Fox News’ Sean Hannity was exposed as being outside President Donald Trump’s “little circle” Tuesday after delivering a series of “Orwellian” remarks during the funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Zeteo’s Andrew Perez argued on Wednesday.
Graham, who died of a brief and sudden illness earlier this month, was laid to rest Tuesday at the Washington National Cathedral in a funeral attended by Trump, his cabinet officials, world leaders and media figures, including Hannity.
Speaking during the funeral, Hannity attempted to dispel claims that Graham was a “war hawk,” with the South Carolina Republican having a long record of advocating for military actions against other nations, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, among other nations.
“[Graham] was often unfairly characterized as a warmonger,” Hannity said, per Zeteo. “I have heard that false criticism a lot. It’s not true. The truth was the opposite.”
When delivering his own eulogy, however, Trump offered a starkly different characterization of Graham, one that directly contradicted Hannity's.
“He was extremely hawkish. I will tell you, he never saw a war he didn’t like,” Trump said. “Only his true friends would understand that.”
For Trump to not only directly contradict Hannity, but to argue that only Graham’s “true friends” would “understand” how “hawkish” he was, Perez argued, was telling.
“Sorry, Sean. Seems you just weren’t one of the boys. Maybe you have to call Trump a ‘jacka--' and a ‘race-baiting bigot’ [as Graham once did], before scurrying back under the big man’s wing, to enter that little circle,” Perez wrote.
“Either way, Graham was still in there when he said, on tape, that the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, in which more than 100 children were killed on day one by a double-tap strike on a school, made him want to cry with joy. Graham was still close to Trump when he was filmed advising Benjamin Netanyahu on how to respond to an arrest warrant for war crimes from the International Criminal Court.”