Exposing Media Matters for not telling the truth about Sean Hannity

Media Matters is at it again. In its latest quest to supposedly hold the media accountable, the left-wing organization spread misinformation about Fox News host Sean Hannity.

On Dec. 17, the supposed watchdog journalism group claimed that Hannity “boasted he had dinner with drug company executives, RFK Jr., and other Trump staffers” on its website. To support its claim, Media Matters posted an audio clip of Hannity and a graphic of what Hannity supposedly said — arguably designed to show Hannity caught in some “gotcha” moment.

However, the self-described “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media” might first want to look in the mirror or, at the very least, glance at its own product. 

Here is the text of the clip, as presented to viewers on the webpage:

“But Donald Trump was pretty clear. You know, when asked directly by a reporter yesterday about vaccines and autism and whether there was a link, he said, ‘Look, I’m —,’ he’s not a doctor. He says, you know, ‘Right now, you have some very brilliant people looking into it.’ He himself does not know. I had dinner the other night with the head of Pfizer, the head of Eli Lilly, and RFK was there, Dr. Oz was there. They had 10 other people within the administration that are involved in medical, and we’re looking to find out.“

Media Matters edited the clip to make it seem like Hannity was telling the story about having dinner with the heads of Pfizer and Eli Lilly instead of Trump. First, MM displays Trump’s quote within quotation marks. Then, MM doesn’t use quotation marks for the last two sentences, falsely implying that Hannity, not the president-elect, said these.   

Presumably, this was done to portray the Fox News host negatively. After all, that is the ultimate objective of its left-wing propaganda. However, if one spends 22 seconds, copies the clip above, and does a search, one will be taken to a webpage with the transcript of a press conference from Dec. 16 with President-elect Donald Trump and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Here, one will notice the same words mentioned by Trump that MM claimed Hannity said.

It starts with a reporter asking Trump a question about a possible link between vaccines and autism:

“Can I ask just clearly, do you believe there’s a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there’s a link?”

Here was the president-elect’s reply: 

“Well, look, right now, you have some very brilliant people looking at it. I had dinner the other night with the head of Pfizer, the head of Eli Lilly and RFK, as you know, and Oz and other people within the administration that are involved in the medical, and we’re looking to find out. If you look at autism, so 30 years ago we had, I’ve heard numbers of one in 200,000, one in 100,000. And now I’m hearing numbers of one in 100. So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.”

This happened at the 28:33 mark of the interview, which is documented on the transcript. And, in case the transcript was not firm enough evidence, here is a video from CNBC of Trump saying the words that Media Matters accused Hannity of speaking, also at the 28:33 mark.

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This is a complete and total embarrassment for Media Matters! In addition to being false, it shows a shocking amount of laziness and a lack of desire to verify and truthfully report its claims. It took less than 30 seconds to disprove. It was a pathetic attempt to try to smear a political adversary.

If Hannity was the villain Media Matters wanted him to be, then they would not have to make untruthful claims about what he said.