Fox News host Sean Hannity has gone on the offensive against Alec Baldwin after the Hollywood actor compared him to a "Long Island working class buffoon."
In a segment that lasted nearly 10 minutes, Hannity hit back at comments Baldwin made on The Howard Stern Show, detailing a feud between the pair that has lasted for over a decade.
"Hannity is an idiot and he is an untalented idiot. Hannity has no talent whatsoever. He has none," Baldwin, the star of 30 Rock and The Hunt for Red October, said on Stern's talk radio show. "He is like a Long Island, working-class buffoon where everything is just hate. Sean Hannity, who lacks self-awareness on any level, he has got zero self-awareness," the actor added.
When it came to trading insults with Baldwin, Hannity had plenty of ammunition and even claimed to be pulling his punches. "Okay Alec, if I am so dumb what did I do on radio and TV is so easy, why have you failed on cable TV news show, a network show, and you and I both know you wanted to work on talk radio? You have failed and flopped in both these businesses over and over again," Hannity claimed.
The Fox anchor then proceeded to play a recording of the pair sparring on The Brian Whitman Show on WABC radio in 2006. Baldwin can at least claim to be consistent in his criticism of Hannity. "Why would I want to come on the show with a no-talent former construction worker hack like you?" Baldwin asked.
Hannity said in the 2006 clip that Baldwin was a "third-rate Hollywood actor," before the latter stormed out of the radio show. The host of The Sean Hannity Show then went on to play a recording of Baldwin hosting a show on WPHT radio later in the same year and the now-infamous recording of the actor calling his daughter a "rotten little pig" in a 2007 voicemail message.
There is certainly no love lost between Baldwin, a forthright Democrat, and Fox News. Baldwin's satirization of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live has been a lightning rod for conservative criticism, not least from the president himself.
In an interview with IndieWire, Baldwin explained his impression of Trump was deliberately unsophisticated. "I made him as two-dimensional as I believe he deserves to be made," Baldwin told the site. "And we've certainly vulgarized it from time to time, beyond certain limitations. But it's essentially us repeating back what he says, and just holding up a mirror to what he says and does."
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Callum Paton is a staff writer at Newsweek specializing in North Africa and the Middle East. He has worked freelance ... Read more
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