Hannity Praises George W. Bush’s ‘Wisdom’ On Middle East Violence During Interview With Lindsey Graham

 

Fox News host Sean Hannity turned back the clock on Friday night and praised former President George W. Bush just as he did throughout the Bush administration.

Hannity spoke with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the Israel-Hamas war, which was provoked by Hamas when it carried out a series of terrorist attacks last week, killing 1,300 Israelis. Israel has conducted airstrikes in Hamas-controlled Gaza and appears on the brink of a large-scale invasion of the territory. In recent days, Graham has floated the idea of bombing Iran, which funds Hamas, but denies giving the green light to the attacks on Israel.

“We have lost deterrence on the Biden administration’s watch,” the senator said. “Donald Trump had China in a box, had Russia scared. We’ve lost all of that in two years. This operation, Sean, took years to plan. We have to quickly come to Israel’s aid with weapons and medical supplies. We have to be ready to join Israel to strike Iran if they try to destroy the state of Israel by opening up a second front.”

Hannity replied by invoking comments by Bush in a video released by Axios earlier in the day:

HANNITY: I heard comments from former President George W. Bush I thought they had a lot of wisdom behind them. He thought that any military incursion… now that they’ve entered Gaza and they have troops on the ground, one situation we have to avoid, that they have to avoid is what happened to our troops in Iraq. We cannot have, as in our case, their national treasure going door to door to door and trying to win a war that way

It seems to me the best way to win war is maybe the way that Donald Trump took out ISIS. He bombed the living daylights out of them, and bombed them straight to hell where they belong. And he did it fairly expeditiously. I don’t think we can go back to the old days of a ground war, traditional ground war like that, especially with military technology. Do you?

GRAHAM: Well, you’re a dear friend. There’s no way to defeat Hamas from the air. You have to go under the ground. You have to kill ’em. You have to pull ’em up by the roots like we did in Germany and Japan. We took Berlin and Tokyo [sic, the U.S. only occupied Berlin and Tokyo after the Germans and Japanese surrendered, respectively], and without that, the war would never have ended. They have to go in on the ground. There is no option other than going on the ground, dig these guys out and kill them, and hold the territory.

During the run-up to the Iraq war, Hannity vehemently supported the invasion on Fox’s airwaves, as did Graham as a member of the House of Representatives.

“Any disagreements Americans may have had in the past should give way to our shared commitment to see this effort through,” Graham said when the invasion began in March 2003 in an effort to stifle dissent.

During a 2005 show, Hannity told a guest who mentioned Iraq war veterans protesting the war, “I don’t care about your thoughts.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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Mike is a Mediaite senior editor who covers the news in primetime. Follow him on Bluesky.