Landing an interview with a president used to be a big deal. Negotiations between a network producer and the White House press office could drag on for months. No detail was too small to haggle over: background, time of day, exact number of minutes. Presidential sit-downs were the pinnacles of many news anchorsâ careers.
No more. Just as he has bulldozed so many political norms, Donald Trump has turned the presidential TV interview into a joke. Fox News lets him call in for talk radio-style rant sessions, the length of which are a punch line among rank-and-file Fox staffers who secretly despise him despite working for his media machine. âWhen Trump was booked for 8:10, and we had an assignment for 8:40, we didnât bother writing it, because we knew heâd talk until the end of the hour,â a producer for Fox & Friends told me.
He called the âFriendsâ and Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. Every so often heâd consent to an on-camera chat, but he liked the phone. It made him seem busy when he wasnât. The interviews, if they can really be called that, were subject to his whims, causing no small amount of competition among the Trump bootlickers at Fox. Stars were known to slip ratings reports to the president to make their own shows look more impressive than those of their in-house rivals. Sometimes interviews were suddenly offered to hosts when Trump heard them say something flattering on TV. One personality rushed to the airport for a cross-country flight when a sit-down suddenly materialized. Other times the bookings were simply a product of who had bent Trumpâs ear most recently: There were side deals brokered during stopovers at his golf club and pitches made during strategy calls.âWhy donât you call in tomorrow?â
More often than not, he did just that. Trump needed Fox to a degree that almost no one understood. He depended on propagandists like Hannity to keep the walls of his alternative reality intact.
Thatâs why, on March 26, 2020, the president was scheduled to call into Hannityâs show at 9 p.m. sharp. Nine oâclock couldnât come soon enough for Trumpâhis newly established daily press briefings on the COVID-19 crisis were proving to be a disaster. That day, heâd gone before the cameras at 5:30 p.m. and told the public to ârelaxâ; shared his affection for Tom Brady; and attacked the âcorruptâ news media. âI wish the news could be real,â he told the journalists who were spread out in the briefing room, respecting social-distancing guidelines. Trump, of course, 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 cabinet and any number of world leaders at his beck and call. He could talk to any scientist or public health expert he wanted. But when it came to a Fox interview, he was just another caller waiting to be patched into the control room.
Hannity started the show 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 show on CNN in the same time slot, and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Then, a good 20 minutes into his show, he finally prepared to welcome his guest.
âIs he there?â Hannity asked his producers. He heard nothing and momentarily freaked out, waiting for the control room to tell him what to do.
Then came the voice of Foxâs very own God: âI am, Iâm right here. Hi, Sean.âÂ
âMr. President!â Hannity exclaimed. âThank youâ¦â
And they were off. Trump began by flattering Hannity, claiming heâd postponed a critical call with Chinese President Xi Jinping just to get on air. He said, âI am talking to him at 10:30, right after this call.â He really 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 after their televised chat, the president called Hannity with a question: âHowâd we do?â
Hannity knew his real meaning was, âHow did we rate?â
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 channel, he said, âMe.â And most people at the channel agreed with him.
He worked from home most days, long before it was required due to the pandemic, thanks to a state-of-the-art studio in the basement of his $10.5 million mansion, 38 long miles from Manhattan, in a village on the North Shore of Long Island. There was only one way in and one way out of his village, and a police station that kept track of every car that drove by. Billy Joel lived half a mile down 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.
Hannityâs 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 Foxâs past, the only prime-time host who was there on launch day and is still there nearly 25 years later. But he definitely wasnât one to dwell on the past. Every day was a new war.
Hannity played his part masterfully. But his friends told me he was burnt out for long stretches of the Trump presidency. Being the presidentâs âshadow chief of staff,â as he was known around the White House, could be a thrill, but it was also a serious burden. Hannity counseled Trump at all hours of the day; one of his confidants said the president treated Hannity like Melania, a wife in a sexless marriage. Arguably, he treated Hannity better than Melania. Hannityâs producers marveled at his influence and access. âItâs a powerful thing to be someoneâs consigliere,â one producer said. âI hear Trump talk at rallies, and I hear Sean,â a family friend commented.
Hannity chose this life, so no one felt sorry for him, but the stress took its toll. âHannity would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person,â one of his associates said. Another friend concurred: âHannity has said to me more than once, âheâs crazy.ââ
But Hannityâs commitment to GOP priorities and to his own business model meant he could never say any of this publicly. If one of his friends went on the record quoting Hannity questioning Trumpâs mental fitness, that would be the end of the friendship.
Early on in the Trump age, Hannity gained weight and vaped incessantly, which some members of his inner circle blamed on Trump-related stress. âIf you were hearing what Iâm hearing, youâd be vaping too,â Hannity told a colleague. He was sensitive to trollsâ comments about the extra weight, especially from his chest up; thatâs all viewers saw of him most nights, when he was live from his palace. He doubled up on his workouts and slimmed back down.
