One week after Donald Trump spread dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus on his own show, Sean Hannity claimed to put truth over politics – then suggested that living in “Democratic-run” cities like Chicago is more dangerous than COVID-19.
In his scripted – and thus pre-approved – commentary last night, Hannity began:
HANNITY: Let’s lay out some key facts because truth matters, context matters, especially when you’re talking about a disease that puts fear in the hearts of people.
Except with Donald Trump, Hannity forgot to mention. Because on March 4, Hannity had no problem when Trump announced that he trusted his “hunch” that the global death toll for the “corona flu” is lower than official statistics. Trump also dangerously suggested that it's fine for infected people to go to work. Hannity also “forgot” that when he asked Trump, “What are we prepared as a country to do to keep our citizens safe?” Trump did not answer the question and instead whined about Democratic criticism and attacked the Obama administration over the swine flu epidemic.
Apparently, Hannity’s definition of “truth” is whatever is good for Trump.
HANNITY: Now that’s what we do on this show because we want truth, we’re not the media mob. You would think working together to keep Americans safe – this is not – you know, we might be able to all agree on this. Apparently not, with Trump Rage Psychosis, unfortunately.
“Not working together to keep Americans safe?” Here’s Hannity suggesting you’re better off getting exposed to coronavirus than living in a “Democratic-run” city.
HANNITY: So far, in the United States, there have been around 30 deaths, most of which came from one nursing home in the state of Washington. The average age of mortality is 80 in this country. And the most at risk, and this is very important, are older people with underlying medical issues, the elderly. And people, by the way, you know, that have compromised immune systems. That would be people that are getting chemotherapy, that are in need of -- have some type of immune deficiencies. Healthy people, generally, 99%, recover very fast. Even if they contract it. And by the way, still, any deaths are tragic.
We want everybody to live. Put it in perspective: 26 people were shot in Chicago alone over the weekend. I doubt you heard about it. You notice there's no widespread hysteria about violence in Chicago. And this has now gone on for years and years and years. By the way, Democratic-run cities, we see a lot of that.
So, when people across America get sick and die, Hannity can send them a condolence card saying, “You were on your way out, anyway, but thank goodness you didn’t get shot in Chicago!”
You can watch the kind of commentary that would be funny if it weren’t so serious below, from the March 10, 2020 Hannity, via Media Matters. FoxNews.com has the full transcript of the show.