“Let’s see if we’ve got any liberals in the audience,” says the king of right-wing cable TV as he surveys the studio audience minutes before his show goes live across the US. “There’s usually a couple in every crowd.”
I’m finding that hard to believe, judging by the number of passionate conservatives I’d met earlier in the live audience queue outside the Fox building. But as Sean Hannity walks along the front row between the cameras, I fear I’m about to be exposed. “I can pick them,” he says, getting closer. He’s beaming, his face is orange with makeup, his shiny teeth look like they were implanted a week ago.
“You’re normal,” he says, as he walks past people in the front row. “You’re normal. You’re normal, so are you.” The crowd is loving it, but it’s beginning to feel like a turkey shoot because he’s getting closer. “The way you can tell someone’s a liberal is that they never smile,” he says, “or they’re wearing a stupid mask.” As the audience laughs, he scans my face, which must be expressing the relief of someone who is just wise enough to know that wearing a mask to a Fox TV studio might not be good for their health.
Welcome to Hannity, the now-undisputed flagship of Fox News, following the axing of Tucker Carlson’s program early this week. It’s the show that exemplifies the Fox conservative talk format and caters for the views and prejudices of its loyal audience. I’m here to see how this echo chamber works from the inside, two weeks after the company endured a hefty US$787.5 million hit in the Dominion defamation settlement for misleading the nation over Trump’s Big Lie about election fraud, and three days after it sacked its most famous right-wing star, Tucker Carlson.
The show’s about to start, but not before Hannity invokes the memory of his mentor, the late veteran right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who he describes as an “intellectual powerhouse” and credits with not only kickstarting his own career but also inspiring Fox News. “I know that he’d want one thing from us and that’s for all of us to unite and save this great republic that we live in,” he tells the studio audience.
Two minutes later, we’re all focussing on a monitor where host Brian Kilmeade, who’s filling the 8pm slot once held by Carlson, is wrapping up by plugging a classic Fox segment coming up on his own regular show, One Nation.
“Amongst my guests,” he says, “is Grant Napear, who had the nerve to tweet ‘All Lives Matter’ and was fired.” Then he tosses to Hannity and the studio goes wild. I can’t hear what the host is saying above the cheering from the seats around me.
The program opens with explosive claims that “the president’s adult son, Hunter, might soon be forced to move out of the White House, where he is rumoured to be living, into a federal prison”. There’s wild applause at this news. Hannity says his sources suggest the arrest could be imminent — and it sounds like it couldn’t come quick enough.
“We know he’s been under investigation since at least 2018,” explains Hannity, regarding a felony tax violation and a felony weapon charge. “So, here’s a question we all need to ask, if the last name was Trump do you think they would have acted faster?”
No one cares about whether a “former crack head and deadbeat dad” goes to prison, says Hannity. This is about Joe Biden and whether his finances are “suspiciously, apparently, co-mingled with his son”. I’m wondering whether the phrase “suspiciously, apparently” has just been invented by Fox’s lawyers to avoid another half-a-billion dollars walking out the door in a potential defamation settlement.
But Hannity is more concerned about what all this means for the nation, namely whether it constitutes grounds for impeachment. And why hasn’t this happened already? Well, that’s because “for years high ranking government officials have gone to great lengths to protect the shady Biden syndicate”. And, just to be sure where Hannity stands, the monologue circles back: “At the same time,” he says, “the feds have twisted and contorted the law to persecute another guy by the name of Donald J Trump.”
You get the drift. Apart from his still-evident love of Trump, Hannity’s mission is to demonise the left and either bemoan the treatment of the right or, in the case of the next story, trumpet its achievements. The news is that the House has passed a bill lifting the debt ceiling. But the biggest story is that the Republicans have narrowly secured a clause to wind back US$4.8 trillion in federal spending.
Hannity crosses live to House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is also cheered by the studio audience. Hannity tells the Speaker he’s worried because some Republicans didn’t support the cause and now the bill could be eroded. The speaker agrees — in fact, it looks like this is what he’s been invited onto the program to do. Hannity urges Republicans to hold the line. He’s listing his demands as if dozens of congressmen and women are actually listening and ready to take his orders. It feels like a rallying call.
The other significant news is that President Biden has declared he’s standing again for president. Various Fox contributors are brought in and seated at the anchor’s desk. As they’re checking scripts and tending to makeup, members of the studio audience yell out how much they love them. “And I love you back,” says Kayleigh McEnany, former Trump Whitehouse spokesperson. The guests are here to mock Biden’s announcement. He couldn’t announce it live, one argues, because no one trusts him to get his lines right.
One contributor, Charlie Hurt, jokes that Biden’s message was prerecorded and released at 6am so that when his staff woke him up at 10am they could tell him, “Look, you’re standing for president again.” That gets a huge laugh. The advanced age of the already gaffe-prone president is a real issue and is crying out for proper exploration. But don’t expect that on Fox News.
I’m beginning to fear a whole show might go by without hearing the word “woke”. But I needn’t worry because Hannity wants to introduce a new star in the Fox lineup. Charly Arnolt is an émigré of ESPN but left for Fox’s Outkick program where, she explains, she’ll be free to talk about the issues that matter to women. And what matters to women? Transgender people in sport, of course.
After the show, Hannity comes back and takes questions from the crowd. We must have cheered in the right ways because we’ve all become family by now. He’s throwing footballs into the stands and cracking jokes. I have one shot at a question, so I ask whether any of the many rumours circulating about Carlson explain his departure.
Was it due to something he said in documents unearthed during the Dominion defamation trial disclosure process? Especially the latest theory that there are yet even more explosive emails? Was it a reaction to the discrimination suit filed by Abby Grossberg, a former member of Carlson’s production team? Or could there be truth in the theory that Carlson was getting too religious and citing too much scripture about the rapture with Murdoch’s fiancé-for-a-fortnight Ann Lesley Smith?
Alas, Hannity’s answer isn’t very illuminating.
“I honestly have no clue,” he says. “I’m reading reports like you’re reading reports … I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether it was a mutual agreement. I don’t know whether it was a departure. I don’t know whether it was a firing. I’m reading the same stuff you are, but then I‘m suspicious because the media lies about me all the time so I don’t know what to believe.”
“Have you spoken to him?” I ask.
“Yes, we’ve touched base.”
“How is he?”
“He was as happy as a clam. You know when you have power like that and so much talent and a big audience like that he’s always going to land on his feet.”
Tucker Carlson does appear to be landing on his feet, judging by the enormous response to his overnight video message on Twitter, in which he complained about how “unbelievably stupid” television discussion has become. And no, it isn’t ironic, despite the one-sided, conspiracy-riddled programming he and Hannity and the rest of the Fox line-up have offered for so long.
