Dick Cheney was tonight’s high-profile, Exploit-The-Ukraine-Crisis-To-Attack-Obama guest of the night on the Hannity show. Just yesterday, Bob Gates, the Secretary of Defense under Bush and Cheney, told Fox News that Republican attacks on President Obama should be toned down during the middle of the Ukraine crisis. But why pay attention to him, Cheney and Sean Hannity must have figured.

In case you missed it, yesterday, Gates said on Fox News Sunday:

(W)hat I was saying earlier in the week was simply that I thought in the middle of a major international crisis, that some of the criticism, domestic criticism of the president ought to be toned down, while he’s trying to handle this crisis.

…I think Putin is very opportunistic in these arenas. I think that even if—even if we had launched attacks in Syria, even if we weren’t cutting our defense budget, I think Putin saw an opportunity here in Crimea, and he has seized it. You know, the ouster of Yanukovych was a big strategic setback for Putin, and—and I think it’s—it’s testimony to how skillful he is or how agile he is that he’s tried to offset that by the seizure of Crimea and throwing this whole situation into a very different—into a very different light…

Gates could have been speaking directly to Hannity. You may recall that last week Hannity trotted out Donald Rumsfeld, Gates’ predecessor as SecDef in the Bush administration, to cast blame on Obama for the Ukraine crisis. Before that, it was Sarah Palin. That’s not counting Sean Hannity’s own words. 

Although Fox News called this Cheney interview an “exclusive,” the fact is that Cheney had just appeared on CBS’ Face The Nation the day before where he suggested that Obama’s weakness was at least partly to blame for Russia’s behavior.

After discussing a number of options for dealing with Russia, Hannity all but asked Cheney to call Obama weak with this question: “Would just the threat… of more (energy) production in and of itself probably stop or at least tie the hands of Vladimir Putin? Wouldn’t that put a lot of fear into his heart quickly?”

Cheney replied:

Well, I think it would if he believes it. But he sees a president who won’t even authorize the Keystone Pipeline. …Everybody agrees it’s a good idea except Barack Obama who has the authority and refuses to act. So part of our problem is that all of these are good ideas – I’m wholeheartedly in accord with the notion of reinstating our missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. But a big part of the problem we have is, we have an administration who isn’t viewed as inclined to keep its word or to keep its commitments.

Hannity pressed the issue: “A recent Gallup poll (found) that most Americans think that the world perceives him (Obama) as weak. Do you perceive him as weak? ...Do you think he’s perceived by leaders in the Middle East, in Russia elsewhere in the world as being a weak president when it comes to national security?”

As if Hannity didn’t know that Cheney had just said he thinks Obama is weak on Face The Nation. But sure enough, Cheney said it again: “Yes, I do.”

It’s stunning that a guy like Cheney would be given any credibility at all considering his lack of repentance for leading the U.S. into a 10-year war based on faulty pretenses. But the fact that he would deliberately go on national television with an obvious goal of attacking a sitting president in the middle of a foreign policy crisis proves that political self-interest trumps all for Cheney – and for Fox News and Hannity for egging him on.