Sean Hannity Doesn't Seem to Know What 'Civil War' Means

Sean Hannity uses his bad TV show to shill for our bad president every night, but he also has a radio show which airs for three excruciating hours every afternoon. Today, he used that radio show to talk about his fears of a coming civil war, which…sounds a lot like where we are now.

In a clip posted by Media Matters today, Hannity responded to a caller (emphasis mine):

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): This country is headed towards a civil war in terms of two sides that are just hating each other and if Robert Mueller wants, there’s a big red button in the middle of the table. And if Robert Mueller is so pompous and so arrogant and so power hungry and so corrupt that he’s going to hit the red button and he’s going to ignite a battle that we’ve not seen in this country before.

Several hundreds of thousands of people died in the American Civil War, which, I guess you could say, was fought by two sides that were “just hating each other.” Not totally sure a similar number of people are going to take up arms in the same way to defend the honor of either a former FBI director or a miserable old TV dingus who was elected by 27 percent of the country, but go on:

HANNITY: You think it’s, and I’m not talking about a war, I’m talking about, in terms of, there’s going to be two sides of this that are fighting and dividing this country at a level we’ve never seen and you’re going to basically have two sides in America, those that stand for truth and those that literally buy into the corrupt deep state attacks against a duly elected president and that’s what it’s going to be.

Hannity seems to be under the impression that people in America don’t already hate each other because of politics. Nearly 60 percent of people reported to Pew last year that it was “stressful” or “frustrating” to talk to someone with a differing opinion of Trump, and in the same survey, nearly half of self-identified liberal Democrats said that a friend voting for Trump would “strain” their friendship.

This trend predates Trump—remember when not loving George W. Bush made you less of an American?—although Trump has certainly exacerbated it. But if Hannity thinks that Mueller prosecuting Trump for being a corrupt dumbass would cause the U.S. to explode into, uh, nonviolent civil war, what does he believe that would actually look like?

HANNITY: I’m not talking about violence, I’m talking about everybody hating each other. You’re not going to be able to have a family dinner without mashed potatoes being thrown across the room.

Ah, OK. So when Hannity said “civil war,” what he actually meant was “food fight.” Common mistake!