Sean Hannity: Make Russia Great Again!
A Twitter account called “Donnie Lil’ Hands” yesterday tweeted at Sean Hannity: “@seanhannity @RowdyBob89 YES! All Americans must join together to MAKE RUSSIA GREAT AGAIN. Teamwork!! #MRGA.” Apparently not recognizing that “Donnie Lil’ Hands” was a Trump parody account, and that the tweet was sarcasm, Hannity fired off his agreement:
Hannity later deleted the tweet and apologized, saying that he thought the tweeter had been saying “Make America Great Again” and not “Make Russia Great Again.”
Sad!
Full disclosure: I used to enjoy watching Sean Hannity years ago, and was once very flattered when he featured one of my blog posts on his show. But like many Republicans these days, his partisan infatuation with Donald Trump has caused him to turn soft on enemies of America like Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin. The man who once said Assange “is apparently not done waging his war against the U.S.” changed his tune after Assange helped Trump, saying: “you have done a lot of good in what you have exposed about how corrupt, dishonest, and phony our government is.” (Perhaps one day he’ll tell us that he didn’t realize he was interviewing Julian Assange; he really thought he was talking to Thomas Sowell or something.)
I’m still working on my review of Garry Kasparov’s Winter Is Coming, but he makes a point in the book that is relevant here: Americans need to show solidarity with the Russian people, and not the Russian government. And the only way to do that is to reject Vladimir Putin, and instead support the freedom fighters in Russia who oppose him — the brave journalists who risk being murdered to expose his corruption, and the opposition leaders and dissidents who are thrown in jail, poisoned, or shot for the offense of questioning the Great President. The U.S. can’t get rid of Putin, of course — that will be up to Russians — but the U.S. can make things more difficult for Putin, by refusing to grant him the legitimacy he craves.
Unforunately, Donald Trump seems to be headed in precisely the opposite direction. And partisans like Sean Hannity are cheering him every step of the way.
[Cross-posted at RedState.]
Sean Hannity has always been Fox News’ dullest knife in the drawer.
Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:13 amHis radio show is unlistenable, and on his tv show he wears a suit and tie above the waist — but he wears blue jeans and sneakers knowing that they won’t be seen by the camera.
You can’t just wear a full suit like a grown-up?
oh my goodness he read it wrong
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:19 amI have tried getting hannity to quit being such a bully with callers who offered the slightest deviation from fawning over his opinions, but finally gave up, he is a right Wing equivalent of a Leftist partisan hack. one reason I like you Patterico, you’re not afraid to call ’em as they are, good, bad, or ugly.:-\
neocon_1 (0a21d6) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:41 amBullying does get old, neocon_1, whether it’s from the right or the left.
DRJ (15874d) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:42 ambullying is whack get on the right track
#stopblmtorture
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:54 amGuy trolled Hannity and he foolishly retweeted it.
Sigh.
NJRob (43d957) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:55 amKissinger said nations don’t have friends, they have interests. Clausewitz said war is politics by other means, and that presumably includes cyberwar as part of the included middle between bullets and ballots. Russia has been a player in the Great Game since before we won our independence, and yes, Putin thinks of himself not as the heir of Gorbachev or even Lenin, but Peter the Great, who’d surely understand and applaud the manner in which the Bear is effectively annexing Syria as a client state, projecting Russian power into what’s been an American lake since WW2, the Mediterranean Sea. So when hackers pointed Putin to the proverbial intelligence birds-nest on the ground, practically gift-wrapped for them by the DNC and the Clintonista crowd, of course they would use every bit of that information to what Putin thinks is Russia’s best advantage.
The left can’t follow this simple chain of logic, partly because they don’t want to — they’re too obsessed with “explaining” how Trump could possibly have won — but mostly because on issues of foreign policy and national defense, they are eternal naive children who are insufficiently serious to ever be trusted with the reins of government.
This has been true at least since WW2: That rat b*stard Castro lived this long based on JFK’s promise to the Russians that we wouldn’t invade Cuba to depose him, given as part of the Cuban Missile Crisis shakedown, which JFK himself prompted by his foolish, disastrously premature summit with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961.
Most people with any intellectual honesty and understanding of irony, left or right, can appreciate the richness of our current circumstances, given that the Dems habitually accuse the GOP of making the Russians into bogeymen to justify military spending, pork, imperialism, miscellaneous other -isms, etc. The only reason that joke works is that this isn’t a new debate, it’s a very old, ritually familiar one, but with the variation occasioned by the entry of Trump into the matrix.
And Trump is a chaos agent, for better we may hope, but assuredly sometimes for worse. I don’t think his administration is actually going to have any clearly-articulated and defined principles from which it never varies. That’s not to say it will be entirely unprincipled; rather, it’s to say that the Trump Administration’s position can never be described with precision, only what the quantum physicists refer to as a “probability cloud.”
