Due to the news from this afternoon that the FBI raided the office and hotel room of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seizing business records, emails and documents, including a payment to Stormy Daniels, Sean Hannity didn’t address his recent Twitter feud with late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel until 47 minutes into Monday’s broadcast.
Hannity spent roughly seven minutes addressing Kimmel’s statement from Sunday (shown below), and said “it seems to be more of a forced Disney corporate apology directed more towards the LGBTQ community rather than about Kimmel’s comments about the first lady…but I’ll let you, the audience, decide.”
Hannity reiterated he felt that Kimmel’s comments were a cheap shot at the first lady, but also said, “I assume he is sincere. From my perspective I really enjoy a good fight, and I do agree with Jimmy in this sense it’s time to move on.”
He then broadened his criticism of Kimmel to a harsher criticism of how other media outlets cover the president: “The hatred and vitriol against this president and his family is frankly unprecedented. The Left in this country, they have even attacked the president’s what, 10, 11, 12-year-old son. What’s even worse is we have this corrupt media industrial complex, and we see it all working tonight…daily, breathlessly saying pretty much anything and everything in an effort to literally hurt this president and bring his family down. Now, attacking the first lady for her accent while reading to kids is just one small example but it’s a line in the sand for me.”
Hannity later said the media never attacked the Obamas, and felt that former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle were “good parents,” though he went on to criticize Obama’s policies.
Hannity later extended an invitation to the late night talk show host onto his program, and said “we’ll probably agree on more than you think.”
But also said that if Kimmel re-started the attacks, he’d “punch back even harder.”
After a rather fierce Twitter feud, that leaked over onto their respective programs last week, Kimmel attempted to lessen the tensions on Sunday afternoon, tweeting “the level of vitriol from all sides (me included) does nothing for our country.” He mentioned that his wife and infant son have been the subject of attacks. Kimmel also mentioned that that he did not mean to “belittle or offend members of the gay community,” in lampooning Hannity, though he defended his “silly and harmless aside” about the First Lady. “Mrs. Trump almost certainly has enough to worry about without being used as a prop to increase TV ratings,” he stated.
Here’s Kimmel’s full statement:
re. @seanhannity pic.twitter.com/DMtWJTMsDU
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) April 8, 2018
Kimmel’s response came after Hannity had devoted the first 22 minutes of his program the previous Friday evening to trashing Kimmel, calling him “a self-righteous sanctimonious social justice warrior,” and later, “a sick, twisted, creepy weirdo, which is why I have been referring to him as ‘Harvey Weinstein Jr.’”