s punk band The Dead Kennedys, which Savage said was “in respect” for the Senator. Finally, Hillary Clinton weighed in on why she persists in pursuit of a nomination she can’t possibly win:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

So while Sen. Kennedy is awaiting a treatment plan for an often fatal affliction, Sen. Clinton is using brother Bobby’s demise to remind voters that Sen. Obama might be felled before this is all over. If she has any conscience at all, she would be regretting tonight that she didn’t drop out of the race yesterday.

Dragging The Dead Kennedys into this has produced an unexpected benefit in the form of wisdom from their singer, and inspirational hurricane, Jello Biafra. For those not familiar with the band, they were an anarchic, brood of rebellious provocateurs. They chafed at anything hinting of authority. And they would have stuffed a slug like Savage down a garbage disposal if he looked at them funny back in the day. Biafra responded to Savage’s prank in an interview with The Phoenix:

“Obviously he took my song way the hell out of context and did it deliberately. But the bigger issue is Savage himself and how the hell he gets away with stuff like saying this…”

But Biafra went further to assail the broader problem of a media environment that has devolved into a nearly useless heap of bio-waste:

“It scares the shit out of me that the most popular radio talk-show hosts are all foaming-at-the-mouth, ultra-bigoted blabbermongers whom only North Korea or the Nazis could love.

But like it or not, Savage is the third-most popular radio-talk show host in this country behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Nobody from the other side is represented or promoted well enough by the big right-wing-owned radio networks to compete. That’s one of the ways they mindfuck the country into being so dumb they vote for people like George Bush, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The real issue here is why aren’t the big candidates calling for media reform?”

~~~

“The damage was further compounded when your friend and mine Bill Clinton rammed through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, further deregulating how many radio stations and media outlets one corporation can own and what they can do with them and they greenlighted their long-held agenda to throw public interest out the window.”

Jello totally nails it. This problem is bigger than a radio crap dispenser; it’s bigger than a Fox News buffoon; it’s even bigger than a pathetic presidential candidate who is the only one that doesn’t know she’s lost. The problem is the media and, were it fixed, these other travesties would be mere annoyances.