Sean Hannity, who never stops complaining about the supposedly liberal “propaganda media” that doesn’t fawn over Donald Trump the way he does, nevertheless promoted a false, inflammatory attack on Senator John McCain with the comment, “Wow if true.” In other words, Hannity couldn’t be bothered to find out its validity before promoting this to his millions of followers.
Two days ago, Hannity tweeted this, but later deleted it:
It was, essentially, a retweet of a Gateway Pundit article by Jim Hoft. Media Matters has the important details:
But Hoft’s article is wildly misleading. His source for the claim was “Reddit users,” and his blog failed to note that the incident had already been reported—and dismissed—as a mere clerical error. In 2008, McCain’s presidential campaign stated that the Russian Embassy in the United States had mistakenly received a standard campaign solicitation in the mail, with campaign spokesperson Brian Rogers calling it “just an error.” The Russians agreed with Rogers’ explanation, dismissing the fundraising request as “a computer failure,” according to a 2008 Associated Press report.
When McCain’s Senate office shot down Hoft’s slapdash reporting with a statement condemning Hannity for “attacking Senator McCain over a fake news story,” Hannity deleted the tweet and extended his “apologies” to McCain (and got defensive over people criticizing him for spreading false information).
In Hannity's defensive tweet, he exonerated himself by noting that he had said, "if true.":
I said "wow IF TRUE" specifically referring to the donation. It turned out to be "not true". THIS IS TWITTER!! https://t.co/tV6KtvHi0I — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) February 23, 2017
As Media Matters also reported, this was not the first time Hannity had retweeted false reporting from Hoft. And Hannity was obviously uncertain about Hoft's veracity in this McCain/Russia report. But Hannity obviously thinks he has no obligation to fact check before promoting inflammatory accusations to the 2.19 million people who follow him and give him credence.
Yet Hannity's own laziness has not stopped him from attacking Time’s mistaken report – quickly corrected and repeatedly apologized for - that a bust of Martin Luther King had been removed from Donald Trump's Oval Office.
Apparently, Hannity thinks truth, honesty and facts are only for other people to bother with while he can sit back, whine about the "propaganda media" and collect his fat paycheck.
Watch Hannity suggest to his beloved Donald Trump that the King bust proves other media is dishonest below, from the January 26, 2017 Hannity show.
Hannity screengrab via Twitter.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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