Trump Bulldozed a Fox News Host

Landing an interview with a president used to exist a big deal. Negotiations between a network producer and the White House printing office could drag on for months. No item was as well small to haggle over: background, fourth dimension of day, exact number of minutes. Presidential sit-downs were the pinnacles of many news anchors' careers.

No more than. Merely as he has bulldozed and then many political norms, Donald Trump has turned the presidential TV interview into a joke. Flim-flam News lets him call in for talk radio-way bluster sessions, the length of which are a punch line among rank-and-file Fox staffers who secretly despise him despite working for his media automobile. "When Trump was booked for viii:ten, and we had an assignment for viii:40, we didn't bother writing it, considering nosotros knew he'd talk until the end of the 60 minutes," a producer for Fox & Friends told me.

He chosen the "Friends" and Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. Every so often he'd consent to an on-camera chat, merely he liked the telephone. Information technology made him seem busy when he wasn't. The interviews, if they can really be called that, were subject to his whims, causing no small amount of contest among the Trump bootlickers at Fox. Stars were known to slip ratings reports to the president to brand their ain shows look more impressive than those of their in-business firm rivals. Sometimes interviews were suddenly offered to hosts when Trump heard them say something flattering on TV. One personality rushed to the aerodrome for a cross-country flight when a sit-downwardly suddenly materialized. Other times the bookings were just a product of who had bent Trump'due south ear most recently: There were side deals brokered during stopovers at his golf game club and pitches made during strategy calls."Why don't you call in tomorrow?"

More ofttimes than not, he did just that. Trump needed Play a joke on to a degree that almost no one understood. He depended on propagandists like Hannity to keep the walls of his culling reality intact.

That'south why, on March 26, 2020, the president was scheduled to phone call into Hannity'due south testify at 9 p.chiliad. sharp. 9 o'clock couldn't come soon enough for Trump—his newly established daily press briefings on the COVID-xix crisis were proving to be a disaster. That mean solar day, he'd gone before the cameras at 5:30 p.m. and told the public to "relax"; shared his amore for Tom Brady; and attacked the "corrupt" news media. "I wish the news could be real," he told the journalists who were spread out in the conference room, respecting social-distancing guidelines. Trump, of form, did no such thing. The country was two weeks into a shutdown of unprecedented proportions. He complained about it; mused about filling the church pews on Easter; and stood uncomfortably close to his coronavirus task force members.

After 39 minutes the president left the briefing early, ordered dinner, and waited for his turn on Hannity. The power imbalance was something to behold: He had the joint chiefs and the chiffonier and any number of world leaders at his brook and call. He could talk to any scientist or public health adept he wanted. But when it came to a Play a joke on interview, he was just some other caller waiting to exist patched into the control room.

Hannity started the bear witness with his usual sermon about Democrats endangering the country. He ripped into New York governor Andrew Cuomo, whose brother, Chris, not coincidentally anchored a rival testify on CNN in the same time slot, and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Then, a proficient 20 minutes into his show, he finally prepared to welcome his guest.

"Is he in that location?" Hannity asked his producers. He heard aught and momentarily freaked out, waiting for the control room to tell him what to exercise.

Then came the voice of Fox'due south very own God: "I am, I'm right here. Hi, Sean."

"Mr. President!" Hannity exclaimed. "Give thanks you lot…"

And they were off. Trump began by flattering Hannity, claiming he'd postponed a critical call with Chinese President 11 Jinping but to become on air. He said, "I am talking to him at x:xxx, right afterwards this call." He actually did keep the Chinese president waiting, which irked Beijing, a White House source told me. But the rest of the Hannity interview was a love-in and a lie-fest. Lower-level staffers could mock the misinformation all they wanted, and they did, copiously. But they were powerless. The prime-time stars held the power, and management had no control over prime time.

The day later on their televised conversation, the president called Hannity with a question: "How'd we do?"

Hannity knew his real meaning was, "How did we rate?"

In the midst of a crippling pandemic, on a day when another 400-plus Americans would die, the president wanted to know about his ratings.

Sean Hannity was the most powerful person at Fox in the Trump age. When people asked who was in charge of the aqueduct, he said, "Me." And most people at the channel agreed with him.

He worked from habitation most days, long before information technology was required due to the pandemic, cheers to a state-of-the-art studio in the basement of his $10.5 million mansion, 38 long miles from Manhattan, in a hamlet on the North Shore of Long Island. At that place was only one style in and one mode out of his village, and a police station that kept track of every auto that drove by. Baton Joel lived half a mile downwardly the road. Hannity was close to his favorite fishing spots and the airstrip where he kept his private jet. He had no trouble affording all this; he banks an estimated $43 million per year.