Beldar (fa637a) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:56 amStill no one asks, much less answers, the questions I think are crucial:
What else did the hackers get that they haven’t released or used yet, and what risks to national security, or even just political order, does that information pose?
And:
Who else besides the Russians — but not limited to nation-states — got access to this stuff, and with what potential consequences?
These unknowns bother me a whole lot more than trying to second-guess the number of votes arguably swung by the Wikileaks stuff, which is Monday morning quarterbacking at its worst.
Beldar (fa637a) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:00 amthis whole russians ate my baby thing is stale popsicles
it’s a completely bogus fake news propaganda effort meant to mess with meghan’s weak-minded and cowardly disgrace-to-the-uniform daddy
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:06 amI never liked Sean Hannity. But for that matter I never liked Trump. Still don’t.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:12 amExcept the Russian people do support volodyas wannabe czar persona, the one strong alternative is navalny, and he isn’t popular among some elements of the intelligentsia echoed by Ben judah by his plain speaking.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:13 amHannity is the mental equivalent of a barrel full of fish.
Kevin M (25bbee) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:14 amAnd what is bill o’reilly, day old chum, and meagain, going over to the island of inveterate hacks (MSNBC)
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:16 amKasparov may be the last of the old class of dissident, but the whole project was compromised with their identification with oligarchs and cronyism.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:20 am@narcisco:Except the Russian people do support volodyas wannabe czar persona
I think there is simply no way to know this. It is not safe, in Russia, to openly oppose Putin.
For context, consider that the People’s Republic of China has NINE official, legal political parties. Of course, only one of them matters, and the other eight are careful to offer no meaningful opposition.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:22 amThe most interesting part of Hannity’s radio show is when he whines about the tough workouts his personal trainer puts him through.
He makes $25 million a year — it’s a thug life!
I also enjoy when he spends 15 minutes without end talking to his production staff about their dating lives and their pets.
Must we endure anymore stories about how he used to be a dishwasher at a restaurant? Everyone has had a low-paying job like that when they were a teenager/young adult, so I wish he’d stop acting as if he used to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:23 amThis is actually possible.
Sean Hannity could have missed that, just likeyou can miss seeing the word “the” both at the end of one line and the beginning of another,.
What was the “YES!” a response to? I can’t find out quickly.
Sammy Finkelman (2178a8) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:33 amBeldar (fa637a) — 1/9/2017 @ 9:56 am
It was at that summit that Nikita Khrushchev told Presidnet Kennedy that he owed his election to him, because they had refused to return the U-2 Pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
I see that the washington Post has now noticed this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/06/this-kremlin-leader-bragged-about-tipping-a-u-s-presidential-election/
You need a little bit of knowledge of political history or a memory too, but most people discussing this know this. And Trump is a chaos agent, for better we may hope, but assuredly sometimes for worse. No, Hillary is a KAOS agent. Trump, hopefully is CONTROL. Hopefully. So long as the worst thing is that he acts crazily. Of course, he’s got taht sadist in the Cabinet, Jeff Sessions.
He seems to have appointed people with different and contradictory political positions, and the last time that’s said to have happened is with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Sammy Finkelman (2178a8) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:46 amThis wasn’t formatted properly:
Beldar @7:
No, Hillary is a KAOS agent. Trump, hopefully is CONTROL. Hopefully. So long as the worst thing is that he acts crazily.
Of course, he’s got that sadist in the Cabinet, Jeff Sessions. (That’s what he’s hiding. The New York Times (and Democrats) are complaining that he hasn’t turned over all of his speeches and interviews to the Senate Judiciary Committee. They wonder what he’s hiding.)
Sammy Finkelman (2178a8) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:50 amWell the shootdown certainly curtailed the u 2 program, which pro
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:58 amPat, hello, hello?
I’m the guy who spent the late summer//autumn despising Trump.
Steve57 (0b1dac) — 1/9/2017 @ 10:59 amEFF me running, what next!?!?!?
Colonel Haiku (6c3d91) — 1/9/2017 @ 11:13 amhttp://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-8/troyanovski4.html
INTERVIEW WITH OLEG TROYANOVSKI
Sammy Finkelman (643dcd) — 1/9/2017 @ 11:34 amso Putin murders journalists
does he do bad things too
happyfeet 2.0 (df82bb) — 1/9/2017 @ 1:06 pmvery good question
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 1:14 pmMust we endure anymore stories about how he used to be a dishwasher at a restaurant? Everyone has had a low-paying job like that when they were a teenager/young adult, so I wish he’d stop acting as if he used to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I never could stand Hannity precisely because he always struck me as the type of guy who packs 15 minutes of interesting content into his three-hour show.
