Last night, before it was known who was behind the explosion at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, Sean Hannity’s near-nightly guest, Jay Sekulow, insisted that the incident proved the need for Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. Because Obama!
Of course, Fox News hates politicization of tragedy - when liberals do it. In a brilliant Daily Show segment in 2015 (below), Jon Stewart caught Hannity saying, “It’s almost like a sickness” for liberals. “Tragedy happens: ‘Let’s see how we can advance our narrative.’”
But Hannity had no objection when Sekulow did that last night. Well, maybe that was because Sekulow said he didn’t want to politicize – right before doing so.
And did Sekulow try to blame Obama for the attack in England? You tell me.
SEKULOW: What the president did was lay out what should have been done over the last eight years but President Obama just would not do it. And I don’t want to politicize this, but when you have eight years of the vacuum that was created, no wonder, as Geraldo said, these cell groups metastasize. They went out for training and then came back in. I mean, does anyone want to argue tonight that we shouldn’t have an executive order restricting who’s coming into the country, so that we know who these people are? I mean, does anybody think that tonight? Does anybody want to argue that case tonight, that we should not know from these particular countries of origin, who these people are, before we let them into the United States of America? I’d like to take on that argument.
If politicization of tragedy is the sickness Hannity thinks, it must be contagious. Media Matters caught Fox’s Shannon Bream, Brian Kilmeade and Lisa Boothe making similar arguments. But as Media Matters also pointed out, Trump’s ban would not apply to a Manchester native, which is what the bomber reportedly was.
Watch Sekulow “not politicize” below, from the May 22, 2017 Hannity show. For some comic relief, much of it at Hannity’s expense, watch Stewart expose the “Fox-abetes” of exploiting tragedy.
(Sekulow image via screen grab)
