Now that ivermectin has been proven completely ineffective for treating COVID-19, Sean Hannity is trying to erase his record of cheerleading for the treatment. Unfortunately for him, Media Matters has receipts showing otherwise.
Last week, Media Matters published research showing that Fox News, which had promoted ivermectin nearly 300 times since December, had failed to tell its viewers the news about a major study showing the drug’s ineffectiveness. In keeping that important information hidden from its viewers, I wrote that the Murdoch-owned network would rather let them die from COVID.
Hannity, however, wants his fans to think he never promoted ivermectin in the first place. Unfortunately for him, there's a video record showing otherwise.
From Media Matters:
“People wrote this story, by the way, that I had been telling people [to use] ivermectin. Linda, is that not the one thing that I kept saying, there’s not a single study that I’ve seen that shows that it works?” he asked his producer on his nationally syndicated radio show on Friday. “One hundred percent,” she replied. He later suggested that his discussion of the drug was limited to hosting “guests on this program [who] mention it as part of their protocol; anecdotally they say it works.”
Hannity’s claim that he had waved his audience away from ivermectin is a bald-faced lie. In reality, last summer he sold his Fox and radio audiences out to the right-wing hucksters promoting the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. He repeatedly and recklessly touted the drug’s “incredible” promise as a COVID-19 therapeutic. While he claims now that he consistently said that not “a single study” shows that ivermectin works, at the time, he said that “numerous studies” proved that it did.
In fact, “Hannity was one of ivermectin’s most fervent proselytizers to the Fox audience,” Media Matters notes. “The drug was mentioned at least 25 times on Hannity from December 2020 through early April 2022, good for the fourth-most mentions of any Fox broadcast.”
This is not the first time Hannity has tried to rewrite his own history. In 2011, he laughably claimed that birtherism “never was my issue” despite another long record proving otherwise.
Maybe Hannity is counting on his elderly viewers to forget what he says. And clearly, he’d like us all to do just that. But just like his empty promise to undergo waterboarding for charity, we won’t forget.
You can watch the video that shows Hannity’s real record of promoting ivermectin below, via Media Matters.