In reporting the news that Chris Harper-Mercer had posted pictures supporting the IRA on his Myspace page, Fox News presenter Sean Hannity asked a contributor on his show, ‘Hannity’, what the significance was of the IRA pictures. And the response was a little confusing.
“It was just a glancing reference? Was there anything more to that?,” Hannity asked, attempting to ascertain if there might be any political or religious agenda linking the shooter’s actions and the pictures.
“There were just pictures on (the page) ... What does that tell you?,” the contributor replied.
“If you go back and you look at that conflict that the IRA had – Sean, at some point they came out in favour of the Catholics, and it was the Protestants, and some referred to that as the old Sunni and Shia rivalry in Ireland, but there was no anti-religion in there, per se.”
The 'anti-religion' remark is presumably (the clip is too short to give full context) in relation to the news that the shooter ordered victims to state their religion.
Which is one way of putting it.
