Fox News would not trot out Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity after the Donald Trump shooting for any other reason than to use it as fodder for inflammatory attacks on the left.
I condemned CNN pundit Scott Jennings for his disgusting, disingenuous and phony concern for inflammatory rhetoric that somehow left out the blatantly violent rhetoric of his own side. But Fox News is a whole network made up almost entirely of even more blatantly incendiary rhetoric. In fact, that’s what hatemongers Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity get paid to do.
In this case, they were not lying about the 2020 election but blaming the left for the Trump rally shooting and pretending there's no violent rhetoric from the right - which happens to be a staple on their own network.
My Crooks and Liars colleague, Heather, wrote about how, at a time that called for turning down the temperature and calling for unity, Ingraham and Hannity dialed up the hate:
INGRAHAM: [T]he media has amplified these attacks on Trump as a fascist dictator who will subjugate all of our individual rights, our rights are all gonna be gone, there's gonna be no healthcare for women, you know, we heard that last night too.
So just think about that, if you're kind of on the edge as a left-wing radical and you hear that Adolf Hitler could win the presidency or someone like Hitler, I mean, this just begs for somebody to take that kind of action.
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And it was wrong, and it was an evil lie that [the left] said about him, and they continued to do it up until a few moments before this was happened, as almost happened today, to Donald Trump. Let's not forget that tonight.
HANNITY: And let us not forget ... you know, with all the talk about January 6th, they always kept out [Trump''s] "peacefully, patriotically march so your voices will be heard."
However, there was a vice president, her name is Kamala Harris, and days after a precinct, a police precinct was burned to the ground, she tweets out for a bail fund, she goes on Colbert, they're not gonna stop, they shouldn't stop, we're not gonna stop, and it's gonna continue, et cetera, 574 riots in the summer of 2020, dozens of dead Americans, thousands of injured cops, bricks, rocks, bottles...
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INGRAHAM: But Trump is the threat, Sean! Trump, as they said, is the threat to democracy.
We all know, no one really believes that. They just said it, and words at some point can boil over to the radicals out there who are a little unhinged.
These people are shameless and shameful. None other than Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham knew that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy, especially on Jan. 6, as their own texts have revealed. And if Hannity thinks Jan. 6 was such a peaceful and innocuous exercise, why has he refused to testify to the Jan. 6 committee and blow the investigation to smithereens? We know why. Because he is lying.
How convenient that the folks who helped seed the Jan. 6 insurrection have forgotten that their own colleague, Greg Gutfeld, called for civil war, while cohosting his Fox News show. Instead of getting fired, he got a new contract and, presumably, a nice raise.
There’s also Ray Epps. Then-Fox host Tucker Carlson repeatedly and falsely portrayed Epps as an FBI plant who incited the January 6, 2021 violence as a false flag operation against Fox’s p***y-grabbing presidential favorite and their MAGA fans. The hideous consequences for Epps – who was both a Trump and Fox fan – forced him to flee his home, give up his business and, essentially, go into hiding in another state. You know who else repeatedly joined in the Epps smearfest? Laura Ingraham.
Despite Epps’ calls for Fox to retract its smears, the network did not. The result is that Epps sued the network for defamation. The case is still pending, as far as I know.
Name one non-MAGA media outlet that has given the Epps story one iota of credibility, Laura and Sean. Oh, that’s right you can’t, because there isn’t one.
Oh, and remember when Jesse Watters “joked” about assassinating Dr. Anthony Fauci? Fox rewarded Watters with his own prime time show weeks later. That’s the same Jesse Watters who agreed with civil war advocate Gutfeld that it was “magical” when Trump said “Knock ‘em out!” about protesters.
That’s the same Donald Trump whom we have all seen boasting about grabbing women by the p***y. Funny how that never put a dent in Hannity’s or Ingraham’s love for him.
I could go on and on about the hypocrisy here. But it’s worse than hypocrisy. It’s deliberately false propaganda – and never forget it comes care of the Murdochs. In addition to their network doing its darnedest to keep the hostilities flowing, I think Heather nailed it when she said it’s also about doing “their damnedest” to get the rest of the media to stop talking about the dangerous, extremist, anti-American Project 2025 - that they're hoping to pass while we're not paying attention.
In short, getting more tax cuts, dismantling the federal government and replacing it with loyalists and other MAGA policies their favorite felonious p***y grabber will deliver means so much to these fat cats, they are more than willing to say anything, ruin people’s lives or worse.
And before I go, let me point out that President Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi issued the kinds of statements that shows a genuine desire for dialing down the rhetoric. Also, don’t forget that when Pelosi’s husband was nearly killed in an attack by a Trump supporter, Trump made snide jokes about it and Fox blamed the left then, too.
Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 14, 2024
We'll debate and we'll disagree, but we must unite as one nation to demonstrate who we are as Americans. pic.twitter.com/rKS9pC5t9U
Tune in as I deliver remarks. https://t.co/YpoGxki2UE
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 14, 2024
As one whose family has been the victim of political violence, I know firsthand that political violence of any kind has no place in our society. I thank God that former President Trump is safe.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 13, 2024
As we learn more details about this horrifying incident, let us pray that all those…
You can watch Hannity and Ingraham act like Goebbels reincarnated as they deliberately and dishonestly fan the flames below, from Fox News’ July 13, 2024 coverage of the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally, via Crooks and Liars.
