Advertisers are dropping Sean Hannity over his defense of Roy Moore

There’s an exodus of advertisers going on over at Sean Hannity‘s Fox News show in the wake of his coverage of Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore. According to a report from The Washington Post this weekend, it turns out that in addition to Moore’s homophobic and religious extremist rhetoric, he also apparently used to groom teenagers for sex when he was in his 30s.

This Saturday, three companies announced that they will be pulling their ads from Hannity after critics called on them to do so. Realtor.com, the coffee brewing company Keurig, and plus-sized clothing company Eloquii announced they’d be pulling their ads. Although they didn’t publicly state a reason why, they acknowledged that they were responding to the outcry.

“While we continually strategize on where we advertise on and offline, we are not currently, and will not be running TV ads on Hannity. -MS,” Realtor.com responded to a Twitter user on Friday who addressed the company with a tweeted video of Hannity’s show.

Keurig tweeted to the president of liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America that the company would be pulling its ads as well.

“Hannity is blocked from our advertising list,” the Twitter account for Eloquii tweeted. “If we can help with anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at social@eloquii.com.”

Media Matters has long been trying to get advertisers to drop Hannity, and his recent coverage of Moore has given that effort a boost.

“Every single person in this country deserves the presumption of innocence,” Hannity said Thursday. “With the allegations against Judge Moore, none of us know the truth of what happened 38 years ago. The only people that would know are the people involved in this incident.”

In a bombshell report from The Washington Post this Thursday, Leigh Corfman accused U.S. Senate Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was just 14-years-old.

According to Corfman, Moore first approached her in 1979 outside a courtroom in Alabama and struck up a conversation with her and her mother. When her mother had to go inside for court matter, Moore offered to watch Corfman. “He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’” recalls Corfman’s mother, 71-year-old Nancy Wells. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”

After chatting her up and getting her phone number, Corfman says Moore picked her up from her house and drove her to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was, and kissed her.

On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.

Fans of Hannity are organizing a counter-boycott of Keurig. As of this weekend, the hashtag #BoycottKeurig was trending on Twitter.

Update: According to Media Matters, two more advertisers have dropped Hannity. 23andme and Nature’s Bounty have both announced their withdrawals.

Featured image via Gage Skidmore (Flickr)

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.