Sean Hannity ties Annapolis newspaper shooting to Maxine Waters

“It’s so sad that there are so many sick, demented, and evil people in this world. It really is sad. You know, imagine you go to work and this is what you’re dealing with today, some crazy person comes in — and I’m not turning this into a gun debate, I know that’s where the media will be in 30 seconds from now. That’s not it,” he said, according to a transcript from the left-leaning Media Matters for America.

“You know, as I’ve always said, I mean honestly,” he continued. “I’ve been saying now for days that something horrible was going to happen because of the rhetoric. Really, Maxine? You want people to create — ‘call your friends, get in their faces’ — and [former President Barack] Obama said that too. ‘Get in their faces, call them out, call your friends, get protesters, follow them into restaurants and shopping malls,’ and wherever else she said.”

No details about the shooter had been shared by authorities at the time.

Waters recently has taken heat for her charged rhetoric, calling on U.S. citizens to band together to force Trump administration officials out of retailers, including restaurants and department stores, in response to the family separation situation on the border.

Waters claims she never called for violence.

Hannity later tweeted out, in response to the abundance of reports on the audio clip shared by Media Matters, a condemnation of what he called “liberal lies” and shared clips from throughout his radio show with which he made the case that his comments about Waters were taken out of context.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the response from Hannity.