Fox News broke their shadow ban of Donald Trump to bring him on Sean Hannity’s program at the end of March. With Trump once again becoming the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, there are no laws and no billion-dollar defamation suits that could keep the Murdoch-owned conservative propaganda machine away from Trump.
More specifically, Fox News came groveling back to Trump. The interview, shot on the ground of Trump’s Florida resort/compound, Mar-a-Lago, Hannity sat across from the twice-impeached, soon-to-be-indicted Trump and did what Fox News hosts have been doing for the past eight years: attempt to guide Trump’s disastrous interview style into something that isn’t an total incrimination of how mediocre and corrupt he is.
Hannity and Fox failed, of course. Among many ridiculous things he said, there is one section of the interview that Fox News has seemed to have scrubbed from many subsequent postings of the interview (but has been saved for posterity by the internet) that has to do with what exactly Trump may or may not have been thinking in trying to keep boxes and boxes of highly confidential U.S. intelligence on the floor of a storage room in Mar-a-Lago.
Trump also all but confirmed Sunday’s Washington Post story that Trump personally went through many boxes of sensitive records after a subpoena was delivered to him.
RELATED STORY: Washington Post: FBI believes Trump 'personally examined' boxes after Mar-A-Lago subpoena
Just as with the rest of the interview, Hannity spends a lot of time attempting to insert the correct answer he wants Trump to give to the question, and Trump usually barrels through the correct answer and then obliterates it with his half-sentenced rants. After one such run where Trump blathered away about Biden’s secret documents, Hannity—possibly with foreknowledge of the soon to be breaking Washington Post story—asks: “I can't imagine you ever saying bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House. I'd like to look at them. Did you ever do that?”
The question is significant because part of the federal investigation and possible case against Donald Trump has to do with obstruction, and more importantly intent. Trump’s unwillingness to provide, for over many months, the many boxes of documents he took home from the White House is the reason the FBI was compelled to raid Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
Trump begins with his classic Trump preamble of all of his bad behaviors and ideas:
- Maybe I did.
- Maybe I didn’t.
- But maybe if I did it is fine anyway.
- But maybe I didn’t.
- But I probably did. And it’s fine.
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“I would have the right to do that. There's nothing wrong with it.” Hannity, seeing the possible admission of guilt, tries to undercut it as hypothetical: “I know you. I don't think you would do it.” It is a pretty awesome thing to watch, a supposed news host offering up blatant coverage for federal crimes that could reach the level of high treason. But one thing people like Hannity and others don’t seem to internalize is that Donald Trump does not care what they think about anything. He has dominated them and will spend the rest of his time making them eat his bile to prove their fealty. Trump jokes, “Well, I don't have a lot of time,” and then right back into the fray “but I would have the right to do that. I would do that. There’d be nothing wrong—”
Hannity quickly tries to change tracks, “—Well, let me move on,” but that ain’t gonna happen. Trump goes on, saying: “Remember this. This is the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff. Do you know that they ended up paying Richard Nixon, I think, $18 million for what he had? They did the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff. I have the right to look at stuff.”
There are many things wrong with Trump’s assertions here:
Also the issue isn’t whether or not Trump looked at boxes but if he decided to look at those boxes and have them moved in an attempt to hide them after the subpoena was delivered to him. It would also leave him on the hook for what items he had not returned, especially if they are proven to be state secrets and not personal things within the realm of reason.
The second part, which is not as damning but is equally entertaining is Trump launching into how “terrible” the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago really was. Trump wants to make it seem that he and his entire staff were being treated inhumanely, roughed up even, during the seizure of taxpayer documents. In fact, Trump says he “gave them (the federal government) tape.” This admission sort of dovetails with Trump’s anxiety-ridden previous statement about looking or not looking at documents, since the Washington Post story notes that investigators say they have video proof of Trump’s potential obstruction.
Back to Trump! While Trump says he’s given the Feds all kinds of tape, he also says he didn’t give them his special tapes of “the raid itself.” In fact, he says the government has pleaded with him not to reveal these tapes!
Hannity, realizing he sort of has to say something, says, “I’ll take that tape and I’ll air it.” Trump basically makes a ratings joke but then says he isn’t releasing the tape “because of the faces and everything else.” And then the best part: Hannity calls that bluff, “We can pixel them out.” Teehee. Trump steps on any recognition of that flaw in his lie, by finishing, “But I have tapes of the raid and the raid is terrible.”
Republican Party operatives are once again left with the hilarious task of attempting to criticize Donald Trump while not actually criticizing him for real reasons. Being such absolute hypocrites makes the job virtually impossible, former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a hypocrite of monumental proportions, went on Fox News the next day to say that he thought Trump’s appearance with Hannity “was the worst interview” he had ever seen from the disgraced former president. Why was it such a bad interview in Chaffetz’s opinion:
Chaffetz further criticized Trump for “whining,” “playing the victim card” and complaining that someone he endorsed, like DeSantis, may be running against him in the GOP primary in 2024.
“Whining” and “playing the victim card” are two of the four policy ideas Republicans have, with the remaining two being cutting taxes for the rich and clawing back civil rights from Americans. The secret fifth policy is participating in abject corruption. This is the reason Trump is the king of this mountain of hypocrites: They’re as guilty if not guiltier at various times, of all the greed and corruption and snowflakery they try to criticize him for.