As he watches his beloved Donald Trump’s election chances slip away, Sean Hannity is ready with a Plan B: impeaching Hillary Clinton.
Hannity's effort is a perfect complement to Trump, who calls Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” threatened to jail her during the second presidential debate, eggs on his supporters as they chant, "Lock her up," and whines that the election is rigged against him.
In his discussion last night with Jeanine Pirro (who was married for decades to a mobster) and Trump toady Kimberly Guilfoyle, Hannity deliberately set about undermining FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her email server as part of the (rigged) system that will probably (illegitimately) elect Clinton. So, therefore, she should be impeached.
HANNITY: We’ve got collusion. We know that the State Department contacted Hillary’s campaign, gave them a head’s up. We know that the Justice Department gave Hillary’s campaign a head’s up. We know now that the White House was actively involved because the president who said he learned about the e-mails in the press ended up getting e-mails to and from Hillary. Now, I would say, because of everyone’s involvement, we need an outside investigator, we need a grand jury empaneled and there is a possibility, first of all, that if they destroyed those e-mails and they were under subpoena, that’s a crime. That’s called obstruction of justice. So she could get elected and be impeached within days. True or false?
PIRRO: Well you’re right. She could get elected and be impeached. But here’s the problem. You’ve got the Clintons who have their tentacles all over. This is a textbook example of collusion, corruption, and banana republic. You’ve got the Department of Justice, the FBI, the State Department as well as the White House all in agreement just to make sure that Hillary gets in. I mean the deal is everybody is in on the deal except for the American people. You can get the Justice Department or a special prosecutor with grand jury powers to start all over. But here’s the problem. Jim Comey destroyed some of the evidence. Jim Comey allowed for the destruction of some of the evidence.
[…]
I don’t know what they did to him, or why he did what he did, but it’s contrary to the law.
[…]
HANNITY: What did the president know and when did he know it? …Did Obama influence his attorney general and his State Department [to ensure no charges were brought against Clinton]?
PIRRO: Of course he did.
HANNITY: OK, but that is against the law!
PIRRO: No kidding. …This is a banana republica and we’re the stooges in it!
GUILFOYLE: Well, and it’s the way the Clintons do business.
[…] They were passing out immunity like party favors to everybody.
HANNITY: Why would the FBI ever agree, as part of the deal, to destroy evidence?
PIRRO: Because they wanted to get rid of it, pure and simple. Sometimes the most simple answers are the ones that first come to mind.GUILFOYLE: Right, common sense, yeah.
HANNITY (gleefully) : So what they didn’t count on is that Wikileaks had all of it.
[…]
GUILFOYLE: The problem is, we’re real close to the election here and there’s a strong likelihood she could be the next president. Now what?
HANNITY: Impeach her.
You heard it here, first, folks. This will be Trump’s and, perhaps the Republican party’s response too, if Clinton wins the election.
I hope the Democrats are ready.
Watch it below from the October 14, 2016 Hannity. I’ll have better video later but the relevant segment starts at 20:06 and goes to 26:51.
From the moment that Barack Obama was elected, right wing voices like Rush Limbaugh’s immediately went on the warpath. Where they had been frantic cheerleaders for the disastrous George W. Bush presidency, they turned on a dime and immediately declared President Obama a failure. Sean Hannity didn’t do this the day after the election in 2008 but he definitely went on the warpath the day after Romney lost in 2012. We must remember that when Barack Obama was inaugurated, Rush Limbaugh was angrily telling his listeners (and CPAC attendees) “I HOPE HE FAILS!”.
While much of America was celebrating the first black President in American history, Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich were strategizing with congressional Republicans to actively block anything and everything President Obama would do. Their goal was to gum up the works so much, even while in the minority, that they could campaign on the obstruction. Idea being that they would either stop everything the Dems did (and thus satisfy Limbaugh and his listeners) or they would be able to campaign that they didn’t vote for whatever awful thing the Dems did manage to get through. As soon as the Obamas took up residence in the White House and went to work, the right wing went to work as well, and the obstruction has mostly continued unabated.
The right wing has kept up a drumbeat of personal harassment of President Obama, with the clear intention of making his stay in the White House as unpleasant as possible. When the various inaugural galas were announced for Barack Obama, right wing radio voices decried that any pageantry was happening, opining that FDR didn’t have anything like that and stating that they’d prefer that President Obama just wave hello from the Oval Office and go right to work without any parties. Every time President Obama has played a round of golf, the right wing has tut-tutted over it. Every time the Obamas have taken any vacation time, the right wing has bitterly criticized them for doing so. Every time the Obamas have gone to Hawaii for the holidays, the right wing did as much as they could to imply that this was a waste of taxpayer resources. When President Obama travelled to Asia at one point, right wingers pumped up the numbers of what resources would be needed to go with him, making it sound like a massive and unnecessary extravagance. And that’s not even getting into the casual racism of the right wing Birther movement.
