Fox News says it isn’t happy with two of its stars, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, openly campaigning in President Donald Trump’s behalf, but it won’t say what, if anything, it’s doing about it.
The network issued a statement Tuesday saying it “does not condone” any of its hosts participating in campaign events, as Hannity and Pirro did Monday night during a Trump rally in Missouri. The statement added, “This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.”
On Monday, Hannity assured his nearly 4 million Twitter followers that he would not join Trump on stage for his rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and that he would not campaign with him. While the Trump team described him as a “special guest,” the top-rated host maintained that he was simply covering the president’s final rally for his show. “Something I have done in every election in the past,” he added.
About 12 hours later, though, he delivered a lengthy campaign advertisement for the president, and for the Republican Party, and then joined Trump onstage to recite his achievements and thank him. “Promises made, promises kept,” said Hannity, echoing the president’s campaign slogan.
Hannity also pointed to the press corral at the rally and added, “By the way, all those people in the back are fake news.” The press contingent included reporters and producers from Fox News, which was covering the rally.
Hannity told Trump how popular he was among his supporters.
“I went out there an hour before the show, and the crowd is electric,” he said. “Every hat I signed … every hat was soaking wet. There’s a bigger crowd outside than there is inside.”
Hannity tried to clean up both his broken promise not to campaign for Trump and his apparent insult of his own network’s journalists in a tweet Tuesday: “What I said in my tweet yesterday was 100% truthful,” he wrote. “When the POTUS invited me on stage to give a few remarks last night, I was surprised, yet honored by the president’s request. This was NOT planned. And to be clear, I was not referring to my journalist colleagues at FOX News in those remarks. They do amazing work day in and day out in a fair and balanced way and It is an honor to work with such great professionals.”
Pirro also appeared at the rally but had no comment about it afterward.
(c) 2018, The Washington Post · Paul Farhi, Isaac Stanley-Becker
{Matzav.com}
Wow, as I knew all along, Faux news are just a bunch of Rinos who are still upset that their darling Jeb Bush wasn’t coronated. Hannity should follow Mark Levin and go on CRTV.