Whenever President Barack Obama goes abroad, cameras follow him, and record the things he says to people. Just as often, it seems, Fox's Sean Hannity takes the recordings made by those cameras and starts splicing and resplicing up a storm, in order to make it seem that Obama said a bunch of things that he didn't say. And then, armed with his cut-up, bowdlerized junk, Hannity plays his audience for fools.
Let's take Obama's trip to Russia, for example. Obama sat for an interview with Fox's White House Correspondent, Major Garrett. Hannity presented their exchange over Garrett's first question, like so:
HANNITY'S CUT:
GARRETT: In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won, the West won it, and it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?
OBAMA: There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage, and I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. We don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.
Hannity, predictably, produced an outraged bleat:
HANNITY: Unbelievable. Now, that's interesting, because Lech Walesa, the leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement, said this about the end of the Cold War; he said, quote: "We in Poland took him, Ronald Reagan, so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. Now this can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century." Mr. President, if I were you, you may want to consider hitting the history books maybe before your next foreign trip.
[WATCH]
Yeah! Burn! Shouldn't Barack Obama be able to demonstrate knowledge of Lech Walesa and the contributions of American presidents in bringing about the end of the Cold War? HE SO TOTALLY SHOULD! The thing is, in reality, HE TOTALLY DID. Here's Fox News' own transcript of the interview:
REALITY:
GARRETT: In your speech this morning, you said the Cold War reached its conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years. Mr. President, are the Russian sensitivities so fragile that you can't say the Cold War was won? The West won it? And it was led by a combination of Democratic and Republican American presidents?
OBAMA: Well, listen, the -- I think that you just cut out Lech Walesa and the Poles. You just cut out Havel and the Czechs. There were a whole bunch of people throughout Eastern Europe who showed enormous courage. And I think that it is very important in this part of the world to acknowledge the degree to which people struggled for their own freedom. I'm very proud of the traditions of Democratic and Republican presidents to lift the Iron Curtain. But, you know, we don't have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.
This is definitely not the first time this has happened! After Obama delivered his speech in Cairo, Hannity and his punk-ass scissors were all snippety-snip on the events of the real world, too. In the wake of that speech, Hannity asserted that Obama had "given 9/11 sympathizers a voice on the world stage." But again, it was a nifty bit of selective editing, which Jon Stewart and his Daily Show researchers famously called Hannity out on, not that Hannity ever has to face consequences!
HANNITY'S CUT:
OBAMA: I'm aware that there's still some who would question, or even justify the offense of 9/11.
OBAMA: I'm aware that there's still some who would question, or even justify the offense of 9/11. But let us be clear. Al Qaeda killed nearly three thousand people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.
Naturally, it's not surprising at all to learn that the world we live in is a far fouler place after Sean Hannity has had his way with it.
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