Sean Hannity seems to think the New York Times and the NSA have a wiretap on him
Here’s one of the stranger outbursts you’ll see this week, so strange in fact that it stands out even by Sean Hannity’s own standards for absurdity. After the New York Times published an article which asserted that the Fox News host provides regular private advice to Donald Trump (link), Hannity fired back with an accusatory Twitter rant which suggests he doesn’t understand how conversations work.
“Any conversation I have with ANYONE is supposed to be PRIVATE,” Sean Hannity tweeted at the New York Times on Saturday evening. “I have NEVER talked to you. Was I surveilled and unmasked by u/NSA?” link). He then followed it up by tweeting “The @nytimes has no clue who I talk to as I refuse to EVER TALK TO THEM! @POTUS knows you are FAKE NEWS and I doubt he talks to u either” (link). It’s almost difficult to know where to start with unpacking this.
For one thing, Hannity’s Twitter skills are crashing and burning here; we recommend Twitter for Dummies. One might assume that Hannity was being sarcastic when he accused the New York Times and NSA of having some kind of wiretap surveillance on him. But considering that Hannity is close with Trump, who famously and falsely accused President Obama of somehow having wiretapped Trump Tower, it’s not necessarily assumable that Hannity is being facetious here. Further, Hannity isn’t acknowledging the rather obvious possibility that the New York Times simply spoke with a Trump associate or staffer in order to get its story, which is remarkable considering that Hannity is supposed to be journalist himself.
In fact, if Sean Hannity had bothered to properly read the New York Times article he was attacking, he would have seen that it says “Mr. Hannity, the Fox News host, defends Mr. Trump’s most controversial behavior in public, but privately, according to people close to Mr. Trump, he urges the president not to get distracted” (link). That’s right, the Times even went so far as to explain that it got the information from people close to Trump. Hannity’s outburst suggests he either doesn’t want the public knowing that he’s one of the people currently pulling Trump’s puppet strings, or he’s become as paranoid about wiretapping as Trump has. Contribute to Palmer Report
