Sean Hannity's 'Banana Republic' Routine Just Set a New Standard for Shamelessness

From Esquire

Just say anything. It honestly does not matter. It doesn't matter if you said the exact opposite thing yesterday. It doesn't matter if you've been saying the exact opposite thing regularly for years. Just say it. As long as you're bashing The Right People, the people you need to eat it up will eat it up. In the postmodern hellscape of our era, where the truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe and history is just a bunch of competing sales pitches, there is no need to acknowledge that the past, as we all saw it happen, actually exists. Why worry about things like principle or consistency or hypocrisy or shame when you can hit any opponent from both sides of any issue in the gladiator pit of primetime cable news television and get away with it?

You may remember that Donald Trump, American president, has kind of made it a thing to suggest his political opponents should be thrown in prison. This was a centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, where his rallies frequently erupted in chants of Lock Her Up! about Hillary Clinton, because Emails. Sometimes, Trump would join in. This was also deployed in reference to Dianne Feinstein, a senior Democratic senator. More recently, he has screamed that his enemies committed TREASON!, an offense that carries the penalty of death under the Constitution. His attorney general has indicated he's willing to participate in these kangaroo proceedings.

This has all enjoyed the complete backing of the various talking meatheads on the Fox News Channel, of whom Sean Hannity is the meatiest meat-brain. He was once on-stage with Trump at a rally in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms-which caused a minor stir among Fox News employees who've somehow maintained the illusion they are not de facto State TV-as one of those mob chants for extrajudicial imprisonment erupted.

But this week, Politico reported that Nancy Pelosi tried to beat back the calls from her House Democratic caucus to begin impeachment proceedings-on the basis that the president has done a bunch of crimes and repeatedly abused his power-by suggesting he needs to be defeated at the ballot box so he can be prosecuted for those crimes as an ordinary citizen. “I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,” Pelosi said. Because shame is dead and his fans have stewed in the vat of conservative infotainment for years on end, Sean Hannity can get away with feigning outrage about this despite his devout allegiance to President Lock Her Up And Also My Enemies Committed Treason.

Even by the standards of this zero-standards era, this is some shameless shit. Locking up a political opponent without trial is exactly what Trump and his supporters were calling for throughout the campaign. On the flip side, Nancy Pelosi is suggesting Trump ought to be granted his full rights as a citizen-a trial before a jury of his peers-once he is no longer president and he's no longer immune to indictment under existing Justice Department regulations. Don't forget: that is why Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not recommend charges for Trump in his Report. It was against department policy. He did not formally accuse Trump of any crimes because he suggested it would be unfair when that person cannot defend himself in court.

Pelosi is wrong on impeachment: Trump repeatedly broke the law and betrayed his oath to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States. A hostile foreign power attacked our democratic elections to get him elected, he welcomed that help, then he meddled in and obstructed the subsequent investigation into how that happened. Again, don't forget: more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors have signed a letter declaring that if he were not president, Trump would have been criminally charged with obstruction of justice right now. The House should begin impeachment proceedings.

But Pelosi is not wrong for suggesting that, once he's no longer president, Trump should face consequences for breaking the law like anyone else. After all, we've seen that powerful people getting away with lawbreaking-Nixon's pardon after Watergate; the defusing of Iran-Contra, which William Barr also participated in; even Wall Street's free pass after 2008-has profound consequences going forward.

But none of that is actually relevant if you're consuming a steady diet of Fox News. One attendee at a town hall hosted by Justin Amash, the lone Republican congressman to call for impeachment, admitted she was surprised to hear the Mueller Report documented wrongdoing by the president because she'd only heard analysis of it on conservative media. If you live in the bubble, it's like it never happened. NO COLLUSION! NO OBSTRUCTION! COMPLETE EXONERATION! It appears this world is so self-sustaining, and so impervious to inconvenient reality, that the shapers of its contours can almost simultaneously say Lock Her Up! and cry foul when someone suggests Trump face consequences for his crimes. The question facing our society is whether this problem, where different parts of the country operate on different realities that scarcely intersect, is surmountable.

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