Under fire over revelations that he deliberately misled the public about the threat and severity of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump ran to Bedtime BFF Sean Hannity, where the two pretended that he lied to prevent panic – and then fear mongered with abandon about Joe Biden, our voting process and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
As you probably know by now, Bob Woodward has come forward with recordings of Trump privately admitting that the coronavirus is five times more deadly than the flu, then repeatedly likened it to the flu in public. Woodward also has a recording of Trump admitting about the virus, “I wanted to always play it down” and “I still like playing it down.”
Like many of his colleagues, Hannity spun Trump’s lies as the mark of an awesome leader. First, in his “history lesson,” Hannity likened His Beloved to Franklin Roosevelt during the depression:
HANNITY: Did President Roosevelt fan the flames of misery? Did he call for panic and anxiety? No, he actually rallied a nation in a time of need. He focused on making Americans stronger by staying positive, and he got to work and he rolled up his sleeves.
Later, when Trump phoned in, he cast himself in the same light:
TRUMP: But if you look at what I said today, I said, don't panic. We don't want to be jumping up and down and going wild. Don't panic. I'm a cheerleader for this country. And I don't want to see panic.
[…]
TRUMP: But what I want to show is, I want to show a calmness. I'm the leader of the country, I can't be jumping up and down and scaring people. I don't want to scare people. I want people not to panic. And that's exactly what I did.
But before the interview was over, Trump and Hannity proved they are perfectly happy scaring people when it suits their political purposes:
Here’s Trump not just touting his list of prospective Supreme Court picks but deliberately trying to alarm Americans about what will happen if Biden gets to choose:
TRUMP: And you -- the whole country, it depends on these decisions, which way you go, whether you have a Second Amendment or not. I mean, the Second Amendment would be under siege.
If I wasn't here, you wouldn't have a Second Amendment right now. You wouldn't have a right to guns. You would -- whether you had it or it was just almost totally obliterated, but it would be in a very different form than you have right now.
…
But the reason he possibly won't [release a list of Supreme Court picks] is because he's going to come up with far radical left judges. I mean, these will be people that are very, very far to the left, that are, you know, revolutionary in a sense, I think, and he's got to come up with them.
I don't know that they're going to allow, because they control him totally. They control Joe Biden. He's not controlled -- he is not in control of himself. He is controlled by the radical left, it's a very dangerous part of our society, and he is totally controlled.
Of course, Hannity had no problem with that rhetoric.
The two undermined mail-in voting with baseless fearmongering:
TRUMP: It's really a corrupt system. And you watch, they have a plan, and the plan is not a good plan. They look to tie it all up, because they can't control the ballots on a small congressional race and smaller races even than that. And now you're going to control 80 million ballots? I don't think so.
HANNITY: Well, Attorney General Barr has warned about it. The Heritage Foundation has identified almost a thousand convictions on the issue of voter fraud, almost 1,300 examples of voter fraud.
And Dangerous Blacks Behaving Badly! By the way, Trump did not and cannot send in the National Guard to any city.
HANNITY: Let me ask you about the violence that has been going on well over 100 days in American cities, New York, obviously, Chicago.
We have Portland. We have Seattle. We have Los Angeles. We had Kenosha.
Three cities that did request your help and assistance: D.C., Minnesota, Kenosha. You were able to send in the Guard. They restored order.
You've been begging the De Blasios and Mayor Lightfoot, and Ted Wheeler, and the governor of -- I'm sorry, the mayor of Seattle, pretty much begging them to allow you to help them restore order.
Joe Biden had said at one point, police become the enemy, wants to reallocate funds. Kamala Harris was for the reallocation, on defunding the LAPD $150 million. You got a billion dollars now cut from the New York PD.
Why do you think that these mayors and governors steadfastly refuse your offered assistance to restore order?
TRUMP: Well, Kenosha is a great example. That was ready to burn down after three nights. And we went in with the National Guard and just closed it out. It took, like, so quick.
And Minneapolis is another example. That was burn -- the problem was it was burning for two weeks before the National Guard came in. And once the National Guard came in, it was over.
It took -- you saw it, 45 minutes to one hour, and it was all over. This was going on for weeks.
…
These -- they are all Democrat-run cities. And they're not a well-run. And they are very, very -- they become very unsafe, because the level is so ridiculous. They do want to defund the police.
FACT CHECK: Biden has specifically said he does not want to defund the police.
You can see proof that Trump’s excuse for lying to the public about the coronavirus pandemic was just another lie below, from the September 9, 2020 Hannity.
