Hannity: Trump Was Set Up in ABC Interview to Create ‘Phony Outrage’

Fox News host Sean Hannity led his primetime show Wednesday night by not only defending President Trump saying he’d take foreign dirt on a 2020 candidate if it were offered, but also insisting that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos had set the president up in order to create a media outrage cycle.

The conservative Fox star, who has been called the White House shadow chief of staff, groused that “Democrats and their friends in the media are still fixated on one issue and one only—raged psychosis against the president.”

Turning to Stephanopoulos’ interview, Hannity told his viewers that they needed to see this “amazing setup,” playing a clip of Trump saying “there’s nothing wrong with listening” if foreign figures offer information about a political opponent and that he’d “want to hear it” if another country called.

“This is what’s fascinating—let’s be very clear,” Hannity reacted. “You might want to listen. Listening is much different than, let’s see, lying, spying, and paying for Russian lies and spreading it through the media via Deep State operatives and using it as a basis for a FISA warrant.”

After complaining that the media was not outraged over Hillary Clinton “paying for Russian lies” and former FBI Director James Comey supposedly using “unverifiable data from Russia to spy on the Trump campaign,” the pro-Trump host proceeded to explain his theory about the interview being a setup.

“This will all get another round of fake, phony, moral selective outrage over that interview but it’s the perfect setup because if they are outraged about that and how can you not be outraged over what I just said?” Hannity asked. “That’s all to be expected.”

“In many ways, that was a genius setup because the media mob will fall right into his trap breathlessly spewing fake, phony outrage over a non-story for days,” he added. “We’ll be showing you the tape this time tomorrow night, ignoring the real abuse of power that took place in 2016 and the real Russian dossier that was bought and paid for and then used as a basis to spy on the Trump campaign.”