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Fox News host Sean Hannity's announcement on Tuesday night that he was prepared to reject Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore rippled through the conservative media landscape on Wednesday, marking a clear turning point in how members of the nationalist, populist movement that has buoyed Moore view the controversy.
The Fox host has outsized prominence in the world of right-wing commentary, and his statement that he was giving Moore 24 hours to explain himself before Hannity turned against him echoed across conservative sites. Wednesday afternoon,
a story on his ultimatum was still the second-most read headline on Breitbart, a site that has strongly supported Moore.
The Daily Caller
also did a story on Hannity, which has racked up more than a thousand comments on the site.
"We literally ran with just the hammer-headline 'HANNITY'S ULTIMATUM' on the post," emailed Daily Caller Editor in Chief Geoff Ingersoll. His audience is so dialed into Hannity, he said, that "we didn't have to write a traditional headline for the audience to understand what it meant in context and click in."
Hannity's statement seemed to resonate with conservatives across the ideological spectrum: Last night, Redstate.com
posted the headline, "WHOA! Sean Hannity Just Sent A Serious Warning To Roy Moore!" It remains in the site's most popular stories list.
Even The Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy-minded site that has stood with Moore, linked to a headline about Hannity's turn.
Comment: Hannity's segment on Moore:
There are a couple issues to disentangle here. 1) Did Moore date young women in their mid-to-late teens? Moore equivocates here, but then says he never dated anyone without their parents' permission. That sounds like a hedged admission. But then, that was more normal
back then than it is now (please excuse Vice's obvious partisanship at the link provided). 2) Are the claims of sexual
abuse legitimate? They may be. Or, he may have dated some of these women, and they are now making false accusations for political purposes. Or, some of the claims may be fabricated completely.
Moore responded to Hannity's ultimatum with
this tweet, where he alleges that the signature on the yearbook is forged (copied from the accuser's 1999 divorce case dismissal, over which Moore presided). Hannity read Moore's letter in his response here:
See also:
Comment: Want to know the logical endpoint of identity politics? Look no further than Israel: victim-mentality extraordinaire and apartheid state.