Fox News host Sean Hannity has been as enthusiastically supportive of President Donald Trump’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as you would expect. And the president rewarded him handsomely with an interview from Singapore that will air Tuesday night.
But as The Daily Show expertly demonstrated in an online-only video that hit Twitter just as Hannity’s broadcast began, he was not quite as supportive of handing diplomatic victories to murderous dictators when Barack Obama was in office.
For instance, Hannity said Trump “deserves a lot of credit for being willing to talk to somebody that everybody thought would be a bad idea.” And yet, after Obama shook hands with Raul Castro for the first time in 2013 at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa, Hannity asked, “Is it just me or does it look like President Obama is more willing to give his time to our enemies than our allies?”
ADVERTISEMENT
While Trump drew comparisons to Ronald Reagan from Hannity for the way he handled Kim, the host compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain for “catering to dictators” in 2010. And whereas Hannity sees “no downside” and “only a win” when it comes to the Singapore summit, he blasted Obama for “showing a lot of weakness” just five years earlier.
Hannity’s change of tune mirrors that of White House Director of Strategic Communications Mercedes Schlapp, who seems to be on board with the Kim summit this week but in 2016 tweeted an attack on Obama for shaking Castro’s hand, writing, “next shakes hands with NK dictator Kim Un Jung?”
