Hannity has for years accused critics ranging from Democrats to CNN hosts as part of a “left-wing crime family,” but Stelter on Sunday urged Americans not to get “numb to this abusive language.” The Reliable Sources host said the language coming from Hannity and Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson is not opinion but instead a concerted effort to radicalize the far right-wing in the United States.

Stelter said that Hannity, much like Trump, “wields power” by portraying a “poisonous” view of the country.

“Don’t get numb to this abusive language. Because it is through this language, it is through these insults, through these attacks that Hannity wields power,” Stelter said on Sunday. “His dark, dire language is fundamentally authoritarian. It softens the ground for a movement like, ‘Stop the Steal,’ Trump’s actual ploy to steal the election. It portrays anyone who disagrees as not legitimate, not American.”

“The poisonous propaganda that the GOP’s activist base is listening to,” Stelter continued. “It’s coming from Sean Hannity more than Trump now…nasty little words like these: socialist, stalker, weak, failure, hell-holes.”

Sean Hannity responded on Twitter to Stelter’s segment on Sunday.

“Haha. This is awesome!!! Poison to Fake News Humpty Dumpty is the truth I reported this week that his highly promoted book ‘BOMBED’ selling less than 1800 copies and he can’t even get 800,000 viewers to watch his socialist propaganda. Ha,” Hannity wrote.

“Humpty Dumpty sold ONLY 1,738 COPIES of his ‘I hate Fox News and Hannity’book. That PUT Humpty AT 4,007TH PLACE ON AMAZON,” he added. “NOW Humpty’s family is BEING ACCUSED OF ‘BULLYING’ AND CREATING A ‘TOXIC ENVIRONMENT’ IN The WORKPLACE.. That is the TRUE definition of poison Humpty.”

Hannity last week accused New York Times writers Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman of being “TRUMP STALKERS” during one segment, prompting Stelter to mock the fact that Fox hires its own network reporters who clearly must fit the same description. Stelter also chuckled at Carlson labeling physicians part of the “medical cartel” and Hannity’s repeated references to President Joe Biden as “president sippy cup.”

Charles Adler, who was a guest host for Hannity’s program nearly 20 years ago, tweeted Saturday a scathing review of the Fox News Channel “opinion” hosts, particularly their targeting of pandemic public health experts: “There has never been an authoritarian regime that hasn’t targeted scientists. Any media organization that consistently does it, enables authoritarianism, even if the primary objective is making billions. If hustling authoritarianism wasn’t so profitable, we’d have less of it.”

Stelter reiterated Sunday that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and his sons, who now operate the media company, are laughing all the way to the bank - and radicalizing the right-wing as they do just that.

“It’s not opinion, what Hannity does…the Fox defense for decades,” Stelter said. “Hannity is spouting poison. Denouncing democratic norms like a free press—that’s poison. Corroding the public discourse is poisonous and the Murdochs let it happen every day.”

Stelter said OANN and Newsmax are simply taking the Fox News format and making it more and more radical for right-wing consumption.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Hannity’s show as well as Stelter’s for any additional remarks.

Update (6/28/2021, 10:38 p.m.): This article has been included to include a response from Sean Hannity.