Hypocritical Hannity, examined.

There are, by my count anyway, roughly three things conservatives whine about, and will always whine about, until the day they die.

The government The media The media in bed with the government

Left-wing liberal bias in the media is something that — if you want to be a famous conservative pundit –you learn very often is like red meat for your would-be audience. Just go back and watch the crowd hoot and holler during this past year’s Republican primary debates any time any one of the people who ended up losing to D-List realityTV star and alleged billionaire would complain about the media. The Republicans in attendance would flip their shit.

Because according to the right-wing, the mainstream media is and always has been in bed with liberals in government. They either will outright call the mainstream media a propaganda machine (Fox News irony lulz abound), or they’ll dance all around the issue passive-aggressively. But what if I told you that one of the conservative universe’s most brightly shining dim bulb is a Trump adviser? Would that make you think that all the talk from Right-Wingistan about the evils of the liberal media bias are hypocritical hot air?

Well, it should. Because it’s true, at least in practice, if not by way of actual paychecks from the Trump 2016 campaign to Sean Hannity.

According to a piece that The New York Times ran over the weekend, Hannity has been acting as a de facto adviser to Trump for months.

But Mr. Hannity is not only Mr. Trump’s biggest media booster; he also veers into the role of adviser. Several people I’ve spoken with over the last couple of weeks said Mr. Hannity had for months peppered Mr. Trump, his family members and advisers with suggestions on strategy and messaging. (source)

The same New York Times piece mentions that even though three different anonymous Trump advisers say he’s angling for a place in a would-be Trump White House, Hannity denies he’s playing any official role.

So involved is Mr. Hannity that three separate denizens of the hall of mirrors that is Trump World told me they believed Mr. Hannity was behaving as if he wanted a role in a possible Trump administration — something he denied to me as laughable and contractually prohibitive in an interview on Friday. (source)

Of course, in a display of the misplaced and undeserved hubris of conservative commentators, Hannity had to make it clear just how well he knows the Orange Fascist In A Unconvincing Hair Piece.

“Do I talk to my friend who I’ve known for years and speak my mind? I can’t not speak my mind,’’ he said. (source)

Here’s the thing — it doesn’t really matter if Hannity is officially or unofficially advising Trump. It is clear as day that he is in bed with the alleged-billionaire. He calls him his friend, and doesn’t deny that he speaks to him in private, though he says he doesn’t make a difference between private and public comments — which is likely utter bullshit. But just stop and ask yourself how outraged and incensed conservatives would be to find out Rachel Maddow or one of her other MSNBC colleagues frequently spoke with and gave advice to Hillary Clinton. Imagine if Lawrence O’Donnell was identified by anonymous Clinton aides as being a pseudo-adviser.

They would lose their minds. Because conservatives believe in rock-ribbed, solid principles of journalistic integrity. In fact, let’s take a few minutes to give web space to all the hearty rebukes Hannity got over the New York Times story from other conservative media members.

Here’s what Britt Hume, Hannity’s co-worker at Fox News said about it:

And here’s what Ann Coulter, leading liberal media critic, said about Hannity’s obvious lapse in integrity and nonpartisanship:





You’ve really got to watch this clip of Laura Ingraham lighting into Hannity for his glaring hypocrisy:

And finally, here’s Rush Limbaugh taking time on his radio show to explain to his listeners why what Hannity has been doing with Trump is a breach in the spirit of journalism, if not the actual rules of it:

Umm. Okay, so I guess we’ll just fill those space in if and when they decide to go looking for their intellectual honesty and somehow, magically, stumble upon it.

…those spaces are going to be empty forever.