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Hannity is in fact linked to both disgraceful chapters of the Trump-Russia relationship. Hannity took a major role in pushing conspiracy theories meant to absolve Russia from the hack of Democratic emails in 2016, a role that culminated in Fox paying an out-of-court settlement to the parents of murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Let me ask you this. Why is it that this happened in the Obama-Biden administration? It didn't happen in the Trump administration, and now it's happening again. Do you have any strong belief as to why that is?
KEITH KELLOG (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Yeah, Sean, I do have two words: weakness and opportunity. When you look at this administration and when you look at the chief executive and you look at the national security staff that he has around him, and you look at the vice president, it’s a constant pattern of weakness.
. . .
When President Trump was in office, you know, he was resolute and he was also predictably unpredictable. He kept adversaries on their back foot all of the time and he would do things that would surprise people but adversaries would look at him and say, “Well, look, this may happen to me.”
Pompeo failed to recall, however, the occasion in December 2020, when Trump publicly contradicted Pompeo about Russia being behind a massive hack of the federal government and industries. Pompeo had said that “we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians,” but Trump instead said that it might have been China. (Trump was also very busy during that period attempting to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election — an assault on American democracy in which Pompeo also seemingly participated.)BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): For four years, Democrats said that Donald Trump was in awe of Vladimir Putin — and Joe Biden was one of them. Lay out for us what a proper deterrence would have been, if you believe you could have stopped Putin when you were in office.
MIKE POMPEO (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, Bill, I can say this, The only thing that has changed in the last 14 months is the leadership in the United States of America. We’ve all known Vladimir Putin a long time. I spent a great deal of time with him and his lieutenants. He hasn't changed, his vision for reinstating the greater Soviet Union and creating a sphere of influence was precisely the same for the four years that I was in office alongside President Trump. We were determined to convince him that there were things he could not do, and we put lots of sanctions on him. But where we could work with him, we could. We had a model for engagement and deterrents that stopped him from doing precisely what you’re seeing happened this morning.