President Barack Obama’s farewell address Tuesday night was high-minded and full of decency, integrity and grace. It was the exact opposite of Hannity’s mean-spirited and sneering response that was also careless with the truth.
In a lengthy opening monologue, Hannity accused Obama of “hiding the truth about his failed presidency,” as FoxNews.com put it. That was pretty ironic given that right now much of the political world is talking about possibly embarrassing and salacious information the Russians may know about Trump.
“He oversaw the precipitous decline of the American economy,” Hannity said about Obama, with a straight face. “That’s a fact.” No, it isn’t.
“By the time he leaves office, President Barack Hussein Obama will have accumulated more debt than all the other presidents before him, combined,” Hannity said, for a dash of race-baiting to go with the smears.
Hannity took a few more walks down smear-memory lane by bringing up Obama’s “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” claim about the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Of course, not mentioned was how Obamacare greatly increased coverage “while producing budget savings for states and reductions in uncompensated care costs for hospitals,” as the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
No, Hannity only focused on the premium hikes and those who lost their insurance plans before adding, “But the misery doesn’t end there.” As if the misery won’t be even greater if his wet dream of repealing the Affordable Care Act comes true and 24 million people would lose their health insurance.
As an Obamacare user myself, I’ll be the first to admit there are problems but it’s sickening (pun intended) to hear multimillionaire Hannity, who probably never worries a day in his life about a health care bill, salivate to remove a safety net for the rest of us.
Hannity followed up that opening with Laura Ingraham for some more classlessness. The segment began with the two mocking Obama. “You were laughing during the whole speech!” Hannity said gleefully. He laughingly imitated her throwing up her papers and saying, “I can’t take this!” about Obama’s speech.
Then Ingraham began ripping Obama’s record. “He struts like he just hit Lotto,” she sneered. As if he should have slunk away in shame like a Russian puppet who had betrayed his country. Oh, wait.
“He’s a masterful politician, I will never take that away from him,” Ingraham offered.
But even that was too much for Hannity. “You thought they were crocodile tears, don’t lie,” he interrupted, referring to the moment that Obama dabbed his eyes. Then Hannity folded his arms with a wide grin.
As Hannity cackled, Ingraham mocked Obama dabbing his eyes. “A man’ll be like whatever,” she said, suggesting that Obama isn’t a real man.
The two grudgingly acknowledged that Obama is a “smart guy,” as Ingraham put it. “He’s not a dumb person.” Again, Hannity couldn’t even give Obama that much graciously. “I think he is a man of his indoctrination.”
Ingraham “joked” that we don’t know what grades he got in college, an old Trump attack.
“Now, you’re gonna ask for his birth certificate,” Hannity quipped in response.
Hilarious, eh?
You probably get the picture.
But there was one moment, at about 5:17, when Hannity hinted that he may be a tad nervous about Trump and the Russians after all.
HANNITY: You’re not buying the narrative of Donald Trump and he might have been blackmailable? Now we believe the Russians, we didn’t believe the Russians –
Ingraham replied by saying that she once lived in the Soviet Union, in 1983. “They’re always looking for ways to undermine the American system,” she continued. “None of this surprises me. This is what they do. This is what they’re all about.”
“I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as the days go on,” Ingraham added.
Yes, I’m sure we will.
And we’ll also remember this trashy tastelessness when Hannity starts whining about the left not being supportive enough of Trump.
Meanwhile, watch it below, from the January 10, 2017 Hannity.
NO CLASS!
:^)
[with apologies to Bill Cosby]
You’re right, Richard Peterson. Old Hannocchio did not get his prized 9 p.m. time slot back. His audience is comprised of older viewers, past the 25 to 54 age group that advertisers prefer. Also, he’s lost his good looks, and continues to gain weight. The suits prefer a younger, good looking face to attract a younger audience, especially females.
Hannocchio complained in the past about how some people were treating him at the network. He feels he’s not appreciated. Poor, old baby. Cry us a river. The suits are doing him a favor by keeping him employed. No other networks wants this half-educated clown, and the suits know it.
Coming down the pipeline for 2017:
1. Hannocchio goes to Washington to visit Trumpster at the White House.
2. Hannocchio receives bombshell news.
3. Hannocchio gets in major, MAJOR trouble, again.
4. Hannocchio is the new face of the Kremlin.
5. Hannocchio loses friendships.
Only Austan Goolsbee was able to point out, very late in the show, that Hannity’s numbers depend on him including the drag from 2009, when the economy was still tanking from the incompetence of the W Bush presidency. Meaning that Hannity’s repeated attacks on the Obama presidency have always been rooted in trying to saddle Obama with the responsibility for the mess he was trying to clean up when he got into office. It’s similar to Hannity’s little trick in 2011 and 2012 of trying to make it look like Obama had caused gas prices to surge – done by cherry picking the start of his graph to happen in January 2009 and ignoring that gas prices had suddenly plummeted in the final quarter of 2008 after skyrocketing throughout the W Bush presidency.
But this dismissive and mean-spirited response to President Obama is what will be coming from the Right as the Pence White House sets to work. Two weeks from now, it is expected that very little will remain of the Obama presidency short of the presence of Sotomayor and Kagan on the Supreme Court. Hannity was practically salivating over the upcoming destruction of the ACA – and he was blatantly lying about the prospects of actually creating legislation that would provide health coverage for the millions using it. As we’ve repeatedly discussed here, the GOP has no plan to actually replace the ACA that they can agree on – they only agree that they want it gone immediately so they can announce its demise and thus retroactively spin the Obama presidency as a total failure.
It will be extremely important for websites like this to continue to point out the truth of what these people are doing, and how they are flat out lying about even our recent history. There won’t be anything concrete we will have left of the work Obama attempted to accomplish, but we will need to remember the effort – something that the Right will desperately try to pretend never happened. For people like Hannity, they’re going to party like it’s 2001 all over again, where the rules change once the GOP gets back into the White House. As of January 20th, anyone criticizing the Pence Administration will be accused of treason or worse, because as we all know, it’s unpatriotic to not embrace someone like Trump as the official spokesman for the United States…