Herman Cain, the 2012 presidential candidate known for his ignorance about foreign policy, played an expert on the subject for Fox News as he agreed with a host that dropping bombs on Syria and Afghanistan proved what a Glorious Leader Donald Trump is.
You may recall that candidate Cain once boasted about being an ignoramus on international affairs: "And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know? And then I'm going to say, 'How's that going to create one job?'" In 2013, the MaddowBlog further noted:
[Cain is] a guy who doesn’t know China has nuclear weapons. He said the U.S. can’t launch a military strike against Iran because it’s “very mountainous.” He thinks “Cuban” is a language. Asked about an international military conflict in Libya, he said, “I got all this stuff twirling around in my head.”
Thursday night, this same Herman Cain was presented to the Hannity show viewers as a credible analyst of Trump's foreign-policy prowess.
“The days of America leading from behind are over!” substitute host Kimberly Guilfoyle gushed at the beginning of the discussion.
Her first question for Cain: “So after this week, how much leverage do you think that the United States has gained or lost with Russia when it comes to this situation in Syria?”
It’s “gone up significantly,” Cain assured us. His only “evidence” was that Trump will “lead from the front.” As Cain spoke, a graphic on the lower right blared, “LEADING FROM THE FRONT” next to an image of Trump. Also,“he is decisive and not afraid to act,” Cain said.
So who cares if he make the right or wrong decision or takes the right or wrong actions? He looks presidential! Being a white Republican doesn’t hurt Trump on Fox, either.
Of course, nobody discussed how Trump's "leverage" might be affected by a report in The Guardian that day saying that the FBI has "specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion ... between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material."
But hey, Trump is consistent and decisive! “[The bomb dropping] was consistent with the rhetoric during the campaign,” Guilfoyle said approvingly. “He’s getting these intel reports and acting decisively within the first hundred days of his administration.”
Unfortunately, North Korea has not gotten the awesomely awesome message, Cain has somehow determined. “They aren’t listening,” he said. But the rest of the world is! China is and Russia, too, “even though they are in denial about what happened in Syria,” according to Cain. He also said he hopes it sends “a strong message to Iran.”
I hate to bring up Ted Koppel because it’s such a sore subject with Sean Hannity. But this discussion is exactly the kind of fact-free ideology Koppel was referring to when he said Hannity is bad for America.
Hannity responded to the criticism by whining for six days about how unfair Koppel had been to him. But Hannity was half right. Koppel had argued, “You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.” In reality, Hannity and his fellow Fox colleagues promote ideology over facts.
This was a perfect example.
Watch it below, from the April 13, 2017 Hannity show.
