Sean Hannity went for a dishonest threefer when he suggested Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) might be responsible for a rise in anti-Semitism that just happened to break out since the election of Donald Trump. At the same time, Hannity got to racially smear Ellison who happens to be in a tight race to chair the Democratic National Committee. And what Hannity didn’t mention is that he has had a personal beef with Ellison ever since he blasted Hannity on the air during a 2013 interview.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported a wave of hate incidents in the wake of Trump’s election. And Trump has responded by blaming others, telling a reporter who asked about it to sit down, then boasting about his own election win. When Trump finally got around to acknowledging anti-Semitism, the director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect called Trump’s response, “a pathetic asterisk of condescension.”

Hannity, the guy with his own history of palling around with anti-Semites, was quick to portray Trump as a victim and Ellison as the real bigot. (Transcript excerpts via FoxNews.com, with added emphases):

HANNITY: The left has been quick to try and blame the president for the rise in [anti-Semitic] threats, but in their search for a new DNC chair, which will be selected on Saturday, the leading contender is Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison. Ellison has a very controversial association with the leader of the Nation of Islam, and that is Louis Farrakhan.

Actually, Ellison does not have any association with the Nation of Islam. As I wrote in 2007 when Hannity also tried that same hideous attack:

Ellison says his relationship to that organization was brief and he has long since denounced it. The BBC reported that “Ellison was supported in his run for Congress by National Jewish Democratic Council as well as a prominent Minneapolis Jewish newspaper, which endorsed him over his Republican rival Alan Fine, who is Jewish.”

Things got worse after Ellison's 2013 appearance on Hannity. On the air, Ellison called him “a shill for the Republican Party” and “the worst excuse for a journalist I’ve ever seen.” Hannity hit back in two consecutive shows. First, Hannity “just asked” if Ellison was a black “equivalent” of the Ku Klux Klan. The next night, Hannity "just wondered" if Ellison might have hid his (black) radical views in order to get elected.

Hannity was aided and abetted in his latest race baiting by Fox News “Democrat” Doug Schoen. Schoen seemed to have done absolutely no independent research into Ellison. Instead, Schoen unquestioningly accepted Hannity’s (mis)characterization and then helped to validate it.

HANNITY: So this weekend to Detroit, Doug, Louis Farrakhan has an association with Keith Ellison who may be the head of the DNC. Anyway, “I want to disabuse the Jews today of the false claim that you are the chosen of God, that Israel or Palestine belongs to you. I want to disabuse you of that, and I’m going to tell you about your future. You think you have the power to frighten and dominate the peoples of the world? I’m here to announce the end of your time,” Farrakhan said, slamming his hand on the podium.

SCHOEN: That’s horrific. I will be startled and ashamed of my party if Keith Ellison for a number of years and as yet as I speak to disavow the Reverend Louis Farrakhan, if he is elected DNC chairman.

[…]

This is a scary, scary time, and I’m glad the president spoke out. And I speak as a Democrat and as a Jew and as someone who is passionate.

[...]

HANNITY: And also, if you look at the latest FBI crime statistics, they show 56.8 percent of hate crimes were motivated by their offenders’ anti- Jewish bias. You have a classmate saying Keith Ellison saying the Jews want to oppress minorities all over the world.

SCHOEN: This is horrific, Sean. I don’t think this is a partisan issue. This isn’t politics. This is standing up for what’s right, reasonable and responsible.

Hannity’s other guest, Dore Gold, a long-time associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, refused to take the Ellison-bashing bait. He told Hannity that the rise in anti-Semitic incidents are “a big problem” that should be “tackled and not politicized.”

Hannity told Gold, “I agree.” But he returned to politicization in his next words.

HANNITY: But I don’t think we can ignore this. When he was a third-year law student he was responding another student that said Louis Farrakhan was no Malcolm X. He defended Farrakhan against charges of racism. He said “racism means conspiracy to subjugate and actual subjugation, and that means planned social-economic political subjugation of whites. It cannot be intelligently argued that the Nation of Islam is doing this. In fact, blacks have no history of harming or subjecting whites as a class.” And I’m sorry, and he organized for the Million Man March out of his community. You cannot just ignore the white people, God that teaches meat tell me the white people are the skunk of the planet earth, or that Judaism, that famous quote, “got a religion,” and “real Jews,” and constant referring, using anti-Semitic slurs.

Schoen had no problem with the politicization. He told Hannity that if Ellison becomes chairman of the DNC, “I have to think strongly and seriously” about leaving the party. “He should disavow Farrakhan right now,” Schoen said. Apparently, he was unaware that Ellison did so in 2006.

But Schoen might want to reconsider his palsiness with Hannity. In October, after being told Farrakhan made positive comments about Trump, Hannity sang quite a different tune:

HANNITY: I’ve always wanted to meet Farrakhan. I listened to hours and hours of his speeches. He’s mesmerizing. He’s an unbelievable orator. What he says about individual responsibility and morality and being fathers and starting business is brilliant. Then he adds the racism and the anti-Semitism. If you took that away, this guy could have been such a powerful force in his life, but unfortunately his legacy is one of racism and anti-Semitism.

By the way, Schoen was part of that discussion. He hasn’t seemed to have had any problem associating with Hannity ever since.

Watch Hannity use phony-baloney racial sensitivity as a cover for his own dishonest race baiting above.

Originally published at Newshounds.us