From CPAC, Sean Hannity helped promote Donald Trump’s make-believe presidential candidacy and make-believe credentials last night.

Despite Hannity's gushing excitement at being at CPAC, even he has got to know that Trump almost certainly will not run. As The Washington Post noted, in Trump’s last iteration of his nearly 30-year long flirtation with running for president, in 2011, “he went to New Hampshire to stoke speculation and issued similar statements about the “serious” nature of his exploration before bowing out and renegotiating his contract with NBC.”

But Hannity said nothing about that to the “we report, you decide” network’s audience.

There was also no mention of Trump’s completely discredited birtherism (nor Trump’s phony-baloney big Hawaii investigation whose results he never revealed) which would likely be a problem for a Trump candidacy. Even though, the night before, Hannity had complained about liberals going birther on Ted Cruz. And even though, as Simon Maloy put it in Salon, “(T)he most prominent voice questioning Cruz’s citizenship is everyone’s favorite clown-wigged birther numskull, Donald Trump.”

Instead, Hannity asked, “How would Donald Trump as president get these people back to work?” (Answer: You have to take the jobs back from China and Mexico, which is “not our friend”).

Then Hannity asked what Trump would “specifically” do to “stop Iran’s nuclear program” and “to defeat ISIS because I don’t hear you saying ‘degrade them’ (like President you-know-who). I hear you saying ‘defeat them’”

“Well, with ISIS, I’d just hit ‘em really hard," Trump announced. And "You may have to have some boots on the ground for a period of time until you get rid of the cancer. That’s number one.” Hannity did not ask what hitting them “really hard” meant.

But hey, with Trump’s amazing acumen, all the world problems are a cinch:

TRUMP: With Iran, sanctions all over the place. Believe me, you can make the right deal if you have the right negotiator. Part of the problem we have, Sean, we have people that are diplomats doing our (negotiating). They know nothing about negotiating. All they know how to do is keep their job. They know nothing about negotiating. If we had the right people, we could solve the ISIS problem and we could solve the Iran problem and a lot more quickly than you’d think.

After dispatching the ISIS and Iran problems so readily, Trump would have plenty of time to solve our economic problems:

TRUMP: I understand debt, I understand business better than anybody that’s ever run, in my opinion, for office. Nobody’s had the success, in business sense that I’ve had. I know how to get rid of debt… and I would do it quickly.

Just pay no attention to his many bankruptcies. Hannity certainly didn’t.

Crossposted at News Hounds.

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