Sean Hannity feigned sorrow to a group of guests who had lost family members to criminal immigrants but he was almost licking his chops at his latest ploy to whip up nativist fever. Unfortunately for him, he was soundly smacked down by Geraldo Rivera in the next segment.

Why we’re supposed to hear about tragedies like the awful shooting death of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco and hate immigrants more than other criminals yet not the proliferation of guns, I’ll never understand. But Hannity never seems happier than when he can promote hate and division. Even as he pretends to take the high ground - in order to attack other people for politicizing tragedy.

Hannity announced at the beginning of the segment, “First, to all of you my thoughts, prayers and condolences. I know this is devastating. You lose a family member.”

Yet Hannity never showed much interest in a single one of them beyond using their plight to push his “Donald Trump was right” narrative.

For example, in the middle of the first guest’s explanation as to what happened to her son, Hannity interrupted to say, “So in other words, this illegal immigrant had committed armed robbery, felonies, all these crimes and we still didn’t deport the guy. …Aren’t you angry? I would be so angry and I’d feel so betrayed by our government for not doing their job and deporting him.”

The mother was apparently sympatico with Hannity’s cause and said, “I appreciate you very much” for having her on. And I’ll bet she was coached before she appeared because she just happened to say, “Even though Donald Trump didn’t use the words I would have used and his message is a little rough – OK, but I thank him for bringing this up front.”

And so it went – until Rivera arrived in the next segment.

Rivera made the point that cherry picking criminal immigrants and suggesting they represent the millions of otherwise law-abiding immigrants is akin to saying that white mass killers represent Hannity and himself.

Even better, Rivera called out Hannity on his tactics:

RIVERA: You just put me in a place where I have to follow three grieving families. Very unfair. Very unfair. …It’s a very difficult situation. Wouldn’t it be as justifiable to say, “OK, here are these three or four or 300,000 crimes committed by undocumented. Now, here is 11 million people who walked their children to school today, who did the dirty jobs Americans wouldn’t do."

Then the real fireworks started.

If only Rivera had called out Hannity's blatant exploitation of the victims' families, too.

Watch it below, from the July 8 Hannity.