What the heck did Sean Hannity just do to himself?
Last night, after the New York Times stunned everyone by publishing an obviously bogus story about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein having tried to invoke the 25th Amendment against Donald Trump, we saw Sean Hannity of all people begging Trump not to fire Rosenstein. Sure enough, twenty-four hours later, it appears Trump has decided to listen to him. But it raises a whole lot of questions about what we really witnessed yesterday, who was really behind the phony story, and what it means for Hannity.
Sean Hannity’s argument was actually a pretty good one for once: if Donald Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, it’ll unleash a torrent of public and political backlash that could end up finishing Trump off. Of course Hannity also claimed that the Rosenstein story was planted by the Resistance in the hope of baiting Trump into finishing himself off, but that doesn’t really make any sense.
But if Hannity didn’t want Trump to fire Rosenstein, it suggests that Trump’s own people in the White House asked Hannity to beg Trump not to fire Rosenstein, which would mean that Team Trump didn’t plant this story to begin with. So who did? The only people in all of politics who seem to be pleased about the Rosenstein story are far-right GOP Congressman Jim Jordan and his House allies, who are already scheduling hearings about it, so they can try to twist it to their political advantage.
So would it be fair to assume that Team Jordan planted the phony Rod Rosenstein story, in an attempt at baiting Donald Trump into firing Rosenstein? You can be the judge on that one. People like Jim Jordan aren’t so much loyal to Trump, as they are using Trump to push their own whacked out agenda. If Jordan thinks Trump firing Rosenstein would help him and the far-right to take control over the Republican wing of the House, they might do it even if they knew it could mean Trump’s downfall. They play for their own team, not his.
In any case, for now at least, Donald Trump has predictably decided not to fire Rod Rosenstein. His actions over the past year have made clear that his ill-fated firing of James Comey, which directly resulted in Robert Mueller taking the helm of a more powerful Trump-Russia investigation, has left him gun-shy about firing someone like Rosenstein or Robert Mueller. The real impact of this Rosenstein debacle may be what it just exposed about Sean Hannity.
This reveals once and for all that the Trump White House and Sean Hannity are coordinating their message and their efforts when it comes to the Trump-Russia investigation. This time around they just happened to be plotting to save Rosenstein. Most of the time, Hannity aligns his Fox News show with Donald Trump’s ongoing illegal efforts to sabotage in the investigation. Now that there’s no longer any question Hannity is working for and with Trump, is Hannity going to end up charged with felony obstruction of justice?
