Hannity Goes After Obama’s Old Pastor. No, It’s Not 2008.
Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night accused former President Barack Obama of being obsessed with him and the network—all while dredging up a 12-year-old controversy about Obama’s ex-pastor.
Earlier in the day, the former president took a veiled shot at Fox News during his video endorsement of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and Hannity couldn’t help but complain about Obama’s not-so-subtle broadside.
“And he can’t get Fox News out of his head,” Hannity exclaimed, after leading off his Tuesday night primetime broadcast by mocking Obama’s endorsement. “He can’t. We live in his mind. He takes a shot at Fox again. Me, yours truly, I live in his mind!”
Hannity, who devoted years of his show to attacking the former president, proceeded to play a clip of Obama saying it “won’t be easy” to defeat President Donald Trump because the “other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth.”
The longtime Fox News star wondered aloud why “in the middle of a global pandemic” Obama couldn’t stop attacking his channel—then played a montage of the former president taking jabs at Hannity himself. (Throughout the video clip, an on-air graphic blared “FLASHBACK: OBAMA’S ‘HANNITY’ OBSESSION.”)
Once again insisting—without a hint of irony—that it was Obama who couldn’t get Fox News out of his head, Hannity then went on a rant running down the purported scandals of the Obama era that Fox News covered incessantly, boasting that “we are the only ones that exposed” them.
“We did a deep dive into the radical hate preacher. We were right about Reverend ‘G-D America’—Reverend Wright,” Hannity bellowed, referencing Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor.
Besides Wright, Hannity also brought up former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, noting that Hannity and Fox News were also the “ones who exposed” Obama’s ties to the former domestic terrorist. Numerous news outlets would later report that the two never had a close association, something Ayers himself would later confirm.
During the 2008 election, Hannity and other Fox News hosts devoted round-the-clock coverage to Obama’s relationship with the pastor following news coverage of inflammatory comments Wright had made during sermons.
Even after Obama denounced Wright’s remarks, the criticism continued, eventually leading to the then-candidate’s famous “A More Perfect Union” speech, which touched on racial tension and anger in an effort to provide context to Wright’s controversial statements. Eventually, after the controversy wouldn’t go away, Obama withdrew from his church and condemned Wright.
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