JVW (6e49ce) — 1/9/2017 @ 1:36 pm”after Assange helped Trump, ”
Except that Assange (nor Russia) helped Trump. Trump won all on his own.
It’s going to be a looooong 8 years for you guys.
fred-2 (ce04f3) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:05 pm“Americans need to show solidarity with the Russian people, and not the Russian government. And the only way to do that is to reject Vladimir Putin, and instead support the freedom fighters in Russia who oppose him”
You mean, like the US should hack the Russian election? But but but we have just been assured that this is a dastardly thing to do! That no country should interfere in another country picking their leader.
(Does Russia even have elections? I gotta admit, I don’t know and don’t care.)
“… but the U.S. can make things more difficult for Putin, by refusing to grant him the legitimacy he craves.”
I think Putin, pretty much like every head of a major(ish) country, doesn’t give a fig about whether any other country considers him “legitimate” or not. He is de-facto the head of the country, and our opinion in that make exactly zero difference.
He is the head of the RUssian government, and THAT fact is what we have to deal with.
The USSR died a long time ago. USSR was our enemy. Russia is at best our opponent. USSR was a threat to us. Russia isn’t. As long as they are not threatening to nuke us, I don’t care about them. (But if they promised to just nuke NYC and DC, I might need to sit down and think it over.)
fred-2 (ce04f3) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:06 pmEvery bar in America has a Hannity in it, teetering and now tweeting on the end stool at closing time.
Apparently, one of them is actually Sean himself.
“Sarge, who says I’m dumb?!” – Corporal Randolph Agarn [Larry Storch] ‘F-Troop’ ABC TV, 1965-67
DCSCA (797bc0) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:11 pmI used to listen to his radio program 10+ years ago, and was always annoyed because it was clear he was sticking to his script at all times. He’d interview some infuriating liberal of the day, who would leave himself/herself open in some way, and Hannity would invariably fail to exploit whatever weakness in the argument was exposed, returning as always to whatever dull drum he was banging on that day.
I decided that he was probably not a very smart man and stopped listening to him. He may have had someone intelligent send a Patterico link to him at some point, but nothing that he’s done since has served to change my opinion of him.
Pious Agnostic (e9063c) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:14 pmpeople are really being mean on Mr. Hannity
but he shoulda thought about that before he misread that tweet
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:28 pmNever really regarded Hannity very highly. Watching Alan Colmes get smacked around verbally is good clean fun, but it’s not a terribly challenging or impressive accomplishment.
M Scott Eiland (1edade) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:44 pmThen again his competition is scary larry o’donnell and the wit and wis wisdom, of don lemon.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 3:30 pmbut it’s not a terribly challenging or impressive accomplishment.
Especially when Colmes contract says “Hannity wins.”
Kevin M (25bbee) — 1/9/2017 @ 3:35 pmNow hannitty, clearly doesn’t want Russia to be great again, however we know the fruit of the perception of Russian weimar, was sowed in the 00d
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 3:52 pmfred-2 (ce04f3) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:06 pm
It has elections, but Putin disqualifies
Sammy Finkelman (2178a8) — 1/9/2017 @ 4:08 pmcandidates, but makes sure there are always some very, very, clearly unaccepptable candidates running, like a Communist, or a Russian nationalist/near racist. Unlike Soviet times he never wins by getting 99% but more like 70%. They may not count the vote honestly, either. Putin;s been limiting the number of elections now.
Streisand calls into Matthews’ MSNBC show, apparently from the dentist’s chair, rants support for Streep, then ends call on air with ‘now I can go back to having my teeth cleaned.’
Buy a toothbrush at a 99-cent store, Babs. You’ve heard of the 99-cent store, haven’t you, Babs?
They just don’t get it.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 1/9/2017 @ 4:13 pmfred-2 (ce04f3) — 1/9/2017 @ 2:06 pm
What we have now pretty much the advice Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave in his Letter to the Soviet Leaders, written in 1984, except that there’s no need to have China as an enemy.
https://www.amazon.com/Letter-leaders-Aleksandr-Isaevich-Solzhenit/dp/0060139137
https://books.google.com/books?id=cLFJkIch2ssC&q=letter+to+he+zsoviet+leaders&dq=letter+to+he+zsoviet+leaders&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjM29zrpbbRAhXKhFQKHd94BiQQ6AEIGDAA
Sammy Finkelman (2178a8) — 1/9/2017 @ 4:14 pm#29 DCSCA, I’ve watched F Troop on DVD — it’s absolutely hysterical.
Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 1/9/2017 @ 4:21 pmNow Exxon business with Syria and Iran, reportedly is a problem.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 4:51 pmwas Mr. Hannity’s mistake better or worse than filthy racist bush-klanster Jenna Bush’s disdainful garbling of the name of a film what featured a predominantly African-America cast?
