Sean Hannity’s still pretending that he doesn’t help spread false conspiracy stories, including one that recently caused Fox News to make a rare retraction. Of course, Hannity’s getting his wheels back as advertisers return to his show, which has made him even brasher than usual. On Monday, he attacked CNN for embracing “fake news,” which is a standard insult these days from the right-wing. However, Hannity’s example of supposed fakery — he accuses CNN of staging protests by Muslim citizens in London following last weekend’s terror attacks — was debunked by Snopes before air time.
Nonetheless, Hannity scoffed at the network’s explanation (“You can see it all. It’s hilarious if it weren’t so sick”) that the protests had been covered by multiple other media outlets. Hannity continued to spread the conspiracy about CNN creating fake news like a certain president also believes.
Yet Hannity wasn’t done there. He railed against Reza Aslan, who recently apologized for using profanity while emotionally reacting to Donald Trump’s politicization of the London attacks. He also pointed toward Anderson Cooper’s recent “dump” comment against Jeffrey Lord as an example of lost credibility, and — naturally — he listed Kathy Griffin as the ultimate example of why CNN’s gone off the rails. The last example is one heck of a stretch.
Very few people have come out in support of Griffin’s ill-advised bloody “Trump” photo, and CNN swiftly fired her after the offending incident. Further, Griffin only generally appeared on CNN for one night (of revelry) per year, so using her as part of a cable-news credibility analysis is silly as heck. Yet Hannity loves piling on the theatrics and often shies away from logic, and he took his beef to Twitter, too.
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/871924104638550016