Fox News host Sean Hannity spent President Donald Trump’s last night in office lashing out at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling on McConnell to be replaced as the Senate’s Republican leader after the Kentucky senator called out Trump for provoking an insurrectionist mob.
Speaking from the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, McConnell blasted the president and “other powerful people” for inciting the Capitol riots, saying the “mob was fed lies” about the election being “stolen” from Trump via baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. Besides the president, it appeared that McConnell was sending a direct message to members of his caucus, notably Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), who spearheaded the effort to block President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.
Hannity, a close confidant and adviser to Trump, began his show by sharing a document from the White House that listed “1,000 Trump accomplishments,” insisting to his audience that “there is real stuff in here, real accomplishments.”
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From there, Hannity devoted much of the rest of his opening monologue to tearing into McConnell for not being sufficiently loyal to the outgoing president, who is currently suffering record low approval ratings for inciting a seditious mob to storm the Capitol in order to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election.
“Now soon-to-be minority leader Mitch McConnell and a handful of other long serving establishment Republicans are trying to reassert control of the GOP, and their playbook is sadly all too predictable,” Hannity grumbled. “Instead of picking up the mantle and promoting the president’s America First agenda, they are cowering in fear, wilting under the pressure from the media mob, liberal Democrats, and big tech companies.”
After asserting once again that the president did nothing to incite the MAGA mob, claiming that all Trump did was urge “his followers to peacefully and patriotically march to the Capitol so their voices could be heard,” the Fox News host groused that McConnell and other “establishment Republicans” were “spineless” for condemning the president.
“Establishment Republicans have no backbone, no principle, no courage, no vision,” he said. “Too many politicians in D.C. are just far too willing to go along, get along, and protect the swamp, and that is why conservatives like myself are tired of these empty promises and your rehearsed speeches and never getting anything done.”
Hannity, who has previously called on Senate Republicans to reject the “impeachment madness” and not take part in the Senate trial, then called for new GOP leadership.
“We need new leadership in the U.S. Senate,” he fumed. “You can represent the people of Kentucky. You’re showing basically right now that you’re the king of the establishment Republicans that, frankly, have always had and remain to have contempt for President Trump, but more importantly, the 75 million Americans that voted for him.”
Interestingly, while Hannity railed against the Republican Party for not having Trump’s back, he didn’t seem overly keen on the potential of a Trump-led independent political party.
“If you go back to 1964, Ronald Reagan gave a speech, a famous one called ‘The Time for Choosing,’” he said. “He asked the question rhetorically: Is it a third party the Republican Party needs? And he concluded no. He said we need a revitalized second party with no bull, bold colors, and no pale pastels.”