Hannity's Long Island mansion and his oceanfront Naples, Florida, penthouse were two über-expensive symbols of how Roger Ailes changed his life. I viewed Hannity as a living connection to Fox's by, the but prime-fourth dimension host who was there on launch twenty-four hours and is however there nearly 25 years later. But he definitely wasn't one to dwell on the by. Every day was a new state of war.

Hannity played his function masterfully. But his friends told me he was burnt out for long stretches of the Trump presidency. Being the president's "shadow primary of staff," as he was known around the White Business firm, could be a thrill, but it was also a serious brunt. Hannity counseled Trump at all hours of the twenty-four hour period; ane of his confidants said the president treated Hannity like Melania, a wife in a sexless marriage. Arguably, he treated Hannity amend than Melania. Hannity's producers marveled at his influence and access. "It's a powerful thing to be someone's consigliere," one producer said. "I hear Trump talk at rallies, and I hear Sean," a family friend commented.

Hannity chose this life, and then no one felt deplorable for him, merely the stress took its toll. "Hannity would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person," i of his associates said. Another friend concurred: "Hannity has said to me more than than once, 'he'southward crazy.'"

But Hannity's commitment to GOP priorities and to his ain business model meant he could never say any of this publicly. If one of his friends went on the record quoting Hannity questioning Trump'south mental fitness, that would be the finish of the friendship.

Early on in the Trump age, Hannity gained weight and vaped endlessly, which some members of his inner circle blamed on Trump-related stress. "If yous were hearing what I'k hearing, you'd be vaping too," Hannity told a colleague. He was sensitive to trolls' comments about the actress weight, especially from his breast up; that's all viewers saw of him nearly nights, when he was live from his palace. He doubled up on his workouts and slimmed back downwardly.

Hannity swore that no 1 knew the truth about his relationship with Trump. He lashed out at people, similar yours truly, who reported on information technology. And he certainly didn't disclose his role in Trumpworld the style a media ethicist would recommend. But once in a while the curtain slipped and his ain colleagues pointed out the extraordinary position he held. Equally the coronavirus crunch deepened in March, Geraldo Rivera said to Hannity on the air, "I want yous to tell the president, when yous talk to him this evening, that Geraldo says 'Mr. President, for the good of the nation, stop shaking hands.'"

Needless to say, that's not how Hannity's calls with Trump actually went. They were instead a stream of grievance and gossip. Trump was a run-on sentence, so decumbent to rambling that "I barely go a give-and-take in," Hannity told 1 of his allies. He sometimes spoke with the president before the show and again afterward, unremarkably in the ten p.one thousand. 60 minutes, when Trump rated his guests and recommended talking points and themes for the following twenty-four hours. Trump was just similar the balance of Hannity's viewers: He wanted more of Gregg Jarrett on the show, more of Dan Bongino, more of Newt Gingrich—the toadiest toads possible.

In the Trump historic period, left-wing blogs filled up with stories about families torn apart by a loved ane's Hannity habit. I heard those stories from Trick staffers too: Some of their relatives resented what they did for a living. They made excuses, mumbling that they were simply giving the people what they wanted. "I feel like Play a joke on is being held earnest by its audience," a veteran staffer said. "The audience has been RADICALIZED," a longtime commentator texted me, in all caps, as he scrolled through his Twitter feed after a live shot on the daytime show America's Newsroom. The amount of vitriol shocked him. Any intermission from Trump was penalized. Nuanced debates nearly the role of government and taxation and immigration were distilled to a unmarried question: Were you with Trump or against him?

Hannity deserved a big share of the blame for this state of affairs. But despite that, and despite the fact that he was rarely at headquarters, Hannity was well-liked around Fox. Colleagues described him equally a big-hearted family guy. He paid bonuses to his staff out of his own deep pockets. He ordered meals and care packages to the homes of colleagues who lost loved ones. He even offered to hire a private investigator when an acquaintance died in a mysterious crash. When the network descended on New Hampshire for principal election coverage, Hannity footed the pecker for the open bar. A fellow member of Sean'due south production crew, a Democrat, told me, "I desire to fucking hate him so bad. But he's so nice to me."

