�Hannity Has Said to Me More Than Once, �He�s Crazy��: Fox News Staffers
Feel Trapped in the Trump Cult Inside the network staffers are cringing,
and even Trump�s �shadow chief of staff� has his doubts. �If you were
hearing what I�m hearing, you�d be vaping too,� Sean Hannity told a
colleague during Trump�s early days.

By Brian Stelter
August 20, 2020
Image may contain Sean Hannity Tie Accessories Accessory Audience Human
Crowd Person Speech Coat and Suit Illustration by Vanity Fair; Photos from
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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 anchors� 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. �When Trump was booked for 8:10,
and we had an assignment for 8:40, we didn�t bother writing it, because we
knew he�d talk until the end of the hour,� a producer for Fox & Friends
told me.

He called the �Friends� and Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity and Maria
Bartiromo. Every so often he�d consent to an on-camera chat, but he liked
the phone. It 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 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 Trump�s ear most recently: There were
side deals brokered during stopovers at his golf club and pitches made
during strategy calls.�Why don�t you call in tomorrow?�

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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. Image may contain
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That�s why, on March 26, 2020, the president was scheduled to call into
Hannity�s show at 9 p.m. sharp. Nine o�clock couldn�t come soon enough for
Trump�his newly established daily press briefings on the COVID-19 crisis
were proving to be a disaster. That day, he�d gone before the cameras at
5:30 p.m. and told the public to �relax�; shared his affection 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 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. Advertisement

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.

�Is he there?� 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 Fox�s very own God: �I am, I�m right here. Hi,
Sean.�

�Mr. President!� Hannity exclaimed. �Thank you��
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And they were off. Trump began by flattering Hannity, claiming he�d
postponed a critical call with Chinese President Xi Jinping just to get on
air. He said, �I am talking to him at 10:30, right after this call.� 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: �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 channel, he said, �Me.� 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.

Hannity�s Long Island mansion and his oceanfront Naples, Florida,
penthouse were two �ber-expensive symbols of how Roger Ailes changed his
life. I viewed Hannity as a living connection to Fox�s past, the only
prime-time host who was there on launch day and is still there nearly 25
years later. But he definitely wasn�t 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 president�s
�shadow chief of staff,� 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. 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, so no one felt sorry for him, but the stress took
its toll. �Hannity would tell you, off-off-off the record, that Trump is a
batshit crazy person,� one of his associates said. Another friend
concurred: �Hannity has said to me more than once, �he�s crazy.��

But Hannity�s 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 Trump�s 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. �If
you were hearing what I�m hearing, you�d be vaping too,� Hannity told a
colleague. He was sensitive to trolls� comments about the extra weight,
especially from his chest up; that�s all viewers saw of him most nights,
when he was live from his palace. He doubled up on his workouts and
slimmed back down. Advertisement

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 didn�t 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, �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.��

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 prone to rambling that �I barely get a word in,� 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 Hannity�s viewers: He wanted more of Gregg
Jarrett on the show, more of Dan Bongino, more of Newt Gingrich�the
toadiest toads possible.