After suggesting Vince Foster was murdered, Hannity praised caller who accused Clinton of multiple rapes

Summary: While discussing Sen. Hillary Clinton's newest campaign ad, Sean Hannity agreed with a caller who argued that "Monica Lewinsky and all those other women that Bill Clinton raped were invisible to her." Hannity replied, "I wish I'd thought of that."

During the August 15 edition of his ABC Radio Networks talk show, Sean Hannity agreed with a caller who argued that "Monica Lewinsky and all those other women that Bill Clinton raped were invisible to" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY). The caller was referring to Sen. Clinton's recent campaign advertisement, in which she stated that families without healthcare "are invisible to this president." The caller added: "So, how can we expect her to see, you know, hundreds and thousands of Americans?" In response, Hannity said, "I wish I'd thought of that," and went on to ask, "[W]hat about all those women that accused her husband of being a serial abuser? Oh, she didn't pay any attention. Were they invisible?"

Beyond saying that he wished he had thought of the caller's smear against Clinton, in the past month, as Media Matters for America documented, Hannity has also suggested that, "[i]n the minds of some," there may have been "a motive for foul play" behind the death of former deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. Indeed, while teasing the segment on the July 22 edition of Fox News' Hannity's America, Hannity asked: "Did a close friend of Hillary Clinton commit suicide, or was it a massive cover-up?" But, although several conservative outlets have suggested that the Clintons were somehow involved in Foster's death -- as Media Matters has documented (here, here, and here) -- numerous investigations determined that his death was a suicide. The Office of the Independent Counsel -- then headed by Kenneth Starr -- completed its inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Foster's death with a report issued on October 11, 1997, which concluded that "based on investigation and analysis of the evidentiary record, that Mr. Foster committed suicide by gunshot in Fort Marcy Park."

From the August 15 edition of ABC Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show:

HANNITY: All right, Sean Hannity Show: I'm going to tell you about this in the next hour. Feminist Fonda -- Jane Fonda -- Gloria Steinem stiffing employees at their women's radio network, just like "Airhead America." Let's go to [caller] in Texas. Hey [caller], how are you?

CALLER: Hey, how you doing, sir?

HANNITY: Got 30 seconds, my friend, but they're all yours. Go.

CALLER: OK sir, yeah, I just had a quick comment to make about that invisibility ad about Hillary Clinton.

HANNITY: Yeah.

CALLER: She said something about -- I just wanted to make a comment about how, you know, Monica Lewinsky and all those other women that Bill Clinton raped were invisible to her. So, how can we expect her to see, you know, hundreds and thousands of Americans?

HANNITY: You know, what a -- I wish I'd thought of that. Hang on a sec. Maybe it's 'cause I didn't go to bed till 6 o'clock. All right, you get credit. You know what? Yeah, what about all those women that accused her husband of being a serial abuser? Oh, she didn't pay any attention. Were they invisible?

From the July 22 edition of Fox News' Hannity's America:

HANNITY: And coming up: Did a close friend of Hillary Clinton commit suicide, or was it a massive cover-up? It's the mysterious death of Vince Foster in this week's "Clinton Chapter."

[...]

HANNITY: And welcome back to Hannity's America. Of all the "Clinton Chapters" we've covered so far, well, this week, we delve into one of the darkest and most mysterious.

[begin video clip]

HANNITY: Chapter eight: the mysterious death of Vince Foster, part 1. Foster served as deputy White House counsel during the first Clinton administration for six months before his death. But before heading to the nation's capital, he spent most of his life in Hope, Arkansas, where he and childhood friend and future president Bill Clinton were neighbors.

Now, he worked at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and became close with Hillary Clinton, who called him "Vincenzo," and when the Clintons went to Washington after the 1992 election, Foster went with them.

But Foster's term in the White House was an introduction to hard-knock Beltway politics. He was largely responsible for handling the Travelgate scandal and was responsible for dealing with all the first family's paperwork related to Whitewater.

Those first months of 1993 were tough on Foster. He was targeted by a series of Wall Street Journal editorials and battled with clinical depression. All of that changed on July 20, 1993. That was the day that Vince Foster got in his car and drove to Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, and he supposedly walked through the woods -- and depending on which version of the story that you believe -- he took his own life.

[...]

HANNITY: Now, these are just some of the mysteries surrounding the death of Vince Foster. Did he have in his possession papers that could have impacted the Whitewater investigation? How was the suicide note missed?

In the minds of some, these questions may have provided a motive for foul play. But the most heated debate over Foster's death wasn't political, it had to do with old-fashioned police work -- and that's where we'll pick up next week when we open up another chapter in the Clintons.

—K.H.