Fox News host Sean Hannity sparked fury Tuesday after he deleted a controversial post on his social media account.
Hannity posted a clip from an exchange between former special counsel Jack Smith and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) from a hearing held Tuesday. In the clip, Schmitt accuses Smith of attending a professional basketball game in Atlanta and somehow colluding with former District Attorney Fani Willis in her attempt to prosecute President Donald Trump. Hannity captioned the post by saying Schmitt put Smith "on the spot."
What the clip didn't show was an exchange later in the hearing in which Smith and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) corrected Schmitt by acknowledging that he attended a women's college basketball game in Maryland against the University of Iowa on the same night Schmitt alleged he met with Willis.
Hannity later deleted his post defending Schmitt when the additional footage was published online. But not before Brian Beutler, co-host of Politix.fm, captured a screenshot and shared it with his audience.
"Here’s a deleted tweet from Hannity, who won’t admit error, won’t chastise Schmitt, and won’t lose stature with anyone on the right, including the most of the blue-check community on this website," Beutler wrote. "This is what you all like about him!"
Hannity's deleted tweet also caught other critics by surprise.
"Hannity's staff needs to be flipping the same burgers as Schmitt's," Steven Svekis, multimedia journalist at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, posted on X.
"It's incredibly on brand how many of these tools are just running with the prescribed 'gotcha!' as though Schmitt didn't just publicly soil himself," Julian Sanchez, author of the "Non-Content" Substack, posted on Bluesky.