Chalk up Pat Buchanan as the latest white bigot to find a sympathetic platform on the Hannity show. Buchanan was recently fired from MSNBC in a move that Sean Hannity desperately tried to paint as an unjustified, ideological purging by intolerant liberals hell-bent on destroying conservatives. But that argument was undercut by Buchanan himself as he quite explicitly argued that having an ethnic majority made a country strong and that “one of the strengths of this country” was its predominantly western and European ethnicity when there were (only) 10% African Americans. Not even Hannity seemed able to spin that.

I’ve repeatedly noted that whenever a white person gets in trouble for bigotry, Sean Hannity is almost always right there with a friendly microphone and some racial rehab. That was certainly the case for Don Imus, Dr. Laura, Bill Bennett, Duane “Dog” Chapman, and Mel Gibson. So it was not much of a surprise to find Buchanan booked last for a double session on Hannity. But while Hannity was eager to give Buchanan a PR makeover, Buchanan was as blunt as ever with shockingly bigoted opinions.

Hannity did his best to depict Buchanan as a liberal media victim. He described Buchanan as “one of the few conservative voices on MSNBC” whose dismissal liberals were “breathlessly applauding.”

Buchanan went along so far. He and Hannity noted that Buchanan had a long history of interviewing people who were believed to hold “extreme ideas.” Buchanan said, “My idea in journalism was people should hear this. They should see these ideas confronted and challenged in real debate and the show was the highest rated show on cable for years and years.”

Fine, but he forgot to mention that he was one of those who hold what are seen as “extreme ideas.” Think Progress recently put together a list of Buchanan’s 10 most outrageous statements. They include such remarks as, “[T]he decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic;” and “Through history, all the great religions have condemned homosexuality and all the great nations have proscribed or punished it.”

Buchanan agreed with Hannity’s theory that he was the target of a liberal conspiracy to “blacklist” his “conservative and traditionalist thought.” He later said his views were “centered right” and “pretty much where the country was at.”

Hannity joined in the victimhood. He added, “And it’s on the heels of this investigative journalism by the Daily Caller about Media Matters, an enemies list, corroboration with the White House that they are confirming. Targeting the Fox News Channel because it allows some conservative voices on here… We’re really getting to the root of an organized campaign to smear, slander, stigmatize, destroy and ultimately silence conservative voices. Do you think that’s part of this?”

Buchanan thought so. He said that elements “predominantly on the hard left” find it “no longer enough to challenge and contradict and defeat or fight these fellas in arguments. We’ve got to smear them, stigmatize them as racists, or homophobic and then when we gotta silence and censor them and the way we do it is go after the media outlets that put them on the air… And they work behind closed doors, Sean… This is Un-American.”

In the second video below, Hannity honed in on Buchanan’s views on race as expressed in a chapter called “The End Of White America” in his latest book.

Buchanan said, “I don’t know a country in this day and age where there is no ethnic majority that is not in danger of coming apart.” He also said he didn’t know why the U.S. would be better off with “a smaller percentage of white folks.” Noting that people such as Bill Clinton had expressed glee over the rise of minority populations in the U.S., Buchanan complained, “Why can everybody else celebrate this and say it’s wonderful and I can’t even write about it without being blacklisted?”

Even Hannity seemed to recognize it might have a little something to do with the way Buchanan phrased things. Hannity tried to suggest a more palatable way of putting it. “Are you talking about the Judeo-Christian ethic? Is it more about culture and not about race? And if it’s more about culture, why don’t you say culturally America’s changing and not bring up the race issue?”

Because, apparently, Buchanan thinks it is about race. He responded, “(Yugoslavia) pulled apart on the basis of ethnicity and religion and culture. But in that same period, there was two separate countries that came together: Germany (and East Germany)… Now if you remove the ethnic core of a country, let’s say France, it’s only 50% native Frenchmen in France, I think you imperil the unity of the country and the culture which comes out of the religion. If the religion goes and the culture goes and the ethnic core go and the language goes, and they’ve got all languages and all groups and many religions, what holds a people together? I know what held us together… My point is that an ethnic core, in other words the fact that we were a western and European people predominantly and we had 10% African Americans – this was one of the strengths of this country as well as the culture.”

It’s a pretty jaw-dropping statement. But not to Hannity. He ignored the bigotry and went right back to portraying Buchanan as a victim whose “freedom of speech” was endangered.