For at least the past year and a half, Sean Hannity has regularly made comments targeting President Biden’s mental fitness, some days doing so more explicitly than others.
Friday night was no exception, with Hannity telling his audience that the president was spending the weekend in Delaware with “a lot of ice cream” and “a lot of nap time.” On this particular broadcast, though, Hannity also read word for word a statement from a Kremlin spokesperson.
“‘Given such irritability from Mr. Biden, his fatigue and sometimes forgetfulness…fatigue that leads to aggressive statements, we will not make harsh assessments, so as not to cause more aggression,’” Hannity said, quoting Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. (The statement was issued Friday after Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin “a war criminal.”)
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Hannity used this to launch into a criticism of Biden’s foreign policy.
“Now like I’ve been saying, Biden’s weakness on the world’s stage—it is emboldening bad actors all across the globe,” he claimed. Biden and Democrats, he said, “abandoned the peace through strength strategy that was successful” under Presidents Trump and Reagan.
That Hannity would give airtime to a Kremlin statement of this sort is not surprising, given the right-wing host’s past statements.
After a 2020 presidential debate, Hannity said, “Maybe somebody on the staff might want to remind the ever-forgetful Joe that he is running for president. He’s not running for senator.” The Trump confidante added, “He keeps forgetting, forgets the day of the week, forgets what office he’s running for. He is running for president, not senator. Somebody remind him!”
In March 2021, Hannity—who followed Trump’s lead by calling Biden “Sleepy Joe”—said he saw a “dramatic, significant decline.” Biden “looks weak, frail, and obviously he’s struggling cognitively,” he claimed.
In May of that year, he gifted Biden a “sippy cup”—the implication being pretty clear.
And most recently, Hannity in January shamelessly aired a GOP ad designed to draw attention to Biden’s pauses during a press conference. “It appears to me to be very transparent, very obvious, very clear… that Joe Biden is in a steep cognitive decline,” he said afterward. “It seems to be accelerating to me.”