The right wing also has been on an 8 year hunt for corruption, given that they saw multiple members of the W. Bush presidency driven from their appointments in disgrace, such as Scooter Libby (who took the fall in place of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove) and Alberto Gonzales. Anything and everything that could be perceived as mud in the Obama White House was immediately flung, to see if it would stick. An ATF program started under W. Bush suddenly became a cause for Hannity and others to yell about impeaching Obama’s Attorney General. A solar power company suddenly became an urgent target for right wing voices. Joe Sestak suddenly found himself at the center of the right wing’s fury, when they thought they had caught Obama talking to him about his midterm campaign (they hadn’t – it was Bill Clinton that talked to him). Anything and everything to make it seem like the Obama White House was some sinister conspiracy against the American People.
Once the right wing got control of the House of Representatives back, we were treated to the repeated spectacle of Darrell Issa holding mock investigations and throwing grandiose tantrums intended to portray himself as a crusader for justice against Barack Obama, rather than the grandstander he actually is. (Issa infamously tried to worm his way into the California governorship with the 2003 recall of Gray Davis – the idea was to both recall Davis and install himself with a quick campaign when people weren’t looking. Except that he generated complete chaos in California and a situation where scores of people signed up to try to get that office, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a lot more popular than Issa. Schwarzenegger was able to walk into the governorship without much fuss and Issa wound up giving a humiliating press conference where he burst into tears at the injustice of it all.) I note that not a single Darrell Issa “investigation” has resulted in a single indictment or conviction of anyone in the Obama Administration. Thanks to Issa, nobody takes congressional investigations seriously anymore.
I note that the right wing has not forgotten or forgiven what happened when Richard Nixon was driven from office over 40 years ago. They haven’t forgotten or forgiven what happened when a record number of Ronald Reagan’s people were indicted and then either pled out or were convicted of various malfeasances. (The Reagan Administration holds that infamous record, topping even the corruption of the Warren G. Harding group from the early 1920s. I believe the W. Bush numbers were up there as well, but not as high as Reagan’s.) I also note that the right wing has not forgotten or forgiven that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are not able to travel to various parts of the world as there are actual warrants filed for them, to get them to answer for war crimes committed during their Administration. So it makes sense that they would attempt to smear the Dems with that same mud and hopefully confuse everyone.
It’s a similar approach to what Donald Trump is attempting now that he knows he has almost no chance of becoming President. The idea is to make the campaign so ugly, so viscerally unpleasant, that nobody will want to participate. Even if he can’t stop Hillary Clinton from becoming President, he can drive her favorability numbers down to the cellar and have her take office under a cloud of bad feeling – an atmosphere where the Republicans can announce that they’re demanding an independent prosecutor even before she and Bill can set foot back inside the White House.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hillary Clinton’s inauguration disrupted by angry right wingers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a nearly identical effort by the right wing in their behavior toward a President Hillary Clinton as they have established in their behavior toward President Obama. I do hope that the Clintons’ natural political abilities will make it possible for them to circumvent a lot more of the obstruction than President Obama was able to manage, but we shouldn’t have any illusions about the sheer hatred coming from the right. Given the way he has behaved over the past few years, I fully expect Donald Trump to resist conceding as long as he can, and to be as much of a sore loser as he can, with help and cover from the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh and Gingrich. Let’s see if he really does try to start his own media channel with friends like those guys and Roger Ailes. If he does, it will magnify the split already happening at Fox News to a point where the network may actually transform into something closer to an actual news network. That could be the greatest irony of this entire campaign.
ERRATA “…or that I am excluding non-whites…”
Anybody who is Indian or Bangladeshi or Pakistani or even Taiwanese will tell you how corrupt are those places and how much they rely on minute checks as people cannot be trusted to tell the truth in most cases. I am not saying you have to vote for Trump I am telling you to discuss the right thing. This is the right discussion on immigration. Hillary wants a type of European Union of the Americas but I warn you. In England for example the population density is 2 people per acre whereas in USA even a postman can live in one acre. If you let millions of people in your children will have that high population density legacy. It is unnecessary.
ERRATA “…or that I am excluding non-whites…”
Anybody who is Indian or Bangladeshi or Pakistani or even Taiwanese will tell you how corrupt are those places and how much they rely on minute checks as people cannot be trusted to tell the truth in most cases.
George W Bush really, really, really belongs behind bars. At the Hague. Admit it. The truth shall set you free!!
Nobody has to stand above the law!