Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inboxGet our free Inside Washington emailGet our free Inside Washington email
Sean Hannity’s opening monologue on Fox News suddenly went dark just as he was getting into the swing of an anti-immigrant rant.
On his show on Wednesday night, the conservative host took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris falsely claiming that she had allowed over 11 million “illegal immigrants” to enter the US.
“I pray to God I’m wrong,” he said, while touting unfounded claims that migrants with “known terror ties” from Iran, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, China, Russia, and Venezuela, are “scheming future terror attacks on our homeland.”
Claiming Harris and President Joe Biden “will have blood on their hands,” he began playing a montage of Harris speaking at campaign events.
“The illegals that Kamala wants to decriminalize, proe free housing, healthcare, eduction, now tax payer-funded – ” Hannity said, before he was cut off and his feed turned black.
Viewers were left with just clips of the Democratic presidential nominee smiling as she addressed rally crowds.
Fox News host Sean Hannity was in the middle of an anti-immigrant rant (Fox News)
After two minutes of commercials, Hannity suddenly reappeared on screen, saying “something knocked us off the air.”
He then said that the technical issue must have been caused by a “left-wing radical, liberal conspiracy” – before quickly clarifying for the “idiots in the media that will print that tomorrow,” that he was only joking.
Hannity’s anti-immigrant rhetoric echoes that made by many Republicans and right-wing figures, who have made a concerted effort to blame the Biden administration, and specifically Harris – who they branded the “border czar” – for the rise in immigration at the US’s southern border.
The unauthorized immigrant population in the US rose from 10.5 million to 11 million in 2022, according to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center.
A technical glitch plunged Hannity into darkness (Fox News)
While the Biden administration has come under fire for the rise in immigration, it was Republicans – at Trump’s bidding – who blocked a bipartisan border bill which would have clamped down on the number of migrants able to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border back in May – with 42 Senate GOP members voting against it.
Harris has promised to revive the border bill if elected in November as immigration shapes up to be one of the biggest issues this election cycle.
