Sean Hannity was so eager to use the death of George H.W. Bush to smear Democrats and the non-Trump-worshipping media, that he swept up former Bush staffer Anita McBride in his accusations of hypocrisy – and wound up proving his own disingenuousness.
It takes a special person to use the death of a president as a cudgel to go after political foes but Hannity proved himself quite up to the task last night:
HANNITY: The mainstream media viciously attacking any prominent Republicans, all while providing cover to all of their friends in the Democratic Party. Reagan was portrayed as a heartless monster the eight years he was president. George Bush literally bashed for his speaking style among other things. John McCain excoriated throughout the 2008 campaign as racist and worse. Mitt Romney called a sexist and misogynist because he wanted to hire women.
Apparently, these attacks are just obviously completely disingenuous when you have the people die and all of a sudden, they now like them. -- Like we saw with Senator McCain. Most of the mainstream media, oh, they'll do a 180 after they excoriated him when he was running for president and treated him horribly, seemingly forgetting about their nasty coverage. A pattern to destroy people's names and character when they're alive and then create a veneer of bipartisanship and then we’ll say nice things about somebody when the person dies. It's so transparently phony. We’ve got the video evidence.
Part of Hannity’s “video evidence” was a clip of McBride saying about Bush, “Such respect for the position, the institution of the presidency.”
Apparently, because McBride appeared on CNN and was identified onscreen as “American Univ. Center for Congressional & Pres. Studies,” Hannity just assumed she must be a liberal enemy. In fact, she’s surely far closer to Bush and the Bush family than Hannity ever was. Her faculty profile includes the following:
McBride previously served as assistant to President George W. Bush and chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush from 2005 to 2009, directing the staff’s work on the wide variety of domestic and global initiatives in which Mrs. Bush was involved. She had primary responsibility for the First Lady’s efforts to support US foreign policy objectives in human rights, women’s empowerment, global health and human freedom. She directed Mrs. Bush’s travel to 67 countries in 4 years including historic visits to Afghanistan, the Middle East and the Thai-Burma border.
McBride's White House service spans two decades and three presidential administrations, including as Director of White House Personnel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush; and as Director of the U.S. Speaker's Bureau at the United States Information Agency.
Also under President George W. Bush, McBride served as a special assistant for White House Management; as senior advisor in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Organizations and as the State Department's White House liaison.
Hannity’s so-called evidence also included a clip of MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle tearing up over Bush’s death, thus baselessly suggesting that she was faking her tears. Ruhle responded on Twitter last night:
DEAR HANNITY... MEET HUMANITY
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) December 4, 2018
It is true.After watching a heart wrenching video narrated by the late Barbara Bush reading her husband's letter about their daughter Robin who lost her battle with leukemia at age 3, I got choked up on tv@seanhannity is right
Today i was a human https://t.co/JBo2JcBybq
Hannity’s BS gotchas only proved that nobody is a bigger phony Bush mourner than himself.
Watch Hannity smear McBride below. Hannity’s whine about disingenuousness begins at 5:28.
It’s also a shame that Hannity is twisting the death of Bush to “literally bash” his own political opponents.