Fox News host Sean Hannity—without a hint of irony—wondered aloud Monday night how anyone in America could trust the coronavirus coverage of the “outright conspiracy theorists” in the media.
Yes, the pro-Trump primetime star who called the coronavirus a “deep state” plot and suggested Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party murdered Seth Rich, is worried about conspiracy theorists.
In a live broadcast from the pier in front of the USNS Comfort in New York City on Monday, Hannity took issue with a number of MSNBC hosts’ criticism of President Donald Trump’s slow response to the COVID-19 crisis.
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Piggybacking on the right-wing outrage over Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asking Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden if he felt Trump had “blood” on his hands, Hannity called the question “pathetic” and accused the MSNBC anchor of propping up Biden to “bludgeon President Trump.”
Hannity then turned his attention to Todd’s “conspiratorial colleague” Rachel Maddow for criticizing Trump on March 20 for promising to send a hospital ship to New York “by next week,” something Maddow said “was nonsense,” as it wasn’t going to arrive by then.
Acknowledging that Maddow was technically correct, Hannity noted that the ship still arrived in 10 days and asked theatrically how Trump was ever going to recover.
He then took some additional shots at Maddow and her network.
“How does anyone trust the outright conspiracy theorists, that whole network full of lies, conspiracy theories, how?” Hannity fumed. “I never see one person get this much wrong over the span of four years and never gets called out. She does a disservice to her viewers.”
Hannity calling out others in the media for peddling conspiracies, especially surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, is rich, considering his own history.
Just in the past few weeks, and before he pivoted to taking the crisis seriously, the Fox News star suggested that the pandemic was a “deep state” plot to hurt the American economy, claimed liberals were “scaring people unnecessarily” about the virus in order the “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax,” and insisted Democrats were “weaponizing” the disease to take down the president.
Hannity, who spent weeks claiming COVID-19 was no more dangerous than the seasonal flu, also seemingly suggested earlier this month that people who vape could be immune to the deadly virus.
The Trump confidant is also well-known for peddling conspiracy theories about Democrats, especially former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Hannity was a leading promoter of the baseless theory that Clinton and the Democratic Party had DNC staffer Seth Rich murdered because he spoke to WikiLeaks. The Rich family later sued Fox News over the ordeal, and Hannity lost several advertisers.
