The Mark Meadow text messages to Sean Hannity, newly released from CNN, exposed the Fox News host as working hand-in-hand with the Trump administration on his re-election bid.
On the afternoon of Election Day, Hannity texted Meadows at 1:36 p.m. to ask about turnout in North Carolina. Two hours later, Meadows responded: “Stress every vote matters. Get out and vote. On radio.”
“Yes sir,” Hannity replied. “On it. Any place in particular we need a push.”
“Pennsylvania. NC AZ,” Meadows wrote, adding: “Nevada.”
“Got it. Everywhere,” Hannity said..
And this:
This would be an embarrassment and a firing offense for any member of the press: secretly acting as agent to a sitting president, coordinating with him to help him win an election, and especially not informing their employer and audience they were doing so.
Members of press organizations who decide to work for a political candidate during an election resign from the journalistic entity that employs them, so they can work on the campaign.
Hannity did not. Hannity couldn't name one MSNBC host who promoted their political beliefs, and under the cover of darkness, simultaneously worked for a Democratic candidate.
On his Friday night Fox News program, Hannity tried to excuse his despicable behavior by claiming everyone knows he's a conservative, so he did nothing wrong.
"Yes, I'm a member of the press...I'm on the Fox News channel, which is a news channel, but I don't claim to be a journalist. I claim to be a talk show host," Hannity said.
Except in 2017, Hannity said he was a journalist to the NY Times:
Hannity told a writer for The Times that he “never claimed to be a journalist.” In one of our recent conversations, he offered a reappraisal: “I’m a journalist,” he told me. “But I’m an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.” He went on, “I want to give my audiences the best shows possible.”
He continued, "I can produce thousands of hours of straight news. Thousands of hours of investigative reporting, but I'm up front about who I am."
"I'm a registered conservative. Yes, I voted for Trump, I make no apologies. I give my opinions straight forward. We would do culture we do sports…These other networks, they claim to be journalists. They're talk show host just like me, except they're not honest about it," Hannity whined.
Hannity was neither honest nor transparent about his work with the Trump campaign at all.
In fact, Hannity is still lying about his role in trying to help reelect Donald Trump, as well as aiding during the infamous January 6 insurrection.
It's one thing to support a political party or candidate. It's another to coordinate with their Chief of Staff to to use your media platform to help your preferred candidate win a state, or district that is floundering.
I busted Hannity back in June of 2019, when he was planted in the press pool after North Korea walked out of nuclear talks with Trump, and was called on by Trump to ask a question that made him appear like a modern day Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik.
When Donald Trump called upon Fox News host and confidant Sean Hannity to ask a question during his Hanoi press conference after the North Korean talks broke down, it was seen by many as a very odd move, but after further review it appears that it was a staged event to help mitigate Trump's apparent foreign policy disaster. After the talks with the North Koreans collapsed, Trump held an early press conference and in the dawn of a new day in America, Sean Hannity was called upon by Trump to address the press conference.
Hannity asked, "We have some history, President Reagan walked away in Reykjavik, a lot of condemnation at the time and it ended up working out very well in the end for the United State. Was this mostly your decision or and what message would you want to send Chairman Kim as he's listening to this press conference about the future in your relationship?"
Reykjavik? Where did that come from? In no other instance had Reagan and Gorbachev been brought up as an analogy to the Trump versus Kim Korean Summit events. Trump refused to definitively say at that moment if he was the one to walk away from the meetings so he could continue building a strong relationship with Kim but later intimated that he walked from the deal. “Sometimes you have to walk, he said. “This was just one of those times.” The next day the North Koreans said they were the ones to cut off the talks with the U.S., but that received virtually no coverage at all. At first, Hannity's analogy of Ronald Reagan walking away from Reykjavik in 1986 seemed like a typical defense of Trump's failure by a super-surrogate but what happened afterwards indicates a much more calculated move.
This time, if it wasn't for all the leaked text messages, no one would have known about Hannity's correspondence with Meadows and efforts to use his Fox News platform on behalf of getting out the vote for Trump.
Fox News should fire Sean Hannity immediately for his behavior, and for lying to their viewers.
However, Fox News operates more like OANN than it does a credible news agency, so good luck with that.
