Kathy Barnette, the Republican candidate who placed third in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary race, blamed her loss on Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity.
Hannity, who had endorsed pro-abortion Dr. Oz, used his primetime television program to smear Barnette.
Oz, who is pro-abortion, pro-Black Lives Matter and supports gun control, publicly thanked his “friend” Sean Hannity during an election night address.
“I do want to say never forget what Sean Hannity did in this race,” Barnette said. “Almost single-handedly, Sean Hannity sowed the seeds of disinformation, flat-out lies every night for the past five days, and that was just extremely hard to overcome.”
Oz and I agree on this one. NEVER forget, PA, how .@seanhannity intentionally interfered in our election sowing lies and disinformation. https://t.co/x99BJ7WChT
— Kathy Barnette (@Kathy4Truth) May 18, 2022
Hannity, who has come under fire from conservatives, responded with a forceful defense of his behavior.
Third-place finisher Kathy Barnette is now attacking yours truly on Twitter. She’s putting out videos blaming me for her loss. Kathy, my first instinct was to put up all of your incendiary tweets again, and there’s a ton of them, but I really don’t need to defend myself.
You’re the one that really needs to answer the questions about all of your comments, and all of your tweets that are there. You can lash out at me all you want. You’re not the first person. But everything that we revealed is true. Prior to the election, we attempted to reach out to you and your campaign for comment over and over and over again. You and your team refused to get back to us to give us answers.
Now, maybe you stand by your past comments, maybe you don’t. But you refused to answer our questions. In fact, you only responded to me publicly on Twitter, and then I tweeted you back and said I would invite you on for a debate the day before election day with all the other candidates. I’m on 675 stations nationwide. You never got back to me. That, unfortunately would be on you.
Mediaite
Hannity’s critics accused him of using heavily edited videos and quotes taken out of context to attack Barnette. Tactics that his critics say are mainstays of leftwing hosts on MSNBC and CNN.
“Sean Hannity is no different than these left leaning Liberals. So disappointing,” said Diamond and Silk.