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:01 pm*African-American* cast i mean
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:01 pmBlacula? Superfly? Cotton Comes To Harlem?
nk (dbc370) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:08 pmThis will be the third president in a row who wanted to start off friendly with Putin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia_Summit_2001
чем больше все меняется, тем больше они остаются теми же
Kishnevi (d0d2b7) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:09 pm—Талейран
It’s pithier in French, of course.
it’s too horribly racist to repeat on a family blog, what Jenna said
what has this country come to
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:10 pmReading the two volumes of the red wheel, soltzhenitsyn seem to hAve seen the problem of czarist Russia to have been the lack of a capable czar like stolypin
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:12 pmHidden Fences? (Ahh, Google.)
nk (dbc370) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:17 pmYou DID watch the Golden Globes. Fess up!
nonono was in bed
happyfeet (28a91b) — 1/9/2017 @ 5:20 pmBack in the real world, our suspicions re Mr sabtuago seem to have been born out
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 6:02 pmfred-2:
This does not remotely begin to surprise me.
This proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nobody should care what you think about this topic.
Patterico (9e7773) — 1/9/2017 @ 7:07 pmUnited Russia, along with smaller factions like lap and rigozins, usually outmatch yabloko the liberal faction.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/9/2017 @ 7:11 pmHannity’s looming problem is if Trump maintains his 40-year pattern of catering to whatever he sees the swing voters being mad at in any particular moment, and the solution they prefer, whether it’s a free market or big government answer. He’s never been one to get out in front and lead on political issues as much as he is the guy who gauges what the swing voters want and then uses his public platform to convince people he’s angrier about the issue than they could ever hope to be.
That means if the swing voters down the line suddenly are seen by Trump as wanting some big government solution to a problem, he’s not going to deny them their passion of the moment. As Trump’s biggest cheerleader during the campaign, Hannity’s then going to be faced with either following Trump’s lead, which could in a worst-case scenario, take him over to Chris Matthews-Rachel Maddow territory on some big issue, or he could break with Trump and risk his revived audience ratings from those who will stand with The Donald no matter where he goes (Hannity got bumped from his 9 p.m. Eastern slot for Megyn Kelly not just because Fox wanted a woman at the center of their prime-time lineup, but because he was losing gobs of O’Reilly’s viewers. His early jumping on the Trump Train reversed those numbers, but he may end up being forced to keep riding it, even if the train takes a leftward curve over the next four years).
John (b9daa3) — 1/9/2017 @ 7:22 pmHannity has gone from being pro-conservative to being anti-liberal; the difference being that he no longer really cares about the enacting of truly conservative policies — and this despite his non-stop whining about “the RINO’s in Washington.” All he cares about now is defeating The Left; and if The Defeator is a progressive ‘Republican’ — sometimes right, sometimes center, sometimes a tad (in the case of Medicare, Medicaid and paid family leave, quite a bit) LEFT — then so be it!
Icy (14b8ca) — 1/9/2017 @ 7:47 pmHannity loves Trump because emotionally and psychologically speaking Hannity is just like Trump; it’s why he’s been a Trump apologist from Day 1.
Hannity’s latest history lesson:
Well then, I guess that must make it okay to be friendly with Putin, no matter how much the Russian dictator works against American interests. I mean, Stalin was much worse than Putin, right?
WarrenPeese (ed23ac) — 1/10/2017 @ 7:58 amWell they were an enabler re the Iran deal, which encompassed the Syrian red lines
narciso (d1f714) — 1/10/2017 @ 8:21 am@WarrenPeace:no matter how much the Russian dictator works against American interests.
I hope you have pearls to clutch or a fainting couch to retire to, because the US has been working with worse people than Putin for a long time now, and just gave Iran pallets of $100 bills while promising to look the other way on their nuclear program.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 1/10/2017 @ 8:25 amJust consider the slobbering over rafsanjani who ordered hits in Argentina, Berlin, Vienna.
narciso (d1f714) — 1/10/2017 @ 8:29 am“50. “(Does Russia even have elections? I gotta admit, I don’t know and don’t care.)”
This does not remotely begin to surprise me.
This proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that nobody should care what you think about this topic.”
What I know is that present-day Russian is far less likely to be launching nukes at us. And vis-a-vis Russia, that’s the most important thing.
Russia is basically a third-world country with an almost first-world military. They cannot drastically harm us, so I don’t much care about the details.
See, this is why neocons got into dis-favor, wanting the US to fight other countries all over the world even when they aren’t a threat to us.
Why do you care about Russian elections? There’s nothing we can do about them, seeing as we don’t have a vote. So why spend a lot of energy caring about something we can’t effect and can’t do anything about?
Do you know or care about, say, Afghanistan elections?
fred-2 (ce04f3) — 1/10/2017 @ 3:15 pm