On Friday, months after tweeting "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj" about Valerie Jarrett, a previous advisor to President Obama, Sean Hannity gave Roseanne time to explain herself, kind of. Instead of directly apologizing for her tweet she decided going off on some nonsensical tangents and continuing to promote misinformation was the right way to go.
Roseanne began by trying to justify her racist tweet comparing Valerie Jarrett to a terrorist organization and monkeys as not being about race, but about politics. Taking her justification into account still does not justify her message as she could not explain what political value there is to her tweet, because there wasn't any. She continues her backwards justification by talking about her switch from being a Democrat and running for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket. The political issue she say prompted the tweet were American foreign policy related to Israel and its relation to the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Roseanne's passion towards the issue is goodhearted being Jewish herself and growing up with Holocaust survivors. In the interview, she talked about how she has taken a vow to fight extremism. Recently, however, her promotion of the misinformation and conspiracies that feed the right wing extremism on social media pits her against her childhood vow.
Instead of apologizing, tells Valerie she is wrong, would not say sorry and goes on attacking Jarrett for another five minutes before Hannity practically forced her to give an apology. In her "apology", Roseanne called Jarrett a "globalist' that grew up in Iran and sits around with former President Obama talking about how awful the United States is and how it is a good thing Iran kills women and members of the LGBT community. Another lie from Barr with the truth being that Jarrett was born to American parents who were helping a hospital in Iran that moved to Chicago when Valerie was six where she went on to serve the Mayor of Chicago in her adult life.
Roseanne even stooped to the traditional "I have a black friend" excuse by talking about her family and political career. She talks about when she ran in 2012 on the Green Party ticket and how she received the support of the Green Party Black Caucus, the African American children in her family means and how that means that she cannot be racist towards African Americans no matter her actions.
In her twenty minute excuse, Roseanne and Hannity teamed up to justify her racism by talking about her mental health, substance abuse and childhood abuse. Roseanne talked about her mental state being clouded due to a mix of Ambien and alcohol because it was Labor Day, which led to a tweet from the producer of Ambien, Sanofi that said, "While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication." Hannity then brought up Barr's childhood that unfortunately included psychological and emotional abuse from her parents. However, despite all these negative experiences, they do not excuse racism in any form.
Roseanne's claim that Jarrett wrote the deal herself and the money given to Iran was illegal is also entirely wrong, which an article from Fortune clearly explains. The Iran Nuclear Deal ironed out by the heads of country's respective foreign affairs departments in the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, Germany, Iran itself and a representative for the European Union representing twenty eight countries. There was no one person this could be attributed, but a team of individual that came together with the common goal of peace in a region that has not seen peace for a very long time.
The money Roseanne talks about was not a ransom and portions of the money given to the Iranians was the Iranian government's own money that the United States had in frozen accounts since the 1970s. A tribunal at the Hague of nine judges decided that Iran would not get the $10 billion they wanted rather the original money kept from them plus interest, like in nay standard transaction.
Roseanne ended one of her points by saying that not knowing Valerie Jarrett was white clears her of all wrongdoing when the fact of the matter is that ignorance is not an excuse for ignorance.