I believed him. But I struggled to square Hannity's reputation with the human being I saw on TV and occasionally in person. While deep into the research for this book in Dec 2019, I ran into Hannity at a holiday party hosted by the Goggle box-news tracking website Mediaite. We were upstairs at the Lambs Club, a stately Manhattan restaurant wrapped with red leather banquettes on 44th Street. Hannity greeted me by putting both his hands on my shoulders and exclaiming: "Humpty!" His nickname for me was Humpty Dumpty. I asked if he e'er felt bad about the name-calling. "No," he said. He took his easily off my shoulders and moved toward the bar.

It was eight o'clock, and Hannity worked the room like a pro, dressed down in a Fox-branded hoodie. He hugged CNN's Alisyn Camerota and chatted with media reporters and even said hi to Trump antagonist George Conway. This room was the embodiment of the so-chosen "media mob" he attacked every weeknight—and he looked like he didn't desire to get out information technology. I wondered what Hannity's viewers would think. At 8:xxx his P.R. person pushed him toward the door, insisting he had to become to the studio for his nine o'clock show. I afterwards realized that the P.R. person had lied—he had pretaped his prove earlier coming to the party.

Those were the pre-social distancing days, when Hannity could still fraternize with the enemy. Months later on, Hannity dismissed coronavirus "hysteria" and bashed Democrats who raised alarms about the virus. In the words of one Kansas Metropolis resident's FCC complaint, Hannity "has misled his elderly viewers on the risk of pandemic virus. They are well-nigh at risk." Hannity, of class, insisted that he always took the virus seriously. But the transcripts proved otherwise.

There are dozens of reasons why the United States lagged then far behind in preparations for the pandemic. Some are cultural, some are economic, some are political. But there is no doubt that one of the reasons is the Trump–Fox feedback loop. When the virus silently spread, some of Play tricks's biggest stars denied and downplayed the threat.

Trump echoed them, and they echoed back. "The thing that's going to end this is the warmer weather," Greg Gutfeld said on February 24. "I day—it'southward like a phenomenon—it volition disappear," Trump said on Feb 27. Fox'southward longest-tenured medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, told Hannity on March 6, "at worst, at worst, worst instance scenario, information technology could be the flu."

This was shockingly irresponsible stuff—and Fox executives knew it, because by the beginning of March, they were taking precautions that belied Siegel's merits, canceling an event for hundreds of advertisers, instituting deep cleanings of the function, and putting a work-from-home plan in place. Play a joke on's virtually vociferous critics said the network had blood on its easily. An advocacy group in Washington Country compiled this information and filed suit against Pull a fast one on. (That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.) Some Play a trick on staffers privately admitted that the don't-worry tone of the talking heads was harmful. "Hazardous to our viewers," "dangerous," and "unforgivable" are some of the phrases Fox News staffers used to draw the network'south early coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

The contrast between Play tricks's public face and the private "resistance" has existed ever since Trump upended the presidential race v years agone. Information technology's the reason why I decided to write a book nigh the network and its unprecedented alliance with the White Firm. In all I spoke with more 140 staffers at Fox, plus 180 quondam staffers and others with direct ties to the network. Their frustration was palpable. Staffers described a TV network that had gone off the rails. Some even said the place that they worked, that they cashed paychecks from, had get unsafe to democracy. They felt like the news segmentation had been squeezed out in favor of pro-Trump blowhards.

Virtually of the insiders acknowledged that Fob News was always, on i level, a political project, but many said they were shocked past how thoroughly Fox and the GOP had been merged by Trump, Hannity, and a scattering of other power players.

"We surrendered," 1 anchor said with remorse in his vocalism. "We just surrendered."

"What does Trump take on Trick?" some other anchor asked, convinced there was a conspiracy at play.

A lot of people I spoke to were desperate to talk. Others were terrified. Ailes made anybody paranoid and punished those he suspected of leaking. That aforementioned fearfulness of retribution was all the same very real in the post-Ailes years. Employees suspected their piece of work phones were tapped and assumed their emails were monitored by direction. I cannot overstate the level of paranoia amid Fox employees.

Most of the sources only spoke on condition of anonymity, citing Fox's nondisclosure agreements and other rules against speaking with exterior members of the media. This was especially true for on-air talent. I laughed several times when I heard Trick stars bemoaning the utilize of anonymous sources on air, knowing those very aforementioned people were confidential sources. Afterwards all, that's how this business works.

Copyright © 2020 by Brian Stelter. From the forthcoming volume HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Unsafe Distortion of Truth past Brian Stelter to be published by I Point Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.

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Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/08/sean-hannity-fox-news-staffers-feel-trapped-in-trump-cult

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