Hannity swore that no one knew the truth about his relationship with Trump. He lashed out at people, like yours truly, who reported on it. And he certainly didnât disclose his role in Trumpworld the way a media ethicist would recommend. But once in a while the curtain slipped and his own colleagues pointed out the extraordinary position he held. As the coronavirus crisis deepened in March, Geraldo Rivera said to Hannity on the air, âI want you to tell the president, when you talk to him tonight, that Geraldo says âMr. President, for the good of the nation, stop shaking hands.ââÂ
Needless to say, thatâs not how Hannityâs calls with Trump actually went. They were instead a stream of grievance and gossip. Trump was a run-on sentence, so prone to rambling that âI barely get a word in,â Hannity told one of his allies. He sometimes spoke with the president before the show and again afterward, usually in the 10 p.m. hour, when Trump rated his guests and recommended talking points and themes for the following day. Trump was just like the rest of Hannityâs viewers: He wanted more of Gregg Jarrett on the show, more of Dan Bongino, more of Newt Gingrichâthe toadiest toads possible.Â
In the Trump age, left-wing blogs filled up with stories about families torn apart by a loved oneâs Hannity addiction. I heard those stories from Fox 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. âI feel like Fox is being held hostage by its audience,â a veteran staffer said. âThe audience has been RADICALIZED,â a longtime commentator texted me, in all caps, as he scrolled through his Twitter feed after a live shot on the daytime show Americaâs Newsroom. The amount of vitriol shocked him. Any break from Trump was penalized. Nuanced debates about the role of government and taxation and immigration were distilled to a single 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 as 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 primary election coverage, Hannity footed the bill for the open bar. A member of Seanâs production crew, a Democrat, told me, âI want to fucking hate him so bad. But heâs so nice to me.â
I believed him. But I struggled to square Hannityâs reputation with the man I saw on TV and occasionally in person. While deep into the research for this book in December 2019, I ran into Hannity at a holiday party hosted by the TV-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: âHumpty!â His nickname for me was Humpty Dumpty. I asked if he ever felt bad about the name-calling. âNo,â he said. He took his hands off my shoulders and moved toward the bar.
It was eight oâclock, and Hannity worked the room like a pro, dressed down in a Fox-branded hoodie. He hugged CNNâs Alisyn Camerota and chatted with media reporters and even said hi to Trump antagonist George Conway. This room was the embodiment of the so-called âmedia mobâ he attacked every weeknightâand he looked like he didnât want to leave it. I wondered what Hannityâs viewers would think. At 8:30 his P.R. person pushed him toward the door, insisting he had to get to the studio for his nine oâclock show. I later realized that the P.R. person had liedâhe had pretaped his show before coming to the party.
Those were the pre-social distancing days, when Hannity could still fraternize with the enemy. Months later, Hannity dismissed coronavirus âhysteriaâ and bashed Democrats who raised alarms about the virus. In the words of one Kansas City residentâs FCC complaint, Hannity âhas misled his elderly viewers on the risk of pandemic virus. They are most at risk.â Hannity, of course, insisted that he always took the virus seriously. But the transcripts proved otherwise.
There are dozens of reasons why the United States lagged so 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 TrumpâFox feedback loop. When the virus silently spread, some of Foxâs biggest stars denied and downplayed the threat.Â
Trump echoed them, and they echoed back. âThe thing thatâs going to end this is the warmer weather,â Greg Gutfeld said on February 24. âOne dayâitâs like a miracleâit will disappear,â Trump said on February 27. Foxâs longest-tenured medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, told Hannity on March 6, âat worst, at worst, worst case scenario, it could be the flu.â
This was shockingly irresponsible stuffâand Fox executives knew it, because by the beginning of March, they were taking precautions that belied Siegelâs claim, canceling an event for hundreds of advertisers, instituting deep cleanings of the office, and putting a work-from-home plan in place. Foxâs most vociferous critics said the network had blood on its hands. An advocacy group in Washington State compiled this information and filed suit against Fox. (That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.) Some Fox staffers privately admitted that the donât-worry tone of the talking heads was harmful. âHazardous to our viewers,â âdangerous,â and âunforgivableâ are some of the phrases Fox News staffers used to describe the networkâs early coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
The contrast between Foxâs public face and the private âresistanceâ has existed ever since Trump upended the presidential race five years ago. Itâs the reason why I decided to write a book about the network and its unprecedented alliance with the White House. In all I spoke with more than 140 staffers at Fox, plus 180 former 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 become dangerous to democracy. They felt like the news division had been squeezed out in favor of pro-Trump blowhards.
Most of the insiders acknowledged that Fox News was always, on one level, a political project, but many said they were shocked by how thoroughly Fox and the GOP had been merged by Trump, Hannity, and a handful of other power players.
âWe surrendered,â one anchor said with remorse in his voice. âWe just surrendered.â
âWhat does Trump have on Fox?â another 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 everyone paranoid and punished those he suspected of leaking. That same fear of retribution was still very real in the post-Ailes years. Employees suspected their work phones were tapped and assumed their emails were monitored by management. I cannot overstate the level of paranoia among Fox employees.
Most of the sources only spoke on condition of anonymity, citing Foxâs nondisclosure agreements and other rules against speaking with outside members of the media. This was especially true for on-air talent. I laughed several times when I heard Fox stars bemoaning the use of anonymous sources on air, knowing those very same people were confidential sources. After all, thatâs how this business works.Â
Copyright © 2020 by Brian Stelter. From the forthcoming book HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by Brian Stelter to be published by One Signal Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.
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