Sean Hannity was apparently punked by a parody news site that said the U.S. is taking in 250,000 Syrian refugees. Even worse, after Hannity relayed the “news” to Donald Trump, he repeated it on the campaign trail. UPDATED
PolitiFact caught Hannity on October 20 and 21 claiming that the U.S. is taking in 250,000 Syrian refugees. Hannity also fear mongered that ISIS would try to infiltrate the group. PolitiFact could find no basis for such a claim other than from a hoax article from the fake news site, Real News Right Now. Hannity’s claim was rated Pants On Fire by the fact-checking site.
Even worse, Hannity’s falsehood made it into the Trump campaign a few days later.
From Media Matters:
At a New Hampshire town hall event broadcast by NBC, Matt Lauer pressed Trump on his belief that refugees who have escaped Syria and entered the United States should be deported. Trump defended his position by saying, “Now we’re going to take in 250,000 people, they’re coming from areas we don’t know.” He added, “They have no papers, no documents,” and declared, “this could be the greatest Trojan horse of all time.”
Media Matters also pointed out that this is far from the first time Trump has parroted right-wing media myths as his own talking points.
Meanwhile, will Hannity correct the record? Stay tuned.
Watch Hannity and Trump promote the falsehood below, via PolitiFact:
10/28/15 UPDATE: Hannity "explained" where he got his numbers - and the explanation may be even worse than falling for a fake news report.
“So our Impact Mobile unit does not have a “hide” tab like our desktop Impact Display does – instead there’s an actual “X” in the corner, fairly large, that they hit to close the ad.
I will check with our Tech team to see if they have seen this issue before, but I suspect it could be a faulty creative that snuck through our exchange through a bad actor. If you could let me know what brand or URL is associated with the creative, as well as any screenshots you can grab, I will go in and attempt to find the buyer and block them asap!"
In other words, you should be able to get out of the ad and if you can’t, let me know what product the ad is for. If you can get a screen grab of it, that’s even better.
The one eyed man is selling ’em TV time and laughing all the way to the bank.
