This Is Getting Too Easy: Slavish Hannity Pushes False Account of Trump’s Altruism On His Website For Months

Can you take one more story of Sean Hannity proving to be a pathetic, bottom feeding bootlick?

I hope so, because I can’t ridicule this little tadpole enough, and he obliges me by providing daily fodder for mockery.

The Washington Post has done the honors today, by publishing the findings of an account Hannity has had on his website for several months, as proof of his hero, Trump’s good deeds towards the military.

“The Trump campaign has confirmed to Hannity.com that Mr. Trump did indeed send his plane to make two trips from North Carolina to Miami, Florida to transport over 200 Gulf War Marines back home.”
— quote in article titled “200 Stranded Marines Needed A Plane Ride Home, Here’s How Donald Trump Responded,” Sean Hannity Show website, May 19, 2016

It seemed like such a sweet story — Donald Trump sending his personal plane down to Camp Lejeune, N.C., when 200 Marines were stranded after fighting in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. At least that is the story that Sean Hannity of Fox News has touted on his website for several months.

The actual facts of the incident are little less altruistic, when told in the clear light.

It seems there were 209 officers and Marines, fresh back from serving with the 8^th Tank Battalion in Operation Desert Shield, waiting at Camp Lejeune to be returned to Broward County, Florida. This was in the Spring of 1991.

Scheduling conflicts led to flight delays and confusion, as the Marines waited to be taken home.

At the time, Trump had entered into another bad deal, attempting to start an airline shuttle company.

The planes of that venture had essentially been repossessed by the banks, due to the failure of Trump to repay his loans. He owed the interest on a $235 million loan to Citibank. He was even tried to hock his own private jet for $6.5 million, in order to raise the cash needed to pay off what he owed.

So much for the “good businessman.”

And how did the Marines end up with Trump’s shuttle plane?

Well, it turns out when Trump bought the shuttle from Eastern Airlines, he made a bad deal, accepting an additional five planes instead of a lower purchase price because the market had turned south. As the Daily Beast noted, in an entertaining account of Trump’s foray into the airline business, “the shuttle needed only 16 planes to operate a full hourly schedule at its three cities, with one or two jets as spares, and extra aircraft are anathema to an airline — they don’t make money sitting on the ground.”

So some of those extra planes were contracted out to the U.S. military to ferry personnel in the United States during Operations Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991. Lt. Gen. Vernon J. Kondra, now retired, was in charge of all military airlift operations. He said that relying on commercial carriers freed up the military cargo aircraft for equipment transport.

So that’s the long and short of it.

Trump, at the time, was deep in negotiations to try and stay solvent, due to his bad business moves, and the planes that bore his name had already been repossessed by the banks.

What we have is a case of Hannity being so enamored of Trump that he spread an incorrect account, and Trump’s people figured nobody would know, so they went along with it.

For that, they earned four Pinocchios.

I hear Pinocchios are what you get when you just lie.

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