Connect with us

Fox News’ Hannity To Birther Issue: I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

Published

on

Last night, Fox News’ birther-conspiracy theory pusher Sean Hannity repeatedly told his guests and his audience how he never really believed the birthers. But Hannity, who last night also claimed, birtherism “was never a defining issue for me,” spent most of his show on the Obama birth certificate issue.

For proof of Hannity’s birther-peddling, read, “Coulter: Birther Rumor Discussed Exclusively On Liberal Cable, Not Fox.”

I confess to watching (and tweeting) Hannity a few nights a week while at the gym, so I’d like to thank the good folks at News Hounds for this report and video of Wednesday night’s “Hannity.”

 

The birth certificate “controversy” was not only the lead-off discussion but took up most of the first three segments on Hannity.

First up, Juan Williams. “Why didn’t he just release it earlier, Juan?” Hannity asked.

Then, later in the segment, Hannity moved on to “just ask,” “Why not release his transcripts? Why not release his thesis?” Then, just as Hannity has pretended all along not to fall in with the birthers, he now said, “I don’t care if he does (release the documents). Honestly, that’s not my focus.”

In the next segment, with Monica Crowley and Sandra Smith, Hannity reiterated, “This shouldn’t have taken two years on the certificate” and went on to showcase Trump’s newer demand that Obama release his school records and prove he deserved to get into Harvard and Columbia.

At the end of that segment, Hannity promised, “Coming up, much more on Donald Trump and the birth certificate controversy.” Hmmm, wasn’t the controversy just settled????

Hannity introduced the next segment, this one with Malkin, by again complaining that Obama took so long to produce the birth certificate. To repeat, what Obama just produced is a longer form of the birth certificate he had already produced.

With her typical sourpuss condescension, Malkin sneered about Obama “wagging his finger” over the issue and called him, “Mr. Waggy McFingerwagger at the media and everyone else.” And speaking of wagging fingers, Malkin she went on to wag her own finger at “the left wingers” and “the media” who had found the birther issue a “useful tool” with which to “demonize the right.”

Sure, Michelle, It must have been those liberal activists who somehow infiltrated “fair and balanced” Fox News and got them to discuss birtherism in at least 52 segments since March 2, 2011.

But to her credit, she went on to denounce the whole birther issue and Donald Trump to go with it.

That prompted Hannity to claim, “This wasn’t my issue either, but as time went on, and Donald Trump brought up the issue, it just seemed to me, just release it and it’s over.” Just like it’s over now, I guess!

Even more laughably, Hannity went on to say that now that the birth certificate has been released, “unless anyone comes up with a big smoking gun, it’s not an issue.”

Well, not until later in the show. When it was time for the Great American Panel segment, Hannity announced that the “big issue involving the birth certificate” was the leadoff topic. Once again, Hannity said, “This was never a defining issue for me but I found it odd… All the president had to do is what he did today. Release it, move on and we’re out of the way. Why did he wait so long?”

Guest Fran Tarkenton suggested that it was because Obama wanted the distraction and would probably want to “lose his birth certificate again because we know he doesn’t have any plan to get more jobs, to cut the deficit, in Libya or wherever.”

Guest Alice Stewart, a former Huckabee aide, said, “It should have been done two and a half years ago.”

Rounding out the “fair and balanced” panel of all conservatives was Fox News’ Peter Johnson who mentioned somewhere that he once worked for the former Democratic mayor of New York, David Dinkins. But Johnson has been a GOP footsoldier on Fox News, including during a recent appearance on Hannity where Johnson gushed over Trump’s birther questions as “common sense.” Johnson made no effort to disavow them here. In fact, Johnson suggested the birth certificate was somehow illegitimate, as he said, “My hope, Sean, is that it was released in good faith, that it’s not about victimology… That’s my concern, whether there’s some deeper plan that goes on here.”

So how did “Release-It-And-Move-On” Hannity respond? By planting a thoughtful expression on his face and saying, “That’s an interesting thought.” Then he went on to claim, “I always want to stay on the big issues.” But first, Hannity teased the next segment of the Panel: “the church that Barack Obama, the president and his family attended on Easter Sunday.”

I’m sure Hannity will get to those “big issues” any day now.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not just Hannity. When the news broke that Obama’s long-form birth certificate was available,FoxNews.com let out a dog whistle to birthers by saying the White House had released “what it says (my emphasis) is President Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate.”

