Sean Hannity predictably came to the aid of Donald Trump in the wake of Thursday night’s January 6 committee hearing. Despite damning testimony from the former president’s inner circle, including his daughter Ivanka who flat-out rejected her father’s election fraud claims, Hannity argued on Fox News that, actually, Trump came off looking great.
Of course, it certainly helped Hannity’s case that the conservative news network did not air the Jan. 6 hearings, so regular Fox News viewers were mostly likely unaware of the evidence presented. None of it looked good for Trump, but that didn’t stop Hannity from barreling full steam ahead in praising Trump as the only one calling for the National Guard during the assault on the Capitol building. Via Mediaite:
“All of the attempts to get people to call up the guard, basically begging them to take the guard,” said the host. “How does this play out as this narrative now takes over? I think the entire story – because this is about a security failure of incredible magnitude – and they don’t even seem to want to talk about it. The one person who looks good is Donald Trump. Donald Trump authorized it.”
Again, Hannity could easily make this claim because Fox News did not air the proceedings where Congresswoman Liz Cheney had shot down this narrative. As Mediaite notes, Hannity is working off of Jan. 5 meeting where Trump said they would need guardsmen, but took “no formal action” to make that happen.
“President Trump gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day,” Cheney said during the hearing. “And he made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and to support and deploy law enforcement assets.”
There’s also the issue that Hannity himself has been swept in the Jan. 6 investigation. Damning texts between the Fox News host and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany have been revealed, including ones where Hannity says that “impeachment and the 25th Amendment are real” in the days following the attack. A far cry from Trump is the “one person who looks good.”
(Via Mediaite)