Mueller v. Hannity

Click here for an article in WaPo by Erik Wemple entitled "Mueller ruins Hannity’s parade of deception." As Wemple says, Hannity's reaction the day the Mueller report was released was as follows:

“We begin tonight with a Fox News alert. The witch hunt is officially over. The Mueller report is out. And the president of the United States has been totally and completely vindicated,” said Hannity on that night. More: “Tonight, thankfully, for the sake of this country, truth has prevailed. As the president’s attorneys put it, quote: This vindication of the president is an important step forward for the country and a strong reminder that this type of abuse must never be permitted to occur again.”

I've seen several accounts of Republicans who only listen to Fox and other right-wing TV and radio shows that say words to the effect of, "All I've seen and heard is that the president was totally vindicated, and the investigation was bogus from the start and should never have happened." They don't know what the Mueller report says; all they know is what Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing crowd have told them. I read of one such Republican who was shocked to see Mueller on TV saying that if they had found that Trump did not commit the crime of obstruction, they would have said so. That's not what she had been led to believe, and she said that as a result of hearing Mueller speak, she would read the second volume of the report (the one that deals with obstruction). She had thought, based on Barr's "summary" of the report, that Trump had been exonerated, and she was surprised to learn, from Mueller himself, that that was not the case.

Great! If only they could take the blinders off and expose themselves to information that doesn't come from the Fox News bubble, they would learn that reality is entirely different from what they have been deceived into believing.

Of course, Hannity cannot let Mueller's statement stand on its own:

“Now, today, he officially resigned from the Office of Special Counsel but not before showing the world, of course, what we already know on this program, his partisan hackery true colors, if you will,” said Hannity, in his typical spitfire delivery.

In his statement, Mueller said:

“If we had had the confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not however make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.”

Hannity, with a nice assist from Alan Dershowitz, professed to be shocked that Mueller would say such a thing. Wemple replies:

Thing is, Mueller had already said as much — in his report, which hit the public realm more than a month before his statement. Here’s the relevant passage from Volume II of the report: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

Of course he did! I already knew that, from reading and seeing non-Fox coverage of the report. But statements like that in the report weren't reported in the Fox world.

This very spectacle — the special counsel, in his first public remarks on the investigation — forced Hannity and many others to reckon with the Mueller team’s actual findings. As opposed to the findings that Hannity had been announcing to his viewers in the intervening weeks:

On May 2: “The witch hunt is done. Mueller has gone home. No collusion, no obstruction.”
On May 22: “We now have four separate investigations that have all cleared President Trump of the spurious charges leveled against him and his campaign. No collusion, fact. No obstruction, fact.”
On May 27: “Now, the truth has been laid bare for all to see. No collusion. No obstruction. No truth to the lies that have been peddled daily.”

Folks who place trust in Hannity — and there are many — might have been confused, accordingly, upon hearing Mueller state, “If we had had the confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” So Hannity had to reassure his fans: Mueller doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Dilemma for Fox: If the report actually showed "no collusion" -- it didn't, but that's the Hannity line -- then the report has to be praised for its thoroughness in coming to such a laudable conclusion; but if the report actually implicated wrongdoing -- which it did -- then the report has to be trashed as a bunch of lies from a partisan hack. Which is it to be, Fox?

Propagating misinformation, as it turns out, is a complicated business. To properly air the “no collusion” mantra, Hannity has to hype the Mueller probe’s investigative thoroughness. To properly air the “no obstruction” mantra, Hannity must simultaneously aver that Mueller is “basically full of crap.” It’s one of the luxuries of Hannity’s bubbled existence at Fox News that he will never be forced to choose between the two.