It’s never a good sign when you’re 12 weeks away from an election and the biggest defenders of a candidate are distancing themselves from him and trying to pin the blame for his inevitable defeat on other people. Yet, that’s where we now are with Donald Trump.
Trump himself is claiming that he’s doing great, but unfortunately he says, “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged.” If Trump wins, it’s because he’s so wonderful, but if he loses – and a candidate who puts states like Georgia in play for Hillary Clinton is destined to lose – it must be rigged.
Joe Scarborough claims he never supported Trump and even wrote a piece in the WAPO calling for Republicans to dump Trump. That’s what he says now, in AUGUST. Meanwhile, during the primaries Scarborough pushed Trump like he was related to him and even said he was open to being his Vice-President.
Sarah Palin says people who don’t back Trump are “traitors” -- “Gop #Nevertrump Traitors - Hillary Delights In You, For She Can't Win Without You.” Yes, all the people who correctly predicted that a conspiracy theorist who talked about his penis during the debates and promised to force the troops to commit war crimes wasn’t going to win are “traitors” while a wildly unpopular politician who endorsed both Christine O’Donnell and Donald Trump while wasting over 90% of the money her PAC receives is the one we can trust!
But Sean Hannity deserves particular attention. During the primaries, he promoted Trump non-stop to his audience with the sort of cream puff interviews you’d expect MSNBC to give to Hillary Clinton. It’s easy to understand why Hannity did that. More Trump means higher ratings and Trump is a sensitive guy who would have never spent so much time on Hannity’s show if he was regularly getting tough questions.
Meanwhile, outside the blissful confines of Sean Hannity’s Trump world, where negative news about him was easily explained away, there were serious problems with Trump’s campaign. In fact, almost every problem Trump is having today should have been easy to see as early as January of this year. Trump’s wildly unpopular with most of the public; he’s mean-spirited; he’s incredibly gaffe-prone; he can’t raise enough money to fund a competitive campaign; he doesn’t have first rate staff and his poor data operation ensures he won’t have a strong get-out-the-vote campaign. By February, all those issues were still present, but it was also clear that there was going to be a large block of Republicans who found Trump so objectionable that they couldn’t vote for him. Here’s what I wrote in Townhall about it back then.
Trump's toxic, he's not a conservative and he has personally insulted an enormous number of people on the Right. There will be more Republicans who won't vote for him than for any other Republican nominee in recent history. In fact, it wouldn't be a shock if there are significant numbers of prominent Republicans who back a third party candidate or otherwise try to deliberately undermine his campaign.
Today Sean Hannity, among others, is trying to pass the buck to these people. To people like Jonah Goldberg, Erick Erickson, Steve Deace, Ben Shapiro, Ben Sasse, Amanda Carpenter, Ben Howe, Bill Kristol and me.
Even Ted Cruz, a man who has fought tirelessly for grassroots conservatives and agreed to speak at the RNC convention, but wouldn’t endorse Trump is being attacked. If you were in Cruz’s shoes and you would endorse a candidate who publicly smeared your wife and father, then maybe you’re just not much of a man. A real man wouldn’t kneel down and kiss the ass of a guy who viciously insulted his family.
All of this brings us to what Sean Hannity wrote on Twitter which echoes comments he’s made on his show.
Republicans who are sabotaging DT (Donald Trump) will get the HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) they deserve. And yes I will hold them accountable.
So, is Sean Hannity going to hold himself accountable?
He’s one of the most prominent conservatives in America. Millions of people listen to him on the radio and on TV and what did they hear during the primaries? They heard Sean Hannity giving Donald Trump a tongue bath every night. Did Hannity ever tell them the full truth? Did he ever say, “I love having Donald Trump on because I agree with some of the things he says and he’s great for ratings, but realistically he has no chance of winning against Hillary. Sure, he makes all the right people mad and isn’t politically correct, but if he becomes the nominee, it also means that Hillary will be our next President.”
Don’t get me wrong. I like and respect Hannity, but when Trump loses, who deserves more of the blame for Trump? The people who told you the truth all along and said, “Whether you like Trump or not, he can’t win. You have to pick someone else,” or the people like Hannity who spent months essentially saying, “Trump’s the greatest! We love Trump. Let’s cheer for him! Trump, Trump, Trump.”
After Trump loses – and he is going to lose because he never had a chance to win, there will be a lot of people telling you that the problem is all these people who told you the truth about Trump. But the truth is never the problem; the problem is the problem. It’s becoming clear that one of our big problems is that people in the conservative movement are being given such skewed information by sources they trust that they thought a guy who was less popular than Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis in January of this year was going to be the next President. That should tell you we have a problem with the conservative media that’s almost as large as the one we have with the mainstream media and if Sean Hannity is looking for someone to hold accountable, the first person he should look at is himself.