Sean Hannity clearly could not wait for the latest law-enforcement press conference on the mass shooting in Las Vegas to be over so he could launch into his planned monologue about how he believes the left is “exploiting a tragedy.”
The Fox News host began by praising the country group Big and Rich, which had the entire crowd at the Route 91 Harvest festival holding their lit phones aloft and singing “God Bless America” together on Sunday evening, before the shooting took place.
Then Hannity took a hard political turn. “You saw within literally hours the left politicizing this event before any facts were known,” he said.
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By Monday night, however, we knew a lot of facts about the shooting, most importantly that a lone gunman used dozens of rifles that were altered to mimic fully automatic weapons to kill 59 people and wound more than 500. Hence the calls for “common sense” gun-safety restrictions in the attack’s aftermath.
Hannity started by going after late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, who he said were “lining up at the chance to exploit this incident for political purposes,” when what they should have been doing it singing “God Bless America” like Big and Rich.
“This is beyond shameful,” Hannity said of their “political statements, calling for things like gun control less than 24 hours after something like this happened, while people are still grieving and victims are still in the hospital, before we have any and all facts. It’s utterly disgraceful.”
“Really, late-night host, you can’t resist the urge for one night?” Hannity asked. “Put aside your radical left-wing policies. And by the way, you’re often so wrong about the issue.” He did not say how, in this case, they were wrong. Or what exactly was so radical about curbing instruments of mass murder.
From there, Hannity proceeded to attack celebrities like Lena Dunham and “the great political philosopher” Lady Gaga, who used their Twitter accounts to speak out on guns. “Lady Gaga, where were you when all the violence in Chicago was happening?” he asked.
“Celebrities are completely out of touch,” Hannity said. “Here is the hypocrisy. They want to disarm all of us. All of you, the American people, preventing you to have the right to protect yourself and protect your family. How many of them live in expensive multimillion-dollar gated communities? How many of them have armed security anytime they leave their house?”
Along the way, Hannity also took shots at Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che for calling Trump a “cheap cracker” in reference to his Puerto Rico response and Hillary Clinton for daring to suggest that “more guns do not keep you safer.” In Hannity’s words, “She’s just bitter and angry and frankly a disgraced ex-presidential candidate.”
“Now is not the time to make cheap political points, divide the country, push your cheap political agenda and try to use the tragedy to further a bitter partisan agenda,” Hannity concluded. “How about the country can come together like they did an hour before this terrible shooting and nearly 30,000 people with their cellphones in the air and lights bright as the light can see singing ‘God Bless America?’”
Because that’s what it would take to stop the next deadliest mass shooting in American history.
Perhaps worst of all is that this is the rant that President Donald Trump wanted the American people to see tonight. From Puerto Rico, he retweeted a message from Hannity promising “the truth about how despicable the media and the left are in America today.”
Instead, both men proved that to be true of themselves.
