Sean Hannity pretended that Donald Trump’s incitement of insurrection was merely suggesting “marching peacefully and patriotically to let your voices be heard” in order to smear Democrats as “far more guilty of insurrection.”

Media Matters caught Hannity’s deceit on his radio show yesterday. After playing clips of a number of Democrats obviously speaking metaphorically about fighting, he played a clip of Trump saying, on January 6, the day his supporters violently stormed the Capitol, “I know that everybody here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

But there’s an important context here, which Hannity – who, let’s not forget, has promoted a different armed insurrection – conveniently left out. And that is that Trump was not just arguing for a “patriotic” protest about policy, he had riled up the crowd with lies about a stolen election.

More than 60 courts rejected those claims as did Trump’s own attorney general. They’re the kinds of lies that just got Fox and some of Hannity’s colleagues hit with a $2.7+ billion defamation suit.

Here's some of the inciteful hate mongering Trump also said that day, which Hannity conveniently ignored:

TRUMP: We have hundreds of thousands of people here and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media. Turn your cameras please and show what’s really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer. They’re not going to take it any longer. 

…

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal.

…

We want to go back and we want to get this right because we’re going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed and we’re not going to stand for that.

…

Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing ...

…

Because right over there, right there, we see the event going to take place. And I’m going to be watching. Because history is going to be made. We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders, or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity they’ll be ashamed.

…

We will not be intimidated into accepting the hoaxes and the lies that we’ve been forced to believe.

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You will have an illegitimate president [with Biden]. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen. 

…

The Republicans have to get tougher. You’re not going to have a Republican Party if you don’t get tougher. They want to play so straight. They want to play so, sir, yes, the United States. The Constitution doesn’t allow me to send them back to the States. Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can’t vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.

You might notice that Hannity didn’t actually defend Trump’s incitement or lies, he just tried to distract from them by ratcheting up partisan acrimony and claiming Democrats are worse.

HANNITY: Alright, so, apparently everybody uses the word “fight fight fight" -- not just Donald Trump.

And apparently if we're gonna define insurrection as “marching peacefully and patriotically to let your voices be heard" -- well, I would say all these Democrats we keep playing are a lot more -- a lot -- they are far more guilty of insurrection than Donald Trump.

Guest Newt Gingrich said, “Of course.”

You can listen to Trump’s Bedtime BFF try to whitewash Trump’s seditious behavior below, from the February 4, 2021 The Sean Hannity Show, via Media Matters.

(Hannity image via screen grab)