Fox News' Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are glad Trump has been 'vindicated.' But they're still really angry.
Fox News' biggest stars are going on the offensive.
Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves on Monday evening, just a day after Attorney General William Barr briefed Congress on the principal conclusions drawn from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's conduct surrounding Russian election interference in 2016. But they were not in a celebratory mood, despite the fact that they both said Barr's summary vindicates Trump — and them.
Instead, both hosts used the opportunity to lay into other networks, particularly CNN and MSNBC for peddling what they believe were lies — told deliberately to mislead audiences about the Mueller investigation, all in the name of conspiracy to increase viewership and profit. Hannity singled out a few publications like The Atlantic and The Huffington Post for writing headlines like "The Collusion with Russia Is in Plain Sight" and "Manafort indictment reveals Trump Russia Collusion," respectively. He expressed particular dismay that The New York Times and The Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting on the investigation.
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"I am pissed off and so should the rest of the country be over what has happened," Hannity said. "We were lied to over and over again." Hannity, who has been an ardent Trump supporter throughout the process, also said that he is going to "hold every liar, every propagandist, every conspiracy theorist accountable."
Carlson expressed similar sentiments of anger toward the media. But he had a secret weapon — a leftist. The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald appeared as a guest on Carlson's show. Greenwald is, to put it gently, not of the same political persuasion as Carlson. But he is also known for being at odds with Democrats and a large swath of the media and over its coverage of the Mueller investigation, and he had some choice words for MSNBC and Rachel Maddow in particular. Tim O'Donnell
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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