Sean Hannity Praises Trump on Air Hours After the President Sues His Boss
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Fox News' Sean Hannity took to the airwaves on Friday, heaping praise on President Donald Trump.
Hannity, whose eponymous show airs during prime time, touched on all of Trump's favorite talking points: tariffs, inflation, taxes, eliminating the "deep state," the "Russia hoax" and more.
But the most noteworthy part of Hannity's show wasn't what he said. It was what he didn't say: a single word about the lawsuit Trump had filed hours earlier accusing Hannity's boss, NewsCorp founder and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and five other defendants of defaming Trump in a Wall Street Journal report about a "bawdy" birthday note Trump sent to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Fox News television personality Sean Hannity airs his show from the floor of a Trump rally on November 5, 2018, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Fox News television personality Sean Hannity airs his show from the floor of a Trump rally on November 5, 2018, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Jeff Roberson/AP
The Context
Trump sued Murdoch, the Journal's publisher Dow Jones, NewsCorp, its CEO and two Journal reporters after the newspaper published an article saying that Trump in 2003 sent Epstein a 50th birthday letter featuring lines of typewritten text surrounded by the outline of a naked woman, complete with Trump's signature.
"Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret," the letter said, according to the report.
Trump railed against Murdoch and the Journal over the piece, accusing them of spreading "defamatory lies" about him and saying that he had "personally" warned Murdoch against publishing the report.
The Journal's report on the letter to Epstein arrived as the Trump administration continues battling fallout over its tactics employed in the probe of the sex offender's 2019 death in a New York City prison.
What To Know
Hannity's fealty to Trump isn't a new phenomenon. He's long been one of Trump's staunchest allies in the conservative cable news sphere. But his effusive praise for the president was particularly jarring to watch in real time on Friday, just hours after Trump had slapped Murdoch and the others with a $10 billion lawsuit.
Hannity acknowledged his affection for the president in his opening monologue, telling viewers: "It's not a secret that I have been a longtime friend and supporter—we've been very transparent—of President Trump. But even I am, frankly, amazed at what he has been able to do, against all odds, in such a very short period of time."
He went on to claim that Trump's is "the single most consequential, transformational presidency in our lifetime."
The president, for his part, seemed privy to what Hannity would say, teasing in a Truth Social post before the show aired: "Everybody should watch Sean Hannity tonight. He really gets it!"
Hannity on Friday ticked through a list of Trump's measures on issues from tariffs to inflation to taxes to immigration enforcement.
The prime-time star also trotted out an army of Trump's acolytes, with one commentator proclaiming: "It's no doubt that we are in the very beginning stages of a new golden era for America. I have only one complaint: when the president was running the first time, he told me and the rest of America that we would get tired of winning."
"I was very doubtful that we would get tired of winning," the commentator, Horace Cooper, said as Hannity laughed. "But I recently told the House speaker [Mike Johnson] we are winning so much that we only have about an hour to celebrate one victory before we move onto the next victory."
Later in the show, Hannity interviewed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the two discussed one of Trump's favorite topics: the "deep state's" effort to topple Trump's first presidency via the "Russia hoax."
In another segment, Hannity went after late-night TV host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert, whose show will end next year after being canceled by CBS.
Colbert's cancellation came after CBS' parent company, Paramount, reached a $16 settlement with Trump over a lawsuit he filed related to a 60 Minutes interview that the president claimed was deceptively edited in favor of then-Democratic nominee Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.
Trump gloated about the CBS settlement in the Truth Social post announcing his $10 billion defamation suit against Hannity's boss, Murdoch, in connection to the Journal story. But Hannity didn't mention that lawsuit, or the Journal story that prompted it, once during Friday's show.
"I want to celebrate and then celebrate again," he told Cooper after laying out Trump's actions during his second term in the Oval Office. "Stop sipping your wine and just take a shot and move on to the next celebration."
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