Alisyn Camerota, who spent many years herself working for Fox News, was appalled at Sean Hannity's fake surprise last night at the Trump rally.
"So there was really a remarkable moment in journalism last night," she said.
"Sean Hannity hosts a television show on the Fox News channel and had been tweeting all day that while he was going to be at a Trump event in Missouri, he wasn't going to get up on stage and campaign with the president. But wait, but wait, he said that I'm not going to get up on stage and campaign with the president and then this."
HANNITY: by the way, all those people in the back are fake news.
"Okay. I have a lot to say about this. He's going to say one more thing. He's going to say one more thing. Listen to this," she said.
HANNITY: Mr. President, I did an opening monologue today and I had no idea you were going to invite me up here.
Nope, no idea.
"Now we can discuss this. Who does he think he's fooling?" Camerota fumed. "Who does he think he's fooling by saying he had no idea he was going to be invited up there? And here is what's going on at Fox, they know vaguely that they're not supposed to have one of their hosts endorse a candidate or a party, but Sean Hannity can't help himself. The whole, 'oh, shucks, me? You want me to go up here?' After he had originally said, I believe, that he wasn't going to be involved in the campaign, they are have a schizophrenic moment trying to figure out what their role is supposed to be with the Trump presidency. I could go on."
"Please do. I'm enjoying it," John Berman said.
"Here is the last thing I will say, I won't bring it up now. What are you guys all doing here? Nina, can you imagine Don Lemon campaigning for Stacey Abrams? Don Lemon being able to take the podium? When people say that there is no difference and when Fox tries to consider themselves a news organization, they have some complications."
"You hit the nail on the head," Nina Turner said. "Sean Hannity has never hidden the fact that that's his guy and he made it crystal, crystal clear, if it wasn't clear before, that the president is his guy and will even go above and beyond and skirt some of the rules to show that the president is his guy and that was no surprise, that was totally planned."
And then Mike Smerconish said something that actually made sense.
"Can I say this is an encapsulation of the partisan division in the country and how we got here, because now things have come full circle, the political leadership in the GOP does not control primary voters and they are no longer the forces responsible for getting out the vote," he said.
"So this is -- I'm not defending that, but this is a likely conclusion of where we've been building for years. If you want to know why the loudest voices in the room carry so much sway, it's because media mouthpieces are able to so encourage the primary voters to come out and vote and determine who the candidates will be."
We've been saying it here for years: Fox News creates the crazy and amplifies it for the Republican party.
Update: Hannity SWEARS it was all spontaneous. No, really.
