Media Matters brings us yet another story of Sean Hannity cropping and distorting Obama’s words in order to bash him. This one is pretty blatant.
Hannity aired the following clip:
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.
From Fox News’ transcript of Obama’s July 7 interview with Garrett, with the portions of Obama’s answer Hannity omitted in bold:
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.
We don’t have to diminish other people in order to recognize our role in that history.
So what did Hannity say?
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.
I guess this is more of the “fair” and “balanced” Fox “News” channel. This isn’t the first time that Hannity has altered a quote from Obama to change its meaning into the opposite. Why isn’t this a big scandal? Can Hannity not find areas of disagreement with Obama without lying about what he’s saying?