Dick Cheney’s BFF: Sean Hannity
Reported by Ellen - September 3, 2011 -
Could Dick Cheney have a better friend in the world than Sean Hannity? Hannity didn’t just conduct an hour-long softball interview with Cheney Thursday night (9/1/11), he helped promote Cheney’s talking points for him. Then, at the end, he did the bidding of Cheney’s daughter Liz, who was in the audience, by going a bit harder after President Obama.
I wouldn’t expect any tough questions from Hannity about Iraq, “enhanced interrogations,” executive power, 9/11 or Valerie Plame – especially after watching the Cheney infomercial that aired on Fox News not long ago. But during this interview, Hannity actually set up Cheney’s shots for him. Of course, Hannity may well have been looking for inflammatory quotes to get his interview into the headlines. But if that’s the case, he was doing it at the expense of two well-respected public servants on behalf of one who is not.
The Sunday before the interview, Colin Powell appeared on Meet The Press and accused Cheney of taking “cheap shots” at him and others in the Bush administration. Powell has also challenged the claim in Cheney’s new book that he pushed Powell out of his job as Secretary of State in 2004. Powell maintains he left on his own – a contention corroborated by Powell’s chief of staff, Lawrence WIlkerson. Wilkerson's recent appearance on Democracy Now, in which he discussed Cheney, his book, the Iraq war and Powell's resignation, is so fascinating, I'm going to include it here for contrast - just in case you missed it in a previous post.
But Hannity didn’t even mention Powell’s point of view. Instead, Hannity’s first question to Cheney was, “Were you surprised at Colin’s Powell’s comments?”
Cheney didn’t react especially negatively about Powell, other than to say the relationship had been strained. So Hannity pushed further, taking Cheney’s words as gospel to "ask:"
You actually wrote in the book that Powell was disdainful and not supportive of the president’s policies. At one point, you also said he personally confirmed the information when he went before the United Nations and made the case about WMD, that he personally went out of his way to confirm the information.
In the next segment, Hannity prodded Cheney to attack Condoleezza Rice with this "question:"
What Condi said was, ‘We would not have put in the speech if we’d (known then what we know now).’ That – you found that was devastating to the administration because then it became, ‘Bush lied people died. We went to war, etc., etc.’”
In the final segment, Hannity slobbered over his glorious hero some more. At about 4:35, he said, “During the break, I was kidding with your daughter, Liz, and she said, ‘You could have been harder on President Obama.’"
So Hannity's next question was obviously designed for Liz:
If he gets a second term and he continues these policies, does America risk recovering? Do we risk what happens in Europe, what’s happening in Great Britain, and Greece, and Ireland and Portugal, and Spain, does that come to America because we’re trying redistribution?
For some reason, Cheney didn’t want to go on the attack against Obama the way Hannity (and daughter Liz) hoped. So Hannity went back to slobbering.
