SATURDAY AFTERNOON: Hannity doctors his explanation!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Red tribe viewers get conned: Yesterday afternoon, we offered a report beneath this catchy headline:

Comer's star witness crashes and burns!

In our view, Kevin Drum's post about this matter offered the most succinct synopsis of what had occurred. Headline included, Kevin had offered this:

Yet another Biden crime story goes up in smoke

[...]

The informant in question is Alexander Smirnov, who retailed a preposterous story to the FBI about Burisma paying bribes of $5 million each to Hunter and Joe Biden for "protection." James Comer and Chuck Grassley got wind of this and demanded a copy of the FBI interview so they could investigate whether Smirnov's accusation was being taken seriously. The whole thing took the right-wing noise machine by storm.

Today Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI. The indictment came from David Weiss, the special prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case. Smirnov was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after arriving from overseas.

Smirnov had been regarded as a star witness in the House GOP's attempt to find a reason to impeach President Biden. 

Just like that, Rep. Comer's star witness seemed to have crashed and burned! But in fact, he wasn't just Comer's star witness. As we showed you, Kevin had linked to a tweet by Matthews Gertz of Media Matters, and Gertz had offered this:

GERTZ (2/15/24): Sean Hannity's Fox News show ran with this informant's claims in at least 85 separate segments last year, including 28 monologues. He said they proved Joe Biden engaged in "public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.”

According to Gertz, Smirnov had been Hannity's star witness too! For a fuller report on this matter by Gertz, you can just click here.

Sean Hannity's star witness had also crashed and burned! Along the way in our own report, we issued The Alexander Smirnov Challenge:

We wondered if Fox News viewers would ever be told about this arrest at all.

We wondered if Fox News viewers would ever be told. Today, we can tell you this: 

In a segment which started midway through last evening's program, Hannity did tell his program's viewers about Smirnov's arrest. But as he did, he instantly launched a slippery attempt to justify his past reliance on the things the star witness had said.

Just like that, Hannity doctored a quote by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), making it seem that Raskin had also vouched for Smirnov's claims in the past.  Rather, he had "edited" a videotaped statement by Raskin. Hannity had edited the statement in such a way as to make it seem that Raskin had vouched for Smirnov's claims, just as he himself had done.

We probably shouldn't say that Raskin's quote had been "doctored." We actually saw the sort of abrupt "edit" which made us think that the fuller statement by Raskin would likely show something quite different from the impression Hannity was trying to leave.

Sure enough! This morning, we found the fuller videotape of what Raskin actually said on the day in question. In his fuller statement that day, Raskin made it clear that there was no reason to assume the accuracy of what Smirnov had said.

We also found this written press release by Rep. Raskin on that same day (June 5, 2023). As in his videotaped public statement, the press release includes the reasons for doubting what Smirnov had said. 

We may start next week's report with this a look at this familiar type of deception. For today, we'll tell you this:

At least on the Hannity show, red tribe viewers were told that Rep. Comer's former star witness has now been arrested. 

That said, they were instantly misled about the matter thanks to Hannity's ridiculous "edit" of Raskin's longer statement. So it frequently goes (though not always), in the early morning hours and then again in primetime, when red tribe viewers watch Fox.

For the record, those red tribe viewers don't know that they're being misled. They don't know that some or many of the things they're being told are grossly misleading, or may just be flatly false.

They also don't know about the types of information which are being withheld. For better or worse, similar problems sometimes afflict us blue tribe viewers when we watch programs on MSNBC, the "cable news" channel which has been designed to push preferred blue tribe narratives.

That press release by Rep. Raskin was dated June 5, 2023. That was the very day when Raskin made the videotaped statement which Hannity craftily clipped.

Red tribe viewers get misinformed in such way on a regular basis. Once again, an important point:

They don't know that they're getting conned! Indeed, several such callers showed up on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning, angrily repeating the bogus talking points they had been fed last night.

(We're not sure that we've ever heard so many angry phone calls to C-Span, or phone calls which were so angry.)

This is a problem with current arrangements in the realm of "cable news." We expect to discuss this more next week—and for the record, this isn't simply a red tribe thing.

In certain ways, our own blue tribe is involved in this breakdown too. Is there anyone on MSNBC whose conduct is as bad as Sean's?

We can't rightly say that there is, though that's setting the bar quite low.

If you want to see Sean's pseudo-confession on last night's show, you can start by clicking here. You'll quickly see the videotape of (one tiny part of) what Raskin actually said. 

You'll instantly see that bit of tape. Careful—you're being misled!