Fox News host Sean Hannity has repeatedly alerted trustees about what he hears in private conversations with President Donald Trump, an excerpt from a new book by CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter reveals.
“If you heard what I heard, you would be guns too,” Hannity told a friend, according to Stelter’s upcoming “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.”
Another Hannity employee told Stelter that host Fox News had trusted that the president was “batshit crazy” in moments of charity.
Although Hannity is still a network juggler by all accounts, Stelter has written about him in the past tense, expressing as if it was common knowledge that Fox News was no longer with the conservative channel.
“Sean Hannity was the most powerful person at Fox in the Trump age,” Stelter writes. “When people asked who was in charge of the channel, he said, ‘Me.’ And most of the people on the channel agreed with him. “
Stelter thinks of Hannity as “a living connection to Fox News’ past.” He is the only prime-time host who has survived every 25 years of the network.
“But he was definitely not one to wander over the past,” Stelter writes. “Every day was a new war.”
Hannity, allegedly known to some in the White House as Trump’s “shadow chief of staff,” played his part “masterfully” during the Trump era – but it took a toll, according to Stelter.
“Hannity advises Trump on all hours of the day,” the book says. “One of his confidants said that President treated Hannity like Melania, a woman in a sexual marriage.”
“He’s probably treated Hannity better then Melania, “it goes on.” The producers of Hannity surprised him about his influence and access. “It’s a powerful thing to consecrate someone,” said one producer. “I hear Trump talking at rallies, and I hear Sean,” commented a family friend. ‘
“Hannity would tell you, off-off the record, that Trump is a batshit crazy person,” Stelter says, quoting an Fox News host associate. Another confirmed: “Hannity has told me more than once, ‘He’s crazy.'”
Stelter has no sympathy with the host, who reports net $ 43 million a year. But he notes that Trump’s persistent bluster and demands for attention, advice and support – “I can barely get a word in,” Hannity told another friend – have apparently significantly accused Hannity of his choice to stand inexorably by the president .
Sometime in the Trump age, Hannity gained weight and sprang up persistently, which some members of his inner circle blamed on Trump-related stress. “If you heard what I heard, you would be weapons too,” Hannity told a colleague. He was sensitive to trolls’ remarks about the extra weight, especially from his chest up; that’s all viewers saw of him most nights when he was alive from his palace. He doubled up on his workouts and slept downstairs.
Hannity swore that no one knew the truth about his relationship with Trump. He draws out to people, like you really, who report them. And he has certainly not revealed his role in Trumpworld the way a media ethic would recommend. But every now and then the curtain slipped and his own colleagues pointed out the extraordinary position he held. As the crisis in coronavirus deepened in March, Geraldo Rivera told Hannity on the air, “I want you to tell the president, when you talk to him tonight, that Geraldo says ‘Mr. President, for the good of’ the nation, stop shaking hands. ‘”
Stelter shows the human side of Hannity, quoting colleagues who described him as “a generous family member.”
“He paid bonuses to his staff from his own deep pockets. He ordered food and care packages to the homes of loved ones who lost loved ones. He even offered to hire a private investigator when an acquaintance died in a mysterious crash, “Stelter writes.
He adds, “A member of Sean’s production crew, a Democrat, told me, ‘I want to hate him so badly. But he’s so nice to me.'”
Although Stelter says he believed this assertion, it was difficult to walk with the rude, and at times argumentative, cruel personality of Hannity’s time.
It was also hard to square with the Hannity he knows personally. For context, Stelter describes Hannity’s run at a December 2019 holiday party at the Lambs Club, a upscale Manhattan restaurant:
Hannity greeted me by putting both hands on my shoulders and exclaiming, ‘Humpty!’ His nickname for me was Humpty Dumpty. I asked if he ever felt bad about calling names. “No,” he said. He took his hands off my shoulders and stepped to the bar.
