Fox News host Sean Hannity has implied that media outlets deemed too friendly to Democrats should be banned from President-elect Donald Trump’s White House.
“Amen,” Hannity responded to a tweet asserting “CNN, NYT, WaPo & others shown to have colluded by @wikileaks should not receive WH press credentials.”
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 14, 2016
Hannity, who appeared in an ad for President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign and hosted several town halls with the candidate, previously praised WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, for exposing “how corrupt our government is.”
Shortly after that tweet, Hannity published another that claimed “Journalism is DEAD IN AMERICA,” below a picture of various news outlets—and labels like “GLOBALIST ELITES,” “UNITED NATIONS,” and others—holding metaphorical guns to Trump’s head:
Journalism is DEAD IN AMERICA! pic.twitter.com/50ZBOTvfHy
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 26, 2016
Hannity cited WikiLeaks in a radio broadcast last month, saying emails it published from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta proved accurate ”everything that conspiracy theorists have said over the years.”
Trump, meanwhile, was inaccessible to the press in the final months of the campaign, and that trend has continued after Election Day. He bucked the tradition of allowing a pool of reporters to fly on his campaign plane, and sometimes started rallies without them in the audience. On Thursday, Trump refused to allow journalists to travel with him to Washington, D.C. to cover his meetings with President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, according to the Associated Press.
Responding to questions about the President-elect’s openness to press coverage, spokeswoman Hope Hicks said at the time that Trump’s team expects ”to operate a traditional pool and look forward to implementing our plans in the near future,” according to the same report.