Sean Hannity Wants You To Know He Can Still Dine At Olive Garden

While most cable news hosts have been covering the fallout from last Wednesday's storming of the Capitol and the impending impeachment of President Trump, Sean Hannity wants to tell Americans the real news: that he can still dine at Olive Garden.

Last Friday, Hannity addressed his audience to debunk a "menacing" report that Olive Garden had revoked his neverending pasta pass.

pic.twitter.com/EzBrlN31Kd

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) January 9, 2021

So, how the hell did we get here? It started last Wednesday, after Anderson Cooper made a barb that the protestors at the Capitol would go back after the riot was over to eat at Olive Garden. “Look at them, they’re high-fiving each other for this deplorable display of completely unpatriotic, completely against law and order, completely unconstitutional behavior,” Cooper said in the on-air clip. "And they’re going to go back to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn that they’re staying at, or the Garden Marriott, and they’re going to have some drinks and they’re going to talk about the great day they had in Washington."

This led Hannity's Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson to stand up for America's "premiere" pasta chain that night while other networks stuck to coverage of the riot and certification of Biden's election victory. In response to the ensuing microdrama between CNN, Fox News, and Olive Garden, Twitter user Mantia cooked up a fake statement from Olive Garden "revoking" Hannity's lifetime pasta pass. It was a pretty good joke considering all the other brands chiming in on Wednesday's riot, but a close reading of the statement reveals it's fake. For starters, it calls Wednesday's riot a "viscous attack" and decries the protestors for going against Olive Garden's ethos of "Hospitaliano."

This morning I made a “social media statement”-style joke image as if it had come from Olive Garden, and I want to talk about why I made it and why I deleted it.

Just so I’m abundantly clear: it’s not a real statement. pic.twitter.com/hTf2ymub5P

— Louie Mantia, Jr. (@Mantia) January 8, 2021

Unbelievably, this joke was a thing millions of Americans had to be subjected to for a minute of Fox News airtime while Hannity read out free ad copy for Olive Garden. "I will eat at Olive Garden soon," says Hannity. "Unless they ban me, which will be a very sad, sad day in my life."