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Trump Retreats to His Hannity Bunker
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trump-retreats-to-his-hannity-bunkerJune began poorly for President Trump, and it’s ending worse. Despite his optimistic pronouncements about the coronavirus, the pandemic is surging across the American South and West. Trump’s poll numbers against Joe Biden are cratering. His former national-security adviser is selling a book that calls him a corrupt fool who’s unfit for office. The number of jobless Americans continues to climb. But, luckily, there are some things Trump can still count on—like the Fox News host Sean Hannity.
On Thursday night, with America deep in a crisis that shows no sign of easing, Trump appeared at a Fox News “town hall” led by Hannity. It was a reassuringly safe space for the President. There was not a single mention of the terrifying spike of COVID-19 cases in Texas or Arizona or anywhere else. No one so much as alluded to the hundred and twenty-five thousand or so Americans who have already died from the disease. And Hannity—Trump’s close friend and confidant, who has been called his shadow White House chief of staff—refrained from citing the recent wave of national polls, including one by Fox, that show Trump losing to Biden by double-digit percentage points. The audience of Trump superfans, many of whom wore pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” gear, obliged as well. When Hannity got around to taking questions from them, twenty-five minutes into the forty-three-minute broadcast, a woman named Linda asked Trump, “What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?”
Hannity’s latest in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign was perfectly predictable, of course. The TV host, who is paid twenty-five million dollars a year by Fox, is so reliable a wingman to the President that my colleague Jane Mayer reported that Trump bragged he was a ten out of ten on the loyalty scale. Before the 2018 midterms, the President had Hannity appear onstage at his big pre-election rally, a faux pas even for Fox that earned Hannity a reprimand from his bosses. Before Thursday’s event, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump hosted Hannity as his guest on Air Force One, and photographers snapped a picture of U.S. Marine guards saluting as Hannity walked on the tarmac to the plane’s steps. In a pre-town-hall interview, at a Wisconsin airplane hangar, the two looked like co-stars in a buddy movie; they were even dressed in matching long red ties and dark suits. When the show got going, Trump saluted Hannity as a “great journalist.” Hannity’s show is the Fox bunker that Trump retreats to when everything else is going wrong.
Not surprisingly, some of Trump’s most outrageous comments about the ongoing pandemic have been uttered on Hannity’s program. In early March, just a little over a week before he declared a national emergency and shut down the country, Trump told Hannity that the coronavirus was “very mild,” that it was similar to the annual flu, and that hundreds of thousands of people could recover from it while still going to work. On March 26th, the President touted the malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug to combat the coronavirus. “This could be the big answer,” he told Hannity. On April 7th, Trump was back on the show, promoting himself and hydroxychloroquine. “We have millions of doses that I bought,” Trump said, before correcting himself, “that the country bought.” He added, “It’s not like it’s something unsafe.” A few weeks later, medical studies suggested that the drug was risky, and U.S. government health officials recommended it not be given to COVID-19 patients. The general theme of all these conversations with Hannity—which are better characterized as rambling monologues by Trump in which Hannity occasionally figures—has been the President’s increasingly urgent need to tout his own brilliance at handling the pandemic. “We’re way under .?.?. in terms of death,” he told Hannity, in April. But it wasn’t true, then or now.
-snip-
On Thursday night, with America deep in a crisis that shows no sign of easing, Trump appeared at a Fox News “town hall” led by Hannity. It was a reassuringly safe space for the President. There was not a single mention of the terrifying spike of COVID-19 cases in Texas or Arizona or anywhere else. No one so much as alluded to the hundred and twenty-five thousand or so Americans who have already died from the disease. And Hannity—Trump’s close friend and confidant, who has been called his shadow White House chief of staff—refrained from citing the recent wave of national polls, including one by Fox, that show Trump losing to Biden by double-digit percentage points. The audience of Trump superfans, many of whom wore pro-Trump “Make America Great Again” gear, obliged as well. When Hannity got around to taking questions from them, twenty-five minutes into the forty-three-minute broadcast, a woman named Linda asked Trump, “What do you think is your greatest accomplishment?”
Hannity’s latest in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign was perfectly predictable, of course. The TV host, who is paid twenty-five million dollars a year by Fox, is so reliable a wingman to the President that my colleague Jane Mayer reported that Trump bragged he was a ten out of ten on the loyalty scale. Before the 2018 midterms, the President had Hannity appear onstage at his big pre-election rally, a faux pas even for Fox that earned Hannity a reprimand from his bosses. Before Thursday’s event, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump hosted Hannity as his guest on Air Force One, and photographers snapped a picture of U.S. Marine guards saluting as Hannity walked on the tarmac to the plane’s steps. In a pre-town-hall interview, at a Wisconsin airplane hangar, the two looked like co-stars in a buddy movie; they were even dressed in matching long red ties and dark suits. When the show got going, Trump saluted Hannity as a “great journalist.” Hannity’s show is the Fox bunker that Trump retreats to when everything else is going wrong.
Not surprisingly, some of Trump’s most outrageous comments about the ongoing pandemic have been uttered on Hannity’s program. In early March, just a little over a week before he declared a national emergency and shut down the country, Trump told Hannity that the coronavirus was “very mild,” that it was similar to the annual flu, and that hundreds of thousands of people could recover from it while still going to work. On March 26th, the President touted the malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug to combat the coronavirus. “This could be the big answer,” he told Hannity. On April 7th, Trump was back on the show, promoting himself and hydroxychloroquine. “We have millions of doses that I bought,” Trump said, before correcting himself, “that the country bought.” He added, “It’s not like it’s something unsafe.” A few weeks later, medical studies suggested that the drug was risky, and U.S. government health officials recommended it not be given to COVID-19 patients. The general theme of all these conversations with Hannity—which are better characterized as rambling monologues by Trump in which Hannity occasionally figures—has been the President’s increasingly urgent need to tout his own brilliance at handling the pandemic. “We’re way under .?.?. in terms of death,” he told Hannity, in April. But it wasn’t true, then or now.
-snip-
Much more at the link.
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