The sensational headline mischaracterized the evidence presented in the post, which drew on a Washington Post story about how Bolton had earned speaking fees from Deutsche Bank, the British bank HSBC and a foundation operated by a Ukrainian steel magnate. All nuance was lost, however, when the blog post gained sudden traction on Monday, posted to about two dozen Facebook groups — with a collective membership of more than 300,000. One of them was a group called “Fox News Sean Hannity,” described as a forum for “all Sean Hannity fans.” The blog post primed Fox viewers in the group — which has no official links to the network or the popular Trump-friendly host — for what they would hear when they tuned in that night.

Craddick bluntly assessed the motivations behind the renewed interest in his post, but he had little sympathy for Bolton’s boosters, either.

“Now the Republicans don’t like Bolton, so they’ll take an article that makes him look bad and push it,” he said. “But if the Democrats weren’t getting something useful out of him, they wouldn’t be fans either.”