Trump's Impeachment:
On March 20, 2019, "Fox mainstreamed the Ukraine conspiracy theory that got Trump impeached." "Breaking tonight," Hannity claimed, "according to The Hill's John Solomon, we now have major evidence of election collusion in 2016, real evidence to back it up" This collusion surrounds Hillary Clinton and a top Ukrainian government official that wanted her elected."
According to Stelter, "Hannity was in league with longtime buddy Rudy Giuliani who was laundering this Ukraine bullshit through Solomon's workplace, The Hill, an allegedly nonpartisan news source. Giuliani's fixer Lev Parnas, who would later be arrested by the feds, set Solomon up to interview Ukraine's deeply corrupt prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko. In the interview, Lutsenko made all sorts of sordid allegations. He said, for example, that U. S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, gave him 'a list of people whom we should not prosecute.' That was a lie, but it got Hannity and Trump's attention." Trump ultimately had Ms. Yovanovich removed from her post.
After Solomon went on Hannity's show and repeated Lutsenko's claims, Trump was so happy that he tweeted a Hannity on-screen banner which said: "John Solomon: As Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges."
"Joe Biden's name did not come up during the introductory segment on March 20, but Fox's Chris Wallace later reported that [Joe] diGenova and [Victoria] Toensing were 'working off he books' to help Giuliani dig up dirt that would hurt the former vice-president and political rival to Trump. 'Only the president knows the details of their work,' Wallace said."
Unbeknownst to the public, on July 18, 2019, the Office of Management and Budget informed both the Pentagon and State Department that Trump had put a hold on $391 million of military aid already approved for Ukraine. No reason was given for the hold. A week later, however, Trump would have his infamous shake-down telephone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
On August 12, 2019, a secret whistleblower complaint was lodged with the inspector general of the intelligence community. For six weeks, the Trump administration prevented its legally required transmission to Congress. The whistleblower complaint revealed that Donald Trump used his July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky to leverage the release of military aid already approved for Ukraine in order to extort a promise from Zelensky to do him a "favor" - the favor of launching an investigation into the activities in Ukraine of Joe and Hunter Biden.
On September 24, 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, accusing Trump of "a betrayal of his oath of office, a betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections." On September 25th, the Trump administration released a document - but not a verbatim transcript -- supposedly capturing the essence of the July 25th call. Nevertheless, for anyone willing to give it an unbiased look, it contained smoking gun evidence of Trump's attempt to shake down Ukrainian President Zelensky. On September 26th, the whistleblower complaint was released. Subsequent testimony during the impeachment proceedings would prove the complaint to be surprisingly accurate.
Although Judge Napolitano appeared on Shep Smith's show to claim that Trump had committed a crime on his July 25th call, "Like jackhammers chiseling away at a city street so loudly you can't even think straight, the prime time shows insisted that Trump was innocent and the real guilty party was the whistleblower."
As the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry developed, "Hannity turned into a human word cloud of defenses and deflections."
Yet, as Stelter informs us, Hannity was not even around to broadcast live on the night that the two articles of impeachment were approved. Instead, he attempted to dupe his viewers into believing that he was reporting live. In fact, he pretaped his show, because he had "a family obligation" that night. Stelter admits, "I was duped that night right along with 5 million other people."
After the two articles of impeachment went to the Senate for trial, Hannity worked to pressure senators like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. He said their voters "would not tolerate any dissent." "It is not your Republican senators' job to bolster what are pathetically weak articles of impeachment from the House." "It is not your senators' duty to call witnesses that the House didn't even subpoena."
Stelter approvingly quotes Maureen Dowd, who had written, "Democrats are relying on facts, but Republicans are relying on Fox." After the Senate failed to convict a clearly guilty Trump, the president gave but a single post-trial interview - to Hannity.
Pundits had speculated whether President Nixon would have been forced from office, had Fox News existed to defend him. The 'not guilty" verdicts virtually "phoned in" by the shameless Republicans in the Senate appeared to answer that question. Perversely, however, by allowing Trump to remain in office, both the Senate and Fox News became complicit when Trump abdicated his responsibility to prevent the coronavirus pandemic from ravaging our country.
The Coronavirus Pandemic:
On January 22, 2020, President Trump told Fox's Maria Bartiromo, "We're in great shape," after she asked him how worried the country should be about the coronavirus.
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