Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” host Sean Hannity used part of his “Opening Monologue” segment to criticize MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow for attempting to further what he said were conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump, including allegations that he has ties to Russia.
Hannity offered several examples of Maddow advancing these theories and went on to ask if various NBC personalities were “OK” with Maddow’s efforts. One of those included former Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File” host Megyn Kelly, who Hannity suggested should interview Maddow as a balance for her interview with radio host Alex Jones last weekend.
Partial transcript as follows:
HANNITY: Now also tonight, we continue to expose the biggest black helicopter tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist in the destroy-Trump media.
NBC’s Rachel Maddow – this is off-the-hook, out of control. And if it wasn’t so serious, it’s actually funny. Now last night, remember? They were expecting a big victory. Results rolling in from the race in Georgia. President Trump mentioned this at the rally. Rachel Maddow, instead of focusing on their big loss, puts on her tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist wires and by the way, asked if bad weather was to blame for bad Democratic voter turnout and their loss.
You can’t make this stuff up. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: If there was a turnout effect from the bad weather today in the district, does that have any partisan implications that you could foresee in terms of what was expected for same day Election Day voting rather than the early vote?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Yeah, see the weather kept only the Democrats home. I cannot go by without Maddow floating some sort of Trump-Russian conspiracy theory even though nobody believes it. It’s been debunked. To date, there’s zero evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Nothing whatsoever. It’s been a farce, a total fabrication, 11 months of lies and conspiracies made up by people just like Maddow.
Now despite these fact to date, Rachel, she was at it again whipping up a new crack-pot theory involving President Trump – mob money and money laundering and even Vladimir Putin made it into the mix. You cannot make this stuff up. I guess apparently she can – it’s NBC News. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: If this new reporting from Tim O’Brien proves out about Russian money pouring into Trump properties and coming from sources close to Putin, through people known for their mob and money laundering ties, if that reporting proves out, we`re left with the question of why that happened. Why was money connected to Putin pouring into Trump projects? Why did they do that?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Keywords: If this proves out. But then she goes to ‘why would they do that?’
If you have been watching this show that example is nothing compared to the other unhinged completely insane things that NBC and Maddow are saying night after night, day after day.
Here’s a couple of her craziest Trump-Russia conspiracy theories. You’re going to love this. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Just last week, Reuters reported on 18 new previously undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: U.S. investigators, including FBI, are looking into a Russian citizen in conjunction with one of the incidents on the Trump campaign last year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Maybe he’s not as charitable as he says or not under really audit. All of the little things might be true. OK, that would be interesting to know. I don’t know if that would change the world that much. But what would change the world is if, you know, Russia was interfering in the election and they weren’t doing it on their own and he was in on it. You know?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIEO CLIP)
MADDOW: The FBI director being fired by the president to try to change or stop an FBI investigation into the president’s campaign and his top staffers – that is a big freaking deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Big freaking deal? No. By the way, you may remember back in 2011, Maddow tried to explain away then-Congressman Anthony Weiner’s very graphic, very lewd tweet.
Another conspiracy theory. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: If the congressman was hacked as he said he was, if he was pranked, how would that work? How could a person do that? What would that look like?
The Daily Kos writer looks at the image of the congressman’s Twitter account more closely. And judging from the pixelization of the images and some other visual clues, he concludes that the damage was a composite saved a number of times indicating it had been Photoshopped.
For a theory with fewer steps – a number of other blogs have different versions of a theory of a potential hacking that looks at the information embedded in this controversial picture.
A third, but by no means final theory, has to do with the photo sharing service that I was talking about earlier, YFrog. It’s not all that hard to generate a program that would try every possible combination using your Twitter name until you got the right email address to use this service to post pictures.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: It wasn’t a hacking. Now, of course, it was also the time that Maddow theorized that Republicans may be pushing assassinations as an actual political tactic. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Has enough kerosene been poured on the flames that the possibility of violence and even assassination is being posited as a real political tactic in the United States?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And why not play the race care? Last year, Maddow was asked if Donald Trump is, quote, “a gateway drug to racism in the GOP.” Let’s look at this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: A lot of people who I think are critical of Donald Trump generally look at praise like that from somebody like Donald do and wonder if he’s a gateway drug. If there’s something beyond Donald Trump himself that means a much greater transformation of the Republican Party into something that is going to be new to mainstream politics.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: So, in the destroy-Trump media, what you just saw somehow passes for, quote, “news.”
So, I have to ask: Hey, Tom Brokaw, are you proud of NBC News now? You know, I knew the late Tim Russert. He never behaved, he never reported things like this.
Now, for example, my former colleague Megyn Kelly moved over to NBC. Is she proud of this type of reporting? Megyn interviewed, for example, it was a big deal – it made a lot of news, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones last week? Should she now interview Maddow this week so she can be fair and balanced?
What about Matt Lauer? Does he support this nonsense, these conspiracy theories that are being spewed?
By the way, what about Andy Lack? He’s the head of NBC. Is he OK with all of this?
Now the only thing the Democrats – members of the destroy-Trump media have left are these tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, as Rachel says.
And they are using them to create distractions to try and stop President Trump from what? Keeping his promises and agenda – bringing them forward.
And of course, we’re putting on your screen right now the key points of the president’s agenda.
Now, Democrats and the media have proven they’re willing to say and do anything to stop the president from enacting that agenda. Enough is enough.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor