Former Cliven Bundy ally Sean Hannity is taking a different view of the Nevada ranching clan’s ongoing war with the federal government, ridiculing their involvement this weekend in the takeover of a government building in Oregon.
“I’m having a hard time understanding why Cliven Bundy’s son is out in Oregon,” Hannity said Monday afternoon on his radio program.
Ammon and Ryan Bundy, whose father made national headlines in 2014 with his armed standoff with federal agents over grazing rights in Nevada, reportedly spearheaded a protest this weekend that saw armed activists occupy a federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. The activists say they are protesting the federal government’s treatment of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were found guilty in 2012 of setting fire to 130 acres of land in 2001 to cover up poaching activities.
A judge ruled this year that their original five-year sentences were too lenient, and he ordered that the two ranchers re-report to prison to serve extended terms. The Hammonds reported to prison late Tuesday evening.
CNN asked Ammon Bundy, 40, what he and their followers hoped to accomplish by occupying the federal building. He responded this weekend by saying, “This refuge — it has been destructive to the people of the county and to the people of the area.”
“People need to be aware that we’ve become a system where government is actually claiming and using and defending people’s rights, and they are doing that against the people,” he added.
But many critics in the media, including Hannity, aren’t on board with the activists’ takeover of federal property.
“[I]t sounds like people looking for a reason for a showdown,” the Fox News host said Monday, adding that there’s no need here for another fatal clash between federal agents and protesters like the one in 1993 near Waco, Texas, which resulted in multiple civilian causalities.
Hannity also noted that not even the Hammonds want the Bundys and their entourage of armed protesters out in Oregon.
An attorney representing the two convicted ranchers said this weekend, “Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family.”
Hannity’s criticism of the Bundys this week stands in sharp contrast to how he responded in 2014 during the family’s first major armed standoff with federal authorities.
For several weeks in April, Hannity was an enthusiastic supporter of Cliven Bundy’s supposed right to graze on federal property. He hosted Bundy for multiple evening interviews, and implored his viewers to see the tense situation from the rancher’s point of view. And it wasn’t just Hannity: Other Fox personalities, including anchor Megyn Kelly, granted Bundy a platform to protest the federal government.
However, Fox’s support for Bundy evaporated almost immediately after a video surfaced in April showing the rancher espousing some peculiar notions about the “negro.”
The rancher can be seen on tape suggesting that African-Americans were better off under slavery in the United States then they are now living on “government subsidy”
After that, Hannity and his Fox News colleagues scrambled to disassociate themselves from the Nevada family and its crusade against the federal government. And it appears that that distancing continued Monday as Hannity complained about the Bundys supposed recklessness.
(h/t Washington Post)
