Sam Reisman at Mediaite reported Sean Hannity unleashed his anger on CNN’s Brian Stelter on his radio show Thursday after Stelter insisted on the PBS chat show Charlie Rose that Hannity and Rush Limbaugh belonged in “truly deplorable basket” for trafficking in Hillary health rumors.
“What does — how do I get an apology from CNN? Should I — I would love to sue them for slander when they say, “Oh he wants Hillary on her deathbed and dead,” when I said just the opposite,” he said. “I mean, I know it’s hard to sue as a public figure. Pretty much people can call you anything. And I’ve been called pretty much everything. But I’m thinking of suing them.”
When his producer suggested CNN didn’t have money, Hannity replied, “No, they’ve got money. They’ve got enough money. Time Warner can pay me.”
As Curtis Houck noted, Stelter faced off with conservative Ben Shapiro on PBS, a rare actual debate with a conservative on PBS. While he was definitely insulting, Stelter seemed to exclude Hannity from the “wants her to be dying” camp:
STELTER: There’s a basket of legitimate questioning about Hillary Clinton`s health and some conservative commentators and media figures fit into that basket. They`re right to wonder about her health in some cases. Then, there’s this other basket, the truly deplorable basket. Sean Hannity fits into it, so does Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and others. These are people who bring up rumors and innuendo about Clinton's health, and have been doing it for years. I'm not saying Hannity or Limbaugh fit into these necessarily, but they — some of these figures want her to be sick. They want her to be dying. They want her to be on her death bed.
Stelter wouldn't admit the media has a liberal bias, and claimed "what I hear sometimes is the victimization narrative from conservatives. I would just point out, there are many liberals who are equally frustrated by news coverage this year."
As if Hillary's camp doesn't have a "victimization narrative." See CNN's Christiane Amanpour for that.
