Sean Hannity's obsession with smearing Hillary Clinton over her health, despite any legitimate evidence, is - well, sick. Not even Hannity's beloved king of misogynist insults, Donald Trump, wanted to go there with him.
Fox followed up Megyn Kelly’s softball interview with Ivanka Trump with an even softer softball interview of Donald Trump on Hannity, the next show.
Donald Trump was sitting in the same children’s library, or at least a backdrop designed to look like one, as Ivanka.
Whereas at least Kelly mentioned some conservative concerns about Trump’s childcare plan, Hannity who boasts about being a conservative, not a Republican, seemed to think it was his job to help sell it.
First, Hannity played a clip of Trump lying, saying that Clinton has no childcare plan. As I noted yesterday when chip-off-the-Trump-block Ivanka made the same lie, Clinton has published a detailed plan and she did so long before Trump.
HANNITY: Your plan is going to help with the cost, excluding the costs from taxes, and allowing family choice, incentivizing employers! […] You’re really talking about bringing in the free market here and incentivizing from a tax so it’s not going to cost as much in terms of government money, is that correct?
Actually, conservatives are worried about costs and government mandating what private industry should do. But not Hannity!
After five and a half minutes, Hannity changed the subject to Clinton’s health “and while we’re talking about it, I’m going to play a slow motion of her from Sunday.” Meaning we could spend more time watching Clinton stumbling as she got into her limousine (a video that any Fox fan has probably already seen a dozen times by now).
“Her campaign is claiming that except for pneumonia, she’s completely healthy. It took them a long time to get to the ammonia (sic) excuse,” Hannity said. “What is your overall view of her health?”
Trump didn’t want to go there. “I really have no view. I just hope she gets better,” he said.
It’s doubtful that even biggest fan Hannity believed him. So Hannity tried another tack. He held up a calendar of days in August marked in red for the days Clinton did not hold any campaign rallies.
“I can’t think of a day that you didn’t even have a rally or a day that you actually took off,” Hannity began. “You once said that Jeb Bush was low energy. With that schedule, she’s making Jeb Book look like the Energizer Bunny.”
“I can only speak for myself,” Trump said. Then he boasted about how he goes from early in the morning until, sometimes, 1 AM.
Trump repeated his claim that he’ll release his tax returns when the IRS audit is complete. He forgot that he offered to release his tax returns before then just last week.
Hannity, of course, didn’t mention the faux pas.
Watch what passes for news analysis on “fair and balanced” Fox, below, from the August 13 Hannity.
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Something that hasn’t occurred to me before (gawd knows why not) is that he has a serious mental condition and needs lithium or whatever to control it. Maybe he’s not quite the evil, devious son-of-a-lady-dog we all took for granted – they just haven’t got the medication cocktail right yet.