At the very end of a long opening monologue Monday night in which he demanded via his on-screen graphic that special counsel Robert Mueller “END THE WITCH HUNT” and attacked former CIA Director John Brennan for his “ERRATIC CONDUCT & BEHAVIOR,” Sean Hannity finally arrived at a rare bit of criticism for a member of President Trump’s inner circle.
Referring to Trump’s most recent comments about the possibility of a “perjury trap,” the Fox News host said, “I could not agree more.” Then, he added, “Now, what Rudy was saying yesterday, I think he could have been a little bit more articulate when he said ‘the truth is not the truth.’” If White House counsel Don McGahn “says one thing” and Trump says another, “guess who decides which one they want to believe?” Hannity asked, trying to help Giuliani out. “That would be Mueller.”
Hannity was referring to the surreal statement from Trump’s lawyer Giuliani on Meet the Press over the weekend. When Chuck Todd reminded Giuliani that “truth is truth,” he shot back, “No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth.” Todd rightly acknowledged in the moment that those words would become a “bad meme.”
Giuliani spent most of his day Monday trying to clarify his comments, tweeting, “My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic ‘he said, she said’ puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t.”
Earlier in the evening on Fox News, Giuliani backtracked again, explaining to host Martha MacCallum that “truth” is relative. “And when you tell me that, you know, he should testify because is he going to tell the truth and shouldn’t worry, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth, not the truth,” he said.
“One person says the Flynn conversation took place. The other person says the Flynn conversation didn’t take place. What’s the truth? You tell me how you figure out the truth,” Giuliani added. When MacCallum argued that well, “either he did or he didn’t,” the lawyer replied, “Like the tree falling in the forest, how do we know what the truth is?”
