Sean Hannity welcomed Tavis Smiley and Cornel West onto his program by thanking them for all the times they criticize President Obama.
"Welcome back," Hannity said to his guests. "I don't think that we agree often but I do enjoy when both of you criticize Barack Obama. I want to thank you for that."
"We try to tell the truth and we're critical of you even more...you know that brother," West responded.
West and Smiley sat down with Hannity to discuss their new book on poverty, "The Rich And The Rest Of Us." Hannity criticized the title of the book, saying that it made him mad.
"I don't like this division, this wedge Tavis, that the President is using in the 99 vs. the 1 percent. 'The Rich And The Rest Of Us.' It somehow indicates that it's a bad thing that people are successful," Hannity argued.
"Not at all," Smiley responded. "Mitt Romney is wrong when he says we're engaging in what he calls the 'politics of envy.' No one who happens to be poor wants what Mr. Romney has. They just want to move beyond poverty...to an opportunity to play on a level playing field. We are dangerously close, Sean, to cementing a permanent American catastrophe here. The rich, more than the poor, are responsible in fact for this catastrophe we have now, yet the poor pay the heaviest price although they're not responsible for the damage done by the Great Recession."
"Stop right there," Hannity said. "Wait a minute. How about government policies are responsible?..How are the rich responsible? The top 10 percent pay 70 percent of the bill."
"No, brother Sean. Government policies tend to reinforce Wall Street and corporate elites," West argued.
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