(emphasis mine.)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=x2Sg8vuovM0%3Ffs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

DOJ Takes Down Thousands of Epstein Documents After Privacy Concerns Raised

Published

on

The Trump Department of Justice reportedly has removed thousands of documents from its Friday dump of millions of pages of Epstein files.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on Monday that the DOJ told “the court that it has taken down ‘several thousands’ of documents from the Epstein Files website after victim privacy concerns were raised.”

In its message to two U.S District Court judges, the DOJ wrote: “The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first victim-related concerns were raised. To that end, out of the larger production described above, the Department now has taken down several thousands of documents and media that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the DOJ had “exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files,” the Journal noted, “The Justice Department was required to redact all victims’ names prior to releasing the files. Officials said they had spent weeks doing so after receiving lists of names from victims’ attorneys.”

Late Monday morning, attorney and journalist Aaron Parnas identified two of the Epstein files he said were missing. According to Parnas, they included references to Trump having parties at Mar-a-Lago called “calendar girls.”

On Friday, DOJ blocked access to a document originally released as part of Friday’s Epstein files document dump. That document included language related to accusations against President Donald Trump and others. In just under an hour, access was restored after CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted the block on social media.

The DOJ’s removal of the files on Monday comes as some, including members of Congress, are asking for more files to be released.

“Where are the rest of the Epstein Files?” asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the prominent Intelligence Committee vice chairman, on Monday afternoon.

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

News

Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

Published

on

President Donald Trump called into the podcast of his former Deputy FBI Director, Dan Bongino, and said that Republicans should “nationalize” the voting process, especially in fifteen “crooked” states, while insisting that undocumented immigrants are voting in America.

Saying that there are “millions and millions” of undocumented immigrants and “we have to get them out,” Trump warned that “if Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican.”

He claimed that undocumented immigrants are told, “Oh, well, you can vote, you can do whatever you want.”

“It’s crazy,” he added. “I mean, it’s crazy how you can get these people to vote, and if we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

He went on to say that “they vote illegally, and the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting,’ the voting in at least many, 15 places.”

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he added, “and we have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes, we have states that I won, that show I didn’t win.”

Mediaite reported that Trump “said a big issue with Minnesota is that it has too many Somalis — who he then claimed are, by and large, known for their ‘theft.'”

“Notably, the vast majority of Somalis in Minnesota came to the U.S. legally through refugee programs in the 1990s and are today U.S. citizens,” Mediaite added.

 

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

Image via Reuters 

 

Continue Reading

News

‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

Published

on

Republican never-Trump attorney and critic turned Democratic congressional candidate George Conway issued a dire warning on Monday about President Donald Trump and his “megalomania.”

“The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time,” Conway wrote on social media. “We certainly don’t have three years. We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”

Reiterating that he sees this as “a race against time,” Conway asked, “How quickly does the megalomaniac lose strength versus how quickly he destroy[s] everything around him. The one thing you can depend on is that the megalomaniac gets more destructive and dangerous over time before he’s done.”

Conway kicked off his social media thread with a New York Times opinion piece by history professor Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.

He quoted Dr. Ben-Ghiat, who wrote: “I have seen this brand of strongman megalomania and the adverse effects it can ultimately have on leaders and their governments. I call it autocratic backfire.”

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

“As autocrats surround themselves with loyalists who praise them and party functionaries who repeat their lies, leaders can start to believe their own hype,” the excerpt continued. “As they cut themselves off from expert advice and objective feedback, they start to promulgate unscrutinized policies that fail. Rather than course correct, such leaders often double down and engage in even riskier behavior — starting wars or escalating involvement in military conflicts that eventually reveal the human and financial tolls of their corruption and incompetence. The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.”

Conway added that the word “megalomania” is “essentially a synonym for narcissistic sociopathy or malignant narcissism.”

“All three terms accurately describe Trump,” he charged.

He offered some “good news,” saying that, as Ben-Ghiat pointed out, “megalomaniacal leaders ultimately blow themselves up politically or militarily. The bad news is that the longer they survive, the bigger the figurative blast radius.”

Conway ended the social media thread by saying this is why he is running for Congress and posted a link to his campaign website.

READ MORE: ‘Snowflake’ Trump Mocked for 1 A.M. Lawsuit Threat Over Trevor Noah’s Epstein Island Jab

 

Image by Presia Debauch via Flickr and a CC license

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.